Legitimacy comes from the consent of the people, as our Constitution says, and the people cannot consent to a government and laws kept secret from them. That is the crux of the matter. Ultimately we the people have the responsible authority and we must must exercise it, and continue to exercise it. If we fail that is also our problem, but it is legitimately nobody elses to decide. That is the fundamental principle on which our government was built.

The usual argument at this point is something along the lines of "you have to be reasonable", which is, of course, no argument at all, essentially a bald assertion that one cannot for some reason (again: fear) govern openly, where simple observation shows that many countries do that with much less fuss than we seem to need. In fact one of the best modern models: Germany, is one we built in the beginning. It is going to be very interesting to see how this scandal plays out in that context.

And no one I know, off of the internet, is either. They are VERY angry about this. If Obama is not careful, this could sway the election towards the Rethugs. Although, really, they are worse than the left, when it comes to authoritarianism.

Strange alliances over this issue too, it cuts across party lines.

Snowden is a coward. A little birdie told me so.

BOXES! I tell you! BOXES, for Gawd's sake!

Snowden could have framed his objection to the collection of phone records and Prism by speaking of having quit a high paying job because after seeing what was being done he thought it wrong. Back up for each major piece could have been a document in the public domain. What he (and GG) would bring to it is the frame and tying things together to explain what they saw as the intrusiveness.

The fact is that most people did not know because our media does not cover things like this -- unless there is a story -- like they were given with Snowden. However, our Congressmen and Senators were presented legislation and they had hearings and they voted - in late 2006, 2007 and I think 2011.

As to your last bolded comment, I would bet that MANY things pass into law without the average person even hearing a word about it. That does not make it invalid - that why Congressmen and Senators are said to be representatives of their district or state. Consider how few people would want CSPAN to be the main content of their news. (I would like it, but it won't happen. )

This is some mutant form of the "But it's all LEGAL!" argument.

Our Congressmen/women, many of them, admittedly, didn't even know what was going on, and key elements were left out of the evidence presented to them, before they even voted.

How CAN you have consent of the governed if the things that you are supposed to be consenting to are SECRET?

YOU CAN'T.

were things said in publicly available hearings on the committees' websites and on CSPAN. The issue was the major issue on the floor of both houses of Congress for weeks. It was the subject of many threads here and elsewhere. It is simply not credible for anyone in Congress to argue that they did not know what this was. (Even the IWR was more complicated and ambiguous than this - and few on the board accept that for aye votes.)

In general, this is political CYA - people are angry, they voted for it - what do you think they will say. I have heard nothing on the phone records collection that I did not hear in 2006. (It might be that because I had used similar data while I was at Bell Labs that may have made it clearer to me how much data that really is and how much insight can be obtained by data mining it.) The biggest controversy then was that it was done without authorization. In 2007, the FISA bill passed giving that authorization and many no votes spoke more of the retroactive immunity it gave both the Bush administration and the phone companies.

It really is a balance of security and privacy. As to the phone information, it seems to me that as long as ACCESS to the data is limited - which it is now and it could be tightened if needed - this is what you would want if you were charged with setting up a system that could quickly identify co-conspirators of a terrorist. Traditionally, law enforcement has always been able to get phone records with a subpoena - with FISA something similar to a subpoena is needed. The difference is that the data is already collected and organized and is from all providers. I would assume that the data requested is both the outbound and the inbound calls to the person of interest.

I have seen people here suggest that this could be used to get information on protesters, rival politicians or everybody - and that it could be used to out people calling places that would embarrass them if public. All these possibilities could and should be eliminated by constraining what uses are valid - which law already attempts to do.

Even Wyden said that they were not allowed to take notes on the things that they voted on.

As to this being a "balance" between security and privacy, not buying that either. The weight should be on privacy, and that should outweigh security, because if it doesn't, then we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What is the sense in having a democracy if you throw it out the fucking window trying to protect it?

I'm glad that YOU don't care about anything but their ACCESS being restricted, but most of us have a major problem with our data and content being STORED. We have that problem because it creates just what Snowden says it does: turnkey tyranny. I don't want my goddamn data COLLECTED or STORED, and neither should you.

If the law attempts to constrain the powers that be from using this collected, and stored, information to target activists and politicians, then it is sorely inept at it. Hello? THAT, very apparently, doesn't work, does it? So, how about just stop fucking collecting and storing shit that you don't have PROBABLE cause to go after, in the first place!

You pointed out a part of it I highlighted. Do you get the argument being made? As to why all secret law must be unconstitutional? Because it cannot have the consent of a public from which it is being kept?

They are saying:
1) The law was made in secret or had secret provisions
2) Because the law was made in secret and people involved had to sign disclosure agreements, the only way to inform the public was to violate confidentiality.
3) Therefore Snowden had no choice that let him inform the public without violating his confidentiality requirements.


I agree that IF there were secret laws - that not even the legislators know of - then what is said may follow.

What I dispute is whether, in fact, the law was secret from the legislators and the public at large. The floor debates were on CSPAN and the open hearings can be watched on the committees' websites. In addition, there were closed meeting - with more detail - that Congressmen could attend. On ANY bill that is at all controversial later, there will be legislators claiming that the bill as implemented was not what they expected. There is NOTHING I learned about the phone data collection that I did not already know. There had even been articles in the MSM in 2006/2007 explaining how they would have the ability to look at the interconnections of the people called and who called the subject. Therefore I reject that this law was made in secret.

As I rejected their first assumption, everything that depended on the first assumption becomes moot in this case. That is why I did not explore any of the nuances of anything else.

And I suggest that laws that one can be thrown in jail for revealing are indeed secret, and it seems clear that a good deal of such secret law has just been "declassified", for political reasons, in an effort to show us it is not secret, so that makes it hard to argue that it was not secret before, if you see.

But the basic problem is that our national scurity state has been caught out lying to us, and lying to the congress too, so their assurances are now worth nothing.

And the other basic problem is that we do and have been enthusiasticallly throwing whistle-blowers in jail and torturing them, and therefore assurances that we will abide by the rule of law and respect the rights of alleged criminals are also not worth a bucket of warm spit, and everybody knows it. In better times, we brag on it.

The law itself is in the Congressional record. The reason you do want the full details out is that it could make it easier for people wanting to evade detection because they learn specifically what is analyzed. You are conflating the "law" with what is essentially the system specifications. Just as the ACA did not design the exchanges - rather it defined what functions they must perform, the FISA law did not specify the system design for the systems that people like Snowden had access to.

The fact is that the main things that Snowden put out originally, could all have been discussed by him (or anyone) based on what was said in 2006/2007. In his case, he would bring the credibility of saying he left his job because he disagreed with the mission they had and that his intent was to explain what was being done. Everything he said could then have pointed to a PUBLIC document of impeccable credibility and he could have editorialized all he wanted beyond that.

This would of course mean that he would not have given Greenwald the trove of other documents ranging from the China one that spoke of US spying to see the extent of Chinese intellectual privacy to embarrassing the US and Britain for spying.

You can't give permission to people to leak with impunity. It is not a bad idea for the person to be willing to go to jail rather than to not disclose something as it would insure that it had to be something of huge concern and importance to that person. Then, it is possible if most people agree that it was warranted that it would not come to that.

Here, the most disturbing thing is that someone - expert on computers, but very new - was given access to so much and he abused it.

The basic argument being made here is that the American citizenry must be lied to and prevented from knowing the truth about their government, for their own good. And that is Snowden's "crime", that he told us. That is simply a ludicrous argument to make in a country that calls itself democratic. It's like everybody except the spooks is too immature or naive to know the truth. I think it's the other way, the immature and naive people I see here are Clapper and Hayden and their ilk, the guys who created this mess.

The FISA laws were debated many times. I don't think people were lied to. I heard in 2006 that this information was being collected. I was against it being done illegally, with no oversight and without any controls. Even the 2007 bill corrected much of that and if you read the statements of legislators many "nos" were due to the retroactive immunity given to the phone companies and the Bush administration.

I know you were very active here way before 2006. Could you really have missed or forgotten the huge number of threads on FISA in late 2006 and summer of 2007 and again in summer 2008? Do you remember Chris Dodd speaking of leading a filibuster in late 2006? -- and getting far too few Senators behind him. I remember putting CSPAN2 on in the background to hear the various comments on the floor of the Senate.

I think the fact that Clapper did not honestly answer every question given to him by Congress is abhorrent - and I would agree that he should be replaced. However, that did not mean that no one knew about the program. (In fact, had Snowden done what I said and said Clapper was not telling the truth - we get to the same point without him violating anything he could go to jail for.

I also see that you are capable of forming and expressing a coherent argument and understand logical inference. But I don't see where this discussion can go anywhere while you still claim that government employees have the right and duty to lie to the public about what they are up to "to protect us".

I specifically said that Clapper was wrong to do so -- and that he should be fired for doing so.

As to the US Constitution disagreeing with my premise, that is ridiculous and a pretty desperate argument. You have not disputed that Snowden - without releasing ANY classified material - could have made the same points on the FISA system and PRISM. The fact is that, just as in 2005 when the NYT first exposed the phone record collect, people have responded to the idea that their information is included. Snowden could have tripped that same American nerve.

In 2005, the issue was actually much more serious. This was the executive branch collecting and analyzing the information with NO oversight what so ever. One big question was whether it could have been used politically. That is not the issue now.

The government has no business telling us what we can know about, no business keeping secrets from us, no business assuming we are children at all. They are employees, our employees, not our bosses. If anything they ought to be busting a gut to make sure we know EVERYTHING, so we could do our jobs as citizens properly.

You are and have been defending secrecy as a policy of democratic government, you think it's necessary and OK. I think you are not just wrong, but disastrously wrong, and I think our current situation shows that quite clearly. I have a lot of company, very good company too. So sue me.

do understand that there are things that are secret - and there have been for hundreds of years.

Policies are NOT secret, government budgets are NOT secret, laws are NOT secret. There are trade secrets that companies have and there are secrets that are the results of government investigations. I am for transparency in the law making process. There are things that if everything were made public would expose our weaknesses to people who would harm us.

I think it incredibly naive that you seem to think that there are no legitimate secrets.

And like the OP says, calling people naive is not a winning argument.

Finally, I want to offer an excerpt from my post #2 above:

"I also see that you are capable of forming and expressing a coherent argument and understand logical inference. "

Never in my years at school or my decades at Bell Labs, then the premier research company in the US, did anyone question my ability to do so -- or to comment - as if in surprise - that I was competent.

I do agree that there is nowhere to continue this.

Because you did offer a coherent response to my question. That does not happen often here.

That you thought it an insult is unfortunate.

THEY are saying that their INTERPRETATION of these laws is classified. That means that the means and methods by which they are enforced are SECRET. What is it about that that you don't understand now?

Edited to add: They just NOW gave us a White Paper on this (which we ALSO don't have any reason to believe is true, given how many lies they've told to us, already) on how they are interpreting these laws. Up until now, it's been SECRET. Not even Congress knew how they were being interpreted. That's NOT consent of the governed, by any standards.

... when they violate our 4th amendment rights in secrecy on a massive scale. That is a pretty huge crime, and you are right. Those people did have a choice on whether to have the NSA violate American's constitutional rights.

Snowden also had a choice on whether to ignore this crime or let everyone know that it was going on. I'm glad he chose to work for the people and not for those who falsely claim they work for the people when they are violating their rights heavily.

I actually do not feel my privacy has been violated on a massive scale - any more than I did when I knew that At&T had similar information archived on phone usage.

An interesting perspective from the 7/7 bombings of buses and subways in England was that they had CATV monitoring the access to all subways which allowed them to very quickly know who did the bombing. Do you feel this was an invasion of the privacy of all innocent people entering and exiting the subway? This data is at least as rich as the phone data collected.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014566871

Go back to the link and see what the reasons were, most were operator errors, if you have every had a typo then you would be guilty of the same.

However, many people will not admit to peeking deliberately, BECAUSE it's illegal to do, theoretically at least. You have to give lip service to the rules, like cops do in similar situations, testilying. So of course it says that, whatever the facts are.

If these are self-reported reasons, they mean diddly squat, otherwise, maybe they mean something, maybe not.

But the point here is they say they don't ("nobody is reading your emails", which is doubly a lie, anybody can read your emails, and the government damn well does) and yet we find they do, in other words they lie to us. We only get the truth when we find it ourselves, they are not going to ever give it to us without pressure, because they think hiding stuff from the public is a good thing.

themselves, integrity is not a part of the lives of those who do not follow standard operating procedures, other errors like operator errors are like typo errors and unless you have never had a typo then you might be one of a very few in this world. The process of collecting data was known in 2005 if not earlier so if you have just found out in 2013 you are not listening.

I've known for sure since the 1990s. I used to be a network administrator, among other things.

The difference now is everybody else knows for sure too.

And i think he is a Communist Spy.

eom

There are different legal traditions around the world. The really glaring example is between American law and Islamic law. If we keep our focus on that simple issue the debate can stand out much further. In fact the basic bedrock in each is very opposite. The American Constitution compared to Islamic Constitution correlates to a lot of secrecy but differs in context. American law avoids religion by separation of state, where as Islam the Constitution is religious, is the Quran, a spectacular difference. Here is a good argument, though some may disagree, however, interpretation goes wild or personal especially when the Constitution is based on religion.


Terrorism or radicalism forms on both sides we witness McVeigh to Bin Laden, here each for their own reasons destroy human life taking actions that symbolize objection to the system they live in and deal with. It surprises me that it doesn’t baffle more citizens or any politician to realize a Democratic form of government is highly and unlikely to take shape in Islam because of this simple difference. If anyone clings to their guns and religion it is Islam, not the American religious right as perpetrated by Limbaugh and his team.

We are probably discussing in terms of legal tradition rather than legal system, obviously those are the overtones that one percenters get away with crime whereas common folk get stuck being taxed to hell. From my view thinking Snowden is very justified to leak this information because of the profiteering taking place, worse those that deny such corruption should be addressed as preposterous.

But true accordingly Snowden broke the law, but so did Bush and Cheney in torturing or outing Valerie Plame obviously the media as key players in the foulest of reasoning and reporting to the public within any time frame. A whole lot of people did not go to jail for that, yet Blagojevich shoots his mouth off over the telephone and gets fourteen year in the slammer. In that case phone tapping sure meant something. With that said especially highlighted that torture is an international crime not just treason, and what kind of money traded during the tortures. So America has in both respects lost it prominence as a leader, Americans cannot be trusted to be honest in war. Or likely not trusted in peace, plus now banking is totally screwed up worldwide because of this distrust.

This is a bleak picture but there is a way out it is called building the infrastructure, renew the post office bring the postal service into the new millennium alone would change the economy.