You can definitely argue that there isn't enough accountability but hyperbole like this deserves ridicule.

The harder Greenwald tries to sell us his goods, the more irrelevant he becomes.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

accountable.

Your hyperbole is the next person's close and reasonable approximation. You may as well be screaming "hyperbole" when someone says they will be over at six and arrives either at 5:57 or 6:04. Hell, in this case you are damn near hollering "hyperbole" because it is 5:59:59.

You are splitting the hair so much that I fear you will slice an atom in the process and kill yourself and your whole city with you.

Add to that the fact that many of the requested warrants are initially turned down until sufficient safeguards are added and there is definitely accountability. Like I said, there can be more but to say there is none is wrong on the face of it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

Rein in? What are the sanctions for violations? What are the consequences for wrong doing? What are the corrective measures for being wrong? Having a finger wagged at you and being given corrections that if you don't do them is without consequence is not accountability and sure as hell accountability gets very flimsy when in order to be even fakely accountable the "court" must wait for self reporting. If anyone goes cowboy and cuts them out of the loop then they just wait for the next report and rubberstamp or scold as they deem appropriate.

A grade school child is more accountable.

There is ZERO accountability to the American people on who's behalf the entire effort is for. Hell, the idea was for the people to be kept ignorant, call that accountability all you want but it is being an accessory after the fact. Your arguments just help to make sure there is little to no accountability by supporting and advancing flimsy pretense as serious effort.

Rubbish. Get back to me when he takes a stand against the evil going on in Russia.

I figured that might draw a comment or two!

Sid

Or are we still not taking a stand on that? Last time I heard Obama said it would be wrong not to attend and spend at the Putin Winter Games.
You can't pretend to be taking both a stand against Russia and a plane to Sochi.

then we can safely ignore that which he has.

like every dogooder in the world has to tackle ALL the evil everywhere to be entitled to kudos for the good they do.

What passes for rationality and reason on this board sometimes qualifies as an evil that should be stamped out.

Snowden did his duty as an American citizen. He wasn't born in Russia, he was born here. Like Ellsberg and every other courageous individual who took their job as Citizens seriously.

Last edited Fri Sep 27, 2013, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)

not nosy Americans who point away from their own government, the crimes of which are much worse. If Russians were yammering about US domestic issues, I would tell them to mind their own business, because it is our responsibility to reform our own government.

You want Snowden to take a stand against the evil in Russia?

I'm not sure how that would work.

Those making excuses for NSA domestic spying are carrying a load of something else.

BTW: NSA spied on Frank Church, the liberal Democratic senator who warned us in 1976:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” -- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) liberal, progressive, World War II combat veteran

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Octafish/277

bringing the discussion back to the topic.

please they knew the security apparatus was going to change after Sept. 11th. what did they expect. America was fairly lax with domestic security issues and most people took them for granted. I've been caught up in a couple issues in Britian all related to "the troubles", while traveling, I always said we don't do security well here. When and if, things would change, it would never go back, the never again would take us all in its wake. Technology and its exploitation are the central defense our security apparatus uses and one way or another we have all signed off on it, years ago.

Yet, the Bill of Rights remain under assault and I am considered a suspect, based solely on my opposition to secret government and wars for profit that are illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous for democracy.

unless your subverting or perpetrating a crime.

Lookit what they did to OWS:

It was stroke of genius that Occupy chose not to emphasize the leadership role. Leaders would have become targets.

Truth tellers are now seen as the enemy. There's a pertinent quote about that somewhere.

Is getting tougher to ignore.

Maybe I should whistle... louder?

Amen.
Without them we would still be ignorant of what they are doing to our constitution....which would please some I suppose.
K&R for keeping this out there.

...the current chair of the Senate Committee created in the mid-1970s to oversee the ______________ just so happens to be one of the nation's most steadfast and blind loyalists of and apologists for the ______________.

and Eric Snowden is my hero. The truth will out and that is a good thing.

You are the new patriots.