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New Dunno.
The slant on that piece is so overbearing that I'm having trouble separating what happened from the reported spin on what happened. I had to quit about half-way through.

Smithsonian:

Thomas A. Drake was a senior executive at the National Security Agency for seven years. When his efforts to alert his superiors and Congress to what he saw as illegal activities, waste and mismanagement at the NSA led nowhere, he decided to take his allegations to the press. Although he was cautious—using encrypted e-mail to communicate with a reporter—his leak was discovered. Last year the government indicted Drake under the Espionage Act. If convicted, he would have faced up to 35 years in prison.


It's not very surprising that leaks to the press result in the intelligence agency pursuing prosecution.

Washington Post:

Those questions may not matter to the government when whistleblowers go to the media, as Snowden did. The president’s directive only protects employees who lodge their complaints with inspectors general.

More importantly in this case, the presidential order applies only to federal employees. Snowden was a contractor and, therefore, not protected.


Sometimes things are so bad that one has to be willing to go around the system and accept the consequences. But we don't let underlings make policy. Too many of these "whistleblowers" apparently saw things they didn't like, things they decided were "illegal", but when they told their supervisors or others in the chain of their concerns, they were told that they were wrong and others had decided differently. Underlings don't decide policy. Elected and senior appointed officials do that. Chaos results when underlings take things into their own hands, and that cannot be permitted in a functional system.

So, yay genuine whistleblowers who work within the system or who are actually willing to stand up for their convictions and accept the consequences. Boo for fake whistleblowers like Snowden who released all kinds of stuff that he had no business accessing, no understanding of most of it, and who did lots of damage in the process, and then flew the coop to China then Russia.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New "Things they didn't like."
Would that be things like the President of the United States deciding on his own, without oversight of any kind who should be killed? Good thing we didn't have the "Obama Principle" in the bad old days when Dick Nixon was in the White House. The infamous "Enemies List" could have been a "Death List."
New Just because you don't like the oversight doesn't mean there wasn't any...
We've been through this. :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Why the scare quotes?
Too many of these "whistleblowers" apparently saw things they didn't like, things they decided were "illegal", but when they told their supervisors or others in the chain of their concerns, they were told that they were wrong and others had decided differently.
Jeepers, Scott, you know that I enjoy being wingman for you, but on this subject you fly so erratically that I have to break formation and streak over to take up a position alongside mmoffitt's MiG-21. And courts have found that the NSA acted illegally, and determined this on the basis of information the courts would never have been made privy to had the scare-quote-whistleblowers not leaked it. "Flew the coop?" When John Kerry cravenly advanced the argument that Snowden should have "accepted the consequences," unwisely invoking Daniel Ellsberg in support, that legendary leaker slapped the SecState down hard for the invidious and dishonest comparison.

Any society in which Richard B. Cheney walks free and Edward Snowden is a fugitive from justice is, if you will pardon my legalese, seriously fucked up. I admire Obama, but what Snowden essayed is more deserving of recognition from Oslo than anything the President has done before or since receiving the trinket.

"Sergeant, I just don't feel right about machine-gunning these peasant families."
"Shaddup, kid. Lieutenant Calley's decided differently."

cordially,
New There's too much history to dig through for a detailed answer.
The NSA program was well known for ages. Remember the infamous closet in SF?:

Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.[1][2]

[...]

On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.[7] A different case by the EFF was filed on September 18, 2008, titled Jewel v. NSA.


Snowden's "revelation" about NSA metadata and the like was in 2013.

Just because J Random Judge didn't know about it doesn't mean that there wasn't oversight in the courts and in the Congress about it. Note that while court cases have demanded changes to the programs, they are still going on because Congress and the President have determined that they're needed.

I put "whistleblower" in quotes because the story at the start of the thread used it incessantly.

Gotta run. HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Re: Why the scare quotes?
New Re: Why the scare quotes?
New Re: Why the scare quotes?
New Have to pile on here, for recalling Ed Murrow's earnest comment to his staff
on (the eve of, IIRC) his scheduled analysis of the mental condition of Tail-gunner Joe McCarthy—though he did not use that epithet—observing that, The ƒeare is right here, in this room! this, as they mutually scoured their memories for presence of any minuscule item as could be grist for the maw of the famous machine-gunner of innocent palm trees (from parked airplanes … during WW-II.)

To underplay the depths-of-depravity of *Our* Deep State™ (or those of any other banana republic established a bit earlier than This one, is to preach cant and Ideal-societies-as-reviewed-by-Miss-Pollyanna in her best of all possible fantasy-world: causes no flags or national-anthems to arise within the gizzard of this lengthy observer of Murican premeditated perfidy, thankyouverymuch.

See.. I fucking-*witnessed* Mr. Welch's handing-his-head to this [hero to those of My Gramma's ilk], as well as remembering Edward R. Murrow's live broadcast, referenced. I do hope, Scott, that you are not ever accidentally in possession of such hot potatoes as both Snowden and Murrow-et-al had to actually handle ... (or just slip away, tacitly.)

{{sigh}}


PS--sorry re the repeats; it seems that (R)eturn [for delete] doesn't signal its mischief visually, in such cases.


Whom does one Trust? within any garrison-State or Banana Republic. Doth not the query answer itself?
Just Seven Years back: Cheney and his ingenue were in The. White. House. and neither has received any formal notification that their perfidy went quite beyond any mere ignorant-Error.

May they both/each sometime travel abroad, feeling that they are 'protected'. May it Be that: They aren't, there.
Expand Edited by Ashton May 24, 2016, 08:05:36 AM EDT
New It really is different, I think.
McCarthy was rattling on about people in the State Department and elsewhere as a way of redbaiting. He destroyed careers of political enemies. The people targeted were targeted for his spin on their political beliefs, not because they actually exposed any wrongdoing (real or imagined).

Oppenheimer was targeted for the perception of his political beliefs by his adversaries. Not for leaking classified information.

Yes, persecution for political beliefs is wrong and should be condemned, and I think we are a little better about being on the right side of justice on that topic now.

Snowden and the other supposed whistleblowers were accused of releasing classified information to the press. They weren't targeted for their political beliefs, but for their actions.

There's no doubt that there's too much stuff that is classified, and too often (especially in the past) classification was used to hide embarrassing facts rather than to protect national security or "sources and methods". But there is a need to protect classified information, and unauthorized release has to be against the rules with the potential for severe consequences for doing so.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New So you'd prosecute Ellsberg?
New Dunno, but probably not.
Ellsburg leaked a single (very large) report that he personally worked on and knew something about.

Snowden (and Manning) leaked a mountain of stuff that they had access to (by hook or by crook) that they didn't work on and didn't really know much about.

Different cases.

Ellsburg's leak was published in in the NYTimes and in the Congressional Record:

To ensure the possibility of public debate about the papers' content, on June 29, US Senator Mike Gravel entered 4,100 pages of the papers to the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the papers, which were edited for Gravel by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, were subsequently published by Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.[21] A federal grand jury was subsequently empaneled to investigate possible violations of federal law in the release of the report. Leonard Rodberg, a Gravel aide, was subpoenaed to testify about his role in obtaining and arranging for publication of the Pentagon Papers. Gravel asked the court (in Gravel v. United States) to quash the subpoena on the basis of the Speech or Debate Clause in Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution.

[...]

Ellsberg surrendered to authorities in Boston, and admitted that he had given the papers to the press.

I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.

— Ellsberg on why he released the Pentagon Papers to the press.[29]

He was later indicted on charges of stealing and holding secret documents by a grand jury in Los Angeles.[29] Federal District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. declared a mistrial and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973, after it was revealed that agents acting on the orders of the Nixon administration illegally broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist and attempted to steal files, after representatives of the Nixon administration approached the Ellsberg trial judge with an offer of the job of FBI directorship, after several irregularities appeared in the government's case, and its claim that it had lost records of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg conducted by the White House Plumbers in the contemporaneous Watergate scandal.[9] Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case." Ellsberg and Russo were freed due to the mistrial.[9]


Ellsburg didn't run to China or Russia. He stood up and accepted responsiblity for his actions. Ellsburg was clearly subject to an illegal investigation and worse. A mistrial was the correct response.

Snowden is no Ellsburg (Daniel's protestations to the contrary).

It's not just the quantity of stuff that Snowden released, but the fact that he had no understanding of all the (good and bad) ramifications of the material that Ellsburg did.

It's hard to make comparisons. But Snowden's actions do not seem comparable to Ellsburg to me except at the margins.

YMMV.

Cheers,
Scott.
New "Snowden is no Ellsberg"
Snowden is no Ellsberg (Daniel's protestations to the contrary).
You know, regarding this issue I'm going to proceed on the assumption that Daniel Ellsberg's judgments are, with all due respect, a shitload better informed than yours. These are, I hasten to add, matters on which reasonable men may reasonably disagree, but your sunny attitude toward the malign cankers comprising the "national security" apparatus that's eroding self-government here always startles me, as though a drinking buddy were to go on occasionally about how John Wayne Gacy might have stepped over the line now and again, but that people should remember that he was a civic-spirited bloke and a lot of fun at parties.

cordially,
New Re: "Snowden is no Ellsberg"
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/rethinking-the-pentagon-papers

Ellsberg, for his part, seemed to have achieved everything he could have hoped for. He would not be going to jail for the 115 years that he had calculated would be his maximum sentence. The Pentagon Papers were out, showing the "murder" and the "lying machine" for what they were. And yet Ellsberg remained deeply disappointed. The storm of controversy he had created revolved not around the secrets he had disclosed, but rather the legal and political issues raised by Nixon's war against the Times. "Mainstream interviewers and other commentators listened to me and treated me with respect," Ellsberg lamented. "But neither these people nor the public at large could take seriously the warning I was trying to convey."

THE REAL COST

Ellsberg's disappointment returns us to the central issues raised by his case. To begin with, one reason the actual contents of the Pentagon Papers did not significantly shape discussion of the war — and would probably have been forgotten had Nixon not attempted to suppress their publication — was that, in contrast to some of the most controversial leaks published by the New York Times and other news outlets over the past few years, no current operational secrets were disclosed. Indeed, not one of the 7,000 pages of the McNamara studies that Ellsberg gave to the Times in 1971 contained information less than three years old. "It is all history," noted Justice William Douglas in his concurring opinion in the Times case. "None of it is more recent than 1968." (In fact, significant portions of the Pentagon Papers covered episodes dating back to the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman.)

Moreover, although Ellsberg leaked with abandon, there were some lines that he declined to cross. Even today, he readily acknowledges that there are certain kinds of materials, "such as diplomatic negotiations, certain intelligence sources and methods, or various time-sensitive military-operational secrets, that warrant...strict secrecy." And the Times, for its part, made at least a limited effort to assure itself that the revelations in the Pentagon Papers would not (in themselves) jeopardize national security in any immediate way or put American or South Vietnamese lives directly at risk.


FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Different Time, ∆ ages/experience-levels of the protags ... different aims re a desired response
..for a Start.

IMO the {utterly predictably-} ennui of the Murican vox-pop probably didn't so much surprise Ellsberg as it Did--in This War-crucial Event--much disappoint him. Surely he *SAW* the escalating of #-Un-Necessary Deaths ..coming.
[Then as now: Afghan, Iraq Syria? whole f'ing M.E. next?? Dead Wahabs on the pile too? they be near the most vicious and the fathers of 9/11.]

If Snowden be characterised as a bull-in-the-China-shop (no pun necessary but, ..why not??) because he abdicated creating the deeply-ordered triage of each factoid (versus the extant media thought-mixer-Machine), we might all have wished he deemed that he Had sufficient time (as he properly noted the Odds against his capture via any next small slip.) Clearly: he did not believe he Had the time/ all. things. considered. Yathink?? [I suspect that his quick action was indeed, the best means of using Surprise, for there being no previous hints of his alienation from The Machine™.

And who would not wish that he possessed years of the experience of creating such collected-factoids, all the while feeling the immense weight of Knowing that No One, not even many on some Special-list: would ever learn of the matters. Well, at least he Did possess that last, nagging awareness.

Finally, you know my screed on the over-reliance (..to the point of absurdity) on the faith that--in time--there will be an "algorithm"/EZ-recipe for the mentally lazy? ... *to "perfect" "Security", then the implementation of the shiny New-plan-for that ... etc. ad, you know.

* my limit: two scare-" " in a row :-þ

I guess I'm fuzzy re why we must keep arguing about the utter (near--) certainty of human perfidy, especiially where personal-ego+massive-power made available: regularly collide and like matter/antimatter ... we know the special word for that phenom. I cut this young guy more slack than thee, when placed in the rare position of overseeing countless factoids/so Many! so horrific in all implications.

(I wish, had it been moi, that I too might have survived This Long!) without being assassinated by the people who Loves dem old-world recipes for ..making-all-Knowledge-Simple! [-minded] Just read the Rule-book


Maybe some pages filled with ⨌∑∞ should be our ready-Ref for navigating the World of (Maya?)
..well anyway: of 'non-denumerable infinities' and other abstractions which we have made concrete. Like a lead slug. I just don't confuse the ineffable with any WFFs (well-factored formulae wasn't it, in "WFF n'Proof"?

I deem that, people who want -Evah!- to signal some grokking of [Reality] ought usually to refer to The Bard, for the best kid-glove handling of (just the ephemeral, never mind trying for the Real, in a few paragraphs.) I include-Self in the overview that most of us, most of the time are anywhere from partially- to ZZZZ-asleep. Especially about such fodder as w.t.f. Freedom, Security, and other Stuart Chase bugbears can be transliterated-into. Y'know?

(Don't believe anything I say, either ..unless it blends in purée mode.) My Gramma oft referred to .."those BIg Men in Washington know." It's my pure-Lead Standard. Now Tungsten {W} needs more words.
New I'm not arguing that humans are perfectable or can make perfectable systems.
I am in favor of looking at the circumstances surrounding people who break their oath and leak a mountain of information by hoovering up everything they can get their hands on.

Reread some of the SCMP interviews. Snowden was upset that the NSA was spying on China.

“The reality is that I have acted at great personal risk to help the public of the world, regardless of whether that public is American, European, or Asian.”


The hubris of the man is astounding. It fits with the rest of his reported childish postings:

As a twentysomething, nerdy NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who just turned 30 on the lam, frequented chat rooms and message boards under the name "TheTrueHOOHA." He held forth about anime and Ron Paul ("He's so dreamy"), which fits the profile of a Redditor-type, but IRC chat logs revealed by Ars Technica today are much more surprising: In 2009, Snowden went off on the New York Times, WikiLeaks, and government leakers in general.

He even offered a potential punishment, according to Ars Technica's transcripts:

[TheTrueHOOHA] HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
[TheTrueHOOHA] WTF NYTIMES
[TheTrueHOOHA] Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
[User19] they're just reporting, dude.
[TheTrueHOOHA] They're reporting classified shit
[User19] shrugs
[TheTrueHOOHA] about an unpopular country surrounded by enemies already engaged in a war
and about our interactions with said country regarding planning sovereignity violations of another country
you don't put that shit in the NEWSPAPER
[User19] meh
[TheTrueHOOHA] moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
[TheTrueHOOHA] those people should be shot in the balls.


Snowden was (wrongly) put in a position of responsibility. He (allegedly) took advantage of his position to steal a mountain of classified information. To pump up his ego, he released it to his buddy Glenn Greenwald and friends, then fled to China and gave press conferences about how wonderful and selfless he is. He then fled to Russia and allowed himself to be used as a pawn in a Putin press conference.

He is in way, way over his head. And the process that allowed him to be hired at BAH and gain access to so much information was broken. I'd like to think that BAH suffered consequences for that, but ...

All that said, I don't think for a minute that we can construct systems that cannot be twisted to nefarious ends. But I also do not think that a single person can be permitted to claim for himself knowledge and expertise that counterweights all the legal and systemic checks-and-balances.

MLK had a huge impact, but not for a single act, and not by himself. He helped build a system that had internal battles over the proper way forward and the best intermediate goals to strive for. A 30-something IT guy cannot take the system into his own hands and do what he wants with it because he thinks that it's somehow wrong for the NSA to spy on China. Or that he has the right to take secret information that he has sworn an oath to protect and give it to whomever he wants.

Systems are imperfect, and they can be wrong. But individuals who go around important systems are wrong more often than not. Look at Bundy. Look at McVeigh. Look at Trump.

Snowden wouldn't get much more than pity from me if he had leaked all the stuff, then called a press conference in DC, gave his spiel about how he did it to protect China from the NSA, and then waited to be arrested. I would have thought that he was a misguided idealist, perhaps. Especially given his diametrically-opposed professed views of less than a decade earlier. But he seems to be a giant narcissist who thinks that he's smarter and more virtuous than everyone in the US Government.

Maybe I'll change my mind in a few years, but I wouldn't bet on it.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Belatedly..
OK a fair exposition of your (and some others') character analysis of this/"any old?" young guy, on a self-assigned MIssion.

So then.. we were expecting, perhaps Epictetus, Montaigne and Kurt V. in an attractive wrapper?
OTOH, from Mozart to Shelley to Dennis Brain (Fr. horn player killed in a Canadian air crash IIRC) lots of exceptionals at or near-30: distinguished selves. Dying at their only local-peak, leaving us to miserably-Miss what we imagine would have become. If. Only.

We now KNOW that Murica (not alone, but still.. counter to all the propaganda of our innate-Goodness) Would/Did.. tell-any-lie/globally as locally; spread any sanctimonious self-aggrandizement as from the first ("Remember the Maine" cha. cha. cha.) or contemporaneously (The Tonkin Gulf LIE to massively intensify the Vietnam pre-Iraq Fiasco. Etc.fucking-Etc.

Weighing the [+]s [-]s of this opera would need a book-shelf of tl;drs, as our grey cells weary of perpetually debating such un-Resolvables as:

JUST *HOW* FUCKED-UP *IS* -??_ this chimerical/ largely imaginary/over-hyped 'THING' called -by at least-One- The dis-U.S.A. Hmmmm?
.
.
.
"We" bloody-Began as a Slaver State, as we commenced our perpetual hypocrisy: within the earliest documents, with phrases like
All Men Are Created Equal
... cha. cha. cha.

This young guy did, at least: allow any/all of us to become Truly! more current on, the State of the U.S. and its (Governmental) world-view, as well as demonstrating the degree of dissembling in Govt. rhetoric to the masses ..previously and just-Then. (Almost any Useful-factoid in this morass Would have been Classified [X] ... the Real-est problem that any 'democratic' ideals must face, in a world run just like The School for Scoundrels

New Thanks. We'll have to battle again when he's back in the USA. ;-)
New Re: Underlings don't decide policy.
That may be so.

But, the question here is not policy, but was is constitutionally legal. One doesn't have to be a lawyer to understand what the constitution says. We are not in the "gray zone" needing a Supreme Court ruling.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New True, but ...
As we know, lawyers can argue anything. And what is Constitutional is what the SCOTUS says, and we know that they're "wrong" on lots of stuff when they want to be.

The fact remains that there is a process that whistleblowers should follow. Do they sometimes get punished anyway, yes, and that's regrettable. But going outside the process is the surest way to have even worse things happen. And if going through the channels doesn't work, then one has the option of resigning. Or going public and staying to make the case that what is happening is indeed illegal (or should be).

All complex human systems have issues. Anything involving official secrecy and "national security" even moreso. But I haven't seen any sort of sensible proposal for a such a system that doesn't involve punishment for unauthorized release of classified information.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Manning and Padilla were driven insane by the system in question
and on purpose. The folks in that article got punished severely and no change occurred. Sorry, the entire edifice on this question is unalloyed bullshit. I can't fault Snowden one whit for not wanting to go through that.

"Regrettable" is carrying a shit-ton of water for you on this one.
New Different.
Manning was in the US Army. Rules are different there.

Padilla probably should have been tried in an appropriate civilian court.

On January 3, 2006, Padilla was transferred to a Miami, Florida, jail to face criminal conspiracy charges. On August 16, 2007, a federal jury found him guilty of conspiring to kill people in an overseas jihad, and to fund and support overseas terrorism. Government officials had earlier claimed Padilla was suspected of planning to build and explode a "dirty bomb" in the United States, a plot they had foiled, but he was never charged with this crime.

On January 22, 2008, Padilla was sentenced by Judge Marcia G. Cooke of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to 17 years and four months in prison. His mother, Estela Ortega Lebron, was relieved. She announced that they would appeal the sentence: "You have to understand that the government was asking for 30 years to life sentence in prison. We have a chance to appeal, and in the appeal we're gonna do better."[1]

On September 9, 2014, the federal appeals court ruled that the first sentence was too lenient, and sentenced Padilla to 21 years.[2]

[...]

Padilla traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. On his return, he was arrested by U.S. Customs agents at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, and held as a material witness on a warrant issued in the state of New York stemming from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On June 9, 2002, two days before District Court Judge Michael Mukasey was to issue a ruling on the validity of continuing to hold Padilla under the material witness warrant, President George Bush issued an order to Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to detain Padilla as an "enemy combatant." Padilla was transferred to a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina without any notice to his attorney or family. The order "legally justified" the detention using the 2001 AUMF passed in the wake of September 11, 2001 (formally "The Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution" (Public Law 107-40)) and opined that a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil can be classified as an enemy combatant. (This opinion is based on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Ex parte Quirin, a case involving the detention of eight German spies operating in the United States while working for Nazi Germany during World War II).[17]

According to the text of the ensuing decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Padilla's detention as an "enemy combatant" (pursuant to the President's order) was based on the following reasons:

* Padilla was "closely associated with al Qaeda," a designation for loosely knit insurgent groups sharing common ideals and tactics, "with which the United States is at war";
* He had engaged in "war-like acts, including conduct in preparation for acts of international terrorism";
* He had intelligence that could assist the United States in warding off future terrorist attacks; and
* He was a continuing threat to American security.

[...]

On February 22, 2007, at the competency hearing, Dr. Angela Hegarty, a psychiatrist hired by Padilla's defense, said that after 22 hours of examining Padilla, she believed that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.[37] She said that he exhibited “a facial tic, problems with social contact, lack of concentration and a form of Stockholm syndrome."[38] She diagnosed his condition as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).[38][39] She told the court, "It's my opinion that he lacks the capacity to assist counsel. He has a great deal of difficulty talking about the current case before him."[39] In cross examination, federal prosecutor John Shipley noted that Padilla had a score of zero on Hegarty's post-traumatic stress disorder test and pointed out that this information was omitted in her final report. Hegarty said that this omission was an error on her part.[39] Another psychiatrist hired by the defense testified along the same lines. The Miami Herald reported that a "U.S. Bureau of Prisons psychiatrist who believes Padilla is fit to face trial and Defense Department officials—are expected to testify at the ongoing hearing before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke."[39]


International airports are different than US soil. If he was arrested before he officially re-entered the US, then certain rules are different (I think - IANAL).

There's no doubt that Bush's people went too far with the "Unitary Executive" BS and their attempting to define anyplace in the universe as "The Battlefield". I don't know enough about Padilla's case (or Manning's) to accept anyone's account as gospel. But the US does have legitimate national security interests and legitimate needs to be able to collect intelligence. And the ability to protect that intelligence from unauthorized release.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New author of the account is on the local NPR affiliate
He mentions that the former head of the CIA has said of Snowden that he needs to be put to death by hanging "because electrocution is too good for him." Yeah, not a statement of official policy, but likely representative of the sentiments of a not insubstantial segment of the higher-ups in what we are pleased to call the "intelligence community." If Snowden had stuck around, do you suppose he would have remained at liberty? Would he not, in fact, have very likely been overcome with remorse at the enormity of his offense against our virtuous national purpose, and hanged himself in his cell, and does it not seem likely as well that any video record of his confinement would be accidentally erased? Had Snowden "faced the music," the tune might quite possibly have been the third movement from Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2.

cordially,
New Yeah, it's a slanted piece. It's from the Hudson Institute.
I don't agree with a lot of that piece, but I do with the excerpts I posted.

Lots of political hacks have held top positions at the CIA, FBI, etc., and age doesn't usually make them more moderate in expressing soundbites.

Snowden would have survived and would have gotten a fair trial. He likely would have been convicted, but he likely would have had the opportunity to plea to lesser charges as well (in exchange for coming clean about what he gave to whom and so forth).

How would him having an "accident" help in the overarching goal of finding out exactly what he took and what he did with it? It wouldn't. Snowden would have been treated very well in custody. And is still likely to be, once he comes home and is convicted (as I assume he will be, but who knows).

We're not going to see eye to eye on this, and I know I'm in the minority here in holding the views about Snowden that I do, but them's the breaks.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Hheheeeeehaaahaaaaa
You ever been on the wrong side of the bars?

I've seen shit that would give you a heart attack. Actually, I had one according to the prison doctor. He didn't bother treating me, or even tell me, though, and only told my wife about it after she explained in great detail how she would be going after his medical license.

You need to review Peter's favorite fairy story about voting in fantasy world vs the real world, and apply it against your view of the judicial system.
New You should have been part of the defense team
...at Nuremberg. None of the accused could have faulted you for not going the extra mile in justifying the need to be good team players. I'm impressed, if far from convinced.

cordially,
New Scott's only following orders! :)
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New Ouch.
New I wasn't likening you to the defendants
Only to their legal team, and everyone, after all, is entitled to a defense. It's your clients, alas, who, if we are to assign loose historical parallels, are the guys in feldgrau, not Snowden. You are justifying, pro bono, the activities of some people whose actions and philosophies may charitably be described as inconsistent with our democratic traditions.

cordially,
New "Democratic Traditions"
I fear that you're mixing up Snowden's worst case scenarios of what could happen if the NSA and others broke all the rules, with what was and is legal under laws passed by Congress.

Yes, some courts have found some of those laws and activities unconstitutional. And that is a problem. There was too little oversight by Congress, and the laws were written too broadly.

But the laws and activities have been tweaked - they haven't been on the whole stopped.

Doesn't that mean that the scaremongering by Snowden and others was incorrect? Doesn't that mean that, on the whole, the activities aren't "illegal". Doesn't that indicate that our democratically elected officials are working within our Constitutional system?

Doesn't that mean that these are activities that are not inconsistent with our democratic traditions?

I get that lots and lots of people don't like that the NSA can have phone companies store every bit of metadata on our communications for N years (I seem to recall that periods of 3-5 years were mentioned in the debate, but I cannot find that number in the final bill) and can gain access to it with a specific warrant from a specific court.

The NSA's job is not to spy on US persons. It's outside their mandate. It's a distraction for the people there to have to sort through masses of US person's data. They don't want to do that.

There are people in the US who have their rights violated every day by over-zealous cops who don't have access to communications metadata. There are people whose lives are ruined by bad data in private credit reports, bad data and bad "science" in private software used to decide sentencing, and so forth. Compare that to how the NSA revelations have affected your real life...

Yes, we need to watch the watchers. But let's not construct some Stasi State out of shadows and fears that have little basis in reality.

Finally, if [generic] you do believe that there's a Deep State controlling too much in the US, what do you think people should do about it? Or more specifically, what should they do about it that is consistent with our "democratic traditions"? Abolishing the NSA won't help because their mandate is outside the US. Abolishing the FBI? The DOJ? Who would do their other work? Who would investigate the black hats that really are trying to steal all your information in hopes of blackmailing [generic] you, stealing all your money, and worse? Etc.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Saved me the trouble of mentioning that: "Aber es war doch Policy zu gassen die Juden!"
Honestly, Scott: If you end up on that side time and time again, don't you think it's time to re-think some of your basic postulates?

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "Arsehole is as arsehole does". I haven't so far counted you among people who actually are -- by virtue of doing, all the time -- arseholes, but... This aspect of you certainly is. How, by the way, do you reconcile it with the rest of your persona? Can you actually go on being the intelligent and thoughtful person you usually come off as, while writing this totally-opposite sh...tuff?

I'd have thought the contrast must be so gut-wrenching it's just not possible. Or is it some kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde thing, where you sometimes transofrm into this rabid leader of the Dick Cheney Fan Club, but afterwards have no clear recollection of the episode...?
--
Christian R. Conrad
Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi

(Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
     the fate of NSA whistleblowers - (rcareaga) - (32)
         Well, at least our 4th Estate repor...., er, ... never mind. -NT - (mmoffitt)
         Dunno. - (Another Scott) - (30)
             "Things they didn't like." - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                 Just because you don't like the oversight doesn't mean there wasn't any... - (Another Scott)
             Why the scare quotes? - (rcareaga) - (14)
                 There's too much history to dig through for a detailed answer. - (Another Scott)
                 Re: Why the scare quotes? -NT - (Ashton)
                 Re: Why the scare quotes? -NT - (Ashton)
                 Re: Why the scare quotes? -NT - (Ashton)
                 Have to pile on here, for recalling Ed Murrow's earnest comment to his staff - (Ashton) - (9)
                     It really is different, I think. - (Another Scott) - (8)
                         So you'd prosecute Ellsberg? -NT - (rcareaga) - (7)
                             Dunno, but probably not. - (Another Scott) - (6)
                                 "Snowden is no Ellsberg" - (rcareaga) - (5)
                                     Re: "Snowden is no Ellsberg" - (Another Scott) - (4)
                                         Different Time, ∆ ages/experience-levels of the protags ... different aims re a desired response - (Ashton) - (3)
                                             I'm not arguing that humans are perfectable or can make perfectable systems. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                                 Belatedly.. - (Ashton) - (1)
                                                     Thanks. We'll have to battle again when he's back in the USA. ;-) -NT - (Another Scott)
             Re: Underlings don't decide policy. - (a6l6e6x) - (12)
                 True, but ... - (Another Scott) - (11)
                     Manning and Padilla were driven insane by the system in question - (jake123) - (4)
                         Different. - (Another Scott) - (3)
                             author of the account is on the local NPR affiliate - (rcareaga) - (2)
                                 Yeah, it's a slanted piece. It's from the Hudson Institute. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                     Hheheeeeehaaahaaaaa - (crazy)
                     You should have been part of the defense team - (rcareaga) - (5)
                         Scott's only following orders! :) -NT - (a6l6e6x) - (3)
                             Ouch. -NT - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                 I wasn't likening you to the defendants - (rcareaga) - (1)
                                     "Democratic Traditions" - (Another Scott)
                         Saved me the trouble of mentioning that: "Aber es war doch Policy zu gassen die Juden!" - (CRConrad)

Real live veggie burgers -- they cook 'em 'til they're pink.
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