Posts Tagged ‘edward snowden’

#PardonSnowden ‘s Interruption

Posted: September 27, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll

Life is shades of gray. Black and white, right and wrong seems to increasingly be in the eye of the beholder. Edward Snowden to say the least is a controversial figure. A hero to some, a traitor to others? Did he break numerous laws? Yes. Did he do the American public a great service? Yes.

Privacy is a unique topic of discussion. It is a special issue in that the vast majority of people regardless of political affiliation, gender, race, or religion believe we as humans are entitled to our privacy. From the strictest catholic straight white man to the most flamboyant, liberal, multi racial, transgender. If we didn’t value privacy, there would be no suburbs, there would be no houses, there would be no doors.

The first world may have given up its privacy unknowingly/ignorantly as it embraced smartphones and free internet services over the past decade. When Edward Snowden helped reveal to America and the world the scale of privacy invasion being purposefully deployed by the US government on its citizens, the outrage was split evenly.

One part anger at the government for abuse of power, one part at Snowden for breaking the law and potentially endangering military operation(s), and one part anger at ourselves for being willfully blind to what we as a society didn’t want to think about or acknowledge…that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The free services that seemed too good to be true, were. We have been paying for Facebook, Google, Spotify and the like with our personal data and privacy.

It is human nature to direct and reflect self-hatred outward. That is what Edward Snowden‘s critics are doing. They are angry that he let the world know that which we wish we didn’t. That we are being watched.

That is what he blew the whistle about. That is why he is in exile in Russia. That is why the newspapers that he leaked his information to are swimming in Pulitzer Prizes. Because he removed all shadow of doubt that the government is indeed watching us. They’re watching us, listening to us, tracking us, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Just typing that out makes me angry. Reading it probably makes you angry or apathetic, both are natural.

It’s natural to point the finger and blame a person. It’s natural to label one person as an enemy.

Snowden is not the enemy. Trying to profit from the information would have made him the enemy. Staying silent, blind, deaf, and dumb would have made him the enemy. But rather than stay comfortable, he took the road less traveled by. He faced the fear of being classified an enemy of the US government. But whistleblowers are not the enemy of the people. They are some of our greatest allies. Snowden is an ally of freedom, an ally of privacy, an ally of innate human rights. Snowden shouldn’t need a pardon but whistleblower protections have failed him. He did the right thing for the public, let’s do the right thing for him, and push for a pardon so he can come home.

Edward #Snowden’s European Vacation?

Posted: December 7, 2015 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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By @anarchyroll
12/6/15

Do you know who Edward Snowden is? Probably.

Do you have an opinion on Edward Snowden? Definitely.

If there’s one thing that I have learned since Snowden popped his whistleblowing cherry, it’s that everyone has an opinion about him whether they know who he is or not. He is either a hero or a traitor. There is no in between or gray area for the masses for this man.

He is either the alpha patriot or the omega cyber terrorist. He either deserves to be given a medal or a noose around his neck.

The United States government on the record believes Edward Snowden to be a traitor who if ever captured will be tried as such. The United States and our allies are the good guys of the world. We protect the masses from the bad guys preemptively when possible, and defeat the bad guys by force when plausible.

Europe generally, and the European Union specifically have been an ally of America for quite some time. The Allied Powers of Word War II naturally comes to mind. One need not be up to the minute on international relations, politics, or events to know that Europe and America have a very positive and professional relationship regardless of specific country or state.
The European Union Parliament recently voted to give Edward Snowden asylum and to offer it to him with as little difficult as possible.

Can you imagine the EU doing this to someone the US government labeled a communist traitor during the Cold War

It’s not a radical example at all. Snowden is currently in Russia.

How can Snowden be a traitor of the highest level in the United States yet our greatest ally is now formally welcoming him with open arms? This was not a random, one off, toothless statement by some drunk politician. This was the equivalent of the United States Congress offering asylum to a man that a country like France had labeled a traitor.
Edward Snowden has become the very public face of a very private world. The world of big data, cyber crime, cyber warfare, and privacy in the digital world.

For better or for worse, whether one agrees or disagrees with his method, Snowden has brought about as important a conversation that can be had in the digital age. One can be the biggest supporter of government surveillance while still admitting that Snowden has spurred a healthy debate on the issue.

Do we not have the right to at least know we are being watched and recorded every time we use our smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and any other device that is connected to the internet? The fact is, most people, especially in America simply didn’t know or assume this before Snowden.

A whistleblower is different than a criminal. A whistleblower is different than a traitor. Is that not why the people behind the Pentagon Papers were not executed for treason?

It was very easy to paint Snowden as a traitor to America since he leaked government secrets to the public and has since taken barely secret residence in Russia. The EU formally offering him asylum turns the black and white into a very murky shade of gray.

Considering how many broadcast news stations have had in person interviews with Snowden since he received asylum in Russia indicates that he is not America’s most wanted. After recent terrorist attacks and mass shootings across America and its allies, it is clear that Snowden is not a terrorist even if one views him as a traitor.

If however, he has been formally offered asylum by America’s greatest and longest standing allies…how can he be a traitor?

#Snowden Gets an Endorsement from #Gore

Posted: June 11, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
6/11/2014

When you’ve been labeled a traitor by the United States federal government and are in hiding in Russia, you’ll take just about any endorsement you can get. Having one of the three most recent Vice Presidents of the United States give you a thumbs up, is Christmas come early.

Al Gore said that Edward Snowden, in addition to breaking the law, “provided an important service” in exposing the NSA bulk surveillance programs.

Gore didn’t completely pardon Snowden’s actions, admitting that he did break the law and would have to serve some penalty for doing so. But Gore also refused to label Snowden a traitor, which is a huge step forward in the public debate on this issue.

The court of public opinion must shift if Snowden is to be able to return to America. The one thing Democrats and Republicans seem to have in common these days is condemning Edward Snowden as a traitor and kissing up the to Military Industrial Complex.

Gore’s endorsement of the good that came out of Snowden’s action are a good start and a good step in the right direction for those in power and on the left to come around to seeing Snowden as more of a whistleblower and less of a traitor.

#Google and the #NSA Sitting in a Tree; S-P-Ying on You & Me

Posted: May 10, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
5/7/2014

The last year has been full of vindication for all those paranoid schizophrenics out there.

We now know that not only has the NSA essentially been getting all the data on the internet and storing it, which is bad enough, but it came out this week that they weren’t using a back door but rather have the keys to the front of anything and everything Google. Which is basically everything that isn’t Apple.

The paranoia about what is done with our information is done online is spreading, and why wouldn’t it? It has also been found that our search engine uses and habits have changed in the wake of the NSA leaks.

I suppose I should think that unlawful spying is unlawful spying regardless. But something, and I’m not sure what exactly bothers me more than Google has been in on it the whole time. Call it naivety, and you’d probably be right or the other thing to call it is a natural reaction to massive trust violation.

This is why those agreements we have to sign before signing up for anything for free online is so long and in such small print I suppose. Fill it with loopholes so there is no legal obligation to not sell the information of every customer to a data broker or give it to Uncle Sam. What about the moral obligation? Oh, there’s that naivety again. It’s business, who has time for morals?  After all, what could be more moral than listening to one’s government?

It is sad how much Google is able to justify what they did to themselves. I suppose that there is a strong correlation with trust violation and monetary profit, not just these days, but basically since currency became the currency of the world. The amount of flagrant Big Brother going on with the NSA and telcoms physically weakens me. It makes me feel like not writing. All the more reason to write. The quality may not be on par, but if anyone learns about what is going on through my writing then it’s worth it.

Great news sources that stay on top of the NSA are: The Intercept, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Verge.

 

US #Government Grants Immunity for #Telcoms that Already had #Immunity

Posted: May 6, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
5/4/2014

I am not old enough to remember a time when Washington DC wasn’t all smoke and mirrors for the elite to create the illusion of freedom. A great example of this is the current effort by the Obama Administration seeking legal immunity for the major telecommunication companies for complying with the NSA’s bulk metadata collection programs. Why is this typical Washington BS? Because the telcomms already have immunity because they were following the law when they complied with FISA court requests. The White House feels the need to request immunity for telcomms because of the multiple NSA reforms that are currently making their way through Congress. But if the Bush Administration wasn’t prosecuted, Gitmo is still open, and no one from Wall Street went to jail after 2008; is formal immunity really needed from Verizon, Comcast, and the gang?

So a sarcastic blog paragraph, is that it? NO. The real story here is in the earmarks. Both supporters and defenders of the NSA are trying to attach hidden bills, add ons, amendments, etc to the various bills to advance their agenda through the back doors of democracy.

This is a problem not just because of how shady earmarks are in principle, but the fact that both sides are doing it threatens to undo any and all NSA reform. Both sides are saying all the right things but are doing very different things when the doors are closed and the cameras are off, what else is new? So keep an eye and an ear on the legislation that eventually makes it to a vote that reforms and repeals the NSA’s various Big Brother programs. Will they do nothing? Go too far? Not far enough? One will have to go beyond the headline and seek out whether there are earmarks and if so what they entail to know the validity and likely the fate of any changes to the NSA’s ability quest to destroy private lives as we know it.

 

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