Why do you propose Snowdon should have chosen the suicide mission? It it essential to disconnect the leaker from the documents to bring life threatening action down to a minimum.
Whistleblowing is when you see something illegal and you reveal those specific instances of illegal activity. You can debate whether or not what has been revealed has been beneficial or not, but that doesn't change the definition of whistleblowing - it's not taking a job specifically to gain access to classified information you've never seen before with intention to leak it[1], downloading hundreds of thousands of documents, then handing them over to a few reporters and saying "I'm not sure what's appropriate to reveal to the public, so I'll let you decide." If those reporters reveal something that isn't in the public interest or is damaging to national security, it's a cop-out to say that he wasn't the one who revealed it - he gave it to the reporters and he's responsible for anything they choose to report.
I see people saying all of the time that there's a huge difference between what Manning and Snowden did. The way I see it, the difference is that Manning gave thousands of documents to Julian Assange hoping that he'd act responsibly with them, whereas Snowden gave hundreds of thousands of documents to Greenwald, Poitras and Gellman hoping that they'd act responsibly with them.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/
That's very much a contradiction in this case. Snowdon found a whole corpus of evidence of illegal action. Since you agree he was capable to evaluate what's illegal or not, the next logic step is to reach out for experts in public interests. Who do you think is more qualified than journalists for this job?
Everything after that has been showing actual foreign intelligence collection or technical information on the NSA's capabilities, often times shown to the public with a warning that they could be used against ordinary citizens, but no evidence to show that they have. In fact, multiple independent reviews of the NSA's program all mentioned in their reports that they found no evidence of abuse[2][3][4].
If he's going to go up and make the claim that the NSA is spying on all of us, I what to see actual evidence of spying on regular people, not descriptions of how they spy with a warning that it could be used against us. That's like saying "the police have guns - they could use them to kill your children!" Instead of showing small number of revelations limited to actual abuse, he's instead given us this: [5][6].
He doesn't get to say that he has no responsibility for it or try to shift the blame over to the reporters. He dumped a huge trove of documents on them unrelated to abuse.
[1] http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa...
[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1... (PDF page 78/labelled p. 76)
[3] http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Rec... (p. 16/12)
[4] http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Sec... (p. 7/2)
[5] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden...
[6] http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelation...
Well, except for all the stuff detailing mass search and seizure[1] of domestic communication. While some people proclaim that the writs of assistance[2] issued by the FISA court make these searches legal, the constitution is still the highest law of the land.
> independent reviews
> [2]...whitehouse.gov
> [3],[4]...pclob.gov
You consider two parts of the executive-branch[3] to be "independent"? Even when one is a "five-member Board is appointed by the President"[4] and the other is "The President’s Review Group"[5]? That's about as far from "independent" as you can get.
[1] https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/deeper-dive-effs-backb... )
[2] aka the primary reason the 4th Amendment exists. These non-specific, general warrants are the very thing the 4th Amendment forbids.
[3] "The PCLOB is an independent agency within the executive branch" ( http://www.pclob.gov/about-us.html )
[4] ibid
[5] see: your link #2, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1...
With regards to the independence of the President's Review Group and the PCLOB: all of the members of the PCLOB are confirmed by Congress, so the President can't just staff them with people favorable to his policies; and if you read the PRG report you'll see that it called for quite a few things that directly contradicted the President's statements beforehand (e.g.: moving the phone records to a 3rd party, splitting up NSA and US Cyber Command, limiting NSLs, etc.)
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1346...
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1346...
> NSA to collect targeted information
> show that the connection is only used by the target
This is off topic. Targeted searches are not relevant, and assuming they have a proper warrant, is perfectly legal. I'm sure some unavoidable collection happens while executing targeted searches, and the filtering necessary is is just the mechanics of wiretapping. Obviously, this is not the illegal part.
Bulk, non-targeted collection is very different. The NSA admits they do not meet the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement, while claiming to have a general warrant from the FISA court, often while waving around Sections 215 and 702 of the Patriot Act, or Executive Order 12333. IN the end, the NSA is still claiming to have a general warrant ("writ of assistance"). As we have not had a constitutional amendment that repeals the 4th Amendment, the specific warrant requirement is still the highest law of the land.
Running your "grep" filter to find the communications of a specific target will probably run across other people's communications. The important part is that - as a targeted action - it only applies to specific locations (or routers/etc) at some some specific time. If you getting a traditional search warrant to search someone's house does not allow you to come back at some future data for another search, nor does it extend to other locations.
On the other hand, if you had a warrant to search Alice's apartment, it is likely that some of her roommate Carol's stuff will be search as well. This is unfortunate, but probably unavoidable and generally legal. The fact that there is a valid reason for the search of Carol's stuff doesn't suddenly extend to allowing a search of anybody else.
As noted above, however, all upstream collection — of which “about” collection is a subset — is “selector-based, i.e., based on . . . things like phone numbers or emails.” Just as in PRISM collection, a selector used as a basis for upstream collection “is not a ‘keyword’ or particular term (e.g., ‘nuclear’ or ‘bomb’) but must be a specific communications identifier (e.g., email address).” In other words, the government’s collection devices are not searching for references to particular topics or ideas, but only for references to specific communications selectors used by people who have been targeted under Section 702.
The EFF says in their motion that they have no problem with the final results of the filtering - they instead consider the act of putting a packet filter on the line to begin with to be illegal[2]. They argue that the packet filter itself constitutes bulk collection, even if it is only pulling out communications that match specific, targeted identifiers.
If the court were to side with the EFF's definition of collection, the NSA would be legally prohibited from collecting on any network connection unless it could show that the only communications that would pass over it were ones that match those specific identifiers because (getting back to my analogy) you can't implement a variant of grep that only reads in the lines that match.
[1] https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-wa... (p. 14/9)
[2] Ibid (p. 13-14/8-9)
You asserted that "[Snowden] hasn't shown anything illegal". I have attempted to point out that he has shown illegal activity: their improper search-and-seizure and the writs of assistance they are using to pretend those searches are legal.
What you (and many other people) seem to be missing is that yes, the constitution says that the NSA is "legally prohibited from collecting on any [domestic] network connection [unless they get warrant]". It doesn't matter if this is inconvenient, it's still law. If modern technology has made the law unworkable or obsolete, the law can be amended. Until then, yes, they don't get to run grep against without a specific warrant.
You claim that the NSA is legally prohibited from collecting on any domestic network connection, but the 4th Amendment protects people, not network connections. There was never any 4th Amendment issue with spying on foreigners before because, being outside US jurisdiction, they don't have 4th Amendment rights - thus no warrant requirement. A warrant is absolutely required to gather the communications of an American citizen.
You say that the law can be amended, and I would counter that by saying that it already was amended - FISA Section 702 is specifically written to target non-US persons using US telecommunications infrastructure to communicate.
Yes, you already said that. But logic tells me before any conclusion the documents must be analyzed in the first place. To put it simple: Dumping then judging.
There are only two ways around this timeline, a time machine or you already knew the documents before they were published. Since the former can be safely assumed unrealistic, do you see who do you support with your reasoning?