(Tony Auth via GoComics.com)
.
The Washington Post‘s Barton Gellman gifts us with a year-end Snowden wrap-up:
… Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.
Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”…
It is commonly said of Snowden that he broke an oath of secrecy, a turn of phrase that captures a sense of betrayal. NSA Director Keith B. Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., among many others, have used that formula.
In his interview with The Post, Snowden noted matter-of-factly that Standard Form 312, the classified-information nondisclosure agreement, is a civil contract. He signed it, but he pledged his fealty elsewhere.
“The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy,” he said. “That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not.”
People who accuse him of disloyalty, he said, mistake his purpose.
“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”…
Technology, of course, has enabled a great deal of consumer surveillance by private companies, as well. The difference with the NSA’s possession of the data, Snowden said, is that government has the power to take away life or freedom.
At the NSA, he said, “there are people in the office who joke about, ‘We put warheads on foreheads.’ Twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads.”…
Former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste away in Moscow as an alcoholic, like other “defectors.” To this, Snowden shrugged. He does not drink at all. Never has…
“There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States,” he said. “I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have not entered into any agreements with them.”
“If I defected at all,” Snowden said, “I defected from the government to the public.”
debbie
Delusions of grandeur.
gogol's wife
If only Obama hadn’t invented government spying.
RandomMonster
So much for a Snowden-free Xmas.
askew
@debbie:
Yep, but he’ll have plenty of worship from white men who suddenly care about government spying to feed his delusion.
Davis X. Machina
I doubt they need them to do what they need to do….
Arclite
Snowden has done us a huge favor. We’d be discussing none of this if not for him. His personality is irrelevant, and discussions of it detract from the larger issues.
Cacti
Megyn Kelly was right. The Jesus of this blog is definitely white.
RandomMonster
I think I’ll adopt “Warheads on Foreheads” as my porn name.
Keith G
His fealty to the notion that “the consent of the governed is primary” has my respect. To that end, he has done his job. Now it is up to the citizens (both grassroots and leaders) to do their part.
gogol's wife
Why does Obama in that cartoon look like a sock monkey?
Baud
@Arclite:
I’d be tempted to agree with you if the posted article weren’t all about Snowden’s personality.
debbie
@Arclite:
Why? Were you totally stunned and surprised that this could be going on? How did you think the government was trying to catch terrorists?
Baud
@debbie:
The Candygram for Mongo technique?
Mike in NC
Vodka is quite cheap in Eastern Europe, so Snowden might develop a taste. Plus he can look forward to the occasional vacation in North Korea.
debbie
@Baud:
Or maybe ninja unicorns. I just don’t know what people thought was going on. And none of them seem to want to offer a constructive alternative.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: DUDEBROS!!!
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina: Meaning what?
Your overly smug burnspbesq-esque back slapping commentary has its limits.
Cacti
O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, O come let us adore hi-iiiim, Snowden our Lord!
Arclite
Also, my Uncle passed yesterday. He got bronchitis and didn’t go to the doctor. Being self-employed, he didn’t have health insurance, although he meant to sign up for ins under the ACA last I spoke with him a couple of months ago. He was only 59. How fucked up is our system that someone should feel they can’t go to the Dr. to treat a completely treatable disease, and instead die? In the richest country in the world. Extremely upset at our fucked up, fucked up healthcare system, and especially at fucking conservatives for being such selfish unempathetic pricks. Hopefully once the ACA kicks in this kind of thing will be rare. Woe that he couldn’t get sick a month from now.
Keith G
@debbie:
There are those who feel that notions like that put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we would like.
Baud
@Cacti:
Heh. I was trying to come up with a Frosty the Snowden bit.
Corner Stone
@askew: Thank tha lawd for Jan 2009!
Now I can finally give one shit about our fucking Constitution!
Thank you, White Jesus!
Arclite
@debbie: The difference is having swollen lymph nodes and suspecting you have cancer, vs. having a biopsy and knowing you have cancer. Now that we know the ways and extent the gov’t is spying on people, we can take action.
Corner Stone
@debbie: Which one(s) of the 315 million did you have in mind?
debbie
@Arclite:
I’m sorry about your uncle. I was uninsured for 15 years and it’s a tough road. You first have to set all pride aside. I hated asking doctors for some kind of consideration, but not one refused to help me when I needed it.
Corner Stone
@debbie: You’re such a BJ Spohisticate.
Thank you for being so savvy.
Corner Stone
Fucking White People!
Amirite!?
Baud
@Arclite:
Ugh. So sorry. Hopefully, this will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.
J.Ty
God, he is such a smug twit. That said, I *am* glad that surveillance is finally getting mainstream coverage. Even if it is mostly concern trolling.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Someone want to please tell me what Snowden has accomplished? Beyond successfully pushing the mem that Obama created the security state that is. As far as I know the NSA is spying like it did before.
Corner Stone
@Arclite: I welcome this debate.
I just wish Colin Powell and Samantha Rice had started it for us.
Not that fucking scumbag whats-his-face.
aimai
@Arclite: I’m terribly sorry for your loss. And how galling and enraging that it was something so treatable.
Cacti
Hail Greenwald, full of bile. The Ed is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst bloggers,
And blessed is the fruit of thy scoop, Snowden.
Holy Greenwald, promoter of Ed,
Pray for us libertarians.
Now and at the election of any Democrat, amen.
srv
@Corner Stone: Just look at all the racism present right here on this blog in 2005.
https://balloon-juice.com/2005/12/20/fun-uses-for-echelon/
Eric U.
@gogol’s wife: I thought it looked like GWBush. There has been one recent preznit who looked like a chimp, and it isn’t Obama
Comrade Dread
I must have done something really f***ing awful for Santa to leave the ravings of this asshat as an XMas Eve gift.
Cacti
@Comrade Dread:
Anne Laurie has come to drop a deuce in your stocking.
Baud
@Comrade Dread:
Yeah, you said “Xmas.” Your War on Christmas is duly noted.
A Humble Lurker
@Corner Stone:
Totally.
Villago Delenda Est
It would be much easier to accept Snowden at face value if Glen Greenwald was not so obviously eager to cash in on Snowden’s story.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 30 odd years (James Bamford, anyone?) has known about what the NSA was capable of doing.
That so many are shocked, shocked about Snowden’s revelations is facile, at best. The main problem here is that these revelations were timed not to impact the war criminal malassministration that took the NSA to the next level, but to embarrass the ni*CLANG*.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is this farce? You believe this?
Good god. All is lost.
RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual
Still a traitor. Still a shitbag. Lock him up and throw away the key.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
Very obviously political. Do not underestimate the hatred of Obama.
The Dangerman
Let us not fete the yellow Snowden.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just because he said leakers should be shot in the balls when Dubya was in office doesn’t mean he’s a GOP ratfucker.
Bob In Portland
Remember the first “Mission accomplished”? Snowden didn’t seem so upset with government spying back then.
Let’s go back and review the cast of characters. Months ago I said this seemed to be a psyops of some sort run to politically injure Obama. It was the sort of “blame the black guy” moment we keep getting with our current Commander-In-Chief. Everything with the surveillance program was in place and functioning long before Obama was first sworn in.
Who benefits from creating a scenario that “the black guy” has been spying on us? Well, internationally it helps the Germans who don’t seem content being sidekicks to the US. Their bankers are accomplishing in the 21st Century what their armies couldn’t do in WWII. That’s why I wondered if the BND had turned Snowden when he was stationed in Switzerland for the CIA. Snowden himself shows no history of being a civil libertarian. A libertarian in the Ron Paul vein, but not civil. You know, the government shouldn’t interfere with my bitcoins.
(I’d also point out that it was a German BND spy ship in the eastern Mediterranean that fed the US the bad intelligence “linking” Assad’s government to the sarin attacks last summer. Cui bono, if Obama gets into another war and helps the Sunnis cut off heads in Syria?)
I mentioned the simularities of this operation to the CIA’s false defector program of the late fifties. This guy reminds me so much of Lee Harvey Oswald’s earlier role defecting to the USSR.
But the tell here is Judge Leon, who in the 1980s was a loyal Bush footsoldier who helped to cover up Iran-contra and the October Surprise. Not only were those two scandals very political, they also involved our intelligence services. As I recall, Leon didn’t have any problems with intelligence services’ skullduggery in the Reagan days. And who is the litigant? Why, it’s Larry Klayman, famed for his work trying to bring down Clinton during Monicagate.
So maybe it’s combination of intelligence operatives here and abroad and Republican tricksters dovetailing to screw Obama. After all, Monicagate included Monica’s good friend and former Army intelligence secretary Linda Tripp and former “reporter” for the North American News Alliance, Lucianne Goldberg, who used her NANA (CIA) cover to spy on the McGovern campaign in 1972. It really is a small world after all.
Lurking Buffoon
I can’t help but remember how shrill and paranoid people were considered when they voiced concerns about the NSA spying on our own citizens during the Bush years. You know, when many of the questionable measures were signed into law by the Decider in chief. And yet when Snowden pointed out the same things when we have a President who is near, all the sudden it’s a terrible thing that no one could have predicted, and it’s all the current president’s fault!
Karen in GA
@Arclite: My condolences to you and your family. As for the timing, I’ve got nothing. That some people want the system to work like this is just… ugh.
Churchlady320
As soon as journalists were able to work???? SO glad this narcissistic brat wasn’t around during D-Day.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@srv:
What? Wait! Snowden made it possible for us to discuss this. SNOWDEN!
He’s a motherfucking hero, that one.
tybee
didn’t snowden meet with greenwald before snowden took the job with BA?
bewleys
@Bob In Portland: I’m eating a bowl of Clam chowder.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est: So the story goes that this NSA leak episode is all a plot to embarrass a president because said president is an African-American?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: I’ve tried North Korean soju, yuck.!!!
Comrade Dread
@Baud: X is the traditional early Christian abbreviation for Christ, who reportedly knew a little something about a war on Christmas and persecution and in their less Christian moments would probably slap their modern day brothers for moaning because a stranger wished them happiness during the holy day season.
Bob In Portland
@Lurking Buffoon: Having been anti-Vietnam in college I know about government surveillance of peace groups. In the 80s there were people doing dumpster diving through my union’s trash because we hosted speakers from CISPES and anti-apartheid groups. In a way I find it comforting that today’s spying on citizens is more, eh, inclusive. Equal opportunity. Everybody gets spied on nowadays.
paradox
I haven’t read comments at Balloon Juice in a long time. I suppose y’all are used to bantering to yourselves with a certain style and attempt at humor. To me almost all of them come across as juvenile, unthinking, and a total fucking disgrace to the American education system, this is the shit-for-brains of intellect it produced for our country and future?
Oh. Good thing.
I’m sorry about your Uncle and loss. I hope the passage of time and the presence of your people eases your burdens.
srv
@Bob In Portland: Snowden hadn’t rooted Echelon back under Bush. If he had that access back then, you might have a point.
And it would make much more sense for this to all come out in an election year rather than a year late if it was a Republican-DoD operation.
You don’t think that maybe Eric Holder’s reading all the AP’s emails coming out a month before SnowCrash maybe has to do with this story having such legs? Of course, how naive of me to think a bunch of villagers might be butthurt over that…
One only need look at John Cole to see his evolution from Bush asshat to Obot over Nat’l Security, even when he could be shrill about it:
Lurking Buffoon
@Bob In Portland: Damn dude! I knew there was plenty of unethical surveillance going on before Dubya, just that it was more, for lack of a better word, restrained. It’s good to know things are more… egalitarian about it today! Clearly, this is Progress.
gbear
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): One of my usually-smart friends said as much on Facebook this morning. I’ve been carefully avoiding the comment box all day.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
Snowden, of all people, should recognize that governments don’t require agreements to get the information they want.
gbear
@paradox:
I have only one thing to say to you, paradox: Quack. Quack.
Bob In Portland
@srv: Gee, I sniffed out Echelon back in the mid-nineties by reading Covert Action Information Bulletin.
Bob In Portland
@Keith G: Well, last time it was white horndog from Arkansas.
Corner Stone
@srv: You are dropping it like it’s hot.
Keith G
@gbear: Viaduct?
lamh36
Wouldn’t the cartoon have been more accurate and less biased seeming if it included more than just Obama siting in the chair, to at the very least reflect that fact that this has been going on longer than Obama has been President.
I think it’s has to do with the “…you deserve” bit of the cartoon.
IDK, I don’t even really care. I already know how these threads go. Just wanted to wish everybody a Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas in case I forget to do so tomorrow.
debbie
@Keith G:
First I’ve heard of this, but I do remember how angry GG was at Obama for everything well before the appearance of Snowden.
Baud
@lamh36:
The cartoon is terrible. Have a good holiday. Although the happiness of the new year may depend on how the Saints do on Sunday.
srv
@Bob In Portland: They got their material from Bamford and cryptome. And then added chemtrail and X-file conspiracies.
Go figure why they didn’t get mainstream.
Keith G
@Bob In Portland: Yeah, but Bill was actually splatting on anything that didn’t have cockandballs.
So you think Snowden gave up any chance to grow old in America outside a federal prison, gave up an upper middle class (if not high) income stream, and gave up any independence of movement for maybe ever so he could help embarrass a Black president?
Hill Dweller
Does anyone know if Snowden voted for McCain?
coin operated
There was a part of me hoping to see Snowden in chains and dropped off in front of a Federal Marshals office in a cartoon. That would be a Christmas gift.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Dread: Figured giving you an excuse for a Ten Minutes’ Hate here would make your near ones’ holiday evening a bit less unpleasant.
Anne Laurie
@lamh36:
Yes, yes it has. And President Obama has said he welcomes the discussion. He, like the rest of us, would have preferred this discussion happen on the last guy’s watch, but sometimes you have to take what you can get, not what you want.
Keith G
@debbie:
Well that’s what some folks up thread seem to be communicating. I don’t see how such an idea can withstand rational scrutiny, but that doesn’t seem to stop them.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
You’re a mean one, Mrs. Grinch.
srv
@gogol’s wife: Tony Auth seems to go with big ears, here’s his Bush:
http://www.gocomics.com/tonyauth/2004/12/08/#.UroZJfYdcdE
At least Obama isn’t just in jammies with a latte and his ACA printout.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@gbear:
Because nobody knew or cared about before Snowden.
Some times it’s hard to say “you’re right,” You should give it a try. It feels good.
gogol's wife
OT, something more pleasant for everyone to do — Christmas in Connecticut, 8:00 EST tonight, TCM.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Keith G:
This seems to assume that Snowden’s actions have all been voluntary. It could very well be that he got into the whistleblower game with much lower aims and was eventually turned, forced to go much further than he planned. If that’s the case, then you’ve got to ask who might have turned him, then wonder about that party’s motives.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Hill Dweller:
Not sure, but he was a paultard in the primaries.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Considering when Snowden started working/contracting for the NSA, he couldn’t have released anything earlier than he did. Now if you want to blame the press for making a huge fucking deal out of Snowden’s revelations while burying the Bush warrantless wiretapping revelations until well after the election was over, you would certainly have a point.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Nope, wrong, there is no Peak Overly-Smug-Burnspbesq-esque-Black-Slapping. Only a matter of time before one of the usual bully-worshipers like Martin or eemom serves up a gem in the vein of: “The people who wrote the constitution were probably paid Chinese agents” or “Thomas Paine was a traitor to everything good and decent America stands for.”
Keith G
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): So…ah….22 dimensional chess.
Or extraterrestrials.
mclaren
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Aaaaand we have a winner!
Shorter Temporarily Max McGee: Snowden was a paid Chinese agent.
You obots are so predictable in your smears that you literally sound like bots.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@gbear:
Oh…I get it now. Your usually smart said it without a trace of snark or irony.
Sorry for the rude comment upthread.
srv
@Keith G: There’s no Occam’s Razor when it comes to Obama.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Keith G:
Sure, blow it off. Then explain to me the conditions under which he now lives his life. He didn’t exactly end up in Iceland or Brazil, did he?
mclaren
Once again, nothing but nonstop attacks on Snowden.
How about focusing on the real criminals here?
George W. Bush. Dick Cheney. Condoleeza Rice. Donald Rumsfeld. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. The head of JSOC’s out-of-control assassination death squads, recently Stanley McChrystal, now some other conscienceless killer. The head of the NSA. The head of the CIA. Barack Obama. Joe Biden. General David Petraeus.
These are the people are who paid agents — paid agents of the military-industrial-surveillance-prison-police-torture complex. These are the people who sign off on the murder of thousands of innocent women and children for their own personal financial and political gain. These are the people who defend murdering rescue workers with drones and describe as “due process” universal surveillance, lying to courts by the DEA to cover up the real source of drug indictments, and a phony War on Terror that has nothing to do with anti-terrorism and everything to do with economic control and political repression.
Who turned Barack Obama? He started out as a professor of constitutional law and now he spends his mornings picking which 17-year-old girl to murder without a trial or charge. That’s the question we should be asking — not hurling baseless smears at a guy who sacrificed his career and his citizenship to reveal massive ongoing violations of the constitution by the American government.
srv
@mclaren: You don’t think the Chicoms could have rooted Snowman while he was rooting Echelon? And then a Russian mobster kidnapped him?
I’ll bet you, CS and Keith read Neal Stephenson and eat that stuff up.
FlipYrWhig
Couple problems with the cartoon. One, wasn’t all the Snowden stuff in the summer? How is it a Christmas present? What did Snowden do recently other than this interview? Two, “deserve”? I feel like it ought to be possible to cudgel Obama on privacy stuff with a bit more coherence than this.
Bargal20
For Snowden to gain the approval of the purity posse here, he needed to hand over all his info to Bob Woodward so it could be studied by “top men”, then strip naked and lock himself in a US government cell and never allow himself to be seen or heard from again.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
Nope, not what I wrote. Not that it isn’t possible, but it’s very easy to imagine that some foreign intelligence agency picked up on his actions and extorted more from him than he planned. These things happen in the black market, and illegally obtaining intelligence certainly falls under the umbrella of the black market.
mclaren
@Villago Delenda Est:
Do you have any evidence to support that baseless assertion?
The same smear tactics can be used against you. The main problem here is that your baseless Karl-Rove-style smears are timed not to lead to a productive discussion of the limits of governmental surveillance in an open society, but to embarrass anyone who dares criticize Obama and suggest that anyone who criticizes Obama’s dereliction of his duty to the constitution is a racist Klansman screaming “NI**ER NI**ER NI**GER!”
mclaren
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Thank you for revealing inadvertently that “Snowden is a paid Chinese agent” is exactly what you wrote when we read between the lines.
If you don’t like the constitution of the United States, emigrate to North Korea. Stick a fork in yourself, you’re done.
srv
@FlipYrWhig: Clearly, you missed the Naughty or Nice thematic of the season.
Baud
@mclaren:
Thanks for the lulz. Merry Christmas, mclaren.
sherparick
If you you don’t want war with Iran, this might be the time to contact your Senator and say enough is enough, that we don’t believe that are any wars on the cheap. Otherwise 2014 might bring us war with Iran, thanks to Senator Menendez and Senator McCain. I don’t like giving Poltico links, but this is important enough to make an exception. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/bob-menendezs-unsanctioned-fight-with-the-white-house-101396.html?hp=pm_1
Bob In Portland
@srv: Don’t remember chemtrail stuff or X-file stuff in CAIB. That seems to be what you are adding. I think that’s called “bad-jacketing”. Surround something you want to discredit with discredited stuff.
There may be another reason why the MSM never embraced CAIB, but I would guess it’s along the same lines why Gary Webb wasn’t embraced.
My initial point was that the bones for Echelon were in place long before Snowden matriculated from high school. How much he had access to at different points in his intelligence career is open to conjecture. I rather doubt that Snowden thought, “Hmm, this much spying on people is cool, but a little more than that is just outrageous so I will throw away my freedom and career revealing what is mostly known already.”
Keith G
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I would give it a go if I knew what point you were getting at. You think that Snowden’s stay in Putin World is voluntary? On what grounds?
I just decanted a nice Cabernet, so we need to be quick.
FlipYrWhig
@srv: OK, but if that’s the premise, that Obama was naughty and deserved Snowden as the proverbial lump of coal, then the Snowden story should have been a story that broke sometime around Christmas. But it didn’t.
Here’s my rewrite: Santa exasperatedly gives back Snowden because he’s been sharing the naughty-or-nice list and exposing Santa’s surveillance infrastructure.
Bob In Portland
@bewleys: We’re going to be having Dungeness crab shortly.
Roger Moore
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I doubt that Snowden was turned by another government. I think he would have been better organized and less panicked if he were getting a push from foreign intelligence agencies. I think he looks more like an amateur who decided things were getting too hot and took off without a plan.
My suspicion is that he was digging for some much more damaging dirt and ran afoul of the NSA’s internal safeguards. He made a big deal about how he could look up absolutely anyone’s information, including the President’s, but never provided any indication that he had successfully done so. My guess is that he was trying to do something like that to prove how out of control the NSA actually was, only to discover that there were more and tougher protections than he had realized. When that happened, he decided to take off with what he had rather than risk discovery and a heap of trouble.
mclaren
@Keith G:
None of what the obots say can withstand rational scrutiny. But, again, that doesn’t stop them.
[1] The obots claim that Barack Obama was utterly helpless and impotent the tried to close Guantanamo and bring about a public option in health care because he’s only one tiny little person…but at the same time the obots claim that Barack Obama has limitless pleinipotent power far beyond the bounds of a mere scrap of paper like the constitution of the united states when it comes to ordering the assassination of U.S. citizens and the universal surveillance of all Americans and the kidnapping of U.S. citizens without a trial or charges because he’s the president of the United States!!!!!!!!!
[2] The obots shriek with hysterical absolutism that president Obama is absolutely and striclty bound by the laws passed by congress and thus Obama could not possibly use sequestration or signing statements or any other method to modify or deflect or alter in any way legislation passed by congress, so as to shut down Gitmo unilterally or order troops out of Afghanistan unilaterially, or order the DEA to place non-violent drug crimes on the back burner, or to use RICO laws against Wall Street criminals…yet the same obots swoon with delighted complacency when Obama orders the IRS to avoid enforcing part of the ACA for a year in order to smooth over problems — thereby ignoring and bypassing laws passed by congress.
[3] The obots lecture us in tones of punitive frenzy that Obama’s economic austerity policies are unavoidable because congress holds the purse strings…yet the selfsame obots laughingly assure us that when it comes to things that Obama really wants, like building mile-wide secret surveillance farms stacked with millions of hard drives in the Utah desert designed to hoover up every conversation on every cellphone and every email and twitter message sent in America, money is no object. When it comes to murdering women and children in wedding parties in Pakistan, the obots tells us that money is limitless and must flow like water: but when it comes to keeping America’s streetlights on or giving antibiotics to impoverished American children or providing basic dental care to Americans, why, then money is tight and America just isn’t made of gold bullion!
polyorchnid octopunch
@Roger Moore: Ding ding ding.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: I would guess he was won over to the Greenwald stance on surveillance/privacy/executive power, figured he’d ferret out whatever he could like Bradley/Chelsea Manning did, got a small amount of juicy stuff (about data-mining and mass surveillance trained on American citizens not suspected of any crimes) and a lot of junk (about spying on foreign diplomats and such), and has been trusting in the abilities of Greenwald and Poitras to protect him from serious harm. His rhetorical posturing is aggravating, but that doesn’t mean much, really. Lately I feel like like I take greater issue with the over-interpretation of what he turned over than with the act of turning it over in the first place.
ruemara
@tybee: The outreach to Poitiras and Greenwald was prior. Poitiras confirmed his legitimacy for Greenwald. The rest is freedom loving history as the nefarious spying by metadata which isn’t the spying people are thinking about, was revealed to the world. Plus only the US is doing it, as no other government is worth noting except if they are outraged at our outrages.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
So do Wal-Mart and Macys, but somehow we’re not supposed to talk about corporations violating people’s civil liberties when there’s a Big Scary Government we can blame everything on instead.
Oh, wait, that’s right — white dudebros don’t get arrested for Shopping While White or get thrown in jail for having insufficient funds, so it’s not a real problem like the government knowing what your favorite goat pron site is.
Roxy
So, who considers Daniel Ellsberg a traitor (a former United States military analyst who was employed by the RAND Corporation)? I would hope the ones that think Snowden is a traitor would also think Daniel Ellsberg is a traitor.
Annie, what a great Christmas gift. I love the pie fights.
mclaren
@sherparick:
Silly lad. America is now part of the Forever War. If America doesn’t go to war with Iran, it will go to war with some other country. War is now the health of the American state; as soon as one unwinnable interminable war winds down into defeat and disarray, yet another unwinnable interminable war must begin.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
Larry Klayman has very strong ties to white supremacist groups that are monitored by the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) and openly advocates for the violent overthrow of the US government as long as Obama remains president.
I can’t imagine why the FBI or Secret Service would want to keep such a person under surveillance, can you? It must be because he’s a poor, persecuted, innocent lamb whose civil liberties are being violated for no reason at all.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Roger Moore:
That’s the way I was viewing this at first, but when all of those leaks about our foreign intelligence programs began cascading, when every new release seemed to smell of the RT newsroom, I started to rethink it.
@Keith G:
No. Quite the opposite. And I don’t think he was pushed into Putin’s arms. I think he was pulled.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Somehow I missed those drone fleets operated by Wal-Mart and Macys that murder thousands of innocent women and children. Could you provide us with some evidence for those murderous Wal-Mart drone fleets, please?
And I also seem to have overlooked those nationwide networks of prisons operated by Macys and Wal-Mart imprisoning hundreds of thousands of non-violent Americans for bogus “crimes” like possession of controlled substances or importing orchids without a permit. Once again, can you provide us with some hard evidence for the existence of that nationwide network of prisons operated by Macys and Wal-Mart?
mclaren
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Do you have any evidence to back up your idle speculations?
I don’t think you’re stupid, I think you’re a paid agent charged with subverting America by destroying our basic system of laws, including the right to trial and due process and the right to privacy.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree with you that he was turned, but by the press rather than by foreign intelligence. A foreign intelligence agency would have tried very hard to develop him as a long-term asset rather than burn him in a short-term publicity stunt. A reporter who was after a big scoop and had no scruples about what happened to his source after he got it might very easily do just that. Since there’s just such a reporter in the mix, it seems most likely that Greenwald is the one responsible.
Arclite
Thanks for all the well-wishes. Sorry to hijack the thread. My uncle lived alone, and apparently decided to “tough it out.” But I can’t help thinking that if he didn’t think he’d face $20K or more in debt to get it treated, he’d have gone in. I just hope that this kind of thing becomes much rarer going forward, for all families. People shouldn’t have to risk death to avoid catastrophic debt. And just like Medicare and SS, here’s to hoping the ACA improves over time as well.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
This is where your dystopic vision and Snowden’s diverge.
Who issues those tracking devices in our pockets? The NSA?
Patricia Kayden
Well I don’t blame President Obama for NSA’s spying which clearly predates his administration.
Merry Christmas, y’all
mclaren
Source: interview with Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, published 23 December 2013.
Cassidy
BINGO! What do I win?
mclaren
Yes, the NSA. It is specifically because of requests by intelligence agencies like the NSA that cellphones and other digital devices continue to broadcast their locations even when turned off, and even when not in use.
It is quite literally because the NSA and the intelligence arms of the U.S. government specifically intervened in the design and specifications of our digital devices that they can be used to track us. There is absolutely no technical reason or business reason why a cellphone should be able to track you when not in use. Nor is there any profit to be made in designing cellphones so that they can track you when not in use.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
I have about as much hard evidence as you have that everything he’s done has altruism written all over it. What I have that you don’t is that right now he’s in that great bastion of freedom we call Russia.
And I don’t see why you might get all that bent about a theory that figures that while Snowden might have been acting out of a sense of altruism, he might have gotten in way over his head and been forced to do something less than altruistic- unless your worldview is completely Manichean, which I guess I can’t rule out, seeing that it’s you.
You think everyone who disagrees with you at least once is a covert agent. Give that one a fucking rest.
Cassidy
And this is a special, gift wrapped edition of crazy lady says crazy things. Have a Happy Holidays.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
Well, to be fair, he’s obviously an usurper Democrat as well.
It’s just amazing how all this “Obama is reading your email to determine where to find your guns” shit is so pervasive.
Anti-government paranoia on the right always is at its most virulent when a Democrat is in office. The Dem being blah just heightens the insanity of it.
Obama has said “well, we’ve started a conversation we’ve needed to have for some time”, but those on the right don’t want that conversation. What they want to do is be paranoid and persecuted.
gwangung
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
And that her concerns are the most important things in the world, and anyone who has different priorities is wrong. And people of color just don’t count in her world.
mclaren
@Arclite:
Agreed.
The peculiarity of the ACA’s flawed implementation, courtesy of the Roberts Star Chamber court, is that the ACA looks to be improving substantially as time goes by in the blue states. You can look at the cost curve and it’s starting to drop in the blue states. Look at the number of uninsured people and they’re plummeting in the blue states. It’s not a panacea, but things are getting a lot better in blue states for folks with serious illnesses.
But in the Red States, things are getting worse for people who make too much to qualify for medicaid, but too little to afford private insurance.
This divergence between the outcomes in the ACA in red states and in blue states looks like it may start to tear the country apart politically. I don’t think anyone anticipated this, and it’s not clear how we fix it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
FSM forbid you don’t carry a cell phone with you at all times, or that…No, it’s unimaginable…You don’t even have a cell phone!
And I suppose there’d be no reason to track a stolen phone, or a need to get a ping from someone’s phone if a medical emergency is suspected.
Villago Delenda Est
@mclaren:
Only the observation of the way the MSM (which is corporatist, you know…you haven’t figured this out yet?) has made such a show of Snowden when others brought up the same points (albeit not in such a dramatic, made for the narrative fashion) earlier and the MSM couldn’t be bothered to be interested in the NSA’s drift under the supervision of war criminals.
The timing is just too good for it not to be, in part, aimed at Obama himself.
One only needs to observe who is pushing this (libertarian douchebag and Paulite sympathizer Greenwald), a guy who didn’t seem to have that great a difficulty with the NSA’s actions 10 years ago.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@gwangung:
Indeed. :D
Cassidy
Oh Mclaren.
amk
Fucking offensive cartoon. Loony left and the teabaggers are the sides of the same gobinment is ebil coin.
You had to turn nasty, didnt’ya, AL?
Roger Moore
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I still don’t see it. My gut feeling is:
1) Snowden didn’t really know what was in the documents he had. The indications are that there are tens of thousands of them, which means he didn’t have time to read the executive summaries, much less the full documents. Most of those documents must have been a grab bag of whatever he could get his hands on, not selected documents that proved his point.*
2) The documents are mostly about foreign spying because that’s most of what NSA does. I don’t mean to minimize the importance of NSA doing any domestic spying, but the indications are that it is a small part of what they do.
3) Greenwald, Poitras, The Guardian, et. al. are running with whatever they can get because they’re in the news business and want to chase headlines. If that means they have to talk about the utterly predictable matter of a spy agency engaging in spying and fluffing up every tidbit into The! Most! Damaging! Revelation! EVER!, we shouldn’t be surprised; that’s what the news tends to do, and it’s certainly what amoral media whores like Greenwald do.
*@Roxy: This is an important distinguishing point between Snowden and Ellsberg. Ellsberg released a single, large document that was an honest history of what had been going on in Vietnam, and was most damaging because it proved the government had been lying about how things were going there. It didn’t contain information about on-going secret activities. Ellsberg released it only after having read it and understood the contents. That’s completely different from the stuff Snowden released.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Roger Moore:
Read it? Hell, Ellsberg probably wrote chunks of it! Dude was one of the best boots-on-the-ground experts the US ever had in Vietnam, the problem being that Ellsberg and those in power didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Villago Delenda Est
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Some in power did understand what Ellsburg was writing about, and some rejected it because, well, the usual reasons. Macho posturing. Financial interests. Institutional inertia. Political cowardice.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Holy Christchild in his manger.
I do not even know where to go next after reading that.
Corner Stone
@Bargal20:
We have top men working on it.
Who?
Top…men.
Cut to scene with Snowy being boxed up in a crate in some Gitmo warehouse
Corner Stone
@Baud: Lulz on you, fool!
Didn’t you bother to check what color the sky was when Andy K at #95 said:
Cervantes
@Arclite:
@Keith G:
Exactly.
Cervantes
@Baud: Not sure what you mean.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Well, it’s not like OTHERS before him were not sounding alarms, along the lines of “we’re doing this, and not only is it illegal, it’s not going to be effective” but no one cared. No one in the Village, anyway…and that includes Booby Woodward.
This entire notion that Snowden is the alpha and omega of NSA revelations is laughable.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
Lol. Lay off the egg nog.
mclaren
@Cassidy:
Notice the double standard:
When obots scream that Snowden is a paid Chinese agent without any proof, they’re wise and sensible.
When someone claims that the obots are paid agents spreading disinformation, they’re crazy tin-foil-hat characters.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Why is that so unreasonable a supposition?
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
DUDEBROS!! WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS!!
Baud
@Cervantes:
If AL posts an article about Snowden, it’s going to engender discussion of Snowden and not necessarily the issues.
Villago Delenda Est
@mclaren:
The only one jumping up and down about “paid agents” is you.
You missed your calling down at the Octoplex in the projection booth.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
How does this square with what all the journalists collaborating on this issue say? Every one of them have taken extensive time working through documents with Snowden himself to pore over the documents and determine what they mean and where they might lead.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Hell, if ANYONE posts about Snowden, the issues get lost fast in how much a hero or traitor he is
The issues ARE important, but it’s essential to understand some context. The most vehement here are not bothering with that.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: Did you mean to reply to me with this one?
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Completely different than Ellsburg being the author of most of the Pentagon Papers and having an intimate familiarity with them before going public.
These guys are going through Snowden’s documents without a road map. Ellsburg had that, and more.
Corner Stone
@Baud: I don’t drink egg nog.
Too many calories.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: If you believe this is a plausible prime mover then we need to end trans and send up a signal flare for Fox Mulder.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
But which commenters push the either hero/traitor line of BS?
Hint, it’s not the ones who find this a credible and serious issue for discussion.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, we’re still having the same conversations we had months ago, while the actual evil administration is moving forward with reforms.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s not actually a rebuttal to my comment.
If I had made that comparison it may have been on point.
It’s others who are promulgating some false narrative along those lines.
IMO, it’s simple folly to keep saying Snowden “didn’t know what he had” or “didn’t understand what he had” when by all outcomes we’ve seen a tip of what he has chosen to reveal to this point.
ChrisNYC
For real? Snowden gives an interview where he talks all about himself and his “personal satisfaction” and people are still with “not about Snowden”? That’s insane.
PS: Remember when Gandhi and King waxed on about their personal satisfaction? You know, those memorable lines … “I may not get there with you … and that will diminish my personal satisfaction…” Chills, I tell you.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Why isn’t he? Because you assert he cannot be?
This is like these assholes who insist that the rich can’t kill people because they’re rich. Only poor people kill people, or something.
We don’t have the facts (and we’ll probably never have them), so we speculate. It’s plausible that he got into this deeper than he thought, and some intelligence agencies took advantage of that.
I don’t think Snowden had detailed knowledge of everything he swiped from NSA. I think he just grabbed a bunch of shit that was classified and knew some of it would be sensational.
Corner Stone
Holy shit. That link srv posted from BJ circa 2005 is pure fucking gold.
Many, if not all were defending the Bush and Cheney admin. Change a president, change a few nyms and…
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
And what does that tell us? Could just be that Greenwald and Poitras learned a lesson from Wikileaks’ Manning dump, in which a five ounce steak was served with twenty pounds of gristle. For all you know, Snowden presented Greenwald and Poitras the same sort of cut, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to trim.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
Plausible?
So, we have a worm in our NSA, the NSA itself hadn’t yet tumbled to him but other foreign intels had his number and ratcheted up some unknown and unnamed pressure?
If that’s plausible then I suggest we have a fuckton more problems than Snowden.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Maybe Poitras is really an officer in Germany’s foreign intelligence service. She sexually seduced Edward, got him to burrow in, pull out (according to some here) a potluck bag, and then put the thumbscrews on him.
Hell, she’s been running him since 2009, I bet.
Cassidy
@mclaren:
You’re welcome to quote me when I’ve said that.
tybee
@ruemara:
so after the gg contact, snowden takes the job at BA and then splits with the data.
interesting timing.
magurakurin
@Villago Delenda Est:
.
Bob In Portland
@Keith G: If Snowden is an operative, he’s doing what he was told to do, not how he feels about the current occupant of the White House. If he’s an operative, someone is presumably protecting him.
Keith G
@Bob In Portland: But there is nothing in the record that indicates that Snowden is an “operative”.
The American people have not been well served by successive Presidents and Congresses not imposing Constitutional boundaries on the NSA. Meanwhile, the NSA failed to (among many other things) to safeguard and limit access to its important processes and data.
Actually, the government is relatively lucky. Had an operative for a foreign agency scooped up this info before the Snowden leaks, things could have been far, far worse.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Thanks for elaborating. I agree — but the nature of the discussion here is hardly his fault. There are some folks here who seem entirely caught up in Snowden’s personality, and if that’s a problem, it’s their own problem.
Plus your elaboration seems quite different from your original statement (that the WP interview is “all about Snowden’s personality”) — which is what I asked about.
Cervantes
If Snowden revealed nothing, why has he been charged?
Cervantes
@Arclite:
My condolences. It’s difficult to lose someone at any time, never mind the holiday season. We lost someone to Alzheimer’s disease about a year ago. Each day since has been difficult.
Hang in there.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Yes, I’m relieved to see you’re not one of those who wants to “engender discussion of Snowden and not necessarily the issues.”
Cervantes
@J.Ty:
Can you help me locate this smugness in the interview? Thanks.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
How are (A) and (B) connected? Even if (B) were true, are you thinking that Greenwald paid (or is paying) Snowden, and therefore (A)?
If Snowden had wanted to be paid for his trove of information, do you think Greenwald and company would have been the highest bidders? And his trove of information is nothing but old hat, then who would pay him for it?
Cervantes
@Keith G:
No, not all is lost — just don’t expect too much from people who quite obviously don’t have it in them.
Cervantes
@lamh36:
Yes. No question about it.
Cervantes
@mclaren:
No need to assume that people who support Obama necessarily object to what Snowden did.
Cervantes
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Possible — but in the absence of evidence for the proposition, don’t forget Occam’s Razor.
LosGatosCA
One of the costs of not looking backward.
No accountability for the original perps means you’re an accomplice to the cover up – which can be as bad as the crime.
Not a hard concept to understand. Hard to digest for people who convince themselves the easy way is the right way.