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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
This was supposed to be edited into my last post but ninjas attacked.
This is a defense of Snowden from the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers and why the Espionage Act is a bad law to apply to wistleblowers (given he was also charged on it before the Watergate revelations led to the charges being dropped). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel-ellsberg-snowden-fair-trial-kerry-espionage-act
TLDR: the provisions of the Espionage Act are such that for a whistleblower it's very unlikely any trial of a person charged under it could be fair. (Me just saying the trial would be classified is an oversimplification at best and possibly just wrong.)
@Fighter: The constitutionality of much of the PATRIOT act has been challenged from the outset although very few legal challenges to it have been gotten through. It was passed in the wake of 9/11 when trading freedom for security seemed much more acceptable (regardless of whether it works.) One federal court has also ruled that the NSA's data collection was unconstitutional. You are free to disagree with that ruling.
edited 11th Oct '16 8:34:55 AM by Elle
The point I was making was that you need to protect people who reveal the government's crimes. The fact that some laws are designed to hide those crimes - which necessitates breaking them in order to reveal those crimes - is the very reason that whistleblowers need protection.
Alright, so the Watergate investigation didn't involve a crime on the part of the reporters. I see that a more direct comparison has been offered already. There are, of course, many more cases that you could use.
A government that fundamentally disagrees with the principles I've stated in my last post or two would attack the Watergate investigators. If there was no current law to do so, they would install one - just the same way that laws are currently in place that prevent people from leaking facts about torture and so on.
Of course this invokes a debate as to where you draw the line. What secrets should be protected by law, and what should not? The position I'm proposing is that any times when the government commits war crimes or crimes against humanity, those crimes should not be hidden by secrecy protected by the law. In practice this is very hard to control, so the matter of what sort of revelation can be made legally and what cannot becomes vague and, in some ways, essentially random. If we take the fundamental stance that revealing those secrets is more important than legislation about state secrets, I would argue we'll have fewer and fundamentally less significant errors than we would if we designed the laws protecting secrets with the opposite goal - ie, that secrets are more important than human rights.
As we've all seen, this becomes a massive grey area. Some take a fundamentalist stance that laws should never be broken when uncovering secrets - even when those secrets include even more serious violations. The opposite stance would be that those who reveal secret crimes should always be protected, even if they have to break a law to reveal that crime. I'm much more inclined to favour the latter position than the former.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
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: The point has been made that the surveillance in question, while reprehensible to many people's sensibilities, was both legal and constitutional according to the processes established in our governing principles.
Thus, Snowden was not a whistleblower of criminal behavior; he was a moral objector who violated national security laws. We can discuss whether this was a net good all we want (I believe that it probably was), but let's not distort the facts of the case.
"Moral objectors" must be willing to face the consequences of their actions. I'm not a big fan of fracking, but if some Greenpeace nuts (or Jill Stein) sabotage oil extraction equipment, that is a crime that should be prosecuted.
Had Snowden uncovered actual criminal behavior, he could have made a reasonable case for whistleblower protection. Instead he broke multiple laws and fell into Russian control while fleeing legitimate prosecution for his actions. Screw him.
edited 11th Oct '16 8:53:40 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In an ideal world it wouldn't even need to be debatable whether whistleblowing is justifiable or not because it'd basically never come up.
Just like in an ideal world, police discrimination (or discrimination of any kind) wouldn't be a thing.
Why? All it does is discourage people who otherwise might reveal the governments crimes. It basically enforces that only the most selfless of people can reveal the governments crimes. And there aren't enough of those people. If I have to choose, I'd rather have some lone criminals getting off the hook than the government.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:00:32 AM by Antiteilchen
On further checking on my part, the Pentagon papers were not a leak of illegal action either. They revealed that the government lied to the public about the reason for the Vietnam War (which though it involved a number of war crimes eventually being committed, was itself technically legal.) Daniel Eisenberg, the leaker, was charged under the Espionage Act, went to trial, and was not allowed to defend why he leaked the papers (the point of the article). If Watergate had not happened and discredited the Nixon administration, he would have been thrown under the bus for it. He argues that the same would happen to Snowden if he came back now to stand trial based on both his case and others since then.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:06:27 AM by Elle
Alabama closing abortion clinics is constitutional and legal. Any doctor who decides "screw it, I will give the service for free to women who can't afford travelling to nearby states or hundreds of kilometers" is a hero in my book, even if the State decides to put him on trial.
Sometimes, the constitution plain sucks, but for some reason it seems kinda hard to edit it - hint: this has something to do with a bunch of people who consider it more sacred than the Ancient Testament.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:11:32 AM by Julep
No it doesn't, because people who reveal government crimes are whistleblowers and not Moral Objectors, which is what Fighteer is talking about. Punishing people who commit criminal acts to reveal non-criminal behaviour is not the same as punishing people who commit criminal acts to reveal criminal behaviour, that's Fighteer's entire point.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
Making the constitution hard to edit is also what protects it from a theoretical President Trump and a Republican Congress working together and tearing it to shreds, mind you. The Constitution is not supposed to be the authority on every law but the outline for the essential parts of government and a reference point of the legal principles that are the most, pardon the term, sacred and not to be violated.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:21:08 AM by Elle
Trump is trying to pull Taking You with Me on the GOP, if not the entire country. He's planning on going full negative and has been ranting about the election being rigged again.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/11/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-tweets/index.html
@Julep: No, the reason why the Constitution is hard to edit is to keep people like you describe from writing a ban on abortion explicitly into the Constitution. Certainly, the people who revere the Constitution would be the first to edit it in every way they liked if they passed the barrier for writing an amendment. Conversely, if liberals had passed the barrier for writing an amendment, they'd certainly modify if not repeal the Second Amendment.
Thing is that we can't even get laws passed currently so there is no reason for even thinking about amending the Constitution right now.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:30:44 AM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyGovernor Le Page of Maine says the country needs an authoritarian leader like Trump to restore law and order. Undemocratic actions are okay because Obama is clearly a dictator as it is.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/11/politics/paul-lepage-authoritarian-power/index.html
This man is a walking example of the dangers of vote splitting.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Still, good news that the private prison system is starting to crumble from within. I'm frankly surprised that more of you are still focused on Trump instead of this since you're already certain of who you're voting for. Once the private prisons implode, quite a few corrupt police precincts will naturally follow. Maybe even the DEA, lacking the support of these institutions, may have to give up the War on Drugs.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:49:34 AM by nervmeister
Trump is a flailing man in a shipwreck, latching onto every person he can grab and dragging them down to the briny deep with him.
To which I say, godspeed, good sir. I never thought I would say this, but if Donald J. Trump plans on taking down as many GOP Congressmen as he can before he goes, then in this, he has my full support.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Yes, Trump, sink the ship with you! Pass the Popcorn.
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The news cycle is focused on Trump's meltdown at the moment so that's what we're talking about. At this point, the need to get as many Democrats elected in November as possible given this extraordinary opportunity trumps (if you'll excuse me) more specific policy issues, although I am of course happy to discuss them.
edited 11th Oct '16 9:52:44 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I do not recall any of Snowden's leaks revealing that anyone in the NSA was breaking any laws. Quite the opposite: the surveillance conducted by the NSA was explicitly authorized by the PATRIOT Act. Calling what was done "illegal" anyway on the basis of abstract principles means that you do believe in a higher global law, which is fine and dandy but there aren't any courts or police enforcing it.
Snowden isn't a hero. He endangered national security and the lives of U.S. intelligence assets over a moral disagreement. Was it a net good for the surveillance programs in question to come to public light? Probably, but that doesn't excuse the actions he took.
edited 11th Oct '16 8:21:43 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"