House Intel Committee Says Snowden's Not A Whistleblower, 'Cause He Once Emailed His Boss's Boss
from the wait,-what? dept
As you probably heard, the ACLU and other have launched a massive campaign asking President Obama to pardon Ed Snowden. You can check it out here and sign the petition. There have also been a bunch of high profile op-eds and endorsements from a wide variety of people -- from former intelligence officials to human rights groups and more. The campaign was obviously timed to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone's new movie, Snowden.Apparently also timed with the release of the movie, the House Intelligence Committee has released a "report" that they claim they spent two years writing, detailing why they believe Snowden is no whistleblower. They've released an unclassified three page "executive summary" that is, at best, laughable. Honestly, if this is the best that the House Intel Committee can put together to smear Snowden, they must have found nothing bad. I mean, it's the stupidest stuff: like that he once got into a dispute with his boss over some software updates at work and (*gasp*) emailed someone higher up the chain, for which he got reprimanded:
Third, two weeks before Snowden began mass downloads of classified documents, he was reprimanded after engaging in a workplace spat with NSA managers. Snowden was repeatedly counseled by his managers regarding his behavior at work. For example, in June 2012, Snowden became involved in a fiery e-mail argument With a Supervisor about how computer updates should be managed. Snowden added an NSA senior executive several levels above the supervisor to the e-mail thread, an action that earned him a swift reprimand from his contracting officer for failing to follow the proper protocol for raising grievances through the chain of command. Two weeks later, Snowden began his mass downloads of classified information from NSA networks. Despite Snowden's later claim that the March 2013 congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was a "breaking point" for him, these mass downloads predated Director Clapper's testimony by eight months.First of all, the inclusion of the email dispute is just... weird. I mean, people have email disputes with co-workers all the time. Is that really a sign that you're not a whistleblower, or that you're just "disgruntled?" If that's really the "dirt" that they dug up on Snowden after two years of research, they really must have nothing that actually sticks.
Oh, and also, as Snowden himself notes, this all kinda works against their point, because it shows that trying to blow the whistle up the chain is... met with reprimands.
@Snowden That doesn't say good things about going through "proper channels" at NSA. Not sure they understand how this hurts their case.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016
@Snowden HEARTBEAT, which seems to be the source of their 1.5m number, was explicited authorized by two levels of my management. I built it.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016
The report also trots out the usual "harm to national security." We've been hearing this ever since the first leak... and yet no one ever has any evidence to support this. It's the bogeyman argument. And yet, here it is again:
First, Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests-they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America's adversaries. A review of the materials Snowden compromised makes clear that he handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states. Some of Snowden's disclosures exacerbated and accelerated existing trends that diminished the IC's capabilities to collect against legitimate foreign intelligence targets, while others resulted in the loss of intelligence streams that had saved American lives. Snowden insists he has not shared the full cache of 1.5 million classified documents with anyone; however, in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense and security committee publicly conceded that "Snowden did share intelligence" with his government. Additionally, although Snowden's professed objective may have been to inform the general public, the information he released is also available to Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean government intelligence services; any terrorist with Internet access; and many others who wish to do harm to the United States.Note that after a lot of hand-waving, the only actual damage they can even come close to quantifying is the amount of money the US government spent trying to close the barn doors -- i.e., investigate what Snowden had taken and make sure that others couldn't do the same. That's not Snowden's fault. That's very much blaming the messenger. Also, if the US government wasn't illegally spying on Americans, it wouldn't have been an issue. It seems worth noting that key point.
The full scope of the damage inflicted by Snowden remains unknown. Over the past three years, the IC and the Department of Defense (DOD) have carried out separate reviews--with differing methodologies--of the damage Snowden caused. Out of an abundance of caution, DOD reviewed all 1.5 million documents Snowden removed. The IC, by contrast, has carried out a damage assessment for only a small subset of the documents. The Committee is concerned that the IC does not plan to assess the damage of the vast majority of documents Snowden removed. Nevertheless, even by a conservative estimate, the U.S. Government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and will eventually spend billions, to attempt to mitigate the damage Snowden caused. These dollars would have been better spent on combating America's adversaries in an increasingly dangerous world.
And, again, the report continues to point to the 1.5 million number, despite the fact that it's already been debunked. Again, the reason Snowden moved 1.5 million docs was because that was part of his job -- that wasn't the amount taken. The reason that the Intelligence Community isn't investigating all of those docs is because it has said that Snowden didn't take all of them. Why is the House Intelligence Committee bitching about that?
As for the Russian Parliament member claiming that Snowden shared secrets with Russia, Snowden himself notes that they're misquoting what was said, and that the guy had prefaced his statement by nothing that it was speculation on his part, rather than confirmed fact. You'd think that the House Intel Committee wouldn't go around trading in mere speculation.
As for the claims that "the information he released is also available to Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean government intelligence services" is also pretty ridiculous. I mean, the documents that have been released (not all of them, and the ones that have been have included redactions) have been placed on the internet, where anyone can read them. The statement about the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans and terrorists having access to them is basically the equivalent of "these people have the internet." Yeah, so?
Next on the docket, the House Intel Committee claims that Snowden's not a whistleblower because he (1) didn't go through proper channels (2) he left the country and (3) the NSA surveillance program was all perfectly legal.
Second, Snowden was not a whistleblower. Under the law, publicly revealing classified information does not qualify someone as a whistleblower. However, disclosing classified information that shows fraud, waste, abuse, or other illegal activity to the appropriate law enforcement or oversight personnel--including to Congress--does make someone a whistleblower and affords them with critical protections. Contrary to his public claims that he notified numerous NSA officials about what he believed to be illegal intelligence collection, the Committee found no evidence that Snowden took any official effort to express concerns about U.S. intelligence activities--legal, moral, or otherwise--to any oversight officials within the U.S. Government, despite numerous avenues for him to do so. Snowden was aware of these avenues. His only attempt to contact an NSA attorney revolved around a question about the legal precedence of executive orders, and his only contact to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Inspector General (IG) revolved around his disagreements with his managers aboutLet's stop right there to respond to this load of nonsense. First of all, hiding behind the very technical, narrow legal definition of whistleblower is pretty ridiculous compared to the actual definition that most people use. Snowden revealed a program that involved mass surveillance on nearly all Americans, a program that the intelligence community had directly and officially denied existed. It was, in fact, a program that, from a plain reading of the law, should not exist, and the only way in which it did and could exist was if the government reinterpreted the law, in secret, to mean something completely different. That's pretty clearly whistleblowing. And the fact that the public has spoken out in support of him so much suggests that many people believe this as well.
And that doesn't even mention the fact that after this Congress changed the law to further clarify what the NSA could actually do. In other words, Congress seems to agree that what Snowden did was in the public interest. Even former Attorney General Eric Holder has admitted as much.
And, of course, the claims about "the proper channels" is ridiculous as well. We've written many, many times on what happens to individuals who go through the "proper channels." It often ends with them being put in jail on trumped up charges. Oh, and Snowden, as a contractor rather than gov't employee, had no whistleblower protections under the law anyway. Going through the "proper channels" gets you marked as a troublemaker, and that often leads to more scrutiny and questionable raids... and jail time. And, as if to confirm all this, the guy that Snowden could have reached out to as the "proper channel" had already mocked Snowden and attacked him, so it's not as if that would have been a useful route.
The Committee tries to brush off this concern with the "proper channels" but fails in doing so:
Despite Snowden's later public claim that he would have faced retribution for voicing concerns about intelligence activities, the Committee found that laws and regulations in effect at the time of Snowden,s actions afforded him protection. The Committee routinely receives disclosures from IC contractors pursuant to the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (IC WPA). If Snowden had been worried about possible retaliation for voicing concerns about NSA activities, he could have made a disclosure to the Committee. He did not. Nor did Snowden remain in the United States to face the legal consequences of his actions, contrary to the tradition of civil disobedience he professes to embrace. Instead, he fled to China and Russia, two countries whose governments place scant value on their citizens' privacy or civil liberties-and whose intelligence services aggressively collect information on both the United States and their own citizens.Again, this is wrong. The Whistleblower Act does not actually extend its protections to contractors, and given how the Committee is reacting to Snowden to this day, does anyone actually think they would have done anything if he had approached them -- other than maybe alerting top intel community officials that they had a troublemaker in their midst? As for the claim that Snowden didn't stay in the US to face the "legal consequences," again, is it any wonder why? He knew what had happened to people like Thomas Drake, who the feds tried to put in jail for 35 years because he had a (mistakenly) classified meeting agenda at his home -- a home that was only raided because Drake had blown the whistle on another program. He'd seen what happened to Chelsea Manning, held in solitary confinement for leaking documents to Wikileaks. He'd seen what happened to countless others.
The very fact that Snowden is free today and able to tweet responses to this ridiculous smear campaign shows exactly why he didn't choose to stay in the US where they would have locked him up and thrown away the key.
To gather the files he took with him when he left the country for Hong Kong, Snowden infringed on the privacy of thousands of govemment employees and contractors. He obtained his colleagues, security credentials through misleading means, abused his access as a systems administrator to search his co-workers, personal drives, and removed the personally identifiable information of thousands of IC employees and contractors. From Hong Kong he went to Russia, where he remains a guest of the Kremlin to this day.And yet, magically, none of that has ever become public. So, uh, it seems like maybe the major worries here were overblown.
It is also not clear Snowden understood the numerous privacy protections that govern the activities of the IC. He failed basic annual training for NSA employees on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and complained the training was rigged to be overly difficult. This training included explanations of the privacy protections related to the PRISM program that Snowden would later disclose.Now this seems to just be the Intelligence Committee scraping the bottom of the barrel again for anything to make Snowden look bad. Oooh, he failed the training program on PRISM. And, yet, that doesn't respond to the fact that there were all sorts of legitimate privacy concerns about PRISM and how it operates, and the program was kept entirely secret.
From there, the Committee goes into full scale playground taunting of Snowden, saying he's a "serial fabricator" because he may have exaggerated a few points:
Fourth, Snowden was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator. A close review of Snowden's official employment records and submissions reveals a pattem of intentional lying. He claimed to have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in fact he washed out because of shin splints. He claimed to have obtained a high school degree equivalent when in fact he never did. He claimed to have worked for the CIA as a "senior advisor," which was a gross exaggeration of his entry-level duties as a computer technician. He also doctored his performance evaluations and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his resume and stealing the answers to an employment test. In May 2013, Snowden informed his supervisor that he would be out of the office to receive treatment for worsening epilepsy. In reality, he was on his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets.So, yeah. I mean, considering how much "fabricating" and "exaggerating" the House Intel Committee does in this whole report, it's a bit weak to argue that him exaggerating his leg problems is somehow proof of being a "serial fabricator." And, I'm sure that none of the members of the House Intel Committee has ever been caught "exaggerating" or "fabricating" information in their quest to get elected, right?
And, of course, Snowden claims they're mostly wrong about all of this anyway. The claim that he doctored a performance evaluation? Snowden notes that he actually reported a vulnerability.
The claim I "doctored performance evaluations?" This one is amazing: I reported an XSS (hacking) vulnerability in CIA annual review system.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016
Army held me for weeks in a special unit for convalescence before separation. I left on crutches. They don't do that for "shin splints."
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016
@astepanovich That would be extremely unwise.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016
In the end, the only proper way to read this report is in the context that Glenn Greenwald pointed out: if the House Intelligence Committee had done its oversight job of preventing mass surveillance on Americans, rather than acting as an enabler for the NSA, Snowden wouldn't have been a problem. The Committee's anger seems driven more by Snowden showing how complicit they were in failing to actually oversee the NSA:
If you don't want leaks, don't build a secret, illegal system of mass surveillance and then hide it and lie about it to the public.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 15, 2016
I get the feeling that history will treat Ed Snowden much more kindly than it will treat the cowardly members of the House Intel Committee who are now trying (and failing) to cover up their own failures as overseers.
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Filed Under: congress, ed snowden, house intelligence committee, oversight, pardon snowden, surveillance, whistleblower
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Snowden is done for
He has made statements about coming back, but if he does he will never see the light of day. If he has any sense, he will stay put as what little freedom he has now will seem great compared to the cell they will put him in for life.
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Re: Snowden is done for
I think eventually (decades) history will vindicate him and he'll get a pardon from some future president.
But even if that happens, it's not clear the "intelligence community" is really under the control of the executive, or the law. I won't be a bit surprised to see Mr. Snowden have a fatal accident, even after a presidential pardon.
Even Eisenhower felt the "military-industrial complex" was out of his control as president, and that was almost 60 years ago. Things have only gotten worse since then.
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So... Snowden couldnt even report a simple best practice for patches without reprimand. Is it any wonder he didn't trust "official" channels?
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If they are petty enough about something so minor as to even bring it up in this report as a point of criticism it can be easily inferred that the environment Snowden was in is no place to report your complaints to.
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So they're [i]never[/i] going to find dirt on him, because there isn't any. He bought into everything, crossed all his "i"s and dotted all his "t"s, did everything by the book and didn't crack until the system utterly failed him.
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"In reality, he was on his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets. "
Snowden: Hey guys I will need the day off, I am going to go to Hong Kong with these stolen secrets. Yeah, thanks.
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You can't tell any person that voted for Obama that they are wrong. They simply do not have a mechanism for realizing mistakes. They WILL be making it again!
There are reasons why politics will always break down and devolve into war. People just simply are not capable of behaving themselves. They have to have a side, or a group, or something they can identify with. Very rarely can you find someone looking to make their own identity.
This means that there WILL be a divide as prophesied by George Washington. It spawned the Civil War, and now it divides the nation again.
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It's not like there were a multitude of options available at the time, pick one of these two candidates which were pre-selected for you.
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You only have to do it a couple of times to send the message. But no one has figured anything out yet.
The two party system is nothing more than a distraction from the truth. Continuing to vote for a candidate in either part will only entrench them. Perhaps you have yet to learn how to fight properly. You mistakenly allow THEM to create the stage for battle and just accept it without much whimper.
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And how many times has this been attempted?
Certainly at least a few times, remember Ross Perot? In the past there was another political party - the Whigs.
I doubt your suggestion is viable.
In addition, the two party system is being blamed for the inherent corruption that is human nature. Having a three or more party system would not address this.
What will hinder corruption? Because you are not going to get rid of it.
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Hold them to account!
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Not sure if voting Republican would have been much better though, so in that regard I suppose I can't admit I'm wrong. If only because I think they're all wrong?
Bah. I'm getting cynical again...
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Voting for the "other" candidate has nothing to do with having a high ground. Anyone believing they have the high ground pretty much does not have it.
Voting "other" is just one of many possible tools to send a message. It may not be the exact message you wanted to send, but better than the, "keep fucking us any way you like" message cause we will just pick fun at those with more intelligence than us because we are "embarrassed" of our poor choices. Doubling down on the stupid is what you just advocated.
George Washington indicated that this is our future if we keep up with this political party bullshit!
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Your moral high ground will do you (and more importantly) the rest of this country no good whatsoever if the real serial fabricator/narcissist gets into the white house.
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Go Hillary!
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"You can't tell any person that voted for Obama that they are wrong."
The phenomenon you're talking about (people unable to change their set opinions) is called attitude polarization and its commonplace on both sides of the DNC / GOP fense. Don't worry, though, there's plenty enough to go around. The mechanism is called confirmation bias and it takes practice easily accepting we're wrong based on new, up-to-date data.
If anything though, it's the right that has been appealing to prejudicial assumtions (e.g. Blacks are criminal thugs, lazy and moronic; Muslims are all terrorists desperate for martyrdom; gays are all pedophiles looking to victimize our little boys) the interests of social equality, pluralism and secularism that predominate liberalism are a product of perspective. It's why the whole all men are created equal bit had to be said to King George (who still believed in Divine Right of Kings)
And so, incidentally, did George W. Bush. So did McCain and Romney, and so does Trump. Divine right guys, the lot of them.
(So do the Clintons, incidentally. It's good to be in the old skull-and-bones network, but Hillary isn't going to put up a useless $25 billion wall and intern Muslim Americans. And her opinion can evolve to public pressure.)
At some point, if you want a working community, you're going to have to get past the us v. them rhetoric. Color-coded sides do make for easy logic and fun movies, but real people don't fit into convenient categories.
And that goes for Obama supporters.
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Re: "You can't tell any person that voted for Obama that they are wrong."
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Re: "You can't tell any person that voted for Obama that they are wrong."
to prejudicial assumtions
Then you said...
At some point, if you want a working community, you're going to have to get past the us v. them rhetoric.
I am not sure you even understand your own position. How can you utter rhetoric that you then turn around and speak against and expect any respect? You are a hypocrite!
When YOU can live up to that yourself, THEN you can ask others to do the same!
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"You are a hypocrite!"
To be specific it was Nixon's Southern Strategy which was an appeal to negrophobia (hatred of blacks) among white male voters to which I was referring, though by Karl Rove and his anger points strategy, the same notion was generalized to recognized and utilize a range of issues that widely stirred strong emotions.
So I was referring to specific incidents in history. I wasn't saying that conservatives universally appeal to demagoguery. I could the GOP has been using such strategies for long enough that they've drawn a voting base of emotion-susceptible voters. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now to say that some of them just like lower taxes for the wealthy, or to keep their guns, or an astronomical military budget.
Though, at the point you're trying to label me as hypocritical, it looks like you're just eager to find a way to categorize me so that you can dismiss my arguments.
If that's what you need to do, you're not able to separate me from my point, in which case forget it. I'd rather you understood my point and decided for yourself whether or not it makes sense, rather than you agreed or disagreed based on how truthy it feels.
Maybe find a fellow conservative to explain it to you how large ideological or religious parties are too diverse to have a consistent position, and that you can't make a large society without more diversity than is humanly comfortable.
Whether or not I prejudge others personally is irrelevant to my argument that prejudging others adversely affects civilization. Bigotry is a non-point source problem, which means it's not enough just to say don't do it. We have to encourage people to want to develop pluralistic perspective, despite their desire to live in small hyper-conformist gated communities. We need them to realize that there's value in polyglot culture that they want.
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Re: "You are a hypocrite!"
You are so certain of your moral superiority (which is based on projection, straw men and LOADS of unexamined assertions) that you see no need for any self-awareness. You hand wave and name call all disagreements, and alter definitions of words as necessary.
When it can be seriously claimed that the morally unobjectionable sentiment "All Lives Matter" is LITERALLY an "act of violence" (and not far down the rod, a sentiment to be met with violence, I suspect), the "false consciousness" is not only on one side, and neither side is actually FOR freedom of expression and belief.
And as long as one party or the other can convince either the educated clueless or the less-educated clueless that they are on the "moral" side of some stupid, irrelevant wedge issue, what you claim not to want is supported by your actions. And of course, you won't see it...
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Poe threshold [CRITICAL]
I really cannot tell.
For starters, do be specific where I indicate I don't want a true polyglot culture. I suspect that in my history of comments on this site you can find something.
Secondly, it doesn't matter. Whether or not I want to live in a pluralist society is irrelevant to the notion that large societies pretty much cannot help but be pluralist. Heck, any ideological group that gets large enough (organized or otherwise) will become diverse enough so that any generalization of them will poorly represent who they are. (Case in point, how often Roman Catholics fully agree with and abide by the Holy See, id est, never.)
As a people, we don't need to like our polyglot culture or participate in it fully, we just need to tolerate it enough that to allow our civilization to grow large and facilitate all the cool infrastructures we like (highway systems, libraries, space programs, the internet).
But as a species we're terrible at doing even that. We really want to throw rocks at the people who are not enough like us. We recognize that racism or religious bigotry or sexual bigotry are wrong and counter productive, but we do it anyway, often appealing to tradition to justify it.
I don't know how to change that. But if we're going to do it, we're going to do it despite ourselves.
Case in point, your response, whether or not it is satire.
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Re: "You can't tell any person that voted for Obama that they are wrong."
What Uriel-238 says.
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Honestly, I don't think we have much hope of getting leaders who care if we (as in the general population) keep sticking with the two major parties.
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I would support calls for a system that randomly selects citizens for political service where we can vote on them. No one should be allowed to run for office.
Anyone looking to serve as President or Judge or Politician are the very people that should be prevented from getting those positions.
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Well, that's Trump's platform in a nutshell.
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In other words the same group that supplies most of the politicians. As soon as you give some group power within politics, they will take over politics.
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Ignorance is a massive problem, is what I'm saying, and as it happens some of our politicians are indeed random yahoos off the street; they've got no clue about what the Constitution says or how Congressional procedures are supposed to work.
For this reason I'm of the opinion that people who aspire to positions of authority in government need to gain a qualification in governance before applying for the job. Imagine a government administration run by people who actually know what they're doing.
A girl can dream.
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Unfortunately anyone not already paid for and purchased by Washington will be quickly hated by "The People" because they are gullible as fuck. Deep down we already know that too many ignorant voters go to the poles. We must first start somewhere else. Besides the President is the worst place to start anyways.
Congress is the very first place to start, if not your local government. The convention of states is what it is going to take to change the diaper that is congress, they are literally doing nothing to help matters. They just go to office and collect a paycheck with kickbacks while playing voters for the fools they are!
Everyone knows it! It's like the Emperors New Clothes level of corruption.
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Good thing we don't have anything like that. So much better to have the educated running thing for the dummies, right? #noneedforasarctag
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In such a vile system, the self-interest of all parties involved is to strive for ever-greater, more centralized power and wealth; to be used in pandering to ever-more-incompatible interest groups.
This is why I point and laugh at the "small government" brigade. Anyone who thinks that handing power to the corporations (which is what we've done) in order to increase efficiency is going to actually increase efficiency is a fool. Any bureaucracy will work to perpetuate itself, whoever pays their wages.
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Change the meaning of the term...
The same thing works for whistleblowers. They're a thing the people want to champion, so we change the definition of whistleblower.
Snowden revealed a state program that was doing things that really shouldn't have been done and were a betrayal of the people of the world. And Snowden went to lengths to make sure that information went public.
It doesn't matter what you call that. Forcing such a program into the sunlight is an action in service of the people of the US. Persecution of those who act to expose such programs is also against the pubkic good, and is an additional betrayal of the people.
The arguments of whys or what it's called are irrelevant. The people who condemn Snowden are not interested in an open, free or equal society.
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Re: Change the meaning of the term...
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Same old same old.
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There is the narrow legal definition, written by corrupt politicians to protect corrupt politicians, and then there is the real meaning of the word.
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intel committee membership?
They deserve some calls and letters, calling them out for their cowardice.
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Re: intel committee membership?
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Re: intel committee membership?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Permanent_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence#Me mbers
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/s...?
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Re: intel committee membership?
Devin Nunes, Chairman
22nd District of California
Jeff Miller
1st District of Florida
Mike Conaway
11th District of Texas
Peter King
2nd District of New York
Frank LoBiondo
2nd District of New Jersey
Lynn Westmoreland
3rd District of Georgia
Tom Rooney
17th District of Florida
Joe Heck
3rd District of Nevada
Mike Pompeo
4th District of Kansas
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
27th District of Florida
Michael Turner
10th District of Ohio
Brad Wenstrup
2nd District of Ohio
Chris Stewart
2nd District of Utah
Democratic members ( href="intelligence.house.gov/about/hpsci-minority-members.htm):
Adam Schiff, Ranking Member
28th District of California
Jim Himes
4th District of Connecticut
Terri Sewell
7th District of Alabama
Andre Carson
7th District of Indiana
Jackie Speier
14th District of California
Mike Quigley
5th District of Illinois
Eric Swalwell
15th District of California
Patrick Murphy
18th District of Florida
Joaquin Castro
20th District of Texas
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But you have to understand how these people's brains work. They believe that security through obscurity is real security. So, if you make what they're doing less obscure you ipso facto make them less secure!
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Re:
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intel committee membership?
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How can he be anything but a whistle blower?
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Re: How can he be anything but a whistle blower?
Minor clarification: The programs had been determined to be legal under US law. Whether or not they were constitutional or not would be up to the courts to decide, but they've basically abdicated when it comes to anything flagged "national security".
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Re: Re: How can he be anything but a whistle blower?
The Federal Government is currently engaged in a game of Chicken with the Citizens of America. We Citizens are blinking as fucking fast as we can. Until we stop blinking and end this shit, the law is worthless. Nothing is legal or illegal because justice is being ignored or prevented.
The American Government currently exists as a Political Apostasy. The Constitution is our founding political document, and it has been 100% abandoned and renounced!
a·pos·ta·sy
əˈpästəsē/
noun
noun: apostasy; plural noun: apostasies
the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.
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Big ones...
Stating that he was able to get jobs/promotions at an 'intelligence' agency by exaggerating his qualifications or lying only shows that he has the biggest stones ever, and that they suck at intelligence-ing. How difficult is an employment verification, especially one from the same, or related department?
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Re: Big ones...
Isn't that just how all NSA tests work in the first place?
;)
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Re:
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House Disinformation Committee
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Re:
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He'll be dead one day. While he lives, he is still teaching us to see through the lies the government does not tire of fabricating as fast as they keep falling apart.
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what? o.O
Are they trying to say he didn't graduate highschool nor get a GED equivalent so he shouldn't have been hired or what?
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Re: what? o.O
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Wrong, my dear chap.
Your feeling overlooks who is signing off on history school books.
Snowden is still telling people "look how your government lies to you", item for item, concise, consistent, plausible. His stories keep straight, those of the government twist in all directions. If you don't know who to believe, picking him means you don't need to change your beliefs around every month.
The U.S. government doesn't merely want revenge on Snowden. They want to terminate the continuing danger to political culture he represents: entrusting people with more truth than they are used to handle, a political climate toxic to those running the show.
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CHAIN of COMMAND
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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of
the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent,for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” AND
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind
constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
The US. & UK. Governments no longer have any credibility ! They make statements but never provide proof . Trust
us, I think NOT ! Don't trust but verify, & demand evidence of proof ! Until they do so, it's just more lies, excuses,rationalizations, & justifications .
No more lies, excuses rationalizations,or justifications, the public needs to hold these officials to account to the
fullest extent of the law under Title 18 sec. 241 & 242 So any future traitors will know there will be consequences to
such behavior. I hope the United Kingdom has equivalent laws, but if not maybe it's time to get some. Better late
than never.
REMEMBER: POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRATS AND DIAPERS SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON.
Some words of true Patriots are as follows, as opposed to the words of false flag patriotism of bought & paid for
professional politicians and bureaucrats of today.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time,and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions,his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
James Madison
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be
concealed from them.
Patrick Henry
"We the People are the rightful masters of BOTH Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to
overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution"
Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we
destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
We should not forget the warning of President Eisenhower .
http://youtu.be/8y06NSBBR
The NSA is controlled & operated by the DOD & the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) Private Corporations.
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically
opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of
excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it."
President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
April 27, 1961
As a reminder Hermann Goering said at the Nuremberg Trials .
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same way in any country."
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
NSA General Keith Alexander told lawmakers "that even if approved, the measure would not necessarily end warrant-less collection depending on judicial interpretation."
As is said in the law, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. ("False in one thing, false in all things" is an instruction given
to jurors: if they find that a witness lied about an important matter, they are entitled to ignore everything else that witness said.)
Time to start removing the corporate Congress from office & defunding the NSA to force them to comply with the law & impose jail time for non compliance under USC Title 18 Sec. 241 & 242. Google it !.
Stop with the trying to put the lipstick on a pig approach !
Disclaimer: Be advised it is possible, that this communication is being monitored by the
National Security Agency or GCHQ. I neither condone or support any such policy, by any Government authority that
does not comply, as stipulated by the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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The Snowden "is not a whistleblower" claim
The House Intelligence Committee speciously conflates "whistleblowing" with "government protected whistleblowing." Cornell University's law school defines whistleblower as "An employee who alleges wrongdoing by his or her employer of the sort that violates public law or tends to injure a considerable number of people." The allegation does not have to be proven to qualify as whistleblowing. It need only be a good-faith belief that wrongdoing occurred. Unquestionably, Edward Snowden's activities qualify as a whistleblower in Cornell's definition of that word, a definition that is widely embraced.
"Whistleblower protection," as envisioned by the intelligence community deserves to be wrapped in scare quotes whenever the term is used. The approved channel forces a whistleblower to self-identify to managers who are thus enabled to orchestrate the whistleblower's removal through smears and retaliatory investigation. The new "whistleblower protection" scheme established by President Obama is basically the old scheme with a fresh coat of paint. That paint includes a new "appeal" process in which reviewers have authority only to suggest that a retaliating agency head reconsider approving a whistleblower's removal or security clearance revocation. Although inspector generals have a long history of aiding management retaliation, and agency heads can deny the IG access to documents and witnesses, Obama's plan relies on IGs to objectively investigate whistleblower reprisal claims. It is basically irrelevant, therefore, whether or not Snowden would have been able to avail himself of Obama's "whistleblower protection" process.
The experiences of numerous whistleblowers and simple logic argue against allowing the government define, adjudicate or otherwise control whistleblowing within the government. Government employees blow the whistle to prevent government officials from abusing the rights of citizens and the public welfare. In taking that action, the employee offers to defend the public interest. The public therefore should decide whether to accept that offer to serve as its representative -- via a jury, for example -- granting the whistleblower its protection and compensating him or her for expenses and losses. It makes no sense at all to allow the government to determine who qualifies to be represent the public's interests. That's like allowing someone you are suing or prosecuting to pick your attorneys. There is more folly in forcing a whistleblower to personally shoulder all of the legal costs of defending the public interest.
Resolution of these problems will occur only when citizens awake to their responsibility to come to the aid of whistleblowers, their champions and their eyes and ears to government abuses and corruption.
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You really want to say that?
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Problem here:
Okay, so the guy fails the training on the privacy rules. This immediately raises a huge question: why did you still let him handle sensitive, personal information?
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SAAPP
.
You might want to have a look at the comments at, https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/federal-anti-slapp-bill-focus-house-hearing!
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From my viewpoint, things are looking UP for a S-E-R-I-O-U-S R-E-F-L-E-C-T-I-O-N on the efforts of Snowden!... and others! Who would have thunk it!
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Please!... no emails!
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KICKING SAAPP *SS
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Please!... no emails!
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