Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower

[Joseph Tracy]

Obama clearly promised to stop and to prevent this warrantless spying and clearly had the power either to stop it or to expose and oppose it.  Instead he has excused it, endorsed it, funded it and expanded it. He has gone after reporters and employees who expose  the truth about drones and spying or  who oppose abuses of power. 
"Fix it, " you say
But how will such abuse of the public trust  be fixed if it  is never exposed to the light of public scrutiny? That is what Snowden had the courage to do at great personal risk. He and Bradley Manning are far more loyal to the constitution and to the idea of democratic accountability than Obama, who has proven time after time to be a coward and a liar. He has never offered anything but an image, brand loyalty to a product that does not exist, his true loyalties the same as Bush: bankers, military contractors, HMOs, the CIA, offshore bank accounts, drone warfare, secrecy. surveillance, fracking, big oil, Guantanamo, corporate money destroying popular democracy, secret courts, even racial profiling has continued unchecked. 

 
On Jun 10, 2013, at 7:46 PM, Henry M wrote:

> Obama didn't put it in place, and has suggested that legislators restrict the unlimited freedom to do anything as long as it relates to terrorism.  I'm not okay with the spying, but I'm not naïve.  It's the natural extension of a process that has been going on for thousands of years.  Fix it, but don't pretend to be shocked to find gambling going on here.
> 
> Yours truly,
> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> Henry Musikar, CISSP
> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Snowden did go to his superiors and they told him to drop it. Thomas Drake went to his "superiors" and stayed entirely within legal processes and his superiors accused him as a lawbreaker( he won in court, but was personally devastated). Colleen Rowley went to her FBI superiors with information that would very likely have prevented 9-11 and she was told to shut up .  Did you side with Bush when William Binney exposed the then clearly illegal NSA spying or Obama who promised it wouldn't happen if he was president?  The 4th amendment cannot be repealed by executive fiat or a law of congress.  When criminals are running the show and breaking laws, compliance is little more than just following orders. Totalitarian states always give themselves the power of law and this system of universal spying is exactly what Orwell, Kafka and history shows as the core methodology of totalitarian police states. 
> 
> You hated Bush but when Obama does the exact same things you approve. Why?
> 
> On Jun 10, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Henry M wrote:
> 
>> Whether or not you like the results of Snowden's revelation, he's certainly is closer to being a whistle-blower than Manning.  Many people who have never handled sensitive information miss an important element of what employees, government or otherwise, are told vis-a-vis whistle-blowing, which is the requirement to bring the problem to one's superiors or to some office specially designated for receiving such information. 
>> 
>> If Snowden had done so, he probably would have been informed that while he, and many other people, may have philosophical (and perhaps moral) concerns about the NSA surveilance progam, it wasn't illegal and it wasn't against government or program policy, direction, or charter, things that Manning is too apparently too young and mixed-up to understand, but which someone in Snowden's former positon should. 
>> 
>> However much you may like them and the results of what they've done, Snowden and Manning broke the law and were aware of the consequence of doing so. That there are bankers who broke the law (many just did very wrong things) and who should be prosecuted in what would be very complicated cases does not, in a nation of laws, give other people such as Snowden and Manning, a free pass.
>> 
>> Yours truly,
>> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
>> Henry Musikar, CISSP
>> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:39 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> i can accept the release of what the NSA has been up to with wiretapping and the like  but if this guy also gave out secrets about US plans regarding cyberattack strategies/defense I think that's something he should be prosecuted for
> 
>