Fuck you too.
"Everyone acts like Congress just passed Patriot act with no support. "
No, not everyone. Not me.
âWe DID make this happenâ
Not me. I wasnât even there that dayâŚ
âSo yes. Youâre responsible because these people represent you. Itâs done in YOUR name.â
Well, I had no idea I possessed so much power! Iâm going to get right on this whole âroll back the surveillance stateâ thing, post haste. Iâm sure it will just take a quick note to me representative.
Eh. Assange has been mostly quiet, and theyâve not made a move on him. Thereâs no way theyâre going to martyr Snowden. They just want him to go away. The worst thing for this administration is to do anything to the guy and drag his name back into the news. The best thing is for people to forget about him and pay attention to American Idol or Justin Bieber. Isnât it time for Lindsey Lohan to relapse?
Manners, please.
Youâre right.
The alternative of believing you have zero power is FAR better a solution.
Heâs in an embassy, not an airport lounge.
I remember when I was a kid, we used to say, âHEY! IF YOU DONâT LIKE AMERICA, WHY DONTCHA GO LIVE IN RUSSIA?!â I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to do that. Hope he likes the open and transparent government there!
I am willing to give up my IP address, my physical address, my social security number and even my celll phone records and search history if it means that my hometown wonât look like Damascus during my kids lifetime.
Doing the first thing wonât prevent the second. It never has, anywhere.
It is obvious that he can return to the U.S., as a citizen, if he chooses. It would serve Snowdenâs cause more effectively if he owns up to his civil disobedience; if he says that he had to do what he had to do, and that the United States has to do what the United States has to do. I personally admire him for his disobedience and feel that in his situation he doesnât need to spin anything in order to strengthen his cause. I donât think that he needs to return to the U.S. if he believes that he will not be treated fairly, regardless of whether that treatment is considered legal or not, but he needs to be completely honest about what is happening.
âSnowden asks Russia for asylumâ
Also India, Brazil, Germany France, Italy, Bolivia, Venezuela, China, Nicaragua, Cuba, Finland, Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, and Austria (at least).
Iâm wondering at the wisdom in the shotgun approach. Time will tell. I have no idea what the play is here, but I think the WikiLeaks people do.
This is the disingenuous âwe.â It actually means âyou.â Youâll notice that his very next paragraph exempts him from being part of we.
âŚaccording to the Washington Post, which is a mouthpiece for the Administration. I would like independent verification that all the Cool Kids are rejecting bad, unpopular Snowden.
Just b/c this is no longer neat and tidy, as though anyone could plan that, is not enough reason to have it go away.
Wanting things to go away is the attitude that got us into this mess, where we trust elected officials to do whatâs right for us â and they donât, b/c we stopped watching them and holding them accountable. Instead we let the ânewsâ tell us what is ok and what is not, and we say âyes, I agreeâ.
This is a mess b/c we allowed it to become a mess.
We can fix it by voting people out of office.
Fair call. Rather busy today so I took a bit of a short-cut.
Iâll make more of an attempt to independently verify before posting, in future.
EDIT: Just remembered that I got that info from Wikileaks Twitter feed. 
[quote=âbbtimquinn, post:4, topic:1992â]starting to seem like a publicity tour.[/quote]You mean the part where heâs trapped in Moscow with his freedom endangered just so Americans can know how fucked their civil rights are in the USA?
Doesnât sound like a fun, little publicity tour to me. Sounds more like heâs put his ass on the line for ingrates instead.
[quote=âbbtimquinn, post:4, topic:1992â]I donât think I would want to spend any time with the guy[/quote]He has the guts to defend himself and speak truth to power. I would love to hang out with this American hero. You? Not so muchâŚ
To those of you suggesting he should just surrender himself, there are some scary precedents in recent history that he may be thinking about, that would lead him to judge Russia as a better option. This administration has vaporized US citizens including teenagers with Hellfire missiles. The âHope and Changeâ idol president maintains a kill list. The US has operated international black sites in third world hell holes, snatching people (some later released without charges) and torturing them incommunicado for years at a time. There are unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib that are supposed to be worse than what weâve seen, that have been kept classified from us - because we might be upset enough to want to hold someone responsible. The things we learned in school about what America stands for are lies; the sooner we all avail ourselves of the myths that let us sleep cozily and ignorant at night, the sooner we can fix this. Or we can attack the messengers as publicity seekers and go back to sleep.
Snowden thinks he had the upper hand he went to the two countries that hate the US. European hypocritical spy allegations are a dime and dozen as all countries spy on each other to some extent.
China and Russia have already seen what Snowden has an arenât interested. He is just a boy trying to play a mans game and Putin is a master at it!
Snowden applied for the Booz and Allen in 2013 with the idea of stealing. Julian just got involved because he needed book sales and to promote his movie. Greenwald got his Guardian kudos and all the files he needs to disseminate on a regular basis for readership and all Snowden has left is his Dad.
[quote=âhartscov, post:17, topic:1992â]
This Snowden kid
[/quote]Heâs an adult, in case you didnât know. But, I guess by calling him a âkidâ itâs a nice, passive aggressive way to dismiss this brave man, huh?
[quote=âhartscov, post:17, topic:1992â]
Kardashian-style self-promotion is evidence of a personality disorder
[/quote]So, are you going to get help for it?
[quote=âhartscov, post:17, topic:1992â]
I am willing to give up my IP address, my physical address, my social security number and even my celll phone records and search history
[/quote]Spoken like a true coward. No wonder you hate this âkidâ who shows bravery instead of weak cowardice in the face of adversity and government overreach.
You know what would be even safer, though? We should all put ourselves in a giant prison where we can all be more easily monitored 24/7. After all, we donât all want to be destroyed and have our hometowns look like Damascus. Theyâd appear much better looking like AlcatrazâŚ
[quote=âhartscov, post:17, topic:1992â]
Itâs now time for him to shut up and go away
[/quote]My feelings about you exactly.
"And it authorized a lot of this. And most citizens didnât even know what it SAID, just âwe have to do something.â
Actually, the legislators that wrote the Patriot Act are horrified at the SECRET way the Executive Branch has interpreted the law. The contortions the Patriot Act has to be put through in order to justify this massive intelligence dragnet are severe. Section 215 is terrible, in that it attempts to allow the government to investigate a person without probable cause or a warrant. Specifically, "so long as the FBI âspecif[ies]â that the order is âfor an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activitiesâ it can obtain pretty much any records it wants. This is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. However, in no way does it permit blanket surveillance of an entire population. The secret âinterpretationâ the Executive is using is clearly not just unconstitutional (and morally reprehensible, as is the original Sec. 215) but it isnât even permitted under any fair or reasonable reading of Sec. 215.
The Patriot Act did not authorize the Executive to write secret law, and have secret interpretations of law. Nor did it permit the Executive to blatantly flout true and meaningful oversight. I do not like the Patriot Act either, and feel that at least Sec. 215, in its valid interpretation, is still unconstitutional and immoral. But lets not pretend that what is going on here is anything but a very scary totalitarian-style power grab by the Executive branch. This is blatantly criminal behavior, and Bush shouldâve been impeached for it, and now Obama should be. But as we know, in the USA today the laws are for the âlittleâ people. Bankers, corporate heads, upper government officials are all immune from prosecution, no matter what they do.
Note: the quote I copied in comes from: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215.
