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Edward Snowden is asking the US president to pardon him based on the morality of his action.
Well, here is a completely opposite view from the other side, so to speak:
http://observer.com/2016/09/were-losing-the-war-against-terrorism/
"Since 9/11, NSA has been the backbone of the Western intelligence alliance against terrorism. Its signals intelligence is responsible for the strong majority of successful counterterrorism operations in the West. More than three-quarters of the time, NSA or one of its close partner Anglosphere spy partners like Britain's GCHQ, develops a lead on a terror cell which is passed to the FBI and others for action which crushes that cell before it kills. If NSA loses the ability to do this, innocent people in many countries will die.
Unfortunately, there's mounting evidence that NSA's edge over the terrorists is waning. It's impossible not to notice that jihadist emphasis on communications security and encryption, which is now gaining ground, began in 2013. That, of course, is when Edward Snowden, an NSA IT contractor, stole something like 1.7 million classified documents from his employer, shared them with outsiders, then defected to Moscow."
"However, our precious edge in the SpyWar is waning fast. We are no longer winning. We're about to hear a great deal of unwarranted praise of Ed Snowden thanks to the hagiographic movie about him by Oliver Stone that's to be released this week. Don't be fooled. Snowden is no hero. In truth, he and his journalist helpers have aided terrorists in important ways. Snowden and his co-conspirators have blood on their hands—and perhaps much more blood soon thanks to their aid to the genocidal maniacs of ISIS."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Thursday September 15 2016, @07:01AM
Taken in that light, it's an interesting piece on the kind of arguments that the pro-surveillance establishment are putting forwards to try and forestall the wave of Snowden sympathy and anti-NSA sentiment that Stone's film will probably bring, maintain the status quo of the mass surveillance state without any focus on the actual (and necessary) targets of surveillance, and ideally ensure that the next wave of pork is even larger than the last one. It might be distasteful commenting on it, but if the best rebuttal the public can come up with is "your [sic] stupid and your opinion is wrong" then they've already won, and that's double plus bad.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:15AM
My opinion is that if a professor and author of 4 books has an argument based on a correlation with one year granularity about things leaked by snowden, ignoring the fact that every half witted reader of spy stories knows what encryption is and what secret services around the world intercept, then Your stupid and your argument is wrong is a proper response.
A secret service, after a leak, should go mea culpa (BECAUSE YOU ARE A SECRET SERVICE AND DEFECTORS SHOULD BE EXPECTED FROM THE START) and work to minimize the damage, not go mew mew about the leaker.
Leaker of what. Personally I was not even 18 and the computers were 8 bit, and I learned that guys playing "diplomacy" by mail had an interview with the police because one sent a letter with "I concur on the attack on liverpool" or something like that.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:34PM
Personally I was not even 18 and the computers were 8 bit, and I learned that guys playing "diplomacy" by mail had an interview with the police because one sent a letter with "I concur on the attack on liverpool" or something like that.
Maybe, they're just using the situation to win public support for mass surveillance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:33PM
I kicked the figurative, living shit out of Schindler on Twitter. More than once.
He's an idiot with no ability to either think or deduce. A useful amplifier of jingoisms.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 1) by xvan on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:31PM
They're not complaining about the leaked information, but the security awarness triggered by the media exposure of the leaked information.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:55PM
Which seems like a burglar complaining about alarms.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by boxfetish on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:57PM
More like a burglar complaining about a neighborhood watch, imo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:01PM
It might be distasteful commenting on it, but if the best rebuttal the public can come up with is "your [sic] stupid and your opinion is wrong" then they've already won, and that's double plus bad.
Read it again. Not "the best rebuttal." But the rebuttal that the piece deserves. A better rebuttal could be written. But in the face of that stupidity, why should one bother?
Oh, and who has then won? Playing the pronoun game, are we?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:03PM
they should establish a official "whistle blower" department:
if shit looks like it's going to go south, just deploy a whistle-blower from said department
and then blame everything on him/her .. then continue with business as usual: violate privacy
and gobble up massive amounts of tax payer monies?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:11PM
but if the best rebuttal the public can come up with is "your [sic] stupid and your opinion is wrong" then they've already won, and that's double plus bad.
How many times do we need to give detailed responses about how liberty is more important than security, how the surveillance doesn't actually increase security, how the mass surveillance is unconstitutional, and how the government can't even be trusted to conduct mass surveillance on the populace because every single government in history--including the US government--abused its power? How many times does it need to be pointed out that mass surveillance threatens democracy for countless reasons? [gnu.org] When will they shut the fuck up and stop trying to violate our freedoms? Obviously, never. They're dishonest, reprehensible authoritarians and they should be treated with nothing but absolute contempt.
It's interesting how if 'our side' gives a short and angry response, then we'll somehow lose, but if they keep repeating the same debunked garbage an infinite amount of times, that's fine.