Feinstein and Rogers: No Clemency For Snowden 504
Ars Technica reports, probably to no one's surprise, that U.S. elected officials are unlikely to start seeing Edward Snowden as a righteous whistleblower rather than a traitor to the U.S. government. From the article:"[Sunday], the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers (R-MI), both emphasized there would be no mercy coming from Washington. 'He was trusted; he stripped our system; he had an opportunity—if what he was, was a whistle-blower—to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,' Feinstein told CBS' Face The Nation. 'But that didn’t happen. He’s done this enormous disservice to our country, and I think the answer is no clemency.'"
Ah right, but.... (Score:3, Informative)
he and others did and were ignored or worse prosecuted.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-09/world/39856622_1_intelligence-powers-single-point [washingtonpost.com]
Disservice? What disservice? (Score:5, Informative)
" ... pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,' Feinstein told CBS' Face The Nation."
You mean the House and Senate Intelligence Committees didn't know about this already? Aren't they in charge? Don't they make the rules? Didn't they say, and aren't they still saying, that it's all legal? In what alternate universe would Snowden think telling the intelligence committees would change anything.
Feinstein thinks we're all ignorant idiots.
Re:'He was trusted; he stripped our system...' (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. It's a bit rich to complain of breach of trust when you've just been caught listening in on the phone calls of allied political leaders.
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:5, Informative)
The German parliament wants to interview him. The current discussion is wether he can come to Germany to do so. And maybe even stay here. There are rumors there may be a legal loophole to not extradite him to the US if he sets foot on German turf. There is a slim majority for that in the German parliament.
All this is obviously pretty hypothetical. What isn't hypothetical is the preemptive US extradition request that arrived pretty much immediately after this has hit the headlines.
Re:And what good would that have done? (Score:4, Informative)
Does anyone actually believe that if he had gone to the Senate or the House that anything would change, that the concerns would have been addressed?
Not only that, but does anyone believe that he would not have been redirected to one of the NSA agents to air his concerns? I am sure Senate/House intelligence committees just stand by to address people's complaints (and is not spending all of their time fundraising).
Re:clemency? (Score:5, Informative)
Snowden says there's nothing more he hasn't released yet. He's released all the data to the media. Now he's just commenting on what they release.
Re:So what exactly are the phone numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
211 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: 202-224-1700
Re:'He was trusted; he stripped our system...' (Score:2, Informative)
Snowdens 'crime' was merely malum prohibitum, whereas the crimes of the U.S. government and its agencies constitute malum in se. That is the crucial point here. In my opinion, doning something that is not legally allowed to prevent or end something that is fundamentally wrong is good, as long as there is no way that is likely to accomplish the same without breaking the law.
Re:And what good would that have done? (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have to guess. There were people who tried to report problems the "right way", it didn't work.
Same goes with the Manning case. There were plenty of people that only reported injustices through the chain of command, nothing happened.
Indeed. See here [wikipedia.org] if you're not sure.
Re:Traitor to the government---of course. (Score:3, Informative)
Whatever you think of what Snowden did, the simple fact is that he is not a traitor. The US Constitution has a very clear definition of treason, specifically, aiding or giving comfort to an enemy at a time of war declared by Congress. Congress hasn't declared war since 1942.
Re:If he had reported it through official channels (Score:3, Informative)
Especially channels amenable to spying on US citizens, we would never have heard of Snowden or the spy programs. If he had then tried to publish via other means, neither would his family. At the risk of Godwin: If you were, say, a German administrator learning about the death camps and being absolutely appalled, reporting it to any senior Nazi official wouldn't do much good.
And it didn't for those who naively did tried to do this. Case in point, John Rabe, a Siemens employee in China saved the lives of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians in during the rape of Nanking. He was rewarded with a gag order upon his return to Germany for embarrassing an ally. Post war he was brutally interrogated by the NKVD and then by the British and died in abject poverty sustained by money and food donated by the people of Nanking. Rabe he was one of the lucky ones. Many altruistic individuals who saved lives during WWII ended up being punished by their own countries for what they did.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: At which point (Score:4, Informative)
And you lost me the second you started ripping Obama over this. This shit has Cheney's fingerprints all over it. Bush was just the tool.
What's most disturbing is the economic spying. I want to know who it's being given to. That there would be proof that corporations have subverted the government for their own profits.
Re:At which point (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that the vast majority of Repubmocrats don't work for us anymore: they work for the corporations.
Gerrymandering contributes to this problem. Congressional representatives with safe seats (which is around 410 out of 435 seats) are required to raise a certain amount of money for the party if they want to keep them. Effectively, they are guaranteed re-election as long as they appease the corporate doners and keep the cash rolling in. Is any wonder the U.S. government responds poorly to the public when, in additional to rampant yellow journalism, the vast majority of your elected representatives are minimally, if at all, responsible to their constituents.
Re:clemency? (Score:4, Informative)
building codes requiring large windows in all new structures
Those are called "egress windows", they've been required by the fire code since the late 1970s in most large cities and since the 1980s in most of the rest of the country. They're so that the fire department can extract residents in an emergency.
Re:clemency? (Score:4, Informative)
That and she already fucking knew what was going on. The very agencies she wanted him to go to were part of the conspiracy. I'm sure Snowden knew that, so why would he go to them?
Re:clemency? (Score:5, Informative)
"There has to be a reason why the US hasn't sent in special forces to extricate Snowden already."
Well, of course there's a reason. The decision makers have brains that are at least as large as their balls. WTF, you think we could send a hit team into Russia, to hit a high profile guest, without repercussions? Repercussions such as a couple dozen dead American special forces being displayed on television by Russian television?
Derp . . . .