Edward Snowden was a BOB

[Despanan]

Well, not really, but checking out his anime art profile from 10 years ago,

[Agent]

one day were going to have to elect a president who has old anime art on the internet this is the terrifying reality we live in now

[Samurai]

Agent speaks sooth.

[Despanan]

I just love it that this is the guy who outed the INSANE levels of surveillance we all live under:

[Phantomgrift]

He really didn't "out" anything.

I drew up responses at length to this on other pages, tying in with the nature of my job.
It boils down to a number of factors.

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I am not “anti-Constitutional”, condoning or chastising the government, or any other host of queries leveled at me.
I have a job in the Intelligence community of the military. I have had this job for the last ten years. I am also fairly well-educated with a solid cross-cultural education that spans the entirety of the United States thanks to growing up traveling. This, I personally believe, grants me an unusual and unique perspective on events.

The government had a plan in place to monitor American Citizens?
Well, per something that we get training on every year, there are numerous red-tape regulations we have to maintain to so much as report on American Citizens, much less monitor them. Now then, contrary to popular, flavor-of-the-week belief, there is no massive “Temple Of Doom” sized warehouse under the NSA headquarters wherein a small country of employees eternally monitors everyone in the United States. Your phone is not tapped and Big Brother is not watching you. Hell, the military doesn't have enough people to remotely begin to do something like that.

However, thanks to the events of 9/11, the world changed. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new manner of warfare was carried to our shores that has not been seen in centuries... At least not here.

To date, the Patriot Act has allowed the CIA and the FBI to stop and disrupt well over 1500 plots that were being carried out on American soil to attack U.S. citizens, landmarks and structures. I spent a year working at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Terrorists do not simply plot overseas and then attempt to launch themselves at the U.S. They infiltrate like the rats they are and blend in while planning. They do not work out of large, comically empty warehouses with laser-sharks and a big, gimmicky, “Evil Mastermind Lair Here!” on the front.

This is where things get tricky.
Monitoring is mostly through computers nowadays. Use certain words, phrases and utterances in a set parameter, and it will trigger alerts that something may be afoot. Al Qadea alone has had operatives attempt to employ themselves at major cell-phone companies, and the ubiquitous use of the cellphone is critical to many terrorist cells. They also have operatives dedicated as strongly as the Chinese are, to hacking and probing company computer systems.

Ergo, a federal agency, if they are attempting to thwart a terrorist plot, cannot simply ask for a single persons records without the risk of raising suspicion. It’s easier to ask for a block of contact information, highlight the target you’re after, and discard the rest. If a time-sensitive situation has occurred, there may not be time to implement the lengthy process for obtaining a warranted wiretap. Ergo, with a much shorter timeframe and situational requirements, the agents in question can utilize the Patriot Act to obtain the time-sensitive information they need in order to prevent the death of American personnel.

This is why these laws are in place, this is why the government “monitors” certain situations that fall within a set parameter. They cannot simply dial in a camera and follow you home on a whim. (That’s the United Kingdom though.)

The other thing that annoys and frustrates me about all of this, outside of that asshole Snowden violating a number of legal laws in breaking the contracts he was signed to? I’m tired of people flipping out and acting like this is brand new or Orwells 1984. History repeats itself. Government monitoring is nothing new, and I for one am glad Constitutional oversight is in place to determine what situation requires monitoring. Or did everyone simply forget the abjectly blatant days of yore when we straight up had the House Committee on Un-American Activities?

Additionally, people wig out, scream and point fingers at the government.
Meanwhile, despite warnings otherwise, they will happily place a crap-ton of their own personal information on the internet that nearly anyone with a basic knowledge of google can pull up. Shoot, for roughly 15-35 dollars, you can pay companies that exist to provide you ever single publically available record on you that’s ever been drafted up. It’s a common tool of modern private detectives. And let us not forget that while people scream at the government, they are apparently completely cool or utterly oblivious to how much of their daily computer use, websites visited, appliances owned, etc. are lifted at will from their personal electronic devices.

This is nothing new, Apple, Microsoft and a host of other companies have routinely been revealed to engage in this type of active monitoring the moment you install or power-up one of their products. Google Earth and Streetview have an alarming trend of recording reams of data about you, including, but not limited to, wireless scanning of the neighborhoods in addition to their photography.

Why do we selectively wig out completely about one, but ignore or overlook the other?
Because the idea of combating enemies of the U.S. is potentially more alarming or bothersome than skimming through Terms Of Usage so you can fire up a round of “Angry Birds” or download some iTunes?

Quite frankly, I have a bigger issue with private companies mining my data because they can legally sell it to just about whomever the fuck they please.

And finally?
Snowden himself. The more interviews and descriptions of him I read, the more information I find, the more I piece together a image not of a humble martyr blowing the whistle on tainted chocolates being given to orphans… No, the more I gather, the more of a picture comes together that paints a portrait of a self-centered, conceited, sanctimonious shit who was apparently cool enough with the information he worked with on a daily basis to maintain his 200,000 dollar a year contractor salary and save up before he decided to run his little scheme and dash off to Hong Kong.

That’s not the actions of a whistle-blower. That’s the classic psychological actions of a narcissistic sociopath.

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Desp, are you truly aware of how much information the basic individual can gather from the internet? Even if it's no more than a public-records search? It's honestly the main tool of most modern private detectives.

Snowden is either looking for attention, or if he truly believes he's doing the right thing... Utterly naive in failing to understand how much personal information people put out about themselves on a daily basis. Entirely of their own whim. Contrary to what some folks would like to believe, there are still very much alive and well, people on the planet that would like nothing more than to see the U.S. destroyed. It's why I still have a job and why we have a law enforcement and military to begin with. When the time comes these things are no longer needed, great. But due to human nature, I doubt if that will happen anytime in my life.

[Agent]

what does that have to do with anime

[Phantomgrift]

Everything? Nothing?

I've started taking Celexa and it gives me spots of insomnia, which in turn leads me to imbibe vast amounts of coffee as I'm still working night-shift.
I've less desire to randomly punch things through bulkheads, but I apparently tend to give new meaning to the term "fuzzy logic" when I'm not paying attention to what I'm typing and just goof off at the computer on a break.

[Zengus]

Insomnia sucks.

You shouldn't drink too much coffee if you're on mood altering drugs (depressants or stimulants, either really. It's not good to mix uppers and downers or give uppers an extra kick). It can give you panic attacks that make you feel like you're having a heart attack (or, presumably, panic attacks that are so bad they give you a heart attack), especially if you're stressed out or low on sleep. Make sure you are taking b-12 vitamins >:|

Your post had some pretty good points, like the exaggeration of the extent to which this data collected is ever actually reviewed, and the fact that war has changed in the last decade or two, and some kind of change needed to be made by the US as well in response. It was one of the better defenses of government intelligence I have read.

[Despanan]

[dexeron]

Frankly, what disturbs me the most is the weird Pollyanna lenses with which Phant wants us to view the entire thing.

I'm not going to say that OMG SURVEILLENCE IS EVIL TYRANNY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.
I'm not going to say that OMG TURRORESTS WE NEED SURVEILLENCE THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Both extremes are wrong, and both are short-sighted. This is a complex issue, and the real questions are ones of structure, of oversight and accountability. We can take reasonable steps to be safe, and also take reasonable steps to ensure that our security apparatus does not oppress us in return. As for Snowden, I dunno what to think. Maybe he's a "whistleblower" that needs protection. Maybe he's an asshole who deserves prosecution. I don't know. I don't really care. I'm more concerned about the fact that what was revealed is being not-so-subtly shoved to the side and ignored, and really, that's what we should be concerned about. Yes, this has been going on for DECADES, under various names, but there's something larger at play here. Do we, as people, want our government* to actually be accountable to the people, or not? (And no, Phant, I don't buy your assertions that it already is. At least not as much as it could be.)


*And by government, I mean federal, state AND local. Unfortunately, Desp, these are really separate issues - your encounters with abusive law enforcement are, unfortuantely, really a separate issue. However, one could say that a lot of it depends on the atmosphere and context created by attitudes on the larger stage; ultimately it's something that I think needs to be addressed simultaneously across multiple levels of interaction.