Former Bush Official Lawrence Wilkerson Says Snowden Has Done a 'Service' (salon.com) 90
An anonymous reader cites an article on Salon: Lawrence "Larry" Wilkerson, former Bush official finds the revelations made by Edward Snowden a service. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former contractor with NSA, worked with journalists to reveal a number of mass surveillance programs. In a recent interview, Wilkerson said, "I think Snowden has done a service. I wouldn't have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it. There's a logic to what he has done that is impressive. He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security -- regardless of what people say. He has been circumspect about what he's released, how he's released it, who he's released it to."
The World Today (Score:4, Insightful)
“Don’t ever count us out, because we are the Greeks on Milos. We have the power, and we will do it.”
He added, “To hell with international law, to hell with human rights, to hell with human dignity.”
We live in a World that's falling apart now - some of it is even our fault (all those decades meddling in the Middle East over oil). China is now the largest economy in the World and with economic power, military power follows.
We have a very crowded World now and things are going to get worse as global warming takes its toll.
I'm afraid the human race will be going backwards in the sense that we'll be having more territorial and resource (fresh water, fishing rights, even arable land) wars. And we'll be dealing with more immigration from the poor countries who want a piece of our pie; which isn't growing fast enough to accommodate the great masses.
We're not headed for Star Trek type of future but a Mad Max one. And he who has the guns is going fare better.
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The U.S. having a ton of military power has been good for the U.S., in the short term. It's been very bad for the world. Now you whine about China?
Standard xenophobia. Common behavior in all human societies.
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Snowden leaks are baby steps in preventing America from being a place like China, Russia, etc.
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Snowden leaks are HUGE steps to allow places like China and Russia to kill the light of freedom that is America
That "Shining City on the Hill" exists because we have always taken steps to protect our freedoms from countries that do not respect individual rights
The instant that they were given access to our methods, we all became less safe
It is time to stop acting like offended children and take responsibility for our safety, bending over and letting putin put-it-in (like Snowden has) is not the path to more freedom or security (they go hand in hand)
What freedoms do you have when the superpacs buy the congressmen and senators? The energy sector put aside over 860million dollars to help their congress wimp and senator wimp to win. Favourable laws for the super rich mean that you are no better off then the Chinese with their restrictions on freedoms.
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Bad for the world? Where do you get off saying that? Bad for Europe, protecting their free trade and energy sources while simultaneously providing their defense during the cold war? Bad for Japan? Bad for Korea?
Get an education on geopolitics. If you live in the Western world, you yourself have benefited directly from that military power, and that stability, whether you want to believe it or not. You haven't been paying attention, or else you are willfully ignoring the truth.
Were things different, and Chin
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OK, you've convinced me. It's a great idea. Let's drop many more nuclear weapons on civilian areas. It it for their own good. Woohoo!!
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Bullocks. Indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is unacceptable; and everyone involved in it, axis and allied alike, should have been tossed away into a hole as a war criminal. I do say indiscriminate for a reason though. If you take a job producing arms to ammunition you do become part of the war machine... you know there's a risk and you take your chances when you sign on the dotted line. But if you're flipping hamburgers, fixing people's plumbing, or making sure they can get their Netflix, you should
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My god, man, stop. You've lost. Be a man and give up already.
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I think you need to step back and think about the fact that the 'Star Trek' type future arose from a 'Mad Max' one.
That's not unintentional writing by Roddenberry, it's the only way it really makes sense even today.
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Well, in the Star Trek chronology, that society shattering disaster was World War 3... that was over 600 million killed via a combination of nuclear exchanges between most major powers, biological warfare, multiple conventional conflicts, mass genocide of survivors thought to be irradiated or infected, the dissolution of the United Nations, collapse of social order in the United States, and ecological collapse and famine on multiple continents. And all of that was a few decades the Eugenics Wars (In the 19
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And guns will soon be about as useful as clubs when the shit goes down the drain because there's a lack of vital parts like gunpowder and firing caps.
Re:The World Today (Score:4, Funny)
We live in a World that's falling apart now - some of it is even our fault (all those decades meddling in the Middle East over oil).
Don't worry, we'll soon have a president that will make America great again. :/
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Trump is not the harbinger, he is the messenger. It is our message he carries. The leadership has failed to cover their bets, and now the Party will either dissolve or rebuild.
I vote for rebuilding, but all I really want is a functional alternative to the Left.
Re:The World Today (Score:4, Insightful)
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What you call right is anything that is not left.
Left is what? Control of thought and all economicactivity in the government.
If you're for freedom of thought, speech you would not like living under a said dictatorship of the people.
How can anybody who wants to live in a free society what to live under socialism?
This crony capitalist crap we're now moving too is a result, the direct result of the rise of the nanny state.
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China is not currently the largest economy in the world, although it is certainly a contender. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, please.
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Damn - the GP is now right about China having a larger economy
understatement (Score:1)
" I wouldn't have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it."
maybe?
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Edward Snowden could be looking at the death penalty or even a trial with no right to a jury or even a lawyer
chief of staff to Secretary of State (Score:5, Informative)
Pity it's only people who are part of administrations long out of power say things like this.
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"Everyone's got a mortgage to pay"
Re:chief of staff to Secretary of State (Score:4, Interesting)
Hats off to Snowden, otherwise we'd still be thinking most of this stuff our government wouldn't even consider doing to its citizenry (just from a moral standpoint of honoring and protecting the constitution and those people that are the citizens) with only the tinfoils thinking it was possible.
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Hats off to Snowden, otherwise we'd still be thinking most of this stuff our government wouldn't even consider doing to its citizenry (just from a moral standpoint of honoring and protecting the constitution and those people that are the citizens) with only the tinfoils thinking it was possible.
It's sad that even the most tinfoil hat wearing faraday caged individual can't be considered paranoid anymore, although quite a few of us have said what was possible long ago without resorting to tinfoil hatness.
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No, they're still crazy.
Snowden revealing what any person paying attention already knew doesn't mean that conspiracy theorists are right, it just means that most of the population isn't paying attention to what is in front of their nose and are surprised when someone points it out to them.
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And what he did reveal was stuff that never made a long term effect anyway. Nobody suffered badly, only some embarrassment to be remembered.
It was enough to make people pay attention, not to get endangered.
In a few years he's just another name on a list of persons wanted but no serious effort would be put into getting him caught.
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Well, I was more considering negative strategical effect on the security of any country.
It just highlighted the need to take caution.
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Pity it's only people who are part of administrations long out of power say things like this.
Standard Operating Procedure... Nothing to lose. They get better book/movie deals that way and they keep their pensions. And besides, if they try anything while in power, they will take a heavy fall.
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Not just nothing to lose, when they were in power, they were on the top. No president or chief of staff is ever going to prison. They will never be held accountable in ANY circumstance.
Former ones however.... they are UNDER the law.
You see the same in intelligence communities. While they are in the circles, mass surveillance and warrantless taps are A-OK. Once they become civilians who are subject to laws....suddenly its all overreach.
I think that is why, of all the spying revelations, the one that seemed t
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I still think that was overwrought. The Chancellor of fucking Germany is surprised that people are trying to spy on her? Bitch, please.
She might be pissed that her security team couldn't stop it, but she knows full well that everyone and their grandmother is trying to spy on her, including but not limited to her enemies, her allies, and people who just want to know what is going on. And if you think Germany isn't trying to get detailed information on what Obama is doing, you're deluded.
The only differenc
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There is another difference. Spying on an ally and getting caught creates diplomatic problems and engenders hostility. It's one thing to go around being a cunt, it's another to be outed as one.
It's a lonely world when everyone is your enemy, and in the case of the NSA I think literally everyone is their enemy. That's the problem.
I couldn't agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I couldn't agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
Snowden is the best whistleblower one could hope for. He's bloody brilliant. On the other hand we shouldn't even care about the character of the whistleblower, it just deflects attention from the issue they're reporting about.
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He's good but not brilliant.
If he was brilliant he would have made sure that the encrypted stuff he did provide keys for was so wide-spread that it couldn't have been intercepted. Now a few journalists did get it and they were raided, which did provide proof that what he had was the real deal and not fake.
Re:I couldn't agree more (Score:5, Insightful)
Dead on, and absolutely correct.
Our government should be subject to both the rule of law and the will of the people, which should be either be the same or consistent.
Snowden exposed significant excursions of illegality, and did so in a less than most harmful manner. If by 'harmful' you would mean 'to have exposed what they are doing in secret', then yes, this is correct.
He didn't use insecure means, known to be subject to compromise, to disclose matters specific enough to risk the lives of intelligence operatives worldwide, nor to disclose precise methods. That was done by another government official, and so far they haven't been held to account. Mr. Snowden is not a criminal except in the strictest sense of having not been caught before he disclosed what he did. He is a whistleblower, and a genuine patriot. He is part of the process of restoring our government to a position of guarded trust it should occupy.
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Except for the part about their donating half a million dollars to the Fiorina campaign as hush money. That's a problem between Ted and the criminal justice system.
Read the story.
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You are correct, generally, but they tend to care a little more when they're in the process of running for office.
Though really, in this year's GOP political climate, getting thrown in jail might actually make them more popular. It did wonders for 50-Cent and Adolph Hitler, after all. Maybe Ted Cruz is looking for a little street cred.
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I'm sure it is. Historical evidence would tend to agree: http://www.conservativeoutfitt... [conservati...itters.com] See item 7. Not my issue but to pray God's mercies for their dilemma.
However, it's also a problem between Ted and I. It's about credibility.
I pray. I believe the Scriptures. For me to pursue public office, while leaning heavily on the appeal of my faith, while having skeletons such as this is just too much. I'm far from a perfect man, I battle with my sinful nature, but there are things that even I just won't abide
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I'm curious, does this mean you wouldn't vote for Ted Cruz if the allegations prove true?
And would you even considering voting for a man of even lower character
DAFUQ with summaries? (Score:2)
Slashdot doesn't even get summaries anymore? Now we just have quotes from somewhere else?
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Maybe it's better this way. This summary made sense.
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Re:Total bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Snowden wasn't at all circumspect. He took a huge data dump containing data dangerous to US national security
This is the quickest way to get everything. He didn't have the time to decide which pieces he needed. Moreover, the vastness is one of the things he was whistleblowing about. Without a ton of data it would have been hard to prove.
and handed it off to a foreign national.
Do you have proof of this? My understanding is it has mostly been very select reporters who have had access and the stuff that has been release has been screened prior to release.
And he did it all because he's an attention whore. If he had done it the right way, we wouldn't even know his name.
No, he did it because he was paranoid. He was scared that if noone knew his name then it would be easy for him to just disappear. It's not like the government wasn't going to figure out who the mole was. This way, everyone else knows who the mole is too so it's much harder for him to be eliminated. Also, having a name to face makes it more believable versus the standard tin-foil hat crowd that says "our sources" and rightfully noone believes them.
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He did give the data to a foreign national, largely because he knew that if he only gave it to US reporters it could be too easily hushed.
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He did give the data to a foreign national, largely because he knew that if he only gave it to US reporters it could be too easily hushed.
He gave it to foreign reporters of one of our closest allies. Using "foreign national" although technically true is propaganda that makes it sound like he gave it to the military commander of one of our enemies as many people don't even know what "foreign national" even means. Why not use the truth and say that he gave "limited access to British Reporters"? Because that doesn't sound near as scary as "he gave top secret documents to foreign nationals" does.
Backpeddling after obvious damage-control stories (Score:2)
Damage control for the damage control.
A feeble attempt to placate a few people who are catching on to propaganda tactics.
What are we supposed to think? "Some people in the federal government think that mass surveillance is bad so there isn't really much cause for concern or action"?
Recent stories:
NSA Wants To Dump the Phone Records It Gathered Over 14 Years" [slashdot.org]
"Whistleblower: NSA Is So Overwhelmed With Data, It's No Longer Effective" [slashdot.org]
These conspicuously attempt to dodge the simple fact that the federal governme