Snowden Queries Putin On Live TV Regarding Russian Internet Surveillance 396
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Edward Snowden appeared on a Russian television call-in show to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin about policies of mass surveillance. The exchange has a canned quality which will likely lead to questions regarding the integrity of Snowden's actions, in the query of his host in asylum."
Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
These propaganda sessions for Putin are pre-staged so Snowden has allowed himself to be used as a "propaganda tool". Considering how freedoms are curtailed in Russia, it seriously deminishes Snowden's reputation.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
While true, your statement also assumes he had a choice...
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While true, your statement also assumes he had a choice...
Either way, it demonstrates that Snowden is a tool. Just not sure what kind...
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep -- if the US wanted to not give Putin a propaganda tool, they could have welcomed him back home with a guarantee of safety.
We made our choice, and he took refuge in the only place he could.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
That's presuming that either Snowden intended to help Putin all along, or that he realized that his safety is not guaranteed, no matter what the US says. Either way, the way the US handled his flight was nothing short of incompetent and disgraceful.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
He chose to flee to the two countries with the BIGGEST free speech / surveillance issues in the world-- China and Russia-- after publicly blowing the whistle on much lesser instances in the US.
I mean we're throwing a fit about the NSA's capturing of "metadata". China just snorts up every bit of cell and internet data that goes in or out of any ISP or carrier, and they barely attempt to hide it. Im sure Russia is pretty close.
So yes, he had a choice, and he made it about 8 months ago, and it was a remarkably bad one.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
What China does in surveillance of their own citizens isn't acceptable in my opinion but how is "they're even worse" a valid defence for the US which has constantly acted like it stands apart on these matters. Secondly, and something I think Americans really don't appreciate, as someone from outside both China and the US I know China would probably try and intercept my calls etc, but at least they don't pretend to be my friend while they are at it which America has been.
I'm yet to hear a good criticism of how Snowden behaved. Arguments like "he should have stayed within the system" are laughable when one considers what he already tried and the fates of others who tried, the but, but, but someone else is worse argument is relative and just shoddy misdirection. I'm incredibly grateful that he had the balls to share what he knew with the world.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
What China does in surveillance of their own citizens isn't acceptable in my opinion but how is "they're even worse" a valid defence for the US which has constantly acted like it stands apart on these matters. Secondly, and something I think Americans really don't appreciate, as someone from outside both China and the US I know China would probably try and intercept my calls etc, but at least they don't pretend to be my friend while they are at it which America has been.
I don't think China and Russia being worse is a valid defence for the US. But I do think it's a valid point of criticism for Snowden. It is a bit hypocritical to criticize the US's surveillance activities, and then flee to the only two major powers that are demonstrably worse.
That being said I think he did have understandable motives, he wanted to go to somewhere that wouldn't extradite him to the US. That means a country that is a) not particularly friendly with the US, and b) powerful enough to resist US pressure, that pretty much means China and Russia. As the Evo Morales grounding incident [wikipedia.org] demonstrates Europe was not an option. Maybe Ecuador was but they may not have been big enough and he still had to get there.
It's still unfortunate that he's in Russia, I think the Ukraine incident has revealed that Putin is a bit crazier than anyone anticipated and Snowden's position more tenuous. The Russians may have been threatening to send him back to the US as a concession to ease the sanctions unless he starts cooperating in their propaganda.
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How about a good criticism of how Snowden behaves? He shouldn't stooge for Putin on television.
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What say he's a buddy of them?
"Kid" wants to stay alive / not be imprisoned and doomed for life.
(And risked it all to tell everyone what he knew, and you people are trash-talking him for that.)
Yay, how awful of him!
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
As I said elsewhere, this argument makes no sense. We've shown Americans how we deal with leakers by our handling of Bradley/Chelsea Manning. Snowden had no choice but to go to our enemies for asylum. He's an American. For him to be a hypocrite, he'd have to spy on americans. If he has to do propaganda for the Russians to survive, then who cares? It's the Russians' problem, not ours.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
Please don't compare Manning to Snowden. Manning copied everything he could get his hands on and released it all without any consideration for whether or not it had a valid reason to be secret. He threw the baby out with the bathwater. Snowden has been careful to release only the things he feels violated the oath he and others took to the U.S. Constitution. One is a vandal. The other is a genuine whistleblower if not a patriot and hero.
I dunno why you think he has to spy on Americans to be a hypocrite. By doing propaganda for the Russians, he is affirming that sometimes you have to compromise your lesser values in order to protect greater ones. That's exactly what he's whistleblowing the U.S. government for doing - compromising Americans' privacy in order to (in their best estimation) protect their safety. If you actually listen to what Feinstein and others who defend these programs are saying, they're not evilly rubbing their hands together while cackling with glee that they're violating the Constitution. They implemented these programs because they genuinely thought the benefit (improved safety for Americans) was worth the cost (warrant-less searches and degradation of privacy).
What differentiates what he's doing IMHO is that if something is written in the Constitution, that kinda implies that it's an uncompromisable value. That you cannot violate Americans' 4th Amendment rights even if doing so would result in greater safety. Exceptions can be made during martial law and war, but no such declarations were made (unless you consider the war on terrorism to be a real, declared, and unending war).
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You really are a special kind of tool, ain't you?
Let's hear how many deaths you predict your baseless and idiotic post will cause? My "estimate" is at least 10k. Furthermore, I predict the fact that I woke this morning should produce at least 20 deaths.
Off topic: why isn't there a "Ridiculous" moderation for these cases (not trolling but purely idiotic)?
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
So the US is enough of a "Big Bad" that its worth Snowden risking his life.... so he flees to an even Bigger Bad, and cooperates with their propaganda machine.
No choice my foot.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
So you would rather that he should have stayed to be broken like Manning?
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Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
He chose to flee to the two countries with the BIGGEST free speech / surveillance issues in the world-- China and Russia-- after publicly blowing the whistle on much lesser instances in the US.
I mean we're throwing a fit about the NSA's capturing of "metadata". China just snorts up every bit of cell and internet data that goes in or out of any ISP or carrier, and they barely attempt to hide it. Im sure Russia is pretty close.
I don't know about you, but I don't want my country to only have to be slightly better than China or Russia. I don't give a crap how bad or good Russia or China are; I only care that my country abide by the values it claims to uphold. Being China++ doesn't mean much.
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You guys just assume as a fact that Russia is worse than US. I don't think that is true anymore.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
Snowden's best chance of survival is to stay in the limelight, where his keepers will risk public scrutiny if he is harmed. So, assuming that becoming a tool was Snowden's only choice, his required tool-task wasn't that bad. Just lob a softball question to Putin, and let Putin respond with propaganda. Snowden didn't have to lie or endorse anything, and it gave him the necessary renewal of his 15 minutes of fame.
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He probably could have tried legal measures to implement reform if it was actually more important to him than being famous
He wants more than fame, he wants to establish Russia as a global power, again. Problem is, his economy is mostly natural resourced exporting - which means it's pretty weak on manufacturing or services.
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You seem to be talking about Putin, while gp was talking about Snowden.
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Problem is, ... economy is mostly natural resourced exporting ...
Extracting natural resources, transporting and selling them is very far from a trivial task.
Maybe not trivial, but it doesn't drive innovation. It's like the 16th century Spaniards extracting gold from S. America and transporting it to Europe. Not trivial, but they still went bankrupt. The English innovated in shipbuilding and navigation. The rest is history.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
He probably could have tried legal measures to implement reform if it was actually more important to him than being famous
Really? What legal measures could he have tried while remaining in the US? He would have been arrested faster than SSD read times, and never heard from again for "national security" reasons. The government's first response was to label him a traitor - they don't let you have much freedom as a traitor, in case you didn't know. I doubt any legal measures he could have tried before being arrested as a traitor would even have been reported on by the press, again for national security reasons.
Whether you think his revelations were right or wrong, I think you'd have to agree he couldn't have truly revealed anything successfully by staying in the US.
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Snowden did the right thing when he revealed the NSA blanket spying on the US public. I think he did the wrong thing when he revealed legitimate spying on foreign nations such as the revelations about spying on the Chinese military. I think the former was so important that he deserved an award for it. I think the later was so damaging to our legitimate foreign espionage that he should be jailed for it.
If he ever returns to the US he should be publicly honored for the former and jailed for the later. It's unfortunate that for whatever reason he came up with that he decided to reveal that legitimate espionage. It's destroyed his reputation among most Americans and in truth it's damaged the good stuff he did do. All those foreign spying revelations have ultimately destroyed his legacy, if he had stayed on topic of mass spying on the American people (his claimed goal) he might have been able to return to the US someday. As it stands if he ever returns he'll likely spend the rest of his life in prison and most Americans are going to remember him as a traitor.
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When considering public opinion on such matters, note that the majority of the country once believed Saddam Hussein caused 9/11, that the Vietnam War was legitimate, that slavery was okay, etc. Leaker of the pentagon papers Daniel Ellsburg was also considered a traitor in the 70's and underwent the same treatment as Snowden by the military/intelligence bureaus, but as time went on and the government propaganda machine moved on to other matters, he largely became regarded as a hero. That said, I'd be curious
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Espionage is never legitimate unless you consider it acceptable for others to do it to you in the manner in which you do it to them. The hypocrisy of the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, BND, Mossad, FSB, etc. is grossly palpable. Everyone seems to do it, yet it's "shame on you" if anyone does it them. Pulling down the curtains was an important demonstration of collective, well deserved shame.
This crap belongs in movies and video games, not the real world. The citizenry of the world's nations should not be the game pieces used in the amusement and distraction of political and military rulers.
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I expect and accept that every nation state engages in espionage against other governments. It's a good thing. It helps those nations understand each other, their motivations, what their red lines are and why they do the things they do in a world where different cultures see the very same thing differently. It prevents war directly though these actions.
That doesn't mean governments shouldn't try to gain the advantage by stopping as much spying as they can. It's natural for a nation-state to seek advantage a
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It's absolutely a shame. The dog and pony show of foreign leaders expressing shock and dismay in return for their electorate's goodwill is embarrassing. Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany, and didn't know phones could be tapped? Please.
Victoria Nuland, a State Department official, was recorded in a private phone call dismissively saying "Fuck the EU" and suggesting names for post-Yanukovych leadership America would be content in a phone call with the US Ambassador to Ukraine, and it's released to the
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
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I asked my senator if he had ever called her about his concerns. She said "no." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he never called Ron/Rand Paul, or any other congressman that one would assume would be receptive to the sort of grievances Snowden supposedly has.
For a few seconds I thought you were being serious, and I was going to respond with something like "You think going to a politician, any politician, with material the government considers treasonous to reveal, is a good idea?!?" But then I realized you must be joking, because no one is that insane. So I applaud you sir/madame, well done! You had me a for a bit.
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He could have gone to Congress.
What does "gone to Congress" mean? You mean like just walking in the front door and demanding speaking time during a joint session of both houses? (not gonna happen) Or do you mean he could have contacted a congressman, which would give him a fairly high chance of being arrested within hours for being a traitor? (or do you think contacting a congressman with information about the NSA's activities would somehow remain quiet for long?)
Maybe you aren't aware of it, but under the US Constitution the Congress has special powers that are quite useful in situations like this.
Maybe you aren't aware of it, but the US Constitution doesn't seem to have
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
That isn't actually true. The contractor protections were not as firm, but they apparently existed. (And from what I've read that has been addressed now.) And I'm pretty sure that would be a moot question if he had gone to Congress.
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Re:Useful Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting what one will do when your political asylum is up for renewal.
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And the rest of the world either inclined to sell him out to the US, or not letting him immigrate in the first place.
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LOL oh man you are so right, look how many terrorist attacks have happened since the snowden leaks eh, now that all of the NSAs spying techniques are known and now stopped. I guess the bad guys have all moved now from forming plots via gmail & twitter & facebook to secretz underground cave meetings! Snowden deserves to be somewhere better than back in the US, unfortunately, not too many places qualify for a position like that these days...
Re:Snowden never had integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
To anyone who ever says that Snowden told the terrorists about bugging. The 2010 film Four Lions has a scene with the terrorist plotters using a spoof on Disney's "Club Penguin", making it the only safe method to chat to each other (it's a black comedy). Interception was so widely known, it was a joke (see Bin Laden's lack of house-hold comms).
The people who didn't suspect that electronic comms were all thoroughly bugged were the other 99.999999% of the population. They thought the 'goodies' were targeting the 'baddies'.
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Do you think there is a useful difference in specificity there? Details matter. The claim that the terrorists "just knew already" is bullshit and a whitewash. Terrorist groups have changed their communication methods since Snowden's leaks and intelligence has been lost because of it.
Does the NSA not have the technology to steam-open their letters, or what? (Also, I call bullshit. The actual (non-business secrets, non-webcam) intelligence the NSA has captured is about zero. Notice how surprised everyone was
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Amusingly, the entire Crimean plan is in the Wikileaked documents from 3yrs ago.
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Hello? That isn't an act of terrorism, it's a planned mass murder - nothing more, nothing less. Or at least it would be if the term wasn't hijacked lately.
Also where did you get the information that "Terrorist groups have changed their communication methods since Snowden's leaks..."? Made up on the spot _or_ "leaked" from NSA? We know from reliable sources that terrorists have used very sophisticated communication for a long time with the leadership often only being accessible indirect by technical means (u
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The sessions of any western Head of State are pre-staged too. The questions are known to all parties in advance. So what is your point?
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Snowden was probably ordering a pizza and his recorded voice was mixed and dubbed into the phone call.
In any case, everything you need to know about Putin's "Open Russia" you can tell from his control of all media.
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Also, compare how the main Russian media speak about Putin with how Fox News speaks about Obama.
There is no difference, sorry. Obama is not talked poorly about in US media. Anyone that talks negatively tends to be labelled a racist almost immediately.
In the last week the only things I have heard regarding President Obama in broadcast media are that he talked to Putin about the Ukraine, and that he's coming to town for a yet another fund raiser. I can not possibly watch all 3 major stations all the time (obviously) but do try and rotate stations. It's possible someone did question or talk poorly ab
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These propaganda sessions for Putin are pre-staged so Snowden has allowed himself to be used as a "propaganda tool". C
But that is what Snowden has ALWAYS been for Putin, a propaganda tool. Why should it change now?
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No it doesn't.
Snowden asked a simple and direct question, as is the norm at Putin's Q&A sessions (he does them with press corps too). Putin gave a simple and direct answer. Whether you believe the answer is a lie or not, it's a question that anyone could have asked and got the same response.
Also
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Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, when I first saw this I though "Oh God..." but after I had a few minutes to think about it, I came to the conclusion: I, nor anyone else here on slashdot, will ever do anything in our lifetimes as significant as what Edward Snowden did last year. And now he's in a very precarious situation. I suspect he could be used as a bargaining chip by Russia. So whatever he has to say to stay alive in the near future is ok with me. I'll not fault the guy. He already did his good deed for this lifetime.
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These propaganda sessions for Putin are pre-staged so Snowden has allowed himself to be used as a "propaganda tool". Considering how freedoms are curtailed in Russia, it seriously deminishes Snowden's reputation.
Snowden doesn't trade on his reputation -- his whistleblowing was a release of the government's own documents, and did not rely on his reputation at all (indeed the public hadn't even heard of him before he released the documents). He's not a career campaigner, just someone who had been working in the business of eavesdropping on all of us and decided that it had gone too far. That he's now effectively in exile is a cost he clearly decided was worth paying, but that in itself doesn't mean that his every a
Re:Useful Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't this call into question everything Snowden has said?
Nice try. People who make any of this about Snowden are trying to hide the fact that the government is violating the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Old proverb (Score:5, Insightful)
It loses a bit in the translation but essentially it says "When you're living with wolves, you better learn fast how to howl, lest they might think you're a sheep".
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Not to Godwin the thread, but the new government in east Ukraine is actually registering Jews right now today [usatoday.com].
America learned once why it can't let dictators like Putin just invade their neighbors with impunity. How quickly we forgot where this all goes. It will take more than a sternly worded letter, or laughable sanctions, to stop this shit. And it must be stopped. It's on all of us, otherwise.
Re:Old proverb (Score:5, Informative)
The man this is supposed to be from is denying it, and also denying he ever claimed the title it gives him. See this, from Kiev Jewish [evreiskiy.kiev.ua].
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Screw you, warmonger. Stop trying to police the world. The only way it matters is if there's clear evidence that they're going to attack America.
Hitler had no immediate plans to attack America. Sometimes shit just gets out of hand and you have to do your part. The longer you wait, the higher the cost in lives and money when you do.
Looks like this flyer is being denied by everyone in the government now: whether or not it was sincere in the first place, the threat from basically everyone in the civilized world is the needed deterrent to stop shit like this before it gets started.
Re:Old proverb (Score:4, Insightful)
This. Everyone sane in Europe knows that we can count on the US in cases like this. Yet we stand there doing absolutely nothing. Just like Yugoslavia.
This is not a US matter. It is a European problem, and Europe needs to wake up.
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But US can not really do anything. We've got troops still in Afghanistan, the people are sick and tired of over a decade of "pretend nothing is happening" war stance, it's been tremendously expensive and increased the debt to crisis levels. And when we have intervened militarily in the last few decades, especially when being in charge, it's been horribly planned and executed. It's impractical to take on another war, especially a war that is guaranteed to spread to multiple countries.
Like the Yugoslavia b
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It loses a bit in the translation but essentially it says "When you're living with wolves, you better learn fast how to howl, lest they might think you're a sheep".
And when you voluntarily move in with those wolves, that's your own damn fault.
This distorts reality quite a bit. Snowden appealed to Russia as a last resort for asylum, it was not his first choice. When he made his appeal his choices were either: 1) Face death (numerous people called for him to die) or life in prison returning to the US. or 2) Attempt to have a life in a different country.
Some freedom is better than no freedom at that point.
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Are you people really so mindless that you have to appeal to laws? All Snowden did was reveal the government's wrongdoings (unconstitutional and otherwise). If you don't like that, well, maybe you should blame the government for being evil scumbags in the first place, as well as the people who voted the fuckers who allowed this in to begin with.
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What are governments "competing" about? If anything, many are competing against the people they are supposed to represent.
The nature of the state, and the nature of the secrets, does matter. State secrets are not automatically holy. Fuck what any law ever written, past, present and future says on that matter. Laws are born out of a desire for justice - they do not define justice, they have to answer to it.
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Hmm... fleeing the country and be free or staying and getting locked up but having your full moral support ... decisions, decisions...
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Face death (numerous people called for him to die) or life in prison returning to the US.
You can justify anything by making up BS like that.
Liar. Feinstien did say he should be killed. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
If he stayed in the US he would have a trial and he would have been able to make his case for doing what he did.
Again, you either lie, or perhaps live in a dream world. Legally, he could have made no case for the defense of what he did, nor had a public trial. In the secret trial he would have eventually had, his defense would have been limited to personal stuff; Constitutionality is not a permissible defense here.
In addition he has plenty of supporters and he would have had A LOT more, including myself, if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on his credibility
Right there, your BS becomes clear. He never had any credibility, before or after (actually he does have some n
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Spending 2 minutes reading Feinstein's Wiki page discounts any possible claim you have of "extraordinary". You could not possibly be claiming that everything I stated was dependent on Feinstein explicitly stating one sentence in one way, because that would be idiocy.
Here are One [policymic.com], two [foxnews.com], three [huffingtonpost.com] references, all of politicians calling for the death of Snowden (and one of those contains 6 references).
I can not find the exact quote from Feinstein either, but this is not uncommon nor does it make my statement wrong
wouldn't matter if it weren't canned (Score:2)
Putin is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.
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He might not even be lying. They don't have the hard drive space or the capability to spy on everyone. Of course he doesn't want to spy on *everyone*, just suspected muslims, dissidents, homosexuals or anyone else who might not support the Kremlin.
I would remind everyone that after the Boston Bombings the Russians were very helpful in providing all of Tsarnaev's text messages. They just "happened" to have him under surveillance. What luck!
I didn't say otherwise. (Score:2)
If Obama were questioned on live TV about surveillance practices I would assume his responses were lies too.
But this is not relevant to question of the Putin/Snowden interview.
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Perhaps, but there is far more reason to think that Putin is lying, because he's been telling bald-faced lies to the entire world as recently as the past couple of weeks (concerning Ukraine). At least in the US, our politicians tell their lies in a gray area such that fact-checkers give numeric ratings to indicate just how untruthful a statement is. Putin just tells outright lies as if he believed them to be completely true and reasonable himself.
Or, phrased another way: In Soviet Russia, Putin fact-chec
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We arent Russia, no matter how much you might try to paint it that way. None of the people you mentioned own the media, no matter how much they adore Obama. You wont be arrested for insulting or protesting Obama. You wont be arrested for reporting on his failings; there are huge websites dedicated to it.
Nice false equivalence, tho.
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Of course you will. The Obama administration has prosecuted journalists and leakers at a far higher rate than before. How is one supposed to report on his failings, if the act of revealing them triggers immediate accusations of being a traitor and guaranteed prosecution? The US based papers who reported the Snowden leaks took big risks to do so, and of course th
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Resorting to hyperbole to make a point? Let's look at the facts, The espionage act was used eight times:
Thomas Drake -Allegedly retained classified information about the NSA's program of wiretapping without warrants. Charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government information
Shamai Leibowitz - Charged for "knowingly and willfully disclosing to an unauthori
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The "people" who own Obama, own the media.
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Don't forget about all the Bush admin people that lied us into the Iraq war. Lots of those folks were the ones that STARTED all these surveillance programs.
Plenty of politicians you could repeat your phrase about:
Bush is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.
Cheney is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.
Rice is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect she would.
Rumsfeld is under no compunct
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Don't forget about all the Bush admin people that lied us into the Iraq war. Lots of those folks were the ones that STARTED all these surveillance programs.
You have the same government that you started this century with.
They just changed spokesmodels - while you felt like you had a say in the matter... Your coup happened in many stages, over many decades - but defining moments happened with the Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy years - with a decisive event in Nov 1963...
Putin: "If anyone tells you we spy on them" (Score:5, Funny)
"We will hear and they will be punished!!!"
Voluntary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't put it past the Russians to stage such an appearance by threatening Snowden. In fact, that's the most likely scenario; Putin could hand him over to the US at any time.
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Alternatively, Snowden could have information that proves Puten is lying and he's laid out a very public trap...
Though his likelihood of dying in a mysterious car accident would increase exponentially...
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And how would Snowden get such information given that there's no way Putin is going to let him roam free, and why would Putin care if he's caught lying?
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Snowden's supposed MO is that he was willing to risk the ire of the US and throw away his cushy life because of how bad the NSA was. Now hes in bed with the Russians, and you want to say "maybe he got scared"?
Come on, hes the one who is supposedly in the know about this stuff, hes the one who chose Moscow. Youd have to be a special kind of stupid to have a security clearance, contract for the NSA, and not know how repressive Russia is.
Re:Voluntary? (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't choose Moscow. He chose Latin America and got stuck in Russia when the USA revoked his passport. It's the US governments fault he's now in Russia and yet they try and paint him as a traitor who ran to the Russians - yet more US hypocrisy and propaganda.
Re:Voluntary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting from Hong Kong to Ecuador (or wherever he was going) without flying over any US or allied territory requires strange routes - just go to a flight booking flight and notice that the returned results mostly involve changes in the USA.
Taking such a route was wise - look at how US allies forced down the presidential jet of a LatAm leader just to search for Snowden.
But I'm really not sure why you're arguing with me about this. What happened to Snowden is a matter of public record, it's not something that's up for debate. He got stuck in Russia because the USA revoked his passport and he then wasn't allowed to board his onward flight. But once it became clear that no plane was safe, not even those with diplomatic immunity, if it flew over any US allied territory, he would have been an idiot to leave anyway because that would have been a direct flight into a lifetime of solitary confinement.
Putin actually speaks the truth (Score:5, Interesting)
But you have to read the statement carefully to understand what he says. It is true that Russia doesn't have the money to put everyone under surveillance like the US does.
So they might not do a mass surveillance like the US, instead they just put everyone interesting under direct surveillance: every Duma representative, every Oligarch, and especially everyone who is in public politicial opposition to President Putin. The NSA can't do that even when they would want to, so they simply target everyone: it's wasteful but now they can't be accused of any bias or that they target anyone they don't like.
The art of lying (Score:2)
A good lier should not lie most of the time, otherwise one just needs to reverse the saying to know the truth with high probability.
On that account Obama is smarted than Putin IMHO. He does lie, but in a less systematic manner.
Once Putin (Score:2)
gets all the propaganda and the middle fingering towards the US he need's, Snowden is done. Putin wil probably use him as a giff to the US.
Snowden in good ol' Russia (Score:2)
There's something amusing about Snowden fleeing from the US and ending up in Russia, of all the places. This video shows that he's making use of the channels of free speech there.
Even more amusing was the beginning of Putin's response "You've worked for a spy agency [NSA]. I previously worked for a spy agency [KGB]. We understand each other - we can have a professional dialog." There could have been a suppressed snicker there... and he might as well have followed by saying "you know how the real world opera
Re: (Score:2)
The text editor ate up my annotation of the above post:
[Sarcasm]This video shows that he's making use of the channels of free speech there.[/Sarcasm]
< sarcasm > was an HTML tag.
Ask Vlad Anything (Score:4, Insightful)
When did Slashdot become infested with NSA apologists?
Putin does this show [mashable.com] annually. I am sure that the callers are vetted, but the questions tend to be wide-ranging, and don't really seem scripted to me. (I liked the one about buying Alaska back.) After all, it's a 4 hour show.
Now, as for Snowden, I see this as positive. State security is not talked about that much in Russia, and he brought it up. While Putin said pretty much what Obama might have said in 2010 (in other words, it's fair to doubt whether he was being truthful), it gets it out in the open, and all in all I think that is a good thing.
What would a former KGB officer... (Score:4, Insightful)
...know about surveillance?
In Mother Russa... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the questions you can ask are provided by the state..
OF COURSE it was scripted and likely highly edited. This is 100% propaganda aimed squarely at the west by Putin. Snowden is just being used to attract attention and shape the message. He's just a pawn in a much larger game.
Reading between the lines though, I wonder what Putin is up to. Why bother with this?
dunno what to say (Score:5, Informative)
His question was important and legitimate (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand the hatred towards Snowden for asking an important question regarding surveillance. From the linked article his question:
"So I'd like to ask you, does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals? And do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigations can justify placing societies, rather than subjects, under surveillance?"
It is a perfectly valid question which needs to be asked to all world leaders. While Putin's answer can certainly be seen as pure political spin, the question itself is a legitimate and forceful question to be posed. And by asking it, it forced Putin to provide an answer through which he can be measured against. He has basically said in nationwide tv that if they did have a mass surveillance system, the state would be breaking the law. This public statement can now be used to hold him accountable should evidence surface proving him as lying.
I would also argue that the question is a far more direct one regarding surveillance than any that has been posed to Obama. And unlike Putin, Obama insists such a surveillance program is legal and necessary. One cannot reform the system without admitting the problem first. Were Obama to give the same answer as Putin to that question, the repercussions would be enormous, as it places a moral and legal standard on the role of surveillance in our society from the chief executive of the nation itself.
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Yes but if you read Putin's words...
"First of all, our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law," Putin said. "So how special forces can use this kind of special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone online, you have to get court permission to stalk a particular person. We don't have a mass system of such interception. "
He never says that they don't collect blanket data explicitly just that they don't do it illegally and that they cannot match the abilities of the NSA.
To add to this the Wiki article on SORM [wikipedia.org] states that the equipment was mandated by Law. So technically the surveillance is legal and transparent.
The only diffrence I'm seeing here is that 1. The Russians aren't as good as surveillance as the NSA. 2. They are totally open about the fact that everything you do on he internet o
Re:SORM (Score:4, Funny)
But the way forward is clear. Make internet surveillance legal, and a free and open society will blossom, untroubled by questions of legality
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All my whistleblowers are named Eric.
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Let me guess, you're writing these lines from the comfort of your air conditioned home office?
Give the man a break, he's had more impact than close to everyone on this site will ever have. And now he's in Russian hands, who have can easily blackmail him into anything.
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We *did* see revelations in the press: WaPo and the Guardian know more stuff than they've published, and redact things. They won a Pulitzer recently.
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Re:Wow... Snowden just lost me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations. Your post wins the "who can represent the worst stereotypes about Americans" prize for this thread.
Let's recap. Snowden revealed gross abuses and illegality in your government. Doing this results in the same sort of punishments as it does in many other countries with overly authoritarian leadership: lifetime in jail, as you request. So to do the big reveal you admit is something you "really needed", he had to run. His first choice was Hong Kong, but when it appeared the Chinese might hand him over or keep him jailed for years in diplomatic limbo he decided to go to Latin America, probably Ecuador. He was en-route there when the US Govt revoked his passport, leaving him stranded in Russia which happened to be on the way.
Your post and general mentality have multiple failures, but don't worry, they are correctable.
There's a simple fix for your predicament - never use the word "traitor" ever again. It describes a state of fevered flag-waving tribalism which allows your own government to blind you and switch off your critical thinking. The people in power are not better than you or anyone else, they are just ..... the people in power. Your country is not better than other countries, it's just .... the place where you were born. Your rulers deserve no loyalty, no special breaks. They are corrupt and untrustworthy to the core, they need to be watched constantly lest they abuse the powers they were temporarily granted for some purpose or another. You cannot be a traitor to such people, the concept simply has no meaning.
Once you get into this mentality, your recollection of historical events will probably improve.