... choice but to go the route he did... he's shown no evidence of it.

The ends do NOT justify the means and it opens up a huge loophole for people to break the law IMHO...

If he can show some good established proof that he at least tried to go the legal route then I think the ends would at least bend towards the means

important to you.

I am glad that this proposal shows the administration has taken those leaks seriously regardless of the messenger.

Come on. You must know that. He did the best thing he could do for himself. Why should he trust anybody? If he didn't trust his decisions then he would be in a real problem.

.... a poor excuse for running from the law and breaking it in the first place.

The slope is VERY VERY slippery

I mean, men of color have EVERY reason to run from such a bias'd justice system... more studied to by biased than the injustice Snowden is claiming "would" have come.

Would this benefit of innocence after intent to break a law be extended to EVERY ONE of them?

regards

That is too risky to stay in the United States. It would be different if a few were calling him a Traitor. I couldn't even imagine the death threats he would get.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/no-charges-for-man-who-leaked-surveillance-program/2011/04/26/AFt9o6rE_story.html

No charges for man who leaked surveillance program

So wait, the argument of "no fair treatment" gets deaded right there!!!!

Snowden had another way and decided not to take it... fuck him

Strange you picked such a sterile article to make your point.

I think this interview does SO MUCH MORE to show what actually happens:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/28/doj_drops_probe_of_whistleblower_who

What he says the costs were: "Well, I mean, it’s a relief that the long ordeal is over. Unfortunately, I ruined my career. I had loved working at the Justice Department, particularly in the Criminal Division. It was an honor to represent the people of the United States. As a result of that, I incurred significant legal fees, which I still owe. I borrowed money for those legal fees. And, you know, really, probably the biggest impact was on my family. I wasn’t home when the 18 FBI agents rammed through my house, but my wife was, and my kids were. My kids were awakened in their beds by strangers wearing guns. And I don’t think that they will ever get over that. My wife doesn’t feel the same way about our house, doesn’t feel as safe in our house."

So what I get from your spittle flecked post is that you're mostly upset the BLOOD PRICE wasn't paid. And you're partially upset that this wasn't about BOOSHIE's misdeeds. But of course it actually was. It was about his unholy PNAC inspired domestic surveillance lovechild which INEXPLICABLY was continued by President Obama and which would have remained hidden from public knowledge without another whistleblower.

But let's not worry about that. This isn't about wrongdoing or using legal hairsplitting to justify the violation of our rights.

It's about.....some twisted little evil gnome named SNOWDEN!

There is no way from now on, any Whistle Blower can remain in this country, until protections are in place and they can trust the law to guarantee they will not suffer the same fate as all the others.

Can you show us ONE Whistle Blower over the past dozen years who did not have their lives destroyed while the REAL law violators were not even investigated.

Tice may be the only one.

But people like Drake eg, who went TOTALLY BY THE BOOK, too all the steps Whistle Blowers are advised to take. He had his life destroyed for his trouble.

his family terrorized, ALL for doing the RIGHT THING, as he said, for taking his oath of office seriously?

You are using THIS to say Whistle Blowers have nothing to fear in this country?
See Pholus' post above and ask yourself if someone reporting a crime against the American People should have been treated this way?

TEN YEARS! Well if that is your idea of fair treatment of Whistle Blowers, and all Tamm did was to go to the press and tell them something illegal was going on that they needed to investigate??

You just MADE my point. No Way can a whistle blower stay in this country or THAT is what will happen to them at the very least.

Here's what SHOULD happen. A Whistle Reports a crime. If they reveal themselves they should be interviewed by the FBI and Congress. They should not be subjected to any intimidation, persecution, or anything else. Once it is established that crimes are being committed, arrests should be made. The Whistle Blower should be called as a witness. There should be no loss of a career, ten year persecution by the government etc.

Snowden did the right thing. No doubt he studied all these cases before deciding what to do.

be in jail, cut off, as Manning was, from the public, unable to answer the smears against him and continue to speak out against these abuses. It benefits us for Whistle Blowers to be free to continue to inform the people. The perps, not so much.

Come on, people, you know this.

Exactly.

and encouraged to take even stronger measures, to rein in the NSA.

Part of the problem has been that the NSA has had access to all of this stuff and the FISA court has had to take their word for it that they have not been looking at it without reasonable suspicion that it is relevant to an investigation. The FISA court has complained that the NSA has not been trustworthy and has misrepresented its activities to the court on many occasions.

The new system would mean that the NSA would need to go through the courts to get access to any of the data. That is a huge improvement!

operating in the dark for all these years, when nothing has been accomplished, as was revealed by the panel, not that most of us didn't know that already.

The private contractors are the only ones benefiting from these Constitutional Violations. I'm sure they are not going to be happy if some of their funding is cut off so it will probably be a fight.

Let's hope there is enough support to pass it, and then on to the next step.

because the mandate runs out this Friday.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140325/10280026681/senator-leahy-if-president-obama-is-serious-about-ending-bulk-collection-he-can-just-end-it-this-friday.shtml

of a reversal of the claims that meta data collection was ever necessary or legal. There should be no more efforts to try to explain why it is necessary.

rather than doing what he legally can this friday I'm afraid.

go back to where he was right after the Snowden revelations where he tried to explain why the meta data collection was important for security. It appears he has abandoned that position now, which is a good thing and proves that WE were right from the beginnning.

Regarding ending it on Friday, true, but there is this in the article which refers to the 90 day review cycles:

These horrific policies have been going in secret for years. They should have ended in 2006 after they were first revealed.

The fact we are even getting this much shows how deep the anger is and perhaps it took the revelation that they were spying on Senators, to take this first step, who knows.

But three more months as opposed to what we were hearing, is definitely an improvement and imo, we SHOULD support, even the tiniest step in the right direction.

To me it shows that they can no longer try to defend it and are not going to try, and that Snowden's revelations were NOT 'old news' as some have been claiming.

without his revelation of this issue and then the public's outrage, I doubt Obama would be taking this step. He's doing the right thing even if it is the first step.

the turnaround, hopefully in time, before the country went totally over to the dark side.

And it proves that the Left was right again, as always.

Congress hasn't mandated the bulk collection; the intelligence agencies have twisted the law to say they're allowed to do what they're doing. Can't the president simply order the NSA to stop doing this?

Throwing it in the lap of congress is not what I hoped for...because that is a waste of time and often produces things that are worse.
He did the same with Gitmo and we are still torturing people down there.
So count me skeptical as much as I want to believe.

I guess we'll have to just wait and see what happens.

is a good thing for the reasons I stated in my post below.

I hadn't considered it from the political optics...

So let's hypothesize your change is tied to 2014. We know about the great advantages Democrats enjoyed in 2012 when it came to statistics and polling.....

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/10/obama_s_secret_weapon_democrats_have_a_massive_advantage_in_targeting_and.html

...perhaps the statistical tea leaves for 2014 showed something where it was worthwhile to throw some proxies under the bus for other gains. I was wondering why younger voters with their lives digitally recorded wouldn't be a bit mortified by dragnet surveillance, but had written it off as apathy. Perhaps I did so too hastily...

and no matter how diligent the anti-Snowden/Greenwald campaigners are, the numbers against all this spying have only gone UP.

It COULD be the revelations of spying on Congress also. It's okay for the 'little people', but not for THEM.

Third, and one I'm kind of wondering about. Snowden has stated there will be more and worse revelations coming out.

Perhaps they've been digging into what those could be themselves, and want to get on the right side of this BEFORE it gets worse.

One thing I know, the President has done a complete turnaround on this, whatever the reason.

And the other thing, there is the CIA V Feinstein situation going on and she too, a former apologist for the NSA, isn't so pleased that they may be spying on HER.

It's probably a combination of things.

I'd like to think that the PEOPLE have had some influence considering how outraged many people are.

the proposal, imo, isn't so much whether it will pass or not, but it finally acknowledges the Snowden leaks as serious. This is quite a turnaround from his original position on Meta Data. If you recall he totally defended it, even trying to explain how it worked. His explanations made NO sense at all. They were so convoluted it is hard now to remember the details.

Something has changed since then. Whatever it is, I am glad to see him abandoning any effort to explain how they are necessary.

And to all those who followed his lead, repeating those excuses, this must be very disappointing considering how they defended his position and called all these leaks 'nothing new' etc. In a way, it's quite a slap in the face to those foolish enough to simply follow along rather than make up their own minds.

And even the acknowledge that the problem exist is a victory for sure.

Righting wrongs is an admirable thing.