Edward Snowden - Traitor or Patriot?

[skydivr]

Anybody see the Brian Williams interview?

I have to say, this kid does not come off looking or sounding like a traitor to me. He thought it thru; he tried to work thru channels. He claims to have kept if from the Russians nor received any financial gain. He claims to have kept out specifics that would directly harm any individuals. Clean, well-spoken, calm and thoughtful.

What he describes, used against AMERICAN CITIZENS, IHMO is in clear violation of the Constitution.

Opinions?

John Kerry, the hypocrite, seems to have forgotten his own protests against the government over the Vietnam war....Just who is the bigger "coward" and "traitor"...?

As the NSA logs this thread...

 

[mysql]

Telling the people that the government is doing things against its own people which clearly violate the constitution is not traitorous.

The established channels to whistle blow are designed to prevent information from getting out. You're essentially telling the law breakers that they are breaking the law. No ****.

Try the same thing in prison - report to a guard that another guard is beating you. See how far that gets you.

Same thing with the police. Report that a police officer beat the crap out of you. Good luck unless you have it on video tape.

 

[Projekt]

Patriot through and through.

 

[E Zurcher]

Coward, traitor and should be hung by the neck until his heart stops beating and he takes his last breath!

 

[Projekt]

So, tell us how you really feel..

 

[StromBusa]

traitor for sure, but whistleblower & ~patriot... yes. I always simly assumed that the government exceeded it's authority, he sure brought that out of the closet, but giving content away to foreign governments .... seems like hanging traitors has fallen out of fashion, they are proliferating. real unique dude.

 

[mysql]

Say what you want about Snowden, but he didn't just dump all the info he found. He carefully went through it and has released things that didn't harm our country directly.

US law has a long history of ENCOURAGING whistleblowing, to the point that they usually got a % of the proceeds. Of course, the US gov't does what it can to put a stop to having to deal with their own actions, and the current laws are a mishmash of conflicting laws and legal requirements to the point where they can pretty much jail you no matter what you do.

 

[TallTom]

Traitor. I did his world. He has put what we do, out of context. Yes technically what he says our government is doing, they are. But not in the context of they are subjecting innocent people to un-constitutional acts. Technically yes our government is violating some rights. Of those that are perceived threats. 9/11 changed everything. And it is these tactics that have allowed us to round up a lot of people that are out to do us harm.

I'm not on the fence if he is traitor. I am certain of my feelings there. What I struggled with, is the same things he struggled with. What were told to do, we knew was illegal to do. But if my Commander in Chief instructs us to carry it out, we do it. That is where Snowden crosses the line. What we were and are doing, was internally reviewing how to go about prosecuting these people when what we discovered, we did so illegally. What he did was not whistle blowing. Well above his pay grade to decide to out our tactics to the general population. We as a government were already dealing with the fact that we were going to be legally challenged in court over our findings.


Notice how many detained people have actually been brought to court yet? There is a reason for this.

And Snowden will probably be the reason the will go free now.

 

[mysql]

Of those that are perceived threats. 9/11 changed everything. And it is these tactics that have allowed us to round up a lot of people that are out to do us harm.

That's nonsense. We've become a police state, with our constitutional rights infrgined at every corner. Look at how many people are actually killed in terrorist attacks, and what we've spent to try to "defend" against it. We have alphabet agencies monitoring twitter, facebook, spying on all all phone calls. It is complete idiocy to try to claim any terrorist group is using twitter to signal an attack. They know what we spy on and what to look for. That's why Bin Laden didn't use any phones and instead used couriers.

But if my Commander in Chief instructs us to carry it out, we do it. That is where Snowden crosses the line.

NO! You are NEVER to perform illegal orders.

Military members who fail to obey the lawful orders of their superiors risk serious consequences. Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) makes it a crime for a military member to WILLFULLY disobey a superior commissioned officer. Article 91 makes it a crime to WILLFULLY disobey a superior Noncommissioned or Warrant Officer. Article 92 makes it a crime to disobey any lawful order (the disobedience does not have to be "willful" under this article).

Following an illegal order is never something you should do, and is not a defense. Just ask all the nazi's that went to trial how well that worked out.


You will also note that in the oaths, the first thing mentioned is always "..support and defend the Constitution.." Our government has gotten out of control. They are all sworn to uphold the constitution, and should be removed from office the moment they are not. The issue now is that this is systemic.

Snowden is 100% in the right with his actions.

 

[mysql]

DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:

"I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God"

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809[890].ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the "lawful command of his superior officer," 891.ART.91 (2), the "lawful order of a warrant officer", 892.ART.92 (1) the "lawful general order", 892.ART.92 (2) "lawful order". In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, "The uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, 'Members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.' This principle was considered so important that we--we, the government of the United States--proposed that it be internationally applied in the Nuremberg trials." (Bill Moyers, "The Secret Government", Seven Locks Press; also in the PBS 1987 documentary, "The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis.")

Senator Inouye was referring to the Nuremberg trials in the post WW II era, when the U.S. tried Nazi war criminals and did not allow them to use the reason or excuse that they were only "following orders" as a defense for their war crimes which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent men, women, and children. "In 1953, the Department of Defense adopted the principles of the Nuremberg Code as official policy" of the United States. (Hasting Center Report, March-April 1991)

^^ That my friends, is why Snowden is a patriot and a hero.

He's taken it upon himself to do what hundreds, if not thousands of those in our government have failed to do. His life is very much at risk as a result of telling the American people what our government has been doing. Prior to his releases, any rumor of such widespread surveillance was dismissed as conspiracy theories and the imagination of nutjobs gone wild.

 

[1busa]

Where I come from the motto is "Snitches get Stitches"


unch: = :stoopid:

 

[proud dad]

They were called traitors

 

[TallTom]

I don't disagree with any of those responses of constitutional rights.

Fist Bin Laden. We funded and educated him to fight Russia in Afghanistan in their quagmire. We also had tracked him as a problem up until 9/11. The Intel was provided to the Commander in Chief who chose to not act on it. After 9/11 he quickly realized we were tracking him and dispensed with anything electronic and resorted to hundred year old means to communicate. By the way for which I give him credit for.

Let's go back a little. The first WTC bombing in 1993, we captured those responsible by tapping their phones. Illegally. But nonetheless that is how we got them.

Now after 9/11 War is officially declared. To an unnamed nebulous enemy labelled Al Queada. That declaration is still in effect. We do not know who is or is not part of Al Queada. That is a moving target of people. So this is where the legal rub comes in. How do we monitor people that have no clear indication they are the enemy. In times of War many things are done that aren't done during peace times. If we are told to monitor every communication of every activity of a suspected possible link, in order to isolate a pattern and a track of evidence that yields a bad guy, that is what we do. The legal moral we have here, and one that we covered for months upon months is, they aren't a known suspected terrorist until we have enough evidence gathered to act on it. So we are placing our need to monitor ahead of the fact that we are essentially fishing for activity that will be illegal. If we are told this is a suspected contact, we drilled into them. Either proved they were or had to say we could not identify them with enough confidence. Bush and the attorney general claimed it was legal, internally many felt it wasn't. But NONE of that had gone to court and been tested yet.

I could write a novel on this but hopefully that gives you a better idea. Just because our boss tells us to do something we don't believe is legal in theory, doesn't mean that in times of war, the courts will feel the same way. If it saved American lives, it may be deemed to be worth interpreting that law differently at the time.

Now lets address what they use. They use websites to recruit, communicate to each other, make statements etc. They use e-mail, social networks, TV networks (Foreign). Here is an example. Go look at YouTube and search. Beheadings of Americans. Every one of those that posted to YouTube are now someone that we want to do our best to track down who they are and where they made that and where it got introduced onto YouTube. And we will use whatever means we can to see if there are any domestic dots connected to them.

They use regular phone, payphones, satellite phones, disposable payphones to call each other. Why disposable? Because they are untraceable. You can only catch them while they are using them. Triangulate them while they use them. We hope we have numbers that we are already suspicious of that hey call They transfer money into and out of bank accounts. Lets use this example. Known bad guy in Yeoman, makes 35 phone calls into America. How do we know that any or all of those 35 calls may not be terrorist related activities? The only way we can is to listen to what is being said and who it is being said to.

Let's go back further. The Mystic Program has been in existence long before 9/11. It is largely automated for a few reasons. Actual people don't have to listen to actual people. Instead a computer uses an algorithm and every phone call made by everybody from everywhere that either comes into or stays in America is recording and stored to memory in a facility in Va. It is also automated because it would impossible and illegal to listen to every call of every person using every phone. It stores every call period. Year ago, it was simple relatively speaking. It could only capture relatively few keywords. In the Pre 911 days it would capture words like OVERTHROW, ASSASSINATE, COUP, etc. If those words were captured that entire call was sent to a human for evaluation. That human would then hear a conversation that could be something like " I think we should ASSASSINATE the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys because of his stupid season plays. That call is disposed of and that person and number are destroyed as a potential problem. Mystic was very good at data-basing phone numbers, times and patterns. It was a simply software program.

Now lets say Mystic hears the word ASSASSINATE from a different call. Same protocol applies. It gets sent to a human. Now that human hears a conversation that says they intend to ASSASSINATE the president. Now the human tells Mystic to give them a dump of every call made by that number and a list of every number that number called. Now you better believe we have humans listening in on those numbers and those conversations. If you don't believe they will do whatever they need to, to foil a plot to kill our president, you are naive.

Now 9/11 happens. Bush orders BILLIONS be spent to make everything we have better. Mystic now can listen to 12 languages and thousands of words set flags now. Further we deploy it into every friendly country we have to do the same. Al Queda is operating worldwide and we have deployed it worldwide to connect the dots of calls and communications between countries now. We have the same tools used to capture e-mails, etc.

That is the reality of this. We don't have thousands of people listening to everyone's phonecalls, we have thousands of people listening to whomever is setting off redflags.

We didn't catch the Bostom Bombers because we had not yet found the need to spool up Checnian (sp) language. But Russia did. And they gave us these guys names as potential terrorist and we did nothing. We were again stupid and Boston happened. But look at how fast this surveillance that watches EVERYONE allowed us to ID these guys within hours. This is the same surveillance that you are now complaining about being illegal. Which way do you want it?

We spend(t) millions of hours listening to people that we have spent thousands of hours identifying. This isn't a haphazard listen to Fred and Ethel having phone sex with each other. We could care less about 98% of the kazillion pieces of info that we do in fact monitor. But the fact that we do in fact monitor is where this has become the bomb it is. We have no other way to accomplish this. If you suggest we unplug so we don't possibly illegally catch a terrorist, how then do you propose we do anything better? And if we do, sit back and wait because 9/11 will look tame before they are done.

Mystic etc are set up this way because it is not illegal for a computer to listen to a computer or a phone. If we are given 300 new numbers to monitor, we believe that we are doing so with the authority of the law to do so. We have a reasonable expectation that they have reason to be monitored.

We also listen, to learn our weaknesses they are attempting to exploit. We tighten up those weaknesses before they act. This allows us to avoid illegal arrest and seizure laws. If we pick up that they are finding a weakness, we listen in and gather intel to help us learn what they know. Avert the planned attack on that weakness. Nothing illegal had to be questioned.

Boston happened. I promise you we have averted about 300 Bostons. If someone is going to attempt a 9/11 or a Boston or etc. don't scream at your government for not taking any steps necessary to prevent them and then ***** when they do.

Now use it to monitor your political opposition and I will scream at the top of my lungs it is being used for the wrong reasons. And this is where I have to step off. I have been out of this world prior to our present administration. I do not know by what rules or directives Obama is using these tools. At this point I will not discuss how much harm these tools are capable of. If someone is being looked at because they are not of the same domestic political agenda, that is whole new world of crap that I don't wish to start a discussion on.

I can say without a doubt that when I was in, we were strictly forbidden to use it for personal reasons. And we monitored the humans monitoring. If they abused their responsibility, they were immediately terminated and charges were pressed.

 

[lil charlie]

Snowden and I went to the same high school and community college. He was I think a year (maybe 2) behind me.

 

[Gpmo]

whistle blower for sure... not sure if i can say hes a patriot but i don't think hes a traitor either.

Not sure i would go so far as hero either. But He did get one over on the Russians.. when he used their own words to grant him asylum from his own treacherous government...


I got a big middle finger for the NSA.

 

[GNBRETT]

Traitor and coward! lets just let every government employee air out our nations secrets cause he disagrees with how things are being done..... he's a first rate scumbag and deserves to go to prison! if he thinks he's gettn anything less then prison if he returns he's dreaming!

this guy didn't work at burger king! he was sworn to secrecy and clearly violated the law. I don't gov a chit wat he disagrees with. we can't hav our top secret government employees taking it upon themselves to air national secrets cause he happens to disagree with a policy.

thats a slippery slope and allowing top secret government employees to decide wen there are or are not going to keep national secrets is very dangerous to our national security!

 

[skydivr]

I have mixed feelings about it too. I was a soldier. I desperately want to catch the bad guys before they kill innocents, and in the hours/days following 911, the rulebook got thrown into the fireplace. I think the problem is, too much of a good thing can be bad. We got all this wiz-bam tech, and I can see how it would be nearly impossible for intel guys to turn it off. Too many 'what if's. The real deal, which I think was what pushed Snowden, who appears to LOVE his country enough to be willing to go to prison for the rest of his life (or worse), is the spread of surveillance was not including people NOT potential terrorists...and I strongly suspect being used against regular citizens for other reasons (political)....just think if the IRS was getting intel from these programs when going after Tea Party groups...would the libs stand for it if the show was on the other foot, and the Bush Administration was going after MoveON.org?

Bin Laden stopped using his cell phone and went to couriers because a dumbazz CONGRESSMAN spilled it right after coming out of a classified briefing (which is when Congress stopped getting told so much). Even Snowden said himself that the NSA workers had a hard job, and that he avoided disclosing Operational intel.

What I also see is Snowden has gone way out of his way to try and ensure what he revealed didn't directly effect someone. You didn't see this kind of care with Wikileaks...

I can't blame Germany's Merkel for being pissed we were tapping her cell phone conversations...especially when Germany is trying to be one of our best allies in Europe...

Brings to my mind: Why the hell would this administration want to give over domain power to an international body....knowing what WE can do with it...

 

[skydivr]

Tall Tom, you are wrong (the part about 'following orders'). Your oath is NOT to the President, it is FIRST to the CONSTITUTION, THEN to the order of those placed above you.

Specifically, you are REQUIRED to refuse an order that is illegal. Would you fire upon unarmed civilians, if told to? I, and most of those I served with, would refuse that order.

There are a lot of people that "I was just following orders" didn't work out so well for at the Nuremburg trials.....

There are several shades of grey at play here....

 

[TallTom]

We were not being instructed to do anything we felt was illegal. What we struggled with was, how we can legally convict anyone that we tapped without legal warrants to do so. It wasn't a question of IF we were doing the wrong thing. It was the wholesale idea that we would figure out how to convict them in court after the fact. I at no time thought I was being given an illegal or unjust instruction. We know what we were looking for and we knew it when we saw it. But the problem was and is, these people have rights as Americans. That is where WE have backed ourself into a legal corner. That is also why you have only seen 2 go to trial thus far. 2 down, thousands await. They await because any attorney will be able to attack the legality of why why got them there before the judge.

And again I will state, that Bush turned on the "Do what we need to do to catch terrorist. We will work out the legal parts later." And to this day they languish in prison in a legal limbo. This isn't by accident. And this isn't something I'd say was troubling to me. I certainly know we were and are at war with Muslim extremist. We weren't the legal system. We are the gatherer of evidence to allow the government to determine how they will proceed with what we provide them.

At no time were we instructed to monitor someone that we felt were not connected to the threat of our nation. That I would have taken issue with. I respect that Snowden feels that rights are being violated. Technically he is correct. But he has given no specifics that I see addresses an individually singled out person. I have not seen all he has had to say. But thus far he is outing us for a "policy" he thinks is wrong. Not who we are applying it to.

Is it capable of being abused. You better believe it! Are we? I don't know that answer. But coming from Snowden's world, he had about 8 ways to send it up the ladder if there was a fundamental abuse taking place. I suspect he didn't like the answers he got. Even though when he signed up he was made aware of what he was doing and what his responsibility was. So he was a young man that didn't like what he was being told by his superiors. And he made his choice in his way.

I believe he believes that he is doing the right thing. But from the perspective of the damage he has done, is inexcusable. I do believe he did the smartest thing possible in the way he did this. I doubt we will hear of his mysterious unexplainable death out of the blue. Had he not did it in the way he did, we would never be hearing about a dead man named Edward Snowden. Russia will see a windfall in its ability to know our intelligence methods. Don't for a second think Russia didn't take him in without getting something substantial in return. They are not stupid. They have a 29 year old fugitive from the American intelligence community. He would be killed in most other places he would have ended up. He may still end up dead at the hands of the Russians. When his purpose has been served, they will NOT allow him to be a leak twice.

I hear there are going to be be new revelations exposed soon by him and his handlers. Why? What purpose does he propose will continue to be served? I believe he is attempting to inflict as much harm as he can because he became disgruntled. That is plain and simple nothing more than a different form of the same enemy he was sworn to pursue and terminate. He should be treated no differently than them.

 

[TallTom]

Snowden and I went to the same high school and community college. He was I think a year (maybe 2) behind me.

Interesting. I KNOW I heard him say he was a high school dropout! I do not doubt what you are saying charlie. It just makes me wonder what his motivations are by making that statement.