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> U.S. prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage. Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the

by raprp 8y ago

> U.S. prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage. Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime?

c3534l 8y ago
Take a wild guess.
clubm8 8y ago
>Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime? Laws apply to commoners, not lords.
- geggam 8y ago
  Q: Why do you think the lords wish to disarm the commoners ? A : Bullets don't care how much power or money they have.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    In the history of the United States, bullets have mostly if not solely been used for the protection of the lords, often by commoners either paid to do it and not caring, or convinced the issue was other commoners. After all a common thread of US History is this LBJ quip: > If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
    - nsajko 8y ago
      I agree with your comment (it reminded me of the times the Pinkertons or the deputized sheriffs shot at strikers long ago), but I think that every citizen being armed would be a good guard for the society's freedom, and thus that it would be worth it.
      - masklinn 8y ago
        > I think that every citizen being armed would be a good guard for the society's freedom, and thus that it would be worth it. That would be a pretty big change from them dynamiting and firebombing Greenwood, or taking over and thrashing Malheur. Somehow I'm doubtful. That's just not how America has used guns ever. And that's not how it uses guns to this day.
      - mcny 8y ago
        More than guns (or in addition to guns), it is important that people know how their government works and make their support indispensable if a ruler wants to stay in power. In other words, increase the number of "keys" like this YouTuber explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs What I struggle with is how does one make the leap from being a democracy to being a democracy which protects the rights of minorities? This doesn't have to be a gender or race thing. For example, here in the US we clearly don't do enough to protect incarcerated people from {sexual, physical, mental} abuse (by staff or by other inmates).
        brobdingnagians 8y ago
        That was part of the idea of the Constitution; the founding fathers knew that uninhibited democracies were a bad idea (even the Greeks experienced some bad things with mob rule) and specifically tried to create a democratic republic restrained by a written set of rules protecting citizens from arbitrary exercise of power by a majority to avoid some of the worst. They lived through quite a few things we are seeing now, but I think a large part of preventing it depends squarely on culture. Having a culture that fundamentally believes in justice and equality will stave off tyranny and oppression, but it doesn't matter what laws you have in a society that doesn't value those. When I took Chinese philosophy there was a philosopher (can't remember which one) who basically said that it is good men who make the laws, but laws without good men will not be enforced.
        hcg 8y ago
        > specifically tried to create a democratic republic restrained by a written set of rules protecting citizens from arbitrary exercise of power by a majority to avoid some of the worst They tried to create one with no power for anyone but white male landowners and with provisions that made changing that extremely difficult.
    - geggam 8y ago
      US history really doesn't have enough time to see it. Not to mention the Bill of Rights enumerated the natural right to self defense to be protected, including being armed well enough to form a militia. ( Military oath calls out enemies foreign and domestic, doesn't say enemies who hold political office are immune ) Look at Japanese history however and you see 100s of years of disarmament.
      - hcg 8y ago
        Look at what those militias have actually been used for.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Yeah, your gun is very helpful against trained soldiers with hi tech equipements and drones. And not harmful at all in your daily life.
    - geggam 8y ago
      Seems to work for the Afghan people. In my daily life a gun does little. People sometimes use it for good or for evil. Like any other tool
      - sametmax 8y ago
        They don't have a gun, they have army supplies regularly provided by other interested party, with additional military and tactical training. You don't stand a chain with your desert eagle if the marines decide you should go down.
        geggam 8y ago
        Think ex military with an AR-15. Should I manage to shoot someone with more military equipment I do know how to run it. The number of veterans in this nation make the active duty army look small.
        sametmax 8y ago
        Never thought about that.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
boomboomsubban 8y ago
The Government doesn't admit it did anything illegal, any court cases trying to show otherwise will take a decade as this one has, and currently the only one I'm aware of was dismissed as the courts ruled they could not prove damage had been done. Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any prosecutors trying individuals involved.
- monocasa 8y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadata-illegal-court/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metada... But you're right about not prosecuting individuals.
- CogitoCogito 8y ago
  > Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any prosecutors trying individuals involved. Well except for Snowden of course. And frankly Clapper's testimony to Congress was obviously perjury. The prosecution of only Snowden is rank hypocracy.
nabla9 8y ago
Elizabeth Goitein (Brennan Center for Justice): > The whistleblower laws for intelligence community members pretend that there’s no such thing as agency level misconduct and we know that that’s not the case... If what you’re talking about is official misconduct that has been sanctioned by the agency, then obviously reporting that misconduct to that agency is not going to help. So internal channels are useless for things like torture, warrantless wiretapping, any of those major systemic abuses, like the ones we saw after 9/11. https://pen.org/sites/default/files/Secret%20Sources%20report.pdf https://pen.org/sites/default/files/Secret%20Sources%20repor...
scoot_718 8y ago
He stole credentials to download and give data en masse. This wasn't a guy exposing a single program. It was a guy just releasing everything he could get his hands on.
- mcny 8y ago
  We're talking about Snowden, not Manning.
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    Snowden as well. He promised he destroyed all the data that had nothing to do with internal spying programs when he landed in China but before he defected to Russia. And he must be telling the truth because he said he's telling the truth.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
      He didn't defect to Russia. He was on a flight that had a layover in Moscow airport, but the US revoked his passport, so he got stranded there until Russia eventually granted him asylum.
      - hvdhh7 8y ago
        His passport was revoked while he was in Hong Kong. Somehow he was allowed to board the flight to Moscow with a revoked passport, but not the flight from Moscow.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        >Somehow he was allowed to board the flight to Moscow with a revoked passport Your passport doesn't magically cease to work after someone somewhere says it's been revoked.
        macspoofing 8y ago
macspoofing 8y ago
What crime are we talking about? Because the surveillance programs have been sanctioned and overseen by all three branches of government. In other words, they were perfectly legal government programs. So Snowden didn't actually whistleblow any crime. You may argue about the public right to know about these programs, and I would be friendly to that view, but Snowden stole much much much more than that, took it to China and asked us to trust him when he said he destroyed that data (though he changed his story quite a few times)... that's why he is a traitor.
liftbigweights 8y ago
> Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime? For the same reason no one was charged for hiroshima or nagasaki. Or the illegal iraq war. It was sanctioned by the government. For there to be criminal charges, someone in the government has to be willing to prosecute. Good luck with that.

by raprp 8y ago

> U.S. prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage. Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime?

c3534l 8y ago

Take a wild guess.

clubm8 8y ago

>Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime? Laws apply to commoners, not lords.

geggam 8y ago
Q: Why do you think the lords wish to disarm the commoners ? A : Bullets don't care how much power or money they have.
- masklinn 8y ago
  In the history of the United States, bullets have mostly if not solely been used for the protection of the lords, often by commoners either paid to do it and not caring, or convinced the issue was other commoners. After all a common thread of US History is this LBJ quip: > If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
  - nsajko 8y ago
    I agree with your comment (it reminded me of the times the Pinkertons or the deputized sheriffs shot at strikers long ago), but I think that every citizen being armed would be a good guard for the society's freedom, and thus that it would be worth it.
    - masklinn 8y ago
      > I think that every citizen being armed would be a good guard for the society's freedom, and thus that it would be worth it. That would be a pretty big change from them dynamiting and firebombing Greenwood, or taking over and thrashing Malheur. Somehow I'm doubtful. That's just not how America has used guns ever. And that's not how it uses guns to this day.
    - mcny 8y ago
      More than guns (or in addition to guns), it is important that people know how their government works and make their support indispensable if a ruler wants to stay in power. In other words, increase the number of "keys" like this YouTuber explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs What I struggle with is how does one make the leap from being a democracy to being a democracy which protects the rights of minorities? This doesn't have to be a gender or race thing. For example, here in the US we clearly don't do enough to protect incarcerated people from {sexual, physical, mental} abuse (by staff or by other inmates).
      - brobdingnagians 8y ago
        That was part of the idea of the Constitution; the founding fathers knew that uninhibited democracies were a bad idea (even the Greeks experienced some bad things with mob rule) and specifically tried to create a democratic republic restrained by a written set of rules protecting citizens from arbitrary exercise of power by a majority to avoid some of the worst. They lived through quite a few things we are seeing now, but I think a large part of preventing it depends squarely on culture. Having a culture that fundamentally believes in justice and equality will stave off tyranny and oppression, but it doesn't matter what laws you have in a society that doesn't value those. When I took Chinese philosophy there was a philosopher (can't remember which one) who basically said that it is good men who make the laws, but laws without good men will not be enforced.
        hcg 8y ago
        > specifically tried to create a democratic republic restrained by a written set of rules protecting citizens from arbitrary exercise of power by a majority to avoid some of the worst They tried to create one with no power for anyone but white male landowners and with provisions that made changing that extremely difficult.
  - geggam 8y ago
    US history really doesn't have enough time to see it. Not to mention the Bill of Rights enumerated the natural right to self defense to be protected, including being armed well enough to form a militia. ( Military oath calls out enemies foreign and domestic, doesn't say enemies who hold political office are immune ) Look at Japanese history however and you see 100s of years of disarmament.
    - hcg 8y ago
      Look at what those militias have actually been used for.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Yeah, your gun is very helpful against trained soldiers with hi tech equipements and drones. And not harmful at all in your daily life.
  - geggam 8y ago
    Seems to work for the Afghan people. In my daily life a gun does little. People sometimes use it for good or for evil. Like any other tool
    - sametmax 8y ago
      They don't have a gun, they have army supplies regularly provided by other interested party, with additional military and tactical training. You don't stand a chain with your desert eagle if the marines decide you should go down.
      - geggam 8y ago
        Think ex military with an AR-15. Should I manage to shoot someone with more military equipment I do know how to run it. The number of veterans in this nation make the active duty army look small.
        sametmax 8y ago
        Never thought about that.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

boomboomsubban 8y ago

The Government doesn't admit it did anything illegal, any court cases trying to show otherwise will take a decade as this one has, and currently the only one I'm aware of was dismissed as the courts ruled they could not prove damage had been done. Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any prosecutors trying individuals involved.

monocasa 8y ago
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadata-illegal-court/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metada... But you're right about not prosecuting individuals.
CogitoCogito 8y ago
> Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any prosecutors trying individuals involved. Well except for Snowden of course. And frankly Clapper's testimony to Congress was obviously perjury. The prosecution of only Snowden is rank hypocracy.

nabla9 8y ago

Elizabeth Goitein (Brennan Center for Justice): > The whistleblower laws for intelligence community members pretend that there’s no such thing as agency level misconduct and we know that that’s not the case... If what you’re talking about is official misconduct that has been sanctioned by the agency, then obviously reporting that misconduct to that agency is not going to help. So internal channels are useless for things like torture, warrantless wiretapping, any of those major systemic abuses, like the ones we saw after 9/11. https://pen.org/sites/default/files/Secret%20Sources%20report.pdf https://pen.org/sites/default/files/Secret%20Sources%20repor...

scoot_718 8y ago

He stole credentials to download and give data en masse. This wasn't a guy exposing a single program. It was a guy just releasing everything he could get his hands on.

mcny 8y ago
We're talking about Snowden, not Manning.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  Snowden as well. He promised he destroyed all the data that had nothing to do with internal spying programs when he landed in China but before he defected to Russia. And he must be telling the truth because he said he's telling the truth.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
    He didn't defect to Russia. He was on a flight that had a layover in Moscow airport, but the US revoked his passport, so he got stranded there until Russia eventually granted him asylum.
    - hvdhh7 8y ago
      His passport was revoked while he was in Hong Kong. Somehow he was allowed to board the flight to Moscow with a revoked passport, but not the flight from Moscow.
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        >Somehow he was allowed to board the flight to Moscow with a revoked passport Your passport doesn't magically cease to work after someone somewhere says it's been revoked.
        macspoofing 8y ago

macspoofing 8y ago

What crime are we talking about? Because the surveillance programs have been sanctioned and overseen by all three branches of government. In other words, they were perfectly legal government programs. So Snowden didn't actually whistleblow any crime. You may argue about the public right to know about these programs, and I would be friendly to that view, but Snowden stole much much much more than that, took it to China and asked us to trust him when he said he destroyed that data (though he changed his story quite a few times)... that's why he is a traitor.

liftbigweights 8y ago

> Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime? For the same reason no one was charged for hiroshima or nagasaki. Or the illegal iraq war. It was sanctioned by the government. For there to be criminal charges, someone in the government has to be willing to prosecute. Good luck with that.