Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn
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animalnewyork.com
One can argue otherwise, but I think this is a very creative and considerate form of protest which btw is also non-violent.
To put this in a programmer's perspective: imagine if artists wanting to make political statements suddenly started littering your linux kernel with binary blobs which caused your boot screen to flash an image of Snowden. Let's pretend that this version of the kernel is hosted on an otherwise trusted package cache, and nobody is actually verifying checksums and so thousands of unsuspecting developers now have this tainted kernel. Funny? Innocuous? Ingenious? Perhaps, but I'd be amazed if you all didn't wipe your disks right then and there.
Edit: I don't mind downvotes (this is my most downvoted chain of comments so far). However if you do, please take some time to contribute to the discussion with a substantive argument. I fully support Snowden, these artists, and the Parks department here. My argument here is only an attempt to make better sense of what people seem to be ignoring for the sake of a political argument which many of us want to support.
Just displaying an image would be easy to verify with a disassembler. And it's misleading to use 'binary blob' as an analogy to a simple statue. Most binary blobs are effectively impossible to examine fully.
Is the the park's reaction much different from using a disassembler? They cover it up so until someone can come to inspect it and then remove it. You can't just look at it and say "yep, that's a perfectly normal bronze sculpture alright" without inspecting it (requiring removal).
So yes very different.
And if they wanted to set up something dangerous, it would be easier to make it hidden. There's no good reason to suspect the statue is dangerous.
The reason why I brought up the potential danger of the statue is not because I or anyone expects it to be dangerous. (For a relevant incident though, remember the Boston Aqua Teen Hunger Force stuff... that got a terrible reaction, even though anyone who has ever played with electronics could tell that they were harmless. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare ) I bring it up because it is both department policy and perfectly valid from the perspective of anyone who works to ensure safety in parks. If some circumstance, however crazy, causes someone to become injured by the installation then it's going to be a much bigger headache to Parks and Rec than a bunch of us calling them fascists/communists/whatever else is going on in here.
Edit: In case I wasn't clear, the point of my analogy is that... as far as you know it's just an image on the boot screen. As far as you know, it's just a sculpture that's properly installed and isn't going to just roll off as soon as some kids try to climb it (park employees try to stop this too, but it's still common esp. at this park). If it was an official installation, presumably Parks and Rec would have enough confidence in the work itself to say "this is fine" and then take responsibility for it in the future. Perhaps a better analogy would've been if someone pulled a similar stunt on NYPL's public computers or something, shrug. (I have no righteous love for my own analogy here, I just thought it would make the issue a little more clear. I seem to have been wrong about that.)
A statue stuck in a park has no more potential to be malicious than a random rock, and has not bypassed meaningful security.
That's a big difference.
The argument of "it exists, therefore it 'could' be malicious" is trash. They 'could' alter anything in the park to be malicious. In the computer scenario I'm not worried because I know they put the image there. I'm worried because I know they could have put a malicious payload anywhere in the system, and I wouldn't be able to find it. But a park never has security. It's always true that someone could bring a malicious object into a park and stick it somewhere random.
It's okay to remove the statue, it's foolish to act like it's scary, and it's annoyingly political that it gets ultra-top-priority and covered with a tarp.
And just because department policy is to overreact doesn't make it valid to overreact. I hope Boston is mocked forever for their reaction to blinking lights, especially because they were doing it out of fear of blame. Fear of blame is a terrible motivator.
- Smuggling a heavy bronze statue into a park has bypassed
security (yes, parks have security).
- Statues have potential but very small likelihood of being
'malicious'.
- Heavy statues have great potential to cause physical harm when
not properly built or installed.
- This potential for harm is considered minimal to non-existant
when the sculpture is commissioned or otherwise created by people with
known identities.
- When some idiot goes into a park and stabs somebody, it's a
police issue.
- When a passerby (or some idiot trying to climb it) gets hurt by
large, official looking part of the park, it's a city issue (lawsuit).
Your reasoning around my analogy actually illustrates my point fairly well– I'm afraid there isn't much I can do to bridge our disagreement there.
Rather than the city of Boston be mocked for their overreaction, I would be much happier if we improved our education in electronics. And other things, because education is the best way we know how to conquer fear in an institutional setting.
The idea that this had "ultra-top priority" because of its political nature is, while possible, extremely unlikely. The chance that its political nature was even noticed by the people responsible for removing it are incredibly slim, and if anything I'm surprised at how long it took for it to get a tarp over it. I've seen much quicker removals of defacements in parks across the city, by park officials to plainclothes police. Despite this, the political nature of the message is wholly irrelevant to the actual issue at hand.
Education about electronics is good, but I think fighting back against "fear of blame" is also an important thing. I'm sure someone in the organization knew that blinking lights don't make bombs. Why didn't that message get to management?
You're probably right, but that's a very naive way to approach public safety and accountability. If it was still visible right now there would probably be a few people climbing up to it to get a selfie with Snowden.
> I'm sure someone in the organization knew that blinking lights don't make bombs. Why didn't that message get to management?
That's not how bureaucracies work. (The fear of blame point is very valid though.)
The tornado example is funny because though it would probably be considered an "act of god", maybe then certain things that shouldn't get blown off would. Why? Because it's literally hydrocal glued onto a column...
"Don't borrow trouble" would be just as appropriate in response to the more conspiratorial views which I am trying to refute.
---
The best possible outcome of this would be that someone at the next commission meeting brings a proposal (or sends one to Laurie Cumbo, or the conservancy) to reinstall the piece. Probably couldn't go in the same location because doing anything with Preservation takes... forever... but I wouldn't be surprised if Fort Greene could muster up support of locals (as long as they don't mind attending plenty of evening meetings).
Have to laugh at this, because only on HN is the use of a disassembler considered "easy."
True story, I program computers for a living, and I have literally no idea how to verify anything at all with a disassembler. Or even approximately how one works.
Knowing that, you should realize that a disassembler is just one or two of those steps reversed, the "assembler" steps, which should make if pretty much self-explanatory.
And I'm talking about looking at a 20 byte function; you could figure it out if you wanted.
[1] I don't use Ubuntu so maybe it doesn't fully apply here. On Arch using pacman, the list of mirrors/caches is mostly commented out so that people can choose their own. They are "trustworthy" essentially until they're not, but we have signature checking to fall back on. In the physical world we don't have this, thus the setup of my (again, flawed) analogy.
Any more involved than that and it's missing the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I admit that the disassembler response made me chuckle.
The point is that you're using 'binary blob' to sound scarier than it is. With a statue there's no reason to fear it (for reasons explained in other posts). With an image displayer an expert can poke it and then announce there's no reason to fear it.
You're telling me I should be ready to wipe my disks then and there, even though it's just an image displayer, but that's an overreaction. Your analogy just strengthens the point that the park shouldn't panic.
In your example, the presence shows that the integrity of your system has been compromised. If this sculpture showed up inside of a high security museum display case, then your analogy would make sense.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111221041147/http://www.artfla... http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2014/jun... http://hyperallergic.com/11146/8-deadly-works-of-art/
Edit: I think I know what you mean based on your other reply to me; I'll respond there unless you want to clarify anyway.
People leave cool stuff places. It happens. I mean how many times have cell phones been left somewhere on accident say, which if it was on purpose doesn't matter either -- OH NO, PARK BENCH SSL CERT MITM ATTACKED, PURGE YOUR LUNCHBOXES
No, it's an object left/put there. So unput it there. That's what parks & recreation does all the rest of the time. Now it's a rad piece of art, not a cell phone, not an umbrella, etc.
The Linux kernel represents a collection of modules, which are predictable and fairly reliable, and as such the Linux kernel is to a certain extent fairly deterministic. A small change compromises the integrity of the entire system, as defined by its checksums.
People on the other hand are not as predictable and not at all reliable when compared to code bases. Therefore, a collection of individuals is a fairly probabilistic system. And as such, a small change in someone's, albeit not harmful behavior, will do little to compromise the integrity of our society.
And by the say, the Linux kernel you were talking about (for which supposedly you have the checksums) is static, whereas you could better describe our society as a dynamic, ever evolving system. You wouldn't compute the checksums of a running program, now would you?
Edit: Re-reading your comment I might have missed a few parts so I'll reply back while waiting for paint to dry (fun day).
I wasn't trying to equate the two systems or their intricacies and behavior. Rather, we are given some system with rules which govern what we expect it to "be". (I could say do, but consider this the "state" of the system; if it is code, it is not executing but just lines of code in files.) When that system is changed in a way we do not expect by an action that we had prior expectations for, we generally try to revert that action. You are responsible for your system, so you can do what you like. Parks and Rec is responsible for this park, and all of its users and rightly intends to remove this unexpected modification, regardless of its origin or meaning.
I'm just realizing what a missed opportunity to be hip it was– when you let a friend provision your vagrant images with unknown docker containers with [insert unexpected behavior] just before distributing it to thousands of users... (The potential danger of the thing would be a side-effect though so this one's not so good either. I tried!)
And they're in the right, so there is that.
Maybe if they had decided to place it on a swing seat... different story... a funny one I'd say.
This whole deal with the people putting up a statue of a hero and the government tearing it down? Not what America's supposed to be about.
Combine that with the fact that most of the senators who voted for the Patriot Act probably read 1984, and didn't object to the obvious propaganda in the name Patriot Act? Not what America's supposed to be about either.
He's one of the most successful double-agents in history, with excellent public relations. If a double-agent were to happen again in the future, they'll do what they can to study how Snowden handled his case.
No, I don't think he's a "hero". At least Manning's ideology was pure, (although naiive). Snowden is almost certainly a double-agent based on the countries he fled to and who he is working with currently. Contrast Snowden with Manning: Manning didn't contact the Chinese Embassy while fleeing to Hong Kong before releasing only some of the data. Just think about it for a second. Manning released anything and everything he got his hands on. Snowden: he's visited multiple foreign countries and has direct contact with those governments.
If you want to discuss the collections programs, lets start with how you expect police to actually deal with modern criminals (ie: Swatters) if they didn't have the ability to track the location of their phone calls. You know, practical concerns that our law enforcement are attempting to solve. If tracking telephone "metadata" is too much, then what tools are you willing to give police in their battle?
EDIT: Here come the down votes. Come on people, lets see your stuff. Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Have the police sit around doing nothing because they don't have the legal tools to look at business metadata? I'm trying to bring up an actual issue here. For a hundred years, the "metadata" standard has applied to mail, telephone records, business records and so forth as "free game" for the Police.
What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?
2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
Wrong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...
It's been free-game for a hundred years. Keep up with the law dude. USPS "metadata" has been copied and tracked. Such information was used for the Anthrax cases of early 2000s... and other such crimes.
It is illegal for police to read the contents of an envelope, but they can (and have been) scanning the outside of envelopes and storing that metadata for police use for decades.
The difference between snail-mail and the business records provision is... terrorism was added to the words. But I'd bet what they were doing was legal before the Patriot Act was made.
> 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
That doesn't answer the question. How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
>How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
And if the Swatter used another phone to call a Google Voice number to create a local line in another city, they will need Metadata to figure out what that _OTHER_ telephone number is.
Otherwise, they have a phone number to a fake google-account created in TOR. That's not very useful.
Phone Number 555-0000 called Google-Voice 555-9991, which THEN called the Police. Only having "555-9991" is completely worthless. You need metadata analysis to unravel the proxies.
Furthermore, executing a warrant generally requires a name and a case. You don't got a name yet, you're trying to build a case without warrant powers at this point of the Police game.
Do you think these Swatters are dumb or something? They aren't using their personal phone numbers to call the police, they're actually redirecting themselves a little bit.
> I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
The legal standard between 1940s (since the closure of the Office of Censorship, which straight up allowed the US Agents to read mail and censor them), and now has been that metadata collection doesn't need a warrant.
Metadata collection is NOT search/seizure in Smith v. Maryland. Its how things have operated for literally decades.
Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least (see again... Smith v. Maryland).
Going back to the cases before that was Olmstead v. United States, 1928, which collection of straight-up data was considered not search/seizure btw. (So we've actually cut back upon collection from a historical perspective. Police powers were greater in the 1920s than today)
If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata.
>Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least
Fine, I want a change from the status quo. But it's not just that, I'm saying two things.
1. It is important that metadata (and data) collection does not expand because of the ease of technology.
2. I would prefer metadata collection to be rolled back a few decades and limited.
It's 1 that really worries me, and no amount of historical collection is going to comfort that.
Thanks for the disappointing enlightenment.
Did you read the business records provision?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861
Read it again. It requires the agencies to check off with a Judge. It already _has_ oversight built into it. If something is wrong with the oversight, then tell me what you think is wrong with it.
In addition, the NSA collects data before asking for permission. And I am doubtful that their oversight is effective.
But I don't want to argue about it for hours. I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
Snowden's first revealed document was the court order where the NSA / FBI was asking for permission from the FISA courts. Now I don't think you've even read Snowden's docs.
> But I don't want to argue about it for hours.
Fair enough. I hope that in our short discussion, you learned how things actually work.
> I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
You're welcome to have your opinion, but your opinion was tainted by horribly inaccurate facts. I thank you for being a good sport and listening to me through this.
In any case, now you know the specific law that grants the powers. You can now write to a Senator / House Representative and argue specifically against the law on your own. Even if you are on the "other side" of this debate, we Americans are much better off when all sides understand the debate. Our political system also works out well when discussions like what you and I just had happen more often.
Summary: Business Records Provision of the Patriot Act. Know it well, so you can criticize it. Take it down and the metadata of the NSA should fall.
Good luck on the political battlefield. Again, thank you for working with me in this debate.
Okay I'll be more specific. Without specific permission pertaining to a specific case, they collect whatever they feel like to sort out later. I don't like that.
>I hope that in our short discussion, you learned how things actually work.
I learned there has been more access to metadata than I previously thought, but my main worry is and has been the exploding amount of metadata and analysis, which I do have a pretty good grasp on.
Thanks for the discussion.
> Okay I'll be more specific. Without specific permission pertaining to a specific case, they collect whatever they feel like to sort out later. I don't like that.
How do you expect the Police to go after a swatter then? The creation of 'nameless warrants' is looked down upon in general, and is grossly illegal in many jurisdictions. You cannot get a warrant unless a specific person is named.
Without a warrant, police cannot continue investigating. Police need access to the metadata to get a name so that they can get a warrant.
I know John Doe warrants exist, but their use is highly criticized. And it should be! We can't have the police getting nameless warrants regularly. With that said, we have to give the Police enough room to maneuver so that they can build a case before they are granted the high-powers of a warrant.
The Fourth Amendment promises _due process_. Metadata, in my opinion is a "reasonable" search. Or at least, we should _define_ metadata as the part that can be reasonably searched. (After all, not all data is innately private. The data that is "public" should be easily searched by the Police without warrants). The debate really should be about determining which bits of data are "public" and which bits aren't.
Well we're talking about a 'nameless warrant' to only access something they could access at-will before, so I don't see that as a real problem.
>we should _define_ metadata as the part that can be reasonably searched.
That sounds like a mess. Metadata has a pretty clear meaning already when it comes to communication.
>The debate really should be about determining which bits of data are "public" and which bits aren't.
Maybe, but things are much more complicated than public and not public.
No. A warrant means they can start accessing data. Install bugs, tracking devices... the whole works. All fourth amendment protections are gone once a judge grants the Police a warrant.
The question is whether or not you want "Metadata" to be part of that pool or not. Personally speaking, I don't.
> Maybe, but things are much more complicated than public and not public.
Which is why discussion of this issue is important. The fact is, you expect something from the Police that is different than the Status Quo for the past decades.
It frustrates me to no end when all the YCombinator posters around here complain and protest in obscure ways (ie: putting Snowden up as a statue in a park), and then they don't really try and learn the intricacies of the law and try to find changes that everyone actually agrees upon.
The reason our political system is borked is because no one is actually discussing the law or how to change it. Our Congressmen get vague clues (ie: SOPA BAD!!), but they really are struggling to understand our opinion in general.
Are you serious? We're talking about a new thing that only restricts access compared to before. It would not be the same as a warrant today. That objection is ridiculous.
>Status Quo for the past decades.
Part of the problem is that it used to take manpower to spy on people, and a lot of that is getting replaced with computers that do it for nearly free. It's not a legal change, but it changes the end result in a terrible way.
Okay, I'm gonna cut off the conversation at this point. YCombinator is not a good forum for discussion. I see you're frustrated so we'll just let it end here.
I strongly disagree with your opinion, so I'm thinking its best to just agree to disagree at this point.
Why don't you trust FISA? And if you don't trust it, what reforms to the FISA courts are you proposing?
Or are you just a lazy armchair protester who doesn't even think about how to improve the world around you? Hey look, I can fling insults at you too and be unhelpful!!
Seriously, the FISA system is documented, and it is part of the debate. Do you actually have an argument, or are you just gonna leave it there?
Which as far as I'm aware, none of what has been revealed by Snowden has been shown to be illegal. Correct me if I'm wrong of course.
As "oversight" goes, that sounds rather a lot like, "That's nice, son. You run along and play, now..."
Almost all of the sitting members of the court are former law enforcement in some way, and many of them have evinced strongly statist and authoritarian views in the rulings they've made in the trial courts they also sit in.
So I'd also like to see some membership on the panel that doesn't seem hand-picked to yes-man (nearly) every request that comes along. I'm not suggesting this as a definitive proposal for changing the court, but what about including members from (or elected by) demonstrably pro-liberty organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever, with some kind of veto-like power?
I legitimately believe that there is value in being able to investigate suspected "bad" actors — and that sometimes those investigations must be surreptitious, or that actor will become aware of the suspicion and change his behavior. I don't buy the leap from that being the case to, "We can look into anyone at any time for any reason, or no reason at all, and then use whatever we find against you down the road, or hand it off to sibling agencies for 'parallel construction' type purposes." (And don't even try to suggest that doesn't happen. We know it does.)
So there's two thoughts off the top of my head.
Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report.
>What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?
The volume of available metadata.
No one has died to Swatting yet, (thank goodness). But the success rate at catching swatters has been less than stellar.
I'm more concerned about the "catching swatters" part. Why the general police forces of the US seem unable to catch them bothers me greatly.
Oh stop whining. You can't just accuse someone of being a spy and expect upvotes. Accusations without evidence (hint hint) are not 'truth'.
>how you expect police to actually deal with modern criminals (ie: Swatters)
Well for most crimes the police have traditionally gotten along fine without such vast metadata. For that crime specifically maybe they could use a warrant to the phone company? That seems easy to do without NSA interception. Or the police could keep track of calls to them and not have to do anything more than find the owner of a phone number.
Snowden is the first guy I'm aware of who fled to China (and later, to Russia) to protect his own free speech. Color me a little bit suspicious of him.
> Well for most crimes the police have traditionally gotten along fine without such vast metadata. For that crime specifically maybe they could use a warrant to the phone company? That seems easy to do without NSA interception. Or the police could keep track of calls to them and not have to do anything more than find the owner of a phone number.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861
> (A) a judge of the court established by section 1803 (a) of this title; or
The law we're discussing requires a judge to sign off on it. Its not necessarily a "warrant" per se, but do you think elevating these powers to require a warrant would suffice?
These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking ourselves if we actually want to progress.
There aren't that many countries who would not release Snowden to the US.
Ecuador has proven itself reliable with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. It proved itself reliable _long_ before Snowden decided to pull Chinese-specific information from the US Spy agency, fly to China, release Chinese information and (probably) beg to stay.
Instead of going to a reliable country like Ecuador, he went to China. Snowden isn't a dumb guy either, he was clearly keeping up with the news. He chose China because the data he pilfered was Chinese specific.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-...
Once in China, after the reveal, Snowden became trapped. He couldn't fly over any other country that had US influence. He furthermore got trapped in Russia (it is extremely sketchy. I think Russia wanted him, and they got him. Russia probably won't let him go.)
I don't think Snowden is working with Russia. He was trying to get to Ecuador IIRC with help from Julian Assange. But based on what he did in Hong Kong, it is clear to me that he expected help from the Chinese Government. If Snowden went to Ecuador from the start, I'd have a much easier time believing that what he was doing was for good-will.
FYI: Snowden was trying to get to Ecuador when Russia trapped him in Moscow.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/02/world/americas/bolivia-preside...
1. you say: "most successful double-agents in history"
2. you say: "probably sold US secrets to China and Russia"
The NSA's leadership has repeatedly stated that they don't believe Snowden to be a foreign agent[0]. Unless you have more evidence than "based on the countries he fled to and who he is working with currently", your case is exceptionally weak. Additionally Snowden is not a "double agent". A double agent is a agent that is turned twice[1]. Even if Snowden were a foreign spy, he wouldn't be a double agent, unless he was recruited to work by a foreign government to spy on the US, but then was turned by the US to feed the foreign government misinformation. A theory that no one, outside of Alex Jones, is currently advancing.
[0]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/nsa-chief-micha...
Nonetheless, the Metadata debate remains important, so I'll continue to bring it up. I've read through the rest of these threads, and they're all "Snowden's a hero!!!" without even touching upon the debate that he's brought up.
EDIT: Its as if this "metadata collection" is the most evil thing in the world ever done. Good gosh. Its still hugely ironic to me that Snowden fled to the state with the "Great Firewall of China" literally spying on every Chinese blogger with police powers that make those guys _literally_ disappear if they say the wrong things...
While over here in the US, this forum gets their panties in a twist over metadata collection.
I am happy that we all hold the US to a higher standard, but I still hold my point: to take down a Swatter, the Police will need access to metatdata.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-...
Snowden explicitly collected how the US was spying on China, went to China, and then "publicly" gave out those details. I think he was expecting the Chinese Government to take him in and protect him after the big reveal.
For whatever reason, China didn't want him. Probably because China has enough issues with their own whistle blowers. Or maybe China already knew the information Snowden had, so they didn't value him at all.
Russia apparently values Snowden very much. They like him if only because he serves as an anti-US rallying cry.
Wild speculations aside, you might want to consider the revelations on their own merits rather than a ham-fisted smear against the source. The fact remains that they have been confirmed as true and are therefore not some kind of black propaganda.
More worrying in some ways is that it seems he got everything using wget and further that there was no audit trail to understand what he got. If we believe as we are told that he was a relatively low level external contractor, that means internal security is non-existent and you can guarantee that any other competent agency also has everything (at least confirming part of your China theory above).
Fair enough. I'm more interested in the political implications anyway.
So what do we do about Swatters? Metadata collection seems to be the only useful tool against them.
Actually, I don't believe that the local police are taking advantage of their resources. I think better organization needs to be done around the metadata that is collected so that it is better distributed between the police officers in the case of a swatting incident.
But actually _having_ metadata is a necessary first step to beginning any swatting investigation. Or do you not think that the first step is figuring out the phone number that the Swatter called from?
Next: I'm not entirely sure that Swatting will ever be stopped. Nonetheless, I'd like to punish those who are swatting, and I think that if they are removed from society... that is one step towards fixing the problem.
If a swatter gets caught and his criminal record is updated such that everyone knows he is a swatter, then society will benefit from it overall.
Also, bull!@#!. _CHINA_ prevented the US from traveling after he got to Hong Kong. If the US had its way, then Snowden would be in jail right now.
CHINA prevented him from traveling after he got to Hong Kong. The US had very little power over the whole issue at that point.
There are other parties at play here.
China had an extremely important role with Snowden. They didn't care about the "passport", they were buying time looking for some other country to take him in.
I guess Russia took him in after that (Snowden didn't want to go to Russia. So I doubt that Snowden is a Russian spy... but if he knew what was good for him, he probably was forced to give some of his secrets to the Russians under the table.)
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent (also double secret agent) is an employee of a secret intelligence service, whose primary purpose is to spy on a different target organization, but who, in fact, is a member of the target organization.
In other words, if Snowden worked for the NSA and spied on China or Russia, but at the same time was passing information over to China or Russia, he would then be a double agent. That's why it's so fishy when he repeatedly says that he specifically used to work on Chinese targets (for example: [1]), chose to flee the US and go to China, and his 3rd leak in the news was giving a Chinese newspaper a list of all of Chinese computers that had been targeted by the NSA[2].
That doesn't mean he's a double-agent, but it certainly raises some eyebrows...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVwAodrjZMY#t=7m16s
[2] http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-sn...
I upvoted you! Of course this account I created is going to probably die because I express the unpopular opinion too!
>He's one of the most successful double-agents in history, with excellent public relations.
>Snowden is almost certainly a double-agent based on the countries he fled to
All that speculation, then this gem:
>EDIT: Truth hurts, doesn't it?
But no. It's not cause your post is full of accusations and dubious speculation based on nothing and provides no evidence. It's cause you struck a nerve and showed the sheep here the truth and they can't handle it. That's definitely what it is.
Except when it's not truth but a random rant.
You say:
> If you want to discuss the collections programs, lets start with how you expect police to actually deal with modern criminals (ie: Swatters) if they didn't have the ability to track the location of their phone calls.
Notice "THEIR phone calls", not "EVERY phone calls".
Truth is, views like yours are clueless and/or dangerous and fail to see the big picture.
I'm sure you embrace the "I've got nothing to hide, so I don't care" stance. So yeah, fk the rest of the people, don't give a sh*t.
Educate yourself.
Is Snowden a hero? Maybe, I dunno. Ask your fellow citizens if they want to put a statue of him in the park. That's how democracy is supposed to work. It isn't perfect, in fact it's the worst form of a government. Except for all the others.
My family member went through this process to set up a memorial statue and it was a nightmare of bureaucracy. And this was in a tiny relatively unpopular park in a small town - not a big city.
It took about 3 years to finally happen (by that I mean approved to happen, its still not completed yet) after jumping through countless hoops and making friends with the right politicians, who then had to back the idea in order to get support by the town council.
The big reason it ended up happening was the person who she became friends with ended up becoming mayor of the town.
Yay democracy.
If no, then we could honestly say that there are not enough people who care enough about the Prison Ship Martyrs compared to the memory of Snowden.
Or when MLK asked all of the south to politely, democratically fix the whole racism thing.
Sometimes protest has to break the rules. Because protest.
You seemed, to me, to be implying that all conscientious objectors must at all times observe complete obedience to the rule of law. That approach will never keep things running sanely for long. You can clearly see throughout history that it never has. Power must always be kept in check and in support of that, some of the rules ordained by that power must always be broken.
We've tried the "trust our elected officials" approach. We got mass surveillance. Next idea?
It's a wonderful piece of work with excellent sentiment behind it. Unfortunately it doesn't suit the government and mainstream media narrative, so I'm sure the act of its erection will be decried as liberal terrorism and vandalism, the piece taken down and Snowden-related news once again brushed over.
[1]http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/illegal-edward-...
I hope, for the sake of the work that went into the piece, that it isn't destroyed.
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/09/embarrassing-pothole-c...
“The park is such a symbol of American liberty; that’s what it’s all about, the founding principals of it,” she said. “It (the bust) is almost appropriate but inappropriate to do it (put up illegally).”
Also if you read the article in the parent post you would notice that your second correction should be directed at it not me, as I accurately copy pasted that quotation.
Though it might make more sense to use "'ve" when correcting to emphasize that it's not a spoken vs. written speech difference, it's a transcription error.
As if the establishment of American liberty didn't involve breaking any laws in the first place.
Imagine if McDonald's just decided to put up giant golden arches in the park. There's a reason the procedures exist.
I do think this is a clever and interesting thing to do, and I hope this ends with the statue staying somehow. But I really don't see the point in comparing this with the establishment of the nation.
Also, I wonder if Sasha would be pinged by the government about who is behind the act, and if Sasha would give them up, adding some irony(?), referencing 1984.
Consider the mentality of obscuring the bust with something that is even uglier. It is not a statement on the aesthetics of the work. It is literally saying "You may not look upon this unsanctioned idea"
They're fully in their right to remove it, but simply making it unrecognizable feels like a political act.
Shameful that something so harmless is immediately covered up (quite literally) because it challenges the state.
The U.S. is getting scarier by the day, folks.
It really is. The facade of democracy is very quickly being peeled back to reveal something utterly terrifying. The response from the people has been the most disappointing and depressing thing though. The random sampling in NYC, of all places in the US, by Oliver's show was a brutal reminder of the mindset of the average person there.
>The response from the people has been the most disappointing
Which one is it? Is it that democracy has failed, or is it that the majority don't care about this particular topic?
The way the government and the media demonized Snowden and fed the public misinformation was designed to get people to not care about this issue.
By attacking Snowden and misrepresenting the facts (such as congressmen claiming he was certainly working for foreign intelligence agencies), they muddied the waters and left people confused and consequently apathetic.
If the US (or UK) cared at all about democracy like they always claim they'd move to something better (e.g. Open list, party list, full on proportional representation, or a number of other alternatives). Heck even run off voting (i.e. multiple votes) in FPTP is superior like the Alternative Vote.
But instead we have FPTP, and why? So we have this revolving door of "sameness" and monied politicians. Essentially bribery and corruption exist in the West, they're just completely legal and out in the open.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_voting_systems_by_cou... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_repres... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Yes. People should be free to elect whoever they want to represent them. I'm not a National Front supporter, but they clearly have support and why should they be withheld from running in a free election simply because others dislike their campaign platform?
The idea of "Only X parties that conform to Y beliefs should be able to run/hold government" is a very dangerous one.
I would rather see a world full of governments made up of mixed up groups of representatives than that which the US currently has - two sides of the same coin being flipped every 4 years with a very small number of families establishing themselves as political dynasties.
There's ~350m people in the US. There is no way the diversity of views in that 350m people is represented in the two parties that hold power there. Similarly, there are 350m people and yet those who hold the office of President are, and have been for decades, close relatives of former Presidents. 2016 is just around the corner and it's looking like the US may well have another Clinton or Bush in office. How the hell is that right?
A nation's power structure should be free to change as the people want it to. The government is supposed to represent and serve the people, not the other way around.
We're seeing former outlying political entities in Europe experiencing a large increase in support - UKIP in the UK, Syriza in Greece, Sinn Fein in Ireland, the separatists in Spain, etc. - because a hell of a lot of people feel the ruling entities there are no longer representing the people and are demanding change.
That is something that should be welcomed and embraced. A nation should be free to make its own choices and deal with the consequences, not be shackled to approved political ideologies.
While I disagree with everything they stand for, it isn't for me or anyone else to decide who should or shouldn't get their voices heard.
If they have enough citizens to vote for them, absolutely they should get a seat. In fact giving extremists a voice somewhat counter-acts extremism as they feel like they have an outlet for their perceived issues.
That's debatable. The ridiculous amount of coverage they have had in France has certainly improved their popularity.
The only good thing about them getting more power is that they can clearly demonstrate that they are just as incompetent and corrupt as the other parties.
[Citation needed]. Sure, they have about 25% of the public now, but the next presidential elections are not before 2017, and two years is a long time in politics.
You can't bribe an officer of the USA govt, it's called facilitation payment and it's legal.
This is made even more funny by the fact that the USA law prohibits foreigners from engaging in that same behavior with other foreigners, in foreign countries. Foreigners have been convicted and indicted in USA for providing facilitation payments, in third countries, to third country citizens.
> But instead we have FPTP, and why?
Its the simplest and most naive electoral system so Joe Bloggs understands it. Its just "the person who gets the most votes wins". The problems this system causes are ephemeral statistical problems that require more than a 10 second soundbite to explain or even to detect happening. So from Joe Bloggs point of view, you want to change his fundamental right to vote based on the fact that your intellectual busywork has concluded that the wrong person can win the election. That's how the UK failed to get Alternative Vote passed in 2011.
Playing devil's advocate here, but would have they done differently with an other bust? maybe it's just forbidden to put a statue in a park without authorization.
Bonus points for a Vine of them covering it up while kids cry in the background.
"Anonymous benefactor donates $30k statue to city park"
That is the scary part, although not new. Is the authorities deeming information and political statements as dangerous and needing to be censored. Make sure more people don't hear about this and start asking questions like why do some people venerate as a here, this guy the government says is a traitor.
What? Wrong. That's just silly. Really it is.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/petitions-call-for-...
Art comes in all forms, including the goat f*cking variety [2] but that's another dimension of this argument that you aren't arguing against so I won't delve into it here.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lzZP36xVE
[2] http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130419-the-shock-of-the-o...
Not sure what China or France doing things has to do with how we do things in the US.
I notice this little detail in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, five years after 1984. After the students build the parts of the statute named Goddess of Democracy, the state security bureau declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their license.[0] At first this amused me a little bit, seeing how pathetic the security bureau was, but soon I feel so frustrated and disappointed be cause it hasn't been any better about politics after 26 years. Of course they have learned how to frame citizen under the coat of "Rule by law". Government without its chain is just like the Smaug.
It really does remind one of soviet style suppression.
If by "one" you mean "you", maybe.
No-one is getting gulag-ed or shot for doing this. To liken this response to Soviet-era human rights abuses betrays a pretty myopic view, IMO.
Oh yeah, and we have the world's largest prison population by far.
So maybe not a real Soviet style gulag, just a bunch of smaller gulag-like places to store our undesirables.
Sure, it's not as bad as the USSR, but why is this sort of thing permitted whatsoever in a democracy again?
This is part of the problem with our side of the debate. We take it as a forgone conclusion that everyone agrees that Snowden is morally right and that the government is morally wrong. We need to do a better job of convincing the general public why issues like this are important. Erecting a statue of Snowden doesn't do anything besides antagonizing both sides of the debate.
EDIT: As this post currently stands at -2 karma, I have to say I am a little disappointed in HN. This isn't Reddit, we shouldn't have brigades of people downvoting comments that bring up gray areas in this debate. I don't think I said anything unreasonable in this comment. However if you do and downvote me, the least you could do is comment about how I am off base.
Dragnet surveillance is totalitarianism. I guess there are apologists for totalitarianism, but why, if we are a democracy, do we listen to those who actively advocate for tyranny?
EDIT: Haven't heard any objection to my points yet, primarily that it's not possible to argue in good faith that someone can be both be well-informed about the effects of dragnet surveillance and still be pro-surveillance.
As it stands, giving the government the power to read any one particular thing will result in it being abused to read other things that were never intended. And with a history filled with governments always overstepping their bounds, the only real solution is to create something that cannot be read, as any limit that depends upon 'please don't' is only a temporary patch.
Isn't this potentially the real problem? It is why our original system required courts and warrants, checks and balances. The Internet doesn't have to be completely different than the offline world. The police can knock down my door if there is a threat of child abuse or terrorism, but aren't allowed to do the same for a traffic violation. Why would that system need to be different online? We just need to make the process of acquiring and executing a warrant more transparent. That political debate would take precedence over any technical problem like designing a distributed system that could accommodate this type of request.
The problem is that current technology allows the government to hide behind 'you have no proof we did anything wrong' and 'state secret' defenses. Maybe a system that makes it clear when communications are being monitored, but the government is going to oppose that as much as a system that can't be monitored.
Also, there are few other considerations:
No foreign company is going to kick in your door, but they would be willing to hack your computer/listen to your chatter in an attempt to steal company secrets. Any weak point for the government is a weak point for all others.
Also, government is made up of some individuals that I do not want anywhere near any backdoors of my systems. Not to say everyone in government is incompetent.
Maybe they are if you are head of R&D for some massive project, at which point you would be taking extra precautions.
I think looking at issues with this lens is how the whole idea of "you're either with us or against us" gets started. It's possible to be less opinionated than that.
I think everyone should take a step back and actually analyze the situation for what it is, rather than immediately grabbing the pitch fork.
He doesn't mean ideologically, he means technically. You're either encrypted or you're not.
This isn't about being opinionated, it truly is about whether or not we allow the government to monitor all the things.
The only options are all or none, there is no "just monitor some of the things" option.
For example, those who want a system that protects jounalist in oppressive countries but that does not protect child predators have lots of positions to pick, but those positions (and the groups that hold them) can easily be divided along the lines of those who support a system that protects both and those that support a system that protects neither (it technically protects neither while it will often be sold as protecting one but not the other, and as such the majority of the group may fully believe it does protect one but not the other).
My view is that this kind of thing is a part of what intelligence services are supposed to prevent, not implement, and they are therefore seriously failing to do their taxpayer-funded jobs. Not really sure of the point of employing smart people to protect you if they then use all of their wiles to weaken individual and state security.
Talk to Old Lady A or middle-aged man B in any number of flyover states; the average American.
They have no concept of what type of data is available about them online. They have no worries about being watched by any agency, because they literally do not understand what is being watched.
Many, many people over the age of 40(ish) make assumptions about what is possible and what is not based solely on past experience. When it was nearly impossible to gather data, house data, and retrieve data about a monstrously large group, no one bothered. Therefore, average Americans from that time period have no idea what is possible.
Like the OP said - take the time to educate folks about what is possible and why they should worry, instead of argue for right versus wrong. All that does is make people pick sides, however irrational the side is.
Some skaterz 'tag' is going to take weeks or months to be covered/removed. However, if instead they it was a picture likely to draw both political and media attention plus cause some individuals distress at a memorial they are going to move quickly.
The fact is in this case it was inflammatory toward the US government so we are quick to declare democracy and freedom of speech is ending. I don't think the parks department who franticly called a worker to get there and cover it up is part of this broader conspiracy to deprive americans of freedom of expression. They moved quickly on something they knew would get a lot of attention.
I might have agreed with you that erecting a statue does nothing. But that it was promptly covered with a tarp is more revealing than I would have expected.
The Weather Underground protested by blowing up a statue. This is pretty classy.
The result would have been exactly the same if somebody put a bust of Hillary Clinton with letters "Clinton, 45th president of USA", even though Clinton would be a pretty safe choice for a lot of people (including those who hate Snowden).
How exactly does covering it up help with that? I agree that there are valid reasons for wanting to remove it, but covering it up before that is just ridiculous.
Edit: Oh sorry, you meant how does covering up help with the potential of it falling... Not much, except to possibly prevent people from being interested in it and going near it. Only the people who know what it is already would be interested. But I don't think it's actually going to fall, just that if they're going to remove it there's no surprise that it's covered. It's not uncommon at all to see tarped statues in Parks when any sort of maintenance is being done for a variety of reasons.
I'm on a the fence about Snowden, however disrespecting a war memorial to prove a point seems to border on tasteless. How about putting a Snowden statue in front of an AT&T store; that would be better messaging in terms of protest without disrespecting actual war heros.
Graffiti is rarely covered up so quickly unless it is found to be particularly offensive. My personal belief is that this statue was deemed to be politically offensive and inciting as well as likely to draw media exposure and so was quickly removed from view even though this is not a required step in the process of restoring the monument to its former state.
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspection... For fun.
So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything.
I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Look, I emphatically believe in what Snowden did (though I may have some quibbles with his methods, his reasons were exemplary). I don't think that justifies what amounts to glorified — if tastefully done, and in keeping with the aesthetics of the monument — vandalism.
This is a war memorial. How might it feel to those who have lost loved ones in one of this country's innumerable wars, to have the monument to their loss, their sacrifice, appropriated for someone else's speech?
>appropriated for someone else's ends?
Appropriated for the same ends for which the original memorial was commemorating. The ends are the same.
Let's also include some perspective. The monument does not appear to be irreparably harmed. So, vandalism, technically, but definitely not comparable to the Sack of Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_%28455%29
Art is not a democratic thing at all. This is the same that Banksy does. Is also the "monna-lissa with moustache" from Duchamp, the picasso's versions of velazquez paintings, and the impresionists showing his pictures in the "salon des refusees". People changed his point of view for better and just learned to deal with it.
What was claimed as inaceptable vandalism and breaking of the rules yesterday, is just culture today.
More interestingly, the success of a work of art is not linked to the objet permanence. If damaged o destroyed will spawn more controversy and will spread the idea (the real work of art), probably spawning a miriad of "photoshop restaurations" on internet.
A very smart move.
It has been argued before http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawRe...
If there's a case to be made protecting graffiti on private property I would say there is a case for protecting graffiti on public property if it is the public's will to do so http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
EDIT: o_o
As for political speech I am quite okay with the rule that you can put up any bust that you have made for your own money, as a private citizen, so long as it is of that quality. I doubt the rule would be abused much.
This is the top of Fort Greene park, not Arlington Cemetery. The park runs concerts, movies, and food stands here. On a given warm day it's full of sun bathers, picnics, couples making out, personal training sessions, yoga, martial arts, &c. It seems disingenuous to suddenly pull out the "loss, sacrifice" card only when confronted with controversial speech.
http://www.ecosistemaverbano.org/scheda.html?id=5955
The roof is held up by statues of service members from various branches... and a Blackshirt.
Every once in a while that gets covered (to signify anti fascism) or uncovered (to signify respect for the artist's intention). It used to be various local administration officials covering and uncovering it. Now it's just random people putting up tarps at night or cutting them down.
The town's official policy at this point is "we ran out of tarps in the early 1990s and don't care anymore".
I wonder how long that tarp will stay :)
No wait - "symbolic". That's the word I was looking for.
tips@animalnewyork.com
Step forward 150 years and this might be the one and only memorial 'made at the time' to the work of our hero.
Considering it was intended to be a temporary art installation, the MIT Hacks reference seems appropriate: " It is a traditional courtesy to leave a note or even engineering drawings behind, as an aid to safe de-installation of a hack."-nightworks
The difference is that this was intended to be temporary and decisions were made to ensure safe removal, which I appreciate, but no instructions were left to a staff, possibly unfamiliar with the removal procedures, leading to risk of damage to the monument.
I also think it unfair to assume the victims for which the memorial was for would believe this is a valid usage - while the theme is close, the artists are equating Prisoners of War losing their life in a situation they had no control over ( at that point), versus a situation very much in the hands of snowden (ignoring the injustices, there are and have been many decision open to him). Having researched a bit more, equating the situation of a single person, to the thousands (~11,500) who were effectively murdered due to the inhumane conditions of their captivity is distasteful at best.
This is an opinion I know, and I appreciate this is a civil conversation if unpopular. I urge more reading on the memorial itself and its reason.
On a tangent, I think Jon's demeanor was a bit to jerkish for my taste. I appreciate the desire to not look like a softball interviewer, but some of his jokes and remarks and mannerisms were embarrassing either in its insult to Ed/Julian or in its pure unfunny character.
Would we know about it on HN?
I'm not sure that the Prison Ship Martyrs would have minded. And I disagree that hosting a "demonstration / gathering would have been more impactful as well as being respectful". It certainly wouldn't have been more impactful, as I am fairly confident that I wouldn't have even heard of it had that occurred. As for disrespecting the monument, I can imagine war heroes preferring temporary or even permanent defacement of their memorial as preferable to the memorial remaining in tact while freedom is destroyed instead.
The materials needed to create a bust of this type cost thousands of dollars, and the pair ponied up the cash. It then took a little over six months to sculpt, mold, cast and ship to New York. Had the sculptor charged market rates, he said it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. “The amount of work that goes into this kind of stuff, it’s easily a 30 grand project,” said the 30-something sculptor. “If it were bronze, it could be a $100,000 piece of artwork, maybe more.”
[From the article]
EDIT: Already too late :(
Step 2: thousands of little versions of the bust begin showing up around the country
Step 3: ...
Bummer I missed it. I was just a few blocks from the park. They should have done on the weekend.
note: jack from "the shining" shows up
What it does is look for different versions (sizes and croppings) of the exact same picture, and if that fails, look for images with similar colors (Jack from the Shining).
Obama: http://bit.ly/19Zkgur
Putin: http://bit.ly/1aDAvyA
Lindsay Lohan: http://bit.ly/19ZkFgk
Matt Damon: http://bit.ly/1xYl5il
If you took your own picture of Obama that had never been posted online before and did a reverse image search, it wouldn't work.
It couldn't get the query, but it does get similar images, including at least one other that's also of the Golden Gate bridge. I unfortunately don't have any personal pictures of celebrities, but here's one of a slightly-askew photo of my computer screen that includes Obama's face (but deliberately not all of the original picture):
It managed to guess that one correctly, even though it didn't have the exact original image.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monolith
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin,_Seattle
Edit: formatting
He may have some trouble with the Swiss themselves though. They will want to question him about at least one covert operation he states he took part in when he was part of the CIA in Geneva, having to do with a Swiss banker. Frankly, the story sounds like a lie though. (he talks about bribing swiss police which is not something you can do easily here)
He divulged sensitive U.S. documents and information that now bad actors use to exploit/harm the US. Further, he knew what he was doing was against the law and ran as far away as he could to avoid facing the consequences(Bradley, now Chelsea Manning as far as I know didnt run like a coward). Now he's a pawn between Russia and US relations.
The information he divulged that we are being watched by our govt. was nothing knew. It was information publicly known back in 2006.
I don't get why he is so exalted?!?
He ran away to avoid the extrajudicial punishment Chelsea Manning experienced - years of pre-trial solitary confinement with such privileges as clothing being arbitrarily revoked.
You can't say that the information he divulged was both known and sensitive without being pretty laughable, by the way.
The only illegal things he disclosed was that some NSA agents/employees illegally used their tools to track ex-gfs and stuff.
All the rest is completely legal. The country had a public debating about warrantless wiretaps and congress wrote laws about it. The NSA follows those laws.
He released the information because he had a political problem with them. That cannot be allowed. I wouldn't call it traitorous, but it was a massive violation of state secrecy laws.
Though, some of his actions since are at least flirting with traitorous behavior. He has released information about US spying on other governments. What the fuck did he think the NSA did? That was its raison d'être.
That's a bold assertion not borne out by the facts. Examples:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/judge-deals-nsa-defeat-bulk-p...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/indepe...
But 15 Federal district court judges have approved the NSA actions as part of the FISA courts. That a single federal district court disagrees isn't a huge deal.
The third party doctrine is very clear. Records about you do not carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. The judge who ruled against the NSA wants to change the law. Maybe the courts will change the law. SCOTUS has disfavored mass surveillance tactics in the recent past.
But right now, it is legal.
Sure it is - that sort of disagreement makes it unsettled law, which is where SCOTUS steps in. Last year they (thankfully) ruled that cell phones can't be searched in most circumstances without a warrant, and I'd expect at least a few of the numerous suits that popped up in the wake of the Snowden leaks to wind their way to Court eventually.
Right now, large parts of the NSA's actions are of disputed legality. We'll see what the justices say.
The SCOTUS is more likely to take a case where there is a split in the case law among the federal circuit courts (appellate courts). A split among federal district courts (trial courts) does not really have much significance.
It will have go to the DC circuit before it carries any real weight.
A single judge goes off reservation pretty frequently.
"The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed."
Much of what he released was unknown to the public. I think that his stated purpose was to enable and spur public debate on those previously unknown practices.
The only real surprise to me was the metadata they were using.
But even then we knew about §215 of the patriot act.
Legality of government actions is utterly, brutally, critically, inhospitably irrelevant when compared to what is ethical. A dragnet isn't ethical. A police state isn't ethical.
Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
As far as "political problems" go, I'd say we all should have major political problems with the government of the US, which hasn't thought twice about breaking all of its own "rules" about the privacy, civil, or human rights of citizens.
I'm sure many people who work for the Department of Defense think the Iranian Nuclear deal is wrong. Should they be able to leak a bunch of classified information to sour it? I'm sure they'd believe making peace with, in their minds, genocidal maniacs with nukes is completely immoral.
>Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
Were you born the day before Snowden leaked? We've been having §215 arguments since the day the Patriot Act passed. It's been debated in Congress every time the Patriot Act comes up for re-approval.
Congress has a large debate about FISA and warrent-less wiretaps every year from 2006-2008, with amendments to the FISA act ever time.
Congress is a manifestation of the will of the people on the United States. You might be pissed off about what they do on our behalf but we elect them.
You may think it was moral to leak, but that isn't germane.
The Snowden leaks made it clear that statements given to Congress by James Clapper were false. If we want Congress to act on our behalf, they must be able to regulate these agencies.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/...
Without Snowden, Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Manning, and the other leakers, we would still be completely and utterly in the dark about most of the malicious things our government is doing. It is solely by these people's sense of moral agency that the wrongdoings came to light! If we left it up to the government to regulate itself within the rules, we would absolutely never have any kind of citizens oversight specifically because they make their own set of rules, and those rules include keeping us in the dark for the purposes of making things run smoother.
As far as claiming there was some kind of debate over the dragnet-- no, some representatives quibbling about the wording from time to time does not count as citizen oversight. The representatives didn't even know how deep the NSA rabbit hole went. They didn't even understand the interpretations of the Patriot act that were being used to justify the spying. They were almost as clueless as we were. So no, there was no debate, no oversight, no way for the citizenry to say "stop" before the fact, and so far, no listening to their cries after the fact.
You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
It was a moral necessity to leak, it isn't germane to talk about legality in the context of morality. We either have leakers, or we're passengers to the system, which doesn't sound like a democracy to me.
If Snowden didn't want to be involved in the NSA, he could have quit.
But like I said, you can't let individuals determine government policy by themselves. Otherwise we'd have no ability to keep information classified.
You can come up with a hypothetical that would justify leaking confidential materials, but I would strongly disagree that Snowden or Manning meet that standard.
If Snowden leaked that the US had an extermination camp, yea I'd support him. But the NSA surveillance programs are nothing like that.
The NSA isn't doing something that completely shocks the worlds conscience. The are following the laws Congress wrote for them. Snowden and other civil libertarians are outraged, but so what. You don't get to declassify stuff because it is against your politics.
The law shouldn't and doesn't give you cover for that sort of political action. How could it? Can a pro-peace activist leak military plans? Can a pro-Palestine activist leak Israeli diplomatic cables?
The standard can't just be "one guys thinks this is immoral."
>You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
Nobody ever has oversight over courts, directly. They are unelected on purpose to protect them from political bias. The People have oversight by writing the laws. If the People don't want FISA courts, ban them.
No warrant proceeding is in open court. You get a magistrate judge to issue you one in private.
As to 95%, that could just as easily be evidence that the DOJ is only requesting warrants in situations that are legitimate. Recall that they are only handing out ~3000 a year (probably many against the same person and many against foreigners). So it isn't like the DOJ is doing this in a dragnet fashion. Also, the FISA court requires substantive revisions of about 25% of those it approves.
The 95% rate is easily just proof that the government isn't abusing the system.
One last try: Snowden leaked information which tells us that the NSA effectively has the power to blackmail anyone in the US or elsewhere. Via whistleblower Russ Tice we know that the NSA was spying on Obama starting from 2004. Anything Obama has done, the NSA has known. Doesn't that seem like it creates an avenue for major abuse?
This sure seems like a backdoor to democracy which would justify letting the members of the democracy know, right? Or is it still more important to maintain confidential materials when the materials show that democracy has a workaround via surveillance?
As the GP comment pointed out, people knew about these NSA programs in particular before Snowden. I certainly did. Just because you weren't paying attention to these issues until they were attached to a charismatic personality doesn't mean that no one else had any knowledge of them.
Congress did indeed debate the details of the Patriot Act. Once again, just because you find it boring to watch CSPAN doesn't mean that the issues weren't debated in open forum. You're conflating your lack of awareness with a secrecy that didn't exist.
The FISA court operates how it's supposed to. It approves the majority of requests because prosecutors can thoroughly evaluate each case before bringing it before the court. They approve everything because prosecutors can request that cases be strengthened before they're even presented.
The bottom line here is that all branches of the government approved of these programs. That's how our system works. If you don't like it then propose a new system, potentially one where every decision has to live up to your personal moral code of righteousness. Until then, we'll stick with doing the best that we can to make the right decisions using the process outlined in the constitution.
Prosecutors can do that for non-secret courts, too, yet their requests are often denied. It's very unlikely that prosecutors take special extraordinary measures to never present a mediocre case to the court.
At the very least, I'd like to see vetted, security-cleared lawyers from the ACLU/EFF/etc. permitted to play the adversarial role found pretty much everywhere else in our legal system.
This article is dated February 15th, 2002, and one of its references is a now dead link to an article entitled "Library computers targeted in terrorism investigation" from the Sun Sentinel dated September 18, 2001.
In 2006 I recall seeing reports of the NSA's activities. Back then it didn't go into all the details that he later divulged.
Further, all those small details are now being exploited against the US by bad actors. I know this via someone who works in cyber security for the Govt.
Obviously I hold the unpopular opinion here, as most dudes 18 to 40 in tech circles exalt him as a hero.
Do you have any evidence that the articles published from the disclosures he's made have made people less safe? I think many of us had a little Truman Show-esque paranoia, especially regarding the Internet, but that paranoia wasn't widely considered credible until after his disclosures. We certainly weren't having a public discourse about the legitimacy of the US intentionally compromising SSL or hacking into our private communication en masse in 2006.
Just to be frank, what Keanu Reeves or Charlie Sheen can do to harm U.S.?
>divulged sensitive U.S. documents and information that now bad actors use to exploit/harm the US
But somehow also
>The information he divulged ... was nothing knew. It was information publicly known back in 2006.
How can it be both sensitive enough to endanger the US, yet completely common knowledge since 2006?
> You have to be naive to think the Russians are harboring him
Can you please provide a source?
The quality of this comment is something I'd expect from a 50 cent army.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades
[EDIT] Softened language.
Most of us think he was in the right to expose PRISM and some other programs, but he basically gave Greenwald & Co. unfettered access to a huge swath of the NSA's internal operations. That's too far for me. It's an issue of scope.
Not released. Not even plausibly given to "Greenwald & Co."
It's telling that you jump to a ridiculous supposed analogy of endangered CIA field agents when we're talking "operations" safely carried out in secure server farms, cubicles, and offices.
>> would it be "too far" to release the entire list of CIA field agents and their covers around the world to two journalists at a foreign newspaper because of that one group of agents? It absolutely would be and would potentially put shitloads of lives at risk. Snowden basically did the same thing with the NSA information.
>> he basically gave Greenwald & Co. unfettered access to a huge swath of the NSA's internal operations. That's too far for me. It's an issue of scope.
Since you admit that you don't know what exactly is in that data dump, perhaps you'd care to make a verifiable argument as to why what Snowden did was too far? Currently you are just using your own assumption that he went to far as your evidence.
//edit for typos
It's fine to disagree with this, but it's an arguable point and it's stuff like that most of us Snowden non-supporters take issue with, not PRISM or XKEYSCORE which are clearly unconstitutional.
Correct. You have no evidence or plausible argument for characterizing what's in the dump or for making your assertion that Snowden himself doesn't know what's in the dump. You only have ominous generalities to hint about.
Unlike other posters, I don't care whether you're a shill. There are many people around the world who will say what you say - and much worse things - without taking a dime. I submit that it's a mistake to think that the difference matters. You're still engaging in misinformation and siding with government agencies spying on the people instead of with the people. That's no better than shilling.
If you want change, it might be best not to alienate the 45% of Americans who believe that Snowden went too far or the 56% who believe that he should be charged. The NSA and Snowden issues are two separate things that are linked by a common thread.
I believe the NSA is abusing its power and needs to be changed. I also believe Snowden released vast amounts of classified data, not all of it in a legitimate whistleblower role. If that makes me a bad person who is engaging in misinformation somehow, so be it. I'm willing to accept that other people believe differently, and I believe that people should extend that courtesy to others instead of insulting them.
And yet, you're here going on about how the real problem is what Snowden did, not the NSA. I see nothing in what you're saying that's distinguishable from concern-trolling.
On the other hand, when you have state powers like China to contend with (who have a greater degree of explicit control over their citizens), it wouldn't be surprising to see state-level competitors wanting to keep a leg up on their competition by employing similar tactics. Unfortunately, the dragnet in place is unconstitutional for the NSA, which is why it is a part of the Five Eyes to work around that issue - by relying on collaboration with other institutions to provide the data that is ultimately being collected.
strawman: "Their argument is this weak thing that's easily disproved."
this post: "I haven't heard a single actual argument from them."
Also I think you have something to learn about human nature if you don't believe people will bluff on a political opinion without being able to give a coherent argument.
And you know what? Where "my morality" is our Constitution and the principles of a constrained government that serves (and is accountable to) the people, then yes, that trumps the Hell out of laws designed to allow what's going on and keep it secret from us.
Given the context of the original memorial that the bust was added to, I wish I could say I was still surprised at people like cdbajorin.
The fact that you are somehow extracting an opinion from my statement is fascinating. No where have I stated my beliefs, no where have I implied my beliefs. Your statement is a simple display of black and white thinking: "If you criticize my comment, you disagree with everything I believe". The fact that "people like me" exist in the context of this commentary is probably a good thing.
Let me reiterate: My opinions were never stated anywhere in this entire thread. I criticized your train of thought and your straw man argument. Nothing more.
When you responded with "I've never seen a plausible argument supporting what Snowden did that boiled down to more than [my morality is more important than your laws]", you were trying to mock my complaint. However, while I was complaining about a lack of argument, you were complaining about an actual, very valid argument that I endorsed.
Or to put it another way, snarking about people who think morality is more important than law is kinda hilarious when we're talking about a monument to the Revolutionary War. Or much of American history, for that matter.
Here's a list of people that were morally justified in breaking the law:
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Eric Rudolph, Mohamed Atta
Some you may agree with, hopefully some you don't. But it's YOUR morality, so I'm sure it's OK.
That looks like an implication of lying to me.
I already explained how it's not a straw man, it's not meant to represent an actual argument.
People get insulted when there is information which implies the USA has done something wrong. On some level, they admit the truth, but they react against it strongly by suppressing that admission and focusing their anger on the person or people who brought it to their attention.
I think this argument holds a lot less strongly than it did with what Manning released (notably the cables that listed "infrastructure weak points" that would basically be a list of high-value targets for anyone looking to do pain to the allies of the US. Things like schools and pipelines). But it's a question of where you think the line lies in "legitimate" surveillance.
But if you don't think it makes sense for the NSA to be spying on Chinese research institutions, for example (if only to keep tabs on Chinese military research), then I don't know if you have any task that the NSA could do given its mission statement. Obviously a balanced position, but I think most people in the US believe some spying infrastructure is necessary.
I don't think all of those documents had to be released for the point to be made. A lot of them, sure, but not all of them.
Never forget, the holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed.
I'm not paid to post political opinions. I hope you can open your mind and see that there are informed people in this world who don't agree with you.
He's not making policy. He's informing the public.
Didn't we just hear about a new HN policy to limit trolling, snotty comments, and low information negativity like this? This snide aside here is a good test case to see if these new policies have any teeth. I would expect this comment deleted by the mods. Accusing other members of being paid-for shills merely because they disagree with you is trolling and only hurts discussion.
Then again, I can't help but wonder why people bother asking if someone else is a shill, as if they honestly expect an actual shill to admit to it. Probably the same people who think undercover cops actually have to admit who they are if you ask them.
That said though I really dislike the atmosphere created by frequent shill accusations. It seems to rapidly create an echo chamber, where minority opinions are dismissed.
'3rd parties' who spend any amount of time here are perfectly aware of that a pro government, anti-Snowden point of view won't be popular. I doubt they would turn tail if someone suspected their presence.
And arguably, false positives and arguments about whether or not someone is a shill work in favor of actual shills. Notice how nobody ever seems to accuse the people making those accusations of having ulterior motives, despite the fact that a false flag strategy of deflecting attention to innocent accounts and derailing threads would be a much smarter strategy on their part than sockpuppet accounts making obviously noticeable propagandic statements.
I fall on the 'Snowden is a hero' side of the fence, but I don't see what got that comment flagged.
I have two objections to this comment:
1) It's inappropriate; the grandfather's comment can stand on its own merits
2) You think you can detect shills based on quality. It doesn't take much intelligence to figure out how to shill in a convincing manner. Maybe you can catch the morons, but anyone who puts much thought into their shilling operation won't be caught so easily. If you look around you can find articles describing the sophisticated methods and training that go into conning people in this way.
a.) It's not him releasing the info anymore.
b.) You are just speculating that he's giving any info to Russia.
Other than the publicity win of playing host to the biggest thorn in your arch rivals side?
If you intend to say that he gave/gives material information directly to FSB, I'll need to see a source.
PG said:
> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
It's a bit weird to impose your own (admittedly popular) purpose of the vote buttons, claiming that your view is the true spirit and intent of the site, when there's a quote from the guy who set up the site directly contradicting you.