>I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior.
Again, this does nothing to establish why his behavior in high school is even remotely relevant to his behavior today - and even if it is, so what? He exposed the illegal behavior of the NSA because he's an attention whore? And that somehow invalidates the illegal-ness of what the NSA is doing?
The man could be a fucking sociopathic pedophile serial killer and it wouldn't matter. His personality has nothing to do with the content of the leaks. Repeat this sentence until it sinks in, please!
Why are you so hell-bent on ad-homming Snowden?
>Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered.
And those that are a little bit more careful? What about those edge cases? You know, and I know, and your bosses know, that it's not the people documenting their lives on Facebook that drives the NSA to backdoor encryption algorithms.
>NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all.
The content of the Snowden leaks proves this to be a a damn lie. Your understanding cannot compete with documents straight from the horse's mouth. Hell, you could be the director of the entire fucking department and it wouldn't matter - the facts disprove this narrative.
>Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve?
The smartest people employed by the three letter agencies are beholden to the US constitution, something they apparently need reminded of.
If you're sucking up info from US citizens, that is not a "oops, let's get an intern to fix this broken footer" like it was a bug on some random rails site, that is a "you just broke the fucking supreme law of the land, please report to the DoJ for your inquiry"
>Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security?
Everyone is a "threat to national security" until proven otherwise. Again, we have the authoritative leaks to go on, which rank about a million times higher than any apologia you can possibly offer.
And if they're not a threat to national security, then why are they in those databases? Search, seizure, and all that...
>Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed?
And yet, my shit is in their database. Why is that? What gives them the right?
>The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized.
Because, yknow, the people responsible for passing a damn budget are the same ones that are responsible for orchestrating the SIGINT programs. Cmon, you know better than that. "The Government" is not a singular entity. This disorganized entity can apparently architect and effectively run programs such as PRISM, DISHFIRE, XKEYSCORE, and that operation that intercepts general purpose hardware to install backdoors who's name I can't remember right now.
Being a mess of bureaucracy and graft has never stopped any government, anywhere, from perpetrating massive crimes against its people. With that in mind, this is absolutely not a defense, nor even a mitigation, of the crimes committed.
I apologize if these posts come off as overly hostile, but you are making fallacious arguments, and you are handwaving inconvenient facts. It would be better for all concerned if you'd stop doing that.
I realize you won't change your opinion, and I respect that. I responded to a comment below addressing some of this if you'd like to read it.
It really just confuses me that a group like HN, generally very open-minded, are so willing to assume the very worst based on very limited, curated, non-refutable evidence. Non-refutable because of security concerns. Its like someone ripped every 18th page out of a book, and from that subset, created their own version of the book. They changed the ending, and flipped the protagonist and antagonist. The story is not accurate.
That's a more complicated issue than a simple 'he lied to Congress'. What he said to in front of Congress was flat out wrong - no one's disputing that. Did he lie? That would require an intent to mislead the committee, which would be a difficult thing to do since everyone on the committee had previously been briefed on it. In fact, he corrected his testimony to Sen. Wyden's staffers several days later when he realized the mistake according to the ODNI General Counsel[1]. He couldn't correct himself publicly because the information is classified.
This calls into question why Sen. Wyden asked Clapper to begin with. It's illegal for Clapper to disclose classified information publicly, but as a sitting senator, Wyden would have immunity for anything brought to the Senate floor. If Sen. Wyden thought it was an issue that should have been brought forward publicly to the constituents that he represents (which he apparently did, since he asked the question in a public forum), he should have done it himself instead of trying to get Clapper to take the fall for him.
Again, that implies that he had intent to mislead. It's easy to prove that he was wrong - it's a lot harder to prove intent. Wyden decided to ask that question to a senior intelligence official who was not part of NSA (Clapper is Director of National Intelligence - responsible primarily for collaboration between the intelligence agencies) and he asked it out of the blue during a hearing that mostly focused on tensions in the Middle East. It's within the realm of possibility that Clapper actually misinterpreted his question, or just plain did not consider a program that we later found only had 23 people working on it (out of around a hundred thousand or so people across all of the intelligence agencies). Wyden clearly knew the answer to his question and wanted the public to know it. Did Wyden lie to his constituents through omission?
>"and he asked it out of the blue during a hearing that mostly focused on tensions in the Middle East"
Are we talking about the same question? Your claim directly contradicts Wyden's statement on the matter.
Do you believe that Wyden's statement is true? And if not, what evidence do you have, and do you believe Wyden is a liar because he intended to mislead people by saying the following? Or did you accidentally make a "too cute by half" factual error or "least untruthful statement" when you claimed he "asked it out of the blue", and it was never your intent to mislead?
>"So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance."
Yes, I would consider it out of the blue. Sen Wyden posed follow-up question to something that Gen Alexander said 8 months earlier, and he waited until the day before to pose it instead to DNI Clapper at a committee hearing that 1) was focused on developments in overseas national security threats over the past year and 2) Gen Alexander wasn't going to be present for. I don't doubt for a second that Clapper didn't see it - you don't wait until the last moment to submit a question unless you're trying to pull a political stunt. If he sent it a week or two prior, I could understand some outrage.
I have no idea what was going through Clapper's head at the time - maybe he did consider the 215 program or maybe he didn't. What he said was factually wrong and he tried to correct it but couldn't do so publicly.
This isn't trying to get the truth out - this is politics. Wyden is an elected representative - he has a duty to act in the best interests of his constituents. He was fully briefed on the program. If he felt that the information should have been public, he should have made it public - as a sitting member of the Senate he was authorized to do so. James Clapper was not. Wyden didn't correct Clapper on the spot. He didn't ask for more details. He didn't ask something like 'can you address any domestic collection programs that would fall under the Section 215 authorities?' He didn't do a damn thing publicly until the program was leaked months later, then used it as an opportunity to advance his own political career. Don't act like Clapper is some sort villain but Wyden is a hero.
I certainly am interested in talking about this intellectually, and presumably so were you when you just said "We can talk all day about politicians lying in front of congress. Would you like to?"
Yes, I would like to. Why do you think I'm not interested in talking about this intellectually? Do you not believe me when I say that? When I asked you a direct question in response to an accusation you made, and you dodged the question by trying to go meta. Did you not mean what you said when you invited me to talk about lying politicians all day?
To me, it appears that you are the one who is not interested in talking about this intellectually, so you tried to change the subject to attacks on Snowden's personality, then when that didn't work, you avoided answering a simple question by going meta, then when that didn't work, you projected your own disinterest in having an intellectual discussion onto me.
If that's the best line of argument that NSA apologists can come up with, it's no wonder they're having problems recruiting honest intelligent people.
You claimed that "They changed the ending, and flipped the protagonist and antagonist. The story is not accurate." Who do you mean, exactly? Please explain your accusations, or withdraw them if you're unwilling to support your unsubstantiated claim that the story is not accurate.
All you've offered as evidence against the story so far are your ad-hominem attacks against Snowden, right out of the US Government's playbook to demonize him and distract from the real story, just as Snowden himself predicted.
To continue having an intellectual discussion, please answer my question:
Is James Clapper a protagonist or antagonist for lying to congress?
Again, this does nothing to establish why his behavior in high school is even remotely relevant to his behavior today - and even if it is, so what? He exposed the illegal behavior of the NSA because he's an attention whore? And that somehow invalidates the illegal-ness of what the NSA is doing?
The man could be a fucking sociopathic pedophile serial killer and it wouldn't matter. His personality has nothing to do with the content of the leaks. Repeat this sentence until it sinks in, please!
Why are you so hell-bent on ad-homming Snowden?
>Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered.
And those that are a little bit more careful? What about those edge cases? You know, and I know, and your bosses know, that it's not the people documenting their lives on Facebook that drives the NSA to backdoor encryption algorithms.
>NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all.
The content of the Snowden leaks proves this to be a a damn lie. Your understanding cannot compete with documents straight from the horse's mouth. Hell, you could be the director of the entire fucking department and it wouldn't matter - the facts disprove this narrative.
>Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve?
The smartest people employed by the three letter agencies are beholden to the US constitution, something they apparently need reminded of.
If you're sucking up info from US citizens, that is not a "oops, let's get an intern to fix this broken footer" like it was a bug on some random rails site, that is a "you just broke the fucking supreme law of the land, please report to the DoJ for your inquiry"
>Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security?
Everyone is a "threat to national security" until proven otherwise. Again, we have the authoritative leaks to go on, which rank about a million times higher than any apologia you can possibly offer.
And if they're not a threat to national security, then why are they in those databases? Search, seizure, and all that...
>Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed?
And yet, my shit is in their database. Why is that? What gives them the right?
>The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized.
Because, yknow, the people responsible for passing a damn budget are the same ones that are responsible for orchestrating the SIGINT programs. Cmon, you know better than that. "The Government" is not a singular entity. This disorganized entity can apparently architect and effectively run programs such as PRISM, DISHFIRE, XKEYSCORE, and that operation that intercepts general purpose hardware to install backdoors who's name I can't remember right now.
Being a mess of bureaucracy and graft has never stopped any government, anywhere, from perpetrating massive crimes against its people. With that in mind, this is absolutely not a defense, nor even a mitigation, of the crimes committed.
I apologize if these posts come off as overly hostile, but you are making fallacious arguments, and you are handwaving inconvenient facts. It would be better for all concerned if you'd stop doing that.