Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower

[Ian Livingston]

There will, of course, be a strong campaign to malign anyone who speaks
publicly and strongly against government abuse of power.



On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 6:48 AM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-is-no-hero.html
> Just sayin'.
>
> Yours truly,
> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> Henry Musikar, CISSP
> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:17 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
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