Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
reuters.com
reuters.com
More seriously, some amount of surveillance is probably necessary, but they need to be a lot more open and transparent about it. Secret laws and secret courts are not the stuff a free society is made of.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...
This is happening in the "beacon of democracy" of the world.
I'm not saying this to start a flame war, but to simply point out that the USA is no more democratic than many other Western nations.
(My personal opinion is that the USA is much more of a beacon of imperialism than of democracy. But that's neither here nor there.)
Not all Americans think of America as a "beacon of democracy", but pretty much anyone who does is themselves American. Also, rectangles are not squares, though squares are rectangles.
It was a Constitutional Republic.
"Republic" doesn't actually mean anything aside from "not a monarchy". When the founders of the United States wrote movingly about being a republic, they were firstly trying to emulate Rome and secondly trying to emphasize the then-popular Enlightenment ideal that monarchies were outdated and it was better to govern explicitly in the name of the people.
(The word "republic" emulates Rome because it's the term used by and for the Roman state. It's derived from the Latin "res publica", for "public property", which is exactly synonymous with the English word "commonwealth".)
Actually, in Athenian democracy, decision makers were elected through sortition [1] (drawing of lots). They considered elections to be the very mark of an oligarchic system, which is what (in my opinion) most so-called "modern democracies" have become. (As illustrated by the importance of parties and of a class of professional decision makers, namely politicians, who have incentives to increase their own power and limit the number of people who reach their status. Usually this is done by rigging the electoral system.)
I prefer the mediated kind of democracy (in spite of the tendency to oligarchy) as at least it tempers the rule of the mob.
In the USA the ultimate source of power is the Constitution of the US. It rules over the power of the people. Since the ultimate source of power in the USA is not the people it cannot possibly be a democracy.
...which starts with "We the people, for a number of good reasons, establish the following Constitution." So you're kind of stuck there.
If you're willing to draw these kinds of distinctions, no country is a democracy and the word is meaningless.
As for your second point: it contradicts reality. There had been even direct democracies (ancient Athens among many others) and, judging by the frequency that constitutions change around the world in most democratic countries you need just a referendum to entirely repeal the constitution.
Of all the hundreds of democracies established throughout history, almost all of them had governance through elected representatives and almost all of them had some kind of legal limits on what could be done through the democratic process (at least not without using some other democratic process to revise those limits). At that point, if you don't want to count them as real democracies, feel free to continue inventing your own language because you're not speaking the same English as the rest of us.
On what authority was the Constitution itself established if not the will of the people? On what authority does the Constitution assert its own if not, in its own words, "we the people"?
I contend that the people of the United States could do away with the Constitution the same way they did away with the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution even gives them a mechanism: pass a Constitutional amendment that repeals every preceding amendment and article and establishes a new Constitution on top of it. Once this legal maneuver was done, no one would ever need to read the original Constitution and its authority would be moot.
In fact, if you consider the idea that the Articles of Confederation were the original constitution, the fact that they are no longer in effect today even absent a formal mechanism in the Articles to abolish them shows that the Constitution could be replaced in the same way. "We the People" somehow had the authority to establish the Constitution in 1787--on what grounds do we not have the authority to establish a new one should we see fit?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Democracy_Index_2012_gree...
[2] http://www.democracyranking.org/en/ranking.htm
If we're talking about economic freedom or the freedom of press, it's even worse:
It is often used to evoke some sense of greater social justice.
Notice though, how notions such as 'willingness to invade other sovereign nations' or 'laws on books against fundamental human rights' or 'presence of any constitution or meaningful court of higher appeal' or 'centralization of media ownership' or 'measured trajectory of higher educational capacity' or 'number of excuses government can use to spy on or detain citizens' also seem conveniently out of scope.
Simply put, the notion we are sold of western democracy as some all-solving wonderland of equality and transparent empathetic good-governance is a farce. The more people lend rankings like these ones credence, the harder that is for people to see. (Though they certainly do have some utility, it is important also to see them critically.)
I bet the results will be nearly identical, if not worse for the US.
The blame here lies squarely with legislators that have drafted laws that are intentionally worded to give the public a false sense of privacy while enabling agencies like NSA to run amok. We elect these representatives precisely for this reason - they are supposed to protect our rights in situations where we can't. Not only did they create these laws, but they were apparently overseeing the mass-surveillance programs established under them and had no problem with the extraordinary Constitutional violations they enabled. Our own President has come in in strong support of these programs. Whether you voted for him or not, you should not be OK with that.
Every senator or congressman that has anything to do with intelligence oversight, along with those that had anything to do with the drafting of these laws, and all other elected officials that have or will come out in support of these programs, must never be reelected. This, unfortunately, is the only realistic defense that US citizens have against their tyrannical government.
I think this argument is based on a strawman. The 'secrecy' most people assume and that the government wants is 'keeping secrets indefinitely at their sole discretion'. The 'secrecy' needed by your or any other scenario is merely a time-limited secret, ie. that all information must be released publicly once investigations are completed. The former is intrinsically harmful, the latter shouldn't harm anyone.
Secret laws and secret courts are illegal.
The program is classified. Its more effective if it remains so. Since it is now public, though he wishes it wasn't, he's happy and willing to publicly debate the issue of privacy vs security. He's made it quite clear that he struggles with the issue himself.
Leaking classified information is illegal, thus it generally should be prosecuted. Though we also have whistleblower laws that protect people who are leaking evidence of criminal conduct.
We just didn't know we cared.
So, yes, we knew section 215, FISA, etc existed, but no one has been able to (yet) successfully challenge them fully because any legal basis for challenging has been (in many cases actively) kept secret.
I'm not sure what the parallel with whistleblowing should be in a case of allegation but not yet a conclusive decision in court, but I'm pretty sure governments shouldn't be entitled to more protection against potential damage to their reputation than an alleged but not convicted sex offender.
(Just to be clear, I'm not commenting on the appropriateness of the policy toward disclosure of suspected sex offenders, just the double standard that would arise if the UK government objected to this kind of whistleblowing using your "innocent until proven guilty" argument.)
But here we go, perhaps the whistleblower technically broke the letter of the law. It doesn't sound like he was leaked illegal activities so he doesn't have the benefit of that particular shield. And just the other day a few on HN were arguing that a prosecutor should not be able to use prosecutorial discretion.
I think we can all definitely agree his heart is in the right place though (and all the previous elements of my ode to him still apply), so I wonder what we would think of prosecutorial discretion after this?
Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original leaks.
We can also have the debate about whether they overly classify things and should be more open in the first place, but that's not the same thing.
The government classifies everything it doesn't want the public to know these days, and then tries to arrest everyone who leaks those documents. I think we need to stop thinking about what's legal and what's illegal, and start thinking about what moral and immoral. Many of these laws are immoral.
Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing.
Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to argue that we didn't have a functioning democracy in its absence.
Your central point is well received, but you rebutted a partial straw man.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act
Additionally it would be interesting if the leakers leaked more to get a softer punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence
Also, I have to add, I'm a little ashamed of my country today. But I feel vindicated as a programmer that we were right! We knew it all along. Things like this have been reported for years. But no one cared. Finally this is plastered on every major publication and people no longer think it's some conspiracy theory or exaggeration of normal security measures. So now's the real test. What do we do? How do we fix this? Our innate liberties have been trampled and threatened. Have some self-respect and speak your mind at work, people.
Yes, it is. The whole thing is cohesive. Penetration at the source is the only thing that will halt government secrecy, and condemning those who leak classified information is egregious and a grave disservice to those people.
Classified information should only pertain to anything with national security at stake. The in-country data mining obviously did not.
The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.
So in the case of programs like this, if the hypothetical terr'ists know about it, that lets them know services to avoid, or communications methods to avoid, etc., which might enable them to form networks that the NSA would otherwise have been able to unravel before their next terrorist attack.
So it's not completely inconceivable that there's a valid reason to apply classification standards.
I happen to think that the importance of transparency is such that we need to at least have that public discussion about what types of records NSA would be storing, searching, and examining.
But at the same time the NSA has literally been doing this for decades, Congress has had classified hearings for longer, and the Republic has refused to fall. I don't know for sure about classified courts, but neither would that surprise me too much.
Therefore, I see no reason why our sacred liberties should be secretly sacrificed as "tactics" in an eternal, global war.
Better to declare global perpetual war against pools, bathtubs, or uncooked food. It would be cheaper and save more lives. Oh, and, preserve the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom.
Or, is a life lost to a one who has claimed jihad worth more than one from uncooked food?
It may be that Bush was right, that terrorists wish us to abandon our liberties. So, too do the disciples of Leo Strauss who want to elevate to warriors the ideology of people who are merely sad, pathetic men no different from the killers of random school shootings, and deserve no more.
Remember we oppose tools such as these based on what the government might be able to do with them to abuse their citizens, just like we field militaries based on what other nations might be able to do.
So far your Salafi army example applies in reverse as well: The U.S. government hasn't been running around actually repressing the citizenry. Certainly we should take measures to ensure they can't, but as long as we're worrying about what people might do then I don't see why it's shameful to worry about what Islamists might do as well.
Everyone should be keeping their eye on @ggreenwald's twitter, reveals much about the debate and what's going on with him. He gives bits and pieces of background info..
By Greenwald's own logic I shouldn't have to "just trust him" either, no? Be transparent, spill the beans! Or is there an ulterior motive?
As far as being Disappeared, even Greenwald can't possibly be that dumb, can he? If he has information that the NSA would want to remove him for, and he hasn't already deleted it, it is by far in NSA's best interests to "disappear him" right now.
If they wouldn't find it politically possible to disappear him now then it wouldn't be politically possible to disappear him then.
Does he just think he's going to string NSA along and that they're simultaneously angry enough to kill him and dumb enough to let him choose to leak it after all?
The very fact that you (and surely many others) feel that Greenwald might release this "super sensitive material" later should be all the reasoning you need to understand why NSA will have to remove him now or not remove him at all.
Obviously I'm saying the latter will happen, but this means that Greenwald is acting like a tinfoil-hat conspiracy nutter. Hell, even if the former will happen Greenwald is acting like a nutter; his logic is all wrong even for the world he thinks he lives in.
Once he releases the information he can pose no further risk to NSA for now, which would make harming him far more politically damaging (as it would be revenge, and not to protect further disclosure).
I don't think he's stringing NSA along at all, I think he's stringing the rest of us along.
It would be in their best interest to disappear him ASAP? Maybe that's why The Atlantic's Washington Editor-at-Large just tweeted that he overheard four government officials on a plane (I believe that's where he was) discussing loudly that the leakers and Greenwald should be "disappeared". [2] He recorded the conversation and is getting together an article as we type.
Greenwald has been writing on NSA abuses and other government fraud and corruption for years. He poses a (the biggest) threat ideologically and now he is a source that leakers can release actual classified information through, if they want. He is obviously very thorough with what he has been doing; he had his computer physically rigged (in the sense of software and probably hardware too) to allow for most secure communications by "someone familiar with those matters" who came to his house to do it for him. He's probably in Hong Kong for safety reasons, or at least reasons related to this story. Who else can travel to Hong Kong at will just to leak stuff?
Try reading his actual articles and Twitter posts. He doesn't actually fear disappearing, he fears being sought-after or... I don't know, maybe he doesn't fear anything from acting alone and will release it all himself later! I just interpreted what I have read, "earning [myself] a Disappearance" is not a quote from him at all.
If you care that much about Greenwald, might want to read the Frequently Told Lies list he has compiled [3] so you don't get tripped up. He usually lives in Brazil but pays U.S. taxes as an American citizen (which is what he is, more than most of us). He can not move because the U.S. does not recognize bi-national same-sex partnerships upon immigration.
[1] http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Guardian-News/1127261...
[2] https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289
[3] http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/2013/01/frequently-told-li...
If you walked up to some dude on the street, who hasn't already agreed to protect NSI, give him a confidential sheet, he's under no legal obligation to protect it (though, see below).
That's one of the surreal effects of our 1st Amendment rights is that for whatever reason J. Random Citizen (and especially the press) are not bound by classification requirements (with the exception of actual national defense information such as war plans, military designs, etc.) unless they've already agreed to be.
So is Greenwald sitting on military secrets? If so he'll never be able to disclose it, so there's no point mentioning it. If not he could disclose it today, if he felt like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_U...
The release of any secret through a media outlet could be considered a "threat to national security"; James Rosen, the New York Times, AP, and Antiwar.com all know this now that they've all been indicted and some of their phone records have been targeted and seized. Glenn has written extensively on this topic, almost daily. I think he has a better understanding of this issue than most people.
The contrast between campaign Obama and president Obama is staggering. One would not be too far off the mark in calling him a liar, as simply an objective observation. I say this as someone who campaigned for him in 2008, which I now regret immensely.
An informed democratic country, yes. But people in the United States are misled, misguided, and taught not to question government.
I know this from personal experience. My parents taught me to be afraid of government. Many of my friends were also taught the same thing. Everywhere I go, everyone in my age group either worships the government or fears it.
There is absolutely no democratic attitude here; it's frightening and totalitarian.
(I noticed that nobody has specified who the "they" is. In a democracy, maybe the "they" is supposed to be "us"?)
So basically the fact the NSA leaker was going to be prosecuted was leaked, how can the the security officials who leaked this piece of information not see the irony ?
Good interview if this is a story you care about.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/thefold/nsa-leak-source-...
which is funny because it should be at an all time high, what with the meeting of the Chinese president Xi and Obama.
maybe they're sharing tips on how best to spy on and kill their own citizens! it is the most important economic and political bilateral relationship in the world, after all.
i kid, i kid.
but seriously, wasn't one of the talking points of the meeting going to be Obama redressing Xi on how the Chinese hack/spy on american companies and citizens' communications?
LOL x 10.
2. Another, even smaller group of people violate the privacy of the above group.
3. The first group says, "Hey, trust us. It's for your own good", and then promptly hunts down the second group for being dirty-stinking-traitor-terrorist criminals.
4. Profit?
Not that it matters too much anyways, I'm assuming it wasn't an OpEd and therefore she'd still have received the normal editing and source-checking services. But I do wonder if there is any reporting that was done by those who don't hold quite as much of a bias as Poitras and Greenwald, for the same reason I would be suspicious of a history of the Iraq invasion authored by Rumsfeld...
disclosure: I know Gellman as an acquaintance through a colleague and consider him to be a great reporter...but I'd probably say that anyway just based on him wining the Pulitzer for his reporting on Dick Cheney (http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2008-National-Reporting)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...
Given that they used the same phrases in their denials, it would seem they have been fed talking points, and are are using a novel interpretation of direct access. For example if Google or FB interpret a real-time mirror as 'not direct access', their statements are technically true, while at the same time being misleading. Doubtless the truth will come to light eventually, but for now we'll have to wait for more information and denials.
From this slide it appears the distinction between the two types of data collection are between "indirect" on-the-wire intercepts and "direct" where the data's obtained from the company holding it. Given the context it could be referring to FISA obtained documents.
You couldn't really do that for $20 million just on labor cost alone, so it was clear there was more to the story, it was just a question of what.
To be clear the story is important enough that I don't think it should be required to overstate or mislead either. Transparency of data collection and intelligence services is a conversation that America should at least have, whether it's backdoors or not.
From the previous times the topic has come up, my impression is that this community is more or less whether they're doing good work or not.
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The person that leaked this knew that he /she would be prosecuted, if... Let's hope that he took care not to leave any crumbs as he gave the info to the Guardian