I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, and fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated surveillance programs in the last two countries where Edward Snowden has been located, namely China and Russia. As an American citizen and voter, I'm still mulling over what I think should be the correct policy response to the revelations about NSA claims about NSA data-gathering programs, but I have deep ties to China as a speaker and reader of Chinese and a long-time student of the language, culture, and history of China, and I have similar connections, less thoroughly developed, to Russia. People everywhere just wanna be free. We ought to be hearing a lot more about all the various governmental data-gathering and surveillance programs, everywhere in the world, and of course we should also be learning more about the actions of private business corporations to gather data on all of us. That Wikileaks tells us much more about the United States federal government than about any of those other entities tells me something about Wikileaks, and perhaps tells me something favorable about the United States.
If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,
remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from.
AFTER EDIT: Good catch by the readers who noticed the non-American English in the Wikileaks press release here (mentioned in other comments in this thread). The press release kindly submitted here is plainly not Edward Snowden's verbatim words, but more self-publicizing from Wikileaks.
>I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy,
>and fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated
>surveillance programs in the last two countries where Edward
>Snowden has been located, namely China and Russia.
I cannot speak for China, but majority of Russians lack a natural compass/taste for civil liberties and human rights: they haven't had the time to develop one. Their version of PRISM is called SORM-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM) - it was launched with a complete lack of secrecy and, predictably, was met with public apathy. There are no news to break. :(
That's the thing that's so jarring about the U.S policy. Their private ideology, or whatever guides their actions, is quite obviously contradictory to their publicly espoused beliefs. The Russian and Chinese government are at least pretty direct about their ideology and intentions.
Well I do hate to say it but we've always had an "us or them" mentality to the rest of the world. I mean we were so isolationist that we were willing to watch Europe burn from afar rather than do anything. There's no telling what would have happened without Pearl Harbor; the U.S. may never have joined the war against Germany at all, in fact.
You'll notice that much of the furor has come from the idea that the NSA might be watching what Americans are doing. For everything else there was effectively a big giant "Of course they were bugging $FOO, that's their job".
Obviously Europe doesn't feel the same way (and didn't with ECHELON)...
> There's no telling what would have happened without Pearl Harbor; the U.S. may never have joined the war against Germany at all, in fact.
The US would have joined the war. By 1940, the US was practically involved in the war, just without men. German U-Boats were sinking American convoys, and American ships were destroying German U-Boats.
It was only a matter of time before the US would have joined the war, Pearl Harbor or not. FDR was prepared to fight it without the approval of Congress.
The US entry into the First World War was primarily to be a participant in the peace negotiations, so Wilson could present his 14 points, create the League of Nations and ensure American dominance in world politics (something the USA has refrained from participating in prior to the First World War, despite its economical power).
The Second World War pretty much started with American involvement, but it was not until Pearl Harbor that the USA could finally - publicly - commit its entire arsenal. But regardless, you would have found a way to join the war. Japan just did you a favour.
> I mean we were so isolationist that we were willing to watch Europe burn from afar rather than do anything. There's no telling what would have happened without Pearl Harbor; the U.S. may never have joined the war against Germany at all, in fact.
Yes, and? Did Europe intervene in the American Civil War, or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years? Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell. Going to war is a huge commitment, and doing it purely for the benefit of a continent that has spent the last several centuries hell-bent on destroying itself sounds like a really bad idea.
The worst part is, when the US government does see a situation that calls for military intervention, like Vietnam or Iraq, that gets criticized as well.
Your comment betrays a lack of knowledge of politics of the time, where 'the time' is mid-19th C, 1930s, or 2000s. And of the current time - how the hell did Iraq call for that kind of military intervention?
Whining about Europe 'not intervening' in the 1860s completely misses the massive changes going on in Europe at the time - it's not like Europe was sitting around peacefully not doing anything in particular like the US was at the start of each World War. Only a few years after the US civil war finished, Germany came into existence and successfully invaded Paris, for example.
Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell
Nice. In one breath you chide Europe for always being at war, in the next you chide them for not going to war enough.
Did Europe intervene ... in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years
Yes, Europe did - the death of colonialism happend after WWII, considerably nearer to us than 200 years ago. The UK fought an open war against a South American nation only 30 years ago. The French still regularly intervene in Africa. The French fought in Vietnam up until Dien Bien Phu Falls in 1954, only 20 years before the US bugged out of there.
Hell, the UK fought against the Japanese in WWII, which again is much closer to our time than 200 years ago.
And the Russians - still a European country - intervened all over the place. Afghanistan throughout the 80s, for example. Immense amounts of material aid to North Vietnam. So on and so forth.
Good old American Exceptionalism. No-one else ever does anything, it's always up to the 'world cop' (who happens to be very selective about what he's policing). You've got a really simplistic view of European political history - I encourage you to read up a lot more on it (if nothing else, it's really quite interesting).
> Whining about Europe 'not intervening' in the 1860s completely misses the massive changes going on in Europe at the time - it's not like Europe was sitting around peacefully not doing anything in particular like the US was at the start of each World War. Only a few years after the US civil war finished, Germany came into existence and successfully invaded Paris, for example.
And when Germany manages to do that for the third time in 80 years, it's America's fault for not intervening?
Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world. Germany invading Poland and France wasn't relevant enough to American interests to justify sending men across the Atlantic to die. It just seemed like business as usual. You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.
Again you fail to understand what was going on at the time, falling back on pop-culture memes. France and the UK were both hastily remilitarising and were buying time. Everyone knew war was coming, but the UK and the French needed more time to prepare, and it wasn't just the US that was suffering from economic depression in the 30s. They knew for 20 years that there would be another war - Marshal Foch said of the Treaty of Versailles "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". He was only two months out.
I mean, come on. You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention', but you say the same is not true of the Nazis? This is despite nearly 10 years of a steady exodus of Jews from Germany to the US and other countries? It's not like no-one knew that the Nazis were oppressive, it's just the depth that they would eventually get to that was unknown.
You can call that isolationism but it's not like any of the European powers stuck their neck out when it wasn't in their interests.
I never said the US should be faulted for isolationism, though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism. I said that you were mischaracterising what was going on and engaging in double-standards.
For example, given that the French were intervening this year in Mali, as 'France' and not part of the UN, how does this stack up against your claim of "Europeans don't intervene in Africa and haven't for 200 years"? Where are the US ground troops intervening in Africa? The US navy, along with European ones, are intervening against the Somali pirates, but that's to protect shipping, it's not to help the people. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some, but I'm unaware of any.
Look, all I'm trying to do is refute the idea that it's somehow the responsibility of the US to step in and intervene whenever a war breaks out somewhere in the world.
The US bills itself as the 'world cop', which was exactly its rationale for invading Iraq. It's natural for people to expect it to live up to its own rhetoric.
> Again you fail to understand what was going on at the time, falling back on pop-culture memes.
Stop posturing--these remarks add nothing to the discussion.
> France and the UK were both hastily remilitarising and were buying time. Everyone knew war was coming, but the UK and the French needed more time to prepare, and it wasn't just the US that was suffering from economic depression in the 30s. They knew for 20 years that there would be another war - Marshal Foch said of the Treaty of Versailles "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". He was only two months out.
I don't see how that's anywhere at odds with what I'm saying, which is that Europe tended to have these wars from time to time and the US was justifiably reluctant to intervene.
> You have just said that Iraq was a war that 'called for intervention'
I said that's how the US government saw it at the time.
> but you say the same is not true of the Nazis?
> ...
> though it is odd you cheer both their early isolationism and their later interventionism
I did no such thing--I said it's hypocritical to criticize America for both isolationism and for interventionism. Please read what I actually wrote and make an honest attempt to comprehend it.
> The US bills itself as the 'world cop'
In 1939 they did that?
My whole point, which you have arrogantly refused to comprehend, has been to justify the initial American non-intervention in WWII, and in WWII the US never billed itself as any such thing.
I can offer no defense of American interventionism. I think it's consistently been a mistake. But if you're going to go around arguing that the US should have been interventionists in World War II, then you have to accept what it looks like when the US pursues a foreign policy of interventionism. Most people don't like how that turns out. Most people would prefer if the US would mind its own business and not get involved in wars overseas, but if they hold that position, it's hypocritical of them to criticize the US for not directly joining the Second World War before they had a good reason to.
> or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas
Yes, particular one that overlapped the American Civil War in time and neighbored it geographically. [1] Perhaps less in the Americas then elsewhere (particularly when the US wasn't tied up in its own civil war) due to the US's proclamation of regional hegemony (the Monroe Doctrine) and desire not get into a fight over that.
> Yes, and? Did Europe intervene in the American Civil War, or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years? Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell.
The 19th century's balance of power was essentially established by intervening in other countries so as to not plunge the entire continent into war. During the Spring of Nations in 1848, Austria, Prussia and France intervened in several smaller European countries (as well as internally) to crush uprisings.
During the American Civil War, there were a couple of wars in Europe, which were much more interesting to Europeans, as these were part of the German and Italian unification wars. Besides, the USA was nowhere as powerful during the 1860s as Europe was in the 1910s, so the comparison is not really useful.
Remember, states don't have friends, they have interests. Why would the Europeans intervene in a civil war of yours? But besides that, the Europeans did intervene in several conflicts around the world, particularly in places where they had interests. Such as the Latin American independence wars (as well as other wars in Latin America), African revolts (remember the 19th century was the scramble for Africa) and East Asia wars that threatened their trading ports (such as the Boer War).
Do read up more on the history of both wars as 'seeing a situation' was a pretty simple-minded opinion there. It took much much more than a call for justice to move the military gears. There were always political or economic agendas hidden under any wars and that makes one reason for criticism. I don't even want to get started on other reasons.
Interestingly, there have been multiple speculations on US's involvement in WW2:
One is the good democratic fight versus the bad facists. US were hampered by the isolationist views held by quite a number of senators at the time, hence there was no direct involvement until after Pearl Harbour attack, which resulted in an almost uniform senatorial agreement on declaration of war.
Another is that US could have kept maintaining the profit stream from arms-dealing to both sides (Germany still imported American arms prior to 1941 or so, if I'm not mistaken) but got unwillingly dragged into the war.
Yet another more cynical view is that after the huge Axis loss at USSR, US just saw the opportunity to join in and mope up what's left of the Axis since winners get to dictate the terms. The Pearl Harbour event was a surprising but timely excuse.
I beg to differ.
Operation Barbarossa was the one turning point of the USSR invasion. Stalingrad was merely the consequence IMO as Barbarossa had led to German army being both weakened and stretched too far out. They simply could not compare to the Soviet war machine's recover-ability and production.
Of course Pearl Harbour was what got the US directly involved and nuking Japan out in the end, but I hold the speculation that without Pearl Harbour, US would still declare war to either Germany or Japan anyway because of several reasons below:
1) US businesses were being harmed by the Axis, i.e. Germans attacking cargo ships meant to supply arms to Britain. Sooner or later the piled up losses would justify the entry in front of Congress.
2) The Japanese was expanding fast in Asia and they would not stop just short of US territorial waters, plus the imposed embargo had been pissing the Japanese off anyway. A clash was inevitable.
3) Letting USSR being the major player and eventual winner meant letting communism spread throughout Europe. There had to be a sizable participation from the Capitalist group in the war and the rest of the Western bloc was too tattered to muster that up.
In 1941, it probably didn't seem obvious that Russia would prevail. The cynical, hegemonic move for capitalism certainly wouldn't have been to ally with the Soviets, but rather to let both totalitarian regimes fight each other to exhaustion and sweep up the remains of both.
Hypothetically, a win for either Axis or Eastern bloc would spell disaster for capitalism. That practically guarantee that US would join in the fray, one way or another, indirectly or directly. Pearl Harbour helped alot with the decision making, as other members pointed out in this thread and the general consensus on America's participation in WW2.
Right, I'm just saying counterfactually, if you were in charge of a global capitalist conspiracy, you'd sell weapons to both sides until Germany and Russia were both weakened and then conquer both, and then you have global capitalist hegemony.
The fact that that's not how it worked out is pretty good evidence that there wasn't a global capitalist conspiracy behind the whole thing after all.
Well, it was pretty much a big win for America after the war ended, economically with all that arms trade and diplomatically as the affirmed leader figure of Western bloc.
Well, truth be told. Every war can practically be explained by economics. And even if that wasn't the prevailing argument, without economics as a backup argument, the war would be hard to justify. Denmark's entry into the Thirty Years' War had little to do with protecting Protestants' freedoms, but rather to secure more money for Denmark.
I agree, partly with that, yet I'd add more factors onto the equation. Let's say that 2003's Iraq was evident from an economic standpoint. On the contrary, the Vietnam war did not seem to net much profits from the get go. However, when you factor in the world affairs at the time, then it started to make sense.
Thankfully not, as the upper class in Britain at least tended to favour the Confederacy.
> East Asia
There's few parts of the world you could list that is a worse example of places Europe haven't intervened.
European powers were either one of the major sides or a supporting power in most wars in East Asia for a substantial part of the last couple of centuries.
You do realize the US "inherited" the Vietnam war with the associated campaigns in Laos and Cambodia from France, do you not?
That the US fought with the British, French and Russian empires against China in the Opium wars?
Now, arguably those are not good arguments for continued intervention. On the contrary. While I think there were some very good reasons why the US ought to have intervened in World War II earlier, I also wish the US had learned more lessons from some of the wars mentioned above (and a lot of other foolish wars the European colonial powers were involved in).
Instead the US seems to have seen the way the waning colonial powers acted as a recipe for how it needed to behave as its own power grew, with - for anyone paying attention to the outcomes of the colonial wars - predictably horrible outcomes.
> Even the rest of Europe abandoned Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Germans before Poland fell
It's easy to look back and regret those. But the politics around them, and the patchy history of Europe, made them politically "tricky". The Austrian "Anschluss" happened on the background of the German Austria's previous attempts to merge with Germany, which was denied it by treaty, including the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 Austria was under a semi-fascist dictatorship, and there was then pressure for a referendum on the issue (with extensive support and threats from Hitler). Facing lack of support from Mussolini who had previously protected them against Hitler, the Austrian government accepted a large number of nazis into government, who then used their positions to prepare and conduct a coup against the austro-fascists supported by threats of force on the basis of allegations of plans to rig the referendum. It was then the Austrian nazi government that handed control over to Germany in a manner designed to effectively be a request from the Austrian state for the Germans to enter Austria. They then carried out a vote to legitimise the takeover.
The combination of events made it politically extremely hard for outsiders to do much more than complain. Europe should go to war because a government asked for military support from a neighbour following allegations that the previous dictator may have tried to prevent the will of the people, in the face of widespread public support for the nazis? In retrospect, probably. But without the knowledge of what Hitler went on to do, it was squabbling between two authoritarian governments over control of an artificially created country with a history of wanting to merge, where the new dictator likely had as much or maybe even more support than the old dictator.
In the case of Czechoslovakia similarly, the state was an artifical creation from parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that included a substantially ethnically German population in certain areas (Germans made up 23% of the population of Czechoslovakia) that had genuine grievances of oppression against the elite of the country, and the government also purposefully moved parts of the German population to the West, making it even easier to make excuses.
So Hitler was similarly able to play the role of someone who at least plausibly wanted to "liberate" the German population, and present the whole thing as "rectifying" a situation that was only 20 years old and an outcome of a previous war when the will of the people in question had been largely ignored when the borders were drawn up, and so got Sudetenland. When Hitler went into the rest of Czechoslovakia, he got the support of Slovakia, and both Hungary and Poland used the opportunity to annex area - he was not the only agressor, and support for going to war over Czechoslovakia when even the government over a substantial part of the twenty year old country took part in the aggression against the rest and supported the German invasion was not an appealing proposition.
While there were certainly fears and lots of people who had concerns about it, Hitler played people up against each other, and was dealing with governments who all had gotten their hands dirty in drawing up fairly arbitrary borders without the involvement of the affected people and/or through wars within the last few decades. Combine that with a strong degree of denial - nobody wanted to rush into a new war - and a lot of admiration for what Hitler had achieved domestically in Germany, coupled with a grudging acceptance that perhaps giving these people what they seemed to want might not be such a bad idea if it resolved some of the remaining tensions created by the Treaty of Versailles.
In retrospect, of course, that was stupid. But then in retrospect it was stupid to not intervene when Hitler remilitarised areas Germany was not allowed to militarise and in a whole host of other situations leading up to the war.
But the cases of Czechoslovakia and Austria were still substantially different than the case of Poland, both because they came first, but also because they were clouded in politics and could be "explained away" as something other than naked aggression. By the time of the invasion of Poland, though, there was no denying that Hitlers ambitions did not stop at "liberating" German speaking groups in weird little newly created states, and with the rapid fall of further states
"Thankfully not, as the upper class in Britain at least tended to favour the Confederacy"
Sidebar to a sidebar, but it went a little deeper than that. The British industrialists tended to favor the South -- and supplied weapons to the Confederacy in the lead up to the war -- because they depended on Southern cotton imports. Their industrial interests were heavily tied up with the South's.
There was actually a very real possibility that Britain would have gone further, and a lot of internal political pressure for it to do so.
> Did Europe intervene in the American Civil War, or in any of the multitude of conflicts in the Americas, East Asia, or Africa over the past 200 years?
Yes they did. Both Vietnam and Iraq are leftovers from European interventions.
"Well I do hate to say it but we've always had an "us or them" mentality to the rest of the world. I mean we were so isolationist that we were willing to watch Europe burn from afar rather than do anything. There's no telling what would have happened without Pearl Harbor; the U.S. may never have joined the war against Germany at all, in fact."
The rich would have made more money selling arms to both sides. (In fact some did.)
You can probably find it as a pdf someplace too, as it is a pretty old book. Read it and try to see the difference between the US industrialists and German industrialists in the dock at Nueremburg. Same sh*t, different piles imho.
> Obviously Europe doesn't feel the same way (and didn't with ECHELON)...
Their people or their governments? Their people disagree with this, as we do. Their governments have long appeared to be cooperating, even if they drop their monocles into their drinks every time something like this comes out.
Parts of the governments certainly don't like it. But I don't have enough experience with parliamentary (or European) politics to be able to tell how much that actually matters.
But I would presume that even parliamentary government must bow to public outcry in some form.
You may have to offer a bit more here... Pressure != Wheeling and dealing. I think what President Obama meant by wheeling and dealing is that the U.S. will not "give up" anything for Snowden.
You're assuming that the oversight in the US is a complete sham. So far we have only Snowden's word on that - not documentary proof. In China and Russia, there is mo oversight at all.
One thing that's interesting, at least about the domestic surveillance portions, is that people of both major political ideologies seem equally outraged.
As for spying on non-Americans...we have decades of propaganda ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H movies that make that cool and desirable.
Don't worry about SORM-2 in Russia that much. AFAIK it doesn't really work, because it is an ad-hock system and it is primarily developed for certification purposes. It is probably a joke, compared to PRISM.
So you offer some things Wikileaks could change, and then you offer some criticism of Snowden's statement.
Why exactly are we still talking about the messenger(s)? How is this productive?
The goal is to make the world better. Nitpicking about Snowden, his associates, his travel, his criminal behavior or lack thereof, Wikileaks, Assange, and all of this other stuff is completely orthogonal, soap-opera bullshit that has nothing to do with that goal.
We should be focusing now on how to a) spread the word about the constitutional abuses and systemic coverup being perpetrated by NSA and b) working toward building a legal environment wherein these types of circumstances are not only legally prohibited but also cannot be re-engineered in practice either.
>> "AFTER EDIT: Good catch by the readers who noticed the non-American English in the Wikileaks press release here (mentioned in other comments in this thread). The press release kindly submitted here is plainly not Edward Snowden's verbatim words, but more self-publicizing from Wikileaks."
Is it not possible he dictated it and WikiLeaks typed it and published it? Or someone at WikiLeaks checked for typos using a British-English spell checker and corrected a few US-English spellings?
That's a fair point, but how can we verify that Snowden actually endorsed this statement or not? How does Wikileaks have access to him while no other media outlets do?
First of all, for an organization whose sole existence is to provide journalistic integrity, I would be very surprised if Wikileaks isn't being honest about this. Secondly, he was actually accompanied by Wikileaks associations on his flights to Moscow. So they're likely sitting right next to him, wherever he is.
They were pretty damn "honest" about getting him safely to Ecuador, weren't they? >_<
Lets be frank here, Snowden is in this situation because he's a dumbass, and he shouldn't have trusted his well being to Wikileaks either. Wikileaks couldn't have saved Bradley Manning, nor do they have the manpower to make Snowden safe.
Snowden leaked information without any plan B. He gave up all of his friends and family and decided to try and live in a strange (US-allied) country while he hid from the long arm of the law... while publicly thumbing his nose. Booz Allen didn't even know he was in Hong Kong when he revealed himself to the world as the NSA leaker. He was still on NSA (related) payroll and was fired after the fact.
Instead of taking advantage of that time to hide, he taunted an entire nation. And the dumbass newspaper reporters let him do it too, without any regard for his safety. Without trying to consult him, or without thinking of the consequences.
After all, coming out with the story was more important than this guy's safety.
This guy has no friends left, and has trapped himself in an even worse country where they openly persecute people like him. Lets see what happens now...
A friend of mine was stranded in the same part of the moscow airport, (en route from Armenia back to the US) but she did not see Snowden, so it may not be so easy to find him.
Perhaps more importantly, none of the many media there have been able to find him so exactly where he is is an open question. Not too many places to hide in an airport.
Presumably a security room operated by the Russian authorities. If something bad were to happen to Snowden it would be a major embarrassment for them, and there are many who might want to cause that.
Wikileaks has released documents from governments around the world, and at different times the leaks have caused scandals in almost every country out there. You may have heard more about leaks that affect United States because of the news you read.
You have heard more about leaks that affect United States because of the news you read.
Many (not all, but many) of my leads to breaking news on surveillance and data-collection programs come from Hacker News, which includes worldwide participation, so it is a bit surprising that there is so much news about the United States here. Other news aggregation services I rely on (including the wall posts of my literate, diverse, worldwide group of Facebook friends) indeed include more news about other countries than HN sometimes does.
What are the best sources we can readily link to today about surveillance and data-collection practices in China and in Russia?
AFTER EDIT TO RESPOND TO REPLY BELOW: I already know Chinese, as a review of quite recent comments of mine here on Hacker News would make abundantly clear. My Russian is rusty, as I haven't kept it up through daily use since the early 1980s, but I have read the Russian press (of the communist era) in the original Russian, and I still take care to be aware of the Russian official and Russian popular perspectives on world news.
I can't really tell you what news to follow, maybe I've just been more interested in Wikileaks over the years. If you really are interested Wikipedia has a good summary of their leaks, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Leaks
In any case Wikileaks is opportunistic, they rely on leaks wherever they may originate.
I'm guessing that TokenAdult speaks both of these languages better than you do, as he's discussed language skills at some length in education-related threads. An apology seems in order.
Wikileaks is generally reactionary, i.e., they rely upon others to bring them leaks which they publish. The organization steadfastly denies going out to acquire the information themselves.
In certain contexts, that word means 'counter-revolutionary', so be careful when using it to describe WikiLeaks. It's good that you had the presence of mind to include that i.e.! ;)
> I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, and
> fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated surveillance
> programs in the last two countries where Edward Snowden has been located
The big deal is that the US is no longer the shining beacon of hope-/change-y-ness or freedom that it claimed to be. We, the US, need to keep that beacon BRIGHTLY LIT. Those states which don't follow the lead will be pressed by the press or dissenters to follow or will repress freedom. [Yes, I acknowledge that the beacon-lit thing is dramatic and too-large, but that's the US for you.]
Lose that and we join a race to the freedom-bottom the US founders would be shocked to learn we have undertaken.
Finally a meaningful statement. I couldn't agree more. However I think that one part of this involves recognizing that the Federal Government is not the US. We as people need to actually use the freedoms we have to build a society that people will want to emulate.
tokenadult, that is a loaded expectation that Wikileaks is disempowered from fulfilling, since they simply publish what is received after anonymizing and verifying where possible.
In fact, back in 2009, Assange told me personally he was surprised not to have received more information from China.
Have they published the leak of Ecuador's surveillance system plans yet? [1]
Admittedly the documents keep getting pulled but apparently they are available on DocumentCloud still.
But I just checked the Ecuador page at WikiLeaks [2] and have yet to see anything. Maybe they just need more time to authenticate the contents? Although then again, Ecuador itself seems to have authenticated it [3].
On that note, Ecuador's page at WikiLeaks seems pretty sparse after 2009 or so. I guess there have been any major secrecy scandals since then in Ecuador?
Why would he be surprised? For all this talk of the jeopardy Snowden is in, we forget that in China a policeman can send you to prison without trial, and that executions are so common they send round mobile vans to perform them.
> I'd really like to see Wikileaks devoting more of its time, energy, and fund-raising into breaking news about government-operated surveillance programs in the last two countries where Edward Snowden has been located, namely China and Russia.
I don't know about Russia, but in China it's pretty well known by everyone that the PRC is watching you; China doesn't claim to be a democratic republic either. It's not a secret or revelation to even people in the West. The only people who aren't really familiar with it in Western countries, are people who only stick to reading mainstream consumer news.
> People everywhere just wanna be free. We ought to be hearing a lot more about all the various governmental data-gathering and surveillance programs, everywhere in the world, and of course we should also be learning more about the actions of private business corporations to gather data on all of us. That Wikileaks tells us much more about the United States federal government than about any of those other entities tells me something about Wikileaks, and perhaps tells me something favorable about the United States.
While I agree that surveillance happens everywhere, USA is in unique position of power to do it, considering how much of internet traffic moves through US-based companies. That said, I also agree that the very fact of existence of outrage caused by PRISM is telling about the US citizens and government, people in Russia, for example, assume that tchekists from FSB are already watching every their step or at the very least able to do so.
> That Wikileaks tells us much more about the United States federal government than about any of those other entities tells me something about Wikileaks
I don't find that's the case. Living in the US, it's not surprising that most of what you hear from WikiLeaks is about the US. Take a look at their homepage (http://wikileaks.org) for example, most featured stories are not about the US.
Not a bad idea in general, but Wikileaks is resource constrained (remember, they are being actively investigated by the FBI/DoD and have a banking blockade going against them), and it's not unreasonable for them to focus (at least right now) on the jurisdiction primarily responsible for what happens to Gmail, Android, Cisco IOS, Apple iOS, Facebook, and AWS.
I share your concerns, IMHO it would be awesome if we had ten Edward Snowdens from ten countries. But we don't so I don't think it's fair to put it against Wikileaks for not leaking something that was not given to them. Seems like they should be a receptacle not an institution that does investigative journalism.
Perhaps showing support for Snowden will help other content come out, but looking at the huge effort President Obama and Vice Clownshoes Biden have put together to get this guy into the brig, not fucking likely. They have done a good job of isolating Snowden and making future whistle-blowing less likely.
Both countries especially CHINA has a bad reputation on communication regulation (network shutdown on some occasions) and censorship. There is no need for WikiLeaks to break anything new here.
US government has been riding a high horse and teaching everybody about internet freedom, and now they are caught pants down. That's a lot of more worthy of news than exposing already known bad guys.
I find it deeply troubling that majority voices in USA are now accusing Snowden / WikiLeaks of damaging USA reputation or things like that.
For all its flaws, the US is still far ahead of China and Russia on these issues.
The recent rhetoric has presents the US as the worst offender of all when in practice it's probably better than anyone else who has the power to do these things (including the UK).
What if you take the US position at face value? There is oversight, and there are real and serious threats from terrorism and cyberattacks.
Is it good to have a massive secret signals collection apparatus? No.
Is it necessary? We don't know and nobody is even discussing that because we're all too busy bashing the US.
You're right, but it's not that simple. HK people don't like to speak Mandarin, and don't like the mainland. It's normal in HK for there to be public demonstrations that would be unthinkable on the mainland.
They already take extreme measure by regularly executing persons (including high ranked officials and bankers) that commited crimes such as fraud and corruption.
I'm of the apparent internet minority (read: most Americans still don't know or care about PRISM/who this guy is) who doesn't care if the government looks at my porn history. None of this stuff matters at all and the fact that anyone was surprised by PRISM's existence is nothing but foolish, in my opinion.
With greater technology comes inevitable supervision over such things, and it isn't in the name of reading about your browsing habits unless you enjoy children being abused or bombing buildings. The only shame is the lack of transparency about the surveillance, but again, this whole thing should have been completely obvious to just about anyone. Snowden is a traitor and a coward for leaking the obvious (while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly) and Assange is a horrible person for a bunch of other reasons.
> I'm of the apparent internet minority (read: most Americans still don't know or care about PRISM/who this guy is) who doesn't care if the government looks at my porn history.
1. PRISM is an apparatus just waiting for another government to use it against the US. Who's to say that Russia, China, etc. haven't been using it to spy on Americans, too? I mean, it's clearly not that hard to get access. Yes - they might not look at your porn history, but perhaps they will use some useful political information against one of your leaders and fuck you up.
2. What would happen if the government was to have a good reason to misuse the information they were gathering. What would happen if a fascist party was to come into power?
3. Calling Assange a horrible person is small-minded. Don't make this about personalities; this is about individual freedom, the right to a transparent government, the constitution your country was founded upon, and human rights.
4. Rather a traitor to the government than a traitor to the principles that made the US what it once was. Unless you want mediocrity...
The simple fact that they are viewing ('metadata' about) my browsing/email/phone calls/IRC/Facebook/Twitter/whatever isn't actually the thing I care about.
Its the fact that if I happen to spend private time doing/thinking/talking about anything someone in the government finds objectionable with anybody someone in the government finds objectionable, I will get flagged and investigated.
Seriously, I couldn't care less if facebook employees read my posts, they have no power to hurt my life. Gmail employees laughing over my email? go for it.
Mozilla employees discovering my personal fetish for modget donkey porn? meh.
But the government? I am now dependent on nobody in the governmental apparatus finding my private opinions and speech objectionable or questionable, now or ever in the future.
Fuck that. Either they stop doing that, or I stop expressing my private opinions to other people.
Society loses if the second one occurs on a massive scale. we have entered a really bad place.
All true except that you are greatly underestimating the risk of private companies collecting data that ends up affecting your life.
Start by thinking of FICO scores or credit histories. Similar concepts can be applied to eligibility for all kinds of 'privately' provided parts of society - job screenings, auto insurance.
Imagine vacation rentals where the owner can screen people out based on political affiliation... the are any number of ways in which private institutions can quietly 'hurt your life' using all this personal data.
I was somewhat understating concerns about private companies there to avoid diluting the conversation too much, but I totally agree.
Hell, anyone could put their hands up to blackmail me over my midget donkey fetish, it doesn't have to be the government - but it does reach a particularly nasty level when it is government policy.
Seriously this. And if people don't think prism has already been used to stalk people with dissident viewpoints in America they might have missed a few years of news about targeting 3rd parties, the tea party, the occupy movement, etc.
Ubiquitous surveillance can be used to control and coerce anyone, regardless of absence of criminal wrongdoing (though there are people who claim the average american commits three felonies a day now, because the USC is so overbroad).
It's not about "nothing to hide": when anyone can be blackmailed, including judges and lawmakers and law enforcement, the entire system of interlocking checks and balances breaks down.
Worse than threatening to expose MLK's private life, they wrote to him as if someone from his religious community found out about it and shamed him and suggested he kill himself.[1] So not just blackmail, but psyops.
As I wrote in another comment, it's not just surveillance for state purposes, it's also surveillance for the corporate interests of the state (pharmaceuticals, agribusiness/GMOs, oil lobby, etc.). What if the big 3 auto makers were so powerful that they tried to crush Tesla by subtly targeting its customers and employees with fake bad news (oh wait, maybe they're already doing it). I'm convinced that some of the spying on the EU was over agricultural policies such as their strong anti-GMO stance--US companies would love to have advance knowledge to maneuver around them. I'm not sure it's happening yet, then again, how would we know?
I wrote this the other day, explaining how Obama confirming ubiquitous surveillance in the US (even if it only targets foreigners (which turned out to be a lie anyway)) is a bullet in the head of the US internet industry:
> None of this stuff matters at all and the fact that anyone was surprised by PRISM's existence is nothing but foolish, in my opinion.
I think that is a mistaken position to be in. It assumes a couple of things -- that people who disagree with the program do so because they are doing hidden illegal things and now those would come to light.
Another assumption is that the government makes no mistakes, is not malicious, can be trusted with such information, and now or in the future it will not misuse it.
This is all coming from the same entity that tortured people while talking about human right and freedom. I am not sure trusting it to "not do the wrong thing" this your history is a rational choice.
At this point trusting it with all this information is no better than trusting a toddler with a box of matches and a can of gasoline.
You are missing the big picture. The issue is not with your own personal history, but with the power to have access to key people private life.
Let's imagine the presidential election, in the next 10 or 20 years, if the incumbent misuses the tools to find out that his/her pro-life opponent had an abortion (or in its close family), it could change the turn of the election.
You can apply the same kind of reasoning to any whistle-blower reporting corruption, pollution, or a toxic drug. It will become much easier to silence and blackmail them.
Democracy is funded in part on the equilibrium of powers, a dragnet collecting everyone's life, is breaking this fragile thing.
If you're comfortable sharing your browsing history with the government, feel free to email it to them at the frequency you prefer. However, I demand that they get a warrant from a non-secret court, so proper checks and balances can work, and their actions can be later scrutinized by the public and abuses can be tracked and punished if necessary.
It's not your porn history the government is interested in - that is, unless you run for public office one day, in which case they may suddenly become very interested in it.
Rather, what you should have an issue with is them having information about you that is deeply personal and private in nature. Have you or a significant other ever had to get an abortion? Have you ever had trouble maintaining an erection? Are you one of the 30% of women who cannot achieve an orgasm? Do you have any mental disorders, sexually-transmitted diseases, or genetic conditions? How large is your penis? Have you ever been attracted to someone of the same sex? Have you ever fantasized about child porn, fat porn, necrophilia, etc.? Have you ever attempted suicide?
Most importantly: do you believe that the government knowing all of this about you - and everyone else - makes you safer?
> Snowden is a traitor and a coward for leaking the obvious
So he would have been much braver by never leading anything? That's a strange definition of coward. Besides the fact that if it was "obvious" like you say, then how is it a leak?
You would when you'd have any conflict with any branch of the government for any reason. It'd be too late by then.
Given that the Congress creates over 50 new federal crimes each year, and where you live, your local government probably also doesn't sit on its hands, are you completely sure you'd never want the government not to know absolutely everything about you? Really sure?
>>> Snowden is a traitor and a coward
I'd give you a traitor - he certainly violated the conditions of his employment and clearance, even if for an arguably good reason, but coward? I'd think it takes guts to take on the US government alone, knowing he'd probably spend rest of his life either hiding or in jail, or maybe eventually both. Would you dare to do the same? If you knew something is wrong and you know it - would you dare to do this, knowing your life will never be the same? It definitely not a behavior of a coward.
>>> while running off to hide instead of facing the demons he accuses so arrogantly
Getting away from an overwhelming force that has every reason to crush you and every possibility is not cowardice, it is a natural act of every human who values his life and liberty.
While I (as an American) resent the implication, it is unfortunately very true.
I hear arguments daily on the subject of the new Xbox and M$'s latest privacy invasion, but most everyone has no clue who Ed Snowden is or what NSA/PRISM are all about.
>I accuse you of being a pedo!
>Please report yourself to the authorities. I would like you to reflect the next 5 years on the logical flaw of the argument.
I realize you're being hyperbolic, but there's a big difference between some random person slinging around accusations on the internet, and a police force in a sovereign nation deciding that a criminal complaint lodged by one of its citizens warrants the arrest and questioning of a suspect in the case.
The problem is that Sweden has thousands, or tens of thousands outstanding rape cases, but has only pursued Assange with this level of detail. If they vigorously extradited every accused rapist who had fled Sweden, that would be highly respected, and Assange would have had far fewer sympathizers for holing up in an embassy.
> The problem is that Sweden has thousands, or tens of thousands outstanding rape cases
That phrasing makes it sound like these numbers come from your ass; feel free to correct my impression.
> but has only pursued Assange with this level of detail.
What level of detail? They happen to know exactly who their suspect is and exactly where he has run off to, and thus far what they've done is ask that he be returned.
>If they vigorously extradited every accused rapist who had fled Sweden, that would be highly respected, and Assange would have had far fewer sympathizers for holing up in an embassy.
What does this even mean? How many accused rapists flee Sweden every year? I have no idea, and I bet you don't either. Maybe Assange is the one guy who's fled the country in the last year and this is what they do. Maybe they do vigorously attempt to extradite every single accused rapist that flees abroad. Maybe the Swedish authorities are working harder on this case because it's high profile and they're trying to avoid a PR mess domestically.
You're assuming skulduggery where there's perfectly reasonable explanations, and - this is me guessing here, so if you can reasonably show me to be wrong, I'll happily admit that - you're pulling assertions from your ass to back that assumption up. Stop that.
Keep beating that dead horse. Most reasonable people recognize that the changer are disturbingly high that the charges are trumped up, and to distract attention away from larger, more important issues.
That may be your opinion, but I see nothing to back up you r assertion that 'most reasonable people' believe the charges to be trumped up. Why bother trumping up charges through an intermediary instead of just issuing a warrant for Assange's arrest on espionage grounds?
Really? I've heard the charges. He held one plaintiff with his body weight and had rough, condom-less sex and he had sex with other plaintiff while she was asleep. In both cases the sexual encounters were consentual. He was originally charged by plaintiff one to take an STD test, rather than jail.
Not to mention that the translation (and gravity ) of the crime is closer to "sexual misdemeanor"/"sexual misconduct" rather than "rape".
Aside from your misleading assertion the encounters were "consensual" (you can't consent when asleep, and consenting on the condition that your partner wears a condom doesn't mean consenting to having sex without the condom) both seem like clear cut allegations of sexual assault to me. If you really think his alleged behavior is no big deal, well there's no civil way of saying this but that makes you an apologist for rape.
And that's without even getting into how little sense the conspiracy theory itself makes.
> Most reasonable people recognize that the changer are disturbingly high that the charges are trumped up, and to distract attention away from larger, more important issues.
There's a fairly high standard you have to meet to make a claim like that, and just stating that "most reasonable people recognize" your claims of an anti-Assange conspiracy don't suffice to carry the point.
In all fairness accused is not convicted. If convicted, any and all rapists should be jailed. But there's a number of conspiracy theories around his charges and there's enough concern that his trail would be railroaded for all the wrong reasons. What happened to innocent until proven guilty anyway?
What happened to innocent until proven guilty anyway?
Doesn't mean you can run away and avoid facing trial. For example, in Australia, if you flee from a Breath test (drunk driving) without being tested, your punishment is guaranteed to be as bad or worse than as if you were caught drunk driving. Presumption of innocence is a right granted to you as part of a legal system. When you refuse to operate within that legal system... you can't pick and choose the bits you want to apply to you.
To me the case is so murky- I would have no trouble believing that Assange was completely set up, but at the same time from his behaviour I would have no trouble believing he was guilty either. But as long as he avoids facing a trial, you can't just say "we must assume he is innocent". That is a right granted to you as part of a process where you will face a courtroom at some point.
I'm inclined to think that he acted like a douche (that is perfectly fine to assume based purely on the parts of the explanations that he has not contested), and wasn't set up but faced two women that wanted to cause him embarrassment, and that the two women got caught up in between the prosecutor and the lawyer appointed for them who both have possible political motives:
They're both known for wanting to substantially tighten rape laws in Sweden, and the lawyer in question is a partner in a law firm that also includes a former Swedish minister of justice from the time Sweden was complicit in illegal CIA renditions - as revealed by Wikileaks. Rather than a conspiracy, they might just have decided he was a convenient person to make an example of, score some political points on, and as an extra bonus he was someone they don't like.
Note that the above is not mutually exclusive with him actually being guilty of a crime. He could perfectly well be guilty and a victim of an overzealous prosecutor.
I really don't want to make a judgement either way. I do think that there's something fishy about the way the case has been pursued, though, but I'm inclined to think that a Swedish prosecutor with ambitions is sufficient - there's no need to infer outside interference.
Wanting to run from what seem likely to be kangaroo court proceedings doesn't imply guilt in my mind. Innocent until proven guilty isn't just a legal doctrine, it's also a philosophy that citizens of functioning democracies need to believe in fervently.
Presumption of innocence is not explicitly enshrined as a right in the US constitution. Rather, it's entered from other rights, like the 5th amendment. In the case of rape, many local US jurisdictions have weakened it in the interest of deterrence.
In all fairness, can we stop using the phrase "in all fairness"? In all fairness, it's just weasel words, and in all fairness the phrase reliably shows up several times in every Hacker News comment page.
Is this where we start parsing what exactly a woman really means by 'rape'? "It's OK, she didn't say she was raped, she said he had non-consensual intercourse, clearly a different thing!"
No, it is where we note that neither of the women filed a complaint against Assange about anything at all. They showed up at a police station asking if they could compel an HIV test.
They were interviewed by a friend of one of the women, in violation of police procedure, and the police on that basis decided to start an investigation without a complaint from the women. An investigation the first prosecutor closed down because she claimed there was no case to answer at all.
One of the women have since consistently refused to sign the police interview protocols.
Now, this might happen if someone is raped. But as it stands, it is unclear to what extent the women even agree with the police transcripts, much less with the police's interpretation of what they said.
If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html
remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from.
AFTER EDIT: Good catch by the readers who noticed the non-American English in the Wikileaks press release here (mentioned in other comments in this thread). The press release kindly submitted here is plainly not Edward Snowden's verbatim words, but more self-publicizing from Wikileaks.