Yes, but honestly that's OK. It's a small step, but for the president to have to come out and say, "I recognize that a significant number of the American people support this man who is convicted of espionage, but..." is a pretty novel thing.
I'd love to know exactly what the NSA is doing. There needs to be some sort of oversight, of course, but they certainly have a job to do. I recently heard former President Clinton talk about it and he was somewhat convincing that there are certain restrictions.
At any rate, aren't we venturing into politics and opinions?
As a community we can be anything we want it to be. The majority will decide.
Because politics and opinions are something they do in Washington and they don't affect our lives / the tech scene?
And of those that do care, a majority feel that he committed treason and needs to be brought to justice.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn-poll-maj...
Another leak or two (especially about China, who most Americans feel are one step away from being the next U.S.S.R. anyways) and Obama, DNI, Congress, and basically everyone will be able to smooth the whole thing over by painting it with the traitor brush.
I really think Snowden has tried to bite off more than he can chew. At first I believed him that he wanted a debate about how the NSA was being used and how dangerous it could be in the wrong hands. Now I think he really wants to gut the whole thing entirely.
But Americans don't want that, they want an agency whose job it is to protect COMSEC, break others' COMSEC and especially to detect and root out terror cells and other anti-U.S. crime before it reaches our shores. The more Snowden aligns his goals with the destruction of the NSA and CIA the more I think he will get people to turn on him completely.
Don't get me wrong; I want that utopia where no one commits crime, we don't need money, everyone's interested are 100% aligned and we just explore the galaxy as peaceful peoples. But if we ever achieve that it would be 1000 times more remarkable than the Sistine Chapel. And you can bet your ass they wouldn't have completed the Sistine Chapel had they torn down all that ugly scaffolding ⅓rd of the way through.
Snowden should have released the slide and then explained exactly what is wrong with the program. Instead, he did a document dump and followed that up by giving a reveal all interview that shifts the focus from the NSA onto him and his motivations. Snowden still hasn't addressed what he technically knows about PRISM.
He also claimed in his interview he could get access to the presidents email. If he thought that was a big issue he should have gone into detail about it for reporters(the target list, how he could do it as a network administrator etc.) and supported his charge. Instead, it is a one off statement in the context of a long interview where he essentially lays out a political reasoning for why he has done what he did. Snowden still hasn't addressed any of the issues of concern about the NSA and the (lack of)oversight exercised over the agency and its programs.
He had a perfect opportunity to put his concerns before the public and I feel he blew it.
It's really just a matter of "50 years, or life without parole" at this point.
It doesn't force anything. They don't have to respond and they usually don't, when it's not convenient for them. It's just a user-created poll on their website.
The petition site was implemented by Obama's cabinet. It was made as a way to make it seem as if his cabinet was more technologically savyy than others(along with "THE FIRST PRESIDENT WITH A SMARTPHONE!"), and allowed for people to think that the platform would increase transparency in governance.
Obama's cabinet decides how to respond to petitions. I think the parent of your reply, although simple in its' phrasing, is pertinent to the discussion at hand.
Ones' history does play out in the judgment that people make, and the fact that the President has broken OTHER promises is probably good reason to suspect his intentions in the future (such as the promise of a real reply@100k)
What policies have been affected in any way by these things? Takes about 5 seconds to sign one once you have an account, so the results seem to be pretty close to the effort it requires from the public.
Voted for Obama twice but he's just as much of a liar as any other politician.
Then why did you vote for him? You had a lot of other options:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_and_...
Because the only other real options for P/VP in 2008 and 2012 were even scarier to me each time, and I live in a swing state. I also wasn't wowed by the third party candidates (but have voted for third party candidates before).
After all that has happened, it amazes me that anyone would put any value on a promise made by President Obama.