Ed Snowden Broke The Law

[kpete]

mho, A secret court is not a court. A secret legal opinion is not a welcome concept, and our government is complicit

SUN JUN 09, 2013 AT 09:58 PM PDT
Ed Snowden Broke The Law
byTailfishFollow

.....................

Ask yourself this: When Congress was considering the Patriot Act, if Section 215 said "The FBI shall have the right to obtain all information pertaining to all phone calls, locations and internet use by all Americans, regardless of whether or not those Americans are suspected of any wrongdoing," do you think people would have supported it? Would you have supported it? That's the result we got, regardless of the otherwise mundane way the law was written.

I normally would say that I hoped the law would be challenged at the Supreme Court. The law as written seems ok, but the law as applied seems unconstitutional to me. However, with a secret law (i.e., the law as applied here) that's not possible. You can't appeal a law you don't know about. Same thing with appealing a court decision. The FISA court issued its authorization for these seizures. Normally the losing side in a court battle can appeal to a higher court, all the way to a state supreme court or the federal Supreme Court. The "other side" in the FISA court battle was us. But we didn't know we'd lost.

So to those people who say Snowden revealed conduct that was perfectly legal and thus cannot be a whistleblower, I say Snowden revealed the problem of secret laws. Laws that evolve outside of the public view. Outside of the view of the people from whom the Constitution and all other laws in our country derive. The people who have the direct and indirect power to change laws they perceive as improper or unfair.

Now many of those people see what has happened to this specific law - the monster it has become - and they're angry. Hopefully they will demand that their representatives take action to re-insert the concept of personal privacy into the important framework of counterterrorism.


MORE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/10/1214996/-Ed-Snowden-Broke-The-Law

[wolfgirl]

1. I think it is very interesting

this guy was actually working with a contractor [Booz Allen]. Booz Allen has a long ties to GOP/Bush folks..

[graham4anything]

3. I don't find it suprising, Cheney/Bush/Hallibruton/Booz Allen/Jeb/Rand all work together imho

and they want Jeb back in office with Rand as VP

and they want NOW to win 2 senate seats that are currently in the next few weeks being run in Mass and NJ,
then to win the senate in 2014 and the ability to stack the court or stop the scotus position from being filled.

[7962]

5. What SCOTUS position?

[graham4anything]

7. the next ones that open obviously.

this SCOTUS will vote one way

soon as there is ONE little bitty vote change from 4 to 5, to 5 to 4, a new scotus will vote a different way on everything

that is why someone like Rand would want THIS 4 to 5 court to rule, not one with another like the great Sonia Sotomayer to rule.

and not to mention, if one of the 4 good ones retires, then that postion needs to be filled, and the Stand with Rand cru
will want to keep that seat vacant so it would be 5 to 3.

[cantbeserious]

2. And Most Americans Speed

eom

[n2doc]

4. So did W

So did all the major banks. I don't see any prosecutions of them.

[Recursion]

6. Did he? I have no idea.

A lot of people here seem much more willing to take his claims at face value than I am.

[zeemike]

8. We are being conditioned to accept a Big Brother government.

And the right has already accepted it because that is what they want...the rest of us are being coxed into it by appealing to our political loyalty.

We are being a bunch of suckers....and the PTB know how to work suckers.

[JaneyVee]

9. It's all a vast rightwing conspiracy.

[WillyT]

10. K & R !!!

[Hubert Flottz]

11. I respect Ed Snowden, far more than the five politically motivated bandits on the SCOTUS, or

anyone who ever voted for the "Patriot Act"...I believe the founders would have found, that the "Patriot Act" is another, "Intolerable Act".

"Secret Laws" And "Secret Courts," are for countries like The old USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, North Korea, Saddam's Iraq and Iran.

Democratic nations have no need for "Secret Laws." On 9/11 all I heard on TV was the idea that, "if America changes, the terrorists have won." Well the day the "Patriot Act" was signed by George W Bush..."America changed," for the worst.

So the terrorists must have won?

Edit to add: "The Path to the American Revolution"

Snip...

The Impartial Administration of Justice Act gave British troops freedom from the Massachusetts law. So just like Administration of Justice Act, British troops could do whatever they wanted without worrying about consequences.

These laws made the people in Massachusetts and all the colonists very angry. The Boston Port Act helped to bond the colonies because the Bostonians needed supplies until the port opened back up. The Intolerable Acts also helped the colonies bond together. They joined together in boycotting British goods. This prepared the colonists for their war with the British and to declare their independence.

http://www.hobart.k12.in.us/gemedia/amrev/revwar/intolera.htm

"The Impartial Administration of Justice Act," reminds me so much of King George W's "Patriot Act"

[mbperrin]

12. Yes, the terrorists won. The moment 9/11 was treated as anything other than a criminal case,

we lost.

Trillions in money, thousands in lost lives, millions of blighted lives, and lots more casualties.

But the 1% made out, so it's all good. For them.

[truebluegreen]

17. +100 nt

[Myrina]

13. But if the law sucks, does it matter that he "broke" it?

I used to go round and round with my Con Law prof who's wife was a local prosecutor.

How can you in good faith prosecute someone for breaking what in essence is a shitty law that should never have been made in the first place?

[CanonRay]

14. "A secret court is not a court"

+1000 and kudos for saying it.

[Octafish]

15. To Save Democracy.

What Frank Church said in 1976, regarding NSA snooping capabilities:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

[LovingA2andMI]

16. Even if he "broke the law" on a random unscientific poll....the public is siding with

Ed Snowden.....

POLL
Do you think the government is overstepping its authority by collecting emails and phone records?
Yes, they should step back (93643) - your vote
56%

The need to fight terror outweighs it (40763)
24%

I'd be more outraged with companies giving it away (13681)
8%

I don't want to answer because I know they're watching (20613)
12%

Source Yahoo - Obama defends U.S. surveillance effort as 'trade-off' for security - June 7, 2013

Nothing such, there is a Facebook Page "We Stand With Ed Snowden" if you would like to join.