Interesting definition of ‘terrorism’, too. Since that definition could be applied to virtually any political or idealogical movement in existence, I’m pretty sure 'm a terrorist, too
Or journalistic movement, for that matter,.
Greenwald tweeted
All these years I’ve been arguing “terrorism” is an empty term manipulated by US/UK Govts: never had proof like this:
Well, on the bright side, can we begin to name corporations and CEOs as terrorists? They fall more closely to the definition as outlined there.
NASDAQ, all definitely terrorists!
Swear I’d just start wearing a burka, but the darn things don’t cover your eyes!
My dad used to say that 90% of laws were just there so they could have you if they wanted to. That’s the second-smartest thing he ever told me.
What’s the first?
Oh. It was in the 70’s. I was going into IT and not at all sure where to specialize. He’d already been in the field for close to 20 years. He told me to go where the market share was, and pointed me at Microsloth and IBM well before the first PC ever rolled off the production lines.
I think that there are more than a few paid sock puppets, but I think there are even more people who either work in the hilariously and euphemistically named “defense industry” or work directly for a three lettered agency. These people are currently being kicked in the face with cognitive dissonance. The public in large part is mortified and disgusted with these people, yet celebrate brave and courageous heroes like Snowden.
Even worse, and this is what I think kills them the most, Snowden has clearly and unquestionably done what he has done out of a patriotic sense of duty. He sacrificed a cushy job, a house in Hawaii, and a safe pile of money to go on the run from an agency that he personally knew would instantly tap all of his communication and has been known to murder Americans overseas without trial. That is a courageous badass motherfucking patriot. If you are working in the defense industry, you need to justify the fat paycheck you get and the gobs of government money you piss away with the belief delusional belief that you are a patriot. Someone who steps outside of that power structure and patriotically points out how you are CLEARLY unpatriotic bastards taking piles of money to destroy the constitution of the nation is a real threat. You can usually spot these people a mile away as they desperately try and postulate and find some way in which Snodwen isn’t exactly what he appears to be, a bad ass patriot.
OMG. The British government equates influencing governments and promoting political or ideological causes with terrorism. Fascinating. So I guess they are going to start prosecuting all those lobbyists and party hacks on terrorism charges in 3… 2… 1… oh I see. Only certain types of activities that seek to influence politics will be treated as terrorism. The mask is finally and completely off. At least the British state is being honest. In the US its all “Snowden endangered freedom!” and “He’s a traitor!” vagueness. But then the American public is orders of magnitude stupider than the UK public. But at least we love our freedom!
I said the same above, but on second thought, the corporations don’t seek to influence gov’t. They don’t have to, they already own it, install who they want in, and run it.
This. I am fairly sure that the information is coming out in a very strategic way. Every time the US media moves on, a new leak is published in Germany or Brazil that requires them to mention it. Every time the German or British media move on, a new leak is published in the UK or France.
It’s genius actually. We learned from the Wikileaks thing that a big dump is a tragic waste - the media cover it for the minimum possible amount of time, then move on to the much easier and less resource intensive process of focusing on Assange and his personality flaws. Has any mainstream journalist actually read all of the Wikileaks cables at this point? Have their bosses given them the time and resources? Or is it on a shelf and ignored because it is ‘ancient history’ and it is easier and more profitable to get the vapors over Miley twerking.
This way, with a steady trickle of information, the spooks can never relax, and politicos have to think about it for more than a week. And no one country or its media is the focus - they are spread around. Pure brilliant 21st century genius.
“Whistleblowing Is the New Civil Disobedience” (Danah Boyd)
The Wikileaks dumps did create stories over the course of several weeks and several outlets reported on them with regularity. The problem was that the vast majority of cables were unimportant, uninteresting or gossip.
If anything, what we learned from the Wikileaks dump is that if you want to look like a whistleblower and not just someone trading in state’s secrets, you need to limit your leak to just the illegal bits. Given the size of Snowden’s cache of papers, searching for just those illegal bits takes time which is almost certainly the main limiting factor in the speed stories are coming out.
Oh I totally agree! It’d be gone in a few news cycles if it wasn’t portioned out.
My point was other people might be after Snowden… a leak file isn’t 100% effective.
[quote=“AliceWeir, post:37, topic:13334”]
So, Miranda wasn’t found to be …[/quote]
Huh. Never noticed the serendipitous link to the planet Miranda from the movie Serenity before.
I did notice the link to one’s Miranda rights (if only a US thing).
Noted here, POGO, the Project on Government Oversight, which typically champions both whistleblowers and better oversight (as the name implies) of government agencies has come out with a newsletter pimping support o this USA Freedom Act. I read it. It gives us nothing, but more congressional ‘oversight’. No budget-kill, no outlawing of mass data collections, no addressing of the Yahoo and Google taps and all that has come because of them - basically, nothing worth having.
I did reply to it on their website, but the editor saw fit to ignore, since I didn’t support their useless position on the matter. They seem more inclined to push for whistleblower protections for NSA and DOD people, which is great, except, pretty self-serving for a group that uses whistleblower protections to get its insider poop for its own benefit. Disappointing. Let’s hope people stay pissed enough to reject this latest, which is hardly more than another power grab on the part of the same people who were happy to fund this mess for years now!
And God, if pressuring Congress to straighten up fails us, then I hope the EU absolutely kicks butt on this thing - because those people don’t represent us at all. Because unfortunately, the link from planet Miranda to the guy Miranda is way closer than the link from US to us.
I hope Snowden goes to Germany. I think it’s his own best shot at pressuring these fools to drop the charges. He’s safer than Obama will ever be now - because, if anything happens to him? The sheer number of suspects would be literally in the millions because of this mess he’s generated and allowed
The US is doubling down on Snowden, insinuating that he is a spy again…just as Snowden said they would.
White House rejects clemency for Edward Snowden over NSA leaks
….Pfeiffer told ABC’s This Week that no clemency offers were being discussed following Snowden’s appeal in a letter released by a German lawmaker who met him in Moscow.
Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California, remained implacable. "He’s done this enormous disservice to our country. I think the answer is ‘no clemency’," she told CBS’s Face the Nation.
The former NSA contractor could have blown the whistle on excesses by contacting the House and Senate intelligence committees, Feinstein said. "We would certainly have seen him … and looked at that information. That didn’t happen."
…Rogers, a Michigan Republican and former FBI agent. He **echoed Feinstein’s response on Face the Nation, saying the leaker had violated an oath of secrecy and stole information. “**He needs to come back and own up,” Roger said.
Rogers also accused Snowden of cooperating with Russian intelligence – “the Russians are not allowing him to stay in the country just because they think he’s a nice guy” – and of helping three al-Qaida-linked groups to change the way they communicate in order to evade US intercepts, putting troops’ lives at risk in Afghanistan.
Rogers, the NSA’s strongest congressional supporter, said the media and public’s focus should be not on supposed surveillance excesses but on efforts to counter terrorism and cyber attacks. "The bad guys candidly are not US intelligence agencies," he said. “They are the good guys at the end of the day.”
Friends in politics have suggested that the French spy on the UK Citizens and pass the data to the UK Gov and the UK spies on the French citizens and passes the data to the French Gov, so everyone can avoid laws against spying on their own citizens.
The question is how much data should be recorded on people, and who should have access to it?
The Wikileaks dump happened because the feds went after Wikileaks - they were planning a slow series of leaks on key issues. And the only reason you or I know that the majority were unimportant etc. is because we’ve been told they are. Do you trust those who told you?
And yet - Congress doesn’t bring those charges. DOJ does. And they answer directly to the Prez. Too bad he hasn’t got the nads to stand up and say it himself, eh?
And Feinstein has never claimed not to know what NSA was doing. Not that her committee would have been his channel, anyway. He was a contractor with no whistleblower protections. They would have told him to take it to his contractor boss, and then he’d have been fired on the spot - no question about it. And then, on to his local congress critter. And then, who knows? Feinstein’s an obvious liar. She wouldn’t have listened - she knows what they did, and she’s STILL defending it - which absolutely puts the lie to her claim that he should have trusted her, of all people! She’s shown exactly zero examples of any ‘terrorist’ being caught because of what her committee allows. That’s just copycatting the Manning nonsense, and the judge wouldn’t hang with it at trial. It didn’t stop them from keeping Manning in prison and torturing her for a very long time.
So then what? Snowden should have hoped that hos own local congress critter outranked her enough to have requested a GAO investigation? Of what? The stuff he wasn’t allowed to tell even his own congress member without getting charged? And then what, when GAO was told they couldn’t investigate because it was all too secret for even them or a Member of Congress to know? Then what?
Oh yeah. Nothing is what. Hope she knows a good plastic surgeon. She’s gonna need a monster nose job!
No. Snowden did it right, because it had to be done and they only left him one way to do it without rotting in a prison for years on end. DiFi’s just mad because he caught her out. I remember when she was still in CA. Accusations of a whole lot of stuff, such as election fraud which would indicate her level of personal respect for the public’s wishes. And gaming her old man’s contracting biz there. (Which totally needs to be looked into and updated again, jic, since Congress members don’t get vetted like other people do. They merely get elected.) Not exactly squeaky clean on her best day. And yet, Congress in all its wisdom gave her THIS committee gig? I wouldn’t take her word on which day of the week it is, long before Snowden ever appeared. Germany is a smart move. It may all be a dirty game with dirty players, but at least some of the other teams treat him better than his own.
Hey, ho. Goodies and baddies again. I swear, we need to ban those words from public discourse entirely. Possibly by mass shaming? something? Anything? Bueller?
Of course it’s a bunch of horse shit. Some little guy is not going to get an audience with the president or a senator. And knowing the scope of the surveillance, how is he supposed to communicate with them, in the first place, without the people who he is blowing the whistle on finding out? It’s an absurdity. I love how government thinks that everyone is terminally stupid.
