Their ability to hide what they did and avoid punishment was enabled by loopholes that the law created, and we should be raising hell with the government to fix those loopholes and, yes, to repeal some of those laws enabling these programs. If you read this site at all, you should have seen plenty of outrage at these laws and the way they have been gamed.
That is a completely different topic from the NSA doing things illegally. If the laws that were written are being ignored, writing more laws is not going to âfix itâ unless the people who broke the law are made responsible for it.
The NSA is most definitely not communist, it reeks of fascism. Special interests, those of the 1% ruling class make money off of this machine. Look back to Cheney and his cohorts and buddies who made a mint off the war. Look at Chertoff who had a vested interest in those naked scanners at the airport, but promoted them like they were going to save lives. Follow the money.
But congress wasnât in session and certainly wasnât consulted, when the NSA decided to violate the spirit and the substance of the US constitution.
The emergent power of the NSA dates from the very public outcry over Pointdexterâs TIA (Total Information Awareness.)
At that moment, the difference between our reality and the Kim dynastyâs wettest dreams for control over North Koreans became moot.
Weirdly, I see the patriot vs American traitor as a bit of false dichotomy (to borrow one of your favorite phrases). That can be one of the most noble of acts when done right. Itâs the best form of whistle blowing. Yeah, Snowden might technically be a traitor. Which in no way precludes him from having saved America.
Iâd lump people who call him a traitor into 4 categories, two of which have the irredeemable legacy you speak of.
Those with an agenda. For power, CYA, whatever. They benefit from the system as is.
Those who have the crap job that requires them to. Just following orders.
Those 2 will be hard to redeem. Then there are those that:
have a knee jerk reaction. For them, ignorance can be corrected. Mistakes admitted can be forgiven.
Think itâs treason for the better good of America.
Yeah, I might fit into category 4. An American grateful for a traitorous act.
But treason is. Keith Alexanderâs lies to congress have been nothing short of treasonous. I relize that this statement is debatable, and if I have to be the standard-bearer for my side of the debate, so be it. But someone has to take my side of the debate.
There was a flurry of whistle blowing just after 2000 related to this. The NSA was essentially privatized shortly before that, and began a massive expansion. September 11th was a good excuse, but the expansion predated that. The NSA went from being a fully governmental agency, to being made up of several dozen private corporations providing tens of thousands of contractors like Snowden to the system, and getting paid billions of dollars to do it.
People want to talk about government control and grand conspiracies and stuff, but itâs all way more banal.
Divulging secrets about an unaccountable shadow government with no stopgap measures, no adherence to the constitution, and no real oversight, is not treasonous to the USA.
Iâm cool with that viewpoint too. Treason, not treason. I understand both viewpoints. My view is that it is along the lines of justifiable homicide. Technically bad, morally good. Or to be more precise, Iâm willing to concede that under some narrow legal definition, he might be a traitor. And that simultaneously he is a patriot. Itâs that paradox that I find inspiring.
Hey, if we all had the same opinion and viewpoint, this would be a boring planet.
If you or I owned a business where we failed to adequately understand its products n order to protect the intrinsic interests of our customers, weâd be sued and lose it all.
If a physician attempts to treat you and does harm, they likewise arenât allowed to claim, âWell, nobody really understands how the body works anyway.â
If a manufacturer uses or produces a substance known to be hazardous and fails to take proper precautions, the EPA and/or OSHA and/or however many plantiffs will take them apart over it.
So why does the government think it gets a pass?
Oh yeah. Forgot. Terrorists. And because ânational interestsâ outweigh yours or mine these days.
Nice going, feds!
Weirdly, I see the patriot vs American traitor as a bit of false dichotomy (to borrow one of your favorite phrases).
Like I said⌠Thereâs a big difference between saying Snowdenâs particular approach could have been more refined in various ways⌠and outright stating heâs a traitor and maligning him.
(to borrow one of your favorite phrases)
Shit, I hate using that phrase because it means someoneâs doing it. Especially when someone (not you, really) is using them while putting words in my mouth for a boring exercise in false argument-itis.
have a knee jerk reaction. For them, ignorance can be corrected. Mistakes admitted can be forgiven.
For sure. But itâs getting a little overdue, dontchaâ think?
Think itâs treason for the better good of America. Yeah, I might fit into category 4. An American grateful for a traitorous act.
I can understand if people think heâs a flawed patriot for whatever reasons; But you think heâs a treasonous patriot? Ok, but youâll have to completely redefine one of those two terms to make much sense.
Thatâs not imposing a false dichotomy, itâs avoiding an oxymoron.
Yeah, well - âmostâ doesnât begin to touch on the details. I knew of these programsâ existence from the 90âs onward. I even knew the basics of how they worked. That does NOT mean I knew how much they (meaning, we) were being abused by them.
What I did know, from other agencies, was that the people in management levels who show up for court appearances and authorize public statements and press releases and such such donât typically know jack about computerized systems, let alone humongous custom systems built out by entire teams of specialist. ButâŚignorance of the law⌠zero excuse!
War is hell, man. Iâll never forget how three of my buddies dozed off in a McLean, VA conference room during a brutal multi-hour presentation on the ânetwork-centric-threatspaceâ⌠Sometimes I canât help but wonder: âWhy them? Why did I stay awake when they didnât?â
Woohoo! I havenât heard anyone riff on the fiat currency thing since, likeâŚthe 1980 Heritage Foundation tax protests? But I get it. When the precious metals were no longer used to give value to the currency, they claimed it was us who formed its support. And now, they treat us as if we can be bought and sold like that. Inanimate objects having no rights.
I donât want to leap off into a semantics argument - but yeah. When a government or a government agency does it, itâs fascism, not communism.
