55 Replies to “So, planned, all along.”

  1. Lance, you’re getting as bad as the MSM we all loathe.
    Nothing in the Telegraph article said anything about giving information to (or working for, as you’re trying to imply) the Chicoms. This was about giving information to the media.

  2. So lance, does that mean you’re peachy-keen with the NSA vacuuming up the phone records of every single American alive? And probably most Canadians, Brits, Europeans, etc? Because “terrism!”?
    So-called conservatives who engage in this “shoot the messenger” attack on Snowden disgust me beyond belief. I don’t know what kind of society they want to live in, but it smells a lot like a tyrannical state to me, and I want no part of it.

  3. I wish the world was as black and white as you seem to think it is Lance. There is comfort in such thinking, but no truth.

  4. What’s evolving here is not black and white differentiation. There is however a clear dichotomy represented between libertarian and conservative thinking.

  5. I’m sure putting a lifelong target on your back is totally worth whatever the Chinese are paying for information they undoubtedly already know. Flawless logic.

  6. Regardless of whether you consider him a hero or villain, the fact remains, he joined Booz Allen under false pretenses and violated his security clearance. More to the point, what kind of background checks did Booz use and how did the US Govt grant him a clearance? If he had the balls of a hero, he would have stayed in the USA and faced the music for being a whistleblower.

  7. In China, Snowden left an astonishing feat in his wake: he actually improved the credibility of government censors and information-security czars, who make up one of China’s most unloved groups. Fang Binxing, a computer scientist known as the “father of the Great Firewall” for his role in developing China’s censorship régime, is so unpopular among his countrymen that he has been pelted with eggs and shoes while giving speeches; when he opened a social-media account in 2010, people called him a “eunuch” and a “running dog” and someone Photoshopped his head onto a voodoo doll. For years, Fang justified government intervention on the Web largely by arguing, as he once did, that unseen enemies abroad “sit comfortably at home, thinking only of how, through their fingertips on a keyboard, they can bring chaos to China.” He warned that using telecom equipment from international companies like Cisco threatened China’s national security. Snowden has given Fang and his cohort new reasons to argue for stricter control of the Web.

    Snowden is misguided at best.

  8. Oh and I forgot this, which may have been what lance was posting about:

    Intelligence experts cited by the Times believed that the Chinese government “had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.”

  9. For sake of argument, let’s assume that Snowden is a traitor, a coward and has the lowest of low characters on Earth. That still does not excuse the US government’s unwarranted spying and data (meta or otherwise) collection on millions of American citizens. People have basic rights and trampling all over them in the War without End (terrorism)is just wrong. The information being collected will be abused for personal gain, political advantage, commercial espionage and vendettas as sure as day follows night.
    So if Snowden is a traitor. That traitor was able to infiltrate the US government’s top secret operation, steal its sensitive information and flee to an unfriendly country. So even Big Government statists, neocons and the military industry apologists should be questioning the security of its operations. They cannot even manage to keep their own information private so how in the hell are they going to protect your privacy on data collected by PRISM.
    What he revealed to the public is bigger, much bigger that Snowden’s motivations.

  10. I sense the Snowden Saga is beginning to run its course, like the Assange Affair (proving that Marx might have been right this time with his “first as tragedy, then as farce” line).
    Oh sure, there’ll be the odd noise and much-ballyhooed pronouncement here and there but the story is flatlining with the public.
    Sometime in the future, I half-expect to run into Snowden serving shots of aguardiente in a cheap Guayaquil bar or flipping burgers at a Reykjavik McDonalds…

  12. Is there anything new in what Snowden has said? By not ignoring him, he has gained credibility beyond other whistle blowers. That the NSA is bugging everyone in the world isn’t exactly news.

  13. My Conservative Party has always been a big,big tent party.
    You like capital punishment? When government does the punishing?
    Don’t like it, but can understand.
    Abortion.
    Hate it. But.
    Medicare.
    Usual government snafu and stalking horse, but it could be worse.
    Gun control.
    Idiots.
    Present government spending, expense control, debt, deficit…
    Bigger idiots. (Yes. Sadly. Our present “Conservative” government.)
    Give up our “security” for safety and bigger government types?
    Biggest idiots of all!

  14. The thing he revealed was the public’s naivety, which is no revelation. Given the NSA’s budget, they couldn’t possibly be doing anything other than the vacuum cleaner approach. And just look at the number of board members in Big Tech who are former NSA officials. One would have to be functionally retarded not to realize that every possible communication is stored and cataloged. Today one has to go out of their way (often to ridiculous lengths) for privacy, and in doing so attracts the exact attention they seek to avoid. Because, you know, actual bad guys tend to do that too.
    And then there’s the practical aspect. Suppose Jihad Jane really is walking around out there. How do you find her? Do you throw away this valuable tool? I’m actually on the “yes” side – turf the surveillance state, take some lumps, and people will wise up on their own and we’ll be safer in the end. Will the Snowden incident result such a public debate ever happpening? I don’t think so.
    The NSA is SPYING on people! It’s UNBELIEVABLE! Yes it sucks, I don’t like it either. But will Snowden’s “revelations” force significant action? Doubtful. So what has he accomplished, aside from personal fame? He’s damaged his country’s image internationally, which is pretty hard to do these days, so isn’t much damage at all. He could have least done this before last year’s election.

  15. The master continues to school the pupil.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-security-putin-idUSBRE95O0VE20130625
    It is no wonder the O admin is trying so hard to turn this into a spy caper. How else do they keep the narrative from straying into inconvenient facts? Such as how poorly the US is responding to this serious breach in it’s security and how impotent the administration truly is on the world stage. But it would pale in comparison were it Justin Trudeau handling such a mess. Could you imagine?

  16. Since when is telling the truth a crime?
    Indiscriminate spying on the whole population is illegal in the US (even if Obama disagrees), and should be illegal everywhere.
    Gawd, the stasi-like people in today’s government (Obama, admin, most sens, most reps) are so far removed from the ideals of the Founding Fathers that they cannot even spell to liberalism, and certainly not grasp its ideals.

  17. Personally, I’ve never thought this whole NSA scandal had much to do with Snowden. My very own little vanity-blog has Big Brother alerts going back to 2005. Look up “Carnivore” on Wikipedia, tells you all about it. During the 1990’s Rush Limbaugh never shut up about the government spying on web use.
    The one thing Snowden changed was the media response. Whatever else he meant to do, whatever his actual aims were, what he -did- do was inform the Low Information Voters of the entire world that the NSA is recording all their phone calls.
    Right now you’ve got a “perfect storm” of competing private and government propaganda organizations, world wide, trying to capitalize on this one event. Every possible lie, half truth and misdirection is out there competing for eyeballs, all at the same time. There’s no narrative yet, just the O.J. Simpson-esque slow speed car chase of Snowden moving around the world and the media orgasm following him.
    I’m willing to wait a few years to find out what Snowden’s real deal is. I don’t actually care. What I care is that now -everybody- knows that their communications are all being recorded by the government and archived forever.
    Also I get to say “TOLD YOU SO!!!!” really f-ing loud to a whole bunch of very irritating people. Which is quite nice, I must say.

  18. Any variation of “the public should have known about a secret program” is illogical. The government wastes large sums of money in every department – does the public know exactly where it goes? No, and by its very nature a secret program will not reveal itself or the scope of its operations. I guarantee that anyone who came forward with the idea that the government was building a massive surveillance state would have been mocked as a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid. Terrorists, OTOH, are aware of the danger and are unlikely to use unencrypted, unsecured forms of communication. So what is the justification in vacuuming up all of their citizens information in the unlikely event a terrorist is dumb enough to do his planning on Facebook?
    If more is revealed about the nature and scope of the spying (political targets, blackmail, suppressing media stories, etc.), the public will lose even more trust in big government and wars used to justify bigger, more intrusive government. Good for the libertarians making the case for limited government and fewer wars, I’d suspect. Long overdue, IMO.
    By the way when I talk about wars I also include the War on Drugs, the War on Climate Change and every other War. Every “War” comes with a huge price tag on economic and personal freedom.

  19. “Also I get to say “TOLD YOU SO!!!!” really f-ing loud to a whole bunch of very irritating people. Which is quite nice, I must say.”
    Well said. Much of what was formerly labelled tin-foil hat conspiracy nonsense has proven to be accurate after all, but everybody is too busy arguing details or fighting each other — quite by design — to really notice such things. That is the only aspect where I would disagree with you. The narrative is very much in evidence here as it is in just about everything nowadays. There are reams of psychologists, psychiatrists, behaviourists etc employed by the vendors to keep it on track or to fill in the potholes.

  20. The US is being shown up as a totalitarian state and I only hope that the smackdown of Obozo by Putin will get through some of the LIV’s. Putin is showing himself to be orders of magnitude more competent than Obozo although, unfortunately, most of the morons who voted for Obozo are incapable of understanding this.
    The main story here is the NSA routinely violated the privacy of all Americans which it’s forbidden to do by the US Constitution.

  21. In 2010, twenty one Americans died as a result of falling furniture, TVs or appliances (1). That same year no one was killed in the US due to terrorism.
    People in the US are more likely to die due to falling furniture than due to terrorism. Why Americans still allow this massive amount of warrantless surveillance by the government is beyond comprehension.
    Follow the money: It is your money that finances spying on you. Republicans voted for Patriot Act renewal in 2006 by a margin of 214-13. Democrats opposed it 124-66. (2)
    1. Consumer Product Safety Commission
    http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/108985/tipover2011.pdf page 12
    2. clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll020.xml

  22. Whether you call it Prism or Echelon or Carnivore or whatever, it’s been common knowledge forever. The technical details differ as advancement happens, but the surveillance state is decades old and I stand by my earlier “functionally retarded” comment.

    So what is the justification in vacuuming up all of their citizens information in the unlikely event a terrorist is dumb enough to do his planning on Facebook?

    Their justification is that investigators glean other information, not specific to an attack itself, such as locations, family, friends, psych profiles, etc. that’s useful in finding bad guys and their pals. And please bear in mind that suicide attackers may not bother covering their tracks. The system undoubtedly works sometimes. Is it worth it? Maybe or maybe not, but Snowden isn’t even a bug on the windshield of the surveillance state. If the oh so noble public had rejected any of the countless and seemingly benign privacy intrusions of the past couple decades, there’d be some grounds for meaningful debate. Instead we have Facebook, people buying coffee with debit cards, cell phones that resemble bovine ear tags, and a public that protests in favour of a mandatory long form census.

  23. “Present government spending, expense control, debt, deficit…
    Bigger idiots. (Yes. Sadly. Our present “Conservative” government.”
    Not sure I follow you on that Kuzo. Team Obama and the Democrats own the White House and the Senate, plus Barry is ruling by Executive Order. That’s not a ‘Conservative Gov’t’ that would be a liberal socialist progressive Democrat sucking the life out of everyone gov’t.
    You can say what you want about Snowden, but he did us a favor.
    ,

  26. Comparing Snowden to Manning is wrong. Manning released massive data dumps to wikileaks because he didn’t think there should be secrets. He released data that endangered real people and allowed groups like wikileaks to edit the videos for most shock effect. Snowden, so far as I know, hasn’t released anything particularly damaging other than that the US is, indeed, spying on us all. Yeas, perhaps it gave the Chinese knowledge of certain compromised systems but I am willing to accept that if it goes towards ending the systemic abuse of the privacy of free people.

  27. No,Max, voluntarily giving information up is not the same as having it taken from you. No more than consensual sex is the same as sexual assault or giving money away is the same as being robbed. Even if the majority on the population thought that rape and robbery were OK it does not give the government the authority to override those laws.
    That is why our legal system, legislative system and the US Constitution have rules and regulations. Giving unlimited power to the government to make links between “locations, family, friends, psych profiles, etc.” is unethical. Your government should not have unwarranted access to such information in the same way they should not be able to break into your house and catalog your firearms, read your financial statement and watch your home videos – even if you leave your home poorly secured.

  28. I’m getting the impression that Snowden is an idiot who just happened to catch the NSA spying on the American people. THAT is, perhaps, his only saving grace.

  29. Funny.
    I don’t remember excusing the NSA in anything I’ve posted or written. Quaint that I’m accused of being B&W when some think that calling a traitor a traitor means that I’m condoning overzealous spying on citizens.
    Snowden is an embarrassment to anyone anywhere that has held a security clearance. He was such a pristine individual that after he leaked to The Guardian he still took four laptops to barter with.
    You don’t actually think China and Russia are putting him up and shuttling him around just to poke America, do you? That would be a little naive. You have no problem believing the US of covert operations, is it a stretch to give the same credence to China and Russia?
    Just because they are making Obama look like an idiot does not make them friends and it would be wise for the right to remember that.

  30. Having consenual sex with someone tonight doesn’t prevent that person, or an acquaintance of theirs, from raping you at a later date. Putting onself in a position to be raped is the problem, and I maintain that the recent cultural acceptance of privacy as a quaint anachronism, combined with gross ignorance (or acceptance) of massive government spending, precludes any rollback from the likes of a Snowden. We can carry on normative discussions about what should or shouldn’t be, but to what ends? Government does plenty of unethical things that shouldn’t be done. We have a cultural problem. The Snowdens of the world don’t change culture.
    I’m not the type of person to do what Snowden did – but honestly, I hope the assertions that his action makes a positive difference is true. I just don’t see it.

  32. Consent is about as relevant to the current privacy situation as a nude cheerleader twerking in a prison yard.

  33. Consent is about as relevant to the current privacy situation as to a nude cheerleader twerking in a prison yard.

  34. So if something is planned, it’s not heroic? Funny watching the Suveillance State Apologists like lance grasp for anything to smear Snowden with. No matter how low or nonsensical they don’t care.

  37. “That’s not a ‘Conservative Gov’t’ that would be a liberal socialist progressive Democrat sucking the life out of everyone gov’t.”
    Sorry,Ratt. That would be a tin-pot, dictatorial, commie, gubermint move.

  38. American citizens had their info taken without their consent by their government. How is not about consent?
    BTW, is getting robbed because a mugger sees you wearing an expensive watch also not “robbery robbery”? Getting physically assaulted by a gang if you drink a bit too much? Or is this just women specific “uncovered meat” kinda thing?

  39. Keep it up, LC. You’re making all my points (shared by lots of others) for us.
    Max, Lance, you’re being hideously naive in all this. You pretend that this is just about national security. This is drivel. Such an information base will unquestionably be used for all sorts of internal “issues” that the government of the day wants “managed”. Have you forgotten so readily about the games the IRS has been playing? Of course the NSA data base will be used for all sorts of things which have nothing to national security. Wake me up when they come after the Right to Lifers. Then we can all have a good laugh.

  40. Consent exists as an abstract concept. It can be uninformed, informed, tacit or explicit and is easily, often ambiguously, violated. In any given week, the average citizen of a developed country gives consent to countless parties, known and unknown, to store personally identifiable electronic records. Unlike consent, electronic records exist in the physical world, and are copied, traded, sold, stolen and leaked. I’m saying that consent, today, WRT electronic records and privacy is baby talk, and puts you in a crib next to LAS saying gaga googoo, or in the prison yard dirt complaining about a sore ass.
    And tell me, my dear rock-ribbed libertarian, who safeguards your records and follows up to ensure your precious consent hasn’t been violated? The government? We do have the office of the privacy commissioner in Canada, and it does attempt to perform that function for the most egregious looking privacy violations. Perhaps we should hire 500,000 people to ensure indivduals’ consent isn’t violated.
    I don’t have any meaningful points beyond “don’t be the twerking cheerleader in the prison yard”, which is increasingly difficult to do without joining the tin foil brigade; and maybe “we get the government we deserve”. And you’re the one who started the sexual assault metaphor.

  41. Perhaps a different perspective, rights vs. privileges.
    Also:
    Amendment IV
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

  42. The Chinese would have got it anyway. They sure have all the Canadian intelligence.
    As for Snowden. He hasn’t put one American life in danger, or revealed agents.
    The best he’s done is reveal what most of us knew anyway to a bigger audience. Put the tin foil hats on peoples heads again.
    Mean while the people that Brought you the IRS, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, EPA affronts to Democracy. Who are the biggest denouncers along with the Media of this man.
    What does that tell you?
    The biggest liars of all, even to their own Governments are awarded,but this guy demonized for revealing uncomfortable truths?
    From the Clapper to the Obama.
    Yet we are to believe them?
    He may have been in-prudent how he did this. But facing the public with his true face, along with Identity, says something.
    That you get more truth from Pravda these days, than the NYTimes says another.
    the utter shallowness of People putting up with their own Government snooping on their lives while covering up for a group that started this whole ugly mess says yet something else.Including the fact they are the only ones free of being spied on while even elected officials are being watched.
    That there has been no outrage at this attack on citizens, but acrimony on another whistle blower like them all. Tells a tale of tyranny.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny3bOmey-BE

  43. Snowden’s fine, upstanding, efforts will be used by the Left to do to it what the Church Committee did to the CIA: make it ineffective.
    All those who may be tempted to cheer this might reflect on the fact that the NSA runs perhaps the most important surveilance – signals surveillance – on the West’s enemies, namely Russia, China, as ell as terrorists. There is no other comparable effort by any Western government. The US remains the strong man of the West, and is therefore indispensable to its security.
    Snowden must be brought to justice.

  44. Who’s Justice? Obama’s?
    The NSA abused its citizens in America, plus allies. Of that their is NO doubt.
    My question is who allowed them to have surveillance like this on its ow populace. Now that would be Justice served. Snowdon is a bit player.
    They brought it on themselves by corruption.
    As for our enemies, who is the most dangerous? China, Russia or the Ummah?
    Obama has tried to cosy up to Russia by unilaterally banning UISA nukes. Shrunk the Army. Given China almost free access of their technology.Plus pays for their entire Army in debt loans. Gives as pass to Islam. Indeed increases Sharia law.Fights for Islam at the drop of a penny.Hates Israel.
    Some day Justice will be done but it won’t be what’s expected.How many Americans have Obama & Hillary killed , compared to this small fry Snowdon?
    I don’t think of him as a hero. That’s for history to decide. To me he is way over his head, but he knew that.

  45. In any given week, the average citizen of a developed country gives consent to countless parties, known and unknown, to store personally identifiable electronic records.
    So because some entities are violating my privacy, the most powerful and dangerous entity-the USG-should be given the all clear? This how surveillance apologists seriously ‘think’.
    All those who may be tempted to cheer this might reflect on the fact that the NSA runs perhaps the most important surveilance – signals surveillance – on the West’s enemies, namely Russia, China, as ell as terrorists.
    Tough sh*t. Jack Bauer takes a back seat to the 4th/The Charter/whatever.
    Snowden must be brought to justice.
    Indeed. He should be given a medal and a sack of money.

  46. All those who may be tempted to cheer this might reflect on the fact that the NSA runs perhaps the most important surveilance – signals surveillance – on the West’s enemies, namely Russia, China, as ell as terrorists.
    Tough sh*t. Jack Bauer takes a back seat to the 4th/The Charter/whatever. – LAS
    Easy for you to say, LAS, living, as you do in the safety created by the NSA, and others whose surveillance is key to stopping the lethal plans of terrorists. Just remember that somewhere, adults will take care for your defense, so that you can keep up your sophmoric scribbling.

  47. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Yeah right without the NSA we’d all die. Fact: you’re more likely to die of drowning than terrorism. TERRA doesn’t give the NSA the right to do what it does. The USG is a bigger threat to my freedoms than Al-Qaeda.

  48. that would be like winning a foot race against legless man, and so no win
    lance, U once said you were a social liberal, did U mean U are a Kommy????

  49. Lance, in this case I completely agree with LAS. What the NSA did is unconstitutional and hence any politician who has taken an oath to uphold the constitution should immediately be either removed from office, or prosecuted and jailed depending on the degree to which they participated in illegal activities.
    The success of the NSA’s brute force approach to vacuuming up all of the worlds communications can be judged by how well they were able to predict terrorist acts. They hadn’t a clue about the Libya “spontaneous demonstration” on 11/9/2012 but they were almost immediately able to finger a thirf rate film maker who had about as much to do with the “spontaneous” demonstration as a schizophrenic who has the delusion that every time they sneeze an earthquake occurs somewhere in the world. Then, we can’t forget the stellar work by the NSA in stopping the Boston marathon bombing as well as how quickly they caught the perpetrators who were planning this massacre./sarc
    The NSA’s supercomputers are another demonstration of GIGO; just like the stellar predictive record of the supercomputer run climate models. The only people benefiting from this totalitarian surveillance society are the hardware manufacturers who likely have a substantial portion of their sales going to the NSA — given the inane goal of capturing all of the worlds digital communications, one can infer that the NSA is the single largest purchaser of disk drives in the world.
    What the NSA seems to have forgotten is that data mining, especially if one wishes to correlated multiple items, has a search time which scales on the order of N^2 (or N^k depending on the type of search they’re doing) which means that unless the NSA has operational quantum computers now, the data they collect is totally useless for their stated goal.
    Where the data is useful, however, is in keeping track of individuals who are enemies of the state. Prior to Obozo becoming TOTUS, the dumbocrats were ranting about how Bush had shredded the constitution and how they’d make it right if they ever got into office. Strangely, now some of the strongest supporters of the unconstitutional actions taken by GWB are Obozo and his gang of criminals who are making as much possible use of the illegally gathered data to dig up private embarrasing data on their enemies which can be used against them. Obozo is going after any high ranking military officer who is disinterested in licking the TOTUS’s boots. Now we know how Petraeus’s emails were found by the NSA. Personally, I couldn’t give a rat ass if Petraeus had an affair with a woman unless it interfered with his command effectiveness. He kept it discreet and his only mistake was not using strong encryption on his emails.
    I see little difference now between the Obozo dictatorship and that of Saddam Hussein except that Obozo has much fancier toys to spy on his people with than Saddam and Obozo doesn’t torture people in the US; he sends them out to foreign locations where this can be carried out to give the appearance of not having violated the constitution.
    The NSA has been totally politicized as have the IRS, homeland security and BATF. Obozo is doing his best to politicize the military as well — the only branch of the US government that still believes that the constitution is more than an inconvenient obsolete 200 year old document. Your arguments, Lance, are not much different to those in WWII who supported concentration camps because they provided employment for the concentration camp guards.
    I agree with LAS that Snowdon deserves a medal for his actions. I also hope that he’s just the first patriot of many to come forward with revelations on the criminality of this administration and, hopefully, the US military will intervene to eliminate Obozo and his band of criminals. A very thorough housecleaning of the US government is necessary and I never thought I’d see the day where I would view Putin as one of the friends of liberty.
    So, to the NSA gestapo who might be reading this posting, I suggest you resign now before the people get angry and come for you. Also, some spook bait:
    Ahmed, the cobalt 60 supply is now acquired and all we need are sufficient quantities of explosives to irradiate the infidels of Washington DC and show them the power of Allah. Yours in Jihad, Ali.

  50. Then, we can’t forget the stellar work by the NSA in stopping the Boston marathon bombing as well as how quickly they caught the perpetrators who were planning this massacre./sarc. – Loki
    Obama forbade surveillance of domestic Muslims; that’s why the Tsarnaev terrorists remained undetected. The FBI was given leads on them, and they did not follow up.
    You rightly criticize the politicization of agencies of the US government by Obama’s political operatives, but then explicitly condemn the mere existence of the NSA, or any comparable signals intelligence capability.
    Your claim of an NSA Gestapo is shameful, as its directors have always been officers from the US armed services, all of them honorable men who took/take their oath to protect the Constitution extremely seriously.
    Obama will be removed from power by the 22nd amendment, or by Article 2, Section 4, of the US Constitution. Leave the unhinged rhetoric to the unfortunate Occupy dupes or others currently falling for the radical narrative of the New Łeft. Their goal is to harm the security of the US through destruction of the foreign surveillance capabilities of the US – the NSA – not strengthen t.

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