Yet, in my view Snowden actions have been extremely important to set the discussions we are having today: how private do we expect our digital lives to be be it from the state or from megacorps.
I doubt that Facebook/CA affair in 2016 elections would have come to light (or have the same impact) had Snowden leaks not had happened.
I doubt that Europeans would have stoped being 100% subservient to American tech megacorps had those leaks not had happened.
I think alot of people around the world started even considering the importance of who is watching or listening to their digital life because of Snowden. Or at least, because of the conversation that his leaks started.
He wasnt alone in leaking information important to these conversations, but he definitely has become an important advocate of his leaks and his own message.
ad blocking existed long before uBlock. uBlock was notable as being a more efficient way of doing it, not a more effective way (i.e. its still using the same form of block lists)
I'll be impressed when he actually issues a pardon. I'd say Trump is notorious for "talking about" things without ever delivering anything. Take the issue of 50 state concealed carry reciprocity. Regardless of what you think about this issue yourself, it seems clear that Trump has tried to pander to gun owners and 2A advocates by constantly talking about this. But last I heard, there had been no meaningful action on it, or any reason to believe he was actually pushing his allies in Congress on the issue.
It's easy to promise controversial things that require Congressional action and cannot pass Congress. The President -no matter who they are or what Congressional action they promised- can't even push their allies in Congress to do something that can't work because of the filibuster or lack of sufficient majorities. Every candidate, and every President, promises things that they know Congress won't likely deliver -- cheap talk. But there are things they can do and so promises they can keep, so long as either they are sufficiently popular or do not require Congressional action.
Did you really think you were going to get carry reciprocity anytime soon? Could you not see then, and now, that that will require sizeable Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and that there was no way for Trump to move the needle on that issue all by himself, especially after the midterms?
Carry reciprocity is kind of a niche issue, lacks enough popularity, and is hard to make more popular. Well, maybe now that the gun stores are empty and millions more are armed than were before March, maybe now carry reciprocity can become popular enough. Before March, the 2A was just barely popular enough to be difficult to gut.
I dunno, if you really care about that one issue, you know Biden won't give it to you (he's not even promising it, and it's not something Democrats want, obviously, else it would have passed already). Trump can't give it to you unless the needle has moved a lot, which... maybe it just-now has. So if this is your one issue, I'm shocked you'd be so angry as to hold it against Trump that he's not been able to deliver it to you. There must be like, three people who care so much about just this one issue. Maybe you could use more issues to make up your mind.
What a strange and minor issue to pick as an example. Do you have a list of promises not kept? I'm curious how they break down into ones that could not be kept because of Congress and ones that Trump reneged on.
Trump really hasn't taken the lead in much in the way of legislative action, almost ever.
I don't think he understands or has the patience for the process.
Anything beyond what he can try to decree himself, he seems to lose interest / struggle with. Even tripping up his own party members in congress while they try to understand what he wants. He has threatened to veto things he pushed for... then signed them shortly after.
I think he might simply be incapable of anything requiring too many new steps for him.
Presidents typically work with their party to pass something. His own party more often complains about a lack of help or counterproductive behavior that makes it difficult for them to pass things.
Trump's lack of effort to work with his own party was a constant topic, until his partly largely quit talking about it as no help became the status quo.
If you compare its process to the 2012 tax cut, there are big differences. The 2012 bill passed ultimately when Biden and McConnell agreed. The 2017 bill was drafted in secret and presented without the minority party seeing the bill at all. [0]
Senate Rs, IIRC. The boilerplate started with Paul Ryan; House Rs demanded it be revenue neutral. The wonks who drafted Tax Cuts and Jobs noticed a major revenue-melting rewrite down to one page by Mnuchin. Senate Rs had to suppress their deficit hawks, namely Corker, and House Rs “folded like a cheap suit” -- Jim Cramer. The sentiment from waving a single page bill around was that, really, any act would do, and only the corporate tax cut mattered. This is what led to the bill including hand-written changes in the margin.
Pardoning Snowden is not likely to be popular is his party, most Republicans aren't very big fans of Snowden.
However, it is true that Trump is known for publicly "floating" a lot of ideas that he latter drops if they prove unpopular. But, if everybody cheers him for it it might actually make it more likely to happen.
The "floating" is A/B testing. Chances are, if this passes some formula of (left wing people won over) - (right wing people who hate it) > 0 then he'll do it.
I took the video to be more like "This Snowden guy -- how would you (the media) cover it if I pardoned him? How would you cover it if the pardon also came with some dirt I need?" This type of test will serve to settle his direction without having to completely remember his past positions, or even precisely who Edward Snowden is.
This is a bit different than the way we do it -- we expect more statistical power with a saved history of repeated trials. "Floating" has been mentioned here. Perhaps "floating" involves trying two different frames to see how the media covers each, rather than numerous A/B trials for more statistical power.
Republicans have grown far more circumspect regarding their faith in intelligence services and Federal LEOs. Many see them as just players in and tools of the establishment political/media complex. At this point I don't think pardoning Snowden would hurt Trump with most Republicans. Certainly the 'Never Trumper' wing of Republicans would involuntarily soil themselves, but that's neither unusual nor significant.
True, Republicans are now much more sour on FBI and other alphabet agencies than they had been before. I'm not sure they are sour enough yet to embrace Snowden. We'll see.
Trump likes to throw ideas in the wild and see how people react to it. It does that kind of polling all the time. This way you can see how the public is ready or not to have such discussions.
Trump couldn’t do national reciprocity with en EO. Trump can pardon.
As to why national reciprocity didn’t go through, it was because the margins in congress were too low. Republicans in NY IL and CA mostly aren’t into it.
Besides, it’s the same story as ever... “if we give you the thing you want, we can’t campaign on it next time!”.
I agree with all these "wake me up when it happens" poster, because I just generally don't like "nothing happened" news.
But seriously, say Trump (or whoever might have been in his place) actually wants to do this as a populistic move: is it hard to do? Does it require any bureaucratic bullshit, arguing with people, forcing stuff, or is it just some paper to sign and it's done? Does it require any effort (and how much) on his side to actually pardon Snowden?
If you'd been paying attention you'd know that the President has the absolute, unquestionable power to pardon offenses against the United States, which specifically means: offences under Federal law, but not offenses under State law.
Pardoning a whistleblower who was just trying to protect the Constitution and help stave off intelligence agencies from spying on everyone a bit less seems like exactly what pardons were created for. What bigger injustice is there than upholding the law of the land and being declared a traitor despite only trying to help save our democracy from autocratic forces?
This was an idea floated recently in a backlash against the President looking to pardon Paul Manafort. ...but it is unclear if it holds any legal water.
The reality is that it is legally untested, and there's a good chance that Double Jeopardy will protect someone who's pardoned Federally, and then brought up on State charges for the same offense.
I might be wrong, but I don't believe there's ever been a case of a State prosecute even attempting to charge someone at the State level with an crime they've already been pardoned of by the President.
A quick read through of the Wikipedia article for double jeopardy[0] describes implications and legal tests for double jeopardy.
The shortest summary I can make of that article that seems relevant is this:
If you need exactly the same set of facts to prove crime A as crime B, or fewer facts than A to prove B, then they are the same crime. If crime B needs one fact not required for A, then it is a different crime for purposes of double jeopardy.
Based on this reading, it appears that a federal pardon would not imply no state charges. Or, a federal pardon leaves the question of state charges an open one.
>> [the president can pardon] offences under Federal law, but not offenses under State law.
> but it is unclear if it holds any legal water.
The claim that POTUS cannot grant clemency for a state conviction definitely holds legal water.
The plain meaning of that clause is extremely clear and its meaning is thoroughly and universally understood in the legal field.
> The reality is that it is legally untested
Re: POTUS directly granting clemency for state convictions, only in a sort of vacuous way. Meaning, this is true for almost everything that is blatantly unconstitutional. E.g., the president having the military disband congress is also "legally untested". I have zero doubt that the current SCOTUS would unanimously reject an attempt by the president to directly grant clemency for a state conviction.
> there's a good chance that Double Jeopardy will protect someone who's pardoned Federally, and then brought up on State charges for the same offense.
Notice that the only reason this indirect argument is made is because POTUS clearly cannot grant clemency directly.
Although this particular theory about Double Jeopardy has not been tested, there's an entire legal doctrine that addresses this question (the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine). The Roberts Court affirmed this doctrine in Gamble.
The primary justification for the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine is that different sovereigns might have different interests. That justification speaks directly to whether the federal executive should be able to grant clemency for state convictions (no, because the state executive might have different interests in prosecution). See https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_2_1_2_2...
So,
1. the President very clearly cannot directly grant clemency for state convictions, and
2. the Roberts court affirmed the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine not one year ago in a 7-2 decision. Go read that decision -- the reasons for upholding the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine speak almost directly to the question at hand.
Given these two facts, it's highly improbable that the President could pardon a federal conviction and then convince the Roberts court to extend that clemency to state convictions via a significant narrowing of the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine. In fact, I'd say that a raw exercise of force is more likely to succeed.
The police officers in the Rodney King case were tried and acquitted in State court, then tried and convicted of essentially the same crime with a different name in Federal court, and the courts declined to say this violated the Double Jeopardy clause. It's not necessarily the case that the courts will allow the same thing when the State seeks to try a defendant after they are acquitted in Federal court or pardoned by the President, but it seems difficult to me to distinguish the two kinds of cases, so I'm assuming it's more likely than not that if POTUS pardons Manafort and NYS wants to try Manafort, they will be able to.
IMO the Rodney King case was a very bad precedent. It was very bad politics for the Federal courts to do otherwise, I understand, but it was not a good decision. The SCOTUS essentially held that a) Dual Sovereignty means the Double Jeopardy clause doesn't apply, b) that the courts can use the double jeopardy condition as a mitigation in sentencing. (b) can be seen as weakening the Dual Sovereignty doctrine, but (a) can be seen as a disaster because the 5th Amendment is incorporated against the States, and the Double Jeopardy clause is in the 5A, so allowing the Dual Sovereignty doctrine to overcome Incorporation doctrine seems like a gross error that puts the entire Incorporation doctrine in... jeopardy. Shall we now say that only parts of the 1A, 2A, 4A, 5A, are incorporated against the States? Which parts? This invites more litigation.
Of course, that didn't happen, IIUC. There's been no litigation arguing that if Dual Sovereignty overrides Incorporation in one case, it might in others. But it could yet happen.
Reasonable. But returning to Snowden, “one executive wants to pardon and the other doesn’t” is pretty much by definition a case of differing interests. IMO this question is more clear-cut than typical DJ questions.
It’s just really hard for me to believe that POTUS could protect Snowden from prosecution in state courts via pardon. At the very least, a DOJ that wants Snowden in prison can side-step this whole question by leaving it to a state and keeping things out of federal court...
The case up-thread was Manafort -- NY State, IIRC, wants him in jail and may prosecute if pardoned. I'm not sure which State laws Snowden might have violated, or which States might want to prosecute him. BTW, I can see an argument against double jeopardy in the Federal->State direction as opposed to the State->Federal direction: the former, if allowed, could see a defendant tried as many times as there are States + 1, and that can't possibly be in the interest of Justice.
> I can see an argument against double jeopardy in the Federal->State direction as opposed to the State->Federal direction: the former, if allowed, could see a defendant tried as many times as there are States + 1, and that can't possibly be in the interest of Justice.
+ a lot more than 1 because of Native American jurisdictions
It's a good pint, but the crime would have to occur in overlapping jurisdictions, which doesn't apply in the case of Manafort. I think even in the case of Snowden it'd be difficult to argue for jurisdiction outside of HI and maybe any states he passed through with HDDs.
I just searched for drug trafficking and computer fraud cases that resulted in multiple charges for the same act in several states. I couldn't find any particularly egregious cases.
I'm not even sure how important this is in the case of computer crime; jurisdiction gets hairy really fast.
> a lot more than 1 because of Native American jurisdictions
Native American jurisdictions generally only have criminal jurisdiction over their own members for actions on their own land, that jurisdiction is Constitutionally an application of federal sovereignty, so where it applies it doesn't add an additional possible prosecution, just replaced (or provides an additional option) for one of the existing possible prosecutions. So, there's no double jeopardy impact.
Most pardons involve process though. Felons apply for a pardon, there's a small board to review applications, most are rejected -- that sort of thing. But the President can pardon anyone, at any time, for any Federal crime they have been charged with, before during or after trial (if convicted).
I am excited by this development. Snowden is a patriot by becoming a whistle blower. I am also saddened by Obama’s complete refusal to pardon Snowden. Why would Obama who is a progressive leader not pardon Snowden. That was a hard thing for me to swallow. I hope Trump hurries and gets it done asap. Snowden has suffered a lot for his ethical actions. I hope he gets to come home and not suffer anymore.
Is it just me or is the term leaker politically charged in the context. For me, Snowden is a whistle blower not a leaker. There's a reason why he revealed secretes (he also didn't just release them, but was very careful how much he revealed), the secrete programs were unconstitutional -> whistle blower not leaker.
The problem is that he also exposed a lot of not-illegal material. Things that were entirely legal, yet classified.
I don't think there's any legal way Snowden wouldn't face a conviction if he was returned to the US, even if you exclude all the "illegal" activity he exposed from evidence against him.
I agree with you that legally Snowden was offside.
The problem was that I think that a lot of the things that leaked people either
A) THOUGHT were illegal
or
B) Thought that while legal, the government does not do and would not do (particularly because spokespeople have implied under sworn oauth that they do not do.
I'm talking about domestic surveillance.
If there was any justice, then the thing should have been a wakeup call for the US populace and government and new laws would have been introduced to make the things that he leaked illegal.
It's all semantics, he revealed valuable knowledge to the public about how the government was unConstitutionally surveilling them at every opportunity without remorse or apology
Not if they were breaking into your house and it was self-defense. Then you're technically a killer, having killed someone, but you're more a hero, and not criminally culpable at all.
Grey comments like this are a reminder that the american tech industry has reached a point where you're only allowed to advocate for one set of ideas out loud (what a coincidence considering where SV and SF are). Nothing this person said is wrong or phrased in a hostile manner but the comment is going grey for simply acknowledging the nuance of the topic. As someone who grew up as a dem during a time when dems were the ones preaching tolerance, it's weird that we're the censorship party now.
It's good manners to avoid calling somebody a word they don't call themselves, and in this case I'd personally defer to The Guardian's articles from 2013 that say "whistleblower": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hLjuVyIIrs
they've intentionally selected the word due to it's negative context. The usage of "leaker" allows them to play to the 'orange man bad' narrative, which they value more than getting Snowden pardoned.
The key word in gp being new. Of course through Obama, the us has racked up involvement in so many countries it's been meddling in that the bar is low. He hasn't deployed troops in Iran or Venezuela. (The killing of the Iranian general was in Iraq)
We are talking about a US President here. You can only expect so much. Missiling and bombing other countries might as well be mandated by their constitution.
this narrative was being pushed when there was an effort to pull american soldiers out of the region recently, primarily by those behind the military industrial complex which wants endless war. Russian contracts, if they were real, were a failure as it had virtually no impact.
Separately, the US has been aggressive against Russia on sanctions and other moves, which the media does not cover. US moves against Russia does not advance the narrative which suggest US only does Russia's bidding. Media outlets are being very selective with coverage to push their agenda.
If that's your number one qualification for a president then we should have just appointed a pet rock instead. No new wars, and it wouldn't complain when you try to put a mask on it.
I think the implication was that pardoning whistleblowers is good, if that's what your opinion of Snowden is. But that doesn't fit the desired narrative, so they don't call him a whistleblower.
Insofar as economic growth is considered positively correlated to carbon emissions, I head the GDP outliers referred to as "decoupling" from emissions.
On as state-by-state basis, something like 40 US states are decoupled now, for various reasons (none of which seemed to be related to politics, to me). I suspect that, nationally, GDP seems correlated to carbon emissions.
There is one other: he has managed not to start any new wars yet. Which is a pretty big deal, even though I think he is pretty terrible in every other way.
I don't think either is a superset/subset of the other -- the Venn circles overlap, but there are definitely leakers who are not whistleblowers. Like, leaking salacious celebrity gossip to a tabloid is not whistleblowing.
Leaking is a common political tool, frequently seen in news, and popularized on shows such as the West Wing and Yes, Minister. It is only a negative when used against you.
He was not a Government employee at the time. Contractors don't get to be whistle blowers.
EDIT: Turns out the law does protect contractors, so I guess it's circumstantial that employees get branded whistle blowers and contractors get charged as spies.
A Russian plant in the white house would still be a spy, even though they're an employee. A contractor who isn't working for any intelligence service isn't a spy, even if they publish secret documents.
You've addressed the President's possible motivations. But, do you think Snowden should be pardoned? Just curious. (It's a tough call. I've not decided my own position on the matter.)
Yes, he should be pardoned. Just because toddlers can't distinguish the nuance between the following the law and discretionary breaking of it, it doesn't mean the rest of us with developed prefrontal cortex have to put up with spending taxpayer dollars on a trial just to show consistency.
People are more concerned about other people showing us shady things intelligence community does, than what Edward Snowden did. When intelligence community shouldn't be doing things Congress doesn't know about, which it does.
My article says that PRISM isn't what Snowden claimed it to be. Your article also does not dispute it. The issue that your article discusses is searches about Americans conducted on data collected from non-Americans outside the US (via Section 702). This is not mass surveillance on Americans.
What the NSA is doing is wrong and edward should be pardoned, but he has said himself he is fine with a fair trial in court (fair is the key word here). So even if you are undecided on the pardoning you have to agree he should be given trial in the US unless for some weird reason you love the NSA that much.
He can never get a fair trial in the current state of our government, he better just stay where he's at and hopefully Trump or a future government will pardon him and welcome him back like the hero he is.
I think it's debatable whether he should be pardoned for leaking the domestic spying information (I don't think so, he didn't try to bring it up through proper channels first), but he leaked information that had nothing to do with that. For example, he gave the Chinese government information about which computers the NSA had access to. My personal theory is that he just gathered as much information as he could get his hands on to give to China, then went back and looked through the data to try and retroactively justify what he did.
Besides, the fact that the NSA was operating surveillance programs at that scale implies that the brass had some awareness of what was going on, so I am not sure what the "proper channels" would even look like for Snowden.
I can't comment on the parent, but here are some disclosures of international capability that Snowden could have kept to himself:
- RAMPART-A
- Anything collected and shared by Five Eyes would have originated overseas. There's quite a bit of GCHQ material, such as Karma Police
- NSA ability to cross airgaps in China
- NSA Core (undercover human agents tapping China, South Korea and Germany) and TAREX (target exploitation running that out of embassies)
- NSA MonsterMind
All of these are only deployed overseas and there are many more such documents. Some have unredacted names of regular people who run these programs, and pieces of info that're miscellany to you and me, but gold to state intelligence services. Both Wikipedia and Lawfare distinguish between Snowden's disclosures of perhaps-unconstitutional domestic surveillance and probably-consitutional international surveillance:
First, Snowden did not have much of a chance to selectively leak documents. He gave basically everything he had to journalists and they've sorted it out.
Second, while many of those actions may be constitutional, citizens should know what their government is capable of and deploying against people. And arguing whether a certain program was constitutional seems pointless when they never get punished.
He never gave any information to any foreign government, what he has let go was directly released to American and European magazines/newspapers. Anything else is conspiracy theory garbage.
He gave them the information when he got to China.
> The two sides disagree whether he attempted this. Snowden say he spent tremendous effort trying to report things through the proper channels.
I think if he had, he'd have a single shred of evidence that he had actually tried. I find it hard to believe that he gathered a ton of information that had nothing to do with his supposed reason for leaking the information, but didn't save a single email he could have sent to the people he tried to report it to.
>He gave them the information when he got to China
Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
>I find it hard to believe that he gathered a ton of information that had nothing to do with his supposed reason for leaking the information, but didn't save a single email he could have sent to the people he tried to report it to.
Any such email would be classified information, and he destroyed his copies of all that information before leaving Hong Kong
Snowden is charged with theft, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person, under the 1917 Espionage Act. His unauthorized disclosures of classified information caused grave damage to the national security of the United States and allowed enemies of the United States to better conceal their communications and activities.
I do not think Snowden deserves a pardon. Edward Snowden should be extradited to the United States to receive a trial and an appropriate sentence.
Almost everyone thought mass surveillance was a conspiracy theory before Snowden. On the balance maybe he still deserves prison, but denying the positives of what Snowden did is disingenuous.
I'm uncertain here, but my gut tells me that potential positive and negative effects of whistleblowing are so hard to predict and fully attribute (they tend to be at a global geopolitical scale where lots of other cofounding factors are involved), that we should judge whistleblowers on their underlying motivations instead. Was the whistleblower/leaker motivated purely by a desire to improve the welfare of their nation's citizens? If so, the person should be praised as a selfless patriot. If there were other motivations, like personal gain, they're potentially a traitor.
Why I'm not certain about this:
- What kind of other actions does this philosophy of "the motivation justifies the ends" lead to? Assassinating political leaders suddenly seems on the table...
- What if the whistleblower is motivated by the welfare of the citizens of the world, rather than just of their own nation? I guess you can be a traitor to your country and a hero to humanity (see Nazi Germany etc etc)
Does it really matter? He revealed unconstitutional information to the press, all very forgiveable by the 1st amendment rights of every citizen. However, since the patriot act we live in only a semblence of a democracy, closer to that than an authoritarian government but unlimited surveillance is certainly on the list of things that is very very very good for when the government has started to get some momentum towards a dictatorship. the same despotic government our current administration seems to be trying to drag us kicking and screaming towards
The principle is pretty simple: any person that has evidence that the U.S. government is violating the U.S. Constitution should report it to the American people. If there is an official channel for reporting it, they should try that first (as Snowden did), but that is totally optional.
Any damage that results is the fault of the people that chose to violate the Constitution, and not the fault of the whistleblower. The violators should be imprisoned in almost every case, and probably even have their citizenship revoked.
Snowden should have be granted a pardon, become a universally respected American hero, and receive a medal.
Snowden's exile in Russia proves that Americans are too ignorant of their own constitution and the principles behind it to do the right thing for him. But he played his part flawlessly and history will grant him the title of American hero.
1. There's nothing about this whistleblower principle that would lead anyone to believe that assassination is fair game. Revealing constitutional violations = whistleblowing; that's it.
2. If there is no violation of the U.S. Constitution, then there is no whistleblowing to be done. Spying on foreign citizens is not a violation of the U.S. Constitution, for example, and so it should not be protected in the same way.
(Whether Americans should support a constitutional amendment that protects foreign people from American spying is another matter.)
Yeah very fair point, though (and?) ideally you'd want to be able to provide some heuristic for citizens to use to predict how their actions will be judged, to help them decide whether leaking is the right move or not.
Easy to forget this. Before Snowden, any claims I made to my family and non tech friends of government surveillance were met with incredulousness and had me branded as a conspiracy theorist.
Snowden vastly changed the conversation for everyday people. He's a hero.
I don't think so. Wasn't it common knowledge that the Government had access to emails via ISPs and shredder well before Snowden's revelations? What was revealing, I guess was some of the technical details of how it was being done.
It was "common knowledge" in the right circles, but that's not enough for a court to find that you have standing to bring suit when the government gets to claim national security against discovery requests.
In fact the lawsuit around Room 641A fizzled because the accuser didn't 'really know' what was happening in the NSA room that had split off copies of backbone fiber trunks running into it and the government didn't have to provide an explanation. So unable to prove standing.
Snowden's revelations lead to actual case law saying that quite a few of the actions of the NSA were unconstitutional, given actual documentation from the government describing their actions.
Pre-Snowden nobody took the people pointing the risk out seriously. Snowden was what took the conversation from Conspiracy Theory to "Conspiracy Well Known Facts".
Not really. There were murmurs, talk of a secret room with fiberoptic splitters at an AT&T datacenter in San Francisco, lots of rumors but most of it was never confirmed
> Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, as part of its warrantless surveillance program as authorized by the Patriot Act. The facility commenced operations in 2003 and its purpose was publicly revealed in 2006.
Part of why Google decided to speed up their timeline on encrypting traffic across their internal network is because they learned the NSA tapped into it.
I was there when it happened, and basically the entire engineering org was pissed off at the NSA. It went from ongoing project to "we're flipping the switch within a month" or something like that.
Snowden's powerpoint decks clearly implied that NSA had tapped Google's transatlantic fibers. But it also seems to suggest that they weren't getting access to Google data from Google, because if they were, they wouldn't need to grep for some guy's email address in a packet capture and display it as a hex dump. Some NSA guy thought it was a big enough accomplishment to document in a presentation that they had managed to grep for gmail.com and surface one pretty useless RPC body, which tells me that their access to and understanding of the data was very poor.
There is nothing in Snowden's leaks to support this conclusion, much to suggest that it is false, and Google flatly denies cooperating with the NSA in clear, non-weasel-word terms.
Well there you go. I guess it was my own assumption based on one of the PRISM slides that show when surveillance for each company started.[1] I assumed it involved cooperation.
Well, that's court-ordered production of data based on given search terms. Being ordered by a court to do something is not the opposite of "cooperation" but it's not the same thing either.
What Googlers were angry about was the stuff in the leaks that showed they were tapping undersea cables.
Yeah, I was also there at that time. Again, to me the revelation was not that they were doing it but instead the specific details of how they were doing it.
To expand on this, it means conversations about surveillance get to actually happen instead of being instantly derailed with "well we don't know it's happening".
Almost everyone thought mass surveillance was a conspiracy theory before Snowden.
The TSP was revealed in 2005, broader surveillance was broadly acknowledged publicly by the government in 2007, and a big, overt part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2009 was retroactive legalization of much of it. All of this well before Snowden.
Seriously? I've never met anyone inside the business (tech/internet) who didn't believe governments were engaging in mass surveillance. This is going back to the 80s fwiw.
Leaking classified data without authorization was reckless and unlawful. There are already stringent safeguards in place to prevent abuse of the intelligence community's surveillance powers. Oversight of US surveillance programs is exercised by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The purpose of these congressional committees is to oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities and programs of the United States Government, to submit to Congress appropriate proposals for legislation and report to Congress concerning such intelligence activities and programs, to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States. In fact, there is no country in the world where surveillance activities are subject to more regulations and checks than the United States.
If this were youtube I could at least be certain that an account named "HenryKissinger" spouting authoritarian drivel was a novelty account. Here? I legitimately don't know.
The national security of the United States was placed in jeopardy by the people who violated the Constitution. The Snowden Revelations should have resulted in half a dozen people being put to death for treason.
What a reductionist argument. OC’s argument is perfectly reasonable considering trump’s history and his previous actions. I’ll never understand why certain people feel the need to feign ignorance about reality and make false assertions that such criticism comes from disdain, and not from a simple observation of past behavior.
Broken clock and all that. Trump didn't even issue the pardon yet. He's despised for a reason and a few reasonable things he happened to say or do don't outweight all the horrible things he did.
It would be a great way to stick it to the intelligence community which has been doing some questionable things in their investigation of Russian collusion. E.g. fabricating evidence for FISA warrants (see recent guilty plea)[1]
Amazingly HN loves to crap all over FISA warrants, but when it's used against Trump, nothing but crickets.
Considering 3-4 years ago he referred to him as a traitor, I'd say the significant shift in stance is news. Should a pardon happen, this would set an important precedent for future whistleblowers and for the rule of law in the often obfuscated corners of the federal government.
Support the efforts of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, who have already publicly stated their support for a Presidential pardon in this case.
I think after 3 and 1/2 years, we'd all recognize by now that Trump more often than not says things just to stir up controversy. As others have said, this isn't newsworthy until he actually does something.
Usually the "stirring up controversy" isn't on the merits of whatever the controversy is itself, but to draw attention away from some other controversy, like the whole USPS debacle.
I think parent is trying to draw a trendline toward executive forgiveness. A Trump pardon is different than an Obama pardon. This is about Trump, not Snowden, and not about the issues of the modern surveillance state as demonstrated by Snowden. A Snowden pardon by Trump will have a clause where Snowden promises to appear on stage at a rally. (edit, clarity)
He won't be winning many votes back, as those who like Snowden likely didn't vote for him, but he might be considering winning some votes "forward", as it's not likely Republicans would vote for Biden just to spite Trump for pardoning Snowden - who is increasingly irrelevant anyway, he did what he did and by now nobody cares about his personal destiny too much and it's not likely there's a chance to punish him anyway. But if he could win some independents who are on the fence - that would be nice.
It is the right thing when they have consistent ideas they do - or will implement.
It is the wrong thing when they publicly consider a bunch of things they won't do, or do tiny but loud actions without consistency, that are not aligned with their political agenda but just wish to win votes.
Disclaimer: I'm not American, but that's a pattern we unfortunately see a lot these days
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.” -Milton Friedman
^^^^
Similarly, the reasons the wrong people do the right things are not too important, as long as they're doing the right things.
Trump is an expert at A/B testing public opinion, and this is a clear A/B test. "Considering" means he's gauging support and will use that data to make a decision. He's done this forever, and it's the reason he prefers in-person events for real-time A/B testing of ideas.
It's not a novel concept either, Biden and others regularly use this technique.
It's insane to vote for someone who does things you support?
To someone with full blown TDS, sure, a Snowden pardon probably won't sway your opinion at all. But think of someone who leans libertarian and maybe doesn't love Trump but also doesn't hate him, and remembers how the Obama admin forced Snowden to flee and revoked his passport, forcing him to stay in Russia. Seeing a pardon from Trump could move them into being a mild supporter.
A lot of people have one or two big issues that their political allegiance revolves around. It can be abortion rights, gun rights, taxes, the national debt, anything. If someone's core issue is fighting the surveillance state, a Snowden pardon would be a massive change in the landscape.
I wonder though, since Trump signed the extension to warrentless wiretapping, would your vote send a message that a pardon for Snowden is sufficient without institutional change?
Trump seemed to only care that section 702 allowed Carter Page to be wiretapped when the other side of the conversation was out of the country.
It's also always interesting to watch one's comment score quickly bounce up and down by several points multiple times over just 30 minutes. Apparently this comment is controversial, heh.
But in this case, the president can get rid of it because it expires periodically and all he has to do is not sign the extension. But unfortunately, I don't think that he will need to sign it before the next election and also, they often include a bunch of unrelated stuff in the bill: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/21/fund-n21.html.
No but they can stop enforcement of them as they control NSA, FBI, SS, etc. Even a reprieve from the injustice would be nice and maybe they could even set a precedent that would help democracy and privacy concerns
If you listen to the video, all he did was say he knows nothing about the issues, but he'll "look into it." That's his standard line. He wasn't actually saying he was considering it at all. Honestly, I don't think he would really have any intention to pardon Snowden. It gains him no points with the left, and would damage him with his base supporters. That's probably why the media reported it, to try to get his supporters upset at him.
It's the same thing with the whole manufactured outrage of Kamala Harris and the question posed to him by the reporter. Trump didn't even mention Harris, and the reporter brought it up and asked him whether he heard about the report. Trump said that he knew nothing about it, and he would have assumed that the Democrats would have already validated Harris' eligibility, but he would "look into it." He never even made a point about it, it was obvious it was a non-issue to him. It's a meaningless statement that the media tries to use to make him look bad, and meanwhile it just lets his supporters keep saying that the media lies, which is true when they bend the truth like they do.
I didn't see the video, but if it's true it's extremely funny (and wording @ reuters suggests it is exactly true). Nothing happened, then journalists (as usual) created a catchy title and extremely misleading news-story out of it, and here now HN users are all over themselves having a lively discussion and angrily arguing about the topic and hardly anybody even bothered to verify it.
Assange only fits the caricature of the description, but that's for another thread.
In brief though, he can not be a traitor because he is not American and never worked for the American government. The most traitorous party in the Assange case was probably Manning, who had his sentence commuted by Obama which was then lauded.
A lot of people believed Snowden's gross misreading of the documents he leaked, and that misreading paints a picture of deep state intelligence agencies run amok illegally spying on Americans. Of course, any literate person who reads the documents understands they don't support that picture, but there are enough barely literate QAnon believers to support an entire industry.
"Unconstitutionally used" ≠ "mass surveillance on Americans"
The issue that your article discusses is searches about Americans conducted on data collected from non-Americans outside the US (via Section 702). This is not mass surveillance on Americans.
The only program that collected Americans' data en masse in Snowden's documents was phone metadata collection, but it would be a huge stretch to label the way the documents described the data as being used as "mass surveillance." It certainly doesn't paint a picture of intelligence agencies run amok spying on everybody without regard to the law and without oversight.
> The FISC found that the FBI created an “unduly lax” environment in which “maximal use” of these invasive searches was “a routine and encouraged practice.”
.. to the point of unconstituainality, using a database with records of most Americans in it.
That is definition "mass surveillance on Americans".
> using a database with records of most Americans in it.
How did you make up this "records of most Americans in it" claim? How would communications between targeted non-citizens outside the US with other non-citizens outside the US contain records of most Americans? To understand the article you posted, you have to understand the terms in it first.
Since I'm being rate-limited, some responses to the comment below (if you want me to reply normally, send a few upvotes to reset the rate limiter):
> The NSA believes it only has to be accurate "51%" of the time, with no court oversight that they're hitting that goal.
No, it doesn't. Where does that claim come from?
>The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it
Follow what? You're confusing 702 collection, which requires showing that the target is a non-citizen outside the US communicating with the same, with querying of that non-American data for American identifiers, which merely requires sufficient documentation for oversight. You very clearly don't understand the article you posted.
The NSA believes it only has to be accurate "51%" of the time, with no court oversight that they're hitting that goal.
The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it, to the point of an unconstitutional view of the program as a whole. They weren't following the rules you're laying out.
> The NSA believes it only has to be accurate "51%" of the time, with no court oversight that they're hitting that goal.
No, it doesn't. Where does that claim come from?
>The court above had found out that the FBI routinely didn't follow it
Follow what? You're confusing 702 collection, which requires showing that the target is a non-citizen outside the US communicating with the same, with querying of that non-American data for American identifiers, which merely requires sufficient documentation for oversight. You very clearly don't understand the article you posted.
> A lot of people believed Snowden's gross misreading of the documents he leaked, and that misreading paints a picture of deep state intelligence agencies run amok illegally spying on Americans. Of course, any literate person who reads the documents understands they don't support that picture
On the other hand, the intelligence community IG report mandated by the FISA Amendments Act that leaked and was published just after, and almost certainly because of, the publication of the Snowden leaks did paint such a picture. So, you know, there's that.
Of course, while much less detailed a picture than the IG report, so did the whole trickle of official revelations and leaks leading up to the FISA Amendments Act, which overtly sought to both legalize some of and control other mass surveillance, some of which was publicly acknowledged and more of which had to have been briefed to members to have motivated the act.
> On the other hand, the intelligence community IG report mandated by the FISA Amendments Act that leaked and was published just after, and almost certainly because of, the publication of the Snowden leaks did paint such a picture.
In what way does it show the NSA having access to everybody's communications as Snowden alleged? Your comment is full of underspecified insinuations with no concrete facts to back them up.
If that is what you're trying to refute, you've presented an irrelevant example, so no wonder I was confused. A few agents breaking rules and being caught is not entire agencies running amok, and the rules they broke involved spying on non-Americans, so you have met neither standard.
Can you please share a link supporting your statement?
AFAIR the efficiency of masks was not proven until recently and in the beginning of pandemic even WHO recommended against masks.
Anyway, accusing Trump of thousand deaths because of what he said is just naive. If he was obviously wrong he wound be corrected by press, local governments, senators etc.
hah seriously? rest of the world knew for decades that masks were effective. It's practically ingrained into asian cultures. WHO recommended against masks because they didn't want a shortage for medical professionals, again you're being really naive.
> What Trump is trying to do is access the libertarian/tech worker vote.
Thats a pretty small niche of voters. Not saying its a wrong assumption, but libertarians are typically a lot more concerned by trade and individual freedoms than whistleblower issues if you were to list up their top priorities.
Everyone has their own pet definition of libertarian. Call it techno-libertarianism if you want. What's clear is Trump has very powerful allies in Silicon Valley and has figured out that he only has to tap the tiny minority of right wing sympathy at Facebook etc and they will let him do whatever he wants. The idea that web companies are liberal and unfair to conservatives is popular and widespread. Appealing to other negative things that people believe about those companies (that they are spying on us, for example) strengthens his position in that regard.
Same with democrat, republican, progressive. I value a lot of the libertarian ideas about freedom of choice, sexual freedom, against interventionism, privacy, constitutional rights (including the 2nd A), however I'm also moderate on social programs and regulations and I'm all for social egalitarianism. I don't think there is a good "group" I fit in but I don't think I'm alone when it comes to techies. One thing that I think people miss is that government should have a lot of self auditing which doesn't happen; like we have a social program, clearly it's failing, so we axe it and try something different. That doesn't seem to happen on nearly the scale we need it to.
> The idea that web companies are liberal and unfair to conservatives is popular and widespread.
For being unfair to conservatives, it's not clear, but web companies being liberal is pretty much a fact. Even Zuck said it directly in last year's congressional hearing - I forgot the exact words but he pointed out that Silicon Valley is located in a very progressive State so it's hard not to account for that trend within the company employees as well.
Yeah, the forum political expert analyst is such a boring trope.
"So, pol nerd here!" —whoa, quite the credentials! It's just altogether offputting and exactly the thing we need less in discourse. We're all just guessing, so it goes a long way to admit that you realize that instead of sounding like the kind of person who thinks you're a "pol nerd" with their finger on the pulse because you do whatever you think you do that makes you an authority on the matter, like read Twitter.
Probably for this: "we skew white, male, and affluent. Those, as he sees it, are his people."
That appears to be an accusation of racism, sexism, and classism. He was in the public eye for decades, but didn't get those sorts of accusations until he dared to become involved in presidential politics.
The evidence points the other way. Just a few items, one for each accusation: He used to have a black girlfriend. He frequently put women in positions of power in his organization, and his campaign was the first successful one with a female campaign manager. When taking his wife out to eat at a fancy place, his own meal would be Diet Coke and a well-done burger with ketchup.
Fair judging standards should apply. The comment you made is clearly more applicable to the alternative: https://joebiden.info/
In typical Vox fashion, that article is really stretching to make a point.
A few examples:
- "Trump Management Corporation" accused of racism, not Trump himself
- Trump pays for ad saying “Central Park Five” should be executed. They were innocent. But apparently that's racist?
- In The Apprentice TV show, Trump said of a black person “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything. That's racist?
- Trump proposed idea for The Apprentice - “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.” That's racist?
- Trump claimed, “I heard [Obama] was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
He constantly aligns himself with racists and xenophobes and retweets their hateful posts and conspiracies, how is that not racist and xenophobic? He's just cunning enough to not say it all outright and I suspect his lawyers have taught him how to avoid those pitfalls.
Well, to pardon someone they first need to pass a sentence, right?
This didn’t happen yet, and the process would probably take longer than Trump‘s current term.
Can someone who is familiar with the US law system shine some light on this matter?
Kind of hard to prosecute Assange if you're willing to pardon Snowden. I'm gonna go make some popcorn and keep watching for Assange's name in the pre-election headlines.
Assange isn’t even a US citizen, nor (if I recall) was the “crime” on US soil. Further, The “crime” of booting up the drive should be independent of what was done with it. It’s insane to me Assange is being prosecuted. Who in the US government is willing to stand up and say this is wrong? The person who leaked the data is going to get far less time in prison.
Citizenship is not a component of any relevant statute, to my knowledge. It's certainly not mentioned in the First Amendment.
What I'm saying is, if Snowden -- who is the alleged primary source of a leak -- gets pardoned, then how can Assange -- who may not have had any primary involvement whatsoever with the leak of the documents he published -- be held responsible? Logically it makes no sense because Assange's alleged crime is lesser than Snowden's.
In the Snowden case Trump has at least two reasons to pardon him: a) pander to a certain crowd (tech), b) stick a finger in the IC's collective eye.
In the Assange case Trump has at least one more reason to pardon him: so Assange can tell the world whether Seth Rich gave him the DNC emails. But if Trump even floats a pardon for Assange then the Swedish government might renew its claims against Assange and the UK might just extradite Assange to Sweden, then Trump couldn't get what he wanted. To pardon Assange Trump first has to get Assange extradited to the U.S., and he can't make a deal with Assange first either, and this means he can't pardon Assange yet. There's also no time for any of that before the election. The closer the election gets, the more reason (a) would dominate any reasoning about a pardon for Assange.
Some possible outcomes:
- Trump pardons Assange just before the election without having floated it, and possibly at the same time as Snowden.
- Assange finally gets extradited and either tried, or pardoned, or both, depending on who is President at the time. Hard to say what Trump might do then, since Assange would be no use to him then, and Biden would probably not pardon if Seth Rich really did furnish the DNC's emails to wikileaks.
- Trump wins the election, the charges get dropped, and Sweden does not renew its charges because now Assange would be no help to Trump's campaigns.
- Trump pardons Assange after the election, whether he wins or loses.
- Eventually the UK rejects the extradition requests, Assange goes free, but effectively can't leave the UK because the U.S. could request extradition from any country Assange enters that has an extradition treaty with the U.S.
> In the Snowden case Trump has at least two reasons to pardon him: a) pander to a certain crowd (tech), b) stick a finger in the IC's collective eye.
I totally agree but this is a political explanation, not a philosophical nor a judicial explanation. It seems clear to me that what Snowden did was more serious than what Assange did, because Snowden was the primary source.
> Trump pardons Assange just before the election without having floated it, and possibly at the same time as Snowden.
This is the outcome that would most intrigue me. I have no idea how people would react, but personally I think pardoning Assange makes much more sense than pardoning Snowden. The difference is that Snowden is living in Russia and Assange is in UK custody.
Well yes, I gave a political explanation as I don't disagree that it's "[k]ind of hard to prosecute Assange if you're willing to pardon Snowden".
IMO there are only two or three reasons to pardon Assange on the eve of the election: to pander to techies, to show good will, or because Trump believes Assange should be pardoned. It will be very interesting if that happens.
President is not responsible for pathetic Healthcare in California and New York. I'm always amazed how every single failure of the Democratic state apparatus is blamed on the President. Same deal with police brutality.
The White House can propose and advocate policies, and it has an effect. Trump has promised to do the former and has never done it. Why is he promising to do it if it has no effect?
> which distract from the real news: Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care,
Nevermind that in the states the main actors responsible in times of health crises are the local State authorities not the Federal ones. Your 'under his care' is terribly loaded.
He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward).
He is also influential among a large group of Americans, as is any president.
He called for Obama to resign after a single case of ebola[1] in the US. Clearly he agrees with me that the president has an effect in fighting infectious disease.
> He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward).
Yet this has nothing to do with the fact that whether to go into lock-down or not and what kind of measures to take are taken by State actors, not the federal government. We can see that right now with the debate on school opening: the Federal government has no power.
I am not sure where you think that States play almost no role, the USA is one of the countries where the local States have the most power compared to any other Western democracy out there.
I think you're misinterpreting that table. USA is in between Chile and Brazil, in eighth place out of 150 countries. It has the highest deaths per-capita of any country over 100M people.
Among those Western countries from your chart, only the US and Brazil are still recording 1k new cases daily. Everyone else is largely done with the pandemic phase, and is working on reopening, whereas the US is only maybe halfway through this ordeal.
If we're just doing per-capita snapshots, the US is doing 8x worse than India and 20x worse than China. Both countries that are far poorer and more densely populated.
By literally any measure, it's been an indefensible performance. Total shitshow.
Why would you use that as a source? It omits most countries.
A real ranking shows the US is doing far worse (orders of magnitude worse) than many countries[1].
One of the few countries doing worse is Sweden, which actively did nothing. They serve as a (flawed, but interesting) baseline.
Our own health officials are blowing whistles, criticizing the federal response in the press, and (universally) disagreeing with Trump's dismissals, false predictions, and insane medical advice.
To think the US is doing well is utter delusion. I don't know what else to call it.
We're 3/4 of the way there, infections growing at the fastest rate yet, and no vaccine yet. It looks like 1 million will fall short of actual deaths by the time this is through.
This comment is logically inconsistent. If the USA's handling of Covid is so awful, then by definition an infected person would get better treatment somewhere else, like Guatemala.
Don't you find it exhausting trying to defend a president that is dumber than you? I don't know how you do it. Your partisan loyalty is not worth your mental health.
When did I defend Trump? All I've stated is that Covid isn't his fault. What seems exhausting to me is spinning every single thing that happens to somehow be the fault of one single person. He's not a monarch, not a dictator, and his power, by design, is quite limited. Why not get rid of governors, state and city governments, Congress, heads of CDC and FDA, postmasters general, school boards, hospital admins, etc. if they have no agency -- if all their decisions are inconsequential? You've already stated Trump is 100% to blame... therefore, everyone else must be at zero. Stop wasting mental energy on how to blame Trump (or inventing fairy tales where some alternative president would have cured it) and direct it towards something productive.
Jacinda Ardern also has limited power. But she's an actual competent leader. One who didn't fart around pretending nothing was wrong for months while competent advisors said the exact opposite. One who didn't act like they got blindsided and started shifting blame after months of doing nothing. One who didn't peddle fake cures and hold mask-optional campaign rallies that directly led to the deaths of his own supporters.
And as it turns out, by being a competent leader, you can actually do a hell of a lot without having absolute power.
Yes. Trump is 100% to blame. Hundreds of thousands of people died, whereas if we had Jacinda, maybe a couple hundred.
Yet if Trump copied Ms. Ardern's lead and postponed our national election in Nov, I'm sure you'd tell me why it was an outrageous and illegal maneuver.
Lol, New Zealand has 750 visitors per 1000 residents, and the US has 225 visitors per 1000 residents per year. New Zealand may be small, but they're not remote anymore and haven't been for a long time.
Let's not forget that it isn't just New Zealand that has utterly destroyed the idea that leaders have no influence over infection rates. Most of the entire world has done better than the US. Hell, even India has done better than the US, despite their massive problems with high population density and unsanitary urban living conditions.
No rational person thinks that the US response was appropriate, and no rational person thinks that responsibility belongs anywhere else except our dipshit in chief. But sure, keep making excuses for him.
Yeah I mean, if he pardons before the debates, suddenly that takes up a debate topic slot. All he has to do is directly ask Biden, ‘You don’t think Snowden did the right thing by exposing your administration’s surveillance program?’. It’s such an easy win, and will take mindshare away from other issues (coronavirus response, police reform, Medicare/social security cuts). Add a TikTok ban in there and take up another debate slot, fill it in with all the anti China stuff.
There are things he can do to set the stage for sure.
Not sure honestly and I can't read that article (paywall). I recently (just a few days ago) read official acceptance of the debate committee schedule had only been completed by Biden campaign. So maybe Trump proposed 4 but then hasn't accepted the actual invite yet?
The prez candidate who refuses to debate will lose several percentage points in the election, so that's not going to happen, they have to debate at least once. Trump will debate Biden.
At least one good thing can come out of Trump's stupidity. It's absurd how badly they treated a whistle blower against the ilegal machinations of the NSA.
I think that Trump believes that Snowden is a Russian spy, because he cannot imagine (given their different personalities) that somebody would do what Snowden did just for intrinsic reasons.
So Trump is trying to make a deal with Snowden - find some dirt on Democrats (Obama administration) during election, and I will pardon you.
However, Snowden is most likely not a spy, so no way this is gonna happen.
Trump will scarcely do something like this unless he thinks it will benefit him. Does he think millenials will love him for it or does he think Snowden has dirt on Obama? Time will tell.
He floats a lot of ideas that 1) make headlines but don’t really make sense and 2) never actually happen. He’s been two weeks from announcing a new healthcare plan since he took office.
Ditto for building "the wall", making various trade deals, bringing peace to the Middle East, ending the opiate crisis, launching the Space Force... He has a real knack for announcing bold new projects with no clear plan for carrying them out, then quietly moving on.
You're right on everything except for the trade deals. He did in fact deliver several major trade deals in the first three years.
That includes replacing NAFTA with a modestly upgraded USMCA. He got China to sign a deal that very aggressively favors the US (maybe they won't stick to it of course; which would imply they may never stick to any consequential trade deal). Along with the new trade deals with Japan and South Korea. The only major trade deal remaining is with the EU (and then Britain whenever they're ready to do so, likely after the virus is brought under control).
It is fair to include replacement of vehicle-only barriers and other ineffective junk. That had been effectively nothing, because even the most non-athletic large person could comfortably walk right through.
Judging by Chelsea Manning's treatment post-pardon, Snowden would be rather foolish to act upon it and return to the United States anyway. But it might be a good opportunity to get a valid visa and travel to another country that lacks US extradition agreements.
I think it’s unlikely Snowden would ever receive a fair trial, therefore a pardon is the best course of action, erring on the side of compassion versus “justice” typically dispensed by the US justice system. What he revealed about the domestic surveillance apparatus violating US law and citizens’ rights had significant value to nation.
Regardless, if this is how the pardon comes about, I happily support it even if it’s not ideal.
> What he revealed about the domestic surveillance apparatus violating US law and citizens’ rights had significant value to nation.
That would be only one of the charges. And a reasonable Snowden defence would be to recite the oath he swore to the Constitution. If this were the only charge, I don't rule out a fair trial.
But the second charge would be revealing NSA programs operating outside inside USA borders. This was the reason Obama didn't want to write a pardon, and the reason Pompeo sides with executing Snowden. The accusation that Snowden was working for a foreign intelligence agency hinges on two questions: why did he reveal those overseas programs, and how did he get onto (or know to get onto) Aeroflot without a passport.
This is why he can be simultaneously a patriot and traitor. Trump (or his predecessor) could have written a pardon the first charge and deliberately left out the second. Whether Snowden would want to take his chances with a trial on the second charge would be a tough choice.
Without going too deep down the "jury nullification" rabbit hole, I'll just say that it's entirely reasonable to admit taking an action that is prohibited by law, while pleading not guilty to violating the same law. You may argue that there were extenuating circumstances that pre-empt the law in the specific case, or you may argue that the law itself is inherently wrong, etc. Yes, it's difficult to win an acquittal like this, but it does happen.
That we can't just mechanically apply the law like the axioms of mathematics is part of the very reason that we have judges, juries, and the adversarial system, to allow for some measure of human judgement in the process.
Jury nullification is so rare and really relies on a particular jury thinking a particular way...
A jury can even be sympathetic... and still convict him.
I hear folks talk about a fair trial but he's already admitted to crimes... so is the "fairness" only determined by a highly unlikely outcome, I'm not sure that's about fairness.
You can admit guilt and plead innocent. It's weird, but it's true. And the jury can acquit in spite of overwhelming evidence of guilt. That's how the anglosaxon system of criminal justice works (or used to; perhaps this is only true now in the U.S.?).
A jury can...but that really depends on the opinions of the jury.
It's not like a legal argument about what you knew or when and what the law says about your responsibility / actions.
A jury ignoring admissions of crimes is pretty rare and a roll of the dice.
I get why people would want that to happen, but expecting that random chance of an outcome and using it to measure fairness, I dunno, they're likely to be disappointed.
You can admit guilt and plead innocent. It's weird, but it's true. And the jury can acquit in spite of overwhelming evidence of guilt. That's how the anglosaxon system of criminal justice works (or used to; perhaps this is only true now in the U.S.?).
Demonstrating gross breach of legality and trust by intelligence agencies? In other countries, leadership of those agencies who lied to Congress (or their version of the legislative branch) would’ve done time.
It boggles the mind that some can attempt to justify the egregious actions of the US intelligence community while supporting the railroading of a whistleblower. Perhaps the intelligence community could be more responsible and compliant with statute, negating the need for whistleblowers to reveal their illegal activities.
Yeah. I don't like him (not eligible to vote for or against), but the "threat to our democracy" narrative is completely sunk. He clearly has no dictatorial aspirations. Maybe it's just because of events in the lead-up to the 2016 election, but if anything he seems worried about abuses of unchecked executive power on people's privacy. He's certainly at odds in some cases with Barr, who is a classic AG and wants ever-greater state power so long as it's responsibly exercised.
He repeatedly floats the idea of having journalists shot, pardons people for intimidating witnesses on his behalf, goes on public television to invite foreign interference in American elections so long as he's the beneficiary, he deploys troops on American soil against the wishes of state governments, sets new standards for noncompliance with judicial investigations, and spams illegal executive orders like a pentester searching for open ports.
Even if one were a fan of his policies, I cannot comprehend the confusion of principles that would lead them to put "checking executive power" anywhere on his priority list. Not as it relates to privacy, and not in general.
Can you explain how you reconcile that belief with multiple statements supporting e.g. running for more than 2 terms, un-elected leaders, as well as the very recent refusal to fund the post office because it will help more people exercise their constitutional rights and the installation of a postmaster general who is actively removing sorting machines and post boxes, as well as unsourced claims of mass voter fraud, particularly through mail-in ballots?
Ah, well perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that his dictatorial tendencies are more a threat to democracy than they are a threat to liberalism. He's interested in being and staying President, not at all principled about what he needs to do to make it happen, but seemingly not so interested in expanding the surveillance state, suppressing speech, that sort of thing.
As one of the "taxed but not represented" people in the US, I guess I might value voting rights a little less than I should.
Trump is in campaign mode, he tried to get the Latino vote after Mexican president visit. His team understand that most SV and New York tech workers are not part of their voting base, but Snowden being an important figure in this area can help him win some votes. 88022
The response to this news on HN has been very disappointing. By contrast, there was a lively apolitical discussion[0] back in 2015 about the effort to bring Snowden back to the US. On the other hand, people now seem more concerned about the motivations of Trump. If it's the right thing to do, who cares about the motivation behind it or the person enacting it? This reminds me a little of the response to Trump's efforts to end the War in Afghanistan. I realize I'm not talking about individuals, but it's maddening to see communities that had almost universally supported both things for many years seemingly let political biases get in the way of doing the right thing.
The main issue I see with Trump's support of anything is the impact this support has on the cause.
I believe Snowden needs to be pardoned. He made the Public aware of the shady things that are done in its name.
So the Public needs to pardon Snowden for being a whistleblower and this can be voiced through the President, who is supposed to be the ultimate voice representing the Public and its interests.
However, Trumps motivations for doing anything have been fickle and marred in short-term political or personal popularity gain, sometimes to the detriment of the very thing he is supporting.
So supporting a pardon for Snowden is great but the reasons for doing so are really not clear and -as usual- not articulated in any sensible and reasonable way.
Maybe I'm wrong but this looks more like a political diversion to me, maybe a way to divert the outrage when he pardonned Stone -clearly a shady character if there was one- or just keep the news busy for a while.
I agree with you in principle, but how can you have an apolitical discussion on a topic that is fundamentally and inseparably political? It's a conversation on treason, presidential decisions, exile, intelligence organisations... It's always been political. Hypothetically the president might want to pardon Snowden and then change his mind when he is in the country, then yes I'd like to discuss his motivations. And people have been burned by this man before so I can't blame their biases.
> realDonaldTrump: ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama's records,I might become a major fan
He should be executed, but in the same breathe he may deserve a pardon? Not going to happen.
Neither the State Department, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, or the Intelligence Community, is particularly sympathetic to Snowden's cause (for good reason imo). There has been no change on that front from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. William Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Mark Esper are no more fans of Snowden than Loretta Lynch, John Kerry, and Ash Carter were. Snowden will die in Russia or in a US prison. I know it's not what the vigilantes of the Internet want to hear, but it's the most likely scenario.
Your quote is from... October 2013 [1]. I think Trump's views and information might have changed since then, and the state of the world has changed which will modify the pros and cons of this move to trump. I expect his decision will mostly be made based on how he perceives it impacting his chance of getting re-elected.
I haven't noticed trump ever being particularly concerned about what the intelligence community thinks.
I expect it might be calculated to help his re-election - if he does it. Remembering how google locked down its internal network after the revelations, I would expect lots of silicon valley might align with snowden's plight.
1. My uninformed kneejerk guess is that Russia, for whatever reason, wants to be rid of Snowden. It's the only explanation for why Trump—who has no pressing reason to be thinking about Edward Snowden right now, and almost certainly does not approve of Snowden or people like him—would suddenly raise the issue.
2. That, or it's something Trump knows will get everyone talking and he needs a distraction. Maybe both.
I could be missing something, but I can't see how this is going to help Trump in an election at all. The people who care about Snowden are not going to overlook everything else Trump has done, and at the risk of sounding callous, I don't think most millenials are really thinking about Snowden at this point.
The question for me is why Putin wants Edward Snowden gone, and when you look at the one vs. the other, the answer looks pretty clear to me.
Clearly Snowden has been useful to them, at least from a propaganda angle, and perhaps intelligence-wise as well. By now they've extracted all the value they were ever going to extract from him, and he may just be a cost center to them now, but you're absolutely right that if they wanted to be rid of him, it'd be trivial to do it.
> Clearly Snowden has been useful to them, at least from a propaganda angle, and perhaps intelligence-wise as well. By now they've extracted all the value they were ever going to extract from him
Symbols can stay valuable for a long time. A political refugee from the United States has all kinds of symbolic value, not least because we aren't willing to admit that there could be such a thing.
I was speculating for the purpose of reasoning about whether they might want to get rid of him. How could he be a cost center? I don't know -- maybe they provide security for him?
> It's the only explanation for why Trump—who has no pressing reason to be thinking about Edward Snowden right now, and almost certainly does not approve of Snowden or people like him—would suddenly raise the issue.
There is way more overlap in the thought process (with respect to the deep state) of Trump and Snowden supporters than than Snowden supporters would let on.
(Remember, we're talking about the same CIA that hacked US congressional computers, because the congress was investigating the CIA’s torture record and they wanted to cover it up. Then the CIA lied about hacking them. Then they later lied about lying about it.)
The IC knows they would suffer zero consequences for his “heart attack”.
Ed is far too smart to ever put himself in that situation.
Thus, for practical purposes, such a pardon is irrelevant.
With a pardon he could travel. He wouldn't have to leave Russia either. In time those who want him dead might fade away. Even if he never left Russia, a pardon might sway some voters one way or the other. Of course a pardon is relevant! (Not saying he should be pardoned, or that he shouldn't be.)
Can you explain why the intel community or US Military hasn't killed Daniel Ellsberg in the last half century then? He's 89 years old, everyone knows what he did and he lives in California.
Why haven't the people involved in the The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI been murdered? The members still alive have been public for the past six years. They revealed COINTELPRO and caused the Church Committee. Not worthy of an instagibbing?
I don't know that I would advise Snowden to ever come to the US. Pardon or no pardon. And I mean that in a very caring way. The people after him are dangerous, and they don't care about laws, or rights. Think Erik Prince, but actually smart, methodical, and quiet. Oh, and there are thousands of them.
Can you elaborate? Are there murderous independent elements within the NSA and CIA that would do this to an American citizen? I’m a huge cynic, but perhaps too naive about this. That all sounds very scary, especially when the leak was about a very large institutional apparatus that feels too big for anyone to take it personally.
Snowden asserted clearly, on at least two different occasions, on the record, that the IC would not hesitate to assassinate Bart Gellman, a US journalist, if doing so would have prevented the publication or further distribution of the documents Snowden provided him.
Gellman writes about both of these occasions in his book Dark Mirror, which I recommend you read if you’re interested in becoming less naive about the American spy apparatus.
Additionally, the commander in chief of the entirety of the US military, including all of the IC (CIA et al), has plainly stated that Snowden should be executed. Note that Snowden has not at this time yet been put on trial, and the US constitution establishes the presumption of innocence, so such an event if it were to occur would be accurately described, legally, as an extrajudicial assassination of a US citizen.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. If he ever sets foot in the US again, he will be quietly and instantly murdered by his former coworkers, even after he is pardoned.
Manning was declared guilty in advance by the US president prior to her trial, and subsequently was tortured so badly prior to trial she tried to kill herself twice whilst imprisoned.
If you know enough about the CIA to be absolutely certain they will murder Snowden, then surely you know what line he crossed that Chelsea Manning didn’t?
You might also want to point out that the torture was solitary confinement for all but 1 hour per day, which I’m no fan of, but just to be clear it wasn’t torture in the water boarding or toenail removal sense.
That’s the thing: it doesn’t need to be “absolutely certain” to be sufficient risk to effectively bar him from ever re-entering (or even venturing too far out of the current protection detail
that keeps him alive).
Even “pretty likely to be assassinated upon entry” would be enough to keep most reasonable or prudent people away forever.
Solitary confinement for extended periods of time causes permanent, physical damage to the human brain and psyche. If you have no experience with it or those who have so suffered, I don’t think you have even a remote shred of justification or qualification to speak of it the way that you have.
As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.
You seemed pretty sure. But ok if he’s “pretty likely to murdered ”, then you must have some numbers to back that up? How many leakers have been murdered, and how many haven’t?
What was the probability that Chelsea Manning was going to be murdered? And how was it calculated?
edit in response to your edit which included this:
>As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.
So you're just going to toss out unsubstantiated claims and then retreat under the pretense of being extraordinary offended?
Torture has a generally accepted meaning and most people (and our legal system) don’t think that a single occupancy prison cell with an hour of human contact per day fits that meaning. The studies supporting psychological damage are generally talking about months of near total isolation, which is not what Chelsea Manning experienced.
It's pretty disgusting that solitary -- considered to "cause such severe psychological damage that it is tantamount to torture" -- isn't torturous enough for you, in the "waterboard or toenail removal" sense:
"Solitary confinement is so egregious a punishment that in 2011, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment condemned its use, except in exceptional circumstances and for as short a time as possible, and banned the practice completely for people with mental illnesses and for juveniles."
1. There is a difference between complete deprivation of human contact for months to years (which could be a form of torture) and spending 23 hours a day in a single occupancy cell with an hour outside for exercise with guards and healthcare workers regularly attempting to engage you in conversation (in an attempt to evaluate your mental state). Chelsea Manning's guard's stated they tried to engage her in conversation regularly, but she wasn't responsive. That doesn't sound like purposeful lack of human contact for the purposes of psychological torture.
2. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture is a lawyer in a political position, not a psychiatrist.
3. The studies linked in his report and the article failed were horribly flawed. They examined general population prisoners and prisoners subjected to solitary confinement without taking into account the selection biases that lead to differences between those populations, i.e., prisoners who have behavioral problems are more likely to be selected for solitary confinement.
I think that charging prisoners exorbitant fees to call their family is horrible. I think that not allowing books on programming in prison because the warden is concerned with "hacking" is wrong. Hell I think giving prisoners beds that are less comfortable than what you'd expect guards to sleep on is terrible.
But I don't think those things should be described as torture because they diminish the meaning of the word.
If Russia allowed Snowden to be murdered they would lose the trust of other potential defectors - especially those that are directly valuable (military and industrial secrets). For this reason I'm certain he's under constant watch.
History would indicate otherwise. Defectors, spies, people who just leak things for money. They sometimes there are repercussions, other times not ... and still more do their thing.
I don't think it is all or nothing and I seriously doubt Snowden is untouchable.
It is a common political trick to find a quote from somebody years ago and pretend that quote says it all about that person. It may even be effective at times. But if you actually believe that if Trump said something in 2013 that quote alone is his true lifetime conviction and he will never change it till he is alive (Trump, of all people!) then you're getting high on your own supply.
I honestly care more about Julian Assange. His own government turned their back on him.
Snowden has been quite the show, enough so that I'm seriously wondering if he's actually a spook. His entire story is weird. He holds a six figure salary as an NSA contractor, suddenly has a moral compass, somehow downloads a bunch of top secret stuff while working remotely from Hawaii, leaks documents that are mostly redacted and missing critical information about compromised hardware, and is believed by the world wide media unilaterally without question. Then his smoking hot girlfriend says she wants to go join him. No one has found him yet while he does video conferencing using Google Hangouts.
By contrast, Julian Assange was trapped in an Ecuadorian embassy for years. He's been though hell and his origination has leaked much more crucial information.
Not sure why the downvotes. I've wondered if Snowden was running a sanctioned op since day 1. Heck even the movie floats this as a plot line (Nicolas Cage character).
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Yet, in my view Snowden actions have been extremely important to set the discussions we are having today: how private do we expect our digital lives to be be it from the state or from megacorps.
I doubt that Facebook/CA affair in 2016 elections would have come to light (or have the same impact) had Snowden leaks not had happened.
I doubt that Europeans would have stoped being 100% subservient to American tech megacorps had those leaks not had happened.
I think alot of people around the world started even considering the importance of who is watching or listening to their digital life because of Snowden. Or at least, because of the conversation that his leaks started.
He wasnt alone in leaking information important to these conversations, but he definitely has become an important advocate of his leaks and his own message.