NSA snooping leaker- hero or criminal

Gallup is 'eh' these days

 

He's no hero, and running into the arms of China and telling their government we've been hacking their computers for years makes him a traitor in my book.

If the guy was that concerned about NSA logging everyone's telephone calls, he should have requested to speak before a Senate subcommittee behind closed doors and stated his views.

People don't want this country to ever be hit again by another foreign terrorist attack, but they're opposed to the intelligence gathering needed to prevent such an attack.:smt066

Congress was briefed regularly on this spy program since it's inception. Why the hell did they keep renewing the Patriot Act if they were concerned about violating people's 4th Amendment rights??

I feel sorry for this guy a little bit because his life is fucked. He's probably going to spend most of his life in prison, if he doesn't kill himself first.

He had something important to say, but you don't steal top secret intel and leak it to a reporter, then flee to Hong Kong.

That's why we need to cut back on private firms being responsible for handling our nation's national security and intelligence gathering operations.
Private contractors are loyal to their salaries, not the country.

 

Agreed he's an idiot to have gone to Hong Kong expecting fairness, however they have a law that if you defect to China on "political grounds" (how fucked up funny ironic does that read - run FROM the U.S to China! ). they will NOT extradite you back to your country.

But let's get one thing straight A/B.... China is the stealer and hacker of the WORLD.
Most of their success comes from STEALING from the U.S!

Their Development Budget is a mere 2%.

Ours is over 50%

2% allocation + now a top power country = hacking/stealing U.S ideas

And that's the truth! (fact!)

 

lets look the guy on another level:
high school drop out. making 6 figures n a time of high unemployment and has a very hot girl friend. wtf?

 

Hero

If you surrender your Liberty for security, won't be long before you have neither.

All this data emails and facebook communication etc, etc how long is it stored for, it's not simply going to be collected then discarded, who would decide what is kept? to do such a thing would be impossible, so all ur information just sitting there, sitting and sitting.
How long till it's not used for the war on terror?

 

True, but they aren't doing that well lately, alot of government subsidising going on over there right now, Steel, Poultry they've flood the market.
That will all come falling on top of them at some point, everywhere else will just have to hang tight.
Things will change.

 

Personally I don't think Obama is a megalomaniac who wants to rule the world, but suppose someone like Dick Cheney ever becomes POTUS?? It would be frightening to know he had the logs of the numbers from every American's phonecalls(which isn't the same as the recording of ACTUAL phonecalls, which the NSA 'Prism' program isn't doing, and would be almost logistically impossible to pull off) and all their internet activity.

Honestly, if someone were to cherry pick some of the websites I've visited over the last decade+, they could make me look like a cross between Jeffrey Dahmer and Timothy McVeigh.

However when I hear that congressman responsible for oversight of the NSA Prism surveillance program go on TV and say they weren't informed about it, then come to find these assholes SKIPPED the WH briefings about the program, it really makes you hate the government.

There needs to be a rigid chain of command and constant oversight. But these individual communication profiles for all Americans shouldn't be permanently logged IMO by the federal government. Or anyone else.

We all know that Google keeps a record of everyone's web activity. So does the telephone company who logs everyone's call history.
That should bother people just as much if not more so.

And I agree Bliss that when people try to equate our government hacking China's government computer network to the hacking China does to U.S. corporations and our military and federal agencies, it's nowhere near the same.

China has become a world power through outright theft of intellectual property. They're parasites who innovate nothing.:smt076

 

Very much agree here, especially @ the Websites part. It's a rabbit hole on the Web. One link leads to another to another. It can even be a site you vehemently oppose, lol.

Overall excellent post!

*Barring of course, your first line :? Srsly?
Look up 'Messiah' complex, lol.*

It's amazing how the country has changed though... When Woodward & Bernstein exposed it, they were noble journalists when it came to Nixon being exposed.

 

yeah also how would we react if another boston bomber happen again or another 9/11. there have been numerous attempts between. its a serious balancing act.

like AB stated google and others have your activity anyway. also, how do you think they are able to snag those pedophilers. you always hear how they caught because they were watching kiddie porn on the web.

 

I think you will find good old fashioned police work does that, ie police masquerading as children on the internet and certain websites being red flags.

Also why does everyone think having all this information about all and sundry will make a difference to our safety? who's gonna go through it and analyze data, they have so much now they can't handle that.
They had information on Boston, the UK had information on the 7/7 bombers in London that information is only as good as the person reading it.

 

just as you are at work or at home....they are watching. the IP addresses are there for a reason.its not old fashion. when the cell fone came to be the feds put into law that companies are to put tracking devices in your fone.

so when yoiu come up missing or you say your were here or there....they can use your cell fone to help verify.....with a warrant

you are rite on one thing tho.....they talked about info over load. so what they are doinbg may not help

 

That's not the only way pedophiles are caught online.
In fact if a thread about pedophilia were started on this board, within 24 hours it would be monitored by the Feds. If any related materials were exchanged by users, those individuals would have their names and addresses flagged by the FBI.
The Feds have spiders crawling all over the interwebz 24/7 looking for certain combinations of words and phrases specific to a class a sex crimes.

It's more than just good old fashion police work that goes into busting pedos online.

 

But is correct. It can be a very slippery slope to try to track pedo's by IP activity. Those who are really engaging in illegal activity know ways to make IP tracing damn near impossible. This is also generally done at the state level and not the federal level.

 

i see

 

Republicans in Congress have come out supporting Obama and the NSA.

An issue only under Obama? Hardly. Try a decade.
It's conscious Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and Centrists who are objecting to NSA spying, and have been since the PATRIOT Act.

Not to mention the HUGE NEW NSA headquarters being built in Utah... that (to put it in perspective) will hold an astonishing 1 trillion laptops worth of data.. and more.

...more...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

This new spot won't just be phone calls that both Admins have stored...it will be every last thing you compute in your head out loud.

 

I'm a little torn about this one, but I say criminal. He signed the papers and took the oath to keep the secrets. Should every employee decide what should be a state secret or not? And if he had slant eyes and a chinese surname would he still be a hero? hmm...

But anyway, a few insights:

1. The information the gubmint is collecting here would be readily available to them whether they were harvesting it or not. Does it make a difference whether they're collecting it straightaway or have to go to AT&T and say "pretty please" to get it? I think not. If you use any telecom service or the "net" you can presume that info is going to be there for people to look into regardless, ie., you can't presume it's private other the anonymity of being lost in a crowd...

2. Weren't the repubs the ones trying to rile everyone up with paranoia about "Obama's gonna kill grandma" when he was trying to give us healthcare? Now when it comes to this program, they're on the side of Big Brother. Fuckin hypocrites. They're disingenuous about their anti-government paranoia and just use it to manipulate the masses.

3. where was all this outrage when it came to the CITIZENS UNITED decision, which is a GENUINE, clear and present threat to democracy? Hate to say it, but americans seem more simple-minded by the day.

4. I bet half the people outraged about this have their whole life story and personal connections readily available on sites like Facebook, etc., right there for anyone to grab, including conmen and hackers..

- And finally, if you want to talk real paranoia, you should be paranoid about the insights into human psychology and behavior, and human connections that the web represents overall. If you're going to be paranoid about all this new e-technology, you should have been paranoid a long time ago. The nature of all this new stuff is such that if a real dictatorship were to ever arise, it would make resistance very difficult, especially since now, more than ever, you need to have the "number of your name" at the ready in order to feed yourself.

So don't worry, be happy.

 

I've known, we all have known that the gov spies, and naively some of us may think most of it has to do with foreigners. I ddon't necessarilly have a problem with the monitoring, but the lack of communication. We don't find out the degree to which we are watched and how until a leak. Just clue me in generally, and we won't have a problem.

 

Now this asshole is assisting German authorities with the cooperation of the Kremlin to reveal how the NSA was able to spy on Angela Merkel.

Why the hell Is Edward Snowden doubling down on being a sellout to this country??

He already can never set foot on American soil.
Does he really want a covert CIA operative to force him to have an unfortunate accident in Russia??:smt048