General News NSA and the usual stuff

I hate how all the far-right thinks that Edward Snowden is a hero. Yeah, some people got spied on, but do you understand how many lives have been saved?

 

I agree. Maybe it's my military background or my high level clearance but there are methods of whistleblowing in place. Go to your boss, the hers, then hiss. Heck go to the House committee, the Senate.

Before anyone jumps all over me, I am not saying the NSA was right or wrong in what they did, I am saying that Snowden is guilty. He signed an NDA for his clearance just like I signed mine. If I saw something highly unethical in the nuclear weapons field you bet I would travel up the chain until I found the person who cared

Foxface

 

If it's in the news section shouldn't there be a link or some context? I have no idea from the parent message what the topic is about.

 

I always try and watch how far I go on something because I feel like if I can get it done or can talk to others around me, I don't want to cause a scene.

What upsets me is what does this mean for the future? The NSA would be stupid if they didn't tighten security! So what happens if something really bad was going on? Like, what if little kittens were being sent to outer space without any catnip? Now that's bad!

I think the NSA needs to lay off some of the spying. Like...I understand spying in terms of protecting us, but the whole world leader thing? That's just silly.

It just goes along with how so many Americans can't get more than one picture at a time. Okay...so we are spied on. If not, I guess we don't need any other protection, we can just do it ourselves?

 

I think the NSA is a symbol of our deteriorating freedom around the world.

If it were Bush doing this stuff, all the Democrats would be up in arms about the NSA.

This is not a liberal/conservative issue, this is a libertarian/authoritarian issue.

 

Sean Hannity in 2005-2007 on the issue of spying:

"Why is your party (The Democratic Party) so against national security? The Democrats brag about killing the Patriot Act, are against the NSA Surveillance, what will your party do to keep the nation safe? These techniques are working, and it's staggering to me that we're even debating the use of these techniques in this country."

Sean Hannity on spying after Barack Obama becomes President:

"Big Brother is monitoring your every move, whether it be online or on the telephone. This is America! And as law-abiding American citizens, you have a right to privacy. These actions by the Obama administration are a clear violation of the 4th Amendment."

_________________________

So it's great and fine and dandy when Bush does it, in fact it's a success and is keeping the nation safe, but as soon as a Democrat takes office, then it's unconstitutional and _TYRANNY_ is coming and we've gone back 29 years to "1984." On a side note, Sean Hannity is your typical partisan hack.

 

Tyranny is tyranny no matter who is in office. Also I was more talking about everyday Democrats, not Democrats in politics.

I should add that I'm not conservative. I'm actually a libertarian socialist.

 

It's difficult for me to pick a side in the NSA debate because neither side is completely right or wrong.

We should undoubtedly be concerned that the government is abusing its powers and violating the 4th Amendment. At the same time, the NSA is needed to protect this country and I'm OK with sacrificing some privacy to protect this country.

As for Edward Snowden, he's a criminal. Period.

---------- Post added 7th Nov 2013 at 10:40 PM ----------

By stating "all the far-right," I'm presuming you're not suggesting that every conservative/Republican is against the NSA, right? Because that would clearly be nonsensical.

In fact, neoconservatives are all for the NSA, and many House Republicans voted to continue to fund them back in the summer. The Tea Party and libertarians are against the NSA.

 

Neocons are the only ones I hear screaming about how Obama is using the NSA to gain everybody's personal information and all this other crap.

 

Huh?

That's definitely not true. The majority of neoconservatives strongly favor the NSA. Tea Partiers and libertarians, as I said, do not.

 

If Snowden thinks he's doing such a right thing, then why not come and face trial if he's doing the right thing? I'm kind of mixed on the NSA. Obviously some repubs are just out to attack the president, and some democrats would be criticising a Republican president if they did the same thing. I think if lives can be saved that's great, but don't impede on our civil liberties to no avail.

 

My continuing disillusionment and lack of faith in any politician and the political system paves the way for the beacon of Anarchy in my mind ^.^

In all seriousness though, I found it infinitely amusing to witness all of Washington freak over Snowden, since practically all their hands are dirty!

 

I don't know too much about this sort of thing, but I'm kind of okay with it. I mean, I'd rather people didn't spy on me, don't get me wrong, but it does help with national security. If it helps stop terrorism and things like that, it's kind of worth it. I do have an issue with them not telling us openly about it, though.

 

The NSA is quite terrible. I'm rather annoyed with the US for tapping into Merkel's and other leaders' phones, but ordinary diplomatic espionage is fine, even necessary. Indonesia is causing a media stir against Five-Eyes (Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) spying, despite it being well-known that the spying occurs, and the regional allocations of spying are available to the public.

Spying is routine, and domestic security requires interior spying. That does not mean, however, that the ease of access to personal material available to US intelligence personnel is justified.

I want my information to be available to the government, should I ever be a danger. But without the direct approval of the relevant minister and the departmental secretary, there should be no delving into personal correspondence and physical possessions, and no foreign government should be able to do so under any circumstances.

 

I think Snowden actually tried to avoid endangering lives by selecting which information to bring to the public? I think it's good that he gave this information to the public, better to know about it as early as possible, so that a police state can be avoided or stopped.

And about going through official routes (head of security, government etc.), they've proven that they can't be trusted to either to uphold human rights or even their own constitution, so it's better that someone actually brought this to the public instead of keeping the real crimes and lies undercover by going through the official route.

My opinion about the NSA: They've made sure that whatever respect the USA had for being the 'land of the free' has gone in the rest of the world, for only minor profit, and they give a bad example to other police states around the world..

From what I remember how people around here thought about the USA ~15 years ago:
-Stopped the nazi's/USSR
-Hamburgers and Hollywood
-World's policeman

How they think now:
-Corrupt political system
-Drones
-Falsified evidence to go into war with Iraq
-Police state that spies on everyone, but that's ok as long as only foreigners are spied upon (Obama's actual words...)

: (

 

A lot of them are.

 

I assume this is towards my comment but there are means that are totally legal and outside of direct administration that can be used. Just because one route failed does not mean another will. If I had absolute proof that he literally went to every agency and committee and they all told him to keep quiet, then yes I would agree he was a hero but short of that he is a criminal

I won't re-outline what I posted in the other thread but it's there

Foxface

 

I've always sort of had the feeling that the goverment could be spying on people by tapping into their phones and stuff, so the whole NSA topic didn't come as surprising to me.

However, I can't believe how so many people seem to be OK with what they do. They have no right to deliberately tap into people's personal lives. Sorry, but the whole "we need to protect our country" sounds like an excuse to me for spying on people. No, this is definitely not OK. Why would you spy on members of the EU? Does the US really think they're trying to do a terrorist attack on the US? What were they thinking?

 

Manning and Snowden are criminals. They broke the NDA they (and I ) signed when they were awarded their security clearance. As Foxface said there are many different routes that they could have gone that would not have criminally released classified information to unauthorized persons. If criminal activity were reported to the agencies charged with oversight, something would have been done. It still would have remained classified, but the people involved can still be fired and go to jail, the public just wouldn't hear about it. This actually happens all the time.

NSA was created to spy, as was CIA, I think they have gone overboard, and now that this information has come to light it should be acted upon as well, but that doesn't change the fact that Manning, and Snowden are criminals.