Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower

[Joseph Tracy]

It's called denial, and particularly since the build -up to the Iraq war and the many betrayals of the Obama presidency it has become the  full time religion of huge swaths of the mainstream media. They are a bit confused at the moment because well, they didn't think they were terrorists just because they try to report what their own government does in a theoretically democratic system where even the military industrial complex has some accountability to the pesky people.
I suppose that after killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose nation never threatened or attacked us, a certain amount of denial helps you imagine that this was somehow heroic and that your killing and arrests of whistleblowers and torture are not really criminal at all but heroic acts of self defense and the promotion of democratic liberty. Denial is also useful in regard to the International mortgage scam from which the world is still reeling. 

"What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did?" Asks Tobit. The NSA are not and have not been - surprise, surprise Mr Tobit - actually tasked with spying on non-suspect citizens without a warrant, but gathering oversees intelligence. When Cheney proposed this program under the title Total Information Awareness, the reaction across the country was, and I quote," no fucking way" and the idea was canned. The NSA is supposed to be the Electronic version of the CIA( an organization that has no constitutional basis and a long history of crime with very little that looks particularly admirable) In that regard they are supposed to stay away from domestic surveillance  and respect 4th amendment rights.  
The idea that everyone is being spied on may not be a surprise to Mr Tobit but somehow, even with a nation in denial, people across the nation are still shocked, especially on the heels of the seizure of reporters private communications. Obama would never have beat even the obnoxious asshole John McCain if he had run on implementing TIA, continuing to hold court released prisoners in Guantanamo, never prosecuting financial fraud, and murdering teenagers because they have the wrong father.  

The progress of fascism requires massive denial, loyalty to power, and fear.  Having fun yet?

The truth is that the NSA started and has grown shrouded in secrecy and it is time for a democratic review. Aren't you really saying Mr. Tobit and Musikar that this totalitarian police surveillance is OK and a sound interpretation of constitutional law?? ?  
On Jun 11, 2013, at 10:29 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> 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
> >
> >
> 
> 
>