Lots of news this weekend on the NSA (phone surveillance) & PRISM (Internet surveillance) revelations. (Some info on how PRISM works from the Silicon Valley side of things, here.)
As these revelations dominate the headlines, perhaps they do obscure other important Obama scandals like Benghazi, IRS / Tea Party, DOJ spying on AP, Pigford, the many EPA scandals, and more. But I say, look at the bright side. There are plenty of revelations to come in those other scandals, so it’s probably temporary.
And, although it’s bad that the Obama administration is so scandalous: given that it is, it’s good that so many of them are coming to light. If some voter doesn’t care about scandal X, they may well care about scandal Y. Even a good chunk of Obama’s left-wing base who may approve of his IRS abusing the Tea Party, is disturbed that he has gone from criticizing to defending the NSA’s activities in spying on ordinary Americans.
So, meet Edward Snowden, now receiving media attention as the NSA whistleblower. I found the whole article interesting. One minor detail which caught my eye is that Snowden sounds like a disillusioned Obama supporter:
…the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms [of CIA and NSA activities], rendering disclosures unnecessary. [Snowden] left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility…It was then, he said, that he “watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in”, and as a result, “I got hardened.”…”you can’t wait around for someone else to act…”
By the way, it looks like Obama means to prosecute the recent leaks. If he does, let’s remember that he will be carrying out the law.
Having said that: The difference between Candidate Obama and President Obama on these issues is astounding, even to a seasoned cynic. Here’s Obama from 2007:
[The Bush] administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest…
Now click here for some video of Obama hemming and hawing about how we should all trust the Congressional and judicial oversight of these massive surveillance programs.
I want to note that in the past, a point I’ve made in defending some Bush anti-terror programs (the ones I knew about) was that they had Congressional and judicial oversight. But the programs we’re talking about now are a leap I never envisioned. I supported programs that not only had oversight, but that were limited in nature, and reasonable in being tied directly to known terrorists / terrorist activity.
These newer programs appear to be practically unlimited. The sphere of freedom from government surveillance in America is getting awfully small. Maybe they still can’t legally open the letter or hear the phone call; but given that they can read your e-mails, and gather so much other information about your phone calls and other movements, “What difference does it make?”, to coin a phrase.
Sane people know there is no hypocrisy, none whatever, in (as a simple example) supporting ice cream as a product or industry while also questioning people who abuse ice cream by eating gallons of it. I support counter-terrorism – until it is abused.
(NB: Since publication, I’ve removed a crack from Jay Leno that could be misleading, added a new closing sentence, and done additional small edits.)
Edward Snowden has fled to Hong Kong, from where he probably can’t be extradited back to the United States. The timing of all this is just incredible. Daniel Ellsberg of, Pentagon Papers fame, supports what Snowdon has done and his “escape” to Hong Kong. The question that we had been asking, is all this a distraction from the other scandals in the Obama has been answered ………… absolutely not. The second adminstration of Obama is getting to look more and more like a Saturn V rocket blowing up on the launch pad.
Now we have to ask if the man is hero or a traitor? Members of Congress knew what was gong on and did approve of the NSA activiities.
Why Should I Care About NSA Surveillance? Or, “When did my Government start acting like a jealous crazy girlfriend?”
As I understood the President Bush programs, they were going to listen to ONLY calls going overseas and a judge had to first approve the wiretapping. (I don’t know if that’s the technical term.) I still support that, if that’s what Preside4nt Obama was doing. It doesn’t sound like it. I’m hearing strictly domestic calls were listened to and no judge overseeing the wiretapping. That’s outrageous.
Snowden gay $500 to the Ron Paul campaign: http://www.ibtimes.com/nsa-whistleblower-revealed-edward-snowden-donated-500-ron-pauls-2012-presidential-campaign-does-nsa
While I don’t know if I support or condemn Snowden…I don’t know his facts-on-the-ground. But the critique that he should have gone to the Speaker of the House or the chairman of the Intelligence Committee-first doesn’t hold water. Since it’s widely-known that the Senate and Congressional leadership are “briefed” on the FISA Courts and what the NSA is up-to, why go to them for “safety and confession”? When the Administration, the Congress and the Courts are in-league to “apparently violate the Constitution”, there is no safety. Walk into the Intel. Committee Chairman’s office with this bombshell, and you’d as likely be arrested on-the-spot and secretly carted-away as given a fair and open hearing.
As for why Hong Kong? If you’re in Hawai’i and need to run where the CIA hit-squads can’t reach you, what other choices do you have?
Oops is guess my gay is showing./lol
My previous post should read Snowden GAVE $500 to the Ron Paul campaign.
Swampfox…you made some good points about just who can ANY of us trust these days? And I find the timing of this info dump curious….on the eve of talks between the US Pres and the Chinese PM. One of the big contentious issues is the Chinese hacking. With the NSA revelations the US position on that issue is highly compromised. The plot thickens daily.
NSA Snooping: Why “Trust Us” Isn’t Good Enough.
Obama is a corruptocrat. He spent his just-south-of $Trillion stimulus on the infrastructure ….. the infrastructure of cronies who would fork over the generous vigorish skimmed out of the free money. To the victors belong the spoils. Nothing new here among the decidedly corrupt.
Having shown the depths of his depravity in corrupting his power, why would it be unthinkable that Obama would install an army of fifth columnists to carry out the fundamental transformation of America.
Well, there is one “unthinkable” aspect: Obama does not leave fingerprints. But then, Obama does not lead. He is Sgt. Shultz. The carefully potted and watered plants do all the fundamental transformation and information gathering as The Won perpetually campaigns and plays golf.
Sgt. Shultz gives me a thin excuse to mention something which few understand. Those under Adolf the First were excellent at keeping the veneer of civilization in tact as they carried out what everyone knew was the “agenda” without Adolf the First having to speak it, approve it, wear it.
The Wannsee Conference was held in a charming suburb of Berlin in January of 1942. Reinhard Heydrich and his SS brass ( Müller of the Gestapo, Eichman of “Jewish Affairs”, Hoffman of “Race and Settlement”) met with the German government brass ( Freisler of Justice, Stuckart of Interior, and others) to map out the “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem. They left no blueprint for the ovens. That was the work of underlings who had to deal with the massive pile of “worn out” Jewish labor which clogged the arteries of the labor camps to figure out. Adolf the First never spoke of or otherwise acknowledged the existence of the ovens. Plausible deniability. It worked for the Wannsee Conferees at the Nuremburg trials until a poorly worded letter allowed the Judges to find enough innuendo to reach the verdict they were determined to reach. (I am not call the trials a sham: the judges needed to prove the guilt.)
The Wannsee conferees neither created the “final solution” nor ordered it. They legalized the implementation of a process already well under way and being carried out. They provided “cover” for a plan that was “fundamentally transforming” Germany.
Wannsee provides a remarkable lesson in all of this current day US spying on its citizens by amassing data. It has enormous political potential. It was used in a stunningly effective manner in 2012 to get people out to the polls who would vote for Obama. The IRS data mining threw cold water on the TEA Party and scared them into taking careful caution. It could be used to upend the Second Amendment. The Obama administration is caught in the snare of having to defend and protect it while assuring the public that mistake were benign and the system has been fixed and blah, blah, blah. They can scream about how Bush started it all, but that does not explain how their people not only failed to contain it, but expanded it enormously.
Successful targeted advertising is the dream of big business. Log onto Amazon and look at how they have made use of you browsing and buying habits. In many respects, targeted advertising is helpful or at least benign. But targeted political manipulation is a different animal. It is as diabolical as the those doing the targeting are willing to be a little bit corrupt for the good of the cause.
Obama has surrounded himself with ideologues who do not like the America they perceive and they they have radical agendas for transforming America. These fifth columnists are busy building gigantic and colonies beneath the surface of visibility and to amass useful information to serve their purposes.
Meanwhile, The Won gives speeches which say nothing, raises funds endlessly and golfs.
As I have commented before, this cyber genie is out of the bottle. The only path forward is to be as certain as we can that our uses of it are guided by a strong set of morals and a firm ethic. That is to say, character is of utmost importance. We are awash in leftist ideology which is determined to implement justice, fairness, equality, security, unity, pride, health care, food, jobs, status, etc. all in the name of “change” and “moving forward.” The more complacent, selfish, dependent, lazy, ignorant, etc. the populace tends, the more willingly it gives over to the collective and statism. Those who oppose liberal ideology must be made to fear the government, feel isolated, mocked and intimidated.
Let no soldier be found reading a book that is critical of the regime.
And now we find out employees at HHS were engaged in insider trading because they had advance word of a Government Medicaid contract worth billions to the Humana Corp.
This has got to be the most corrupt administration in American history.
#3 Louise B – I haven’t heard that the current program involves any wiretapping; rather, the collection of ‘metadata’ (call numbers, time, length etc.) about every domestic U.S. call, which can then be matched to other databases that track a person’s movements, political views, commercial transactions, email content, etc. If that’s wrong, please correct me. (And I think it possible, of course, that they’re wiretapping without admitting it.)
No one knows the true extent of the NSA’s operations, except for people in the NSA. I don’t even think members of Congress who are supposed to be in the know, know what they should know. The NSA has been withholding data that the Congressional oversight committees have requested. This whole thing smells to high heaven. And, more information will be coming out, probably from Snowden and the Guardian. In this day and age of computers and other technology, obviously nothing is secure. In the days of J. Edgar Hoover everyone in politics feared his secret files. Thankfully, when he died in 1972, the files went missing. Sadly, it is my belief that the NSA has secret files on just about everyone in this country. Welcome to George Orwell’s “1984” …… it just happens to be 2013 instead.
Now that Snowdon has told the world how much info he has seen BUT not shared, he is in more danger from foreign governments where torture is state sanctioned than he is from his own country.
Instead of worrying about the CIA putting a hit out on him, he ought to think about being held by Russians, Iranians, ChiComs, North Korea, etc.
He is hoping to wash up in Iceland.
But I doubt he will make it to Iceland.
The only advantage of attempting asylum in Hong Kong may produce is the HK government might insist in guarantees that Mr. Snowden doesn’t disappear, fatally-slip in the shower, or hang-himself once delivered to the Feds.
Under Obama’s rules-of-engagement, a US citizen outside of the United States is subject to extra-judicial killing.
WTF has happened to my country??????
Telephone snooping is the tip of the iceberg, they are able to access so much of out personal lives. The facilty in Utah is gigantic. It makes me wonder if universal background checks is now a moot point. I remember a tele evangelist from Pasadena, CA, in the 70´s predicted this would come to pass and stored in a large facility. At that time he was opposed to the use of bar codes, which he claimed was the mark of the beast of Revelations or Apocalypse. Those who possessed the mark could buy. His predictions seem to be right on.
I hope that there is an underground railroad of conservatives in the world to guide Snowden to Iceland. I wish him luck.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just do not know if there are enough people in Congress with the b**** to stand up to the administration and do something about this. I know the media will not. Why am I getting more info from The Guardian?
I do believe the CEO of Verizon was an Obama supporter.
But they can get this metadata from anyone. Thinking about going dark. Hard to do, but may be the only way to protect myself.
The real loser in this—beyond Americans in general—is going to be the concept of cloud computing on the global-scale. And the observable-fact that the major players in the Industry aren’t howling-at-the-Moon just demonstrates their prior complicity to “Universal Surveillance”. What American multinational or foreign-operated business is going to use or trust the Internet now with their proprietary information, internal communications, and intellectual trade-secrets when the US Government (the Admin, the Congress and the Federal Courts) have declared ANYTHING not a telephone call between two US resident-parties fair-game for snooping without restraint or restriction?
And just a week ago we-collectively were complaining about the Chinese and the PLA’s hackers.
I don’t think the Mugabe Regime would kill Snowden outright, now that he’s in public. I would not be surprised if the NSA (Hi fellas!) found a way to plant kiddie pr0n on his laptop and/or heroin in his carry-on bag.
Errr… Has anyone seen Mr. Snowden’s girlfriend lately? His parents?
“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Ted, you ask the $64K question I was asking after I read all the stories (at least outside of The Guardian UK) on Mr Snowden yesterday. According to the HI real estate agent hawking his house, no one has seen or heard of him or his domestic companion in weeks, and his home was apparently very spartan in decor with the biggest occupancy being the garage filled with ceiling-to-floor boxes. I’ve seen nothing mentioned about his parents at all.
I find it interesting that there’s this subtle portrayal of him as a loser who can’t make it in the real world: “dropped out of high school (though received a GED later)”, “very little college experience”, “washed out of Special Forces training” [acquiring two broken legs in the process would tend to do that, I would think], etc. Yet somehow he manages to be a computer whiz, making most recently an estimated $200,000 annual salary. Yes, that’s about $100K less than Fauxcahontas made teaching two classes at Hahvahd Law, but still pretty damn good for a not-yet-thirtysomething who isn’t on Wall Street.
The kicker for me was that he doesn’t do social media—no Facebook or Twitter accounts. Naturally, that must mean he’s just one step above being a basement-dweller surrounded by sci-fi memorabilia who masturbates to publicity photos from the current Star Trek movie—and one step below being the next Ted Kaczynski (though perhaps there’s a shack in rural Iceland waiting for him).
I think V the K’s estimation of what could happen is a very real possibility, except that he seems smart enough to avoid the usual traps and probably uses a number of layers to connect to the Internet. He’s already done the usual clandestine ops protocol of checking out of the Hong Kong hotel he was interviewed in. The biggest trap I see for him is financial; it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to operate in public without leaving a financial trail. It’s difficult enough to check into hotels which aren’t health & safety hazards without evidence of financial security and a valid ID (which may be copied by staff).
One thing’s for sure: when both Glenn Beck & Michael Moore come out in support of you, you’re not the typical renegade.
Pardon me if I remain skeptical of this Mr. Snowden. All this cloak-and-dagger chatter is amusing and he could be a legitimate, trustworthy critic — but he pops up out of nowhere in the middle of a climate of scandal and he’s instantly famous, the public breathlessly wondering about his whereabouts and safety, conspiracies multiplying like a cartesian brain dump, but not without the vaguest interview during which the lamp behind his head gave away his hotel’s address. Am I alone in thinking that real life is messier than this? Is this a massive government conspiracy — or have they gotten to you too?
I think a healthy dose of skepticism is wise, which is why I’m not one of those rushing to sign the pardon petition on the White House WWW site (not that I feel that entire effort is worth the electrons to keep it online, as it’s merely a PR stunt designed to show the little people that He really really likes and cares about them, and you—but I digress).
You are correct about real life being messy, and it could still turn out that way in this case. Mr Snowden has been compared to Bradley Manning, of which his case is rather different than Manning’s. Yet, long after the initial disclosure (and long after the start of the Bradley Manning Hero Brigade), we find that the ‘hero’ indiscriminately copied information by the megabyte, appeared to not only have emotional and mental health concerns but also gender identity issues, as well as a disdain for the policies of his then-Commander-in-Chief.
So, too, we may find out that Mr Snowden is not quite as sterling as originally seems. But his choice of outlet is also interesting. I find Glenn Greenwald rather obnoxious, particularly in the days of the previous presidential administration, but he appears to be consistent at least where civil liberties infringement occurs; which is more than can be said for most of the rimjobbing media.
There a couple things I intentionally avoided in my post, RSG. One was praising Glenn Greenwald 😉 The other was jumping to conclusions about Snowden (one way or the other).
Booz Allen’s statement on Snowden:
Some say 3 months is too short for him to have gathered all the data he claims; unless he got the job just to gather it. In other words, though he appears real, is he a front for someone else?
You know that Mr. Snowden might be correct when the “Angry White Liberals” on MSNBC and CNN are waging a character-assassination campaign against him.
“If you can’t refute the message, denigrate the messenger.”
What Snowden has to say about NSA surveillance is (at this point) almost certainly true, as well as embarrassing to Obama. I’m just keeping my mind open to the possibility of twists in the story.