http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

Wow. This guy has some balls. I hope he gets the protection of being a whistle blower, though, I doubt he will.

Good luck to him..

They are going to slam this guy... You can't have contractors with privileged access/security clearances making these decisions and giving information to the media because of a personal moral dilemma.  National Security is not something you f with.  By leaking the information in the way he did, I'm almost positive he will not be protected as a whistle blower.  There are proper channels for whistle blowers.  This guy sounds like a system admin guy that may or may not know what the processes were for "snooping".  Just because he supposedly was able to "snoop" on anyone does not mean that he was supposed to be doing that and if he did, he probably disregarded numerous guidelines/regulations/policies by "snooping" on his own as a system administrator.

^^^^

Yup. NSA = Gestapo. And we need them to be that. Best we can hope for is that they scale back to the still ample operating room allowed by more reasonable interpretations of the law. Won't help this guy, though.

NSA = Gestapo. And we need them to be that.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

I don't recall being given any choice in the case of this secret surveillance program. Do you?

Our government does a A LOT of crap that we wouldn't approve of if we knew about it. Some of it is, in fact, necessary. Where is the balance point in that? How do we double check that balance when some of it needs to remain secret? Do we draw the line at monitoring US citizens? What about US citizens abroad? What is legal for us to do, spying wise, when everything we do in that regard is illegal in the countries we are doing it in?

Or are we of the illusion that doing everything legally and transparently would actually work?

This is the gray area that Cheney exploited in the creation of Guantanamo, the novel new classification of "enemy combatant" and the non-torture classification of things that are generally accepted as torture just about everywhere else. Should we be surprised when we realize (gasp!) that they took it too far and no one ever told us?

I guess I just take if for granted that that's what the government does. I know too many ex-spooks to assume that the Fed isn't doing stuff we don't know about and wouldn't like if we did. And have long since come to peace with the necessity of it and, really, the fact that there is precious little we can do about it even if we wanted to. Demand balance, sure. Expect transparency? Never.

I'm saying those that openly or tacitly approve via apathy of these programs and their abuses ARE allowing our liberties to be taken, all in the name of 'security'.

Go ahead and define "abuses," then. I'll probably agree with you and together we can... uh, vote, I guess... that the NSA stop doing secret stuff we don't know about.

And then we'll trust that they stop doing it, right? You know, exactly like we trusted that they weren't doing it before.

See the problem? THAT'S the problem that I'm not sure how to solve. Snowden is likely giving up most of his natural life to do something about it. What is our part, then?

Its a large problem. At its core is the Federal government's ability to grant itself permission to do things (legally, thanks to the Patriot Act) that we wouldn't want it to do. A "simple" solution is to 1) repeal or amend that section of the Patriot Act. Another "simple" solution is that 2) a Federal judge calls "Unconstitutional!" and it goes to the Supreme Court - but that could go either way seeing as it hasn't happened already.

The simplest "solution" is 3) that we wrangle for a little while about who is to blame and how this terrible oversight happened, fire a few NSA employees - maybe even a DHS director - and the NSA will never to do it again. Promise. No really, we promise.

The Fed doesn't give a rats arse about my approval or disapproval - only in what pressure the people can (and do) bring to bear. Watch. They'll attempt "solution" 3 first and enough people will probably buy it that options 1 & 2 will never get enough unified energy behind them to happen. We're great at being outraged and posting things on forums and facebook... but we ~suck~ at effectively strong-arming the Fed back into line. Turning disapproval into effective action is an elusive art.

So I wholeheartedly agree with you, kevlar, even as I'm fairly certain its going to happen that way anyway. And the NSA, thanks to the vagaries of the forever war on "terror", is in a pretty good place to defend itself. After all, what it did was perfectly legal and sanctioned by Congress, repeatedly, for the past 6 years.

I'm saying those that openly or tacitly approve via apathy of these programs and their abuses ARE allowing our liberties to be taken, all in the name of 'security'.

Until whatever facts are brought to light, I think it would be safe to say that the only one that abused the program was him... Just because he claims that there is a massive surveillance machine with the capability of taking liberties at will does not necessarily mean that it is being used in such a manner.  I theorize that this guy jumped the gun and leaned that he was able to do things that surprised him and thought it was would be noble of him to bring it to the media.  I think this guy had full access to a program that he did not fully understand.  Just my opinion...