The character and motivation of Edward Snowden, the man who revealed the scale of the Obama administration’s domestic surveillance program, remains open to debate. He might have done it for the noblest of reasons, as he claims, or he might have done it on behalf of a foreign government — or a jilted news organization — for some manner of personal gain; we may never know.
What’s a lot more knowable, by virtue of being so familiar, is the extent to which Democrat supporters will use their own peculiar rules of logic, and evert the meaning of language itself, as they create new categories of offenses against the Big Government — theirs — that they want to impose on everyone else.
The NYT’s David Brooks is a prime example. In an opinion piece titled The Solitary Leaker, Brooks claims that Snowden – the man who shone a light on this mass invasion of privacy – “betrayed the privacy of us all.”
It gets worse. Snowden, who exposed the secret behaviour of what has surely been the most closed and unaccountable of administrations, “betrayed the cause of open government”; in taking such actions against an administration that has shown boundless disrespect for the Constitution, and under whose watch the IRS targeted groups that sought to educate people about the Constitution, Snowden “betrayed the Constitution.”
Says Brooks:
“The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed…”
So true. As the Founding Fathers themselves so eloquently put it, “Leave the government alone. Shut up!”
Didn’t the Founding Fathers urge the military to move into people’s houses so that the government could keep a better eye on them? (/sarc)
I see the New York Times is striving to establish itself with the same credibility of other totalitarian mouth pieces such as Rodong Simnun
“Never underestimate man’s ability to explain away…anything.”
A thought-provoking read:
27 Quotations from Edward Snowden
And, while many here have snorted at my quotations from Marshall Macluhan, here’s something from his pamphlet The Medium is the Massage – and yes, that’s “massage”, not message. Macluhan loved puns. The following was written in 1967, just to give you a sense of how prophetic the man was:
How much do you make? Have you
ever contemplated suicide? Are you
now or have you ever been… ? Are you
aware of the fact…? I have here before
me…. Electrical information devices
for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb
surveillance are causing a very
serious dilemma between our claim to
privacy and the community’s need to
know. The older, traditional ideas of
private, isolated thoughts and actions—
the patterns of mechanistic technologies—
are very seriously threatened by
new methods of instantaneous electric
information retrieval, by the electrically
computerized dossier bank—that one
big gossip column that is unforgiving,
unforgetful and from which there is no
redemption, no erasure of early “mistakes.”
We have already reached a
point where remedial control, born out
of knowledge of media and their total
effects on all of us, must be exerted.
How shall the new environment be programmed
now that we have become so
involved with each other, now that all
of us have become the unwitting work
force for social change? What’s that
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?
What mr snowden did was wrong and illegal. And there were/are legal means that he could have used to achieve his goal of alerting Americans to what the Obama administration was(is?) doing.
And what the Obama admin was/is doing was so illegal.
And both should be punished and neither should be excused.
I love that the same people who hero worship leaker Manning and Ass -ange want to drone this guy. Theoretically at least this guy has not gotten any Afghan peasents killed.
“What mr snowden did was wrong and illegal.”
Under US laws and regulations pertining to the security of information.
Not a Canadian problem though.
“What mr snowden did was wrong and illegal.”
Wasnt the original tea party in Boston also illegal? When a govt starts turning otherwise law abiding people into criminals its time for the govt to be cashiered, just like the founding fathers intended.
Just so we are clear, anyone who supports the abolishion of the 4th amendment through unilateral unwarranted government spying on citizens, and anyone who believes Snowden is not a Patriot whistle blower for exposing the fascistic reflexes of a government gone rogue, is NOT a Dem – they are some form of martinet statist who promotes the authoritarian police/surveillance state that is the opposite of the constitutional republic model.
As for Snowden, he is now being hunted like a dog by all the psycho killers the US police state can send after him. He will be “disappeared” by the pathocracy he exposed. He has left Asia and I understand Iceland (people who understand governments gone rogue) have offered him asylum.
As for the ideas of those hunting him, that he must be a foreign agent – that is exactly the morbid paranoia I expect from fascists.
What a ridiculous article. It talks about our need to trust in order for society to work and ignores the need to keep government responsible.
The behavior of the DemocRats in all this is really quite remarkable. When Bush was setting up the expanded foreign phone/internet monitoring after 9/11, the Dems raised all manner of h3ll and wouldn’t shut up about it. Now that Obama is doing to EVERY American what Bush only did to terror suspects, the Dems are all over the airwaves telling the rest of us to shut up.
Example on Drudge today, Al Franken.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least-1-liberal-friend-left-sen-al-franken-20130611
We also have discovered this week that the Liberal Party under PMPM, aka Mr. Dithers, signed on to this NSA mass data collection hook, line and sinker when they were in the majority. To hear them now talk about the CPC, who ALSO signed on 100%, you’d think Liberals wore white and sang in the heavenly choir while the CPC carry pitchforks. IMHO, they’ve -all- got pitchforks.
This is not a partisan issue, as all parties have signed on to this ubiquitous surveillance policy. In this way its the same as the high tax policy that nobody in the West seems to have much of a problem with. Watching them point fingers at each other while under the table shaking hands is unseemly enough to make one nauseous.
In my view, the entire engine of government in the West has become overbearing, oppressive and extremely dangerous. As a practical matter this surveillance makes the tens of thousands who informed to the Stazi in East Germany look like a high school practical joke. There’s d@mn little difference between the USA, Canada, Britain, Europe and Australia, they’re all full-steam-ahead on
All it will take to turn this from ho-hum to Stalin’s purges is a charismatic leader. Obama wants to be that leader, the apparatus is certainly trying to make it happen, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to pull it off or not. If not him though, then the next guy. Or the next.
So the only way to avoid it is to have a Small Government Party with some great big frickin’ teeth on it, go into the Big Brother machinery with a chain saw and start cutting stuff up.
That was supposed to be the CPC, but I guess we’ll have to try again.
His Foulness works exclusively by character assassination. Edward Snowden, whatever the rights and wrongs of his actions may be, will be hung up (metaphorically) along with Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and all the other sometime opponents of the Foulness.
Right on the money Phantom – but Alex Jones is the crazy one for saying the same thing for the past 15 years. Actually Michael Savage has recently come into the realization it is a corrupt system problem and not a Dem-GOP issue.
This isn’t ‘Demspeak’ there’s lots of authority worship on both sides. Several years ago most Republicans were okay with the surveillance state and most Dems against it. Now it’s the other way around. We get the police state we deserve because of the rank partisanship of the populace. Partisanship is a mental illness.
The tea party was an entirely different thing – the beginnings of a revolt against a monarch And having no representation – the birth of modern democracy.
Mr snowdens act is illegal in the democracy of which he is a citizen.
“That was supposed to be the CPC, but I guess we’ll have to try again.”
Careful, you’ll get the pro-CPC SDA set all riled up. CPC can do no wrong, don’t you know.
I get the partisans – any action is judged by the political persuasion and not principle – that see Bush’s surveillance state as evil but Obama’s as virtuous. How they (neocons and progressives) manage to ignore the fact that their political enemies will eventually inherit these intrusive systems is bizarre but not surprising. At least they seem to realize that there is danger in letting the state become all powerful and intrusive. Y’know except when there guy is in power because then it’s like totally different.
Who I cannot understand is the statists. In spite of historical precedent and modern examples they are blind to the waste, corruption, abuse and incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats. Somehow the real story about revelation of massive and unwarranted spying on citizens is a crime against the state and how cynicism is poisoning social-political harmony. Excuse me? Shouldn’t the default position be that government protects your rights – privacy,property,free speech- unless they have a damn good reason to take away your basic rights as a citizen of a free country. Isn’t the cynicism the natural response to a political class that tramples over your rights without any debate. Apparently not. They believe that the government has all the rights and your duty is not to question. Unlike partisans they cannot imagine the natural progression of state power from benign to malignant. Knowledge is power and the temptation to harvest massive databases of info for political and personal gain will not be resisted for long.
Gord.When your government is spying on and turning half the citizens into criminals,then what the goverment is doing is illegal. Mr. Snowden did what a true patriot would.The fact he scares the c**p out of you,says more about you than him.
“In my view, the entire engine of government in the West has become overbearing, oppressive and extremely dangerous.”
– I think they’re looking around and saying to themselves, “Gee, this works great for the Chinese, let’s do that here!”
Careful, you’ll get the pro-CPC SDA set all riled up. CPC can do no wrong, don’t you know.
Make no mistake: if this was happening in Canada right now, half the posters here would be circling the wagons. No integrity whatsoever.
Mr. Snowden did the right thing. The government has deemed it illegal. The people (as in ‘we the people’) did not consent to this datamining operation, the government, which is supposed to serve the people, did not even bother to ask them. Therefore, it is an illegal operation that Mr. Snowden has exposed.
Also, the warrant was approved (rubber stamped) under the authority of the FISA act, that would be the Foreign Intelligence Service Act. That act was never intended to be used for surveillance of the citizens of the USA.
// there’s lots of authority worship on both sides. Several years ago most Republicans were okay with the surveillance state and most Dems against it. Now it’s the other way around. //
That’s a fact. Mr. Brooks would have said the same thing if Romney had been in charge — he is a mouthpiece for the real power. Nor would there have been any less spying. As for the seeming majority of Americans who say “security is more important than privacy”; they have been well trained over the past decade to react that way.
But to get a bit more analytical about just why Obama & Bush [& Romney] are headed in the same direction — & why a young guy like Snowden who believed his Civics lessons would have been shocked into his action when he realized the system he was operating in, this article is a good start —
+
// Under Mr. Obama, America is still far from being a classic police-state of course. But no President has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police-state. […]
What gives? How could a fellow who spoke so eloquently of the need for the rule of law when running for President now be presiding over a lawless “industrial-sized killing machine” abroad and a massive threat to civil liberties at home? Why has Mr. Obama made the U.S. even more hated in the Muslim world than when he took office – even though his stated goal in 2009 was to reshape U.S. policy in the region? How is it that both he and Mitt Romney both ran on essentially the same foreign policy, despite significant differences between them on domestic policy?
Much of the answer to such questions lies in something that we rarely do in this nation – seeing the U.S. Executive Branch Mr. Obama nominally heads for what it really is: the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings (“Dollars and Deaths,”Cong. Record, 5-14-75, p. 14262), mostly civilians, since 1962 – far more than any other government in the world.
Nothing demonstrates this institution’s power more than Mr. Obama himself. The fact that he has so violated his own values and belief system as Commander-in-Chief is not merely a matter of personal hypocrisy; it is a dramatic illustration of how the Executive’s institutional violence, secrecy and deceit overwhelm even Presidents who begin their terms with relatively good intentions.
[…]
Americans have been conditioned to focus on the personality of the President, and to see the giant Executive Branch as a mere servant of its “Commander-in-Chief.” Countless books and newspaper stories have been written about the differences between the “Reagan”, “Carter” or “Clinton” foreign policies. There are of course significant differences between Administrations, though often due as much to differing objective conditions as Presidential desires. But the simple fact is that these differences have been far outweighed by a remarkable consistency in U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II. And a President is far more limited in his options than popular folklore suggests. It is only when one understands the Executive Branch as an institution that one can make sense, not only of Mr. Obama, but much of both America’s postwar history and frightening future.
Famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars reporting on Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan Policy Review in the fall of 2009 provides an instructive case-study of just how limited a President’s options are when faced with institutional opposition from within the Executive Branch.
{…]
America’s Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security
It’s evil, lawless and authoritarian. And as NSA leaker Snowden has shown us, its aims are to be all-powerful.
Fred Branfman June 9, 2013
“if this was happening in Canada right now” Good thing Canadians don’t use Google or Facebook or any internet or banks or credit cards. Good thing the usa is only data mining ‘certified’ American citizens. Good thing that Canada and the USA are such vile enemies that info would never be shared. Ha-ha-ha-haaaaa….
I don’t think the motivation is important or relevant. Indeed, I don’t think that even the individual, Snowden, is relevant.
All that is at issue, is the actions of government in gathering an enormous data base on all citizens. That’s the only issue. Do Americans want their government to carry out such an action? After all, the government must remember that it exists not to dictate to the people but to carry out the will of the people.
A basic ‘will’ is the need for security. It is up to the Obama administration to prove, not simply to declare as Obama does in his endless rhetoric, that such data gathering is vital to, is necessary to, and is the best method to..ensure the security of the American people.
I have my doubts that such evidentiary proof exists.
Furthermore, such activities ought to have been made public, ie, the American people should not be told about this data gathering by an individual but by their govt – and then, they could ask for evidentiary proof, and they could decide if indeed they wanted such oversight.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that Obama can show that any ‘terrorist attacks’ were prevented by this data base. And by the way we must remember, he says that he’s gone and conquered Al Qaeda and that terrorism no longer is a threat!…
Americans must inquire whether this data base can be used for any political reasons. After all, the IRS, that benign tax gathering institution, has been turned into a political ageny during Obama’s administration, to hinder and prevent dissenting voices against His Majesty.
The Obama administration, ah, ‘leaked’ the list of Romney’s donors, and then, somehow found out ‘unpleasant things’ and smeared the donors in the press. That’s classic Obama; he got rid of his two opponents in previous Senate races by finding out their private divorce data and leaking it to the press.
Remember that Obama has an enormous electronic network linked to his own political party. That HIS political party. Not the Democratic Party; it’s the one he set up with a massive electronic data base of voters, all connected to His Word via his free gift of SmartPhones, all ready to do what He wants. What’s it got to do with terrorism?
Such a data base of all Americans, showing their political contacts, political funding, business networks, could easily be a political tool of enormous power. What’s that got to do with terrorism?
So, the question, the only question is, do Americans trust their govt to not turn this data base into a political tool? I certainly wouldn’t trust ANY government to refrain.
But the Obama Gang is going to go after Snowden – and he’s a red herring. He’s not the real issue.
“There is no way, absolutely no way, that Obama can show that any ‘terrorist attacks’ were prevented by this data base.”
How do you know?
JJM, there are two simple reasons.
The first, is the simple reason that there is no way that anyone can ever prove that ‘potentiality’ always becomes ‘actuality’.
The second is the simple reason that it is illogical and expensive and a waste of resources to assume that ALL residents in the nation are ALL potential terrorists. This, as a concomitant action, sets up the people as, all of them, innately hostile to their land and to other people.
That’s the mental delusion that is currently in sway when Authorities are charging five year olds for biting their pop tart in the form of a gun.
That’s the mental aberration that sets up identity blocs as adversaries against each other.
That is, I can talk about my desire for ‘taking out all the X-people’ but that does not mean that I will ever carry out such an actual act.
Good intelligence doesn’t rest just on a data base of who talks to whom and what they are talking about. There’s a second step: the potentiality for action. And finally, the action. It’s not a necessary linear step from each step.
After all, the Russians warned Obama’s administration about the Boston bombers. They did nothing.
The Libyan embassy warned Obama and the State Dept about jihadists and asked for more security. They did nothing.
Americans have to decide what kind of govt they want and whether the risks are worth their enabling a govt to ‘go rogue’…as it already has in the USA.
LASsie said: “Make no mistake: if this was happening in Canada right now, half the posters here would be circling the wagons. No integrity whatsoever.”
You really are an odious little cretin aren’t you? This IS happening in Canada. Right now. I see no wagons being circled in defense of the CPC scum who carried on the work of the Liberal scum, work which they were specifically voted in to stop.
What I see are a lot of people taking a hard look at Mr. Harper’s activities and not liking what they see.
The problem is right now there IS NO PARTY a Canadian can vote for that will not continue to implement the ubiquitous surveillance policy. The NDP love it, the Liberals started it, and the CPC are enlarging it. You dumb enough to think the Green Party will stop it?
This is the case in every Western nation today. We are all up against it.
YOU are not helping, LASsie. Perhaps instead of making false accusations against people on the internet you should start in using your tiny mind.
Oh and incidentally, Edward Snowden and his “revelations” are of no consequence. This information was all out there long before he called up The Guardian. What has changed is that now the American media can no longer turn a blind eye to it as they have previously. We’ve been talking about this for quite a while now.
The problem is not the leaker . The problem is Western Governments , replacing, censoring. Than bugging their own populations.
Using the Police with human rights courts to impose odious laws on us all to shut us up about what’s really going on.
People should be aware no matter what party is in charge. When both the Media with Government. Start defending the undefended use of illegal means to spy on it own people without court orders from a judge. Using a scapegoat to defray from their own ugly deeds.
My Country right or wrong anyone?
Even the IRS guy has been pilloried, that exposed Obama’s campaign to smear any who oppose him. Including people who where against attacking certain press individuals.
What is happening in America is an outrage. But no less than what’s going on here through different means.
One thing here, we don’t give a hoot what Party does evil. Which Politicians are becoming police state hounds.
las & mike81
… with all due respect
“Careful, you’ll get the pro-CPC SDA set all riled up. CPC can do no wrong, don’t you know.”
HOGWASH!
Statements like this from the Unsullied Conservative Purists demonstrate just how ignorant they are regarding politics, and how to get things done in government. We are loyal to our party out of political necessity!
In fact, it is us(the partisans) on all sides of the aisle who actually do the heavy lifting in a democracy; by working to keep the party’s direction true while still maintaining the coalition(s) that keep the party(s) politically viable. For some reason the ‘purists’ on our side of the aisle cannot grasp this elementary concept. It’s the so called “Independents” who get the free ride by simply bouncing back and forth based on whatever whim they fancy today; as they have no skin in the game. It is YOU who all parties offer-up the goodies to knowing full well you’ll jump at whatever bone they offer(even if it is a conservative bone like cutting the CBC).
I can only hope that the support gained by the CPC in the last election is made of sterner stuff than those that would betray the Canadian conservative movement with some ridiculous ‘protest vote’ or spoiled ballot.
You want to sway your movement? Withhold your monetary and volunteer contributions. If you don’t make such contributions, then you cannot expect to have a loud voice internally within the party/movement you (somewhat) support.
Moving your vote from one party to another should be a very significant decision; and done so only after you are convinced that another party will better represent you in the long term. Otherwise, it is most prudent and effective to stay with your natural party, be active, and move your party in the direction you deem best. Jumping from ship to ship at every turn yields poor representation from our parties as they are always trying to sway YOU by offering-up goodies.
So yeah, it is in fact you guys(those who constantly criticize partisans) who are the toothless ones, with the loudest bark, spewing the most juvenile nonsense; that, if heeded to, would effectively neuter the actual effectiveness of the conservative movement in Canada. In other words… if the CPC listened to you… we’d never see conservative minded government again.
I can’t stand all the pious US government types standing up and saying that Snowden has jeopardised the safety of the US by his revelation, that what he has done is high treason. Even speaker Boehner was ranting about him on the news. What individual Americans have been placed in peril, what true secrets have been revealed?
About that allegedly solitary 29 year old, some compelling thinking out loud questions from John Rappoport:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/nsa-leaker-are-there-serious-c
All that typing help your hurt feelings?
Christ, I feel like I’m on CGN. As soon as you become critical of the CPC, you gotta be a frothing at the mouth lib supporter. Grow the hell up. You and the CPC are hardly the bastions of ‘conservatism’ in Canada.
We are loyal to our party out of political necessity!
AHAHAhAHHAHAHA Complete lack of self-awareness. No Homey you’re loyal because you can’t think beyond the emotional satisfaction you get from supporting your tribe. That’s it. The only ‘heavy lifting’ you do is the mental contortions and double-think required to justify your BS and lack of integrity and sell it as some kind of ‘deep thinking’. The only thing people like you have accomplished is to support failures like Bush that led to Obama. We’ll be lucky if Trudeau is the worst that Harper is followed up by.
Independence is real power. Fewer and fewer Americans are signing up for Red or Blue. People like me are the future. Your petty partisan talking point wars won’t matter.
You’ve got to be joking, LAS. All you’ve ever done here — and you must have commented hundreds of times — is bash the Conservatives, and those who support them.
You *never* bash the other federal parties. And you say you’re not partisan? And you laugh — in all-caps — about us being un-self-aware partisans?
Do you ever make yourself sick?
L-ASS
” People like me are the future”, ain’t that the sad truth, bought by an Obumbles phone no lass(less)
Mike*…..my exact thinking on Homie’s bullsh1t
and Gord Tulk….pray tell how is/was Snowden to reveal this in a legal manner, when because of “national security” it was enacted in secrecy, me thinks you just reacted without thinking of what you were posting, cuz it’s about as much bullsh1t as what LASS usually craps out!!!
It’s funny the republicans have been against the policies put forward by the democrats. Until now, in light of these NSA/PRISM leaks. Now it seems the republicans or at least 3/4 of them are getting behind democrats who support NSA/PRISM policy of taking peoples data without their knowledge or general consent.
Now I’m rather skeptical of both republican and democrat parties even more than before, to the point of calling the current president by this fixed title: George W. Obama
I’m going back to being an independent with a libertarian slant again
You *never* bash the other federal parties. And you say you’re not partisan? And you laugh — in all-caps — about us being un-self-aware partisans?
Which one of these parties has been the government since 2006?
All you’ve ever done here — and you must have commented hundreds of times — is bash the Conservatives, and those who support them.
I have made plenty of other comments.
“The second is the simple reason that it is illogical and expensive and a waste of resources to assume that ALL residents in the nation are ALL potential terrorists.”
Does the US government assume that all residents are potential terrorists?
And by the way, I believe Snowden just imploded.
As long as he focussed on US domestic surveillance activity, the moral and ethical basis of his actions could be perceived as arguably altruistic: a “whistleblower” defending the US Constitution.
But now he has come out and informed on NSA activity against China, i.e., intelligence-gathering on a foreign country – precisely the sort of activity the US public actually expects the NSA to do. That’s not the action of a whistleblower, that’s the action of a traitor.
Worse still for Snowden, he has shredded hs credibility upon the blindingly obvious.
The US spies on China? Gosh, who knew?
Yeah, JJM, I too wonder about the character and motivations of Snowden. I stated this at the outset of the post not because it’s the most important issue, but rather to make clear that in addressing the bizarre logic/assertions of Brooks I wasn’t defining Snowden as either a “good” or a “bad” man.
I think – for what it’s worth — that it’s somewhere between possible and probable that he’s not the “lone wolf” he claims to be. He could be a sort of a front man for patriotic CIA higher-ups, as some have suggested, or he could be acting on behalf of, say, China or Russia, and using his stated noble intentions as a sort of cover, or it might be something else altogether. We’ll probably never know.
You’re right that if he is providing China with information, that’s traitorous. Do you have a link for that, btw?