Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden | Hacker News Reader

Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden

thelocal.dk

342 pointsflexie303 comments

Can a US citizen explain what seems to me tobe a dissonance, between the government putting huge efforts and resource in trying to arrest a citizen speaking out against the government doing illegal spying on its own people (an almost no reaction from other citizens), and people defending the right to bear weapons to protect themselves from the government turning into a dictatorship?

Well part of it is pretty simple. He stole, as in removed classified information without permission from a secure facility and disseminated millions of pages of classified information to non-approved parties (everyone in the world). If it were legal to remove classified information without permission, because you felt entitled to, then that could be a legal defense. But it's clearly not, so he sought political asylum in Russia. If however, there was a directive from the President or office of legal counsel to shut down the program and if NSA had kept it running, him exposing an illegal program could be a legal defense - had he gone through the appropriate channels. But there was nothing illegal about it at the time. So he committed the crime, not NSA...

To add to your comment, he took an enormous amount of data. It was sweeping and pretty indiscriminate. And he gave it to the media.

Some of what he took and shared could be legitimately argued as whistle blowing but there's lots of other classified data about legitimate programs that was taken as well.

Isn't the more important point whether or not he exposed serious corruption and illegal activity? We forgive the police breaking the law, in order to enforce it, all the time.. the classic example of speeding to catch a speeder.

It seems disingenuous to focus on the collateral damage of his action and ignore the main target. We forgive our military their collateral damage all the time as an unfortunate side effect of pursuing a noble mission. Shouldn't he be afforded the same?

> Isn't the more important point whether or not he exposed serious corruption and illegal activity? We forgive the police breaking the law, in order to enforce it, all the time.. the classic example of speeding to catch a speeder.

But...that's not breaking the law. When speeding is done as part of the police officer's job, it is not breaking the law.

In contrast, when a police officer speeds while not carrying out their duty, that is indeed breaking the law. The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2013 was awarded to an investigation that uncovered illegally speeding cops: http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7180

> that's not breaking the law. When speeding is done as part of the police officer's job, it is not breaking the law.

By definition, whistleblowing is disclosing information that shouldn't be disclosed.This is why there needs to be whistleblower protection: so that the "illegal" action is no longer considered illegal but a civic duty.

> The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2013 was awarded to an investigation that...

Funny you should mention that, in 2014, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to journalists who worked with material illegally provided by Edward Snowden: http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7200

>But...that's not breaking the law. When speeding is done as part of the police officer's job, it is not breaking the law.

What about the FBI running a honey pot where they continue to allow children to be abused? Technically legal, but is it really something we should tolerate?

I think this is the key issue that really muddies the Snowden issue.

I completely agree with Snowden's leaking of the domestic spying program information, but he also leaked a lot of information not related to that. Foreign spying is basically what the NSA is supposed to do.

Did he also leak information about spying on enemies? Or only about spying on allies?

Both, and that's the key issue. Here's an example:

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266875/exclusive...

And he gave it to the media.

That makes it sound like he dumped it indiscriminately.

Which is very misleading.

Can you give an example?

Listening in on Merkel's phone calls. Yes, an ally of the US but allies spy on each other all the time and have and will for all time. Was it illegal? That's a hard no. Was it immoral? That's an interesting debate.

Edit: Though I did appreciate her Captain Renault impression about being so terribly shocked that as head of state she was a target for espionage.

> Was it illegal? That's a hard no.

It was illegal under German law. Should we ignore the laws of our close allies?

Being a foreign spy is always illegal. That's the point of it, and why spies are separate from soldiers and police.

Whether or not we should, it later came out that they were doing the same to us.

If I were a German taxpayer and the BND weren't spying on the US I would want a refund.

He doesn't have to. Both Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have acknowledged both that there are documents in the Snowden tranche that are not in the public interest to disclose, and that all the documents had not been reviewed before being turned over to reporters.

So you're saying you have no examples, and that the only people privy to any supposed non-public-interest disclosure were the journalists at a few major newspapers.

No, that is not what I said.

He cannot, because any sensitive data that is not in the public's interest, to be made public, has not been.

>The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL and the New York Times

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chine...

>Research by SPIEGEL reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter. And there is evidence that agents based at Pariser Platz recently targeted the cellphone that Merkel uses the most.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-...

Well, I suppose it's in China's and Germany's interests, but doing things like that that benefit another country at the expense of your own is generally called treason.

It may generally be called treason by some people, but in the US the definition of the crime of treason is specifically constrained to avoid abuses.

>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Revealing national security secrets to Enemies doesn't count as Aid?

It's sort of amazing that treason is a still a charge that can be levelled. Seeing the word outside the context of a 18th century history (or earlier) still catches me, and with Snowden it's hardly recent news.

That's a bit of an oversimplification of the comparison. The right to bear arms is in part a check against tyranny (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...), in that if the citizens are armed a corrupt government may have to be stopped by force. So from a historical perspective there is a clear acknowledgment that a corrupt government's laws may need to be broken to fix a corrupt government.

The initial comment is wise to point out digression in thought from the founding fathers and our current attitude toward government.

Some of what you say is true, but highly misleading (and the 'appropriate channels' issue is still an open question in my opinion). Although Snowden accepted political asylum in Russia, he had little choice at the time.

The US government revoked his passport while he was in an international "no man's land" (i.e. the international side of Russian customs), effectively making him stateless. He had originally planned to transit through Russia on to Cuba, and thereafter Ecuador or Venezuela. By cancelling his passport, the US government effectively trapped him in Moscow.

Heck, he couldn't have even have gotten himself illegally smuggled out. The US government forced the Bolivian president's plane, on its way back from Moscow to Bolivia, to land in Austria, where it was searched. Just on the mere suspicion that Snowden was on board. Forcing down the plane of the head of a sovereign nation and subjecting them to a search in a foreign jurisdiction sounds pretty damn illegal to me. Actually, it sounds like an act of war. But I suppose that doesn't matter when your country spends more on its military than the next 19 countries combined.

Also worth noting that the crimes Snowden has been charged with are two counts of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed just after the US entered WWI. Its original intent is clearly to punish people who endangered military operations during a time of total war. Given this intended purpose, it's a near certainty Snowden would be found guilty if he ever came back to the US to 'face the music':

Professor at American University Washington College of Law and national security law expert Stephen Vladeck has said that the law “lacks the hallmarks of a carefully and precisely defined statutory restriction on speech.” Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, “basically any information the whistleblower or source would want to bring up at trial to show that they are not guilty of violating the Espionage Act the jury would never hear. It’s almost a certainty that because the law is so broadly written that they would be convicted no matter what.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#Criticis...

> The US government revoked his passport while he was in an international "no man's land" (i.e. the international side of Russian customs), effectively making him stateless.

This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in).

He was allowed by the Chinese to flee from a place that had an extradition treaty with the US and wound up in a place that doesn't. He put himself there. Honestly, the "It's the American government's fault I'm in Russia" argument that Snowden and his close supporters have been peddling isn't really much of an argument when it effectively translates to "If it weren't for the US government I'd be in Cuba or Ecuador right now."

> Also worth noting that the crimes Snowden has been charged with are two counts of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed just after the US entered WWI.

I keep seeing this argument being brought up, too. The age of a particular law has no impact on whether or not someone should be accountable for breaking it. If that were the case, I could quite literally get away with murder.

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-...

Wish I could up vote this twice. Forcing down the plane of a foreign head of state is all but kidnapping - how this got so little press is insane.

I think he did try the "appropriate channels" but nothing happened.

That's the first time I've ever heard that. You got a source for that claim? (I'm not suggesting I've researched it, I just have heard a fair amount about the whole thing, and I've just never heard that he tried "appropriate channels").

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/07...

> Edward Snowden said he repeatedly tried to go through official channels to raise concerns about government snooping programs but that his warnings fell on the deaf ears

> In testimony to the European Parliament released Friday morning, Snowden wrote that he reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing

("appropriate channels" was a quote from the previous comment I was replying to)

NSA eventually confirmed it as well http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/pape...

The screenshot there is not about surveillance. Is there a fuller version somewhere?

Also, the article says

>The official said that Snowden had asked a question, but had not “raised concerns” about the NSA’s practices.

This is some mental gymnastics right here. Also this is coming from the very NSA that got outted. They're not going to give any admission to having given Snowden no other alternative, or they've no leg to stand on.

Why are you acting as if there is a difference between asking a question and raising concerns? Going to you boss and saying "I saw X doing Y, is that what should be happening?" is clearly doing both.

Not only did Snowden attempt to raise alarm, but so have others to little effect. Thomas Drake, and William Binney, for starters who were both much higher up in the NSA than Snowden. Neither had any effect on NSA lawbreaking and Drake in particular suffered quite a bit for his efforts. I think it was fair for Snowden to assume and plan for the worst when tattling on the NSA.

It's worth noting that there were no appropriate channels, though. People who tried those in order to address illegal NSA programs either got ignored or had their life ruined (see Thomas Drake). Snowden took the only possible course of action to address this. That the only remaining channel was illegal, is part of the problem.

I think your argument was best summarized by doki_pen below:

> Many Americans believe in following the law no matter what.

But it's clearly not, so he sought political asylum in Russia.

No, that's not what happened.

Go back and read the basic chronology of what happened to him after leaving HK, please.

There's a Catch-22 situation if I ever heard one

I can only give my perspective as a US citizen. The best way that I could explain it is with the phrase "out of sight, out of mind." Issues have much less of an impact if a person doesn't see and feel the direct consequences in their lives.

Lets take the Snowden case. He released tons of info regarding the US spying on it's own citizens, but how does that directly effect my life today? To put another way, how do I FEEL the day to day impact of these programs? The answer is simple, I don't.

I have no idea whether the NSA has a record of every website I have viewed. I have no idea if I have a file on some government server detailing my porn preferences based on my google searches. I don't know if the government knows of my relationship status based on listening in to my phone calls. Essentially, unless and until the government decides to use this information that they may (or may not) have to blackmail/arrest/detain/publicly humiliate me, it doesn't impact my life in a noticeable way

Now, lets compare that with the gun issue. When the federal/state/local government passes a gun law, if I am a gun owner I FEEL the impact of that law. If someone wants to buy an AR-15 and there is a threat of banning the weapon, that person feels the direct impact of the issue in his life. If someone wants to carry a concealed firearm in public (something completely legal in the vast majority of states, btw) but they live some place that does not permit it, they FEEL the impact of that law.

This is also why for people who don't own guns and have no interest in doing so, gun restrictions me nothing to them. Banning assault weapons have no negative impact on the lives of people who have no desire to own such firearms.

I am certainly not saying that the right to firearms is more important than the right to privacy from government surveillance. What I am saying is that it is FAR easier to find and organize people who have felt (or would feel) the real life impacts of gun restrictions, than those who have felt the impact of the NSA's surveillance program.

> Lets take the Snowden case. He released tons of info regarding the US spying on it's own citizens, but how does that directly effect my life today? To put another way, how do I FEEL the day to day impact of these programs? The answer is simple, I don't.

That's a shame because you're in a position to understand what is at stake here. But you don't care and when you'll do, it will most likely too late.

This masterpiece was written by a pastor, Martin Niemöller for the raise of Nazi Germany:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

IMHO this poem applies in every case were we are able to understand the repercussions of some actions, but we choose not to take action because.

By taking action I don't mean take on the streets and protest (that's good too of course), but the very least techies should do in my opinion is to create awareness about the dangers that high-tech, state-level surveillance can bring to a democratic society.

He was speaking from a hypothetical "I". As in, "this is the implicit rationale that many US citizens have", not "this is my own rationale". Not sure if you realized that given you're tailoring your reply to him, not to those people who act under that rationale.

No, I did not. Thanks for pointing that out.

No worries.

Thanks for the poem. We all need to be reminded about this more often.

"... and there was no one left to speak for me"

it may sound terrible, but one shouldn't put one's life into hands of Socialist and Trade Unionists, who might "speak" for us. one should possess a firearm and be able to defend one's life and freedom.

> Essentially, unless and until the government decides to use this information that they may (or may not) have to blackmail/arrest/detain/publicly humiliate me, it doesn't impact my life in a noticeable way

I think that's the crux of it for many people (myself included).

I don't support what the Patriot Act has become, though I do believe in what it "should be". In a perfect world, I really could care less if the government stored all of my data and everything about me. If it could only be used to prove/prosecute my status as a bad actor/terrorist.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the government can be trusted to limit scope in that way. Possibly more relevant, I don't believe all people who work for the government (and could/would/should have access to said information) will always act with my best interest in mind either. Ethics don't come easy to all people.

Also, it's always possible for my information, which I may otherwise choose to keep private, to be lost/stolen/hacked from wherever it resides. I would prefer that door not exist, rather than the keys being held by someone else who may or may not be trustworthy.

It _feels_ like a slippery slope to me. One that seemingly should never exist, based on constitutional rights, etc.

(Note: not trying to flame or troll anything mentioned here, just to discuss serious thoughts).

*EDIT: typo/spelling

Even your trust could be used against you. What if a "bad actor" is defined as someone who publically spreads hostility towards a change in government policy?

Thanks for making my point. Even though I gather you understood what I was saying, you still found a hole in the words I used to state it. Trust alone isn't enough to support _any_ kind of mass surveillance.

The best way that I could explain it is with the phrase "out of sight, out of mind." Issues have much less of an impact if a person doesn't see and feel the direct consequences in their lives.

This sounds like a general problem with modern democracy. Theres so much going on that none of us can keep up with it, including the people who work in politics full-time. The inevitable result is an inability to make intelligent decisions in our own interests. The wisdom of the crowd is all that saves us, except when it doesn't.

> but they live some place that does not permit it, they FEEL the impact of that law.

How is that any diffrent from living in a country where you know you are under 24-7 surveillance? Unless you planned carry a concealed gun all the time, you'd hardly ever be affected - only on the occasions where you'd have otherwise carried.

It is not just knowing that you are under 24-7 surveillance, it is knowing that there will be CONSEQUENCES for "negative" behavior while under that 24-7 surveillance.

For example, if one takes the traditional image of the tyrannical government spying on its citizens (the East German Stasi comes to mind) the fear wasn't just that the government monitors would hear you say something anti-government while in private. The fear was that they would use that private conversation as a reason to imprison, torture, and/or execute you. You had to watch every word you say for fear of detention or death.

Many Americans do not believe that their government would or could use that information against them, especially since they are not terrorists (think of the old cop line "if you are innocent you have nothing to hide). The fact is that much of the information that is being collected by the government is ALREADY being collected by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and AT&T. Most Americans rightfully assume that google is keeping track of their searches, and that AT&T has records of who they call. Why would they trust some corporation with this data, but not their government? I don't necessarily agree with this thinking, but I understand it.

Until there are MULTIPLE reports of the U.S. government using that information against ordinary Americans, you are not going to see much traction on the issue.

> Unless you planned carry a concealed gun all the time, you'd hardly ever be affected - only on the occasions where you'd have otherwise carried.

This might sound strange to people who don't carry guns (particularly if you live in a country were civilian ownership is restricted), but for the people I know with concealed carry permits, many actually do carry all the time (at least everywhere they can legally). These folks don't carry their guns only on special occasions. One firearms instructor told me that he carries everyday because "if I knew the exact day that I would need my gun in public, I would just stay home instead." They treat carrying a gun like wearing a seat belt. You don't only wear your seat belt on the highway or in heavy traffic. As soon as you get in the car, you buckle up.

Most people don't care about NSA surveillance or they agree with it. A surprisingly large number of Americans approve of the Patriot Act. Those who disagree with surveillance often don't understand the full implications of it and don't make any connection between that and the idea that citizens might need to protect themselves from their government by force. For a lot of people, their desire for stricter gun control largely outweighs any desire to arm themselves against their government.

I don't want to turn this into a 2A debate, but it might be partly because gun control seems much more real than someone in a building in Maryland seeing which route they take to work in the morning, even if most of them never had any interaction, positive or negative, with a firearm.

I think the reason stems from fear of death. Very few people actively fear the NSA & government using this information to inflict harm on them to result in their or their loved ones demise. On the other hand, they see the news plastered with murders done with guns and now have some degree of fear.

>A surprisingly large number of Americans approve of the Patriot Act.

Because the vast majority of those people don't understand the repercussions of it. They think it allows the government to "catch the terrorists" on our soil. That's the way it was pitched.

The people in power are still immigrants to the internet and this sort of technology in general. The views regarding domestic spying will change as more technologically savvy people age and move into politics. That's why they're trying so hard to push certain legislation, before it's too late.

They think it allows the government to "catch the terrorists" on our soil. That's the way it was pitched.

And it does. Some people are worried enough to think that is worth the price.

Let's assume that's true for the sake of argument. Then why stop there? Why not monitor all communications to also catch murderers and rapists and tax cheats? Why have a 4th amendment at all? What makes "terrorism" substantially different than any other crime?

Sure, why not? There are people out there that would happily have their communications monitored in order to catch murderers. Tax cheats, maybe not - no-one lives in fear of a tax cheat.

I'm not saying this is a wise or sensible opinion, but people still hold it - not everyone is just "ill informed".

I disagree. They're ignorant. How could they not be? 3000 people died in the twin towers. Thats nothing. The spying is far scarier. They own us. Totally. No one can escape it. Anyone who intends subversive action can be targetted. They can be approached and manipulated by an agent who knows everything about them. The would-be-subversive can be nudged, sabotaged or flat out blackmailed. There won't be any more rights movements in this environment. At least not "real" ones. They will manufacture contrived movements to subdue us. Anyone who thinks this is right hasn't thought it through; They are wrong.

If you're one of the people holding this opinion, you are wrong.

At the very least you're wrong about them being properly informed.

> Anyone who intends subversive action can be targetted. They can be approached and manipulated by an agent who knows everything about them. The would-be-subversive can be nudged, sabotaged or flat out blackmailed.

You've just highlighted why the average American is scared of terrorists but not the NSA: 3000 people did die on 9/11. There is no evidence of the NSA targeting Americans, or nudging/sabotaging/blackmailing them.

The military could easily storm Washington DC, topple the government, execute every Congressman, impose martial law and announce the start of a new regime under the sole authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You'd have to be pretty nuts to worry that's actually going to happen.

Also, referring to people who disagree with you as ignorant isn't generally the best way to change their minds.

Anyone who intends subversive action can be targetted

But if you identify with your current government (for whatever rationale), should you not fear subversive action?

Anyone who intends subversive action can be targeted.

Yeah but if I don't intend subversive action then I'm fine, so

Not all opinions are created equal.

>And it does.

Maybe. Do you have any evidence? How many terrorists have been captured on American soil since 2002? How many were caught thanks to the Patriot Act?

One of the Boston bombers was captured.

> And it does. Some people are worried enough to think that is worth the price.

That's a broad claim. From everything I've read, there has not been much real success. Can you point me to some news reports where the spying actually helped catch real terrorists? The only case I know of is a Somali expat sending money home, which ended up in Al Shabab's hands.

Most of the terrorist attacks taking place in the USA are staged by the FBI: https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrori...

The article you've cited discusses the FBI and a single terrorist. I'd like to see the citation for most attacks being staged by the FBI.

Here's another one: https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/another-terror-arrest-an...

And another one: https://theintercept.com/2015/04/29/tamerlan-tsarnaevs-path-...

More: https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-te...

And more: https://theintercept.com/2015/02/25/isis-material-support-pl...

Then there's this: https://theintercept.com/2015/01/16/latest-fbi-boast-disrupt...

And this: https://theintercept.com/2015/06/25/fort-dix-five-terror-plo...

If you want more mainstream, CNN says the FBI staged 30 attacks since 2001. [0]

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/opinions/terrorists-confidants...

Plots, not attacks. There is an important difference.

After COINTELPRO law enforcement as a whole in both the US and other countries moved to a subversion model as opposed to an adversarial model. This is why the FBI or local police have infiltrators or paid informants in virtually every activist group in the US, regardless of whether or not those groups are actually affiliated with terrorism -- if they ever start leaning that way, LEA will step in and disrupt it from the inside.

The way this works out in practice is that every agent sees an opportunity to advance their career by manufacturing threats. So they have their infiltrator agent or their informants stir the pot, see who's "really down for the cause," get as deeply embedded with the group as they can (going so far as to have children with members in some occasions), and gradually shift the group towards extremism, or if the group won't go along with it, whoever they can splinter off and radicalize.

Once this person has incriminated themselves enough, they get arrested and charged with terrorism.

I'm not going to cite any sources because you could easily find reasons to dismiss them. Certainly, I don't know of any listing of all arrests for terrorists accompanied by all the case details, so I'll certainly never be able to provide quantitative evidence of this very real trend. Also, I think that looking all of this up and finding it out piece by piece will be valuable for you -- it's very easy to dismiss a fully formed theory such as this comment, but it's more difficult to dismiss all the little pieces of evidence you build up over time. Maybe keep a document with all the incidences you find, to prevent yourself from dismissing every single one of them as "only about one case -- not a trend" and by induction, determining there is no issue.

> Most people don't care about NSA surveillance or they agree with it.

John Oliver went to the streets with the question, if people have ever send a naked photo of themselves with a cellphone or email, should the government have the right to collect and look at those photos?

None of the people agreed that the government should have that right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M#t=24m54s

>Those who disagree with surveillance often don't understand the full implications

No, those invading countries, killing people with drones, torturing people in concentration camps, creating even more animosity against the USA don't understand the full implications. Why aren't we talking about those implications?

> Why aren't we talking about those implications?

Assuming I've understood your question properly, my suspicion is that there isn't an easy, one-line, (ideally rhyming) sound-bite defence against accusations of disloyalty.

When you question aggressive foreign policy you get accused of everything from "not supporting our troops" to being "soft on terror", take your pick.

It's a little like how Obama's drive to address economic inequality seems (to an outsider at least) to have collapsed because of repeated accusations of "class war". There was no snappy defence.

Or being an "isolationist".

I feel like Rand and Ron Paul have been some of the few that have read that paper by the CIA on Blowback.

> Why aren't we talking about those implications?

Are you kidding? Frankly, people never shut up about them. Even that famous "We Are All Americans" article after September 11th, 2001 went on about how the attacks were blowback for past American misbehavior.

You're begging the question here.

The U.S. Department of Justice's reason for pursuing Snowden is because he perpetrated the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history. Speaking out against the government, which isn't a crime in the U.S., is not sufficient for being arrested.

Can you imagine one of your customers permitting a developer to walk away with their entire code repository and internal strategy docs, without calling the police?

Speaking against the government alone isn't a crime. It happens daily across many venues. Hell, I've got folks on my Facebook feed practically plotting to overthrow the government over the Oregon/Bundy controversy.

This explains the motivation of the US intelligence community in calling the police, yes. But It doesn't explain the willingness of the people of the nation to abet his prosecution.

To take your analogy and apply it more accurately:

Can you imagine one of your customers permitting a developer to walk away with the entire code repository that demonstrates massive violations of US law and internal strategy docs about how they intend to violate those laws without shutting him up permanently?

The Snowden leaks didn't demonstrate "massive violations of US Law."

Essentially one documents out of thousand upon thousands really exposed an illegal program (phone meta-data), and even that was done under a good faith legal theory. It took several court cases to find it was against the law. If he just released that FISA order, it would still be illegal, but there would at least by a good argument to not prosecute

He released tons of information about stuff that nobody would credibly think was illegal. Instead he released stuff that exposed spying on foreign countries, the raison d'être of the NSA, and he did it because he was ideologically against spyign. And that's why the DOJ has to go after him.

Said an acquaintance who used to live in the US: "Americans individually are the nicest people you can imagine, and 80% of them have no idea how their government represents them abroad".

It is a puzzle.

More accurately, 80% of them have no idea how the foreign media portrays the way their government represents them abroad. Don't make the mistake of assuming that your giant government-associated news corporations full of hard-ideological reporters and editors are any more trustworthy than Americans'.

You're making it too simple.

You may find the case of the US embassy in Oslo instructive. That building is located quite close to the castle and the other embassies, on a major thoroughfare, and has suffered much poor press because they insisted on closing off half the road due to security concerns.

The press has not been favourable to the embassy. But the commuters (that street is/was a major commuter route from the posh western suburbs) don't just read about the traffic problems, they experience them every morning. Of course it didn't help when the newspapers printed headlines like "Americans refuse to move to <quiet backwater>, insist on continued traffic chaos." But the traffic chaos existed and was directly noticeable.

(The situation was eventually defused. The embassy will move.)

I'll give you that our State Department's grotesque levels of incompetence and stupidity don't exactly make it hard for the foreign press to smear the United States; I find it entirely plausible that the same people who couldn't be bothered to put bulletproof glass on a consulate in Libya would try to turn a European ally's capital into an armed camp. That being said, I've still too often seen stories in foreign papers painting perfectly anodyne American actions as the height of villainy to have any more faith in their reporting than I do in American papers'.

Oh, sure. No doubt at all.

I always imagined that the U.S. negotiates abroad rather like Darth Vader negotiates with Lando Calrissian.

"I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

"Perhaps you believe you are being treated unfairly?"

Does that make me part of the 80%, or the 20%?

When all you consume, day in and day out, is propaganda, it becomes reality for you.

I spent 6 years living abroad and got to see the perception of the USA (south america counts as "americans" too) -- in the media in foreign countries, including some discussions of politics with people in europe and south america.

I can answer your puzzle very simply: The media in the USA is controlled by the FCC to a high degree, and all we get to consume inside this country is propaganda of one sort or another. From Fox news to CNN to MSNBC to your local affiliate, you get a very slanted, very consistent take on the news.

John Stewart used to run clips of various reporters reporting on the same story and using the exact same words. This was supposed to be funny- but the thing is, this is because the government manufactures the news for us. Investigative journalism is basically a dead art. And the places that do it still (like Rolling Stones coverage of the housing bubble) are basically putting forth political propaganda pieces as if they were investigative journalism.

The media is not controlled by the FCC in the way you imply. There is no evidence of it and to suggest it is ridiculous. It's accurate to say it's controlled by corporations, who have their own reasons that do seemingly align very well the status quo of current politicians, but that's not to say the news media is in any way coerced. There are plenty of simple, rational reasons why this would be the case.

The reason you see the same lines from channel to channel is because these news outlets buy their stories. They are pre-written and arranged and often include video footage. They do this because original reporting is expensive and it's silly for a hundred reporters to cover the same unimportant subject when a single person can do it and sell it to others. Everyone wins, but it does result in many places not altering the script very much to make it more original. To suggest this is a government plot is silly. Again there is no evidence of this.

You realize the FCC is almost entirely staffed by people from those corporations, right? And if they haven't already worked in the industry they have a standing job offer to do so.

Double plus good comment, comrade. Absolutely absurd that there could be propaganda or control, after all, if that were the case, we would have heard about it, right!

PS- Prove there is no evidence.

PPSS- A negative four vote count on an article pointing out that the media in the USA is mostly propaganda (on a site which bans people who disagree with the sites desired narrative) is... well, super ironic, and a form of a badge of pride.

Operation Mockingbird never went away, it just got a new name...

IMHO, the keeping of guns acts as a crutch [0] that lulls people into thinking they can always fight back when the true time comes. I believe they think there's no need to prematurely worry about mass surveillance (thus Snowden is a criminal), because if the ultimate results are used wrongly, then their guns can be used to put an end to it.

Of course the same pathology applies to democracy itself, so out of the (ballot, jury, ammo) boxen, the only avenue us individualists really have left is the S-box.

[0] Please don't misjudge my perspective - I think people have the right to keep and bear whatever tools regardless of purpose. And I think the 2A, as written, quite obviously covers fully auto, explosives, and armored vehicles. It should perhaps have been revisited with the advent of nuclear weapons though. A good legal test would be stewardship - what type of weapons can an individual/group practice with and store without causing harm to others?

I agree, and I find the viewpoint that guns will protect from Americans from a totalitarian government as naive.

The US military has proven itself very effective at fighting those only armed with small arms. In Iraq roadside bombs have proven a far better weapon than assault rifles.

Trying to imagine the Oregon militia fighting against predator drones seems insane. IMO, the 2A is just an opiate that the government uses to lull right wing voters into acquiescence.

If there is an actual revolution you can expect people within the military to take sides.

If the military [mostly] side with the revolution, civilian legal entitlement to handguns is even more unlikely to affect the outcome than if they don't.

I want nothing at all to do with a 2A debate, but ...

The "nuclear weapons" argument is actually a useful and substantive retort from gun control advocates - I don't think it should be waved away as if it's absurd or silly.

But at the same time, I think there is a very, very simple solution to the "nuclear weapons" problem, and that is to cap firearms capability at whatever the highest capability employed by the state and local law enforcement that one is subject to.

No SWAT team or sheriffs department will have a nuke, so the problem is solved.

Because of posse comitatus[1], you can't end up with a situation where local law enforcement disarms itself completely (and thus, disarms all citizens) and hands over larger tasks to the military, since they can't do that. On some level, local law enforcement in the US needs firearms, so that unintended consequence is skirted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

but ... we jumped right in!

Your test seems like a good one too, but federal domestic law enforcement would need to be included as well. Organized police would flip their bacon, but getting rid of that power asymmetry is kind of the entire point. It could devolve into police using only bureaucracy-approved expensive weapons or network DRM, so it would have to be by general weapon class and we'd need non-corrupt courts for actual implementation.

Ultimately I don't think such "debates" come down to much besides showing how out of hand the government has gotten, through both attrition and precession. The Bill of Rights should be viewed more as a bunch of (failing) test cases than something with hypothetical legal force.

Americans have always had a distrust of government. That's why we fought a war for independence against Britain even though the eventual peaceful federalization of former colonies like Canada and Australia provided that violence wasn't necessary.

Then consider how our constitution was created: it was designed to protect people from the tyranny of the state (which is why gun rights are so prevalent) but also tyranny of the mob (hence the survellience state approach to preventing conflicts from getting out of hand).

I think much of the democratic west is moving towards autocracy, not because of cultural preference, but because of concentrated power from industry and wealthy individuals whose interests dominate politics and so nothing changes.

I think the solution is for more direct democracy, and I believe that many of us on the right and left would prefer that to the fear of powerful top-down implementation of a way of life preferred by one side or the other.

I'm not convinced that more direct democracy is the solution. In fact, I think democracy is the weapon wielded by powerful industry and individuals. When you control the primary sources of information, how difficult is it to convince the people to vote your way? (Not that I know what the solution is...)

The California proposition system reveals, IMO, both the strengths and the weaknesses in direct democracy. On the one hand, when representatives are not doing their jobs, the people can perform an end-run around them and pass any legislation they want.

On the other hand, it's easily manipulated.

Imagine I'm a lawnmower manufacturer. My bought and paid for representatives are concerned, because their constituents are very concerned about the safety of squirrels and want their representatives to pass a law requiring a new type of (more expensive, less efficient) lawn mower. They can't not act, or they won't get re-elected, but they also know they have to do what I want or they won't get my contributions. What to do?

We write a bad law and have someone submit as a proposition. We wage a campaign against it (while our representatives speak out in favor of squirrels), pointing out the very flaws we had put into it and some sob stories about lawn mower factory employees losing jobs and how much more expensive it will be to cut your grass. If it passes, no big deal; we've put enough weaknesses into it to make it largely ineffective. If it doesn't, great! The people have spoken: they don't care about squirrels; and it's not the representatives fault. We probably don't have to worry about it again.

I'm the last person to ignore or undervalue the power of propaganda, yet I believe it is necessary for people to be active citizens who think for themselves. By outsourcing our entire political thought process to representatives (who are more in need of wealthy donors than individual voters) we deny ourselves the chance to think for ourselves.

Besides, even Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, understood the ambiguous relationship between those who craft public perception, and those who are affected by it.

I agree that we need a thoughtful and active citizenry, but I am skeptical that even the most thoughtful and active citizenry can keep abreast of all developments which may affect their lives and remain un-fooled 100% of the time.

In contrast, I think a thoughtful and active citizenry can elect an intelligent, honest, and dedicated individual to office once every 2-6 years to represent their interests and to evaluate the job that individual has done during that term; even if they do not necessarily know or keep abreast of every issue which may affect them personally or collectively.

It is worth noting that the particular bit of federal tyranny the constitution was designed to prevent was ensuring slavery never got abolished. It was the top priority for half the states ratifying it.

That's not too far off the survellience state. Americans want America to be the best in the world at everything, and that takes money and power. Slave owners had plenty of both.

The reprehensible institution that it was, I cannot fathom a way our country could have grown so quickly and so successfully without coerced labor, and, for the native Americans, theft of land. We were in a lot of debt following the revolutionary war. It would have been crushing to pay back otherwise.

No, direct democracy is a tyranny of the majority. What we need is to return to our idealogical roots of our actual governmental system: constitutional republic, or, in better words, constitutional representative democratic republic.

The power of true American exceptionalism lies in the fact that individualism and individual sovereignty is our foundational principle.

As Christopher Hitchens said: "The American Revolution, the one that says, build your public on individual rights, not group rights, have a bill of rights that inscribes these and makes theme legible to everybody, separate the church from the state, separate the executive from the judicial, and the political branch. Do all these things; It doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea. There is hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles. I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course, paradoxically a very conservative one."

"Of course, objectively as well as subjectively, the American revolution is now the only revolution with a fighting chance of survival and success: the idea that you could create a multicultural democracy over a vast expanse of the earth's surface that could possibly be emulated by other people."

What I think is that in allowing the separation of powers and checks and balances functions to erode, particularly giving power to the executive under the banner of war, we have strayed from the fundamental principles of our Constitution, and a return to this model is where the true future of America lies. Of course I don't like saying "a return to" because our history has been filled with issues in this regard, so I want to avoid giving any pretence of a panacea of the past, but the beauty of our system was supposed to be that it would continually, if gradually and slowly, be improved. I no longer thing we are improving in a constitutional sense, and supranational global governance is all but openly accepted on the hill. Borderline treasonous if you ask me.

In an oath the Constitution, one swears to protect and defend it from enemies foreign and domestic. I tell you now, with full conviction, that our Constitution has more numerous and more engrained and powerful domestic enemies than foreign ones.(or domestic enemies backed by foreign ones) The thing is though, our true foreign enemies, the ones who are actually a constitutional threat, don't wear a thwab... they wear business suits and ties.

In my many years of trying to understand the larger geopolitical chessboard since I got out of the military, my conclusion is that all roads of corruption in America lead to DC and to Wallstreet, but that most roads of corruption from there lead to the City of London and to the various hidden vestiges of European monarchy and oligarchy, including the papacy. (and this is giving you the sanitised version so as not to explode your head with conspiracy theory.)

Until this is understood, we will be unable to truly defend our country and it's constitution.

You have a great response and it deserves a clarification of what I mean by direct democracy.

For the most part, the system set up by our founding fathers is a good one, for the most part. There is simply too much to governance that should be left to common folk to sort out.

However, it is clear that the average citizen is completely powerless to have any effect on the system. The system is run by representatives who are owned by special interests. We are often given the choice between a red Lego and a blue Lego with no discernible difference between them once they get to Washington and spend half their time fundraising for the next election.

That is why we should have direct democracy: not as the foundation for policy, but a citizen check on the tendency for concentrated power to corrupt. We should have the right to publicly challenge resolutions by referendum to keep congress from controlling all they see fit with no real consequence.

Voting for representatives is not enough to hold them accountable. It is no different from exchanging one dirty diaper for another.

Thank you for the clarification, I think I understand your position, so let me attempt to restate it and add to my previous response.

You are saying that because congress isn't properly accountable for their current actions, and that we should have a more direct democracy, with the ability to challenge proposed legislation by referendum as one potential vehicle for that?

I think I could potentially get behind that, but I would want to hear more about proposition for nation wide referendum systems, especially since some states already have such a thing, but not all, to implement it nation-wide would require a constitutional amendment.

One alternative idea I would propose is an increase in the amount of representatives. Give them smaller districts and they would be more accountable and less able to use the two party system as a manipulatory vehicle. Issues abound back at the hill for such a thing, but I think it might be a good start.

Gerrymandering has to be controlled and eliminated as well.

Campaign finance reform is a must as well.

Overall I think I understand a bit better, I would just urge caution that in trying to fix broken parts of the system that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. As long as propositions conform with the constitution, I'm ok with it.

I will admit though, with the corruption as pervasive as it is now, a constitutional convention scares the hell out of me, as it could too easily be hijacked into something horrible.

Two things come to mind,

Many people are glad some things were exposed like the scope of data gathering, what many dislike is disclosing of state secrets that went along with the mostly uncurated dumps. Expose government overreach good; expose state secrets bad.

Two, the armed occupation/protest in places like Oregon has a lot more to do with disagreement over government control over grazing lands, and other natural resources many locals believe should be locally devolved, typically to enable more liberal exploitation of the resources [to the chagrin of the environmentally minded, but these are typically areas with poor economies] So these issues are completely disconnected.

I think the anti-dictatorship is not as common as it might look. Certainly some people believe that, but in my experience most gun advocates merely believe that you can't count on the government to protect you from criminals so you need to be able to do it yourself. I think these people welcome the government's efforts to protect them, they just don't think it does a very good job sometimes, or that it's simply not possible to provide perfect protection.

Lots of people don't see the NSA's activities as "illegal spying on its own people," but rather as strong anti-terror efforts that don't give up when terrorists enter the US.

The idea that we need strong gun rights as a way to stop the government from becoming tyrannical has at least two major obvious holes in it, but a lot of people's views are more subtle and nuanced than that. As usual.

Please explain the two major holes please and be ready to defend them if they are not solid.

Please ask as if you were a human being, not a robot, and I'll consider it. "Be ready to defend them" is ridiculously rude.

I thought of three obvious reasons.

1. The U.S. military is ridiculously well financed and supplied. Even if every American strong enough to lift them had a battle rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the federal government has mobile armor, fighters and bombers, and guided explosive munitions. The average American simply does not have the means to fight toe to toe with any professional army. As guerilla fighters, it is usually more useful to build explosives and make booby traps than it is to fire rifles. And if you're close enough to hit something with a rifle, you should probably already be running away.

2. We have strong gun rights now. They have not perceptibly slowed the government's slow ratcheting towards greater power and Constitutional overreach. Whether the government is already tyrannical is a matter of opinion, but be assured that some people think that it is.

3. Guns are not the only tools required to resist government. They are neither necessary nor sufficient. Defending gun rights in preference to any of the others, such as privacy, speech, assembly, redress, and due process, is to abandon our best means of resisting government power in favor of the one least likely to yield a predictably favorable outcome. All human rights work together to produce liberty, and none are more important than the others. To prioritize them is to see them picked off one by one, back to front, like Alvin York would.

Your 1 and 2 are the ones I'm thinking of. Particularly with 2, it makes no sense that gun rights can prevent a slide into tyranny, but can also be taken away if you elect the wrong politicians. It requires gun rights to be simultaneously extremely powerful and extremely weak.

I think 3 is an excellent argument but is not really a hole in the idea that gun rights are necessary to prevent tyranny.

The baby boomer generation grew up before computers, and most of them don't even know how to check their email. They are very patriotic, and very insular. They believe that God gave America to white Christians, and the government is defending it.

In short, they understand guns, but not computers.

Young people grew up with the internet and are better informed, but they have no control. District lines and campaign financing have made it impossible to make an impact.

The numbers are reaching a tipping point though, and you should expect to see a very different America in the next decade or so.

Are opinions on guns really divided along generational lines though? I mean going from my experience on Reddit, any time someone even suggests the U.S. should restrict gun ownership, that person gets a dozen or so upvoted replies reminding them that God gave Moses the 2nd Amendment on Mt Sinai. I find it hard to believe those are all baby boomers.

The gun debate never uses rational language on either side. For or against regulation, you hate America.

If you believe, as I do, the 2A is rooted in codifying the ability to take up arms against an oppressive (gun-restricting) government, as had just been done a few years prior, you're out of touch. If you believe in gun ownership for protection, you're going to accidentally shoot your child. If you believe all guns are bad, you're point of view is to be enforced at the business-end of a government-owned gun.

It's all madness. Try not to form a view of the argument from Reddit.

That's a good summary. It is also very regional/local. If I lived in Chicago I may think we should ban all guns tomorrow. But I do not live in Chicago and, having been around guns my whole life, do not see how removing them from legal owners fixes anything.

The bitter irony is that Chicago already tries very hard to ban guns.

To which some may reply that trying to remove a symptom does not a cure make.

Until it does, and judging by the row of analgesics at the supermarket dulling the pain is often enough.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic - I'll assume you are. I don't imagine you actually believe perpetual use of pain killers is ever better than solving the root cause (and how tenuous a solution it is at that, ready to flare up worse than ever, with the patient now addicted to pain killers to boot).

> The gun debate never uses rational language on either side.

Case in point?

I think that you'll find sometimes those opinions vary greatly between subreddits.

Detailed demographics:

http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/gun-control-...

(hint: it's very divided - somewhat by age, but not enough to back up my original point)

Thanks for this. The most interesting one to me is that there seems to be clear political will to restrict gun ownership in urban areas. I'd always wondered if the whole debate wouldn't be a lot less heated if it was done at a regional level, rather than even a state level.

The most depressing one to me is the divide between registered voters (slightly pro-gun) and non-registered voters (heavily anti-gun). If you want political change, maybe try voting!

I think there is also a prevailing sense of impotency and apathy. The capital is so far away from most people (geographically and culturally) that they don't feel like they can change things. American politics are very divided on party lines, and neither party addresses these issues.

I don't know what country the parent commentator is from, but US states are the size of most countries. At a local level there may be vigorous debate, but the only other comparable governments are the EU and maybe China. I imagine that the citizens of those governments also feel like they have very little voice?

(edit, the EU is not a country)

I moved to USA from Europe, here is my POV: Citizens are mostly poorly educated relative to Europe. Also politicians are more corrupt.

So the politicians have a free hand. For an empirical illustration : http://youtube.com/watch?v=HVOuK_KB9ew 85,000 callers out of 90,000 callers to a California senator (representing among others Silicon Valley) wanted a no vote. Senator voted yes. Or http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03hd981

Confidence level is 15% with media support, this is normal: http://pollingreport.com/CongJob.htm You have a choice of 2 parties. It is not a Euro style multi party democracy. Ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland

So: most people support Snowden, despite thought shaping that happens on forums. And Aaron. And Ian. Daniel. Hastings. But in age of big data, surveillance meta data can be used bayesian/predictive for internal politics (not for 'scary' external imagination). The winning move then is to be or appear passive. And anticapte tyrany. hth

Ex: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_red...

Everyone is free to critize the government, to accuse it of any atrocity and to denounce it on the basis of those accusations.

What you cannot do is disclose internal information to which you have privileged access as a government agent/employee/contractor. You have ample notice of this fact before agreeing to become one. In fact you must go out of your way to apply for a security clearance. If you find this an unacceptable infringement of your freedom, you may choose not to work for the government.

Snowden is not subject to arrest for dissent, but for what is effictively a breach of his employment contract.

SCOTUS recently held that government employees cannot even be fired for disparaging the government provided they do not identify themselves as government employees when doing so.

Additionally, in the USA there are theoretically protections for "whistleblowers" who reveal illegal or immoral practices by large institutions. The problem is that the security apparatus hides behind the cloak of national security needs preventing any open rational debate on the subject.

Because arrest does not mean convict, and his actions consisted of more than speaking out. He has publicly admitted to something that, from the surface facts, appears to be illegal (regardless of whether you think it was morally right and acceptable). As such, until convicted or exonerated, it is the job of the justice system to bring him in for trial.

It's comparable to killing someone in what you believe was self defense. You may still have to go to trial to prove your innocence if the government believes it may not have been self-defense. That is the point of the justice system, and trial by a jury of your peers.

The right to bear arms is to protect from overreach by the government. As long as government consists of representatives of the people making laws in accordance with the constitution and prior laws, there should not be a case where arms are required to defend against the state. It ensures the government cannot monopolize force.

But they can try him in absence, can they not?

I imagine in a high profile case like this which polarizes the populace, there is recognition that a trial where the defendant does not get to mount a defense would likely exacerbate any feelings of mistrust held for the government.

you're correct. it is a huge cognitive dissonance. many of the most vehemently pro-gun anti-government people in the U.S. only selectively apply their views to "keep the government away from MY PROPERTY". they are often also enthusiastic supporters of aggressive, militaristic foreign policy and all kinds of really nasty shit including but not limited to assassinations, drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, torture, extra-judicial detainment, and persecution of whistle-blowers on the ground they are "traitors".

it makes me sick to think about, but thats how it is. the U.S. is a country of many contradictions.

Hoo boy! I wish I could explain it. I live right smack in the middle of a bunch of people who can be observed to do exactly that. They are oblivious to the irony or logical inconsistency. My only guess is that these people see pro military industrial complex hawks as defenders of the America in their fairy tales and implicitly trust that their motives are pure. The only other thing is maybe that they've been defending the MIC for so long that they've stopped (or were never) thinking critically about their position.

There's actually quite a lot of overlap in the U.S. between people who vociferously support gun rights (which includes libertarians and some left anarchists) and support for Edward Snowden and opposition to mass surveillance.

Up until Rand Paul dropped out, he and Bernie Sanders were the only two U.S. presidential candidates speaking out against the NSA's overreach. Paul is staunchly pro gun rights, and Sanders has taken criticism from Hillary Clinton and many on the left for being insufficiently anti-gun for their tastes.

Sure, a US citizen could, but it would just be one citizen's point of view, and a citizen is not the same as his or her government, which is why a U.S. citizen can be critical of their government without being schizophrenic. We're each allowed our own point of view (and may be punished or rewarded commensurately). Since our laws are not centrally planned and individual rights are dearly cherished (though not universally respected), well, you get this sort of "cognitive dissonance " effect.

Can a US citizen explain what seems to me tobe a dissonance

Americans will, unsurprisingly, pay lip service to the American ideals of democracy because that's what they were taught. The two disconnects I see are: do they actually believe in them? And can the identify a compromise of the ideas as such? Not always, and infrequently.

People are exceptionally good at ignoring ingnorable things that they don't want to deal with, the "someone else's problem" phenomenon.

Political groups that don't frequently recommit to American ideals mean that the political trends sway away from them. Add in some "this time it is different" type of rationalization, and boneheaded "America could never possibly X" attitude that makes them think the groundwork for X is always and forever unambiguously benign.

So different political groups have different levels of commitment to different American ideals. Someone can believe in gun rights as important to maintain like all the other rights that strengthen our democracy. Or they could just like guns and find out the political groups they're already predisposed to disagree with want to take them away. Their commitment to American ideals is repackaged into hatred of the other party -- and as long as this hypothetical person got to keep their gun and a few other pet political issues, they'd welcome a dictator.

I agree that what the NSA did was bad, but I really don't understand your anti government stance.

The main problem with those NSA programs is not that spying is evil (it's necessary and it's part of defending your country against many different types of threat), the problem is that this spying program, as a tool, could be used for other things than security purposes. This is in fact very worrying and it's what Snowden complains about: this massive chest of data was not encrypted and could be read by many government operatives by means of bribery, or even by individual with political goals.

So the problem has been about how those tools has been designed and managed with very sloppy consideration, and that politicians are not able to fix it because as always, technology is beyond what democracy is about.

What I understand about this scandal is not about trivial corruption in government, it's more about what sort of political problems, technologies can create.

> an almost no reaction from other citizens

I think every citizen who use computers for sensitive purpose, or people who might be the target of spying, are now aware of the NSA, and might have taken precautions that made NSA's job a little more difficult.

I don't think you can really have a protest against the NSA. It's not a simple issue, especially from the technical standpoint.

Many Americans believe in following the law no matter what. Snowden broke the law. Gun owners are trying to prevent the law from changing.

>Many Americans believe in following the law no matter what.

But if the government breaks the law, it's OK? When others do it, they're traitors?

Listen man, I'm just delivery the news, not defending it. The question was how do people think about it, and that's how they think about it.

That pretty much sums it up, yeah.

Like Nixon said: "If the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

And like the House judiciary committee said, "Oh yeah? Well we just voted on three articles of impeachment against you."

Americans are starting to get rather pissed off at the increasingly obvious double-standard that exists when government employees are suspected of crimes, particularly violent crimes by those charged with keeping the peace, and corruption and fraud by those granted positions of trust and authority.

And this is all mostly due to ubiquitous smartphone cameras. In this light, universal surveillance is barely acceptable, just so long as we get to watch them as thoroughly and easily as they watch us. So far, this condition has not been met.

While the group of Americans who "believe in following the law no matter what" might partially intersect with the gun owner/advocate group, I'd like to add that there are apparently many 2nd Amendment folks who also believe in armed occupation of federal facilities, which is obviously super illegal.

Edit: Not sure why I've been downvoted. I said "apparently many" because I've made the horrible mistake of reading comment sections on articles about the occupation event, and there were a number of very vocal supporters in those comments. To me that constitutes "many" supporters of this position. Obviously I have no idea what percentage of total gun rights advocates are in agreement with the occupation as I highly doubt those numbers exist. In addition, I wasn't even trying to make a statement for or against the 2nd Amendment/gun rights, merely pointing something out.

Not "many." You are cherry-picking a tiny number of people against a backdrop of 300 million or so.

Why not respond like this to the comment I was replying to? doki_pen said "Many Americans believe in following the law no matter what". Might this also be a tiny number of people when compared to the whole U.S. population? Speaking of the population, there are barely more than 300 million people in the entire country. I doubt there are that many 2nd Amendment activists.

They probably didn't learn following the law by observing their government. ..because that would be another dissonance.

What's the dissonance? Sounds like the two things you said are in agreement. Or maybe your main point is the part in parentheses?

While it doesn't explain the soccer moms going along with the security state, part of the explanation is the Washington DC area culture. "Snowden" is a four letter word to anyone working for the DoD, DHS, DoJ and all their suppliers and providers - the beltway bandits. People outside this large circle don't understand that. But, inside, what Snowden did is unquestionably wrong. On top of that there are oddities like people with security clearances not being allowed to read the leaks. That just heightens the disconnect.

Coincidentally, the people arming-up against the government are the most alienated from this circle. But that's just a coincidence. There's no connection through Snowden. It's all about creating a hostile environment for government officials. For the group in Oregon, they are probably more aware of Joseph Smith and the Oath of Vengeance than Edward Snowden.

I think you could make an argument that many of the people who are loud advocates for gun rights don't understand the nuances of what Snowden did. Many gun advocates are an odd mix of "f the government" and "US is the best!"

I just started subsistence hunting this year, so I own a gun and I want to keep the ability to hunt. I have zero concerns that the US government will "take away" my hunting rifle. But I'd love to see handguns and assault weapons under much tighter control. I think there's a middle ground between "no guns" and "you can own any gun you want". But not many people look for the middle ground right now, and most of our prominent politicians couldn't even give an accurate description of the what the term "middle ground" really means.

"Middle ground" on gun control, eh? http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/...

This issue can also be explained a bit by illustrating some of the divides that make up party lines.

The call to arrest Snowden has been echoed by both political parties. The mainstream of both parties is very pro-surveillance. While surveillance programs were certainly in place before 9/11, the Bush administration really furthered the goals of the surveillance (and the larger National Security state). The Obama administration continued that advancement without restriction.

I would say that the two political parties in the US both support surveillance in a pretty vast majority. The bureaucratic reasons for this are fairly complex, but the simplest way of putting it is that the mainstream of both parties is very authoritarian (what some, myself included would label fascist.) Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama (to some extent), and the neoliberal movement has effectively the same foreign policy goals as the neoconservative movement that gave rise to the Bush administration.

On the fringes of both parties, you have outspoken activists trying to address both surveillance and the larger natsec state. The libertarians on the right, (Rand Paul, Justin Amash), and the progressives on the left (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) have all been outspoken against the NSA. The problem is that the mainstream in both parties tends to control Congress, the bureaucracy, and the media.

Gun Rights is a mainstream Republican issue. Every republican has to be strongly pro gun (both the mainstream GOP and the libertarians are) whereas every democrat has to be against it (Both the neoliberals and the progressives are.)

There are a lot of issues (or, in my opinion, non-issues) in American politics that tend to split the fringe in both parties. Topics like Gun Control, Abortion, Immigration, etc. are hot button issues that generally take the focus away from issues that theoretically should be very, very important, like NSA surveillance, illegal rendition and torture programs, assassination programs, and war.

It's sad, because the anti-establishment (Progressives and Libertarians) in both parties tend to agree on these issues. Frankly, most of the people who are pro-gun-rights are also anti-surveillance. These are the constitutional libertarians on the right: gun rights are guaranteed by the US second amendment, and privacy by the fourth amendment against illegal search and seizure.

The dissonance you're seeing isn't so much due to logical inconsistencies, but rather due to the weird, schizophrenic nature of US politics.

I have a hard time explaining it. I know many very pro-gun people who constantly think the government is trying to take their guns but who don't have a problem with spying. My father is one of them.

One of the only things I can see is the propaganda has worked. They think spying is only to catch online child abusers and terrorist, and they know they aren't one of those so they have nothing to worry about. The spying is also much harder to grasp. Taking someone's gun is a very easy think to understand. Even a toddler can understand someone taking something from them. In comparison, spying, especially the really large scale stuff, is much harder to understand.

But besides for that, I don't really know why there is such a divide between the reactions.

> illegal

Legal.

> a dissonance, between the government putting huge efforts and resource in trying to arrest a citizen speaking out against the government doing illegal spying on its own people (an almost no reaction from other citizens), and people defending the right to bear weapons to protect themselves from the government turning into a dictatorship?

These are, arguably, two different reactions to perceived xenophobic threats.

My opinion, I can't see even a significant minority of gun owners rising up in rebellion and revolution against the US. Ever. At most, the odd Timothy McVeigh or Ammon Bundy.

The 2nd Amendment, and its implications, are mostly a convenient argument. We, as a population, just want our guns.

The right to bear arms has strong institutional support from the NRA (the gun manufacturer's lobby). Edward Snowden has very little institutional support (a bit from a few rights groups but none as powerful or rich as the NRA).

Most political insanity in America boils down to this.

Is your second point referring specifically to nationalists/separatist militias, or those who believe that Americans have an individual right to bear arms? The answer would depend on what you mean.

It's very simple: political beliefs are rarely logically consistent (at least not through a logic that excludes human psychology). This is not limited to the US.

Not an American, but it really comes down to fear, and the illusion of safety; the TSA is a perfect example. A gun doesn't keep you or your family safe, but it gives you the illusion of safety. Government surveillance is the same, since the rhetoric is that it will keep America safe from terrorists, yet like the TSA and guns, when we look at the data, all of these provide no tangible benefit, and often great harm.

Why value tangible benefits over intangible ones?

Calling it an illusion implies that air travel is not safe, when in fact it is very safe. However, people did not feel safe, so the government constructed an agency (perhaps deliberately, perhaps not) to provide security theater and help people feel safe.

In general, American citizens today are safe from terrorism. If anything, the greatest danger comes not from terrorists themselves but from the American peoples' unjustified fear of terrorism. We could use some more security theater.

This is either sarcasm, or, the most perverse and backwards logic for government sanctioned security programs that I've ever seen.

The ostensible reason that the government has created the TSA and its ilk is for actual security. Claiming that it's been created to intentionally achieve security theater is quite a extraordinary claim to be making. Furthermore, the origin of danger does not come along a single axis running between "terrorism" and "people's fear of terrorism". The government programs themselves can have negative impacts (c.f. any discussion on the TSA, NSA, border controls), which you are conveniently ignoring.

Firstly, I said "perhaps deliberately, perhaps not" because I am not claiming that they intentionally wanted to provide security theater. I don't think that motive is relevant. I'm replying to a specific statement to explain that there is a benefit, even though it is intangible. Of course there are other bad effects, like inconvenience to travellers, and other good effects, like providing stable jobs to otherwise unemployably stupid Americans who live in or near airport-bearing cities.

In retrospect, I should have mentioned that last bit instead as a tangible benefit, but I only just now thought of it.

I'm fine with the reasoning, but on balance I'm not convinced the TSA reduces fear. They're motivated to scare us to keep (or grow) their budgets.

> A gun doesn't keep you or your family safe

Defensive gun use is far more common in the USA than murders by firearms:

http://guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

> when we look at the data, all of these provide no tangible benefit, and often great harm.

No tangible benefit? Even 100,000 people saved by guns annually (the low end number) is "tangible benefit".

According to the CDC, there are 11k homicides by firearms: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

If you look at other countries, when guns are banned there is a shift from guns to other methods of killing ,but not a significant decline in homicides.

This is what you see when looking at the data.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about. If we look at western countries, the US leads in homicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention.... You're narrative doesn't fit the data.

> A perfect example of what I'm talking about.

It's certainly a perfect example that people see what they want to see, even when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I'm talking about you, by the way.

Like facts?

> Can a US citizen explain

It's not some monoculture over here. Your guess is as good as any's.

Can you explain why you think US citizens have power over what their government does?

well if you cherry pick your news sources, or your news sources cheery pick what they want to relay, it would be easy to gain the impression that those defending the 2nd have no problem with them trying to get Snowden back.

However that is the crux of the issue. The media spends is way to cozy with the governments of the countries they operate in. Far too many in the media are trying to create news instead of reporting it. So putting two and two together... many of the media are against the gun rights advocates and take liberties with their reporting to put those advocates in the worst possible light.

I am quite sure if you asked many of the advocates you could get very different replies based on how you phrased your question. Like many others there are pro government supported and gun advocates and those who don't trust the government.

I have guns because I am afraid of the government. Snowden confirmed my fears were justified.

Despite being a US citizen who also enjoys guns, I don't understand this rationale at all. What kind of government overreach would private ownership of firearms stop? It obviously wouldn't interfere with any sort of targeted attack on an individual (that's what drones are for), and I have a hard time believing it would deter even ground attacks. A few guys in the woods with AR-15s aren't going to be a speed bump for any concerted effort by a nation-state, let alone this one.

*Disclaimer: I disagree with our use of drones, don't think anyone should come to take away private guns, and don't believe any of this is a real risk. I'm just trying to understand the large group that believes their guns will protect them from the military.

I don't pretend to know what the scenario would be where I'd actually use my guns. Be assured it's a nightmare scenario and not some dispute over land use rights.

A few lone nuts would have no chance against the government. But if the sentiments and fear spread to the point that entire towns were like-minded in their opposition, you'd have a guerrilla warfare situation like we saw with insurgents in Iraq. In that situation, the government's job becomes much more difficult, and assuming carpet bombing is off the table, small arms indeed can make an impact.

Logically, if you fear the government, you should also have a transmitting radio and a reloading bench (with a fat stockpile of primers) at home, solar cells, a PVC pipe filled with gold and silver coins buried in your backyard, a tamper-resistant dash-cam in your car, and a packed bag--with medical supplies--hanging by your back door.

If just a gun is enough to reduce your fear, you haven't been thinking about it hard enough. (Or maybe not playing enough Fallout.) Battles can be lost with poor logistics before strategy or tactics even come into play.

If you ever see a day where you need that gun against a rampaging government, you're not going to be able to make full use of paper dollars, public networks, broadcast media, retail stores, power grid, refueling stations, police, hospitals...

I think people actually keep guns because they fear both too much government against them and not enough of it for them.

Sometimes you want to build a house and sometimes you want to just want to hang a picture on the wall. Either way you at least need a hammer.

I don't know if that made any sense.

I know it's only a metaphor, but I've driven a picture hanger into the wall with vise grips before. An actual hammer just makes the job easier; it isn't the only way to drive a nail.

I'm not from the US and I'm genuinely curious about something - if you are afraid of the US government do you therefore see the enormous power of the US military as a good thing or a bad thing?

Both really. Double edged sword. I like knowing we could repel an invading army, but it can also be turned on its citizens and tempts politicians to get entangled in global affairs.

>The media spends is way to cozy with the governments of the countries they operate in.

Say what you will about the quality of journalism in the US, but is as diverse, open, available and free as anywhere in the solar system. There is no singular view; you can easily find sources form any angle.

there is no dissonance. spying is about privacy. guns are about lives. spying can lead to loss of life but guns do lead to loss of life.

People think Snowden is a traitor.

It's absurd that this is still a thing. Without that charge there is plenty that he could be prosecuted with. Crap like "betraying your country" belongs back centuries ago along with imperial expansion, prosecution for speaking ill of the King etc.

In all seriousness just watch Team America by the South Park guys. Pretty much sums it up.

This is a lazy cop-out for people who don't really care to spend any time thinking or looking at evidence. Which might be emblematic of the real problem. Knee-jerk anti-Americanism isn't a bit more sophisticated than knee-jerk pro-Americanism.

What?! Team America: World Police isn't anti-American or pro-American. It is a satirical caricature of the U.S. It's grossly exaggerated, maybe, but it isn't false.

As an American, I'd say it does a great job at lampooning the way America sees itself and how America sees other countries.

Those guys chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at international sporting events? In their hearts, they're singing "America: F--- Yeah!"... or at least some Lee Greenwood.

Because being impotent and having a short penis doesn't make people want cryptography to compensate, but it does make people want guns.

It sure does make people engage in needless tribal bickering, too. Rather than being part of the political design wherein each half of the population supports half of the tyranny, why don't you try rooting for a sports team instead? The Super Bowl is on this weekend, and you can even nonchalantly call it "sportsball" to feel like you're still above it.

This revelation seems me to be a calculated political move. The government at the time was the leftist one led by Helle Thorning Schmidt (now the president of Save the Children). Current government is a right-wing one. Revealing this shows certain groups of traditional leftists how those traditional workers' parties have "betrayed" them (and this leftist government has been quite pragmatic; just recently the leftist opposition parties voting to approve the infamous sufficiency proposal -- i.e. the one where if you're carrying significant amounts of cash and try to seek political asylum you get to pay for it yourself first).

You can read that in what the foreign policy spokeperson of the party says: "It is to me unbelievable the that S-SF-R government of that time would prefer to join the hunt on Snowden and thus value the American government over the Danes' fundamental right to freedom" (see http://www.politiko.dk/nyheder/pind-fly-i-kastrup-skulle-tra...)

> “He is sought for a series of legal violations; that's what he is. And the US is a democratic constitutional state,” he added.

Looks like this guy never heard of Guantanamo or the other secret camps the US keeps around the globe. It's beautiful to be naive.

His former boss and predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen was Bush’s biggest supporter and ditto on the Iraq War.

He has a vested interest in ignorance of the past—so much so that he shut down the investigative committee for the very same war as one of the first things when he won the election last year.

Or laws that are blatantly amoral.

At least this story gets it right that it was the DOJ's flight, not CIA's.

That really does make a big difference to me. Capturing an escaping fugitive really is their domain, assuming they operated with permission of the governments over which they flew.

The DOJ cannot in fact lawfully fly into other countries to capture escaping fugitives! If Snowden is in Denmark, they need the cooperation of the government of Denmark to take custody of him.

Since Danish agents were present when the plane touched down in Copenhagen, couldn't they just detain him awaiting extradition?

It's very clear Denmark was onboard given the article.

Yes, they can definitely do that.

tptacek, you have a J.D, correct? I would love to chat about your experiences in law/tech, if we could exchange info.

Eek, lord no. People on HN to talk to about that: 'rayiner, 'tzs, 'DannyBee, 'pdabbadabba, 'grellas, 'dctoedt.

('tzs has a JD and isn't a lawyer, which I think is interesting. Also, he wrote my all-time favorite HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6228350)

Oh, that's interesting. Very impressive. My apologies for the misunderstanding :) I've seen far far worse legal understanding reviewing the writing of first and second year associates as a paralegal, in a previous job.

I do monitor the few comments of a few (especially rayiner and grellas.) I'm quickly learning that when they make legal arguments it's best to shut up and let them educate me.

Also, I've interestingly met a few people with JDs who go into finance, management, engineers as patent attorneys, and even one who went into high-risk bail bonds.

Do we know that yet?

The article is based on this admission from the Danish minister of Justice (in Danish): http://www.ft.dk/samling/20151/almdel/reu/bilag/163/1596061....

It just mentions the "American government".

Freedom of information requests have shown that FBI (Department of Justice) asked several countries to be notified should Snowden pass through their airports.

Also, it is believed that the plane is a privately owned gulfstream with ID N977GA.

https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N977GA

Doesn't international law/Danish law require an extradition process or is kidnapping for political purposes not a crime?

Danish politicians doesn't give a shit, sorry. If the US wants something, they get it, no questions asked.

If it turns out to be illegal, oh well, mistakes happen. The only reason Denmark isn't puppet state of the US (to a larger extend than is case) is because the US doesn't care.

Our politicians have absolutely zero spine when it comes to arguing against the US.

I agree that Denmark tends to dance to the US's tune but not as spinelessly as you make it sound. If what you're saying was true wouldn't there be US missile on Greenland?

The US did plan to put missiles in under-ice bases in Greenland, without telling Denmark:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm

They didn't do it because it didn't work - the ice moves too much, rather than the Danes complaining about it.

In 1961, the US asked if the Danish government wished to be brief about nuclear weapons stationed in Greenland. The answer "Not really" (paraphrasing of cause).

The Thule scandal, about covering up a nuclear armed B-52 crashing in Greenland is fascinating too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash...

But you're right, no missiles.

When will it get to the point where 'arguing with the US' will become a political boon, rather than a liability?

The opposite of stupidity is not intelligence.

It's just as stupid when politicians use "stick it to the man" as justification for their bullshit.

See Maduro's endless struggle against the evil neoliberal conspiracy.

> is kidnapping for political purposes not a crime

If you do it, it's a crime and SWAT will hit your home, if government does it, it's ok, it's for your safety, you know... terrorists.

I know what you're getting at, but there are things a government must do that a civilian must be legally prohibited from doing. As a matter of fact, that's most of the role of government.

The monopoly on power that the sovereign grants to the executive branch is still meant to be within the limits of that grant. This is obviously not the case anymore. The sovereign has lost oversight over the executive branch's actions. Effectively, governments and their organizations have become states within states, with no accountability anymore. That's where state theory completely implodes, as there aren't meant to be any "we're doing secret stuff with no oversight, you have to trust us we're not doing anything illegal" situations.

Surely there is a legitimate need for classified information and secrecy. Who beyond military, executive, congressional committee, and court officials should have that type of access?

International Law is concent based, meaning, it's more a guideline than a law. Sovereignty, at the state level, still reigns supreme. Until states voluntarily bind themselves this will be the case. Here in the U.S. of A. most folks misunderstand the term "state" to mean a political unit that is subservient to the federal level of government. This is only true for certain areas of law, and it is only true because the states bound themselves by voluntarily ratifying the constitution (well, enough of them ratified it and a few went along for the ride). Most folks here are unaware that each state is, politically speaking, still as sovereign as Germany or China. Arkansas = Australia. New York = Bolivia. Texas = France (except, Texas is bigger than France). So, no, between two states, unless there is a binding, not concent based, agreement between the parties, and even then it's fairly common to break these agreements and settle the outcome in court, well states can do pretty much whatever they want. And they do.

Edit: On the subtle points being missed or misunderstood by the replies so far, maybe do some research before sounding off. I've a B.S. in Political Science and am married to a person currently working on their dissertation for their Political Theory Ph.D. whose advisor is ranked above Foucault for the most influential political theorists, and I was able to double check my claims as correct simply by reading some Wikipedia.

Your comments about US states may have been true prior to the civil war, but certainly have been true since then.

is that an assertion? based on your say so? or was there some reasoning behind that statement, that you'd like to share?

Can individual states sign international treaties? Can states give out citizenship based on their own criteria? Can states impose import duties?

Because Germany, China, Australia, Bolivia and France can. The US is not unique in its federal structure.

a state can only not make international treaties if it give up that right. states can give out citizenship based on their own criteria (http://patriotaction.net/profiles/blogs/texas-naturalized-ci...).

can states impose import duties? yes (http://www.dutycalculator.com/dc/187995051/food-drinks/fruit...)

federal structure... wt-what.. seriously, i've no idea where you're going with that one.

Vacri already said enough about import duties. No US state can or does impose duties.

US citizenship (as defined by the federal level) is a necessary condition for Texan citizenship. Texas can't grant any political rights to "Texan citizens" who are not US citizens.

Federal structure: Take a look at Germany or any other federal nation. Germany consists of 16 states that joined a union (that is known as Germany) and voluntarily ratified the constitution (well, enough of them ratified it and a one went along for the ride). The states are individual entities that have their own laws, police, and so on. Starting to see the similarities? Politically speaking, no US state is as sovereign as Germany. Not in theory and certainly not in practice. However, the single German states have a certain level of sovereignty just like US states have a certain level of sovereignty. It's not an absolute but a spectrum.

"Most folks here" are unaware of what you posted not because they don't know but because it's simply not true. Maybe you should do some research outside Wikipedia. Well, you can even start there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_state I know that many people (including political scholars) in the US hold the view that the states are individual entities similar to entire nation states. Note that this view is shared by almost nobody outside the US.

Oh, and please don't respond to comments by editing your original post by the way. I could also spread out the university degrees of me and my conversation partners here but that does not change anything about facts. It's just a bad argument.

First of all, the broader issue is super complicated. There is no way we can cover it all here. No way. Take for instance: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/745/1/Chapter8_Introduction.pdf [0]

Also, we are all wrong on certain points given certain assumptions. For instance, given the assumption that a state is defined as a political entity with absolute sovereignty, the 50 U.S. States could not be termed states. I'm very well aware of that and probably should not have been authoring a response a bottle of Zinfandel into the awesome "Fortitude" series, from Amazon.

I was fortunate to be able to take a class, "The State and Sovereignty", with Richard Ashley, who more or less wrote the book (or paper) on post-modern or post-structural International Relations [1]. From another site: "Ashley is concerned with how concepts like the state, sovereignty, and war are rarely questioned as problematic in international politics (Ashley 1989: 302). If the state is the central unit of analysis in IR and yet it is rarely thoroughly examined, how accurate are the assumptions that realism and liberalism rest on?" [2]. My thesis for this class was on this exact topic. Titled "Sovereignty: A Non-Sequitur", I used a lot of words to reference a lot of other people who used even more word to call bs on the very concept of state sovereignty.

But, hey, that's what you get when you approach a complex topic in a blunt fashion. But let's not stop now, let's go to Wikipedia:

State (polity) := "A state is an organized political community living under a single system of government. Speakers of American English often use state and government as synonyms, with both words referring to an organized political group that exercises authority over a particular territory. States may or may not be sovereign. For instance, federated states that are members of a federal union have only partial sovereignty, but are, nonetheless, states." [3]

Federation := "A federation (from Latin: foedus, gen.: foederis, "covenant"), also known as a federal state, is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions under a central (federal) government. " [4]

"The component states are in some sense sovereign, insofar as certain powers are reserved to them that may not be exercised by the central government. However, a federation is more than a mere loose alliance of independent states. The component states of a federation usually possess no powers in relation to foreign policy, and so they enjoy no independent status under international law. However, German Länder do have this power, which is beginning to be exercised on a European level." [4]

U.S. State := "A state of the United States of America is one of the 50 constituent political entities that shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside.[3] State citizenship and residency are flexible and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders (e.g., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody)." [5]

German Länder (States of Germany) := "Though international relations including international treaties are primarily the responsibility of the federal level, the constituent states have certain limited powers in this area: in matters that affect them directly, the states defend their interests at the federal level through the Bundesrat (literally Federal Council, the upper house of the German Federal Parliament) and in areas where they have legislative authority they have limited powers to conclude international treaties 'with the consent of the federal government'." [6]

[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... [2] http://polisciprof.blogspot.com/2006/03/some-thoughts-on-pos... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_%28polity%29 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany

So, we have, at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned but surely others will say the issue is more complicated [0], that: federated states that are members of a federal union are indeed states, there is such a thing as state citizenship, and that states belonging to a Federation do enjoy independent status under international law.

Now, in practice, how do U.S. States feel about Trade agreements. Let me google that for you:

https://www.citizen.org/documents/States_Rights_and_Trade.pd...

https://www.citizen.org/documents/SovereigntyFactSheet09.pdf

http://leg.wa.gov/House/Committees/CDHT/Documents/JLOCTP.pdf

http://www.ncsl.org/ncsl-in-dc/standing-committees/labor-and...

It's a real issue, that is not always clear, that is becoming ever more important with treaties such as the TPP.

I don't know what else to give you.

Just because it has 'California' in the name 'California Almonds' doesn't mean that California has inked any trade treaties, any more than the Champagne region of France is the entity that enforces it's branding issues on sparkling white wine.

Similarly, the page you've linked to there is other countries' import duties on the product - the table column's title is even "Import to Country".

Even if the page said what you think it does - I'm from Australia, which is on the list. I'm really interested to see if you can show me the trade agreement California seems to have individually inked with my nation. I don't think it exists, but you apparently do - please reference the law.

They can't present such a law because it's explicitly prohibited by the US constitution, Article 1 Section 8.

And not all states are the 50 U.S. A German state is not bound by our constitution. They have the right to enter international trade agreements.

Can't fix stupid.

That's not true. Under section 51(xxix) of the Australian Consitution, only the Federal government can make international treaties. Individual Australian states cannot.

> still as sovereign as Germany or China

Ah, I see. So China, just like a US state, has to honour the public acts and judicial proceedings of neighbouring states via a 'full faith and credit clause'?

the "full faith and credit clause", i.e. article iv, sec. 1 of the u.s. constitution, was written after the constitutions of the states that would eventually sign onto the constitution (clearly), and a long (long) time after the term "state" was being used (c.1300 [1]).

Given that a cursory reading of the wikipedia page on this clause states that"At present, it is widely agreed that this Clause of the Constitution has little impact on a court's choice of law decision," I'm at a loss as to how I'm to interpret your one line response as relates to your argument that U.S. states are not as sovereign as a state such as Germany or China.

idk, maybe you were just bored and threw this out into the universe, to see if it would stick, or something.

[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=state

You have me genuinely puzzled at how you somehow claim that because the term 'state' in this context is 800 years old, it means that law made later than this is somehow weak. I genuinely don't get this age-of-etymology argument you're using.

In any case, age of a law is not an automatic trump card. There are multiple sites on the web listing silly laws from the 19th century that never get enforced, for example.

> to see if it would stick, or something.

What, you mean like saying that the individual US states are as sovereign as China?

Also, "I've got a BS and my partner has a PhD in topic X, and I can verify my point by my reading of Wikipedia"? Seriously? Well, my reading of Wikipedia says that you're completely wrong! I'm also King of Namibia and my bestie is the Pope. Just take my word for it.

The revelation that the US landed a private aircraft in Copenhagen

Who owned the plane?

It might be a English translation of a Danish way of saying "business jet". Talking about the type of plane. As opposed to bigger commercial jets. E.g. a Gulfstream V is a business jet often used by business people. Even when used or owned by government, some people might keep calling it a "privatfly" - private plane.

Thats exactly what it is (Danish here)

Seeing a lot of people asking broader things about Snowden here, the main perspective to have on this is from Eben Moglen: http://snowdenandthefuture.info

cheers

Looks like this has turned into a hot topic as more details have evolved. To my mind, this all seems to be a bit of an academic side-show, given how long ago these events were.

What should probably be of concern is that Assange is talking about leaving the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK AND the UK police have taken a much lower key approach recently, removing officers from outside etc.

Has Assange not considered the risk that, given how friendly the UK was to these flights [landing, refueling at Glasgow Airport for example], the flight is probably sitting waiting at Heathrow right now?

If he steps out, he's more likely to be confronted by US agents, possibly posing as UK police, who will detain him and whisk him off to the waiting plane ? The convenient absence of real UK officers will allow for a daylight snatch by the US and bypass the Sweden issue completely.

Are you talking about Assange? The article is about Snowden.

I think the underlying issue is about rendition flights - so it's relevant to Snowden for historical purposes but is relevant for Assange (another target) for very current reasons today following the UN decision on arbitrary detention.

The original comment therefor seems pretty valid.

Are you saying you don't think it is a valid comment dealing with the underlying issue because it's not restricted to purely Snowden?

Side Bar: Why do all the articles about the "jewelry law" have quotes around the phrase "jewelry law"? For example: "Denmark faces backlash over 'despicable' 'jewellery law'"

Because it's not officially called that. The law itself is about confiscating valuables from people who enter the country seeking protection, and it's been dubbed the "jewelry law" by media to make it easier for people to imagine what its effect will be (stealing people's jewelry as they enter).

They are not stealing peoples jewelries not sure where you got that from.

This is exactly the kind of unfortunate misconceptions about that law and it requires context to understand what the point of it is.

Denmark is one of the countries who both take most and provide the most social benefits to immigrants and asylum seekers.

There is almost no difference what a citizen and an asylum seeker/immigrant gets in social welfare from the government. They have access to free healthcare, free education, free housing and so on.

Denmark is one of the countries who accept the most too.

A system like that requires a lot taxation to even be possible and so Denmark is one of the most highly taxed countries in the world.

What the law is attempting to make sure is that immigrants or asylums seekers who come to Denmark and ask for the government to provide all these things to them don't have any wealth. I.e. before the danish government starts giving you access to the social welfare system you need to have spent your own wealth first.

This is the same way they treat their own citizen btw.

And on top of that. This is something that Germany, Holland and Switzherland is already doing. The law is much bigger than that and holds all sorts of adjustments to deal with the underlying system. Someone just managed to polemically pick some of this up and interpret it in a way that made it sound like they where literally pulling gold teeth out of peoples mouth.

They aren't taking any of affectional value either.

So no they are not steal peoples jewelry as they enter.

The contention is whether the valuables are being traded voluntarily for welfare, or whether they are being taken by force (i.e. stealing). Presumably Danish citizens can choose whether to claim welfare or not.

Also, while a normal person might suppose that all jewellery must be of "affectional value", I doubt the Danish state sees it the same way.

The law was never intentioned at taking jewelry or taking it by force. The law was intended to make sure that you didn't have people showing up with lots of valuables and collecting money from the system. Again the Danish system is extremely giving. And lets put something in context here. People traveling through several countries to get to Denmark seeking asylum do have a choice. Many of them are men and left their family behind btw.

And yes the Danish state sees it that ways since it's explicitly in the law.

The whole thing is much to do about nothing. A bunch of danish people venting their political opinions about danish domestic policy in international media.

That is their right but this leaves a lot of room for gross simplifications and lack of context when discussing the law.

This started with people claiming the government would take peoples wedding rings which is ironic since wedding rings is mostly a western tradition and muslims aren't even allowed to wear gold wedding rings.

This is just one example of how absurd the whole discussion is and the level of manipulation that have gone into framing Denmark as an especially bad nation.

The fact still remains that Denmark is one of the countries that gives most of it's GPD to immigration and refugees, one of the few countries who live up to the goals set by the UN on how much a nation should be spending on aid.

It's beyond any rational claims to portray Denmark the way it's being done right now. At the end of the day though it will mean absolutely nothing.

This is a much bigger discussion than some anal focus on some minute part of that law.

>> "The law was intended...|

The intention of a law and how it enforced can be quite different. This law could be abused, I think that's the issue.

>> "People traveling through several countries to get to Denmark seeking asylum do have a choice. Many of them are men and left their family behind btw."

There's a reason the men are leaving their families behind. Travelling across Europe can be very dangerous - I'm sure some of the men who lost children to drowning off the coast of Greece wish they'd left their families behind. The men take the dangerous journey, get some shelter for their family in a new country, and then move the family there safely. Not all asylum seekers have had their homes destroyed/are at immediate risk of being killed. You would typically start trying to get out before your city is being bombed so it makes sense to leave your family in relative safety where they have shelter/food/a community to help them.

>> "muslims aren't even allowed to wear gold wedding rings."

Not all people seeking asylum in Europe at the minute are Muslim.

Denmark have no history of treating it's refugees or asylum seekers that way. They are just doing what Germany, Holland and Switzcherland is already doing. And you should turn it on it's head. The law was made to make sure people don't misuse the danish wellfare system. It's the same rule that apply to it's own citizens.

It is estimated that more than half of the refugees are economic immigrants/refugees not actually refugees. Sweeden is sending back up to 80.000 for exactly that reason. They aren't in any danger.

Claiming that it can be dangerous traveling across Europe is so absurd I don't even know what to say. Is it more dangerous than what they escaped? If thats the case why travel to Denmark? You are contradicting yourself.

Most people who seek asylum are actually muslims so yes.

Europe is more dangerous than living under ISIS?:) Well, looking at how things are going it might just be the case very soon. Back in the days before the collapse of Soviet Union there was an attempt by the party to turn the tide by claiming "to fix the socialism's shortcomings we need more socialism!". Now Europe is trying to fix refugees and ISIS problem by calling for "more refugees! more ISIS!"

Because "jewellery law" is a nickname, and the law is not about seizing jewellery, but seizing any sort of valuable assets.

The law involves confiscating valuables and money, but it does so much more than that, including, but not limited to, increasing the waiting period for family reunification.

People put it in quotes, because they think it gives them an excuse to use the misnomer, which is bad journalism on their part.

It’s basically in the interest of the administration that people only thought the bill concerned jewelry confiscation, as it distracted from all the other heinous things in the text.

The former bill, which has since become law, is L87 (ie Bill 87).

Thank you for showing us your political opinion. Now here is the real challenge.

Make a long list of other countries that are dealing with refugees and immigrants more civilized than Denmark.

Sweden? Who is now sending home 80.000 people?

Germany? Who are doing the same as Denmark? Holland (Doing the same), Switzerland? (Doing the same)

There is a context to why Denmark do what they do which is a very liberal social security system.

It's ok to disagree but please put things in more contect than just showing your personal opinion.

Holland (Doing the same)

To the best of my knowledge, we are not. Can you provide a source?

"In the Netherlands, asylum seekers are supposed to declare their assets, and deductions can be made if this exceeds €5,895 for an individual or €11,790 for a family."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35408936

Ah, deductions. So they will not be stripped of their valuables.

Neither will you in Denmark. It's the same approach.

This is what's so sad about this whole story. It's taken completely out of it's context and presented as if danish police are standing there waiting to strip people of their values before they enter the country.

Thats not how it is nor the intent.

I accept that the situation may be misrepresented, but your own link states otherwise:

Police can seize cash over 10,000 kroner [..] as well as individual items [..] such as watches, mobile phones and computers

money and valuables will be confiscated on arrival [..] Assets discovered at a later stage [..] may also be taken

So if the BBC article is inaccurate about the Danish situation, I don't think you should assume it is any more correct about the Swiss, Dutch or German situation.

> Germany? Who are doing the same as Denmark?

No, we're not. This is a lie.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/636771/Germany-seizes-mi...

Bringing him back the US would be extradition, not rendition. Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

That's not true. Rendition is the act a host country takes in yielding a subject to the country requesting extradition.

What you're referring to is the Orwellian term "extraordinary rendition" (the correct term is "kidnapping"), in which subjects are detained extrajudicially and shipped to a third party jurisdiction to be tortured. "Torture" is important to the definition of "extraordinary rendition", as getting subjects to countries where they can be tortured is the reason "extraordinary" measures have to be taken in the first place.

Serious question: is it kidnapping if US Marshals go into Mexico and grab a fugitive to bring him back to the US? Maybe it is, maybe we (generally, as a country) are okay with it under certain circumstances or for certain offenses.

If it happens as you describe, then it is definitely kidnapping.

It's kidnapping under Mexican law, but I can't think of a US law that would ban it.

Does it happen frequently? (Serious question, I don't know).

I have no idea, I just know it has happened in the past both with and without approval/consent of Mexican officials. I don't think they'd be super public about it either way. Either it happens very rarely and that's a safe way to evade capture, or it happens every day and people will stop running to Mexico.

I don't believe it is the case that US law enforcement agents can go into Mexico and arrest people. Can anyone clarify this?

Rendition just means giving something e.g. giving someone up for extradition.

"Extraordinary rendition" is some weird orwellian way of saying "we kidnapped people and took them to countries that will torture them for us"

Extradition is a well defined process subject to a defined judicial review by the countries involved.

According to the Wikipedia article on (extraordinary) rendition "in the United States, the first well-known rendition case was that of an airline hijacker abducted in Italy and brought to the U.S. for trial, authorized by President Ronald Reagan".

It seems like the Snowden case would fit the same definition.

The US would extradite him, but the Danes would render him.

So... wouldn't this be a rendition from Denmark to USA (where he would be - no doubt - interrogated harshly)?

Interrogated over what? He's publicly confessed repeatedly to what he's done. AQ subjects were tortured because the administration believed at the time they could find out about upcoming plots. Snowden has already done his business, boasted about it and fled the nation. If he ever set foot in the US he'd be very easily convicted by due process without needing to answer a single question.

I think a lot of people here just aren't aware of much of the history, or have forgotten.

An important reason for people being tortured was because of the Bush administration's torture policy described in John Yoo's "torture memos," which described a legal justification for the use of torture in early 2003 or so.

When this policy became a source of public humiliation around 2004-2005, the Bush administration began quietly and partially walking the policy back, and the CIA began destroying evidence.

It became an election issue around 2008, with Democrats successfully using the torture memos and Abu Ghraib to discredit Bush and the Republican party. The Republicans wisely chose McCain as their candidate, since he was a former POW who had been tortured and at least nominally opposed torture, but it wasn't enough to dispel the perceived taint of Abu Ghraib. This was one of the major reasons Obama was elected, and his public repudiation of the policy was one of the first major consequences of his election.

What happens if or when Snowden enters US custody depends on who is elected to which offices. The past 15 years should have taught us that the executive has a huge amount of leeway and that it can take years for the judicial branch to catch up, so that it actually matters more, rather than less, who is elected to what office. Elections determine the course of history. Make sure to vote, whether or not you are happy with the primaries.

I thought that "harsh interrogation" was a codename for torture - or at least inhumane treatment, like the one afforded to Manning.

Perhaps pour encourager les autres.

I'm sure he will get some ridiculous 2,000 year prison sentence, no need to torture him to make the point.

Permanent solitary confinement in ADX Florence (which is assuredly what Snowden and Assange will receive if they are ever in U.S. hands) IS torture.

There is no metaphor or exaggeration or hyperbole in the above sentence.

Manning has been tortured. As a member of the army I suppose there are some differences but it's not so difficult to think that the same could happen.

Manning was convicted of espionage, imprisoned, and put into solitary confinement under the legal authority of UCMJ. Unfortunately, this is all legal, backed by the popular view that sentencing should be punitive and serve as a deterrent. Think of all the people in solitary confinement who, unlike Manning, were never in the public eye.

Manning was:

imprisoned in solitary confinement, barred from exercising even in his cell, under constant surveillance, without pillows or sheets,

all this, before the trial.

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/manning_3/

http://www.mintpressnews.com/chelsea-manning-chronicles-her-...

I agree with you about all the other people in solitary confinement.

Manning was ... put into solitary confinement.

That's what we man by "tortured".

Though "living death" might be a better description.

A rose by any other name is still a rose, whether it's legal or not.

No, you're thinking of extradition. Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

> Rendition means sending him someplace away from American courts to be [interrogated harshly].

I'd fully expect from the US government to lock Snowden up in Guantanamo and throw away the keys.

You would expect Obama to add prisoners to Guantanamo while he's desperately trying to close it? And you think he could just disappear an extremely visible personality and no one would be suspicious? The fact is they have him dead to rights on breaking the law and any court would easily convict him and give him at least a few if not many years in jail. He'd probably plea bargain to something face saving and be done with it.

> desperately trying

Haven't heard a peep out of him about Gitmo this decade. If this is what counts as "desperately trying", I've got to wonder what term you use for actual effort.

He's been slowly but steadily releasing people.

http://www.gtmoclock.com

You've got a lot more faith that extralegal shenanigans won't happen than I do, for sure. Snowden's leaks have shown us that the US government will do anything if it thinks it can get away with it, the law be damned.

Besides. What happened with Bradley/Chelsea Manning is all "legal", and that amounts to straight-up torture.

Snowden would not have been sent to Guantanmo because he is an American citizen. The point of Guantanmo is that the US wanted a place to keep people who weren't US citizens and wasn't on US soil.

Correct. He would be placed in permanent solitary confinement at ADX Florence in Colorado, not Guantanamo Bay.

(Guantanamo Bay, in case you weren't aware, has entered the vernacular as a metaphor, and that's how the previous commenter was using it.)

Not just that. They had all these detainees that they thought were probably terrorists, but they knew they didn't have enough evidence (or at least admissible evidence) to convict them. So, between sending them court knowing a lot of them would be acquitted or letting them go back to do whatever bad stuff they were worried would happen, they just decided to hold them in limbo. They have plenty of evidence to convict Snowden in a civilian court.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com