Snowden Interview

[notyou2]

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/11/edward-snowden-interview-blacked-u-s-media-banned-youtube/

Worth watching.

[notyou2]

I am interested in knowing if any Americans had seen this. It has allegedly been removed from youtube repeatedly.

[BigBallinStalin]

It's on my reserve list. Gonna get to it one day some day.

But, no, I haven't heard of that implausible media blackout (wouldn't smaller media companies publish it? or maybe Vimeo?).

[Ray Rider]

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/11/edward-snowden-interview-blacked-u-s-media-banned-youtube/

Worth watching.

Word. Thanks for the link.

[Phatscotty]

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/11/edward-snowden-interview-blacked-u-s-media-banned-youtube/

Worth watching.

ty!

[notyou2]

You're both very welcome.

[rishaed]

Its true.. Gone, just gone. And those with the correct picture up, well they aren't the interview. Thanks for the video.

[Phatscotty]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-van ... _ref=false

In written testimony to the European Union (EU), Edward Snowden explained in patient, well-written, detailed prose exactly why what the NSA is doing is so dangerous. Snowden reveals himself an articulate writer, and through that moves from mere whistleblower into an almost philosophical role. His testimony deserves your full read, so you should best stop right here and just go read it.

For those who prefer some highlights, with commentary, please follow me deeper down the rabbit hole.

Snowden says:

The suspicionless surveillance programs of the NSA, GCHQ, and so many others that we learned about over the last year endanger a number of basic rights which, in aggregate, constitute the foundation of liberal societies.

The first principle any inquiry must take into account is that despite extraordinary political pressure to do so, no western government has been able to present evidence showing that such programs are necessary. In the United States, the heads of our spying services once claimed that 54 terrorist attacks had been stopped by mass surveillance, but two independent White House reviews with access to the classified evidence on which this claim was founded concluded it was untrue, as did a Federal Court.

...There are indications of a growing disinterest among governments for ensuring intelligence activities are justified, proportionate, and above all accountable. We should be concerned about the precedent our actions set.

Snowden understands that the programs he revealed are fundamentally in conflict with the very basis of a just society; the two cannot co-exist. When the government turns its full resources to spy, without suspicion or reason or legitimate purpose, on its full citizenry (including the Senate, charged with in theory a check-and-balance role on the executive), a fundamental shift occurs: the Government is no longer of the People, it has made the People its enemy. The opposite follows by course. Deceiving your enemy is part of any war.

More:

I know the good and the bad of these systems, and what they can and cannot do, and I am telling you that without getting out of my chair, I could have read the private communications of any member of this committee, as well as any ordinary citizen. I swear under penalty of perjury that this is true. These are not the capabilities in which free societies invest. Mass surveillance violates our rights, risks our safety, and threatens our way of life. If even the U.S. government, after determining mass surveillance is unlawful and unnecessary, continues to operate to engage in mass surveillance, we have a problem.
Indeed we do Edward. The problem is that following the events of that one day -- 9/11 -- America went, quite simply, insane. For a short period of time, nearly every American, naw, let's all look at our shoes and feel ashamed, because EVERY American agreed that anything that even might make us feel safe again was OK. We went out and bought duct tape when told a gas attack might happen, and we eyed our neighbors cautiously.

But as the dust literally settled, the government realized that they could cite 9/11 as justification forever, for anything. Evil people took this opening to slip a still-metastasizing national security state into the fabric of our lives, then enlarge it to cover the globe. Snowden in his testimony acknowledges that the NSA's reach covers billions of people. I am certain that if we could ever catch those anti-freedom figures and their helpers in a private moment, they would all say: "If we knew it was going to be this easy to create an omnipotent executive, we would have done it years ago."

Snowden:

Whether we like it or not, the international norms of tomorrow are being constructed today, right now, by the work of bodies like this committee. If liberal states decide that the convenience of spies is more valuable than the rights of their citizens, the inevitable result will be states that are both less liberal and less safe.

[mrswdk]

But as the dust literally settled, the government realized that they could cite 9/11 as justification forever, for anything. Evil people took this opening to slip a still-metastasizing national security state into the fabric of our lives, then enlarge it to cover the globe.

Hadn't the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand already agreed to jointly spy on the whole world shortly after WW2? It's not like 9/11 was some sort of tipping point.

Also, 'evil' is a bit of a silly label to apply to the NSA fuss. What has the NSA actually been doing, other than invading people's privacy a bit?

[notyou2]

But as the dust literally settled, the government realized that they could cite 9/11 as justification forever, for anything. Evil people took this opening to slip a still-metastasizing national security state into the fabric of our lives, then enlarge it to cover the globe.

Hadn't the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand already agreed to jointly spy on the whole world shortly after WW2? It's not like 9/11 was some sort of tipping point.

Also, 'evil' is a bit of a silly label to apply to the NSA fuss. What has the NSA actually been doing, other than invading people's privacy a bit?

It's OK to spy on all the others, but not on yourself in a free and just democracy. The government has turned against the people and we are no better than any communist or nazi country. It's like what scotty posted, the government by spying on the checks and balances (senate and judiciary) has essentially become the enemy of the people instead of working for the people.

[mrswdk]

It's OK to spy on all the others, but not on yourself

lol. Hold that torch high, Lady Liberty.

The government has turned against the people and we are no better than any communist or nazi country.

In terms of political freedom and government repression, I can think of a couple of important differences between America today and the USSR, Nazi Germany or North Korea...

the government, by spying on the checks and balances (senate and judiciary), has essentially become the enemy of the people instead of working for the people

But what are they actually doing, other than watching? I've always taken the view that if the police want to put cameras on lamp posts then I have nothing to fear, and I don't see how these latest revelations are any different. If some computer somewhere has logged that I emailed my mother this morning then, frankly, I couldn't care less.

[BigBallinStalin]

Consent is a big problem--even 'consent' as conceived by voting, since the activities of the NSA weren't disclosed to the Legislative Branch (recall the Director of Intelligence lying about the NSA program to Congress). When an agency violates the 4th Amendment, usually the Congress gets involved. This problem is a concern if you want something closer to equality before the law and a more stable and free society.

No accountability is another problem, so there's no good incentive which rewards people for proper behavior. Politicians can ignore it, Obama makes some speeches, and the officials within the intelligence community can go about business-as-usual. Anyone, who reports on government malfeasance with hard evidence regarding foreign/intelligence policy, will be tried in a secret court (for espionage, it's not open to the public) and will be killed or possibly imprisoned in solitary confinement for the rest of their life.

According to that interview, Snowden mentioned how NSA agents can glean private information about foreign corporations (on deals and what not). They can then pass to this to the interested parties for the sake of "national interest." The Chinese flaunt intellectual property rights, and the Americans flaunt corporate espionage laws. That's another problem--if one wishes to maintain good standing within the international community or if one is concerned about yet another avenue of crony capitalism.

This program largely isn't about guaranteeing the public's safety. It's a mixture of doing intelligence work for the sake of intelligence work (bureacracy for the sake of bureacracy), stealing corporate information from competitors and rewarding it to political contributors, and likely using state secrets of friendly governments as leverage. Then there's their total disregard for the Constitution--the rules which the government should enforce upon itself.

If you blindly trust an agency with practically zero accountability to manage such operations, then you wouldn't be concerned. I'd be concerned about that mentality though. When more people turn a blind eye to government mismanagement, then I'd expect greater government mismanagement. Apathy is a problem, but the main problem is ignorance. When the government shrouds its activities from the public, then you become less able to even know if the government is meeting your expectations. It generates mistrust, which is counter-productive in promoting a freer and stabler society.

[The Voice]

Thanks for sharing. I see many more American whistleblowers seeking asylum as we continue down the path of infringing upon the rights of American citizens, who have done nothing wrong.

[mrswdk]

Where do you draw the line between what the government can and can't keep a secret though? One of the things I saw coming out in the Snowden leaks was that government agents sometimes lurk online games looking for terrorists/criminals who are using the games as a place to chat. I can't see the publishing of that information benefitting anyone except the 'bad guys', who now know not to use WoW (or whatever) for their secret conversations.

I get that accountability is an issue, as unaccountable people can easily go on a power trip. Still though, this 'power tripping' seems to have materialised in the form of nothing more than snooping so far. No one is disappearing, nothing is being disrupted. They're just gathering some pretty boring data. The US is still a country where the legal system has authority over public institutions, so no one is going to be getting dragged off the street for opposing the government any time soon.

Plus, in theory Obama already has the power at his fingertips if he wants to abuse it. He controls the CIA, FBI, regular police and the military. If he really wanted to dig his claws into society, he could've been doing that since day one. Who would have the power to hold the American security apparatus accountable if it decided it wanted to assert itself? No one. The reason that the US is not run on the same kind of lockdown as Syria or China is because the government chooses not to behave like that.

I was just tossing over the impact that a seizure of power such as this might have on America's attractiveness as an ally or place to invest, and even then I'm not so sure it would matter that much if the take over was conducted with little mess (i.e. just an announcement that the GOP and Democrats have merged into one party, voting will no longer take place and everyone has to just accept it or else). 'Good standing' (by which I take it we mean moral authority and a secure investment environment) in the international community may have its merits, but many, many times we have seen countries with not-very-good standings get along just fine. China's moral reputation is a bit of a mess, and the nature of the CCP's hold on society still presents risks for international investors, but China is nonetheless continuing to prosper and develop more ties with other countries (for now, anyway).

[BigBallinStalin]

Where do you draw the line between what the government can and can't keep a secret though? One of the things I saw coming out in the Snowden leaks was that government agents sometimes lurk online games looking for terrorists/criminals who are using the games as a place to chat. I can't see the publishing of that information benefitting anyone except the 'bad guys', who now know not to use WoW (or whatever) for their secret conversations.

We can always imagine all sorts of scenarios where the bad guys would benefit from x, y, and z, but from what I recall, that MMORPG effort was largely fruitless. Had it not been exposed, the state would've still been wasting valuable resources which could've been put to better use--much like the recent NSA data-mining ops.

A line is typically drawn by the laws--the kind which at least the Legislative gets to vote on. The other delineation is formed by social norms, which aren't accurately expressed through the legislative nor require such expression. The NSA program trumps both by (1) bypassing US laws and procedures and (2) ignoring US public opinion, which is intentionally kept in the dark about it. Growing US Presidential power is another main threat--unless we're fine with more wars and secret police.

I get that accountability is an issue, as unaccountable people can easily go on a power trip. Still though, this 'power tripping' seems to have materialised in the form of nothing more than snooping so far. No one is disappearing, nothing is being disrupted. They're just gathering some pretty boring data. The US is still a country where the legal system has authority over public institutions, so no one is going to be getting dragged off the street for opposing the government any time soon.

How 'bout that corporate espionage?

"Public institutions"? You mean, government organizations? That's false when it comes to the intelligence community, but it serves as some minor constraint.

I generally believe that if people allow an organization to build the basic apparatus of a potentially exploitative system, then the system will become more exploitative over the years. With each crisis, the system builds more and gains more control. This is the nature of states, and it's something we shouldn't be encouraging with a naive attitude about government.

Look at the US decline in economic freedom from the past 10 years. It was in the top 5 and now it's around 18th. That's a big problem with significant repercussions. Much of this Snowden incident and people's response (or lack thereof) is reflective of this decline. There's a big problem with the US, so it shouldn't be dismissed.

Plus, in theory Obama already has the power at his fingertips if he wants to abuse it. He controls the CIA, FBI, regular police and the military. If he really wanted to dig his claws into society, he could've been doing that since day one. Who would have the power to hold the American security apparatus accountable if it decided it wanted to assert itself? No one. The reason that the US is not run on the same kind of lockdown as Syria or China is because the government chooses not to behave like that.

I was just tossing over the impact that a seizure of power such as this might have on America's attractiveness as an ally or place to invest, and even then I'm not so sure it would matter that much if the take over was conducted with little mess (i.e. just an announcement that the GOP and Democrats have merged into one party, voting will no longer take place and everyone has to just accept it or else). 'Good standing' (by which I take it we mean moral authority and a secure investment environment) in the international community may have its merits, but many, many times we have seen countries with not-very-good standings get along just fine. China's moral reputation is a bit of a mess, and the nature of the CCP's hold on society still presents risks for international investors, but China is nonetheless continuing to prosper and develop more ties with other countries (for now, anyway).

Presidents don't exert that much control. They may have the option to do X, but it doesn't mean the incentives and payoffs would line up with action x. I'd imagine that status quo players would get upset when their status quo is too greatly disturbed.

RE: underlined, you're forgetting history.

Ideas still matter, and China's a tinderbox. If you don't care about ethics, then sure, who cares what laws government agencies break. Sounds silly.

[mrswdk]

Bumping so I remember to reply.

[notyou2]

Every individual right that is rescinded through known or unknown methods is a step towards an authoritarian state. It's as simple as that.

[AndyDufresne]

Every individual right that is rescinded through known or unknown methods is a step towards an authoritarian state. It's as simple as that.

Thumbs down, emperor man, thumbs down. Or up.


--Andy

[mrswdk]

Every individual right that is rescinded through known or unknown methods is a step towards an authoritarian state. It's as simple as that.

[notyou2]

When does your card arrive?

[The Voice]

Where do you draw the line between what the government can and can't keep a secret though? One of the things I saw coming out in the Snowden leaks was that government agents sometimes lurk online games looking for terrorists/criminals who are using the games as a place to chat. I can't see the publishing of that information benefitting anyone except the 'bad guys', who now know not to use WoW (or whatever) for their secret conversations.

We can always imagine all sorts of scenarios where the bad guys would benefit from x, y, and z, but from what I recall, that MMORPG effort was largely fruitless. Had it not been exposed, the state would've still been wasting valuable resources which could've been put to better use--much like the recent NSA data-mining ops.

Precisely

[Army of GOD]

An ideal democratic government should never keep secrets from the public...at least the intelligent public. The US is so far-gone from an ideal democracy at this point (I would say we're almost an authoritative republic) that there's no getting better without some sort of violent revolution, so I don't want to hear "the government needs to keep some secrets". If the gov't is truly "for and by the people" then the people should never not know (or, should never be kept from information if they seek to find it) what the gov't is doing.

[notyou2]

An open and transparent government is the key to democracy.

[mrswdk]

Dear Santa,

This Christmas I want world peace and an Xbox. Say hello to your reindeer and Mrs Christmas from me.

From,
Jimmy
Boston