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Well, in all honesty, he should be charged.
Legal sorts... if the government is prosecuting someone and has exculpatory evidence aren't they required to produce it?
Espionage act says that classified information cannot be divulged to unauthorized people; the American public is unauthorized.Fennis said:
They've basically tried to refute everything he said and have claimed innocence. Now they want to charge him for a crime? I thought he was lying?
I don’t give two ####s about some extremely broad act that was used 3 times before the current administration decided they found a broad tool they could use to go after people who let the American people know about dangerous unconstitutional programs or let the press know about critical information. People you should be looking as a hero.
If the administration wanted consistency, they needed to charge Snowden; this was the same logic that they used to name Rosen as a co-conspirator and eventually use it to spy on his emails and Fox's servers. I never said I support the administration, and I would imagine most of you would know that this is not the case, but I have said my thoughts on Snowden's motives are still undecided. I always thought that Obama was too inept to run the Government and every time he pleads ignorance it just reinforces it to me...then there is the possibility that he has an "enemies list".
I don't think the bolded is true ... not since Snowden released his information.
Depends on who "they" refers to, Obama said nobody is listening to your phone calls. If you don't think he is trying to refute Snowden's claims with that statement, why make it?
I didn't realize Snowden said that phone calls were being listened to on a wide scale -- I thought the big news Snowden released regarded phone-call meta-data collection where phone-call content was specifically excluded from dumb-trawl collection. IOW, did Obama specifically speak against something Snowden released? Obama (or another high-level official) may well have ... I could have missed it.
I've heard Venezuela, Iceland and now Equator, if I was him I don't think I would telegraph my next move.
I see. Thanks for that.
Much like the DNI, Obama is being deceptive here.
Regarding Obama shooting from the hip, you make it sound like Obama is not aware of what the NSA was up to.
One of my no-proof hare-brained pet theories about this kind of stuff is that the sitting President is actually kept largely in the dark about such programs. I think there are a lot of government officials and programs that work outside and above recognized legal frameworks, where chain of command gets wonky and veers off in unexpected directions.
Fair enough, but you would think his "people" would brief him before allowing that statement or at least explain what he was refuting and what the facts were.
Again, the problem is that most Americans won't be phased by the question. Just keep me safe from my imaginary terrorists targeting me personally!
One can believe this. The real question is, do you / can you honestly believe their presentation of the program? That's where it fails for me. What they say doesn't add up with the actions. I simply don't believe their presentation of the program.
The government has an obligation to protect national security. That is not a conspiracy theory. The government's obligation to conspire regarding national security is conspiracy fact. It is obligated to conspire to protect national security.
Yep.
This presents a tough Catch-22:
Of course not...there has to be "trust" here. The problem then becomes the "government" is seen as a whole, so when politicians are screwing us, there is less and less good will for situations like this. The #### is rolling down the hill. It starts with the government's face to us the people (the politicians). They screw us, it's assumed that the whole government, including these agencies, are screwing us.
It's not unreasonable, IMO, for you or anyone to not believe the government's presentation. But as for myself, I'm not there yet. I agree that some of the actions are questionable, but I it doesn't necessarily lead me to the assumption that the government is deliberately trying to mislead the public.
I completely disagree with the bolded. Most people will NOT live "normally" knowing that pretty much everything they do is being recorded and stored in one way or another. It's "normal" for people to do things they only want a limited number of people to know about. What the NSA is doing will discourage that "normal" behavior to a great degree.
Big surprise, but as to the bolded, I agree with Doug and disagree with you. You wrote that "most people will not live 'normally'". Most people are either unaware of this story, or don't really care about it, so I can guarantee you're already wrong. But even among those who do know about this story and care about it, I don't believe that more that an extremely small percentage of them will allow this story to affect anything they do or the way they do it. I'm sure you'll be able to provide, if you want to, some anecdotes that attempt to prove me wrong, but that's all they'll be: anecdotes.
What does your guarantee entitle me to?
I'm kind of assuming my personal experience is typical. So far, I'm still allowed to choose where I live & work, move freely to do business with establishments of my choosing, associate with friends of my choosing, send my children to the best schools I can afford, and so forth. My immediate, "use them every day" civil liberties appear to be intact. Not being able to do anything about the NSA stuff, I just have to compartmentalize knowledge of the surveillance in the same way I compartmentalize 3rd party knowledge of my SSN, 3rd party knowledge of my banking and point-of-sale transactions, IRS knowledge of my salary and employment history, DMV and USPS knowledge of my address, and other public records about me that are out there.
The things people do, that they only want a limited number of people having knowledge of, aren't major life decisions, like the examples you gave.I'm kind of assuming my personal experience is typical. So far, I'm still allowed to choose where I live & work, move freely to do business with establishments of my choosing, associate with friends of my choosing, send my children to the best schools I can afford, and so forth. My immediate, "use them every day" civil liberties appear to be intact. Not being able to do anything about the NSA stuff, I just have to compartmentalize knowledge of the surveillance in the same way I compartmentalize 3rd party knowledge of my SSN, 3rd party knowledge of my banking and point-of-sale transactions, IRS knowledge of my salary and employment history, DMV and USPS knowledge of my address, and other public records about me that are out there.
I've still got a life to live -- and for the most part, I'm hoping that the NSA stays out of my way, and I stay out of theirs. Miles from ideal, but I'm not convinced a better bargain is out there to be struck in 2013.
What do you have in mind?
