Edward Snowden reveals the 21th Centurys' Global Big Brother

With tongue firmly planted in cheek...Yeah, back when she used to slaughter her own people instead of those of other nationalities.

 

@Takao
Although I regard statistics as a pseudo-scientific support for lies, I agree with your previous assertions. Rather in a qualitative way than quantitatively. Some other military force would have caused much higher number of casualties, that's certain. And yet the question remains why America as a state got dragged in such unpleasant affairs? Trends indicate that America is sinking lower and lower while it appears that trust in government among average Americans is increasing. Just decades ago Nixon fell for reasons that would have been perfectly acceptable today. He was spying too, wasn't he?

 

But of course, Obama compares best with Nixon! He is even worse. Look:

 

Not necessarily. Nixon's spying was done for personal gain. The NSA's spying was done under the guise of national security.

This is even spelled out in the approved Article II Section 2 of Nixon's Articles of Impeachement

Then we have his many attempts to "cover up" the whole affair, which is what Article I deals with, and finally Article III which essentially states that he behaved in a non-presidential manner.


So, no, I cannot say, in good faith, that Nixon fell in a manner that would be "perfectly acceptable" today.

 

After being kidnapped by Barack O'sama for more than a month Eddie Snowden hopes his suffering would end with the Russian permission to leave the Moscow Airport. I hope that the Russians wouldn't bend under pressure of a treat.

 

Here is a question: Would you let a fugitive who enjoys making trouble have free rein of your country?

If the Russians bend to the Americans, it certainly won't be on this issue.

 

Certainly not: a troublemaker is a troublemaker. But what concerns me is indeed a grim trend towards trading freedom for illusion of safety and human rights. Also, determination to literally hunt a man in public has just one objective: to intimidate potential future whistleblowers.

It is frightening that this happens in the USA with almost unanimous support of the western democracies. If freedom and privacy falls there, there is no hope for us. I would like very much to see the West protecting freedom, not reducing it.

 

I was investigating today the reason why American authorities in talks about Snowden choose the word "return" instead of "extradict". Clearly, they want to compare Snowden with many little Russian thieves who came to the USA illegaly and have been returned to Russia because of their criminal activities.
However, Snowden isn't a thieve and in many countries, including Russia, he couldn't be persecuted for his alleged "crimes". Therefore, there is no reason neither for "extradiction" nor the "return".

American authorities should first recall a case of Ilyas Akhmadov, a Chechen terrorist whom they granted asylum - in a country fighting terrorism.

 

Seems that the British were also unimpressed with Russian "evidence" against Chechens.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/nov/14/chechnya.russia

 

Do you think that others than Americans are impressed with American "evidence" and American behaviour these days? This is the lowest point of American reputation.

 

No, it's not -the lowest recent point was in 2007 when the US was down around 30%, now it is around 40%, according to some foreign popularity polls(although a recent Pew study placed it as high as 63%). So we still have another 10% to go. Truthfully, foreign opinion has been in the tank since 2002-03.

But hey, that does not stop them from taking our money.
http://foreignassistance.gov/CountryIntro.aspx

 

Considering they end up using up around 25% of total world resources they are still paying too littlle And it would be very interesting exercise to superimpose that map with a report on government corruption .
Foreign money can be a huge obstacle to true democratic development.

Back to the main subject:
As expected the US has "whitewashed after the fact" any potential internal legal issues, the diplomatic damage is still consistent, European politicians that accept that sort of behaviour by an "ally" are going to loose a lot of votes, though strangely it's the Germans rather than the French that are making the most noise (after the Echelon fiasco when so called "NATO intelligence" was used to favour US firms in bidding for inernational competitions the French are generally pretty wary of US surveillance).
Italy is of course out of the game, sad truth is the Italian goverment has been legally" tracking all electronic comunication (metadata not content) for years (IIRC the law was passed in 2003) and they don't want to remind the voters that other people consider that sort of behaviour questionable.

 

Just wait and see; Europeans are less intimidated by the American scarecrows and care a bit more for privacy than the US ant it's European franchise: the UK.

 

After Snowden told us the truth, the US politicians look indeed ridiculous when they preach about moral values.

Senator Dianne Feinstein said on CNN’s “State of the Union":

"He (Snowden) went to two big cyber-intruding powers — China and Russia "

But of course, China and Russia are cyber-intruders because America owns the Internet. Now, how the US can preach about the fair use of internet

 

Now, that is just too funny..

As I pointed out earlier, German intelligence was essentially moving in lock-step with the NSA. Any crying, whining, and hand-wringing done by German politicians is most likely an attempt to direct any national and international attention onto the USA and away from their own in-house "dirty laundry." The Germans were not intimidated by American "scarecrows," because they were using the same "scarecrows" for their own purposes.

France has kept mostly quiet, because, as it turns out, they have been doing the same darn thing!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/04/us-france-security-idUSBRE9630FS20130704
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23201769
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/05/world/france-runs-prism-like-spy-network-le-monde/#.UfWsNG1iIVo
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2356178/Hollandes-hypocrisy-Edward-Snowden-revelations-revealed-French-intelligence-services-spy-illegally.html
http://www.henrileriche.com/2013/07/05/hypocrisy-of-hollandes-fury-over-snowden-revelations-as-its-revealed-french-intelligence-services-spy-on-publics-phone-calls-emails-and-social-media/

Spain:
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number11.12/spain-use--trojans-to-spy

From http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-security30oct30,0,3975040.story

Now, I believe you were saying something about Europeans caring a bit more about privacy...

 

No, our politicians are bastards too, perhaps worse than the American. In my midget country all of them are liars and pathological kleptomaniacs. The only difference is that we don't let us be blinded by patriotism and frightened by scarecrows like Al Qaeda etc. If Snowden were my countryman he would have been celebrated as a hero. American trust in own political elite is ridiculous.

 

We're not blinded by patriotism...We just don't care.

While Snowden may have told the world "something new". It really is not new...nor does it have anything to do with any "patriotism."
Lotus Notes From January, 1999: http://m.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html
Windows 95 From April, 1999: http://m.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html?from-classic=1
Another one from 1999: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/03/windows.nsa.02/
and it's Wikipage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

So, Snowden is not telling us anything we did not already know, he only told us something we had "chosen" to forget...or ignore.

 

Thank you for being so honest. I think this is the essence of the whole affair. Snowden is talking about Obama's New Clothes.

 

Normally, in the USA everything is in accordance to laws, but just on their own soil. If they want to treat people illegally they just relocate them to the foreign soil. If they want torture people they open a G.U.L.A.G. abroad: at Guantanamo Bay, for example. Certain people had similar facilities and similar methods. I will refrain from naming them.

Poor Snowden, they revoked his papers and he is now Mr. Nobody in the Nowhere-land. In Russia but not exactly in Russia. USA want him to come back home but they have deprived him from possibility to travel: they invalidated his passport. USA want Russians to extradite him but Russia cannot extradite – they have no extradition laws. USA want Russia to return him but how Russia does not know whom to return: Snowden has no valid identification documents. USA want him back because they've charged him for committing unlawful deeds, but refuse to do that in written: Russia has not yet received anything in written. USA blackmail the Russian president Vladimir Putin to hand over Snowden against the Russian laws, but his primary function is to defend laws.

We can enumerate an endless list of things America wants to do against laws, just not on their own soil.
I don't know a proper word to name such behavior but I can recall just one: barbaric and yet I doubt that choice because barbarians had no laws.