The Guardian has agreed with the New York Times to give the U.S. newspaper access to some classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, both papers said on Friday.
In a brief story posted on its website, the Guardian said it “struck a partnership” with the Times after the British government threatened the Guardian with legal action unless it either surrendered or destroyed files it received from Snowden about Government Communications Headquarters – Britain’s equivalent of NSA.
So the Times is on board now. Who else? Oh:
The nonprofit investigative reporting group ProPublica is among the media organizations with access to some National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, another suggestion that the reportorial investigation into the NSA’s programs and practices is broader than previously known.
ProPublica, a source familiar with the situation said, is doing the lead reporting on one piece of the collaboration with the Guardian — which was the first to print Snowden’s revelations — and The New York Times, which BuzzFeed reported Friday had been brought in to work on one portion of the documents, which relate in some way to the NSA’s connections to its British counterpart.
You mean, this may be an actual story, even though Bob Cesca and a bunch of other people (embarassingly, some front pagers here) have completely lost their shit? I mean, it isn’t really about Glenn Greenwald and manic progressives and hating on Obama? Let’s look at some of Cesca’s trenchant analysis:
Were it not for the melodramatic personal struggles of the reporters and their source, along with the link-bait and bad reporting that constantly demands careful inspection, we might be talking about ways to improve and reform America’s surveillance operations.
Check out the big brain on Bob! He can wrap his head around every detail of Greenwald perfidy, real and mostly imagined, but that’s all he has room for! He can’t possibly also field a discussion about the actual NSA abuses- he’s just too fucking busy reaching for the fainting couch because some of the reporters involved just aren’t up to his standards. Drama Queens! Melodramatic fags! Suck on that, Ackerman and others. You are unworthy. Your actual reporting doesn’t hold up to the fact free wanking. Deal with it, beeoch.
Greenwald isn’t going to be the story for much longer, so it will be fun watch these guys come up with new villains.
J
Hope this makes shooting the messenger–the favorite pastime of many in these parts–a little harder.
Omnes Omnibus
Any chance of someone here with a megaphone posting something about Wyden and Leahy? How about reposting those Congressional phone numbers like Tim F. did during the ACA fight? I know my congresspeople’s numbers; I’ve called them about supporting legislation to rein in surveillance. OTOH one could bitch about people bitching about Greenwald.
A Humble Lurker
Not if Greenwald has anything to say about it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus christ.
Cygil
What’s the countdown on John Cole leaving his own blog for Firedoglake, leaving the yellow-dog democrats to play here?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: Why would they do that, when it’s easier to generate 500-comment flame wars?
mclaren
This is classic abused-wife behavior. It’s learned helplessness. I can’t speak up, he might hit me again. That person who keeps telling my husband is a bad person is evil, I have to call the police on him. He’s just trying to get me to do bad things so my husband will take a tire iron to me again, and that’s evidence my husband loves me, because punishing me is what he has to do whenever I make mistakes. And I always do make mistakes like forgetting to rub his feet when he comes home, since I’m just a bad bad bad person…
The KGB got people into this mindset after beating them for three weeks non-stop.
Now it’s the American people’s turn. How sad. The American people used to be real live human beings. Now they’re just human punching bags pathetically rationalizing their victimization because the prospect of facing their real situation is just too horrific to admit even to themselves.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Honestly, I don’t know. I actually care about the issue; I just don’t want to talk about Greenwald, right or wrong.
Mnemosyne
Since the story has been out for over two months now, one can’t help but wonder if more substantial reporting would have been possible if the Guardian and Greenwald hadn’t been clinging to their “scoop” for so long and refusing to share the information with other news outlets.
Oh, wait, can’t criticize Saint Greenwald and his methods. Everything he does is perfect and pure and done in precisely the right way, and wondering if this information sharing could have been done sooner only questions the perfection of Saint Greenwald and his methods. My bad.
AT
What’s so hard about look forward and not backwards for you to understand? There’s nothing to see here! Move along!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: so do I, but I have largely refrained from talking about it here.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope. Because the real question that John has is How Right Was Glenn Greenwald? not How Do We Stop This Shit?
? Martin
@J:
Indeed it should. Unlike Greenwald, ProPublica won’t fuck up the conclusions of the information they get.
Hunter Gathers
Can we call for a T-Bogg unit after he’s retired?
Villago Delenda Est
The problem is, as far as the MSM and Greenwald are concerned (and the “honorable” Congressman Kotex) this IS about bashing Obama. None of these types concerned their pretty little heads with Voldemort and his puppet in the Oval Office were doing this shit. The NSA’s capabilities have been known for fucking decades. The problem, of course, is procedure and process were trashed by the Dark Lord and his minions. Now all the sudden Kotex is “concerned” about NSA abuses. Well, la de da.
Ted & Hellen
Hey John…that last check bounced.
I’ll need a cashiers check or direct wire deposit, like time before last.
Jeesh.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Villago Delenda Est: Kotex?
Ted & Hellen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Was a melodramatic fag?
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: James Sensenbrenner is heir to Kimberly-Clark money. He hates being called Tex.
Ted & Hellen
@Omnes Omnibus:
So stay out of the thread.
???
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
This. It’s easy to shoot Greenwald as messenger, because he gratuitously inserts himself into the story and distorts the truth as much as he thinks he can get away with. It will be nice to have some competent journalists in charge for a change.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: okay, that’s a new one to me.
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
There’s no WE about it, codependent one.
THE One could stop this shit tomorrow. He’s prez, remember? He sought the job, he just won’t do the job.
kdaug
Yup.
Mark S.
Shit, I thought Fuckhead was trolling, but he was dead serious. We would already be having a national discussion on surveillance and the Patriot Act if it weren’t for Snowden, Greenwald, and Corner Stone.
Fuck them all to hell!
askew
I am more interested in when Cole and the other drooling fanboys of Greenwald will finally admit that he’s been lying and exaggerating during this entire Snowden scandal. Or when they start to acknowledge that maybe Snowden isn’t a whistleblower but possibly up to no good.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: I don’t really give a fuck about that either. The fucking laws need to be fixed.
askew
@Mnemosyne:
Yep, that is it in a nutshell. We are required to take everything Greenwald and Snowden say at face value even if they are contradicting themselves.
At this point, I am not even sure what the white, male libertarians are outraged about. Is it Obama making the UK detain Greenwald’s spouse?
Ripley
We got a 10-53, blog down, I repeat, blog down.
Richard
@askew:
Perhaps now is the time that the “Snowden is Jesus and MLK rolled into one!” narrative starts unwinding…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-russian-consulate-while-in-hong-kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop
MOSCOW — Before American fugitive Edward Snowden
arrived in Moscow in June — an arrival that Russian officials have said
caught them by surprise — he spent several days living at the Russian
Consulate in Hong Kong, a Moscow newspaper reported Monday.
The article in Kommersant, based on accounts from several
unnamed sources, did not state clearly when Snowden decided to seek
Russian help in leaving Hong Kong, where he was in hiding to evade
arrest by U.S. authorities on charges that he leaked top-secret
documents about U.S. surveillance programs…
Kommersant cited conflicting accounts as to what brought Snowden to the
consulate, on the 21st floor of a skyscraper in a fashionable
neighborhood. It quoted a Russian close to the Snowden case as saying
that the former NSA contractor arrived on his own initiative and asked
for help. But a Western official also interviewed by the newspaper
alleged that Russia had invited him.
chopper
you really got our number, cole. it’s all about the fags. faggots everywhere! will no one rid us of these meddlesome fags?
Jesus, you sound like greenwald and his need to paint everyone who disagrees with him with his ‘worshipping dear leader’ garbage.
I’d say ‘sober up’, but you’re off the sauce, so I’ll just say ‘grow up’.
askew
@Richard:
That would require Greenwald’s fanboys to admit that they were misled by Greenwald and Snowden and I have yet to see one of his fans (Chris Hayes, John Cole, Rachel Maddow, etc.) even acknowledge that even 1 of the revelations of Greenwald/Snowden haven’t been true.
Laertes
The bitter-enders are going to grow ever more desperate as their narrative falls apart. The longer this story drags on, the worse the various government players look, and the more irrelevant Greenwald and Snowden’s personalities become.
You can see some early signs of this desperation in any Mnemosyne remark, all of which can be shortened to GREENWALD GREENWALD GREENWALD.
Stories like, say, http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/world/europe/glenn-greenwald-nsa-fallout , bounce right off such a person’s mental filters. This crew sees the G word and stops thinking, because they’ve seen everything they need to know. All the creepy stuff that follows can’t possibly register.
Mandalay
@askew:
Focusing on the character of Snowden is just as irrelevant as focusing on Greenwald.
Nobody in government or national security would be admitting anything, or pondering any reform at all, were it not for Snowden’s revelations. Consider how much information Snowden has revealed which the authorities have explicitly or implicitly verified as correct. Why not chew on that mountain of information, rather than obsessing about whether Snowden is or is not a whistleblower. Which matters most to you?
askew
@Laertes:
Actually, the opposite is happening. As the stories are getting investigated it turns out there is really not a huge NSA abuse happening. The NSA doesn’t read our e-mails. The # of domestic emails incorrectly obtained by the NSA was less than .001% of all emails instead of the millions that Greenwald asserted. And each one of these stories has become less explosive as they are investigated further. Yes, there is a need for more oversight and tweaking of the law but there is not a massive NSA security breach happening to Americans and Greenwald’s assertion that there is has been a lie.
Richard
@askew:
I quoted that piece because I wonder if Snowden staying with the Russians in Hong Kong is just “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of just how much he has been cooperating with them all along.
I’ve had a feeling that we’ll ultimately find out that he’s been a Judas goat.
RandomMonster
@Mnemosyne:
And to criticize means you’re a homophobe and AMERICA FUCK YEAH.
Omnes Omnibus
Congressional phone numbers.
askew
@Richard:
I’ve thought that since Snowden refused to return to the U.S. instead of camping out at the Moscow airport. He’s shady as hell and more will come out about it. Unfortunately, even if that happens we’ll never see those on the left who have been wrong this whole time own up to their mistakes.
justsomeguy
It seems to me that if GG wanted to not be the story then he’d, at the very least, do a better job of reporting. The issues seem complicated enough, at least to me, without someone having their thumb on the scale. Even if it is for noble reasons, and I’m willing to bet that the reasons are somewhat noble and somewhat self-serving, GG is distracting and I don’t think you are being an honest dealer by chastising people to ignore his flawed reporting and only discuss “the issues”. The frame is part of the picture, as it were and since he is driving this story you can have separate discussions but you also have to consider the source.
Mandalay
@askew:
We don’t really know that. The core problem is that there is no Congressional oversight of what the NSA does.
I don’t trust the NSA at all. There are many instances of them stonewalling Congress, withholding information from Congress, and deliberately lying to Congress. Until that is resolved, everything the NSA asserts to put itself in a favorable light is just meaningless window dressing.
Badtux
Let’s see: Greenwald has cooties. Snowden has cooties. Thus there is no story.
That’s the argument in a nutshell: that it isn’t about whether the story about the NSA spying on us in an unconstitutional manner is true or not, it’s about Greenwald and Snowden having cooties. And if they have cooties, you must ignore the story because, well, COOTIES!
Sigh. Didn’t that argument stop working after 3rd or 4th grade? Just askin’.
– Badtux the “Cooties!” Penguin
Omnes Omnibus
@Badtux: I am starting to get the impression that some would rather bash the Greenwald-bashers than talk about the actual story how to Congress to exercise some oversight.
amk
So can we expect I-endorse-rand-paul-for-president post from you soon, cole?
Russell M
Is it okay to be happy the greenwald the pure is not the going to be the story? I actually want their to be some, you know oversight on our surveilence state. maybe just a little.
Splitting Image
Greenwald wouldn’t have been the story at all if he had handled his scoop in a more professional manner.
Laertes
@askew: Great example, thanks. Here we’ve got a story in which the British government is doing extremely creepy stuff, but because it’s got the Greenwald name on it, that’s all invisible to you.
Take, for example, this bit of weaselspeak:
Had the Blair government tried out a line like that ten years ago, we’d all have seen it for the horseshit that it is.
Honestly, guys, do you think you’re doing Obama any favors by truckling to the NSA here? Don’t you think he could make use of a little popular anger over the ever-growing national security state?
“I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.” – F.D.R.
Mandalay
@Richard:
But there is no “Jesus and MLK” narrative. You just invented it as a strawman because you have nothing useful to offer.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Amen to that. Beginning with the WWI-era Espionage Act.
But then, Congress can’t even get its act together enough to once and for all bury beyond resurrection the mohair subsidies left over from Red Scare times.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus:
Therein lies the problem. Which laws need fixing? Among our revelations is the PRISM program that GG announced allowed the government to spy on everyones social media accounts, except that every bit of additional information on the program shows that it’s merely a mechanism to satisfy subpoenas in order to not give the NSA full access to everyone’s social media accounts.
We have the revelation that the NSA improperly collected 56,000 emails, out of 4 trillion that are sent each year (easy to do given proxies, VPNs and the like). It’s 56,000 too many, but it’s not a significant legal problem – it’s a clerical issue. If the NSA was deliberately collecting emails counter to the law, it’d be a number a hell of a lot larger than 56,000. Same thing with the 2,000 improperly intercepted phone calls (easy to do if you bring a foreign phone into the US) out of 3 billion placed per day, just in the US.
We might be able to have a good discussion if the folks reporting this stuff could provide some reasonable context, and didn’t too often completely fuck up the story.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mandalay:
And we don’t know that less an NSA that someone inside the government wouldn’t use their connections outside the government to spy on everything we’re doing on the internet, circumventing every check and balance that’s been set up. Hell, that might be happening right now, to all of us. But without proof, it’s all theoretical. So do we shut down the internet on the theory that it might be happening?
Laertes
@justsomeguy:
I’m going to stop you right there. Any sentence that begins like that can’t lead to anything useful. Of course Greenwald wants to be the story. A more interesting question is: Why are so many people so eager to oblige him?
Soonergrunt
Wow. Not only do you engage in the very behavior you claim to hate by mau-mau-ing Cesca and others who don’t strictly toe Greenwald’s line (whichever line that is today, because they change over and over and over again, even for the same story,) but you simultaneously belly-ache about how “He can’t possibly also field a discussion about the actual NSA abuses- he’s just too fucking busy reaching for the fainting couch because some of the reporters involved just aren’t up to his standards” when he’s already had that discussion, as have others who can’t stomach Greenwald’s sensationalism and lies, but apparently since he and the rest of us don’t hold to Greenwald’s lack of standards, Cesca and others like him aren’t supposed to hold standards of their own.
“Drama Queens! Melodramatic fags! ” Fuck you. Seriously, you assinine prick, fuck you. I don’t know anybody who’s dragged Greenwald’s orientation into this, explicitly or otherwise, and there’d be a race to call out anyone who did and for you to suggest otherwise in any way is a cheap shitty stunt. Your unsupported claim of homophobia in Greenwald’s critics is geared to generate outrage irrespective of truth value. In that respect, it’s exactly the kind of thing Greenwald would pull come to think of it.
“Greenwald isn’t going to be the story for much longer,”
As long as Greenwald breathes, he’ll keep inserting himself into the story, so normally I’d say something like “you’re not that stupid” but after reading this shit, I can’t really say that.
chopper
@? Martin:
clearly, you hate teh gayes.
Mandalay
@Laertes:
For some here it is far more important to focus on the perceived character deficiencies of the protagonists. Factual revelations about our security are an irritating distraction to their real drama.
Laertes
Basically, there are two kinds of people. There are those who think that the fact that Glenn Greenwald is an asshole means that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to him, and those who think that the fact that Glenn Greenwald is an asshole means that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to anything else.
Mandalay
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
No, of course not. The ideal solution is for Congress to grow a spine and assert its authority but sadly I see little sign of that.
Right now they look like useful idiots who just rubber stamp everything their betters tell them.
Richard
We might be able to have a good discussion if the folks reporting this stuff could provide some reasonable context, and didn’t too often completely fuck up the story.
Exactly. Kind of hard to be reasonable when you are coming at it from the hysterical point of view that Obama is running a STASI police state, which is the pot that Greenwald has been stirring with his sensationalist reporting. Of course, the Guardian typically walks backs the more misleading elements of his stories, however, the outraged readers never pay attention to the corrections.
askew
@Laertes:
The NSA had nothing to do with the UK detaining Miranda nor did Obama no matter what Greenwald alleges. We don’t even have the full story of what happened with Miranda. Greenwald first told us he was detained for 9 hours just for being Glenn’s spouse and was denied an attorney. Then, we find out Miranda was in fact acting as a mule for stolen national security files and that he refused an attorney. Later, we find out that the Guardian was paying for Miranda’s trip and provided an attorney for him, which certainly provides evidence that Miranda was acting as a courier and not an innocent bystander.
I would certainly object to the UK holding a random foreign national for 9 hours for questioning, but Miranda wasn’t just some random foreign national. He was engaging in transporting illegally obtained government documents. The UK government is well within their rights to question him on that. I am not sure why people think claiming you are a journalist or working as a mule for a journalist means that you are not subject to the law. Do I think the UK law needs to be changed? Probably. But, in the scheme of things am I going to be outraged that Miranda got questioned because he decided to engage in shady behavior, no. He wasn’t arrested or treated poorly, he just got questioned and his items got searched. I was questioned and my items searched in the UK too. It wasn’t for 9 hours but I was questioned.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soonergrunt: And he wonders why people occasionally accuse him of trolling…. This is basically why. If one cared about the issue, one could post about it. Or one could be confrontational and drive up traffic.
Badtux
I’m just wondering how many people here are on the EFF and EPIC mailing lists. If you were, nothing that Snowden and Greenwald have revealed is surprising. There have been lawsuits for literally *years* about illegal surveillance by the NSA on U.S. soil, and the lawsuits have invariably been tossed out of court not by being proven frivolous, but because the government invoked Reynolds to get it tossed out of court. If these programs don’t exist, why does the government keep invoking States Secrets to get them tossed out of court? Clearly with all this smoke, there’s fire. The exact nature of the fire is unknown, but there’s too much smoke for this to be just a lit match.
One more factoid: One of my coworkers was working in the main data center of a large national ISP that is run by a group notorious for its tussles with the government. As in, they’ve sued the federal government multiple times and *won*. Except once. That they aren’t allowed to talk about. A FISA warrant was served. At least, the Federal marshals *said* it was a FISA order, but nobody was allowed to see it. A SWAT team held the entire staff of the data center at gunpoint in the parking lot, having cleared the building while scaring the crap out of the staff. As the staff stood there, M-16’s pointed at them, a team of technical personnel pushing carts with electronic equipment piled on them walked by and entered the building. The staff was then notified that the equipment being installed was Federal property and was not to be tampered with, disconnected from their network, or otherwise subverted under penalty of major time in Club Fed, and if they detected tampering they *would* be back and would handcuff every single staff member until they found out who’d touched it. The staff was then allowed to re-enter the premises.
What are those mysterious black boxes doing? Aren’t you the least bit curious?
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
How?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mandalay:
And what happens when Congress takes the initiative, starts enacting more oversight, actually looks into it, then comes back and says that nothing noteworthy- that is, no institutional abuses, just a few errors- happened? Will you be happy with that?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@A Humble Lurker: Engaging him is never worth it.
Soonergrunt
@Richard: Unlike most American papers, the Guardian never notes changes to their stories. The story just changes and the previous version (or versions in the case of many of Greenwald’s stories) just disappear down the memory hole. It’s BECAUSE they get read over and over that people have noticed the differences.
300baud
Could the there-is-no-NSA-story-because-there-is-no-bad-behavior people get together with the there-is-no-story-because-we-have-known-about-this-for-decades people and decide why we should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?
askew
@Laertes:
It’s not that he’s an asshole. It’s that he lies so often that it is impossible to even know what the true story is. The two types of people are those who think Greenwald is an asshole who lies and aren’t sure if there is anything to get outraged over and want more facts and those who think Greenwald is an asshole and are OUTRAGED!!!!!!!! at the government because Greenwald said the NSA is doing bad things and anyone who disagrees is an authoritarian Republican in disguise.
Laertes
@askew:
Yeah, Johnson over at LGF is beating that drum too. It’s not very persuasive. The idea, I guess, is they held him for nine hours, and for eight of those hours they insisted that if he wanted to talk to a lawyer, it had to be one that they provided for him? It’s pretty weak sauce. And, of course, the real issue there is that they used some kind of “anti-terrorism” statute to hold him, which is of course what always happens when you give Law Enforcement a new toy–they use it for stuff that everyone solemnly swore that they wouldn’t back when they were first asking for the thing.
Which is kind of the whole point here anyway.
Splitting Image
@Mandalay:
I agree with all of this. But what I think a lot of people don’t realize is that the problem that needs to be solved here is Congress. Not the NSA, strictly speaking.
Look at it this way. There are many instances of politicians stonewalling the news media, withholding information from them, and deliberately lying to them. If the news media consistently lets this go unchallenged, which of the two is the bigger problem?
Mandalay
@Soonergrunt:
Well said – I don’t know anybody either.
Smearing people with thinly veiled bogus accusations of homophobia is every bit as vile as homophobia itself.
RandomMonster
@Laertes:
Fine, that’s a worthwhile topic and we could talk intelligently about the relative creepiness of Britain’s attitude toward freedom of the press. We should also talk about the fact that that has nothing to do with the NSA or how much our privacy is being abused, Britain being a rather different country.
What’s vexing is that Cole’s posts don’t bother to consider the important questions about surveillance in the 21st century: how much, to what degree, who has oversight, how often is the process abused, etc. Instead, he just attributes the most superficial motives to critics of the Guardian’s reporting — and then he can’t stop there, he has to put words in their mouths like “melodramatic fags”.
Get over it — most of us aren’t talking about GG at all.
Laertes
@askew:
Close. It’s more like we’ve been worried for a long time about the ever-growing reach of the national security state, and we’re glad that the public is finally starting to get creeped out about it. The guys who rung the bell aren’t the guys we’d have chosen, and their motives are murky, but the simple fact is the bell needed ringing and they rung it.
Badtux
Question: Someone above said something about “Greenwald LIES!”. What lies? Please inform a poor herring-breathed penguin!
Omnes Omnibus
@Laertes: That story comes from Miranda and is in the Guardian.
Look, the Terrorism Act of 2000 is a pretty crappy law. It is just like the PATRIOT Act in that respect. When a legislature passes laws like that, it may as well expect that the executive will use any powers that it has been given. If we don’t like those powers being used, we need to repeal the laws.
Richard
It’s BECAUSE they get read over and over that people have noticed the differences.
Sure, some people have, but somehow the mitigating details and corrections that get added later never get mentioned by the outraged when they discuss the story elsewhere down the line. I’m a little tired of reading “facts” that the Guardian has debunked itself.
? Martin
@Badtux:
They’re hoovering up all of the data that goes through one of their servers. There’s a packet filter on there that’s looking for specifically keyed data, capturing that, and storing it for later retrieval.
The intel community has been doing this kind of thing for decades. Just because it’s in a data center rack doesn’t make it any different from the same taps that were put in phone relays back in the 50s or 60s. Certainly you’ve seen, well, any crime drama made in the last half century. If so, this shouldn’t really be a big surprise.
BruceJ
@? Martin:
Actually, these are the numbers that the NSA has shared with us. Given that they have a history of lying to us and congress time and time again, Mortons doesn’t manufacture enough salt annually to take that with.
The spooks LOVE it that this has turned into a catfight over GG. The more attention paid to him, the less to the absurd house of cards they’re trying to pretend their ‘oversight’ is,
56,000 emails doesn’t need the worlds largest data center in the desert in Utah. And you’ll note these are the complete emails they’re talking about.
Just as with the cellphone sweeps, where they collect EVERYONE’S metadata so they can play their games of six degrees of Kevin Bin Laden, they’re very carefully NOT saying they don’t go scooping up everyone’s email headers. You know, just in case you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who bought felafel from that suspicious store where someone who knows someoone who might be a terrorist once shopped.
? Martin
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I doubt it. He’s got the same attitude toward the NSA that the Tea Party has toward the Department of Education, the IRS, and the department of HHS. Same schtick, different acronym.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Because if we all ignore them they will stop doing it? I don’t think so.
You alone have taken it to another meta-level, by constantly complaining about those arguing with those who complain about GG. Well done.
askew
@Badtux:
The list is too long to track. He’s been doing it for years. Little Green Footballs is doing a good job on tracking his statements and clarifications that he’s been making during this debacle. But, it has been a problem with Greenwald for a long time and it is why no one should be taking him at his word.
TG Chicago
@Soonergrunt:
Cole quoted that right after quoting this from Cesca:
(emphasis added)
Not sure how to read Cesca’s comment without seeing it as a complaint that Manning was/is going through gender issues and that Greenwald failed to be quiet when his partner was detained.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Go read my first comment on this thread. If someone cares about the issue, maybe he/she will do something about. If they care about the GG/Snowden fight, they will wallow in that.
ruemara
@Laertes: He admitted he had a lawyer he specifically wanted to use-one provided by the Guardian. This contributed to the 9 hour delay. Jesus. This is the problem with the circus atmosphere GG et al have created. There is a massive issue with the NSA oversight. Not the actual presence of the NSA-the oversight and regulation. Instead, we’re arguing about whether they’re really the crusaders they present themselves to be, or not. They’re not. They are manipulating things for their own advantage. Doesn’t stop there from being truth to the issue, but we have to sift what they’re saying and doing to find the facts. That’s not journalism, that’s a cold reader with just enough info to be dangerous.
And Cole, get bent. These guys are fucking up the story for their own glory. Cesca and Johnson are right. The story keeps changing and details emerge that do not match up to their headlines. The corrections go on page 24 after a few days of the wrong thing blaring across the front page. Not one of the people you’re deriding have said there wasn’t a trenchant story. They’re saying there isn’t any trenchant analysis. You’re supposed to be smarter than this. I find it interesting how all these ultra-lefty types are more hero-worshipping than the “Obots” they deride. Nice use of the term fags, as if Cesca ever slurred GG on his sexuality. This post is beneath you.
askew
@Laertes:
I’ve got to say I certainly don’t remember any of the white progressives who are losing their shit over Miranda being detained being worried about the creep of the national security state in the UK. Considering the fact that the UK passed this law in 2000, you’d think I would remember Hayes, Maddow, Greenwald, etcs. stories of OUTRAGE over this UK law and the freedoms their citizens have been living without. But, nope I don’t remember anyone giving a shit about it until Greenwald’s spouse ran into trouble with it while trying to travel through the UK with stolen documents. And yet, we are the ones making it about Greenwald.
rda909
@Soonergrunt: C’mon, man. You should know the score by now…
Putin = Good.
Obama = Bad.
That’s the literal endgame of the Snowdenwald and its mindless followers such as Newsmax promoter, John Cole. It’s a big Internet, dude.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Jesus John, are you becoming a dry drunk?
As someone else said elsewhere: Greenwald stands athwart history, one foot in the neo-confederate camp and the other in the neo-Romanov camp.
While Greenwald isn’t the story, he has made himself the story.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@TG Chicago: Manning is not, and has not been, Greenwald’s source in any of this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am still wrapping my head around a libertarian ruining off to Putin’s Moscow for FREEDOM!!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I read that as libertine for a moment. It was disorienting.
Laertes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Then let me help you with that: As bad as things are for him in Russia, it’s likely better than the treatment he’d get in the States. Where you choose to live is in part a statement of your principles, but it’s also about who will or won’t lock you up in a tiny cell for 35 years.
? Martin
@300baud: When we point out that we’ve known about this for decades, it’s to note that Congress has investigated, the courts have heard cases, and the conclusion was that nothing was illegal – or if it was, that bit was corrected. GG and others will occasionally trot one of these things out as an exclusive, everyone gets distracted by the shiny penny, doesn’t bother to apply even a cursory level of skepticism, and decides to act all outraged and then get pissed off that the people that actually read the paper every day and have a memory span longer than a newt are rolling their eyes.
And let’s ask the simple question. If the NSA improperly intercepted 56,000 emails out of 4 trillion that are sent each year, why didn’t they bother to improperly intercept more? If in their egregious disregard for the courts, and congress and the constitution, why hold back? Why take just 1/100000th of a percent of what they could – fewer than I have in my work account? Why not take a million? Fuck, you could fit that on a USB stick. It’s not like they don’t have the capacity. Why do such a timid job of breaking the law, if your intent is to break the law?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@? Martin:
Perhaps. Maybe we’ll find out whether that’s the case or not. Until then, I’m happy to wait for the reply.
rda909
@Laertes: You’ve got to be a parody account, correct? That is some hilarious material right there.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not even bothering anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Actually, and I know I am out of tune with contemporary legal opinion on this, I think the government should need a warrant before they pick up metadata or anything else. I am willing to accept that idea that the 56,000 is statistical noise, but I do not think that we should collect anything within the US without a particularized warrant. Like I said, I am out of sync with standard legal thinking, but fuck it.
? Martin
@BruceJ:
Ok, so here’s the problem. Your assertion is that everything the NSA says is a lie which is very convenient. It means we can NEVER know the truth of what’s happening no matter how much they reveal, how much oversight there is. It means you can spin conspiracy theories forever with no risk of anyone proving you wrong.
Disprovability is a key component of the scientific process and of any factual assertion. You’ve eliminated that possibility. As has Mandalay, and mclaren, and a host of others. No amount of evidence is possible. The NSA is a perfect evil. And if we replace it with another agency, they’ll simply assume the same perfect evil. Again, this is fundamentally no different than the birthers or anyone else like that.
It’s why its pointless to argue with you guys. Any evidence which is provided you’ll dismiss as a lie. Why bother?
NotMax
@? Martin
Foreplay.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Soonergrunt:
Thank you for saying it.
“Drama Queens! Melodramatic fags! ” Fuck you. Seriously, you assinine prick, fuck you. I don’t know anybody who’s dragged Greenwald’s orientation into this, explicitly or otherwise, and there’d be a race to call out anyone who did and for you to suggest otherwise in any way is a cheap shitty stunt.
I do, John Cole. He’s the only person I’ve read that has injected Greenwald’s sexual orientation into this mess. Pretty damned disappointing to see it too.
Yatsuno
@? Martin:
Because the government can never be trusted. Ever. Not with anything. It’s basic libertarian thinking.
The prophet Nostradumbass
The great thing about a conspiracy theory is that it can never be disproven.
Mandalay
@Soonergrunt:
That is not the case. This permanent link shows corrections and clarifications on a daily basis.
Do you have a link to support this? Greenwald frequently posts updates to his columns (as in his most recent here) and I have certainly seen those updates contain corrections. But you are alleging something more sinister, right? That he publishes his column, then later republishes the revised column with no changes being noted? I’d be amazed if the Guardian knowingly allowed him to do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: You can’t prove that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Laertes:
Or who will pay him a lot to “leak” information. He is a libertarian after all..
If one was truely a paraniod state of mind one would this faked up scandal from our friends in Moscow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
Faking e-mails to undermine the science proving Global Warming just in time for an international conference on carbon emissions from our friends in Russia, the world’s second largest oil producer. Those merry pranksters.
Now gee wis, Putin is under a lot of world wide heat from the left over his anti-gay policy and he needs a distraction and this conveniently happens along PROVING one of his chief international critics is worse than Hitler and in a fashion his chief critic can’t disprove, just in time to cover for the Sochi Winter Olympics. Happy coincidence for Putin, he sure is one lucky man, isn’t he?
But naturally one would have to be paranoid to see this pattern.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I think it’s just delightful that Cole essentially accused Bob Cesca, based on no evidence at all, of being a homophobe.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus:
The government HAS a warrant. FISA issues approval every 90 days to collect it, provided that the NSA doesn’t look at it. The NSA then needs to get a specific warrant to look at any part of it, and then only that part of it. That’s not even in dispute by Snowden’s information.
The issue of whether the NSA holds it or someone else holds it is immaterial in this day and age. The NSA has, by virtue of that specific warrant, precisely the same ability to access to the data in either case. But with the NSA holding it, they don’t need to worry about the preservation of that data, plus they reduce access time to it. We know it can take weeks for these warrants to be complied with from the social media companies. I’m sure there are many situation that the NSA doesn’t feel it can afford to wait weeks.
NotMax
@Yatsuno
It is not libertarian to point out that when it comes to covert surveillance and intelligence agencies, the camel’s nose metaphor has demonstrably played itself out time and time again.
(I’m not a libertarian, nor do I play one on TV.)
Badtux
@? Martin:
How do you know they didn’t? I don’t know that. I know that the same NSA director who lied to Congress before says they didn’t, but why should I believe known liars?
I don’t believe everything Greenwald says because Greenwald is a journalist, not a computer geek. He is pretty much clueless about things computer and it shows. People like Snowden try to dumb down what they say to Greenwald’s level so that he can somewhat understand them, then Greenwald pretty much tries to dumb it down even more for the general public, and the result is the hash that journalists usually make out of any technical topic (I have never — EVER — had a mainstream journalist accurately quote me on any project I’ve worked on, the reporter from Forbes came closest but that’s a financial reporter rather than a mainstream journalist).
That said, I reverse-engineer the process to see what the technology might actually be whose details Greenwald is mangling, match that with the details of what has been reported in other cases such as the journalist who accidentally got sent a copy of his dossier complete with emails and was unable to submit them as evidence in his lawsuit for illegal surveillance against the government because of, guess what, “state secrets privilege”, plus what is reported to me by my friends and colleagues in the computer industry (yes, I have many friends working for major Internet companies, it’s the industry I work in), plus what is told to me in confidence by former NSA employees (retired for years, and more than a little upset that the NSA is being retasked as a domestic surveillance agency) and enough holes line up to be worrisome. There does appear to be massive hoovering of information about Americans. There does appear to be major electrical grid issues caused by the massive amounts of equipment that have been brought online at NSA HQ in Maryland, as in, they’re sucking up pretty much enough electricity to power a medium-sized city in that relatively small area. Then there’s the new data center. I look at how much data can be held by what I know they must have to use that much power, and remember I have inside information on how much power a major data center uses and how much data it can hold, and it’s definitely *not* just metadata. It’s not full voice calls — that much, at least, is still beyond them — but the emails themselves must be there (along with IM’s, chat board contents snooped at the ISP level, etc.) otherwise there’s no need for that much equipment.
Look, the NSA says they don’t even know how many documents Snowden took. And you expect them to know how many emails NSA employees illegally read? For realz?
More to the point — as I said, I know several ex-NSA folks (look, I’ve written encryption software, of *course* I know some of those folks, they sort of kept tabs on me back in the day, nothing personal y’know). None of them are skeptical about the notion that the NSA is engaged in massive domestic hoovering of data. None. And they’re people who should know.
Just data. Make of it what you will, but simply saying “Greenwald is incompetent / sloppy / has cooties!” doesn’t change the remainder of the data.
? Martin
@Yatsuno: Exactly. And it’s a dodge to evade any rational discussion or to face up to unpleasant realities. It’s why I never, ever refer to someone as ‘evil’. People do that so they don’t need to explore their motives, to entertain the idea that the person who did that is fundamentally no different than you. Evil casts all that away. Discussion ended. Just exterminate them.
This line of thinking from libertarians, but also from the NSA always lies, corporations are always horrible, etc. is just a way to avoid having to think about a difficult problem. It’s lazy and dishonest.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
That was not his assertion, and you know it. It’s obvious that was not his assertion, yet you build your strawman around it.
Then you knock down your strawman! You’ve just won another argument with yourself.
The poster asserted that the NSA has a history of lying to Congress and therefore nothing they say can be trusted. That is true and obvious. Ironically, your claim that the poster asserted that “everything the NSA says is a lie” was itself a lie.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: The warrant that the NSA has is damned close to being a general warrant. I want individual warrants for individuals. Inconvenient for the NSA? Fuck, yes. Too bad. If the government wants to collect non-census, non-tax, and non-health info on me, it can get a warrant.
Mandalay
@Badtux:
Exactly. The NSA cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Ever.
This is not because they are inherently worse than any other organization. But any organization that can get away with lying will end up lying, however pure and honest their motives for lying may be. That is why having meaningful Congressional oversight of the NSA is so vital.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: You know, old boy, you can get remarkably literal minded on occasion. Sometimes people use metaphors, litotes, similes, exaggeration for effect, and other rhetorical devices in order to make their point. They are not necessarily wrong to do so.
dollared
@askew: Oh Jesus, let’s live in a Tom Clancy novel rather than deal with a completely unsupervised and out of control NSA sucking $100B/year from our nation and posing a clear threat of abuse. With documented abuse like the DEA stuff and the surveillance of LOVEINTEREST already shown.
But no, a Judas Goat. Can you milk them?.
justsomeguy
@Laertes: That isn’t a more interested question. There are competing motivations but if you have an agenda which is limiting the surveillance state then why do a shoddy job? Because regardless of the merits of the principles involved, being a shit reporter is also relevant. Yea, it empowers people who would rather dismiss the issue but that’s as obvious as Greenwald’s need to be center of attention.
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: Yes, after a fashion.
dollared
@? Martin: And “don’t bother me, everything is the way it is for a reason” is not lazy and dishonest?
Mandalay
@? Martin:
You are the one being lazy and dishonest. I have never seen anyone allege that the NSA always lies. You just made that up.
What multiple posters here have done is correctly point out that since the NSA is factually known to have lied to Congress on multiple occasions, they cannot be trusted.
That is completely different to your convenient but fabricated assertion that people allege that the NSA always lies.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: So you’d be ok with blanket record preservation on metadata on the telco’s?
? Martin
@Badtux:
BTW, that’s not beyond them. Pretty much every domestic phone call is already recorded and stored somewhere. Almost all digital VOIP systems are mandated to do this. They don’t need to tap anyones phones, they can just ask for the download. Ballpark it would take up about four 19″ racks given current storage density each day – about what YouTube adds daily. Voice compression is very good – remember, we’ve been doing cellular for 40 years now and wireless bandwith was shit back then.
But I too know NSA folks, and data center folks. Yes, there is a lot of domestic data collection, but the government has been in that business for a century now. Everyone who is convinced the NSA is spying on them should be fucking terrified about the IRS, which holds every bit as much damaging information. But they never seem to be worried about that – and it’s nearly as impenetrable as the NSA. Same for the USPS who we trusted for two centuries with all of the data that we now worry the NSA might have access to, and who had the same sort of metadata collection going for decades, and has been continuously storing mail covers since 2001 after the anthrax attacks. That was explicitly ordered by Congress and is every bit as intrusive as the NSA metadata collection. Never hear a peep about that one. There’s something about making information digital that causes people to react differently than information which is analogue.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mandalay: @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Waiting. Can’t be that hard to answer, can it?
Omnes Omnibus
@justsomeguy: Good point. It reminds of something else. A number of people (not on this thread) have talked about how lawyerly Greenwald’s pieces are. I have to disagree. Primarily because somehow things always end up being about him. A lawyer should put his client’s interests first. It shouldn’t be about the lawyer; it should be about the client.
? Martin
@Mandalay: When you declare that everything they say cannot be trusted, you must therefore be assuming that everything they say is a lie. That’s what it means to distrust something.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Quantitative exaggerations are one thing, but qualitative exaggerations are another matter. Saying someone always lies is qualitatively different to saying that I can’t trust someone because they sometimes lie.
Worse yet, the poster used the fabricated assertion as a rationale for not discussing the issue at all (“It’s why its pointless to argue with you guys.”)!
Still, since you horsewhip your kids, and skullfuck kittens, its pointless to argue with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: Either I am misunderstanding you or the other way around. I am not okay with anything approaching a general warrant. Those are one of the things complained of in the Declaration of Independence IIRC. My view is that if one wants to get data on individuals, one should need to go to a judge and establish probable cause. Otherwise, it is no one’s business who I call or how many Brony sites I visit (for the record, zero).
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: I don’t have children and am allergic to cats.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
False. It means that anything they say might be a lie if it can’t be independently verified, because the NSA has a history of lying. And this is doubly true since Congress has no meaningful way of independently verifying much of the information it receives from the NSA.
Nobody said the NSA always lies and you know it.
Sinnach
@Mandalay: You’re splitting intellectual hairs here. Claiming on one hand that the NSA ‘cannot be trusted’ while also arguing that no one ever claimed that the NSA always lies is, at best, a shallow fig leaf of plausible deniability. When can the NSA be trusted? Can we trust their public statements? Can we trust their internal audits?
You’re invalidating anything from the NSA while expressly stating that you’re not. You’re playing Calvinball with what’s admissible.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Sinnach:
But Congress- which created the NSA, and enacted a lot of safeguards, including FISA, in the wake of the Church Committee hearings- can, according to Mandalay, anyway, be trusted. If I’m following correctly.
? Martin
@dollared: I’ve never asserted that. But I make a distinction between ‘I think this thing is counterproductive’ and ‘I think this thing is illegal or unconstitutional’. I object to a lot of what the NSA does on the ground that it’s useless, costly, and counterproductive. But I don’t see a lot there that is illegal, and I can at least understand the rationale for why they’re doing what they’re doing (even if I disagree with it).
But then, I also assume that the people who are employed at the NSA are little different from those at the IRS, the FDA, and the USPS. Some are criminals, a bunch more are flat-out incompetent, most are good civil servants that want to do whats right for citizens, and a few are exceptional. And that’s simply how every corner of the government and even the planet is organized. I cannot accept without some serious proof that the NSA is, as you tend to paint it, a criminal enterprise. Sure, there’s crimes being committed there, but then a survey of 3rd grade classrooms in this country is going to turn up a comparable number of teachers committing crimes. I see it where I work as well. I’m sure you do too. The NSA is not going to function uniquely among human enterprises.
The distinction we should be looking for is whether there is an institutional effort to break the law. That’s not unheard of in government. The Nixon administration has plenty of examples, and most administrations have at least a few. What I’m not seeing in this scenario is an institutional effort to break the law. A conspiracy that involves all 3 branches of government cannot be taken seriously without a lot more evidence. It would be unique in our history.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Should the telcos have to keep a certain amount of data(1 year, 2 years…) beyond their business needs? If they do not, there’s nothing to get a warrant for; the data’s been destroyed. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, you first need a haystack.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t see any reason for the telcos to keep the data.
? Martin
@Mandalay:
Several people in this thread have asserted that nothing the NSA says can be trusted. They have specifically questioned every bit of information that the government has released.
If you cannot trust any of this to be the truth, then you are at least openly asserting that every scrap of it is potentially a lie. Not that it definitively is, but then there’s no way to prove your assertion wrong by your own rules. If I provide more evidence to corroborate the first bit, that too could be a lie. This goes on forever, and so by the rules of the game you can all claim that every bit of it is a lie. These are the rules you are advancing.
At some point (not every point, mind you, but there needs to some sort of middle ground here) you have to take what is presented as authentic. You are unwilling to do that. Actually, you are willing to do it, but only when it seems to confirm your own biases. You’ll trust GG who is accountable to nobody, but not your elected officials.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Should have be an ETA: I would never suggest that a client keep records beyond the point they are legally required to do so. As a matter of fact, I would say shred the docs on the exact day one is permitted to do so.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, man, I am this close to breaking Godwin’s law.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Should the government require, by law, that the records be kept? So there should be no method of determining who a targeted individual is calling from outside the US and who that second person may be calling?
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Dude.
Seriously, what would you advise? Stepping away from Godwin, I wouldn’t mind a bit if telcos were not permitted to keep my data.
@BillinGlendaleCA: In my opinion, no.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Is the metadata your data? It’s collected by the telco’s for their business purposes.
TG Chicago
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Okay, fair. I thought he was referring to the greater story of leaks, but Cesca’s linked article doesn’t mention Manning. I withdraw the Manning part.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, you’re right. It’s smart. It’s that it’s morally ambiguous It’s that, well, someone would have done well- for themselves, anyway- to have followed your rule. Mid-20th Century, Central Europe…Just sayin’.
Yeah, I know, the law can be morally ambiguous.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: You added your second question after I responded.
That being said, I don’t think the government should require that a company keep metadata so that it can come looking for it later. If a company does keep metadata for business purposes and the government establishes probable cause for a need to get the records, it should be able to get them. If this put me is a bit more danger, oh well, I can live with it.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: They have to keep the data. It’s what generates your phone bill. Not keeping it means that you can not go back and view an old bill or review your own calling history, or even get billed for the current month. And if they only stored it in the form of your bill, they could just subpoena that instead (which would be worse – more revealing data there).
It’s not like these guys are saving this stuff for the sake of spying on you. It’s just data that they keep as part of their ongoing services – oftentimes that customers demand. The VOIP recording is pervasive and damn near mandatory because every enterprise customer out there wants it. The only thing that most digital answer machines now are doing is storing a reference to a call that was being recorded anyway. All call centers record. All 911 calls are recorded. There are services that allow people to replay the last call to or from their phone. Google Voice does all of that and transcribes the content. My phone company offers the same service.
They aren’t doing this because the NSA has asked them to, but because we as consumers have. But once it exists, it’s open to subpoena. NSA didn’t force everyone to share all of their life on Facebook, but once you do, it can be subpoenaed. This is not the fault of the intel agencies.
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin:
The transcriptions often produce rather amusing results. My wife’s transcribed voice mails are a real hoot.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: How long do they need to keep it for business purposes? Tax records need to be kept for a certain period. The same is true of other records. After that, destroying them is legal. If they have a business reason to keep them, they should do so. If a warrant comes in while the records exist, if should be complied with. Should companies keep records forever, just in case the NSA needs them?
What the hell, it creates a market for a telco that flushes data as soon as legally possible.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: By the way, a subpoena is different than a warrant. The standard is lower. If the records exist, it should require a warrant establishing probable cause to hand them over to the government.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: They probably by law only need to keep them for a few months. But we as consumers expect them to keep them longer. I don’t think there’s any legal obstacle to them destroying the data, same with Facebook. But should Facebook put themselves out of business in the process?
This might be a problem with a solution if there was more competition in the marketplace – a phone carrier that didn’t keep data longer than required by law. But then the court has given the NSA approval to copy the stuff over on a regular basis (including the actual calls, by the way, though that appears to be limited to calls leaving/entering the country). So retention of the data isn’t really the issue until a change takes place in the judicial branch, and I don’t see that happening. They don’t tilt with the winds on this kind of stuff. They won’t stop approving it simply because it’s unpopular. They’ll only stop approving it when its no longer legal. And that means Congress needs to pass a law making it illegal. So, we need to get a 3 branches to move in a new direction. I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: You may have noticed that I said above that my opinion on this was not that of the legal mainstream. Well, golly gee, it turns out that my opinion is not that of the fucking legal mainstream. Who could have guessed? I know I am shocked by it.
Patricia Kayden
“Greenwald isn’t going to be the story for much longer, so it will be fun watch these guys come up with new villains.”
The only villains will be Congress if they don’t find a way to reign in the NSA by amending the Patriot Act.
fuckwit
@Badtux: THIS! I’m one of those guys. I was an EFF supporter in the 1990s and early 2000’s. Got burnt out after that, and distracted with other more pressing issues (i.e. trying to stop two wars). And none of this, zero of it, is surprising to me.
It raises an excellent question: when Snowden decided to go all whistleblower, why didn’t he give his documents to the EFF? To people who knew exactly what the documents meant, had the expertise and serious-mindedness to actually do something with the information? Instead he went to a self-promoting, hype-addicted jackass. Maybe birds of a feather? I dunno and maybe it doesn’t matter at this point anyway, now that the adults are getting involved.
I am interested to see what ProPublica does with this, and maybe EFF will be able to get ahold of this. I trust what they say. If EFF or ProPublica or some other credible source digests this stuff and starts putting out revelations, I will believe every word.
What’s even more important is that, as you mention, we’ve already known shit was fucked up and bullshit for a decade or more, thanks to EFF and others, and it’s way overdue to have Congress repeal some motherfucking laws, i.e. PATRIOT Act, AUMF, drug-war invasions of privacy, maybe to reverse Reynolds, and also to pass some new laws regulating the NSA. To do that, we’ll need a sane Congress that actually wants to do its job, and we have to do that now. 2014, it’s all about 2014.
fuckwit
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): No. Congress can be REPLACED, or pressured with the threat of being replaced; that is the whole point of representative government. And it’s also their job to make laws, which I hope we can replace them in 2014 with a Congress that will actually do that.
NobodySpecial
After this thread, I need to watch The President’s Analyst to get some sanity back.
Anya
@Soonergrunt: I am with you Soonergrunt. Cole is being such a douche… I actually felt embarrassed for him. WTF! Accusing people who challenge GG’s questionable reporting of homophobia is really pathetic.
JVader
@Mnemosyne: The reason that Greenwald and The Guardian sat on this so long is that they have an enormous amount of information to read, analyze, sift through to decide what needs to be published and then it has to go through legal and his editors. Would you just print everything someone gave you without taking the steps above? Greenwald is acting like a real journalist here… that is why to Jesus Freaks are pissed because there are so few actual journalists left in this country. I suppose Snowden could have contacted Bob Woodward so he could smoke another million cigarettes while a wrote a book about this and published in 2020 with 95% of the information he got redacted… he would just make up the rest to back whatever Rethug the Post wants in office next.
JVader
Badtux: I’ve followed EFF for a long time as well. Do you really think that Snowden giving them the scoot is reasonable? It is an organization that is easily attacked (face it, they are issue advocates, not journalists) and have 10k people ready this stuff? Think about this shit. He got it to a real newspaper which was the right thing to do (as was hauling ass from this country).
Baud
They said Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMAs couldn’t be translated into blog post.
They were wrong.
Anya
@Baud: Ha!
cleek
so, everything JC has to say about this story is about Greenwald and how we shouldn’t make the story about Greenwald. right.
Melodramatic fags!
you’re becoming unhinged, JC.
chopper
@Mandalay:
I hope you didn’t pay too much for that “Internet hair-splitting machine” you use.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Lots of binary thinking there John, and in this thread. There are lots of things going on at once in this Snowden/Greenwald affair. I think the issues are:
1) There’s too much classified information. Too many people have access to it.
2) There’s too many contractors with less oversight than civil service employees.
3) There’s apparently too much trust in computer systems administrators on classified systems. (This may explain why they still don’t know how much stuff Snowden took.)
4) Snowden was on the job at BAH for around 3 months. Nobody on the job for 3 months knows and understands the details of a huge organization.
5) Snowden has lied on multiple occasions. “I make nearly $200k a year.” “I could wiretap the President.” He had no need to do that. He had no need to come out publicly at all. His words and actions make me not trust him.
6) We’ve only seen snippets of the vast store of documents he supposedly has taken. E.g. We’ve not seen the whole PRISM PowerPoint. What we have seen has been ambiguous (numbers without context).
7) Greenwald has conflated capabilities with actual abuses on too many occasions.
8) Many of the hair on fire accusations about the NSA’s capabilities have been in books going back decades or more. Having bits and pieces about more details now does not mean that Obama is constructing a new Stasi to prepare to throw us in FEMA camps.
9) Congress has the power and the responsibility to clarify or change the laws and to conduct oversight of executive branch agencies. Screaming about the Tyrant Obama (as some are wont to do) is misplaced outrage.
10) Greenwald has had knives out for Obama since before he was even elected (see the previously posed back and forth e-mail exchange about the central American countries giving the NSA all their call records). He’s got an agenda and has never been reticent about pushing his agendas…
Yes, people can break their oaths and break the rules and spy on people they shouldn’t. Look at Snowden for a perfect example. But I haven’t seen anyone explain how it could be in the NSA’s interest to spy on Americans. It’s not in their charter. They already have a huge job in sorting through mountains of data to do their foreign intelligence job. Sorting through another mountain of data from Americans would only make their job harder. Unless you think that the US government is a monolithic force that is made up of people who always lie about their jobs and don’t have to justify their budgets, it makes no sense.
The courts said decades ago that intelligence agencies can get databases of calls and the like without a warrant. I do not fear the Security State is going to drag me away based on that.
Those who don’t trust Obama’s explanations of what is going on with the NSA need to ask themselves why they trust Snowden and Greenwald.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Keith G
Gosh Cole, about 80 % of the comments here are taking you to task. You challenge them to make the issue about what the government’s behavior has been; yet without a pause, the comments about Greenwald and Snowden’s behavior continue apace. And now you are included in the bashing
And
You have been called a “dry drunk” and a “drooling fanboys of Greenwald” and an inquiry was made about when you plan to endorse Rand Paul for president.
Nice people. They seemingly can’t help themselves as they use and reuse the same Nixonian attacks against Greenwald and Snowden in order to minimize governmental misbehavior. And now they are coming after you – you Greenwald fellating, Putin loving, libertarian drunk!
Ah, the reality-based community that is the Left.
Betty Cracker
@fuckwit:
Me too. They seem to be a highly professional, non-WIN-THE-DAY oriented organization that actually conducts in-depth investigations and puts out informative reporting rather than a collection of sound-bites and self-aggrandizing puff-pieces. That’s exactly the type of reporting that’s needed on a story this byzantine.
MomSense
@Yatsuno:
I’m just rooting for number of comments at this point.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Called three of our Congressional delegation and saw the fourth. Sen. King did an interview where he said he supported making some changes to the Patriot Act. He didn’t say anything about FISA. The President called for a few specific changes but I haven’t heard much discussion about that beyond his comments.
I continue to be frustrated that the President’s call for repeal of the AUMF has also been ignored. Officially ending the “war” would go a long way toward unraveling the justification for the overwhelming security apparatus but again I haven’t heard much discussion of the tangible outcomes in all of this or much desire to organize for any.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: Come on, dude — Cole gave as good as he got. It probably behooves everyone to step back from the ledge a bit, but to pretend it’s all one-sided as you did above is just plain dishonest.
Keith G
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
And yet, Scott, there are those who do seem to want to ignore their “charter”.
Look, the main foundation of our Constitution was all about not trusting the men who run our government. 225 years ago it was clearly understood that men were not angels and that those in power like to collect more power. This is part of that same ages-old conflict.
Keith G
@Betty Cracker: Sharp elbows are okay, but focus on what has been said not personal attributes or other personal issues.
Dry drunk? Really? Let’s say a person is actually an alcoholic. It’s a disease. What’s next? bringing up someones Parkinsons disease? How about diabetes? Are they on the table too?
This is not the only thread when Cole’s issues with alcohol have been used. I find that unworthy and it does set me off. I was going to say I was sorry, but actually, I am not.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Mandalay:
I’m not entirely sure that the base, its fond memories of Nixon/Agnew, and its worship of the ghost of Ronald Reagan are entirely their ‘betters’.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Keith G:
Hey dumbfuck, I asked if John is becoming a dry drunk. Asked.
If your parents paid for your education I would tell them to get a refund.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: I agree that’s a shitty thing to say, but then again, so is implying that your opponents are homophobes. I’m not the blog police — whatever. Just pointing out that the nastiness isn’t one-sided.
MomSense
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The other question I would love to ask Snowden is why he required that the WAPO publish all of the documents within 72 hours and post online a cryptographic key to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the source of the leaks.
My spidey sense does not like that at all. This was reported, incidentally, by WAPO who didn’t comply. When they informed Snowden they would not, he told them that they would no longer be exclusive even though he had been in discussion with Greenwald for months–even before he took the job with BAH.
I think Snowden has some serious credibility issues and I don’t apologize for thinking that. The source of the intelligence is always evaluated as well as the information they provide.
Keith G
@Odie Hugh Manatee:Why ask? Why is it essentially to this thread? It sure seemed like a passive aggressive way to frame the comments of another, but if you had a good reason to bring it up, I will recant.
@Betty Cracker: I don’t disagree with you on that point. As I said, a previous comment left me a bit exasperated. That said, earlier rounds of the GG flame wars were contaminated by comments about GG’s personal life that ranged from snarky to blatantly ignorant (on that I am being kind). Cole should have been more specific, but he was not making shit up.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t get why there’s this much willful misunderstanding of what “the other side” thinks or wants. My reaction to the news that other organizations will look at the NSA/surveillance stuff is… “Oh, good.” I don’t love intrusive surveillance or something, mostly because as far as I can tell I’m not an insane idiot. I _do_ distrust Glenn Greenwald’s leaps and obfuscations, and will always do so, and will not give him the benefit of the doubt. But the number of people actively thinking “Because Greenwald is sloppy with facts and interpretations, nothing is happening here” is pretty minimal. It’s more like “because Greenwald is sloppy with facts and interpretations, it’s impossible to understand what _is_ actually happening.”. And Anti-Greenwald does not mean Pro-surveillance. This can’t be this hard to understand, right?
And the homosexuality stuff is beyond the pale.
jamick6000
@Soonergrunt:
A lot of people have called Greenwald a drama queen. Zandar was speculating that Snowden and Glenn were gay lovers. The gang of idiots over at Little Green Footballs dog whistle the hell out of the gay angle.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Maybe because some of us long-timers here see a change in John that could indicate just that. Then again, he could be acting like an irrational asshole because he’s bored and needs the cheap amusement. That’s why I asked.
Is that a good enough answer for you or do I need to explain myself better to some dumb asshole on the internet who misinterpreted what I said and then feels the need to question my actions when called on it?
@jamick6000:
RE: LGF… Please link or STFU.
jamick6000
There’s a little claque of morons (Charles Johnson, Bob Cesca, Soonergrunt, a tremendous idiot who calls himself “Jefferson Obama”) who obsessively attack Greenwald and who basically do “spin” for the national security state. They’re pathetic and nasty. They frequently call Greenwald a Nazi. It’s hard to take these clowns seriously.
andrewtna
@Soonergrunt:
Can you please point out to me where Bob written about the need to reform NSA? I ask this seriously.
He certainly criticized warrantless wiretapping during the Bush years. Maybe I started reading him again much too late, but all I’ve seen from him lately is an intense focus on calling into doubt reporting on NSA and questioning GG’s credibility and motivations. [Side note: A reporter with an ego? No one would have ever made such an accusation about intrepid Watergate reporter Bob Woodward]
Bob (Charles Lane, too) also goes through painstaking detail to assure people that, while the government said there have been zero privacy abuses, we now know (thanks to the NSA, themselves!) there have only been very few abuses which shows these people are quite good at their jobs, and the fact the NSA has documented these very few abuses, as required by law, is evidence the oversight system is working.
It’s just hard for me to buy that he wants more oversight of the system, when he accuses any reporter who writes about NSA abuses – not just GG anymore, but Barton Gellman, WSJ and Bloomberg, etc – of trolling for clicks.
And that quote from Cesca, which Cole included, was too funny:
Bob and co. have been the ones talking about the melodramatic personal struggles! He has refused to talk about ways to improve and reform America’s surveillance operations. And then he focuses the rest of that article on the personal struggles, of course.
But, now seems like a great time for Bob to start that conversation, the one he says he wants to have, among the reasonable lefties who hate GG on how to improve and reform surveillance operations. What’s stopping him?
jamick6000
while I’m on the subject of the toilet that is LGF — anybody else notice they call Al Jazeera “Jihad TV.” What a joke those guys are.
andrewtna
@andrewtna: Sorry, Charles Johnson
Cacti
This update in white people problems has been brought to you by John-boy Bocephus Cole of Bumblefuck, West Virginia.
jamick6000
@andrewtna: it’s hard to keep very, very dumb pundits named Charles straight.
jamick6000
@Cacti:
smart point. minorities have never been improperly targeted for surveillance in this country.
Keith G
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Well at least your estimation of me is moving up.
Being a fallible human,I reread your original comment to find the context clues that I apparently had missed that would have better guided my interpretation.
Nope.
But if it will help, I will cop to being a “dumbfuck” and a “dumb asshole” if that’s the price for pointing out how unnecessary the dry drunk question was.
Cacti
@jamick6000:
Thanks for the whitesplanation, dudebro.
Betty Cracker
@jamick6000: I don’t think calling someone a “drama queen” necessarily qualifies as homophobia — hell, I call my (female) teenager that all the time. I’m frequently a drama queen (straight woman) myself, and so is Cole (straight man). Implying that Greenwald and Snowden are lovers? Yeah, that crosses a line.
I think FlipYrWig nails it above:
On the other hand, I don’t trust LGF either, and I found it ironic when someone last week was linking to LGF articles to bolster a guilt-by-association case against Greenwald for associating with white supremacist assholes. I still haven’t forgotten that Johnson was besties with Pam Fucking Geller and crew. Good for him for realizing what a bunch of racist shitbags they were (and he was right along with them), but his avid participation in that enterprise will forever make me question his judgment.
FlipYrWhig
@jamick6000:
Have you considered the possibility that obsessively attacking Greenwald is not the same thing as doing spin for the national security state? Greenwald is a big-time pundit/reporter. When he tries to make a case about something, people scrutinize it. When they see what they think are shortcomings, they point it out. I would summarize the Cesca position as something more like “Until we can figure out what’s going on here — and we can’t yet due to the way Greenwald tells the story — we have to reserve judgment on how bad it is.” But John and lots of others are content to say “We know enough to be outraged, and if you’re not, you’re an authoritarian, a shill, an apologist, a gay-basher, not a real liberal,” etc.
When Annie Jacobsen wrote her stories about Muslims acting suspicious on her plane, which had to be a dry run for terrorism, she thought, and they turned out to be Christian musicians, we all had a good laugh. We weren’t laughing at the underlying issue of terrorism, we were laughing at her paranoia. Is it possible to care about an issue and still disparage some of that issue’s sloppy, ahead-of-the-facts messengers? Pretty obviously yes.
But when it comes to Greenwald, the normal rules no longer apply. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. No one on the larger left was devoted to the consummate truth-telling of, say, Alexander Cockburn. They thought he was often a crank.
Cacti
It’s equally laugh worthy/cringe inducing that the Griftwald howler monkey brigade is singing praises for the New York Times…
The paper that couldn’t stop tongue-bathing Dubya’s balls in the run up to the Iraq war, and that protected Scooter Libby as the source of the Valerie Plame leak.
Enjoy your new bestie, emo progs.
Rex Everything
Re “no one around here ever said anything remotely homophobic, GOD!”—I swear I’ve seen the word “boytoy” applied to Miranda about 90 million times in BJ comments.
Number of times I’ve seen a het woman’s spouse or life partner described as her “boytoy” in BJ comments: zero. Number of times I’ve seen the word “goodtime girl” or similar applied to the spouse or life partner of a het male: zero.
It’s almost like a vile stereotype about gay male saturnalia is informing the choice of wording or something.
jamick6000
@Betty Cracker:
I agree. But calling a gay guy you’re disparaging a drama queen is pretty dog-whistley, imo. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the people saying it are homophobes — they just really, really dislike Greenwald, to the extent that they’ll use anything as a club.
chopper
@Keith G:
well, at least you still like the gays.
Keith G
@jamick6000:
@Betty Cracker: We seem to be at a very interesting time when unacceptable gay related commentary is much more narrowly defined than unacceptable race related commentary. Gays seem to be the last oppressed group where it is fine for outsiders to make *public* “quips” of questionable taste. Although women do run a close second as next to last. Go figure.
Now that would make for an interesting discussion.
Keith G
@chopper: Well really I do. Actually, more than you might be comfortable knowing.
chopper
@Keith G:
well then, maybe cole shouldn’t come out of the gate acting like those who disagree are homophobes? maybe then people wouldn’t respond with personal attacks.
you call people assholes, they call you one back.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: I think Jamick6000 made a good point that using “drama queen” to disparage a gay guy could be considered dog whistley, but in your opinion, is “drama queen” always an anti-gay term, no matter who it’s applied to? Just curious. I don’t think so, but language and mores evolve, and I try to keep up…
chopper
@Keith G:
well, I do have my reservations about the veracity of greenwald’s work, which apparently means I think gays are ‘icky’. so please, no gay talk! I’M NOT COMFORTABLE
TooManyJens
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s not hard to understand at all — if your goal is understanding what other people are thinking, instead of proving how much better than them you are.
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: well, obviously. If Glenn Greenwald were über macho and straight with a totally hot GF I’d totally overlook the way he overreaches his facts. I mean, that’s just the bro code.
FlipYrWhig
@TooManyJens: Sing it, sister!
TooManyJens
@FlipYrWhig: Thanks, fellow fascist surveillance-lover!
Keith G
Honestly, I do not know, Betty. I came out a long time ago and was involved with gay liberation politics in the 70’s. I have been called things that would make Hugh blush. And I have used more than my share of in-group campy vocabulary.
Of course, the problem with the typed word is that so much intend is conveyed by tone, face, and other body language. I stopped watching Leno soon after he took over, when I realized so many of his jokes depended on his affecting a “gay” voice. Those jokes had a meanness subtext that was really off-putting to me. Of course, he wasn’t any kinder to women. I have heard others make similar humorous observations without the meanness/put down after-taste. Is that just style? Context? Maybe it’s that the later were not using a mocking voice.
I think that might be the case with ‘drama queen’. It has been appropriated by nearly all parts of culture, but at specific times it still can cut.
What about the word ‘bitch’? It is popping up a lot more in general culture – even on the tube. It can be a friendly ribbing between friends (either sex) or a conversation ending gut stomper.
edit:
For bonus points, what is the commonality between’ drama queen’ and ‘bitch’?
chopper
@TooManyJens:
the funny thing is this whole black-and-white way of thinking is just like greenwald’s blogging. if you disagree, you’re a cultist who worships ‘Dear Leader obama’ etc etc.
it’s like a word virus. you start reading the guy and you too turn into a gibbering gibbon demanding fealty to your point of view.
LAC
@Omnes Omnibus: :)
It sure smells like that. I have to bounce around several sites, including the Daily Banter, to get the full story. Here, all we seem to get is Cole’s “Fuck you fuckers for hating on Greenwald”, mistermix’s “The government is coming for us! Fuck, where’s my arsenic?” Ann Laurie’s “my petunas are growing nicely and isn’t that Obama on my computer? That “not Hillary” little shit!”
@TooManyJens: Word!!
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Badtux:
Downloading JSTOR documents. Obviously.
Rex Everything
@LAC:
Except that, you know, Cole didn’t actually say “fuck you” to anyone in particular, or bring up anyone in particular’s drinking problem to disparage them.
But hey, he gave as good as he got. Whatever the fuck that means.
dopey-o
@Keith G:
Finally! Thank you for pointing out this obvious (and ignored) fact of our American experiment.
Furthermore, it is not the case that “The NSA lied. Therefore, everything the NSA says is a lie.” It is that we don’t know which statements are lies and which are true. Working / governing / living in a state of high entropy is Not Good.
LAC
@andrewtna: I do not know if you have ever gone to the Daily Banter, other to heed the Greenwald “Aqua Man” cry for minions to assemble and screech on the comments board, but there are many articles on this matter. In addition, based on comments made by the minions, it isn’t a conversation you want – it is a “I will hold my breath until you admit that Greenwald is the bestest”hissy fit.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: You’re right about tone, context, etc. John used a form of “bitch” in the OP, and I don’t think anyone complained. He spelled it “beeoch,” lending a sort of tone (though some could interpret that as a offensive in another way), but as a woman and therefore among the group very frequently targeted with the “bitch” tag, I didn’t find it offensive. Others may have.
The other day in a thread here, someone brought up the premiere of the new season of Breaking Bad, and lots of people responded (me too, I think, or at least I thought it), with “Yeah, bitch!” If you watch the show, you know that refers to a particular character’s frequent use of that phrase, applied to humans of all sexes and orientations, plants, mammals, inanimate objects, etc. But someone who didn’t know that could be offended.
Anyhoo, interesting discussion. It would make a great topic for a post if I ever get my shit together enough to write it. Thanks!
J
@Keith G: Well said Keith G.!
TooManyJens
@Cacti: I don’t know why they’re splitting it up so that ProPublica gets to see some of the docs, the NYT gets to see some, etc.
I’d really love it if ProPublica could see all of them.
different-church-lady
I welcome this development for two reasons:
1) We now have a chance to see some actual reporting on the issue. (Note that I said ‘chance’)
2) It potentially relieves Cole of the crushing burden of defending Greenwald’s patent excesses — something which is clearly taxing his intellect on a regular basis.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: What you did there: done been seen.
Pylon
I’ve seen a few people say that the NSA’s story on how few emais are actually intercepted and read cant be trusted because they have lied in the past. True enough. The same can be said about Greenwald, no?
Which is why new reporters on the subject is a good thing.
CoalsToNewCastle
https://twitter.com/bobcesca_go/statuses/372262352223076352
Bob Cesca has asked for an apology for John Cole for accusing him of calling Greenwald supporters fags and drama queens.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@TG Chicago:
I honestly don’t think that calling someone melodramatic is a “code word” for homophobia…..And since Cesca has a long history of being very supportive of LGBT rights….Cole’s interpretation is simply wrong, not to mention rude (probably meant to stir up the hornet’s nest, if anything)
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@jamick6000:
I read Cesca’s website every day, just like I read Balloon Juice every day. Cesca has not called Greenwald a Nazi. He has accused Greenwald of not being honest (true), conflating access with abuse (true), and being overly dramatic (true). But a Nazi, no, I don’t think so. Show me the quote with a link, if you please.
chopper
@Rex Everything:
no, he just insinuated that we’re homophobes if we take issue with greenwald’s work.
@Pylon:
you sound suspiciously like an obama cultist.
chopper
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ:
yeah i feel the same way. besides, if you’ve ever read greenwald’s blogging, ‘melodramatic’ really does often describe it.
‘drama queen’ is a harder one, but i don’t think it’s really used in an anti-gay way. with regards to men, it seems to be used equally whether the subject is straight or gay. i think the intention is more emasculating than anything else – portraying the subject as a pissed-off teenage girl. so it’s really more sexism.
chopper
@CoalsToNewCastle:
this is gonna be interesting.
Cacti
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ:
Bob Cesca is also an honest to FSM liberal democrat, and not a born again Bushbot like Cole or Greenwald.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@fuckwit:
Well, duh. Of course that’s how it works.
But what happens when the make-up of Congress swings right?
Mandalay’s entire argument is built on trust, and not just trust in the NSA, but trust in elected officials. The problem there, of course, being that we don’t all trust the same people, or even the same sorts of people. So when Mandalay claims satisfaction with the NSA if only there was improved Congressional oversight, it rings false.
Mandalay won’t be completely satisfied with improved Congressional oversight until the improvements are enacted by a Mandalay-endorsed Congress, and Mandaly won’t be happy with the oversight itself without similarly Mandalay-endorsed Congressional overseers. But, of course, that which Mandaly endorses won’t necessarily be endorsed by anyone else.
CoalsToNewCastle
@chopper: Greenwald himself uses ‘drama queen’ so I don’t think that, as long as the same conditions are applied for using it on Greenwald and using it on other people, it’s a problem.
I mean, I never call people ‘drama queen’, so if I only called a gay guy I was arguing with that, it’d be significant. If someone calls everyone who acts hyperbolicly dramatic a drama queen, it’s not really significant to use it about a gay dude.
chopper
@Cacti:
ah, the zeal of the converted.
chopper
@CoalsToNewCastle:
in which case irony is truly dead.
pylon
@chopper: I admit to being more comfortable with Obama running the NSA than Cheney. Look, I’m sure there is always room for abuse. The fact that NSA guys used the tech to spy on spouses (and got caught) suprises me not in the least. Cops, FBI, IRS, NSA – whoever – there’s always gonna be guys who overstep (“warrant – I don’t need no stinkin’ warrant”). And I’m sympathetic to the argument that a specific warrant is needed in every case (I’m a lawyer, so that notion is appealing to me). But practically speaking – when is a warrant going to be denied anyway.
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: Plus, as someone who studies drama and monarchies, I take offense to my scholarship being rhetorically associated with Glenn Greenwald.
dman
@Mclaren
“Now it’s the American people’s turn. How sad.
The American people used to be real live human
beings. Now they’re just human punching bags
pathetically rationalizing their victimization
because the prospect of facing their real situation is just too horrific to admit even to themselves.”
BANG ON
ChicagoTom
@pylon: The fact that NSA guys used the tech to spy on spouses (and got caught) suprises me not in the least.
They didn’t “get caught” — at least not in the sense that someone was policing from abuse/violations and these guys got caught in a net.
They SELF-reporterd in one way or another. Either because they had to take a polygraph test for a promotion or some other access or for some other reason. That right there is troubling.
People keep trying to minimize the instances of abuse based on the numbers, but the numbers are self-reported by the perpetrators. In fact, it seems like the NSA doesn’t care to actuall catch anyone violating these so-called safe guards. Furthermore, there has been no indication that any of these people who violated the protocols actually were reprimanded or fired or faced any sort of consequence. Another quite troubling fact.
What good are rules if there is no punishment for violating and no enforcement mechanism other than self-reporting?
Furthermore, it really troubles me that so many people just accept that a system that has the capability to illegally spy on average law abiding citizens exists, because, well, we just trust that it wont be abused. And that when the abuses have come to light people want to play games — like abuse is only a problem if it reaches some critical level, like say XXX number of abuses have to happen before anyone is allowed to object. That’s some prime time level idiocy. Abused once is once too many and heads should roll for it, if nothing else but to send a message to anyone thinking of abusing the system that the cost of getting caught isnt work it.
A system that can be abused will be abused.
Peter
@Mandalay: Oh, I disagree with this, based on two points:
1. A lot of the ongoing criticism of the Obama administration is based on the government’s attempts to detain Snowden. This takes on a rather different tone if they are pursuing an agent of Russian intelligence instead of an innocent whistleblower, hmm?
2. It makes the documents less reliable. Note that I did not say less true or accurate, but less reliable. Consider the bizarre, seemingly counter-productive way that Snowden has been leaking out a few at a time. We’re not getting a data dump here, we’re getting a carefully curated version of it. A movie trailer version of the full documents, if you will. And as we all know, movie trailers can be either accurate representations of the films they are made for, or hilariously deceptive. Snowden (and Greenwald) are not separate from the story, because they are creating the story.
cleek
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ:
but don’t call it “trolling”, because that just means you’re trying to shut down the conversation that the OP worked so very very very hard to foster.
kc
@CoalsToNewCastle:
Only drama queens demand apologies.
Seanly
@Mandalay:
My problem with the NSA is that multiple congresses and presidents have given them too much power, too much ability & no oversight. I’m pissed that this agency had all this power & data and no one, D or R, wants to reign them in. The NSA started way before Obama, the Patriot Act opend the barn doors even further before Obama and now we’re all supposed to be angry at Obama?
EthylEster
Late to the fray….I’m glad someone else has noticed that Cesca has run off the rails.
I keep intending to leave a comment there noting his derangement but then I just leave. His after party BS is also annoying. I keep eliminating blogs I read daily..his is probably next.
As for the flap about Cole accusing Cesca of calling GG et al drama queens, etc…..I sense a Jane Hamshers of the Left moment. Cole has them every so often.
EthylEster
@mclaren: WTF?
Bob In Portland
Although I’ve never seen my folder, I’m guessing I’ve been spied on by the US government most of my adult life, from the people planted in my Student Peace Union back in college during Vietnam to my days working in a union in San Francisco.
When I read about Echelon in the 90s I realized that the only thing limiting the NSA was the size of their hard drives.
I say this because I just cannot get worked up about the Snowden Affair. I note how this looks an awful lot like the CIA false defectors program of the late-fifties (the most famous alumni being Lee Harvey Oswald). The tell is that anyone reading Covert Action Information Bulletin knew that the NSA was creating an expanding domestic spying apparatus back in the eighties and nineties. Just like Snowden appears to be giving out info already pretty much on the record, Oswald was supposed to have given the Soviets the secrets to the U-2 when he defected, but when Francis Gary Powers went on his fateful flight the CIA removed the top-secret camera from the U-2 before he went up. And down.
As far as Greenwald goes, he’s either a useful idiot or working with Snowden. Snowden is either working with a part of US intelligence whose aim is to smear Obama or some foreign intelligence (Germany) or a combination of the two. He is not a true libertarian, and he’s not liberal. He’s an agent doing his job.
EthylEster
@Badtux: Read Cesca. He carefully lays out the details and then I murmur to myself “That’s all you’ve got?”
LAC
@mclaren: Oh good god…do us all favor and take your place at the right hand of the Father. You are obviously too good for us mere mortals.
LAC
@EthylEster: Funny, I read him and go wow, why doesn’t balloon juice go deeper into the story too? It does blow up the narrative, however.
EthylEster
@NotMax: Thanks. You took the idea right out of my brain. And your words were better.
I am not a libertarian and I don’t hate my government. But I think the powerful have a tendency to want to hold onto or expand their power. And in a democracy there must be oversight. I don’t trust the senate intelligence committee to look out for the interests of the private citizen. Most/all are themselves rather fond of power. Who represents ME? Not Dianne Feinstein.
EthylEster
@Badtux: Glad to read you again! I haven’t seen you around too much lately.
J R in WV
@askew:
I find it amazing that people who don’t believe that government can do anything effectively suddenly are willing to believe that the NSA has a failure rate of .0001% with no actual evidence whatsoever.
NASA had a 40% failure rate on shuttles… but NSA is perfect? Right! You go right on believing that, dumass~!
And vote for the (R) next election, they’re perfect too!
Heliopause
Something that Cesca and your like-minded commenters can’t quite wrap their heads around; most of the NSA disclosure stories were either co-written with “real” journalists (assuming you don’t think Greenwald is one) or written by other people entirely. Off the top of my head I can only think of one that Greenwald was alone on the byline. Not to mention that all the disclosure stories (as apart from Greenwald’s blogging) presumably went through an editing process. So yeah, it’s a gigantic red herring.
chopper
@J R in WV:
yeah, sending a large machine full of people into orbit on top of a massive controlled explosion is kinda a different thing than, say, successfully tapping some emails.
Soonergrunt
@Heliopause: So all of those stories that have had to be revised over and over again, or the ones where the content of the story, usually about 5 paragraphs in, says something entirely different than the headline and the lede–I guess you’re telling us that the Guardian as an organization is fucked up?
EthylEster
@CoalsToNewCastle: and I’m betting he gets one…after a tasteful pause.
John Cole
@Soonergrunt: No. There has never been any mention of the sexuality of Manning, Greenwald, and Snowden. My bad! No one has described any of these people as effeminate or odd or inquired into their personal sex lives.
Just what exactly does that mean?
EthylEster
@chopper: weak. i know you can do better. or at least you usually do better.
John Cole
@chopper: @CoalsToNewCastle:
And Bob Cesca is lying. Show me where I said Greenwald supporters are fags and drama queens. Quite clearly, I was talking about Bob’s implied insinuation re: melodrama.
EthylEster
@John Cole: THAT’S the quote that triggered your response? So this IS going to be a replay of JH_of_the_Left!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@John Cole:
Dude...
You get melodramatic every fucking time the refs throw a flag on the Stillers.
ETA: And you’re behaving melodramatically over this. I’m not calling you effeminate. I’m not calling you gay. Just overly-fucking-emotional.
eemom
It appears that Cole is now the story.
Rex Everything
@chopper:
Well, no, he didn’t. Unless your real name is Bob Cesca.
But this really proves my point. Cole said one phrase that you all chose to interpret a certain way, in a post that was making a much larger point. Never mind that you turned out to be wrong (unless you think Cole’s clarification is a straight up lie)—how anyone can seriously compare this to Soonergrunt’s post, the ENTIRE POINT of which was “fuck you John Cole!”, how anyone can say Cole gave as good as he got, is beyond me.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@eemom:
It’s a blog. Bloggers opine. Opinions are born of individuals and their unique perspectives. At least Cole lets us in on the origins of his perspective, which allows us to suss him out better. Can’t say that about every blogger.
Rex Everything
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Yeah. Right. Cole, and not Soonergrunt, has been overly-FUCKING-emotional.
chopper
@EthylEster:
what’s weak is comparing a data gathering system to the space shuttle in terms of expected failure rate.
CoalsToNewCastle
@John Cole: No, he’s calling you out for putting these words/thoughts in his mouth:
Drama Queens! Melodramatic fags! Suck on that, Ackerman and others. You are unworthy. Your actual reporting doesn’t hold up to the fact free wanking. Deal with it, beeoch.
In your post, this is supposed to be Bob Cesca’s thoughts, right?
Rusty
Cole’s posts and actions here sometimes rise to the level of performance art, and this one is no exception. Performance art is often misunderstood by a wider audience, as this piece is. JC explained himself easy enough in the comments (#200-ish), above. His original post is provocative, to say the least. Like a good piece of performance art, I had to see/read the post 3 times, and read many of the misunderstanding comments twice, before I finally got it. Yup, he’s spot on. I don’t always agree with John Cole, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis to celebrate.
I said “actions” above because I think promoting Freddie deBoer to frontpager was also a piece of performance art, especially when you view it through the lens of ensuing backlash. What the critics never realized is that both Freddie and John are kindred souls – both blazing onto the internet with their full legal names. From the moment they started posting, anyone could have discovered their locations within a matter of minutes and caused problems for either one of them – and they didn’t really give an eff about that. Sure, it’s en vogue now to come out of the closet of anonymity – witness all the frontpagers here that finally started using their full legal names – but John and Freddie did it long before it was cool. They have had to apologize many, many times for being wrong – which you have to do if you’re not hiding behind some facade.
Anyway, cool donnybrook.
pylon
@ChicagoTom: “A system that can be abused will be abused. ”
So all systems?
chopper
@CoalsToNewCastle:
it’s cool, since cole has now said to bob ‘if that crazy shit i put in your mouth to make you look like a homophobe wasn’t what you meant, i apologize’.
somehow i doubt cesca feels it’s all hunky-dory.
LT
HAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA AH!
Oh fuck. I suppose I shoul dbe glad I missed this last night.
Good one, Cole. Knock some fucking heads. The fucks.
Pat
These clownish gangs of loyalists endlessly defending Obama over his criminal NSA only demonstrates to the larger public how little the actions of establishment Democrats resemble their lofty rhetoric when it comes to the civil rights of anyone but themselves. The lack of Democrats’ courage of convictions is why crazy ass wingnuts keep winning elections. Dems are rightly seen as craven cowards by the electorate for cowing to the hawks on nearly every nat’l security issue out there.
LT
@Soonergrunt: You want “prick”?
https://twitter.com/soonergrunt/status/372137334788980736
That’s fucking sick.
LT
@Soonergrunt: And Cesca (and Charles Johnson) very often has a hint of homophobia in his posts. I don’t think he’s homophobic, but those fucks – like your @20committee “Glen or Glenda” friend – just can’t fucking help it. The hate overcomes them.
paradoctor
@? Martin: Not necessarily _everything_ the NSA says is a lie; just that everything that suits them is a lie. We can confidently predict that they lie to serve themselves, and not you. This is what is meant by “you can’t trust them”.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
Greenwald has his BFF Snowden hiding in a country where gay folk are persecuted with government approval and it doesn’t bother Greenwald a bit. Greenwald is a guest speaker on a panel moderated by the neo-confederate Southern Avenger (aka the Loser Luchador), Rand Paul’s former campaign manager, and his supporters ignore it. Assange, another Snowden supporter, admires the Paul political family and thinks that being anti-abortion is to support non-violence and those who point this out are being shouted down by The Cult of Greenwald.
Assange is hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy, Snowden’s hiding in Russia, Greenwald is living in Brazil and Manning is in prison. Heck of a movement they have going there! It looks soooo All American!
I’m against the security state but I refuse to align myself with those whose political stances are diametrically opposed to mine. Jane Hamsher was rightfully derided for wanting to join forces with Grover Norquist and this situation is the same damned thing. I don’t give a shit if my position on the security state is the same as Greenwald and the Gang, I refuse to sidle up to these shitheads and it’s sad to see that some idiots see them as the ones who are ‘leading the way’ to a better world for all.
No they aren’t. The only care about what they care about and the rest of you can fuck off if you don’t agree with them.
I’ll take Charles at LGF over neo-confederate Greenwald any day. Charles is far from perfect but at least he saw racial discrimination on the right and rejected it (and the right).
Rex Everything
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
What’s even worse is, do you know Chomsky was a guest on William F Buckley’s TV show in the late 60s?
OMG!! Huge fucking scandal! This means Chomsky and all his supporters love Buckley!
Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Rex Everything:
Not even close to a comparison, 10/10 for lameness.
Here’s a good one from NBC for those of you who value your privacy.
Shorter version: Get off of the internet.
Here’s another one for our libertarian freedom fighters: Your Facebook friends may affect your credit rating.
Yeah, keep thinking the NSA is the big problem.
chopper
@Rex Everything:
chomsky went there to debate buckley. is greenwald going there to tell the paul family’s political guys to pound sand?
Rex Everything
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Please. It’s the exact same thing. Being a guest on someone’s panel does not imply, does not even begin to imply, does not even hint at the merest rudimentary beginnings of a nascent implication, that one shares the host’s views.
Rex Everything
@chopper:
If Greenwald had said anything there that was remotely conservative or libertarian, we both know you guys would be shouting it from every rooftop.
Since all you ever offer is this moronic guilt-by-association horseshit, it’s clear that’s all you got.
chopper
@Rex Everything:
i’m asking, is he going there to smack them down? if so, then yeah, it’s like chomsky going on buckley’s show.
if not, it’s a stupid comparison.
CoalsToNewCastle
@Rex Everything:
Really? You think it’s totally fine to be on a panel that’s moderated by a white supremacist? And not call out that dude on being a white supremacist?
Tripod
TPC
Pat
Wow, the collective psychosis of this loyalist gang is clinically fascinating. Change the proper nouns and it’s a Limbaugh chat room all day long over here since their Prince got poo on his collar. Their childish defense of the NSA has revealed them as rank partisans who couldn’t criticize Obama if he raped their mothers right in front of them.
chopper
speaking of psychosis, what’s with you guys and your obsession with Obama raping people? first it’s nuns, now it’s mothers.
Pat
They couldn’t criticize him if he substituted Maxwell House for their Cafe Verona either.
LAC
@chopper: Well, at least they have moved on from the Hitler references.
chopper
@LAC:
not if obama’s in a hitler costume when he does it.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@andrewtna:
Cesca:
Other posts demonstrating support for reform:
This one is very detailed on FISC and FISA and what needs to change
This is a good primer on the technical terms and the surveillance programs that were being discussed in the news
Here is a brief post critical of Sen. Orrin Hatch who was against the privacy invasion of a national gun registry but supported FISA.
Here’s another one critical of conservatives in 2010 who are against the surveillance after they were for it
There are tons of these kinds of posts where Cesca calls out someone for opposing FISA, NSA, etc long after it all began after 9/11. Here’s other posts regarding his opposition to said laws….
This one is critical of then Sen. Obama of voting for the FISA Amendments back in 2008
Here he is openly asking blog readers to contact then Sen. Obama to encourage him to vote AGAINST the FISA Amendments
More specific comments about his position on FISA
An oldie, but a goodie from 2005, his opposition to illegal wiretapping
And I don’t know just how far back his archives go, but I know for sure he took a very strong stance against the The Patriot Act and ALL of the laws since then that sought to expand the surveillance state. But those are old you say? Okay, here’s links to articles from this year where he says there should be reforms in the NSA, FISA, etc.
Here, Here,
And just for giggles, here’s one on how corporations are invading our privacy and very few people, not even Greenwald, seems to mind that in the least.
Need I go on?
chopper
see, cesca here is being pretty reasonable. which is the problem.
why argue realistic measures like reforming the FISA law and the PATRIOT act and increasing legal oversight of the NSA? that’s stuff that could actually happen. kill the bill!
Pat
So a Congress member who knows the NSA probably has all of his dirty laundry neatly tucked away in its server room will somehow find the character to do the right thing and vote for meaningful surveillance reforms? The obvious answer to that means the whole apparatus needs to be stripped bare and rebuilt from square one. No significant bloc of Congress has clean enough hands to support anything more than superficial reforms to the NSA.