11 ms·

Snowden calls for whistleblower shield after claims by new Pentagon source

187 points by randomname2 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Aelinsaar 10y ago
It's never going to happen, or at least, not anytime soon. We live in a country that has its intelligence agencies "Losing" the evidence of their torturing people for years, and really, that's the least of their crimes.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Pseudonymity is arguably the best whistleblower shield. Drake just outed poor administrative oversight, and he was ruined financially. Whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning are lucky to avoid torture and execution.
  - awesomerobot 10y ago
    Arguably Manning did face a period of torture.
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      By any reasonable definition of torture, definitely. Certainly if a foreign government did what we did to Manning, to an American hostage, we'd call it torture. The problems with recognizing torture today though, have gotten harder, not easier. It's fundamentally harder to make people understand torture that utilizes "soft" methods (as defined by Darius Rejali) such as electrotorture, solitary confinement, various forms of drowning/suffocation, drugs, etc... compared to torture that leaves unambiguous physical scars.
      - Shivetya 10y ago
        when that line keeps moving its easy to lay claim. from your definition its pretty much anything someone wants to take offense at. which in turn pretty much causes a lot of people to tune the issue out. Manning is fine, its the people we don't know about that we cannot be sure of.
        Aelinsaar 10y ago
        Not surprisingly, your attempt at mind-reading wasn't a success.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        > The problems with recognizing torture today though, have gotten harder, not easier. I don't think it is all that hard.
        csydas 10y ago
        I think the post was referring to it in a legal sense, not a lay person's sense. I'm making an assumption here, but I'd say by most common definitions, quite a few common penal actions are likely torture. However, the law, and specifically the military and government, have very specific idea of what constitutes torture and what doesn't, and they're very good at spinning public perception to their side. Remember the public facing debate in the US whether or not waterboarding was torture? You had hundreds of pundits and news outlets weighing in on the matter and making a declaration, and public polls would be split. Of course, the few pundits that put their money where their mouth is and actually underwent waterboarding did an immediate 180 in virtually every circumstance. But it also goes a bit beyond definitions of torture and instead is a problem of jingoism. One need not look too deeply online to see what some American citizens feel is the appropriate response to muslims, to black people, to virtually anyone from the middle east, and so on. When you have a public that, superficially or not, is okay with thinking in terms of "waste the fucking [racial epithet]s", it's really easy to bend and flex the definition of torture in your country, as the US has done so quite a few times.
        10y ago
    - mirimir 10y ago
      Manning wasn't lucky enough :( Snowden barely made it to Russia. If they had caught him, he would probably have ended up at a black site. Never to be heard from again. That could still happen, if Russia gives him up.
- cm3 10y ago
  The same happened in Germany where the BND (German NSA) destroyed evidence, most likely because of obligations to allies like NSA. Then the state safety agency (Staatsschutz), something like the secret service to uphold the constitution, destroyed evidence and obstructed investigations in a decade long Neo-Nazi killing spree. These orgs operate, and maybe have to they way they are set up, with no real oversight and anytime other branches of government want some info they accidentally park their computers in an MRI machine during lunch hour. Edit: The Staatsschutz did that to save their own skin because they had moles inside the neo-nazi groups and probably wanted some info to be buried deep. What the BND destroyed and was made public not that long ago were something called "selector lists" for mass surveillance in partnership with the other big brothers.
cassieramen 10y ago
Are there any people not in favor of pardoning Snowden here? It seems like most of the people I encounter who aren't on his side either don't fully understand the situation or think the story is so ridiculous some conspiracy is going on. Everyone is so gung-ho on getting rid of political insiders, exposing the wrong doings of the government, and yet we blacklist someone who could be a bannerman for that cause.
- tamana 10y ago
  Yes. There is a contingent that says Snowden overshared information and that is treasonous. Those people no problem in the oversharing Showed exposed,of course. A substantial grouonornproehxt people, on and off HN, are deeply authoritarian and believe that The State is the only legitimate arbiter of right and wrong.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    I don't think that's a charitable interpretation of the majority view. 64% of Americans familiar with Snowden have a negative view of him: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowden-unpopular-at-home-a-hero-abroad-poll-finds http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowde.... The people are entitled to trust the government and condemn those who leak state secrets. You or I might think that's short-sighted, but the whole point of democracy is to give people the power to make these value judgments. America wasn't set up for a class of self-appointed civil libertarian guardians to tell people what their priorities should be.
    - MajesticHobo 10y ago
      A valid point of view, but the US is technically a constitutional republic, not a true democracy. Certain values and principles are written into our DNA via the Constitution, and I contest your assertion that they can simply be voted away by the majority.
      - dalke 10y ago
jasonjei 10y ago
The thing with IGs (inspector generals) though is that they are also like HR--they serve to protect the government as an entity rather than the agents, just like HR serves the company, not the employee.
- diamondlovesyou 10y ago
  Agreed, though, I'd say they act like that because they answer to the higher ups in the organisations they're apart of, and aren't properly independent. Thus there is no self-interested incentive to take the rank-and-file's side. I'm not sure why HR or IGs are ever assigned the task of 'representing' agents in the first place; it just seems like a conflict of interest. Also, the plural of inspector general is inspectors general, not inspector generals.
  - jasonjei 10y ago
    I wonder if an independent board could eliminate this conflict of interest. We have a so-called independent system setup for lots of local policing agencies, yet they often coverup the misdeeds of the police rather than protecting the citizenry.

187 points by randomname2 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

It's never going to happen, or at least, not anytime soon. We live in a country that has its intelligence agencies "Losing" the evidence of their torturing people for years, and really, that's the least of their crimes.

mirimir 10y ago
Pseudonymity is arguably the best whistleblower shield. Drake just outed poor administrative oversight, and he was ruined financially. Whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning are lucky to avoid torture and execution.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  Arguably Manning did face a period of torture.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    By any reasonable definition of torture, definitely. Certainly if a foreign government did what we did to Manning, to an American hostage, we'd call it torture. The problems with recognizing torture today though, have gotten harder, not easier. It's fundamentally harder to make people understand torture that utilizes "soft" methods (as defined by Darius Rejali) such as electrotorture, solitary confinement, various forms of drowning/suffocation, drugs, etc... compared to torture that leaves unambiguous physical scars.
    - Shivetya 10y ago
      when that line keeps moving its easy to lay claim. from your definition its pretty much anything someone wants to take offense at. which in turn pretty much causes a lot of people to tune the issue out. Manning is fine, its the people we don't know about that we cannot be sure of.
      - Aelinsaar 10y ago
        Not surprisingly, your attempt at mind-reading wasn't a success.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      > The problems with recognizing torture today though, have gotten harder, not easier. I don't think it is all that hard.
      - csydas 10y ago
        I think the post was referring to it in a legal sense, not a lay person's sense. I'm making an assumption here, but I'd say by most common definitions, quite a few common penal actions are likely torture. However, the law, and specifically the military and government, have very specific idea of what constitutes torture and what doesn't, and they're very good at spinning public perception to their side. Remember the public facing debate in the US whether or not waterboarding was torture? You had hundreds of pundits and news outlets weighing in on the matter and making a declaration, and public polls would be split. Of course, the few pundits that put their money where their mouth is and actually underwent waterboarding did an immediate 180 in virtually every circumstance. But it also goes a bit beyond definitions of torture and instead is a problem of jingoism. One need not look too deeply online to see what some American citizens feel is the appropriate response to muslims, to black people, to virtually anyone from the middle east, and so on. When you have a public that, superficially or not, is okay with thinking in terms of "waste the fucking [racial epithet]s", it's really easy to bend and flex the definition of torture in your country, as the US has done so quite a few times.
        10y ago
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Manning wasn't lucky enough :( Snowden barely made it to Russia. If they had caught him, he would probably have ended up at a black site. Never to be heard from again. That could still happen, if Russia gives him up.
cm3 10y ago
The same happened in Germany where the BND (German NSA) destroyed evidence, most likely because of obligations to allies like NSA. Then the state safety agency (Staatsschutz), something like the secret service to uphold the constitution, destroyed evidence and obstructed investigations in a decade long Neo-Nazi killing spree. These orgs operate, and maybe have to they way they are set up, with no real oversight and anytime other branches of government want some info they accidentally park their computers in an MRI machine during lunch hour. Edit: The Staatsschutz did that to save their own skin because they had moles inside the neo-nazi groups and probably wanted some info to be buried deep. What the BND destroyed and was made public not that long ago were something called "selector lists" for mass surveillance in partnership with the other big brothers.

cassieramen 10y ago

Are there any people not in favor of pardoning Snowden here? It seems like most of the people I encounter who aren't on his side either don't fully understand the situation or think the story is so ridiculous some conspiracy is going on. Everyone is so gung-ho on getting rid of political insiders, exposing the wrong doings of the government, and yet we blacklist someone who could be a bannerman for that cause.

tamana 10y ago
Yes. There is a contingent that says Snowden overshared information and that is treasonous. Those people no problem in the oversharing Showed exposed,of course. A substantial grouonornproehxt people, on and off HN, are deeply authoritarian and believe that The State is the only legitimate arbiter of right and wrong.
- rayiner 10y ago
  I don't think that's a charitable interpretation of the majority view. 64% of Americans familiar with Snowden have a negative view of him: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowden-unpopular-at-home-a-hero-abroad-poll-finds http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowde.... The people are entitled to trust the government and condemn those who leak state secrets. You or I might think that's short-sighted, but the whole point of democracy is to give people the power to make these value judgments. America wasn't set up for a class of self-appointed civil libertarian guardians to tell people what their priorities should be.
  - MajesticHobo 10y ago
    A valid point of view, but the US is technically a constitutional republic, not a true democracy. Certain values and principles are written into our DNA via the Constitution, and I contest your assertion that they can simply be voted away by the majority.
    - dalke 10y ago

jasonjei 10y ago

The thing with IGs (inspector generals) though is that they are also like HR--they serve to protect the government as an entity rather than the agents, just like HR serves the company, not the employee.

diamondlovesyou 10y ago
Agreed, though, I'd say they act like that because they answer to the higher ups in the organisations they're apart of, and aren't properly independent. Thus there is no self-interested incentive to take the rank-and-file's side. I'm not sure why HR or IGs are ever assigned the task of 'representing' agents in the first place; it just seems like a conflict of interest. Also, the plural of inspector general is inspectors general, not inspector generals.
- jasonjei 10y ago
  I wonder if an independent board could eliminate this conflict of interest. We have a so-called independent system setup for lots of local policing agencies, yet they often coverup the misdeeds of the police rather than protecting the citizenry.