Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-nsa-leaks-snowden-20130731,0,4611758.story

by dllthomas • 13 years ago

186 59 13 years ago

l33tbro• 13 years ago

Surveillance "debate"? I must have missed something.

soganess• 13 years ago

In modern parlance the word debate is used place of "dialog" or "conversation", even if there is little actual debating going on.

jstalin• 13 years ago

We should more than give him his due. We should throw him a frickin ticker-tape parade.

staunch• 13 years ago

I'll settle for a pardon.

alipang• 13 years ago

Like the one Bradley Manning got.

dllthomas6• 13 years ago

Under the current administration, I'm hoping we even get any sort of meaningful response to the pardon petition (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow...).

I'm holding out a tiny glimmer of hope that Obama comes to his senses enough to pardon for the domestic pieces. It doesn't seem likely, but doesn't seem to directly contradict what he's said, and maybe Obama can pre-emptively compromise with me for once...

bparsons• 13 years ago

Today was disheartening.

The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history.

The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on with its day.

What does it take to get American's outraged about something?

frenchy• 13 years ago

What does it take to get American's outraged about something?

sex

conanbatt• 13 years ago

When this story brokeout, i had the idea that the best way to publicize this is to find an example of a private sexual conversation on record, which they obviously have. Would have been interesting for Snowden to get one of those just in case.

That, or an inside trading potential example.

Money or sex is something everyone understands.

product50• 13 years ago

George Zimmerman

montage• 13 years ago

Take away their Twinkies

EliRivers• 13 years ago

What does it take to get Americans outraged about something?

Suggest that professional game players should take sensible safety precautions.

adamio• 13 years ago

I think most people assumed the government was always doing this , and just accept it will continue to do this. To most people its not that far from the police being able to get access to similar records. The whole secret court aspect flies over the heads of the masses

Almaviva• 13 years ago

A nipple slip.

zues• 13 years ago

This should have been the first release. Unfortunately the media and average citizens have a short attention span for continuing coverage of anything..

He should have led with this leak.

ISL• 13 years ago

Who knows what may be released tomorrow? On the whole, the timing of these leaks has been excellent, and appears to be calculated to maximize their effect.

lukifer2• 13 years ago

"People do not react to abstractions. They only react to direct experience. Very few people are even interested in abstractions, and even fewer people can become emotionally involved or emotionally react to an abstract thing."

- Stanley Kubrick http://youtu.be/xa-KBqOFgDQ?t=51m30s

It's worth noting that this was in the context of nothing less than the atom bomb.

adventured• 13 years ago

America is overloaded on stimulation. For something to get attention, it has to be extraordinarily sensationalistic. These stories are boring government spy stuff to average joe. The NSA would need to be eating babies, assaulting the family dog, promoting / blocking abortions, promoting / taking guns, or the equivalent.

I would argue that half of the country only gets fired up about something when they're told to do so by the party they vote for, the same one that dictates what they believe on any given issue. That's why it hurts that there is a Democrat in the Presidency right now, it has silenced a lot of the supposed civil rights advocates on the left.

ihsw3• 13 years ago

Take away their bread and circuses[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

codex• 13 years ago

Evidence of harm?

u2328• 13 years ago

| What does it take to get American's outraged about something?

Americans can get outraged just fine. The problem is that many people just don't understand exactly what's going on. They're either not very technical, and/or don't understand through the context of history, the ramifications of mass state surveillance.

This highlights the problem with our news-as-entertainment media model. It gives us what the country wants (sensationalism, excitement), not what the country needs (facts, context). Until not-for-profit media organizations can give the private news industry (in particular: CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS) some legitimate competition, we'll be stuck in this cycle.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

Well well, a couple of people are starting to wake up. I was nearly despairing that the impact of what Snowden was saying would be lost in the snowstorm the government was trying to create to obscure his message by attacking the man.

It seems the message is getting through, and that is a great thing.

lvs• 13 years ago

The obsessive discussion about phone records is such an obvious straw man. Phone records are just the tip of the iceberg. It's all the other communications surveillance that we should be talking about. They'd be happy to give up phone record dragnets because they know that's not a useful repository of information anyway.

northwest5• 13 years ago

Also: What does everybody expect from "the debate"?

Is there a way we can get out of this mess? I currently don't see any, besides the one with massive loss.

Please, anybody, correct me.

dllthomas6• 13 years ago

Call me naive, but I would be surprised to learn that these systems are being used to overtly control the electoral process. So the way out of this mess is to talk to your friends and family and make sure they understand the issues and what is at stake, and make sure they do the same. Elect politicians who will do better - Obama promised and didn't deliver, but the issue only seemed to matter to a sliver of what were basically his base anyway. In the wake of an election with this issue more front-and-center, because the people have demanded the issue remain more front-and-center, I'm not convinced you'll see the same behavior.

ihsw3• 13 years ago

The electoral process has already been subverted through gerrymandering and a two-party system. All the good, honest, hard-working folks get stuck together with the parasites and psychopaths. In either party there is a very wide range of people from salt-of-the-earth types to scum-of-the-earth.

If you don't utilize gerrymandering then you lose, and if you're campaigning in a third-party then you lose.

northwest5• 13 years ago

Elect politicians who will do better

How?

The 2-party system will simply not allow it. They have the monopoly over the 2 "choices" we're given each time. They will continue to give us "choices" that they can control. Remember how one of the earlier whistle blowers revealed that Obama had been under surveillance earlier? People who are under surveillance are controllable. If they are allowed to access power, it's really not a stretch to think that they just have the function of a puppet. The 2 parties are controlled by the campaign money donors, which are mostly corporate interests. Do you remember how the Republicans ejected Ron Paul from the debates by quickly changing the rules when he got traction? (Not that I would really want Ron Paul for President.) The media are controlled by the same interests, just look at how little coverage you find about the new slides in the mainstream media, today.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

An ex-president told us that won't work. Maybe we should listen and realize the problem is very serious.

md224• 13 years ago

NSA response to today's revelations: http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2013/30_July_2013....

northwest5• 13 years ago

Neat.

Defending Our Nation. Securing Our Future.

...I read that as...

Defending Our Own Money. Securing Our Own Power.

readme2• 13 years ago

NSA surveillance foiled this potential terrorist and he is now incarcerated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najibullah_Zazi

He was going to bomb NYC subways.

Please, if you're going to participate in this so called "surveillance debate", stick to facts and refrain from hyperbole.

lechevalierd3on• 13 years ago

We are winning but nothing is done and nothing will be done. The whistle blower won't be pardoned, and in a few month nobody will care about it. I so deeply wish that this is going to hurt at some point certain businesses so that some big player might use the little influence they may have to change things.

tn132• 13 years ago

"I need to reduce your freedom to keep you safe", no one can argue with that.

tn132• 13 years ago

Someone should suggest to the American public that this mass surveillance is a big threat to sports and will somehow kill Baseball and Football (the one played with hand) in the country.

Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

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