None. There are no changes. He is reviewing a transition to changes.
And remember, these are only executive changes, which means if the next president is worse, well then the changes can be undone with the stroke of a single pen by a single person (and they might even decide not to tell the public).
The permanent bulk collection of data continues for future use by any president or agency when the laws don't hinder them. It's a library they can peruse now or 50 years from now.
ps. someone needs to do a mashup of his first campaign speech to end abuses, arguing against this other person
Before the US invaded Iraq, when the President was talking about mushroom clouds [0] and the Secretary of State delivered a PowerPoint about bio-weapons to the United Nations [1], I gave our leaders the benefit of the doubt.
Surely the military, the CIA, the NSA, the NRO, and the President must have secret information they cannot share with the public to justify the horrors of war.
Turns out I was wrong. It was a pack of lies, half-truths and poorly-substantiated rumors to justify a predetermined agenda.
After the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, when the President and the Secretary of the Treasury threatened the end of the world as we know it if the richest corporations aren't given direct cash infusions [2], I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Surely our elected officials would never directly transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the richest of the rich unless the alternative was truly grave.
Turns out I was wrong. It was a pack of lies, half-truths and poorly-substantiated rumors to transfer wealth from working people to the ownership class on an unprecedented scale.
So when the President stands before us today and speaks for 45 minutes without saying anything of consequence, without providing any evidence that the threat is so dire, so imminent, so cataclysmic that we must relinquish our freedoms to preserve our freedoms, I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.
No more vague threats. No more fear. No more intimidation. No more secrecy. These are fatal to a political system that relies on an informed citizenry.
>So when the President stands before us today and speaks for 45 minutes without saying anything of consequence, without providing any evidence that the threat is so dire, so imminent, so cataclysmic that we must relinquish our freedoms to preserve our freedoms, I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.
It gets worse: people who do such things, can also manufacture concrete evidence of "dire and imminent" stuff.
For example by letting the stock market crumble to some predetermined stop point, when they come with measures to save the day. Or by provoking for some attack and seeing it happen -- which is mostly what was done in Pearl Harbor to convince people to get in WWII (E.g:
http://mises.org/daily/6312/FDRs-Pacific-War-Before-Pearl-Ha... -- Can't vouch for the validity of the linked website in general, just found a quick link to the issue. The facts are available in tons of historical books).
That's because the rest of you don't understand what an all-out financial collapse would mean for you because as a result of the FED's actions, it didn't happen.
What? What would it mean? Doesn't man nothing. It's just an excuse to hand over millions for free.
The basic Liberal theory says that when a big player goes down, it's good for the market, because many smaller players will fill that gap. What is happening the last years throughout US and Europe is that when a bank goes down, the state turns communist and we share the losses.
If the bank has huge earning, it's capitalism, so they can keep it because hey they worth it!.
Joseph Stiglitz has an entire book on the subject. As Krugman said - and the economist also... go figure! - Obama should have put at least some rules to Wall Street giants when they were on their knees, not after he made them twice as big.
Blah, I am not sure if the Congress or Obama CAN actually do anything to regulate WS giants at all.
Yes. Idahoans also didn't understand why they should pay me mucho dinero to continue protecting Idaho from dragons.
"But we don't have dragons in Idaho", they'd say.
To which of course I replied: "See how effective I have been?".
Plus, besides the disregard for the burden-of-proof in your argument, wasn't the economic crisis caused "as a result of the FED's actions" in the first place (deregulation etc)?
> Plus, besides the disregard for the burden-of-proof in your argument, wasn't the economic crisis caused "as a result of the FED's actions" in the first place (deregulation etc)?
Deregulation was Congressional action, not action of the Federal Reserve (usually referred to by the shortened form, "the Fed").
>Deregulation was Congressional action, not action of the Federal Reserve (usually referred to by the shortened form, "the Fed").
That's the "law passing" part. But the advisory part has Fed written on it:
"In Congressional testimony on October 23, 2008, Greenspan finally conceded error on regulation. The New York Times wrote, "a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending. ... Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken."
"By dialing rates to near zero, Mr. Greenspan made it cheap to lend. It was natural for the banks, a greedy lot to see that they could borrow money at low rates and lend it out to customers at higher rates."
"As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time."
Eh? There are a lot more choices available than that.
And is not about moral ideology, it is pragmatic to take the view that declaring organisations as too big to fail, bailing them and then letting them carry on as before is pretty stupid. That's not running an economy, that's making excuses for an abusive relationship.
it was already imploding some. We'll never know how much more worse it could have been, but... Bear Stearns had already closed and the world didn't collapse. If a couple investment banks had closed, would everything have stopped? The big boys would have found a way to keep going pretty quickly. As it stands, the 'fix' still ended up keeping most previously normally available capital for average people on hold for years, grinding many regions to a virtual standstill with respect to housing/travel/construction/etc.
So... even with the massive bailout, the majority of average people got hit pretty hard, and many are still recovering as their regions try to fight back from the economic collapse, while we read about bankers bitching that their bonuses were only in the single digit millions for so many years.
Yes, I'm much more for avoiding economic collapse than ideological purity. I like not starving to death, while the tea partying libercrazians would destroy the whole nation just to see out their distorted principles.
the punch line is thee was no threat to economic collapse..
The FEd had full powers to ask that any bail out remove current bank leadership from power due to the threat of full Gov receivership of those banks by Fed..we were sold the idea of giving a free get out of jail card to banks based on lies
It doesn't. A bailout was 100% necessary, but it needn't have been as generous as it was. Especially considering it severely curtailed Congress's appetite for heavier demand-side stimulus in the aftermath.
"That," replied Hardin, "is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications in short, all the goo and dribble he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out."
"Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire."
Ever since the first time I've read that, I've wanted newspapers to do that. Then when I learned about diffs and similar styles, I've wanted it to be done with strikethroughs or red -- and ++ marking up the actual speech's text.
I seem to recall there was a recent election where this could have been corrected. If you vote for the lesser of two evils its not like your going to benefit.
Until no politician/President can guarantee himself a second term will they ever feel accountable to the public.
Yet the one thing they will count on is the ability to play on voters irrational fears/views of the other guy.
How could it have been corrected? Though I hesitate to say Romney would have been worse, he gave no indication of being better.
Plus, campaign promises have a tendency toward melting away when facing hard reality. Even if a Green or Libertarian candidate had won (absolutely 0% chance), there's no reason to think they'd have followed through on their promises. They might want to, but so does Obama, presumably. It's just the structure of government that someone in the executive branch isn't going to be willing to use all of their political capital in a battle that weakens their own authority.
"It's just the structure of government that someone in the executive branch isn't going to be willing to use all of their political capital in a battle that weakens their own authority."
In other words, once you give government power, there's essentially no chance that they will relinquish it.
I suspect a third party would be far more likely to expect only one term and attempt to accomplish as much as possible without worry for re-election. Though there have been so few examples of "true" third party wins at high levels to know. The best example might be Jesse Ventura. As well, you might expect people who consistently run as a third party knowing no chance of winning to be less susceptible to the political machine than others.
Ventura only 'sought one term' because most of the state of Minnesota despised him and he never would've won re-election. He barely won the election as it was, with a bare plurality of votes in a 3 person race: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_electio...
Plus, campaign promises have a tendency toward melting away when facing hard reality.
I have a hard time believing that campaign promises are anything other than lies, told bald-facedly in order to satisfy an image being portrayed by the campaign. It's all an act, just like this NSA speech is likely just an act designed not to change anything. Reality is that they're going to do whatever they want to do.
There was a primary each time. It could have been another Democrat. Or you could have voted third party. As long as you vote for either major, you're voting for the same thing.
C'mon. Doesn't everything Obama has said on surveillance sound exactly like what Bush would have said? They're the same, they just use different dog whistles.
I just don't understand why the election always ends up being between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich [0]. Honestly, Obama and Romney were the best leaders the US had to offer?
I think the system at that level isn't designed to find the best leaders. It's designed to generate a small number of candidates who can galvanize their base and consolidate power and funding for their parties, and who more importantly can be controlled by the party and be trusted to maintain the status quo.
Trying to choose between two politicians is like trying to choose between two pairs of dirty underpants, when what you really need is a clean pair of underpants.
"Until no politician/President can guarantee himself a second term will they ever feel accountable to the public."
No, until they learn that they can't get in at all without being accountable to the public, no politician will feel accountable to the public.
I don't know how to look at a politician pre-election and know that they'll be honest and keep citizens' rights foremost. Certainly not by listening to them, because I've noticed whenever they make sounds their lips are moving, and when their lips are moving they lie.
So it would have to depend in part on their not being able to hide anything. Which would mean something like absolutely fucking open books, on everything, almost up to having a camera in the president's bathroom. Citizens would have to be able to inspect just about anything at all at a moment's notice. 'cause Congress won't.
And if not the absolutes of the previous paragraph, then as close as we can get, and closer all the time.
They lie, they have money and weapons, they have to be watched 24/7. Just like us.
Let's not pretend there was a viable alternative to either Blair or Obama. Politics has descended to a level where every time the public get to vote their job is to pick the lesser of two evils.
> If you vote for the lesser of two evils its not like your going to benefit.
Did you read Daniel Ellsberg's AMA interview on Reddit the other day?
In it he was actually supportive of those who had voted for Obama based on the principle of the lesser evil, explicitly invoking the Duverger's Law mentioned in a sibling comment.
Either way let's face it, the natural area a third-party split could occur at this point is within the GOP, not the Democrats, so a national concerted effort to vote outside the two-party bloc will do to the Republican candidate what Ross Perot did to Bush Sr., and what Ralph Nader did to Gore.
To fix the "lesser of two evils" problem you have to fix how the voting process itself is done first.
It's going to be done like any other major political change has happened, comfortably inside of that two-party system. You have to mobilize political pressure to effect the change at all, which is the same thing you'd need to do for success with a third-party strategy anyways.
But hey, please feel free to do what you want, a real libertarian third party is the progressives' wet dream right now.
Oh yeah, because our political system was a paragon of ethics, transparency, and trustworthiness before the bastards on the Supreme Court decided to let two dudes with an LLC sell a movie they made on a weekend that was critical of Hillary.
Most of all because as I read the body language, Candidate Obama passionately believed in what he was saying. The words march out proud and true, like soldiers.
President Obama seems barely shadow of the man in the earlier clips. He stumbles over the most important parts of his delivery and seems at one stage to hesitate as he asks himself if he can actually say what he is about to say.
Something is wrong with the man in the more recent clips. Emotionally he seems unwell.
Yes, the infamous 2007 speech that has come back to haunt him. Every politician has a speech like that, but this one is a real whopper, up there with "You can keep your plan".
First rule of politics: never make a promise you can't keep.
Second rule of politics: never keep a promise you don't have to.
from what I recall most of the data programs wouldn't keep stuff after 5 years, but that's slightly pedanting (on your "50 years" comment).
He could ask congress to pass laws, but he's the executive, and considering the executive's contempt for all things from congress, down to the right of congress to check the executive's use of the military (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Questions...), one can't hope for too much. At the very least, these executive orders being put into place means that he's signaling Congress that he wouldn't necessarily be against rollbacks of certain points.
This is exactly the problem. As ck2 seems to be suggesting, laws should be passed which make it illegal. At least, that is how I interpreted her critiques of "executive changes"
we already have a Constitution. how many more laws do we need to state the obvious? The problem isn't a lack of laws, it's a lack of an Enforcement group that is above partisan politics.
This is the same man who began an initiative called the Open Government Initiative before any Snowden revelations.
"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and estabish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."
Um. There has been a notable increase in the level of openness in government. Open Government isn't an initiative for making the privacy geeks happy. It's an initiative to make already-public data accessible and usable, and to increase the amount of data available. Federal agencies and lower-tier governments (states, counties, cities) were given a mandate and timeline to do this to their data.
When you're convinced that fundamental concepts like freedom, due process, and privacy are worth violating--for any reason--you've been brainwashed. No excuses. Everyone knows better.
I didn't intend my comment to apply to politics at-large, just the privacy and civil liberties topics currently at hand.
I think it's possible to make a case for the broader political spectrum, but I won't attempt that here.
What a bunch of sophomoric horse shit this thread is.
Obama is a disappointment on this issue, and other things too. But there are differences between politicians, and all this blah blah about how they are all the same is a great way to get apathetic and do nothing to improve things. It can be hard work trying to pick out the good ones from the bad ones, and maybe sometimes none of them are that good. And you may feel let down when you misjudge one. But that doesn't mean you just give up and spout platitudes about woe-is-us as an excuse for not doing anything, or no longer attempting to vote for good people.
Two politicians: Nelson Mandela and Joe McCarthy. No difference?
There surely are differences among politicians. You're totally right.
For example: Obama versus Paul. Hell, for the sake of a well-rounded argument, let's throw in Romney.
Look back at the campaign speeches. Regardless of what you think about either Obama or Romney or Paul, Paul's arguments follow logically. They're consistent with history. The other guys' arguments just don't. It's simple.
You could see RIGHT THROUGH Obama and Romney, even back then.
What he said is true. Heck, it might have even prevented people from (re-)electing Obama if more people realized this. I have no idea what your problem is.
Obama "acknowledges" Edward Snowden's role in triggering a public debate. Does this mean Mr. Snowden is officially a whistleblower-hero, or still a traitor who deserves life imprisonment?
As for the notion of requiring private telecomm companies to store data and provide access to the gov't, although still just a hypothetical situation and not yet policy, would this not simply shift the burden from the NSA to private companies?
Obviously, they're already handing over the data, but making it all official and open seems like a retrogressive policy that would in the long run backfire as Americans turn to overseas hosted services not beholden to the NSA. Perhaps even the domestic telecomm firms could get around it by offshoring their data storage and transmission services, such that the only domestic components would be the towers and switches, while the repositories of customer data would be safely overseas under some other entity's control (also not ideal, argh).
"The fact is, is that Mr. Snowden's been charged with 3 felonies. If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case."
What Obama thinks Snowden "deserves" is irrelevant. Snowden's status as a "traitor" is as yet undetermined, and until he stands trial for the crimes he's being charged with, we won't know.
> "If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case."
What you see here is Obama conflating (intentionally, of course) the notion of "right" and "legal".
Snowden thinks what he did was right. He does not believe that will save him in a court room, which in theory determines legality. That is why he fled the country; not because he does not really believe that what he did was right.
The law is supposed to reflect the morality of the country. It should be unsurprising that the US president thinks that US laws are, on the whole, aligned with the country's general morality.
It is suppose to be an approximation of it, but it is important to recognize that it is not itself it. It should be the case that the law and morality align, but if we want to ensure that they do align and continue to align in the future, then recognition that the law is an approximation of morality rather that the definition of it is vital.
If we mistake the law for a definition of morality, then it becomes impossible by definition for the law to be wrong.
The President must realize that the law does not define morality. And of course he does; born in 1961 he is beyond doubt keenly aware that US laws do not define morality. He is conflating the concepts for political reasons.
This is impossible and incorrect. Firstly, there's no such thing a "morality of a country" and in any case the law does not represent it. For example, abortion is legal, yet considered immoral by a lot of people. Secondly, the law must by definition come after what is perceived as right by a majority of voters and thus it always represents an "old version" of it.
> Firstly, there's no such thing a "morality of a country" and in any case the law does not represent it.
By the same token, this is why it's always idiotic to talk about "the people". It is always wrong to say "the people chose" or "the people believe" or "the will of the people". Real life isn't a musical set in Paris starring Jean Valjean.
>The law is supposed to reflect the morality of the country.
The law has always been reflecting the power balance and nothing more. It reflects morality only as a consequence of and to the extent to which moral people have power.
Even if Snowden were to return to the US to face "justice," as one of his supporters I would expect nothing more than a show trial.
We'd be relying on a legal system that has already been completely compromised to render political outcomes rather than legal ones, and there's too many "powerful" people who have been shown to be terrible liars and dishonest by Snowden's revelations for him to get a fair shake.
Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment - while not proven, I think we can both agree that Snowden broke the law as it's currently written, and that it'd be trivially easy to prove as such.
The only question during this trial would be related to the jury and the judge. Those are the two sets of people who would be able to realistically intervene on Snowden's behalf without risking the federal government's endorsement of leaking privileged information to the public, and even then the judge would be setting an alarming precedent for future cases involving the leak of privileged info.
I agree, that most probably, Snowden broke the law (I am no expert in US laws).
But again: US gov. has double standards. When Snowden breaks a law, he will most likely be hung (or worse), but if members of Us agencies breaks hundred, thousands, even million times laws of human rights and the US constitution, they will be either promoted or get an automatic pardon from the president (as Obama did directly after election).
That stinks and is a SHAME for the whole "western world".
I suspect I'd be one of those you'd label a "patriatic [sic] redneck" because I'm right of center and live in a part of the country where so called patriotic rednecks frequent.
And I support most of what Snowden has done for the reason that a true patriot upholds the letter of the Constitution, which does not hold true for a majority of the people in power. I would instead appeal to you that they should therefore be considered false patriots.
It's fairly easy to condense simple matters into left or right biases but easier still when the purpose is to appease our tribal nature as a species (us versus them). Of course, the latter serves political interests quite nicely and in a manner that helps keep the coffers overflowing.
That's not to say that I don't treat some matters as black or white (I do because of my own biases--and when I do, I think I'm right :) ) but it bugs me more than it probably should whenever I see this notion repeated that anyone who shares my political persuasions must, by virtue of our "patriotism," secretly desire a police state. It seems to me that the police state and the true patriot ought to be at odds with each other. Perhaps my understanding is skewed, but I can't think of a patriot who would wish for fewer freedoms, excluding for a moment Orwellian-esque double-speak like the PATRIOT Act...
The problem isn't necessarily any one political group as much as it is to do with politicians. The majority of which have been so insulated inside the echo chamber that is Washington DC and so far detached from their constituency for so long that it seems they (and any agency you can imagine that they interact with) feel separate from--and probably above--oversight.
If I were in a real conspiratorial mood, I might suggest that the divisive nature of US politics is entirely intentional and serves to keep us apart so that we may not work together to toss the bums in power out onto the street.
Sadly, though, I think I've already said enough to invite trollish remarks so I ought to stop while I'm ahead. ;)
I think, there would be plenty to discuss, about the things you said. But not being from the US, I can't say to much about it.
I think, names like "patriotism", "freedom", "homeland" or even "solidarity" are grandly misused by politicians today. I think, today politicians are just show-men of the real class in power. What should be decided, is not discussed openly, but by people that are not shown on cover pages. The task of the show-men is, to put the decisions (how bad they might be!) in some sound sounding words (like "Patriot Act") so that the masses will agree or at least don't disagree with the things that shall take their freedom, their work-power, their money, their land ... and give it to the new lords, which are no nobles.
And of course, left and right are also instrumented a lot. Because giving a clear "foe" is good to mobilize the own side (even for the wrong things).
> I think, names like "patriotism", "freedom", "homeland" or even "solidarity" are grandly misused by politicians today.
I feel you hit the nail on the head right here.
While you state you're not from the United States, you have a clear understanding that a ridiculously large (and embarrassingly so) percent of our population doesn't possess. Not that it surprises me: My mum isn't from here, though she's now a naturalized citizen, and she has a far greater understanding of US politics than the natives!
But then, I also think there's a certain amount of similarity among politicians the world over, or as you stated "the real class in power."
To illustrate one particular sore point that meshes well with your description, many bills drafted by the US Congress are seldom these days drafted by politicians and are instead written by their staffers or, through lobbyists, by other entities that have a keen interest on influencing the bill's content. When former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated regarding the ACA that "We have to pass it before we can know what's in it," she wasn't joking. Many of us laughed, more still called her stupid, but she--perhaps unwittingly--provided an insight into Congress few of us are fortunate enough to experience. After all, of those who do read the bills or are instrumental in their construction, they effectively have free reign to inject what they wish. With partisan politics being such as it is, mobilizing your compatriots to vote on a bill isn't especially difficult.
I don't know what the solution is, because when you have laws fabricated by organizations with deep pockets who, by virtue of their expenditure can effectively select those who win elections, any attempt to effect change will be toothless.
Anyway, I deeply appreciate this conversation and would like to thank you for the exchange we've had. It certainly made my morning. :)
The thing you describe seems to be universal today. In the EU, we have exactly the same and I think, in my own country it is not so different. Lobbyists are effectively writing the laws and when they come from the EU to our local parliaments, the time-frames are deliberately set in a way, that politicians don't have time to think about it. The pressure from government is than to rapidly pass the bill, because of course it came from the EU -- and the EU is good for peace, for growth and for everything, so any bill coming from there must be good!
At least one law was brought to a downfall later by judges, because it was extremely unconstitutional -- and it came out, that it was pressed threw the parliament, so the politicians just did not know, what they did (or even don't wanted to).
We've been seeing a frightening trend toward impenetrable, multi-thousand page bills pushed through Congress whose length is so intimidating and the time schedule so short that almost no one reads them. Then, once passed, everyone (including those who voted for it) get up in arms about the evils of special interests or how they simply didn't know some really bad part was in the very bill they passed. It's absurd. Hell, it'd almost make for good comedy if it didn't have real consequences.
There's a quote attributed to Mark Twain that goes something to the effect (in regards to US politics) "We have the best politicians money can buy."
I can only hope that it's bad behavior we haven't exported to Europe since I suspect it's the nature of the beast (special interest, lobbyists, you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours). But I wouldn't be surprised if corrupt politicians in other countries looked at what we're doing here and decided to one-up us. ;)
Joking aside, though, there's something terribly, terribly wrong when it costs nearly a billion USD to run a successful campaign for president...
If I keep up with this line of thought, I'm liable to feel depressed! :D
I think, it's in best interest of the people in power, that the campaign is so costly. When you look at the presidents of the last decades (I don't know to much US history, to go back to far), they all where already millionaires when they where elected.
In our country, the campaigns are less costly, but until anybody comes to the top of any major party, he must be inwardly corrupted already. I see it this way, that nearly no current leading politician in our country is not already totally corrupted by money and power. I think, Mark Twain had this one right, but I don't think, that it had to be exported, it seems to lay inside the human kind. I think it was already visible in the first republics like Rome. Maybe we are in a similar position today as in Caesars or even Neros time.
You should know, that some years ago, even in Europe, rich people started building places to live for millionaires -- apart and secure from the "plebs". They provide for times, when the 99% will no longer hold still. Of course, millionaires are only third class "rich" people in our world. Second class are billionaires.
But I believe you aren't talking about rednecks, but about Washington contractors and possibly a rather limited set of military/civilian special ops people.
As usual, one should be careful what one suggests to the media. For every fantasy Snowden shooter there are likely _scores_ of citizens who fantasize about doing the same thing or worse to those who put monitoring systems into place.
There is some possibility that pitchforks and torches might become de rigeur political dress in the near future. A true redneck would likely be in the crowd, torch in hand.
I agree that Snowden broke the law on divulging classified materials, as it codified. What I'm concerned about is the show trial where the Administration gets to trot out whatever stories they want to make up about how he provided "aid and comfort to the enemy."
Those who want to "get" Snowden have already shown that they have no compunction about lying under oath, so that is where my fear originates.
The precedent would only be alarming to authoritarian cowards. Which, if we're also accepting the "law is morality" viewpoint, are people who should be in prison or worse.
Thomas Drake had most of the charges against him dropped and he plead to 1 year probation. A summary of espionage charges under Obama shows that the DOJ has faced an uphill battle in court.
It is also perfectly legal to hold a trial where he is represented by counsel, rather than physically present. So if they were serious about trying to achieve 'justice', they could. But they're not. They're serious about trying to get him back on US soil. Which doesn't really speak well of their intentions.
I'm pretty sure if they did this, we would have a bunch of posts on this very forum decrying the trial as a "show trial", where Snowden does not have the ability to speak for himself or present his own defense. Whatever counsel they choose would be dismissed as a government puppet, and the result would have no impact on how people think.
Ignoring ethics for a moment (heh), one has to consider the ramifications a pardon such as that would send. That's tacit endorsement from the president of the US for everyone who thinks wrongdoings are going on to come out and tell the world, regardless of the chain-of-command, regardless of any oaths these people have taken - it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start leaking privileged information.
I can't think of a way to pardon Snowden without sending that kind of message - you can't say, "Only do this if you're really sure what's happening is super bad."
So yeah, he could pardon Snowden, but the consequences could be ruinous to the US, even if it is "The Right Thing" to do.
Right. Much better to send the message that even if the disclosure proves warranted, even if we end up agreeing that reforms are needed, even if it's clear that the 'appropriate channels' are broken, if you disclose we'll hound and pursue you to the ends of the earth.
/sarcasm
Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers led to charges, that were later dropped, and we didn't see some huge number of whistleblowers.
So I assert your claim is a poor one. History has not shown that granting a pardon to a whistleblower has led to inappropriate leaking, and the chilling effect of not doing it when appropriate (or deciding it's not appropriate when it clearly was, such as now), is not worth the trade off.
I don't think history can help us here, as 1960/1970 was a fundamentally different time than now. It's infinitely easier to proliferate information to the population, and there are no barriers to doing so now, whereas the newspapers were gatekeepers of public dissemination when Ellsberg did what he did.
the newspapers were gatekeepers of public dissemination when Ellsberg did what he did
They are still in the Snowden case as well.
Also, to declare that history cannot help in the analysis of a problem in the present is to admit defeat. To fully understand the present, the only real tool you have is history.
The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.
Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear photographic evidence of white ringleaders. White murderers knew that the fiction of official non-recognition was not a rule, yet the reality of the precedent thus set led to many other mob lynchings.
All of this is to say that even though a pardon is not a rule and should be recognized as such, that only helps matters if every potential future leaker sees it as an exception and not a new precedent.
> The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.
Some types of classified data leaks are more equal than others. The same is true of violations of any criminal law. That's why the pardon power exists (and, in part, why jury nullification is important) -- because no law can ever perfectly account for all edge cases.
> Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear photographic evidence of white ringleaders.
That repeated pattern of false portrayals to put a public face on a decision not to prosecute is very different than a pardon that does not deny that a crime was committed, and does not falsely assert ambiguity in the identity of the responsible party, etc.
But given that the pardon involves a wide swath of classified data disclosures, only a minority of which have any obvious "American civil liberties!" tie, how do our hypothetical future leaker determine that a pardon might be appropriate for him, while a hypothetical future spy determines that a pardon would not be granted in their case (especially if they leak something of public import simultaneously)?
A pardon sends a very mixed message here, precisely because Snowden has crafted a very mixed message.
Pardons are purely discretionary acts of Presidents, not applications of legal principles that any reasonable person can expect to be applied in future cases; absent a pattern by multiple Presidents, no sane person would see a past pardon as a reliable precedent—at most it's a source of hope that if a similar political situation is created as a result of the act that there might conceivably be a similar result.
But other people (in some federal organisations) where pardoned for tormenting people and other felonies. So, as your statement holds: In the US tormenting and breaking basic human rights will be tolerated also in the future?
The US gov. is applying double standards.
Seems to be widespread today in so called "free western countries".
>...it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start leaking privileged information.
The thing that government can do to prevent that from occurring is to demonstrate actual whistleblower protection schemes, and correct flaws when exposed.
As I understand it, that would leave open the possibility of charges being brought against him again in the future, provided it never got beyond the "charges" stage.
You're a traitor the second you commit treason. You just can't be sent to jail until it's proven in court. Most of the recent attempts to convict people on espionage or similar charges have failed in court. Manning's case is still pending. Snowden would almost certainly be convicted of something. Treason seems highly unlikely.
We would probably end up with Edith Snowden (Like Bradley, er Chelsea Manning). Seriously - with Gitmo et al, why would anyone put themselves at the tender mercies of our justice system when high-level personnel have it out for them?
No stopgaps on data collection, only increased permissions to access the stored data. No word on how difficult it is to acquire those increased permission levels, could simply be an additional form to file.
NSLs remain nearly untouched. "Warrants" will continue to be issued with negligible oversight.
> Create a panel of advocates to represent privacy concerns in significant cases.
Because the process remains secretive with no constant public advocate presence, there's no reasonable way to initiate the process to determine what is a "significant case". Just as before, we cannot contest breaches of privacy if we are not aware of them.
this is the single most dangerous thing about current law enforcement. NSLs completely subvert any recourse to the judiciary without immense risk to yourself. Luckily most judges seem to agree on the ridiculousness of NSLs , and are trying to whittle down the power they have.
> Third, the legal safeguards that restrict surveillance against U.S. persons
> without a warrant do not apply to foreign persons overseas. This is not
> unique to America; few, if any, spy agencies around the world constrain their
> activities beyond their own borders. And the whole point of intelligence is to
> obtain information that is not publicly available. But America’s capabilities
> are unique. And the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and
> fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special
> obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do.
Thanks. We, foreign consumers of american services and products, will sure remember this one.
Seen nearly 10 years ago in Cologne, sadly I don't know the name of the artist (it was in a museum, he filled huge walls with such drawings). I know HN frowns on images, but I don't have the eloquence to express what this picture is saying anyway, so I'd rather post that instead of nothing. At least it's not a meme - not yet, anyway. Here's hoping :P
A century or two from now, when other nations reflect on the rise and fall of the United States, the Bush-Obama era will be one of the most striking because of how it fundamentally changed civil rights and the relationship between government and the press.
Has the relationship between the government and the press really changed that much? The pentagon papers happened before, and the gov't didn't much like that.
Civil rights have definitely gotten worse in the past 15 years, but I'd say they're still better than before 1978 (when FISA was written). Before things like the FISA, the executive was pretty free to do almost anything (and did, see Hoover). As a long term trend, civil rights have been increasing, not decreasing. We've made mistakes that we need to roll back, but acting like this is the fall of the United States as we know it is pretty myopic (people have been predicting the fall of the United State since the 1800s), and not putting much faith into our institutions (which aren't the worst).
I agree that this era is one for the history books on the topics of civil rights and digital data.
But I doubt very much the context will be the fall of the U.S., because--can you name a nation that is not struggling with these issues? Both in government and in private life?
I think it remains to be seen where it all nets out for each nation. Human society in general is being changed by digital data. I would not bet against the U.S. because we have a history of being pretty good at adapting to social change.
And yet both had their legions of die-hard supporters who acted like said president could do no wrong. What's that say about the people they governed?
There's just really no way that future textbooks will have anything good to say about this era of American politics. (Unless they're biased or propaganda.)
You're assuming that the successors of Bush and Obama won't be as bad or even worse (if that's imaginable...and it is, I think). This era may mark a crucial point at which the collapse of the U.S. accelerated, I'll grant, though we shouldn't paint too rosy a portrait of their predecessors. They had their part to play as well. Every politician likes to use a crisis, especially a blatant failure of the State, in order to increase its power, extract more money from the population, and so forth.
> A century or two from now, when other nations reflect on the rise and fall of the United States, the Bush-Obama era will be one of the most striking because of how it fundamentally changed civil rights and the relationship between government and the press.
Aside from the lack of historical perspective rtpg comments on, I think you (And rtpg, too) are confusing "civil rights" and "civil liberties".
Obama = Change. Change = same shit, different day.
Obama has basically said that he knew about all of this, and he was ok with everything the government was doing. However, now that it's all public knowledge, he thinks that we need changes. Have some testicular fortitude, Mr. President. Either you are ok with what NSA does, or you are not. Don't make a speech where you tell me that you were cool with what NSA was doing all the way up to the point when it became public knowledge. And don't tell me in one sentence that this is an important public debate, and in another condemn the man who brought about this debate, Mr. Snowden.
Obama promised change, but Snowden just might actually deliver on that promise.
For me as a German, all this does nothing. It was never and is still not advisable to store data on US servers and it is not advisable to use US IT services. Data is collected by the NSA and will be used by the US in arbitrary ways (economic espionage, extortion, no-fly lists, physical attacks, influencing political decisions, kidnapping, ...) without any international control.
Who is going to trust Obama? Then, who is going to trust the NSA?
Only fools. James Clapper lied about what the NSA was up to, to Ron Wyden, a member of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper has still not been charged with anything.
There is no way to oversee an organization that only has to tell you whatever it wants to. Do people really not understand such a basic concept as this? Congress does not have special insight into what the NSA is doing. Everything Congress knows is whatever the NSA wants to tell Congress. It's all a sham. Kangaroo courts and pretend justice. As fake as all that crap North Korea shows tourists. As fake as Saddam's elections in Iraq.
Big up to the NYTimes. I'm impressed with US newspapers' willingness to speak up despite what they know about the surveillance. Those journalists can expect to be investigated and any wrongdoing will take them to jail. They're brave. We should thank them.
> Do not "subvert, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable generally available commercial encryption" or standards.
I wish so bad that there was at least some kind of address for this. I highly doubt it will hit mainstream attention anytime soon again unless some kind of publicly accessible (read: marketable) scandal occurs to bring the news media around again.
I figure that one is way too abstract for him to address in a speech anyway, so I'm not surprised to see it wasn't mentioned. (This article specifically discusses his speech)
It is absolutely not "too abstract" to address in a speech. He could have said something like, "This administration regards the technologies of public cryptography as a crucial piece of modern life, and an underpinning of liberty on the internet. As such, I am directing the NSA to under no circumstances attempt to weaken such standards."
If JFK could say, "We're gonna go to the moon, I have no idea how," then Obama can say, "The NSA will not undermine cryptography standards."
If JFK could say, "We're gonna go to the moon, I have no idea how," then Obama can say, "The NSA will not undermine cryptography standards."
You don't see the difference between those two statements?
Every American can dream about traveling to the moon and the ambition that represents. There's probably not 1% of the country that even understands what cryptography is, let alone how it might be undermined.
i voted twice for Obama, i feared for society if we had to deal with more leaders like Bush. to see a hero of mine fall so hard. I personally feel betrayed... i will never trust a republican, but now i can't trust democrats either. the fact is we need to do git clone github.com/germany/pirateparty.git usaTechParty.
A party that upholds the desires of its supporters, even giving thema voice and instituting some form of liquid democracy.
blah blah Obama just talking, trying to keep us on the edge, give the dogs a bone.
These government people move way to slowly, how long does it take with todays technology to communicate and figure out what needs to change? The longer we just keep 'talking', the longer they can continue with their scraping of data and secrets.
Someone or something is going to have the data; there's nothing that can be done about that. Marketers have been doing for a long time, the NSA just got CAUGHT. Marketers use it to make money by making sure you see the best ad for you, the NSA uses it to make money by 'stopping terrorists'. But what if all the data was free and the programs turing it into useful information were open-sourced? That would change the market entirely. Anyone could see the most important scraped news of the day, whether its a terrorist threat or just thrending news. It could be like a social network that everybody has already joined. Privacy would be interesting. Maybe you could only see from others what you choose to share yourself. But thats too long to get into here...
Clearly what needs to be done is this: the data that the NSA collects should only be accessible by the program. It needs to be fully autonomous. The biggest concern with the vast collection of data and secrets is the human element. So we should simply take the human element out of it. Make an open-sourced program and algorithm that reads the data when it needs to and automatically gets the results to those who need to see it. The code could be posted on github and master pulls can be voted on by the whole world, but we can start with just America maybe at first.
All of America shuts down for simple things such as football and the superbowl, dead peoples birthdays, religious holidays. I think we could dedicate a day or two to a simultaneous conversion about important things happening in our country moderated by artificial intelligence and by the end of the day take action on what we agreed upon. Gallup releases 'polls' so quickly, how come nothing comes from those?
But if we don't trust an artificial intelligence then WHO can we trust? Obama? Clapper? The Pope?
We could physically implement this system ourselves if we needed to, after we figure out what we as a nation/world want. There's a data center in Utah. We could literally go there and take control. but how many people would a 'protest' like that require? and if we come to the conclusion that thats the only other option, we should hurry before the military and Google finalize the perfect humanoid robot. Or else all hope might be lost. The people vs armies of drones and robots. Elysium here we come.
for months everybody is leaning back, watching information we already knew being unveiled. comfortably everybody is waiting for somebody to do something. for politics to correct itself. now politics reacts, everybody is kind of outraged because, you didn't guess it, they don't do anything instead of lamenting utter bullshit and discussions rise again. endless, as you should know by now, useless discussions pointing out this and that but nobody, in the middle of all confusion, reaches the simple conclusion:
you are fucked.
we are fucked.
we'll get fucked forever if we go on like that.
but i guess it's too hard for us tech people, supposedly highly educated with great intellect, to wrap our head around this. code, business and money are more important.
not at all. I just feel it is time that someone else takes the role of world tyrant for a while. Very sick of USA belting out that holier than thou crap.
And remember, these are only executive changes, which means if the next president is worse, well then the changes can be undone with the stroke of a single pen by a single person (and they might even decide not to tell the public).
The permanent bulk collection of data continues for future use by any president or agency when the laws don't hinder them. It's a library they can peruse now or 50 years from now.
ps. someone needs to do a mashup of his first campaign speech to end abuses, arguing against this other person