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> It also gives a road map to more oppressive governments looking for ways to spy on their citizens.

This is just sad. Western governments are the oppressive governments. That we have the “moral high ground” is a lie that’s been used as a weapon by these same warmongering immoral people that have always been in charge. “American exceptionalism” is an immoral indefensible position.

To still be trying to state that our governments are the only ones morally worth to use these military weapons, after all the revelations of torture, lying into war, detaining people for life without trial, kidnaping, assassinations, spying, etc, is to willfully refuse to break out of the military propaganda that you've been subjected to.

Western governments are the oppressive governments.

If you think Western governments are the oppressive ones, what do you think about the governments of China, Russia, and Iran?

The US has 1.5 times the number of prisoners as China, with 6.3 times as many per capita.

The US has 2.5 times the number of prisoners as Russia, with 1.2 times as many per capita.

The US has 27.5 times the number of prisoners as the UK, with 5.0 times as many per capita. (Interestingly, China has less prisoners per capita than the UK.)

So you can make a lot of points about the relative quality of those prison experiences (and they might be valid points), but in terms of sheer volume of people that are incarcerated by their own government, the US outstrips both China and Russia by a wide margin - in both absolute and per capita terms.

If the government offered a legitimate and effective way for whistleblowers to expose wrongdoing and unconstitutional behavior, perhaps they could limit this type of damage from being done. As it stands, the release of this information could be considered collateral damage as result of their continued persecution of whistleblowers.

The people who are harmed by making this information public is not the U.S. government. Think it through. Who wins by knowing how the US government conducts targeted counterintelligence operations? That will be primarily terrorists, organized crime, and oppressive governments. So then who loses? That will naturally be victims of terrorism, organized crime, and oppressive governments. That is why I don't think it's responsible to go around publicizing every little detail about NSA/GCHQ CI techniques and technology.

I don't think you're being very clear. The victims of terrorism generally don't have access to the information that these counterintelligence operations obtain. In other words, the victims are in the same place they were before they knew what the NSA was capable of. What I think you're saying is doublespeak. To paraphrase your argument, "Snowden is doing damage to our counterintelligence capabilities by releasing this information. Also, Snowden isn't doing any damage to the government." These statements contradict one another.

My point was that revealing CI techniques empowers terrorists, which tends to be a bad thing for (potential) victims of terrorism.

That's certainly a possibility. The contrary may prove to be true as well. For example, if I was a terrorist and I knew that the NSA was spying on all my phone communications, I may elect to not use a phone. This means that I'm not as effective at communicating with other terrorists which may reduce the effect I have. You may very well be right though. It's unclear to me.

You're assuming that these programs really are serving to curtail terrorist activities. In fact, that is very much in doubt.

Given that the net effect of these programs, so far as anyone in the government has been able to demonstrate, ranges from zero to trivially small, rendering these programs inoperative will have a zero or trivial positive effect for the terrorists.

I suspect that you're reply that the govt's inability to demonstrate the program's efficacy is because such a demonstration would necessarily reveal so much that the programs would be rendered ineffective in the process. Too damned bad. At some point we've got to touch base with the philosophical foundation on which the government is built. Ultimately, we are the masters, and the government operates only as we allow it to. Allowing the government to circumvent so many of the liberties which the Bill of Rights guarantees will be conserved for the people is to turn the design of our government on its head.

That will be primarily terrorists

Ooga-booga! TERRORISTS!!!11!!

Still waiting for a list of "terrorists" caught by this program.

To be clear, you are saying that a cell phone used to receive a command to denotate a bomb is the same phone the bomber uses to share photos on Facebook?

It is a roadmap to oppression, and revealing it is harmful to NATO. Can you connect your own dots?