Snowden

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Just finished watching this excellent flick directed by Oliver Stone.

If any one is actually interested in lifting themselves up and out of the mundane, politico gutter mush du jour in order to transcend to much more relevant, patriotic issues concerning top secret tyranny and outright government lying to its citizens, I recommend you enjoy watching it, too.
 
Just finished watching this excellent flick directed by Oliver Stone.

If any one is actually interested in lifting themselves up and out of the mundane, politico gutter mush du jour in order to transcend to much more relevant, patriotic issues concerning top secret tyranny and outright government lying to its citizens, I recommend you enjoy watching it, too.

I'll take it with a rather cynical eye after the hatchet job he did with JFK.
 
I am sure Comrade Snowden will be pardoned by Comrade Trump.
 
Oliver Stone isn't known for objectivity or handling the facts with any sort of respect. I haven't seen much on the movie, but I presume it lionizes Snowden, so I probably won't see the movie.
 
I haven't seen the movie, not fond of Stone.
 
He should be pardoned by Comrade Obama.

Many comrades believe crimes should be overlooked if they agree with them. I dont. Stealing is stealing. Did he steal claasified material? Did he give that classified material to foreign governments? It is ok comrade....really it is.
 
Many comrades believe crimes should be overlooked if they agree with them. I dont. Stealing is stealing. Did he steal claasified material? Did he give that classified material to foreign governments? It is ok comrade....really it is.

Most of the people pardoned were guilty, that is why they are pardoned but in Snowdon's case, what exactly is he really guilty of?
Information on how the US is spying on it's own citizens is whistle blowing is not treason.
What foreign governments are you referring to?
The news media may think it is a governement of it's own but it is not.

I don't think a person can actually be pardon unless they are convicted so this is kind of moot anyway.
 
Many comrades believe crimes should be overlooked if they agree with them. I dont. Stealing is stealing. Did he steal claasified material? Did he give that classified material to foreign governments? It is ok comrade....really it is.

Can you define stealing in relation to existing information?

Just so we know what you think.
 
Stealing is stealing.
Stealing, as in theft or burglary, involves removing something which is now in the miscreant's possession and is no longer possessed by its owner. I can steal a loaf of bread or whatever. If I copy data and leave the original in place, I may have violated copyright or security laws, but I haven't removed the original -- I haven't 'stolen' it.

Instead, if I make the copy publicly available, I have freed it. (And not in the sense of 'liberated' = stolen.) Someone has evidence of their crimes. Someone else releases that evidence for the world to judge. What was stolen? Only the coverup.
 
Snowden has repeatedly said he will return to America to face whatever charges are against him except for any under the 1917 Espionage Act.

A couple of points brought up by the movie which I was unaware of:

1. I didn't realize what a "star" Snowden was.

2. I didn't realize that a final bit that popped his naive bubble was the government so nefariously and deceptively using a program that he created himself for a totally different mission.

The film is Edward Snowden's story, he even appears at its perfect ending. And if I hadn't been aware of it beforehand, or read his name as Director in the credits, I wouldn't even suspect Oliver Stone had anything to do with it.

Snowden began his clandestine career under the W presidency, but his despondency truly began after the next administration took office. Probable fact is if Barrack Obama would've admitted the illegality America was doing at the onset of his term in office, and if he would've ended it at least some of it then (like he admitted to and ended some things after Snowden's "espionage" was made public), none of us would have ever even heard the name, "Edward Snowden", for Snowden himself was naively encouraged by Obama's election, but then became even more disappointed by the constitutional lawlessness as Obama's reign went on.

Courts have found government practices Snowden exposed were illegally conducted, and Congress has passed laws which President Obama has enacted which overtly (CYA) stopped some of them. But anyone who doesn't accept that the entire federal apparatus isn't still conspiring and acting to capture, analyze, and record every bit of digital information, especially concerning Americans, is nothing but naive - just as Snowden was when he patriotically joined the CIA to serve his country.

No? Not heard of LInX yet?

"A parking ticket, traffic citation or involvement in a minor fender-bender are enough to get a person's name and other personal information logged into a massive, obscure federal database run by the U.S. military.

The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LinX, has already amassed 506.3 million law enforcement records ranging from criminal histories and arrest reports to field information cards filled out by cops on the beat even when no crime has occurred.

LinX is a national information-sharing hub for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. It is run by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, raising concerns among some military law experts that putting such detailed data about ordinary citizens in the hands of military officials crosses the line that generally prohibits the armed forces from conducting civilian law enforcement operations.

Those fears are heightened by recent disclosures of the National Security Agency spying on Americans, and the CIA allegedly spying on Congress, they say."

Navy database tracks civilians' parking tickets, fender-benders, raising fears of domestic spying
http://washingtonexaminer.com/navy-...sing-fears-of-domestic-spying/article/2546038

From NCIS itself:

"LInX contains data from nearly 1300 law enforcement agencies who share more than 680 million incident reports, 530 million narrative reports, and 64 million mug shots. Additionally, LInX users can access thousands of data streams from a number of partner systems such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) National Data Exchange (N-DEx) and the Department of Homeland Security's TECS and ENFORCE."
 
Stealing, as in theft or burglary, involves removing something which is now in the miscreant's possession and is no longer possessed by its owner. I can steal a loaf of bread or whatever. If I copy data and leave the original in place, I may have violated copyright or security laws, but I haven't removed the original -- I haven't 'stolen' it.

Instead, if I make the copy publicly available, I have freed it. (And not in the sense of 'liberated' = stolen.) Someone has evidence of their crimes. Someone else releases that evidence for the world to judge. What was stolen? Only the coverup.

You will have stolen the privacy of something that was clearly marked to be private. To hold it as not being stealing just won't fly. Your assumption that if it can't legally be swiped and published if it can't effectively be protected, it has to be a coverup is hopelessly naive.

Sorry, everyone having access to everything is anathema to full consideration of options in government decision formulation. It's an untenable basis on which to conduct government. Besides, as we've just seen, at least half of the citizenry are dumb as a rock and will do all sorts of dangerous, malicious, and screwy half-assed stuff with the data. Your position is a call for chaos.

Snowden is no patriot. If he wanted to play out the whistle blower nobleness, he shouldn't have skipped town--and handing it over to another country is clearly treason.
 
Just finished watching this excellent flick directed by Oliver Stone.

If any one is actually interested in lifting themselves up and out of the mundane, politico gutter mush du jour in order to transcend to much more relevant, patriotic issues concerning top secret tyranny and outright government lying to its citizens, I recommend you enjoy watching it, too.

Stone, like Moore, has evolved into nothing more than a propagandist.

History is only a suggestion to those guys.
 
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I remember when the story first broke.
I was caught for a long while in the general exhilaration and the mirage of the lone hero who takes down a powerful system.

But several political analysts commented that one single man couldn't have possibly done that by himself, without support from inside or from the outside... Regardless of whether Snowden was with 'the good guys' or with 'the bad guys'.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to tease out which of those theories made sense and which ones were over the top conspiratorial.
 
I remember when the story first broke.
I was caught for a long while in the general exhilaration and the mirage of the lone hero who takes down a powerful system.

But several political analysts commented that one single man couldn't have possibly done that by himself, without support from inside or from the outside... Regardless of whether Snowden was with 'the good guys' or with 'the bad guys'.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to tease out which of those theories made sense and which ones were over the top conspiratorial.

Sorry, but that idea ranks up with the idea the Oswald could not have possibly shot Kennedy.

;)

In growth, government does not gain in intelligence, it gains only on confusion and paperwork...
 
Sorry, but that idea ranks up with the idea the Oswald could not have possibly shot Kennedy.

;)

In growth, government does not gain in intelligence, it gains only on confusion and paperwork...

We're talking about NSA - which is one of the most powerful and sophisticated system of espionage.

I can't buy the story that They would be so careless about their own information, like simple govt. beaurocrats.
My theory is that someone higher in rank than Snowden, who had more clearance or access to data, gave him the info or clearance to access the information.
 
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We're talking about NSA - which is one of the most powerful and sophisticated system of espionage.

I can't buy the story that They would be so careless about their own information, like simple govt. beaurocrats.
My theory is that someone of a higher in rank than Snowden, who had more clearance or access to data, gave him or or have him access to fhe information.

Sorry.

~Occam's Razor~

The simplest explanation is the best.

In this case, incompetence and bureaucracy...

As Machiavelli penned, a conspiracy is a group of malcontents each of whom by exposure has the ability to be contented.
 
I'd like to see it, but I don't get to the movies but about once a decade, simply because I'd like to know more about what happened.

But as for Snowden himself - he took an oath to keep secrets and he violated that oath. It's black and white and he needs to man up and face the consequences of his actions.

Whatever his motivation and whatever good (or bad) came of his actions is just a side show to the fact that he violated his oath.
 
But as for Snowden himself - he took an oath to keep secrets and he violated that oath. It's black and white and he needs to man up and face the consequences of his actions.

Whatever his motivation and whatever good (or bad) came of his actions is just a side show to the fact that he violated his oath.

But there's a difference between taking an oath to keep secrets that would preserve the rights and safety of americans and to serve one's country, (as NSA is supposed to be)
- and keeping secrets that clearly violate the rights of american citizens. Because Snowden felt that NSA top employees were abusing their privileges and were posing a danger to american people
 
In saying that, I always felt that although Snowden did the right thing by exposing the fact that NSA was spying on it's own citizens,

The fact that he revealed other top secrets like the manner in which the US spied on other countries like China, certain European countries or so on (countries who certainly engage in similar counterespionage measures towards the US) was a bit more in the line of treason.
 
I'd like to see it, but I don't get to the movies but about once a decade, simply because I'd like to know more about what happened.

But as for Snowden himself - he took an oath to keep secrets and he violated that oath. It's black and white and he needs to man up and face the consequences of his actions.

Whatever his motivation and whatever good (or bad) came of his actions is just a side show to the fact that he violated his oath.

Maybe he can be Secretary of State.
 
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