ModShop wrote: |
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:| You snipped out half the sentence to make it sound ridiculous. |
I did that intentionally. What you said was crazy.
You casually throw around "a few years jailtime" like it's some kind of slap on the wrist and isn't a horrific life-ruining experience.
You would subject Snowden to that... even though you agree what he did was morally right... just because you're afraid of what other people might do. You're punishing him for other people's crimes.
Worse than that, actually... because those crimes haven't been committed yet. So you're punishing him for the possibility that other people might commit related crimes in the future. It makes zero sense.
Perhaps, but a lot of crazy people aren't known to be crazy until after they act. |
If you can't trust the NSA to monitor and filter its own employees (on whom is has complete control to do background checks, psych evaluations, etc, etc), then how do you trust them to monitor and filter out potential terrorists (on whom it is much more difficult to do any of those things)?
That's the NSA's
job. You're basically saying "there's no way the NSA could know", which effectively makes them a useless organization.
Really though, they wouldn't even have to be "off", I'm sure countries like China would provide quite the incentives for valuable information. |
We might have strayed from the point here. If China is willing to harbor former NSA employees and compensate them for access to classified information..... what does that have to do with Snowden?
He did not find haven in China nor did he leak classified information to them (apart from what he leaked to the US) that we know of.
Like before, I think you are over-reaching here and are looking for excuses to hang Snowden based on what other people might do, rather than what he actually did.
FredBill30 wrote: |
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Many people still don't care. |
Public apathy is not a good thing. Especially when the topic is moderating governmental agencies.
Remember... the government is supposed to work for us, not the other way around. If they're doing something we don't like and we are all apathetic about it, we're conceding civil liberties to them.
As Zereo mentioned... history is full of instances where government started running out of control once it over reached.
Not to mention the fact that he is almost certainly leaking information to China/Russia. |
Source?
I think you're talking out of your ass here.
If his motivation was to leak to a foreign power, why would he have contacted US press agencies and revealed his identity?
I'm also almost certain it's no coincidence that he went straight for really the only 2 main countries that rival the US militarily. |
He has to go somewhere that isn't on good terms with the US because anywhere else and he'd be extradited back to the US and have to face prosecution.
Also lol @ rivaling the US military. You know we spend like 2.5x as much on our military as the next 16 countries in the world combined?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/204c21cc52b7386a825bd07dc6ee7577.png
from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
We're not afraid of China because they pose a militaristic threat (which they don't), we're afraid of them because they pose an economic threat and could literally destroy our economy if they chose to.
The worst you could have are some dirty photos/video you're sending to your lover (Or downloading from some website). Unless you're an enemy to the US leaking info or planning an attack you should have little to nothing to worry about. |
That's not the point, as I've stated in the thread previously. It's a civil liberties issue.
But I mean, they're our government. Trust that they will do right with it... |
Read Zereo's reply to this. He has pointed out several instances
in just the past few years where the government has been exposed betraying the US citizens and/or abusing its power for misconduct.
If you blindly trust the government, you're a fool. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around. We have to make sure they're doing their job right. We can't just trust that they are.
To that person who said the argument above is the reason that they shouldn't spy, remember - some possibility to finding enemies are better than none. |
The founding fathers would disagree with you. From one of my earlier posts:
I wrote: |
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the founding fathers generally spoke out against the SOP of modern governmental institutions like the NSA.
Ben Franklin in particular had a famous quote: 'Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.'
And of course Patrick Henry: 'Give me liberty or give me death' -- which is not to be confused with the modern practice of "give me the closest thing to liberty as long as I don't have to worry about dying at the hands of terrorists".
People should be a lot more outraged by this than they are. You should not be rationalizing what the NSA is doing and trying to convince yourself it really is in our own best interest. |