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Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem is, people do not care anymore. The scandal is over, business as usual. Only a small percentage of the population still cares about Snowden. I think the image of the NSA has been hurt and a change in legislation might get you some positive press in the future, but I do not think that pardoning Snowden would be worth the effort for a politician. On the other hand: Obama probably does not have to care.

Edit: I normally don't do these edits, but seriously, why am I getting downvoted for this? Obviously this is bad, that does not make it any less true. You must be the ones downvoting sad YouTube videos and the reason why Facebook had to introduce multiple like variants.

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Snowden's actions were effectively an attack on the mechanisms of governance: if they let him off the hook, they fear they will encourage more people to act like him, and that affects the solidity of the lever of governmental power.

If government is a tool, it's a rare politician that votes to make the tool less reliable. Note that this is distinct from changing the scope of what the tool can affect: this is about the reliability of the tool. Even politicians that were in favour of what Snowden did, who thought he contributed positively, and voted against surveillance, would still likely baulk at making life too easy for more people like him. That's because government is supposed to flow from the top down, and policy change is not supposed to emanate from the machinery. The machinery is supposed to execute the orders of government.

One could argue, that it was really the press acting here, which as the 4th power is also part of the machine. Also the Nazi trials largely ended legal positivism [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_positivism

And you know what's also awful? We expect neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump to pardon Snowden in the future. In this sense, Democrats and Republicans are not all that different. It's still all about the interest of the powerful.

Trump would, in all likelihood, further attempts to hunt him down - given his stance on spying on Americans.

Sure, that is bad. But on a grand scale of things the president or whether or not one man will be pardoned is not really what matters for the American people. To me it is an important issue, but things like wars, mass surveillance and so on are even more important. And you cannot fix them with a broken parliament. However the parliaments are broken, because its members are invincible [0]. Name recognition beats everything. They do not have to fear to do something wrong but for their names to not be recognized anymore. So money talks.

Hard to imagine how this could be fixed. I guess you would have to restrict the amount of money to be used, but who would shoot himself in the foot? You would need shitloads of money from a source, who does not care - rare combination. Also the topic is not as sexy as "curing X".

After that the even bigger problem would be to find a way to get the media to actually report on things and/or the people to actually pay attention to such reports. A glimmer of hope to me is Jon Stewart (and the group around him, especially Last Week Tonight).

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php

The if Hilary claimed she would pardon Snowden I'd vote for her in a heartbeat. I hate her because to me she seems to want to expand the surveillance state. I hate Trump because with a surveillance state anyone who makes fun of his hands would/could be arrested...

Hence, at the moment I'm voting Gary Johnson, who I actually think is the most qualified, but also made it clear he wants to downsize the NSA

Gary Johnson wants to get rid of the Department of Education[0] and is against mandatory vaccinations[1].

[0]: https://www.johnsonweld.com/education [1]: https://twitter.com/govgaryjohnson/status/113419678730301440

I'm not going to get into a flame war, but pretty much everything related to libertarians are freedom of choice. I strongly agree that mandatory vaccinations on a national level should not be required.

As long as it does not harm me, I don't think I should disallow someone to do it. That is to say, I don't think I should, or society should pressure our beliefs on others. I would vaccinate my own children because it makes sense to, but I wouldn't force my neighbor to at gun point because that isn't going to help anyone. Which is the whole premise of the libertarian party.

But everything affects others, especially in this ever-more-connected-and-congested world. Standards are useful for computer, and for people.

Libertarianism has attractions, but idealism only goes so far. I believe the Libertarian world would collapse in flames (or disease, or hunger, or congestion).

There are multiple approaches to structuring society consistent with the idea that violence shouldn't be used to coerce people into desired behavior. There are multiple libertarian worlds.

I really like the idea of the small state. Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. Children have rights and when parents do not protect these rights, the state has to. There is a hierarchy of rights. The right of the child to be healthy is greater than the right of the parent to ignore scientific evidence.

Very well said.

(I know we're supposed to avoid comments like mine, but this one needed it.)

I strongly agree with that in general, I just think it might be enforced differently. For example, you lose social security benefits if you do heroine, but heroine isn't illegal.

In the case of children I agree for like polio, but perhaps not flu. Either way it's hard to judge and the major point of libertarians is that the state should decide. For example, a west Nile vaccine makes sense for almost everywhere. Besides the bay area which has no mosquitos.

I'm sure Gary Johnson would agree to some extent, and he has already changed his mind when presented with evidence.

> I strongly agree with that in general, I just think it might be enforced differently. For example, you lose social security benefits if you do heroine, but heroine isn't illegal.

I think it should be illegal, but junkies should not be prosecuted. So I have a similar stance. The US seems to be goldmine for political activists. It is already very rich and successful and many of its social problems can be changed just through policies (e.g. prison population).

It is interesting how different (neo-)liberalism is seen in Europe vs. the US. When conservatives in the US speak about liberals they mean ordoliberalism and leftism, meaning increasing rights for people and decreasing rights for corporations, while Europe's left means the exact opposite, when it speaks about neoliberalism.

Both are wrong. (Neo-)liberalism includes both social liberalism and market liberalism. Maybe "individualism" is an easier term to describe the general idea. It should be seen as a second dimension on top of the left-right spectrum. You can introduce liberal policies that harm or help the poor or the rich.

I do not know the Libertarian party in the US, but what you are describing as libertarian here does not seem libertarian to me at all. Just careful and sensible liberalism. Libertarianism has some anarchist vibes to it. I would say the Tea party has libertarian policies.

If you're curious you should actually look up where the Johnson/Weld ticket stands on issues [1].

The libertarian party in the U.S. is branding itself as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" meaning government should be lean and allow for as much social liberty as possible. They kinda tried to take the "common sense" approach. At least, that's what they say their stance is. Based on both of the governors terms in office I'd agree.

I always like to call myself a liberal, it totally throws off my friends who are Democrats and Republicans though.

[1] https://www.johnsonweld.com/issues

People skipping vaccines does affect you. http://www.vaccines.gov/basics/protection/

Suggest you find out about the herd effect[1] as far as vaccines is concerned. Not having full vaccination does harm you.

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

Not enforcing vaccinations leads to loss of herd immunity [0] which means that you (and any children you may have) are more likely to catch whooping cough, typhoid, etc etc.

Therefore by your logic, you should be for mandatory vaccinations. This is a valid and consistent opinion for a libertarian to hold.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

In the second paragraph of your link, one learns that only certain individuals with particular conditions actually benefit from herd immunity over simple vaccination. We can assume that none of those people are libertarians, so the "valid libertarian opinion" is simply to vaccinate and let others do as they will. The primary victims of the lessened herd immunity that results from less than total vaccination are the people who don't vaccinate. This is a problem that solves itself. Presumably Gary Johnson simply opposes the creation of some sort of Trumpian Vaccination-or-Death Squad.

>As long as it does not harm me, I don't think I should disallow someone to do it.

Oh, so you don't understand the most fundamental bits of science at play in the vaccination debate. Why am I not surprised. I recommend you Google "vaccines herd immunity".

Children have already fallen gravely ill in some places in CA because of the stupidity enabled by this "libertarian" mindset.

While I'm personally in favor of mandatory vaccination for kids, there's an argument to be made for not requiring them by law. There's all kinds of ways to use the levers of government to induce people into getting their kids vaccinated without making them mandatory.

And get rid of the EPA and the federal department of education right?

Libertarians are interesting. Them wanting a small gov always has something anyone would agree with.

>And get rid of the EPA

Yeah, no. Not Gary Johnson.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gary-johnson...

On the other hand in northern New Mexico, there was a Molycorp mine. There was metals contamination in the Red River. It had gone on for decades. And for decades politically it was being protected because of the jobs that were involved. I took office and I said, you’ve got to clean this up. You have to come to the table and you have to clean this up. They refused to come to the table. So my biggest club in the bag was, I am going to declare you a Superfund site. I’m going to hand you over to federal EPA unless you come to the table in 30 days and come up with a plan for fixing your metals contamination.

And they claimed that it was natural! It was ludicrous. It was a slap in the face. And they refused to come to the table. My phone is ringing off the hook, politically. It’s ringing off the hook. There were all these jobs. And my response was: “These people are bad actors and they have to be brought to the table.” Thirty days went by and they became a Superfund site. So there’s an example of the EPA and why the EPA should exist. And why government should exist to protect us against those who would do us harm. And in this case the Libertarian argument would be, as individuals we could have brought suit against polluters. We can bring suit individually. Well, in the case of Molycorp, you know what, they would have been able to withstand any individuals trying to bring that suit against them.

I think people are confusing your statement of the situation as endorsement of the situation.

The reality is, I think you're right. Sadly, for the majority of people, this is not an issue they care about.

Descriptive vs normative statements. Surprisingly difficult for people to differentiate between the two.

If you look at my comment, it even was normative, but the other way round. I called the situation a "problem".

There you go, some people obviously even have trouble looking at the comments :)

Interviewer questions have shown more care about Snowden's personal drama instead of focusing on the issues of growing censorship and surveillance.

I wish people would stop donating money to twitch gamers and instead support journalists who investigate, setup tor-relays/seed-boxes and reduce the dependence on centralization.

When the market fails, the state has to chime in. Oh wait … nevermind.

That's just the news cycle right?

Until another terrorist attack happens on a favored Western city, Westerners will be ambivalent about ISIL.

Until a newspaper prints another photo of a child dead in the sand, Westerners will be ambivalent about refugees.

And then there are people like me, who don't see the situation as black&white, i.e. I am not signing that petition. In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers. Like what the Brits are doing and currently they didn't have any big attack after the London bombings.

I am not an American and I don't have a motivation to defend NSA or whoever, I just think that what Snowden did was partially wrong. Of course, caching the Internet like NSA and others are doing has human rights consequences, and those should be discussed publicly. But question the very existence of such practices is unreasonable in the situation the world is in nowadays. There are LOT of people in the world today who would want to wipe off the whole Western civilization, if they could... there must be a protection from them.

Even Snowden agrees that surveillance is necessary. However it is done outside of the public's eye and as we have seen without legal authorization. That's the part that made him blow the whistle.

Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That's exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.

He agreed that targeted surveillance is necessary (I do too), not this indiscriminate 'collect it all' bulk surveillance of entire populations that we have now.

Isn't that what startups do these days? Collect every piece of damn information from each user visiting their site? Log when they hover over a link and all?

Morals aside, startups are after typical behavior. When you do analytics, you normally want to discover things something between 5% to 90% of your users. Most companies even have problem for getting into that 5% limit because it is too small.

Terrorists are a few hundred, spread through the billions of people. Or, on the same kind of numbers, around 0.0000001% of the people the NSA spies on.

I think targeted surveillance is not enough - if you find a suspect, I think you need to take the bulk surveillance data and look at what that person communicated in the past and whether he is indeed a suspect, not just watch him only from this point on.

Considering the bulk approach is what they've been doing for 10 years or more and terrorist attacks continue to happen, usually by people the intelligence agencies already identify as risks, it doesn't seem to be at all effective.

The bulk approach leads to a saturation of data. That doesn't make things easier, it complicates them.

In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.

Except you know, it doesn't prevent terrorist attacks. At all.

All it does is make the pile of hay with the needle in itthat much bigger. And a hell of a lot more expensive to the tax payer that is paying for the privilege of being spied on by their own government.

If you include other agencies or even the whole military-industrial complex, it seems to me that they are both source and solution to the problem. With Saddam still in Iraq, ISIS would not be a thing and there would not be a need for intelligence on them. Doing less can be more.

The usual justification for invading becomes ridiculous in that context: We need to restrict the people's freedom by spying on them, because we tried to bring freedom to another country.

Yes, I recall that line of reasoning very well - When Saddam is gone, that is, after bringing democracy to Iraq, the rest of the Middle East will become democratic and peaceful. Iraq was to be a beacon of for freedom and democracy.

"...they didn't have any big attack..."

"Big attacks" are vanishingly rare. But, just for the sake of argument, they haven't had an attack until they do.

The point of this is the US is actually harvesting way more data than the U.K., and we have so-called "lone wolf" attacks every couple of months.

Mass surveillance doesn't keep you safe.

I am in Europe and... they aren't that rare in France or Germany for example.

> ... it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.

Keep in mind that while we're trying to prevent terrorist attacks against us, we're actively and have actually used those same terrorists to further our goals in other countries.

It doesn't stop terrorist attacks. You undermined your entire comment by implying that it does.

If you are so sure that this sort of surveillance is effective due to the non happening if a rare event, then I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. It is garunteed to stop tiger attacks.

I agree. It's like he wasted his efforts.

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