If Snowden had only...

[SHRED]

...alerted the USA citizens that they were being intensely spied on without divulging foreign affairs to other countries would that have made any difference?

If he would have done just that and stayed and faced the justice system I think the support for him would be overwhelming.
He wouldn't be labeled a traitor and the public outpouring would be intense I think.

When he went overseas and divulged to other countries I think that is where the line was crossed.

[Rex]

1. he needed the powers of the Matrix.

He ran off to China and Russian intelligence. Which is about as stupid as you can get, but he thinks he is doing something important. Must be amazing to be so collected and calm while being a piece of meat being traded around by sharks. I think it is because he is incredibly stupid.

And before someone comes in here and tells me otherwise; like you have to be uber person to be a spy just think how incredibly stupid the people in the NSA must feel.

We elected an incredibly stupid person as president, George W. Bush.

[Cleita]

8. Sorry, Georgie Porgie was never elected.

He was appointed by the Supreme Court his daddy set up for him.

[Rex]

10. Good point, that is true and I doubt he was elected in 2004 either.

But any dumbass can be POTUS now, so there really are no standards anymore imo for anything. I think someone should investigate the hell out of Snowden's former employers.

[Cleita]

13. Well, of course. Our intelligence should never have been turned over to a private

company, who in turn outsourced the vetting of their employees. They did a shitty job and as a taxpayer I want better.

[Rex]

16. As a taxpayer we demand better!

No offense, but screw the days of "I want". We need to start demanding that if they are going to treat us shitty, at least be transparent about it. God knows we give them trillions of dollars that they seem to lose and then go 'oppsie'.

Of course a real move would be to immediately work at getting rid of the Patriot Act and trying hard not to pretend some guy that looks like the Shaw fucked us up so badly in the minds that we have the DHS and now another trillions of dollars in the whole. Kinda like the huge waste of money on the DEA. Kinda.

Or how about actually following these laws we hear about so much and trials for a few recent warmongers that know what they did in Iraq.

Don't get me started...

[Cleita]

17. Good luck at getting rid of the Patriot Act considering our Dems signed on to it in spite

of a lot of yelling from the streets. And transparency? About anything? I thought this whole thing was about trying to get that.

[Rex]

21. The whole thing is about a distraction that leads to a distraction

that leads to...yep you guessed it. Bhengazi.

I was complaining back on DU2 and DU3 when they decided to keep the Patriot Act and thought it a good idea to play with drones.

Nobody cares. It shouldn't be too shocking and is the main product of our American apathy.

That works too for the need of social engineering.

Besides, all intel operations are smoke and mirrors. Like robosigning or the TARP deal.

Pretty much everything from 2000 on up. Some people will say from 1950s.

It is a great sham game the 1% play and now are the richest people on the planet earth.

They won.

[Cleita]

22. They won! The saddest words today.n/t

[Rex]

23. I knew they were true words growing up watching Ronald Wilson Reagan

shit all over this country...at the ripe age of 13.

Ya it does suck. In a way it can be a nightmare for the working poor.

They won.

[brush]

18. Yep! And whatever part Greenwald played in . . .

him turning over the info in the first place coupled with the fleeing. I don't think his hands are completely clean in the whole thing.

[Rex]

20. It is the thing both parties do NOT want to discuss.

That they both have dirty paws in this particular odyssey. Nobody is clean.

[HardTimes99]

32. Kind of difficult when the perjuring Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper,

was a former executive at that 'former employer.'

Perjury is so 1970s-80s. (in case it's needed)

[Benton D Struckcheon]

2. Yes.

The issue here is not that we're spying on other countries using the Internet to do so. That's not even mildly surprising. The issue is the indiscriminate collection of domestic metadata to facilitate said spying.
But here on DU, where it seems pink unicorns must also exist or something, spying on other countries by any means, it seems, isn't supposed to happen. Which world these people grew up in is an open question.
And his action revealing the details of that delighted a whole bunch of these people. Pathetic.

[Fumesucker]

12. Spying on the governments of other nations is one thing

Mass dragnetting of the citizens communications is entirely another.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Given what happened to Bimmey and Drake

No, you would not have heard of it

[Purveyor]

4. Stayed and 'faced the justice system' like Manning? eom

[99th_Monkey]

7. +100

My thoughts exactly.

[dawg]

5. He would have had to have visited us all individually ...

and whispered it in our ears. And then, swore us all to secrecy. Otherwise, there would have been no way to tell the American people without letting foreign governments know as well. They read papers too.

The Hong Kong trip was probably a dumb idea. I'll bet he chose to go there because libertarian types often hold it up as a place with great economic freedom. But it's PRC now buddy, and don't you forget it.

[KittyWampus]

25. He could have remained anonymous.

[dawg]

26. But the data would still have gotten into foreign hands.

Besides, once he's made a cell phone call (or perhaps email) to Greenwald, he, of all people, knew that he would be unable to stay anonymous.

[KittyWampus]

27. He had relevant info he wants to dump, he could have dumped it. Anonymously. At once.

[dawg]

28. There is no more "anonymously".

That is kind of the point.

[Cleita]

6. He had to go to a news org. that would publish it and that turned

out to be a Brit news org. The Guardian. He had tried to get one of our newsies, the Washington Post, to do it, unsuccessfully. If they had done it, it would have remained domestic. The Guardian is a reputable news org. and I believe his mistake was to reveal himself. That was very idealistic or very stupid of him to do. If he had just operated as an anonymous, it wouldn't have involved all the international clusterfuck we have today.

[zeeland]

14. It would have been nearly impossible trying to remain anonymous and a lot easier

for the parties so inclined to assassinate a nameless, faceless individual.

[Cleita]

19. I'm not disagreeing that you could be right.

I suppose the only other alternative he had would have been to shut up and keep doing his job. If you think this surveillance sucks and is close to police state that would have been hard.

[Savannahmann]

9. The advantage of his remaining is that he can be more easily silenced.

They can use "Enhanced Interrogations" and determine what information he has released. That makes it a lot easier on the cover up than scrambling from one lie to the next.

He'd be labeled a traitor anyway, the authoritarians throw that label around more than any other, including Hitler or fascist.

I don't believe the line was crossed when he went overseas. Remember, his first divulgence was the FISA court order, which upset many people right away. They demanded investigations, not in the abuse of the laws, but to find out who leaked it. Then PRISM came out, and then Snowden was identified, and his location. The word traitor was tossed about long before we knew who, and where he was.

It has nothing to do with where he released the information. It has nothing to do with who he released the information to. It has to do with the fact that he released the information. I sincerely hope he finds somewhere safe to remain for a few years until the CIA or one of the contractors assassinates him. We should learn that we are not gods, and our arrogance should be examined. Because claiming the right to spy on the world is hardly moral, and proper morality is the basis of all that is just. Immorality is the foundation of all that is unjust. Doubt me?

It is moral to treat all citizens equally. We have Constitutional Amendments that decree such things. Yet we deny Marriage to many of our fellow citizens. Therefor, the inequality is immoral.

It is moral to tell the truth, and in defending this abomination, our leaders admitted that they told the least untruthful lie possible. Hardly a moral action.

It is moral to care for one another. To provide shelter, warmth, food, and medical care. We provide welfare, food stamps, heating oil assistance, and now the ACA. To deny people those basic needs is immoral. We fought for the moral, and we opposed those who championed the immoral.

Morality has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with basic human rights, and how you treat one another. The Moral Majority was anything but. They wrap intolerance in divine guidance, and call it moral. We wrap compassion, consideration, and respect in nothing, because those need no packaging. We surround ourselves with understanding, accepting those about us for who they are, and what they are. The Conservatives wrap their bigotry and hatred in the name morality.

This Intelligence Industrial Complex is not moral, and it is not just. We must take action now, before our children, and their children suffer.

[SHRED]

11. well put...thank you

[zeeland]

24. Our children are already suffering.

That ship has sailed. I keep thinking of "The Butterfly Effect." Not that I'm some
expert on it, but if enough of us could do one small thing would it be enough to
create a bigger change. Unfortunately we can't begin to agree what that change
looks like. That's how "they" always maintain chaos.

"The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks earlier."

[Savannahmann]

31. Chaos theory.

Actions may well have results that are impossible to predict, and difficult to imagine. The butterfly flaps its wings in Central park, and a hurricane forms on the other side of the world. Perhaps better labeled as a Typhoon.

I am sure of one thing. We must drag these programs kicking and screaming into the light of day. We must understand the depth of the spying, and we must decide as a people what action to take. Yet, the first step in any plan of action is to know your enemy, in a manner of speaking. Until we know what is going on, coming up with logical, reasonable, and sensible courses of action is impossible. Perhaps that is why they are really keeping it secret now, because without the details, we can't possibly hope to chart any course that is reasonable. We are lost in the fog, and unable to see anywhere else to go.

[brush]

15. Exactly!

He would have had the best lawyers in the country lining up to defend him.

Guess he had other plans. One has to wonder if he thought it completely through. I mean the turning over classified info to other countries?

If he was out to alert the American people to what the government was doing to them, he trashed his own raison d'etre with that miscalculation and the whole fleeing thing.

[dkf]

29. No...we use international cooperation to get around US laws protecting citizens.

Five eyes is about sharing info so US can say they don't spy domestically. But they let UK do it then tap into their data. Bunch of BS.

[99Forever]

30. He'd be in Gitmo being waterboarded...

... and the Rah Rah Posse would be telling us how SupaPrez saved us from impending doom, and the 1% would be laughing at us.

[Galraedia]

33. Some things that Snowden said are contradicted by some of the documents he released.

Example: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023137494

If Snowden was interested in the truth he wouldn't be making false claims and exaggerations.