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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You cannot simply say spying is immoral. It depends on who was being spied on and why.
A Republican controlled congress would likely go along with at least some of the more Trump-ish policies, particularly the anti-Muslim and anti-immigration ones.And some things he's said (like an apparent blase attitude toward using nukes), seperation of powers doesn't really cover and given the blatant disregard he seems to have for the Constitution, I wouldn't trust it to stop him.
You're in Louisiana, a Republican leaning state, and in Batton Rouge, a hot point for a lot of Black Lives Mater stuff; on a personal level if you're really worried, than do what you can to find out about your state and federal legislative candidates and even your local candidates and talk with your friends and family about the election and the importance of voting out anyone willing to back Trump and his regressive policies.
But should you panic? No. That helps nothing. Keep enjoying media too, because worrying about politics constantly will drive you nuts by November.
The whole problem was that the NSA was collecting everything from anyone. No suspect, no probable cause, it was a drag-net with no specific target hoping some of it would turn up something
.
edited 6th Aug '16 5:05:54 PM by Elle
Trump is currently not liked by either party...or anyone. Many things he wishes to do are blatantly illegal. So, no, I don't think the worst of his policies are actually going to be passed even on the off-chance he becomes president (very off chance).
Leviticus 19:34I agree that not all spying is bad, but there is a difference between spying on someone because they may be a known enemy of the state even if they are a citizen of the state, and spying on someone just because technology allows them to. Spying on one's own citizens is something that can lead down a dark path, especially considering the McCarthy witch hunts for communists during the height of the Cold War.
edited 6th Aug '16 5:20:00 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyOh, one more thing about Snowden: In 2015, the EU Parliment voted to call for the charges against Snowden to be dropped.
By a very narrow margin, but nonetheless.
edited 6th Aug '16 5:44:38 PM by Elle
@ Julep: The issue is they weren't exactly 'spying' on their own. I saw nothing that rose to that level in the Snowden leaks. Metadata collection with oversight is not, again, spying, and the Fourth Amendment does not prevent the government from surveillance. How do you think police do wiretaps and surveillance? Or the feds?
@ Silas W: Nothing he did was ;'dumping?' He gave thousands of documents to reporters with no clearance. Documents he couldn't possibly have vetted or understood and let them publish them Unloading his documents on third parties and let them decide what to do, even when they were ridiculously irresponsible, is dumping them. It's why Snowden's no whistleblower.
@ Gameguru: Then I'll ask this, because it's something I've noticed Snowden's defenders routinely refuse to ever address: what is right about revealing US operations against terrorists, human traffickers, offshore hackers or Chinese technology institutes? How is trying to tempt foreign governments with intelligence in return for asylum not morally skeevy? And can I again somehow learn how collecting metadata is spying? Like I've said before: actively analyzing what Snowden leaked does not reveal large scale spying. In fact, Snowden flatly lied about what he'd been doing for the agency.
It's a symbolic measure, yes, but it's a step in the shift of international opinion. In 2013, several EU countries were cooperating with the US in their attempts to intercept Snowden.
The constitutionality of the program has already been rulled unconstitutional by a federal judge
And I'd like to see your source regarding the US operations he supposedly revealed.
Again, citation needed. I know of one slip up involving the NY Times and Al'Queda.
edited 6th Aug '16 6:05:59 PM by Elle
Snowden didn't just leak stuff relating to the US' domestic spying. He released materials related to thousands of other operations against foreign governments, against criminal organizations, and against terrorist groups. That's beyond irresponsible, and it's what makes the difference between "whistleblower" and "traitor".
It's been ruled legal as well.
Look up MYSTIC and SOMALGET. The programs tasked with helping to thwart human and narco-trafficking via the collection of cellphone conversations in the Bahamas, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and a country that was originally redacted by Greenwald and his fellows, and revealed by Wikileaks (Starts with 'A' ends up with 'anistan'
Or the infamous leaky data
story with "NSA is watching Angry Birds!"
Except buried in the article is a nugget that they're targeting 'valid intelligence targets,' and later revealed they're doing this to terrorism suspects in other countries.
This was pretty common when the Snowden stuff was coming out: Make a big clickbait headline, bury important info later in the article and let the public do the rest.
MYSTIC and SOMALGET, at first glance, were apparently a programs that, without the consent or knowledge of the countries involved, recorded and stored info about every single phone conversation in certain countries and in the case of Afghanistan and the Bahamas, the full audio too.
This is legal how?
edited 6th Aug '16 6:29:26 PM by Elle
If you can find me something in the Constitution or US law about it being legal to conduct surveillance on foreign nations in this manner, I'd like to see it. And seeing as these were programs going to fighting human-trafficking I'm not getting hung up it
edited 6th Aug '16 6:37:05 PM by Lightysnake
There' nothing in the constitution that makes it illegal. Therefore, most likely legal. However, there might be international laws regarding the issue. Really, dealing with foreign citizens is more of an international law dealio.
@Lightysnake & Ambar: I might be convinced to revise my opinion on Snowden if I see valid enough evidence against him... That being said, I checked both his Wikipedia article and the link you've provided and I'm still not convinced. For one thing, the article in question mentions both the reasoning for why the NSA might be targeting information from smartphones and the article actually mentions its use against 'valid foreign intelligence targets' multiple times in the article. That being said, these quotes are from the NSA who... well, weren't they caught spying on U.S. Citizens without valid reason? Why should I trust that they are only using something like this against 'valid foreign intelligence targets' after that revelation? Isn't that kind of the point of the outrage?
EDIT: Since this discussion might be off-topic for the U.S. Politics Thread, I would be willing to continue this conversation in the appropriate On-Topic Discussion Thread.
edited 6th Aug '16 10:07:07 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyOnce again, I'm just a mite tired of "caught spying on US citizens" being thrown about with no real proof behind it. Metadata collection may be skeevy, but it's not spying like that.
And the purposes of those programs are against terrorists and traffickers in other countries. That's the reason they exist. And yet we're willing to trust Snowden's word otherwise? A guy who has blatantly lied constantly from the very get go? So, here's my challenge: show me the NSA targeting the smart phones of innocent targets from the documents.
Trump is losing college Republican groups.
Republican groups from Harvard and from University of Pennsylvania, Trump's alma mater, are refusing to endorse him.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."![]()
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You guys are the ones accusing the USA of spying on its citizens, etc. Therefore it is on you to provide the evidence that they were doing so. As Lightysnake's noted, metadata collection is an iffy area, certainly, and there's problems with it, but it's hardly evidence of a McCarthy style witch-hunt on the part of the NSA.
American intelligence has done lots of absolutely horrendous stuff over the course of its history. I will be the first to admit that. CIA sponsorship of dictators like Pinochet and Videla is more than enough for me to look askance at anything American intelligence does. But this one is hardly up there.
edited 6th Aug '16 11:04:51 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
I'd note that spying on your own people is allowed if done by the people whose job it is to do that. That's the FBI, not the NSA. The NSA are meant to spy on foreigners, they even claim that that's what they were doing and that US citizens data was only collecteted accidentally. It's a separation of powers, honestly and intent issue.
On dumping, I'd define dumping as putting everything in the public sphere, Snowden didn't do that, he worked with journalists to try and vet stuff, he did that poorly in some cases but the attempt to filter makes it not dumping.
On what Snowden revealed, he did out some basic stuff that should be being done and is totally moral. Like the UK spying on Argantina, a nation we have an active territorial dispute with and in living memory went to war with.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranNot really on topic, but I thought it might be relevant given the recent Snowden and Assange talk:
Iran says it executed nuclear scientist in US spy mystery:
http://bigstory.ap.org/55fcaf2185ea40dd9d3c9e0111a708fc&utm_source=android_app&utm_medium=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=share
Here's he EFF's position on metadata
. I vaguely remember hearing something more recent pop up in the news but not sure.

Seriously, would Congress pass any laws that would do a single goddamn thing he says he'll do?
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