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Edward Snowden is a modern day hero and deserves support for everyone who wants to preserve basic liberties, democracy and privacy. Do not let them demonise this guy.

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



We just need to snag a BTC address for him :).

Hong Kong?  In the next few decades will be directly under the Chinese rule.   It is also obvious that the Chinese is meddling with Hong Kong political affairs.  I guess there are better destinations.

Respect. Giving up all that to do the right thing. He's a hero.

He seems smart. He has probably already stashed away enough money to live well for many years...

He works for the friggin' CIA. He's probably move to some remote place in Asia, find a nice asian woman to be with, and he probably has changed identity too.

At first I was outraged...$200k working for Booz Allen in Hawaii!!!  :o

Then I saw the end:

$200k makes sense. So does that mean his position is open?

Hopefully he didn't stash it away in any fiat bank accounts.

I wonder if he's on this board? Seems likely based on his age, profession, and beliefs and right to privacy.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

Social Engineering is one way to defeat strong encryption.

Sounds like a bitcoiner ....

Edit: Electronic Frontier Foundation is in another stoush shows why what this guy has done is so important. Basically, they have set-up a legal labyrinth that allows for operation without oversight and widespread Fourth Amendment violations. Without whistleblowers there is no way to break the legal blockade that is allowing for a full totalitarian State to develop in secrecy.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion)

His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video)

Here's the video interview. He says he is a systems guy, engineer, admin type... I tend to believe him. It is is time for the sys admins to stand up for what they believe in and stop taking this shit that the technophobes keep dishing out to use technology to abuse other people's right. Go the good guys! Sys admins, you have the bridge, out.

It's entirely possible that the existence of Bitcoin is what enabled this whistleblower to stand up and do the right thing.

He was basically working for the Federal Reserve, helping the CIA/NSA to obtain trade secrets, etc.  Without an alternative, anonymous currency, the options for someone in his position, after leaking, would have been limited to moving into a self-sufficient shack a la Ted Kaczinski, an embassy a la Julian Assange, or a brig a la Bradley Manning.

If he is in hiding (not stashed in some hotel in Hong Kong), sending him bitcoin will potentially out him.

As much as we like to pretend bitcoin is untraceable, the fact is the block chain holds all the records.  If I give 1btc to an account set up for him, following that btc to it's destination will tell folks where he is.

He truly needs to go primitive.  Hard currency.   No formal employment.  No residence.

Personally, I think he is screwed unless he is willing to live entirely off the grid in the fashion of Ted Kaczynski.  I can't see a sys admin doing that for the rest of his life.

The next question is what government is willing to protect him (deny extradition) and does said government have living conditions he is willing to submit to?

IF the seastead folks had a working platform, he would be a first citizen.

what are you talking about? 

if he posts an address and ppl send him coins, so what?  since when is that illegal?  and since when would that reveal an ip address?

any spending out of his address would be unknown as to its purposes or usage since you wouldn't know the identity of anyone associated with those receiving addresses.  he could buy alpaca socks for all you know.

The spend will have an IP address associated with it.  The alpaca sock vendor will be located somewhere and have shipping records of who bought what and how the goods were delivered.

You want to send him money, it is less trackable to mail him fiat.

have you ever heard of Tor?  no ip address there.  or he could just use a Starbucks cafe.

the alpaca socks example was more an example that Snowden won't be necessarily using BTC for "money laundering" or illegal activities.  he'll be using them for normal everyday living activities.

if he stays in HK, there are probably many local vendors who will accept BTC for food and living expenses.  or just plain localbitcoin exchange to fiat.  that will probably apply to any place he might go into hiding as well.

He can be anonymous as he likes using bitcoins, if he knows what he is doing. Something tells me this guy could keep his bitcoin activity entirely anonymous if he chooses. TOR sticker on his laptop is a good clue.

Guy is running from NSA.  He would be better served to go totally off grid.

The reason Snowden is a hero, and not some anonymous dead guy in a chinese river is that HE WENT PUBLIC.

Privacy is a nice thing to have, but the real changes and protections of individuals from government power are the individuals willing to go public, at personal risk, with information that their conscience tells them they are wrong to hide. (Now that being said, it's probably MUCH safer to go public than to try to be anonymous, and if you've worked at one of these places, you'd probably know that)

In the meantime, I think the best course of action would be go to https://supporters.eff.org/donate and hit the 'pay with bitcoin' button, and then tell all your friends.

(And then add this copyright message, with your name, to any messages you send)

This message copyright 2013 Troy Benjegerdes. Any duplication, by any means, including in-memory temporary copies made by monitoring hardware, by contractors of any state surveillance agency is a violation of the US federal and international Copyright law, and subject to a $2,000,000 per incident fee. Whistleblowers reporting violations will be entitled to 75% of damages recovered from said violations.

If he was coward maybe.... seems like USA has too many of them and needs brave guys like this to stand up for what they believe in.

"For evil to flourish requires simply that good men do nothing." - Edward Burke

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality." --Aleghieri Dante (1265 - 1321)

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." --Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor

“One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this.”

I think that maybe it is better to fight the windmills rather than submit to the darkness.

"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught." -- J.C. Watts, Oklahoma Congressman

He has stood and faced down the dragon.  We should ask no more of him.  It is on us to hold the dragon down and kill it.  He deserves to ride off into the sunset.

i think the fact that he went PUBLIC and only revealed info that is damning to the NSA concerning blanket invasion of personal privacy laws in this country will save him in the end.

if they prosecute or assassinate someone for something that has clearly outraged the public sphere, and rightfully so, will be asking for trouble by the NSA.

I am concerned he ends up in the same place as Bradley Manning.

Manning was different.  he is a troubled young man from what i've read.  he also was indiscriminate in what he released; namely identities of overseas agents/informants which endangered their lives.  

Snowden is clearly no where near in the same category having been entrusted in a top position.  he's a clear thinking young man which comes thru in the video.  he simply has a conscience that American's can identify with and he's highlighting a violation of liberties we're all concerned with.

I can agree with that. He's done his job ...

It will be interesting to see what sort of fiction the government spin doctors create to discredit and demonize him.

You can bet they're working on it now.

Hopefully the video will be viewed far and wide so that everyone can see how level headed the guy is.

+ 1 for honesty and integrity

Donated to Ron Paul therefore Libertarian / anti-government / terrorist.  It doesn't take much to set the left/right brain paradigm in motion.  You even see it in this thread.  "Bradley Manning was leftist / reckless / disturbed etc."

Don't forget gay and suicidal.

Exactly.  He also said:
Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.

the NSA is going to have a hard time with Snowden.

he talks like one of them.  even given the situation into which he has placed himself, he talks with an air of confidence, arrogance, clarity, and righteousness that will serve him well.

if they touch him, the public will go "WTF?".  jailing him for telling all of us something we've suspected all along that the NSA is wiretapping everyone and their mother?

Am I the only one that thinks (a) he deserves to be jailed (rightly or wrongly, it's part of the job he signed up for), and (b) of course the NSA is gathering data!

I for one will never assume I have absolute privacy online or anywhere else.

if you watch the video carefully, its clear he didn't expect the civil rights violations to go as far as they have.

he says he kept questioning superiors but the answers kept getting more obtuse as they went on.  what he finally saw was nowhere near what he expected.

which is why he quit.

"of course the NSA is gathering data?"  of course they are, but all emails, phone calls, texts, browsing habits (pages) of everyone domestic and intl?  c'mon.

People like you are part of the problem, not the solution.

There is a difference between right and wrong ... that is what the Nurenberg trials were about.

Just because you are following orders does not make it right.

Many of the US govt employees are now well outside constitutional law and they know it. So they are using secret courts and kept politicians heading the 'oversight committees' to cover it up. You should also be advocating for putting those people in jail, that is what THEY signed up for, to protect the constitution ... yet you want to persecute the whistleblower? .... wtf kind of person are you?

From what I have read, these are facts:

• He was not working for a foreign government
• He did not reveal the info for money
• He concluded that his agency was breaking the law
• He was selective about what he revealed
• He went public at a great personal cost

...and he made public illegal activity by public officials ( breach of everyones 4th amendment rights ), so he is a whistleblower and should be protected. The senators that were briefed and approve of this should stand trial for conspiring to commit civil rights violations along with the NSA, FISA court judges, and the President.

There exists a classified whistle blower process.  Essentially, it allows someone inside a classified program to contact an investigative agency that has individuals cleared for access to the program.

Snowden does not appear to have used this process.  A claim to be a "whistleblower" will be difficult to sustain in the face of this.

The basic problem is that what he did _was_ illegal.  It was also morally the right choice.

The judicial branch is not well set up to handle that.  The executive branch will want to hang him high.  The legislative branch will run around in circles, as always.

Snowden's best bet is to become very hard to find and wait for the next US President to issue him a pardon.

When was the last time someone used such a service successfully? Sounds like possible psyops to me

I think you are being naive if you think such a process would have given him protection in this case. He was basically exposing systemic criminality by the intelligence agencies and you expect them to offer him protection for doing so?... Get real dude, these guys are playing for all the marbles, which is exactly what he is saying and exposed to be true.

Obama pressured over NSA snooping as US senator denounces 'act of treason' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/obama-pressured-explain-nsa-surveillance)

Information chiefs worldwide sound alarm while US senator Dianne Feinstein orders NSA to review monitoring program.

World leaders seek answers on US collection of communication data (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/european-reaction-us-surveillance-revelations)

Data protection chiefs and analysts in EU, Pakistan, South Africa and Canada express concerns at revelations in leaks.

US lawmakers call for review of Patriot Act after NSA surveillance revelations (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/patriot-act-nsa-surveillance-review)

White House insists it welcomes 'appropriate debate' after Republican leadership questions implementation of security act.

If you want to send him bitcoins, don't send it to him directly, send it to someone with a great little sailboat that can sneak him to Iceland.

Tom, you got the kind of boat needed?  ;D

Yep, but I would have to take off work for a couple of years to make it happen.  You going to cover my salary?

I'm based west coast of the US.  I figure it would take the better part of a year to get to him in whatever East Pacific refuge he is hiding in.  From there, it is probably easier to reverse course and head around South America before going north to Iceland.

Of course, depending on global warming, it might make more sense to top off the diesel tanks and make a dash across the Arctic Sea.  I don't have any good data on sailing conditions there during the summer months so I would have to plan on motoring the full distance.  Couldn't make any port visits in Alaska or Russia unless I'm smuggling him.

Probably just be easier to buy a boat in the Philippines and start from there.

This Formosa / Peterson 46 Cruising Yacht For Sale looks like a good choice:
http://www.pgyc.org/sail-boats-for-sale.php

Arctic Sea Ice

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2013/06/Figure1.png

+1

I was thinking the opposite.  If we could be absolutely sure that we had a valid Bitcoin address for the real Edward Snowden, this would be a great opportunity for him, freedom, privacy, and for Bitcoin.

Donations should come from everyone in this forum, most people who use Bitcoins, and (drum roll please) many freedom-loving people all over the U.S. and around the world who would instantly have a reason to download a Bitcoin wallet and put something in it, so that they could help Edward Snowden, wherever he goes.  The blockchain would document the overwhelming support that he has.

Do we have any trusted boots on the ground in Hong Kong to try to contact Edward Snowden and take a photo of him holding up a note with a hand-written Bitcoin address?

I am ready to give him a donation.  I think he needs help.

+1

YEARS?  :o :o :o Holy moly. I think he'd turn down the offer... If he's still alive.

Is it because you are planning to sail most of the voyage? Surely some use of an engine would be warranted... How long would it take using engines the whole way? How many stops for refuel would that take?

It's almost time for the northwest passage to open up again this summer, surely you're just a bit tempted to slip through there?  ;D

There are two separate issues here.

First, yes, the government should operate within the law.  Oversight committees have direct responsibility for making sure that happens.  There should be consequences for illegal activities.  Heads should roll.  Time for everyone to consider the legality of what the NSA does.

None of that changes the fact that one of our most important men - a person entrusted with US national security - is now HIDING IN CHINA after leaking information on an almost daily basis.

Fucking China, the irony!  (Or what he calls a place with "a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent".) :D

Just putting himself in China has potentially exposed other US national secrets or security interests, by the way. ::)

There were other ways and he decided to do at that way.

An alternative view, with which I tend to agree:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-is-no-hero.html

Oh, and just to point out a touch of irony in your own post:

"Just because you are following orders does not make it right."  This guy followed those orders for YEARS, yet you are willing to pardon him for that *and* for the actual bona fide crime of leaking classified information?

Do not confuse Hong Kong with China.

They are not the same. Not by a long shot.

A clever tactic on your part though.

Thanks. ;D

Let's not pretend Hong Kong doesn't ultimately answer to Beijing
either though.

Strange gamble on his part, especially after telling the Guardian newspaper that he had "full access to the rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth."  Way to make himself a target.

he probably knows alot more than you do about which is the safest place to go after doing what he's doing.

there are probably investment bankers staying in the rooms right next to him.

It may sound like news to you, but Hong Kong indeed doesn't ultimately answer to Beijing, at least not always.

Many spiritual organizations like Falun Gong, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_gong#Suppression which are pervasively suppressed/banned in the mainland China, have large bases and many believers in Hong Kong and do lots of propagandas there. Lots of anti-CCP books are also published there, and in the June 4th of every year there was a massive assembly of people gather to commemorate those killed in the Tiananmen Masscare, all these would have been impossible had Hong Kong needed to obey Beijing's order when it comes to evictions/deportations.

Maybe, but he does seem to be missing at the moment.  Whisked away to Beijing, perhaps, or maybe our National Hero is already living the high life in Russia (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-russia-asylum-request)?

I have been Hong Kong (China too), so I am under no illusion that the people of Hong Kong live under the same strict regime as the people of mainland China.  That doesn't mean China isn't in control.  And Snowden seems to be betting on exactly that - if he is allowed to stay in HK, it will be because China has stepped in under Article 3 of the US-Hong Kong treaty (which allows Hong Kong to refuse to hand a person over if it believes that it might impact China's "defence, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy").

The bickering about the power structure of HK is pointless; Snowden could be on the moon by now.

He seems smart enough to formulate a simple plan like: "Tell everyone I'm trying to head to Iceland next, but sneak down to my secret bungalow in the Seychelles the minute this reporter leaves the room."

+1

NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Did you hear about that country that started up in the 1770s as the greatest experiment ever in small government?
It only took ~230 years to become the world's most bloated and restrictive government in history.

This has happened before a few times... But never this large.

Sadly, it always ends the same way, so we can fully expect for that particular experiement to end a lot noisier:


(Hence many people's interest in bitcoin here.)


Anyway, what we learned from that failed experiment is: The smaller you make a government without actually removing the government entirely, the less structure there is in place to actually curb the growth of the government.

So with all of this in mind, are you really trying to just keep the status quo moving along as usual? More oversight committees? More regulations? Hoping the problems will go away if we just get one more good man in some public office somewhere?  ::)


EL OH EL at the 700+ DEATH THREATS the author got in the comments below.

Here's one for you too:  Please go die in a fire.

that guy is traitor for me , he is bought by the Chinese government.

He does not sound like a ChiCom to me:

The Guardian describes Snowden as intensely passionate about the value of privacy; his laptop displays stickers supporting internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project.  In the 2008 presidential election, Snowden voted for third-party candidates. He said he "believed in Obama's promises," yet "he continued with the policies of his predecessor."  For the 2012 election, political donation records indicate that he contributed to the primary campaign of Ron Paul.

Interesting to see big media defending the government here. The whole Prism thing really has them on their heels.

I now wonder if Snowden becomes the straw that broke the camels back for others wanting to blow the whistle.

Collections for Snowden, with almost 0% chance of ever reaching him, are already up to $12,232:

http://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/reward-edward-snowden-for-courageously-leaking-nsa-docs/description (http://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/reward-edward-snowden-for-courageously-leaking-nsa-docs/description)

So wtf was he doing at the NSA? Their sole purpose is to monitor comms.

... you must be particularly dense. His greater purpose was revealed to the world for all to see 3 days ago. Which part of that did you miss?

Without his privileged position (and years of graft) his statements would have been worthless. As they are, they pop the bubble of arrogance and cut through the thicket of laws, secret court rulings and red tape being used to cover up the govt. criminality. He is now a genuine witness to their crimes.

Keep trying to demonize the truth and you are looking worse and worse. Just think like Snowden that of all the crap you are going through in your life could actually be preparing you for a greater calling if you open your heart and mind to the truth and the good.

I guess I'm just not quite ready for my calling. ??? Blame it on my incredible density.

Respectfully, I'll bow out of this thread.  Go send your bitcoins to Snowden. :)

He is a gentleman and a scholar.  8)

He revealed a CRIME in progress. 

I thought it interesting how Obama turned Bush-esque and said, even with a sort of stupid look on his face, "No one is listening to your phone calls."  Of course not.. He didn't say, which would have been accurate and more descriptive, "We are recording every one of your phone conversations and, should it prove useful, we can listen to the recording without anyone else knowing about it."

He revealed a crime of the highest order: treason.  The NSA was attacking the fundamentals of democracy (which I could explain in great detail at a later time). 

Just read the news, they seemed to be trying to chase him to Hong Kong.  Safer for him to be in some remote islands.

The fact that he believed Obama's promises shows that he is not all that smart.

He will be caught.

Smart or not smart, you can't escape from the hands of the USA govt.

This is a valid point.

I guess I'm the only one that thinks this guy is a nimrod.

He throws away his life, all to tell us the profound news that the US Govt is snooping on our communications.

ROFL

Anyhow, I'll throw in a bitcoin... a bitcoin to whoever catches the rat.

 ;D

I agree with you.
Anyone who has been reading the news has known that the NSA was monitoring transatlantic communication at the nodes of where the cables come into the US.

Also, the NSA is not looking at the actual content of our communication. They were merely creating a network graph of who talks to whom. Yes, that IS an intrusion, but they were working on the assumption that if you know who someone's friends are, you know who they are. I am interested in Bitcoin because I want to make money, and because I believe that if there is a form of currency that makes trade between individuals and small companies in different countries easier, the world will benefit.  Snowden violated his employment agreement. He also screwed his life. He made a very bad investment.

 

We all knew it .. doesn't make it right. They have been doing their damnedest by lying, denying, obfuscating, changing the laws and secret rulings etc to stay out of court about it.

Now they have to face the music for what are criminal actions.

They can stick their transactions graphs right up their backsides ... piss off with your snooping, who needs it in a free society?

In HK? Do you think hongkongese will give him permanent residence. I don't think so. Hongkongese are brutal when it comes to accepting aliens in their milieu. Russia? I tell you Iceland is better.

If Snowden is that shrewd with politics(which I doubt), he should know that if China allows him to stay, she will get no credit because he is in Hong Kong, otherwise if he is handed back, it will be face-losing for China because she apparently chooses to cooperate with her assumed ideological archenemy, so yes, he indeed made the right bet, but only by coincidence I guess.

Did you listen to his interview? He said that he could wiretap anyone at any time from his workstation.  Judges, your neighbor, your accountant, even the President. I pay pretty close attention to the news and was not aware of this. Sure we all joke about it being true to an extent, but it's not like there are media outlets regularly informing us of this massive data aggregation. And it is absolutely massive and secret, seeing how all major tech and cellular companies are complicit, yet ordered to deny it when asked.

The man has more courage than most of us here, I can assure you of that.

no, we didn't know it.

we've long suspected it, but didn't know it.  especially in the ways Snowden described.

being able to "intercept" any one of us at any time.  you, me, your wife, your accountant, your banker, your local Google rep, etc.

plus, he put it the context of blatant disregard and hubris from his bosses at NSA.  we've got a problem and it's big.

With slowly developing scandal of IRS suppression of small government advocacy groups (eg patriot/tea party/etc), the ability for a secret, well funded agency that answers to the Executive Branch to monitor activity to this level is especially troubling.

Essentially, I can be reasonably certain that all of the metadata regarding my household and much of the actual content of activity is sitting in a "protected" database at NSA, just waiting for someone to decide that I am a threat to the government and get a secret warrant to look at it.  All of this with out ANY notice to me.

As a US citizen, I find this extremely disturbing since the government that is able to do this should only exist because of the collective agreement of US citizens.

"I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  - Grover Norquist

according to you.

if you see something illegal going on in your workplace, you should report it.  that he did.

as far as screwing his life, did you listen to what he said?  he's comfortable with the difficult decision he's made.  he understands that it will irreversibly alter his life, probably for the worse, but sometimes principles are worth fighting for.

and as far as an investment, that's the wrong way to look at this.

Meh. He doesn't get kudos from me for being a narcissist. Nor does his pole dancing girlfriend.

I have always assumed that the govt could intercept my fone calls etc. I'd laugh if they did. They'd probably be sitting their listening to elevator music while I'm on hold with my <cell/bank/university/health/whatever> company.

If this is the price I have to pay to significantly reduce the chance my legs will be blown off, then so be it.

You're a complete idiot if you think it is about reducing the chances of "getting your legs blown off" ... and besides from 20 million to 1 down to 20.1 million to 1 ... worth it?

You don't have to assume they are intercepting your 'fone' calls ... they ARE ... everyone one of them and they are storing them in a massive database for all time. It is not that there is some snivelly little NSA Stasi guy with headphones listening to your porn calls they just store them all up and data-mine the whole lot of them for when someone decides it is your turn to be gone after ....

This is what makes me sick about politicians.  They all knew this was going on, but they are only now pretending to care because of the negative spin in the media.

Heroes are not afraid of evil regimes.

The latest facts show that he wasn't exactly a hero after all...

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?doc_id=264389&f_src=securitysentinel

+1

Ummm, the facts are no-one can know the facts about these programs because they have placed themselves "legally" above scrutiny. The tech giants are legally bound to lie about any involvement so you cannot trust them and the secret court rulings on who does what are ... well secrets. The web of deceit is deep and tangled ... believe whatever 'facts' you like I guess.

NSA is not above telling lies ;)

We do know that Snowden at least lied about himself. That should say a lot about the rest of it.

Does the NSA always tell the truth?


If, as you say in your post, that Snowden lied, that illustrates the fact that NSA/CIA agents lie and are not to be trusted.

where are the facts of this?

He wasn't even an agent. Just a contractor - and only for 3 months.

yeah, let's make this about the leaker because that really is the issue isn't it ...  ::)

http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/prism_vendor_slide_washington_post-100041030-orig.jpg

I'm just wondering how a personal transaction-graph built up from all of this intercepted material is NOT a violation of 4th amendment? Doesn't that constitute a search?

i asked you for some evidence.  a link perhaps?

http://www.boozallen.com/media-center/press-releases/48399320/statement-reports-leaked-information-060913

His income was also a lot less than he stated.

I would say maybe the point is just about the facilitation, the convenience of working through the client-side tool. Instead of making the FEDs work (i.e, send user information on a strictly one per warrant basis, and in a uniform format), the tech companies and ISPs choose to make it comfortable for them, which increases the risk of abuse.

LOL, "complete idiot"? Really? Are you 13?

Sorry but I think this whole thing is overblown and in a few months time, this guy's moment in the sun will disappear like a fart in the wind.

Oh, so you admit that you're what's wrong with America?

 ;D ;D ;D

Governments being fascist and evil INCREASES the number of terrorists. But continue to live in your silly dream world where the NSA spying on grandma actually helps to reduce terrorist attacks. ;D

Oh, by the way, asking if someone is 13 is just as much an ad hom as that person calling you a complete idiot. Just thought I'd point that out. Carry on...

(Please, let's all carry on nitpicking about how much money Snowden made and his girlfriend's occupation and how long he worked for the NSA contractor. I think we can tell who in this thread sees the big picture and who has spent too much time watching the evening news.)

It's not exactly nitpicking when the guy lied about everything.  :P

The upside is that people are a little more worried about their privacy, and maybe there will be some limits put on what the government can do before they go as far as to actually do what Snowden was saying.

The age query was serious, I don't think there's a min. age requirement here.

Anyhow perhaps I'm misguided. Can you please tell me in plain English, exactly what this "hero" has told us that any human with two connected brain cells didn't already know?

marcus_of_augustus is telling you right.

I'll take up this challenge.

What Snowdens leak has done is to firmly put the topic of online surveillance into serious public discourse, away from a domain which would be dismissed as "conspiracy theory" by many people.

And yes, lots of people who are paying attention (hint: not many actually do) can add 2 + 2 together and realize that the government probably has a program for surveilling the flow of data in place. What this situation does however, is to make this topic much more immediate and tangible, again pushing it from dusty corners and niches of society into the forefront and mainstream debate. That is a great achievement in my opinion. The only way to stop the development of police states seems to be a critical mass awareness of the population (think V for Vendetta final scene).

Anyway could we please stick to the topic?

Personally I think Snowdens situation and Bitcoin are a great match and could benefit greatly from each other. Has anyone come up with an idea how to contact the guy/let him know about the huge support lying in wait just for him to reveal an address?

HOW IS IT ONLY $20M A YEAR?!

If there's anyone who wants to support Snowden beyond just sending him money, I suggest you sign this: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

Or this one:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_prism_global

+1

Gallup: Democrats even more dumb than Republicans:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-government-surveillance-programs.aspx

Reducing your chance from 0.00001% to ...what?

I'm surprised I haven't seen any of you mention the real use for PRISM.

I just don't get it, why HongKong? what the fuck, he's going to get extradited.
why didn't he just go to HongKong, out of reach of the Americans, THEN go to Iceland, THEN TELL YOUR STORY.
balls.

edit: I don't buy the 'i couldn't reach iceland in the short time'.
earning $120k a year and your telling me he couldn't sit at HKG, pay in cash/credit for the first flight out to KEF?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower

Edward Snowden Q&A

Listening to some of the politicians in Hong Kong speak today it seemed like much of Hong Kong actually supports what he's doing and will be helping to delay the extradition process as long as possible, possibly years.

Wow. That was extraordinary. Thanks for the link.   Any more?

He was worried that he would have been captured in Iceland before he had a chance to go public.  Iceland is small and the US can exert enormous pressure and maybe even have its agents operated directly there.  Hong Kong, under China's umbrella, would not suffer from those same risks.  Did you see that Snowden said he would have had to give the NSA 30-days of notice before he left the country?  He was worried he might not have even made it to Hong Kong without being nabbed right off the airplane.

The good news :

Snowden says encryption is safe.  It must be. Otherwise how could he be giving all these interviews out in the open?

Snowden isn't in any danger at all (except, perhaps from kidnap by foreign intelligence operatives).

It's absurd to think the US authorities would try to kill him. He would have been perfectly safe had he stayed in the US too.

You might not have been paying attention ...

You know they have the death penalty in the U.S and people have been talking about how the government are considering targeting U.S Citizens they think are terrorists right?

Great post BTCLuke :D 

The only surprising thing to me here is:  a long bitcointalk thread where nobody questions the official story of the MSM. 

Did I miss something? ???

There are lots of so-called whistleblowers sitting in the US, none of whom have disappeared or otherwise died young.

Immediately Snowden went public he was safe (at least from US authorities). Sure, he'd be jailed pretty quickly (he committed a crime) and wouldn't be able to do the interviews and Q&As he's currently conducting from HK - nor flirt with China and Russia to secure his long term liberty - but physically safe nonetheless.

Do you really think the NSA, CIA or whoever would try to kill Snowden? I say again, absurd.

He committed treason hes not safe.

I wondered this myself and came to the conclusion that no-one even bothers questioning the MSM because they implicitly assume (KNOW?) that they are spinning propaganda ... it must have been like this with Pravda during the USSR.

So WTF is your solution?

I'm not saying any of this is ideal, but if we want the ability, for example, to gather information on persons of interest (whether they be criminals, terrorists or foreign government or corporate spies) as and when required, there will necessarily be some form of clandestine operation that must necessarily be kept secret from the general population. We necessarily rely on our elected representatives to decide how best to formulate and implement that plan. We necessarily rely on a small subset to specify the boundaries within which these programmes operate. The result - the best we have manged to come up with - is oversight committees and bona fide whistleblowing programmes.

Got a better idea?

Nice. ::)

Yes.  And advertised in the NYT. 

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013_06_01_archive.html

When has the U.S government ever given a shit about what people like you think is absurd? They went and organised an illegal spying operation on Kim Dotcom just for setting up a file hosting site for fucks sake and in another country I should add.

He revealed treason, IMHO.  He will be _accused_ of committing it.

http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/brazil_pepper_spray_victor_r_caivano_ap_0.jpg


A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590799755/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1590799755&link)

So do you personally want to have this ability? Or are you just conflating government with society in general? Because if "we" end up having this ability I don't think it's going to be you or me that will be using it or even having any say in how and against whom it will be used.

Hey btw if institutions like banks and governments want to spy on me...well I can live with that as long as I can spy on them in the exact same manner. I bet that I have significantly less to hide than them ;)

Ha, no, not me personally. "We" meaning US society as a whole.

As in if this was put to a vote tomorrow, there's zero doubt the people of the US would choose to keep the NSA and every other branch of the US government that deals with national security matters.

I would go so far as to say that without such institutions, the US simply wouldn't be the superpower it is today. Chances are we wouldn't have the freedoms we enjoy today. We probably wouldn't even have the freedom to be typing here about bitcoins or bitcoins for Snowden.

I guess my first question would be;
if privacy is your main concern, why would you run to a communist country?
odd

Encryption itself seems safe, but the problem is that for SSL/tls the centralized certificate authorties which are subject to government coercion, hacking and the like. Meaning fake certificates and man in the middle attacks. Plus some centralized vulnerabilities in tor. 

Without some type of working peer to peer CA (perhaps tied to bitcoin or namecoin) this is a big vulnerability as Moore's law marches on because it becomes easier and easier to monitor more and more. (Or save more and more for use later).

He was already safe when he hit Hong Kong and out of reach of the authorities. He could instantly got in the next available flight paying cash to KEF and nothing could have stopped him short of someone shooting down the plane.

i wanna do it！


maybe snowden in here ;D

Snowden is looking more and more like a treasonous liar.

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?doc_id=264687&f_src=securitysentinel

We should worry more about the charges and less about Snowden.
If the NSA has nothing to hide then they shouldn't be worried. (I think I've heard that somewhere before...)

Seems they do.
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/nsa-outlines-steps-to-reduce-leaks-a-5843

This confirms my suspicion that you're conflating society with government.


Here you seem to be assuming that democracy is a good thing for anybody and a valid expression of the "will of the people" (whatever that may be).


Finally I can agree with something you've said :) You can't have a superpower without necessary institutions. But what good is a superpower? Does it do any good for you? What other people are profiting from the fact that there is a superpower? I can tell you that personally I prefer power of any sort to be as fragmented as possible - it can do less harm that way.


I admit that you've lost me completely here. What freedoms are you talking about?

All the freedoms you enjoy and take for granted. Or are you suggesting you have no freedoms?

If nothing else, you have the freedom to go elsewhere, renounce your US citizenship and stop paying US taxes. :)

Nope, wrong. The U.S. Government has the power to decide whether or not you can leave the country. If you attempt to leave the country after they decide to specifically bar you from leaving by denying your passport application or denying you at the border, you could be arrested or shot at the border. How the fuck is that a "freedom" if someone else gets to decide whether you have it or not?

"Tyranny of the majority" for sure.

Please explain why you think the tyranny of the majority deciding that we should keep the NSA and other departments meets my needs as a U.S. citizen, and without some off-the-cuff false-choice crap about "you have a smaller chance of getting your legs blown off after running a marathon". Please explain why the U.S. being a "superpower" benefits me as a citizen, or benefits the citizens of Pakistan, Libya, etc, seeing their family members being blown to bits by predator drone strikes and aerial bombs, and landmines left over from previous wars, and uranium bullets used by U.S. troops giving people cancer. Superpower indeed.

Power should be as fragmented as possible so it can do less harm.

Hey, you forgot to mention: Even if you Don't get denied or shot at the border, and everything goes fine... Leaving your tax farm for another incurs pretty stiff exit fees!

The USA doesn't let its' livestock go cheaply... Expatriation fees are rarely less than 10% of your total worth, and you still get taxed on all income earned for the next 10 years!

...And if you don't expatriate properly, you will be taxed by the US for the rest of your life, yes, even on income from other nations that they have no business knowing about. People who try to ignore uncle sam because they've lived overseas their whole lives find this out the hard way in the end. Let's just say extradition treaties exist for a reason other than whistleblowers.

But hey, you're more free than anywhere else in Murika, right? Why not stay home... Obomba will take great care of you. ::)

Hong Kong isn't communist, it has a very high degree of autonomy and operates without the economic and political contraints of mainland China.

I'm not sure I follow you there..  can you give an example? 

Namecoin project has recently got TLS (https) working for names in the namecoin blockchain, "NAMESEC" ... i.e. TLS without CA's is now possible using namecoin blockchain and .bit domains.

http://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4285#p4285 (http://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4285#p4285)

.... the "NAMESEC" protocol :)

I'll let Saint George Carlin (http://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=7m11s) explain to you that you don't have any right or any freedoms. What you have is temporary privileges. Freedoms are no freedoms if there is someone who can just take them away.

This is profoundly delightful.

Keywords highlighted; if you decide right now to leave the country, you are free to do so - UNLESS you are a person of interest against whom an order (as you hint at) has already been made. So don't pretend you're stuck here. If you don't like it (it being the system within which the group of people that call themselves the USA has decided to live), without wanting to sound overly harsh: fuck off go elsewhere. You have that freedom! Even Snowden had that freedom; had he chosen to do so, he could have quit his job quietly and left the country. (Ignoring for a second whether, morally speaking, that would have been the right thing or the wrong thing to do.)

Obviously I don't expect you or anyone else here to up and leave the US (unless, perhaps, you already live abroad and taxes are an issue). The vast majority sitting at their keyboards will weigh-up the opportunity costs and very quickly decide it makes absolutely no sense.

As to the tyranny of the majority statement... Really? You don't see how protection of US national interests has ensured and affords you the freedoms you enjoy today? Are you serious? Without these protections every other country that DOES actively protect it's own interests would quickly dominate the US. Try to remember, this is not just about terrorism. For decades now the US government has tackled - on a day to day basis - political and corporate espionage, hacking, spying, sabotage, etc. Without government level protections, the US simply would not exist in the form it does today. You certainly would not be enjoying the freedoms you enjoy today.

None of this means we should let the NSA or any other branch of the government run wild. But the question becomes, "how do you keep X in line, operating within the boundaries we set?" So instead of indulging in your plight, why not suggest a viable answer? :-\

(All this is way off topic. Sorry.)

Great, love it. :D

He's wrong though. Society would never survive with his concept of unlimited rights. Instead we have (and this is the point you are making) lots of privileges. Temporary or not, we have lots and lots of them. Even better, we have the chance - albeit primarily through our elected officials - to increase the number of privileges we enjoy. Or, indeed, as an individual we can choose not to live with "privileges" and instead to go elsewhere and take our chances. The downside, of course: you abandon society and nobody has you back. Good luck with that. ;D

The chains of your enslavement seem to rest comfortably around your mind. What's curious is why you feel the need to try so hard to convince others that it should be the same for them?


Edit: in other news DuckDuckGo private search engine sees 33% rise in usage since widespread secret govt. surveillance revelations. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100825956 (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100825956)

"He's wrong though. Society would never survive with his concept of unlimited rights. Instead we have (and this is the point you are making) lots of privileges."

Yup. You have the privilege of owing hundreds of thousands of $ for debt the government racked up. You owe several hundred thousand more for the unrealistic promises made by your government to baby boomers. You have the privilege of paying your taxes to start wars all over the globe, face it YOU pay to kill brown people, women and children. You have more debt for the trillions spent on war to "protect your freedoms", despite the fact that you are a hundred times more likely to be killed by lightening, or peanuts, or snakes, than you are by terrorism. If you think what the government is doing in your name is OK, you are either a moron, or a coward. If you hide inside when it's raining for fear of being struck by lightening, then you are on the coward side. If you don't, and you agree with what the NSA is doing, then you are a moron.

All great societies start off free, but as the centralised power branches gather more and more power for themselves, they start to drain more and more resources. Like a parasite that goes from being helpful to one that destroys the host, all central governments eventually go the same way. Face it, the USA is totally broke, and the only way the government is going to be able to keep control as more and more of the population slips into poverty, is through oppressive means.

And all the good will the rest of the world had toward The United States of America, the greatest nation the world has ever seen, has been pissed away. When the other shoe drops, the dollar collapses, and you are all plunged into abject poverty, people that 30 years ago would have rushed to your aid, will laugh and say you reap what you sow.

Make it happen!

Yes and that is a good start, but not many people using .bit yet and going into other TLDs is needed (not trivial I know), :-)

The dogma of statism seems to run deep within you so I'll just leave you with the following observation: please do not confuse assumptions like

"society would never survive with his concept of unlimited rights"

with facts. Fact is you have no idea what would happen. Neither do I. The difference between the two of us seems to be that I'm (more than) willing to find out. For many reasons but mostly because I find the current system of centralized power to be laughably ineffective and in disgusting style. Many people would add that it's "morally wrong" but I don't care for that argument.

You know, if I want to protect myself from "evil people" then setting up an institution with legal monopoly on the initiation of force and by extension unlimited funding, which is sure to attract the most evil people of all...just doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. As for the other "services" government provides, I think we're better off without them and/or we can do better on the level of individuals and voluntary cooperation.

In the end it all boils down to whether you have trust in human beings or not. Of course if you don't trust people in general you're going to concoct some paranoid scheme how to protect yourself from the perceived threat they pose.

Good news, though! This condition is curable! Suggested cures include but are not limited to: traveling, hitchhiking, couchsurfing, meditation and the use of hallucinogens.

+1

"The downside, of course: you abandon society and nobody has you back. Good luck with that. ;D" - I don't know about the U.S but here in the U.K societies are that divided this tends to be the case anyway.

Back to topic: DOUBLE AGENT!!!!

Chow,
S110RE

This is why I say that conflating society with government is a dangerous delusion.

What I am talking about expressed in your terms is abandoning government. Or more to the point, abandoning the idea of a single institution endowed with the power to create and enforce rules binding for absolutely everyone.

I can make a strong argument that by abandoning this idea you are not abandoning society. To the contrary, as has been pointed out, people tend to like social structures. Funnily enough, this has been mostly pointed out by people using it as an argument to support regulation and government - but again, they seem to be conflating government and society.

So what might happen if more of us decided to abandon this idea of government? Who will "have our back" then? We can't know for sure, until we try. Visions of chaos and destruction seem inappropriate though, possibly fueled by mass-media and public education sponsored culture which, guess what, is interested in preserving the status quo. One of the ways it can achieve this is by making alternatives look immoral or scary.

My personal opinion on this is that without the false sense of security provided by government, people would look for other options how to secure their well-being, defense, health care, retirement and education. Can we at least entertain the notion that people faced with the need to provide those things for themselves (as opposed to believing the promise that they will be taken care of by government) might feel a stronger sense of responsibility toward them and thus come up with better solutions? Add to that the observation, that needs and styles with which people satisfy them are varied. Who's going to provide a better fit in terms of servicing those needs? One universal system which is the same for all (except those sitting in the chairs of power, of course) or many many individuals trying lots of different approaches?

I think we do know and we did try. That's what the wild west was all about. It's how and why countries and governments formed in the first place; people banding together to maximise their chances of survival and the survival of their offspring. The bigger the group, the more obvious the need to delegate decision making to a subset.

I think we know exactly what would happen if we suddenly dispensed with government or the dollar or western society crumbled: the group of people with the most guns would quickly declare itself the new government! Maybe Mexico and Canada would acquire some new land. ;D

Anyway... bitcoins. How's the collection coming along?

Last time I checked the "Wild West" period of US history coexisted with something called the federal government. The fact that there were areas where the rule of federal law was tough/impossible to enforce is another matter altogether.

Hey by the way, did you ever notice how the period of the Wild West coincides with one of the biggest growth spurts of any national economy ever and witnessed the transformation of the US from mostly agrarian colonies into an economic superpower? That personal and economic freedom was very high during this period must have been pure coincidence, other, less free nations around the world have been doing as well or better...oh wait...

and for the last time:


No! "We" do NOT know what would happen. If you truly believe that YOU (please refrain for speaking for everybody) know what would happen...well I guess there is no way and no point in trying to convince you otherwise, just let it be known that there are tons of people who subscribe to their own dogmas (and will argue with you to death about them) and a select few who have exchanged the concept of dogma (permanent absolute belief) for the much more fluffy and nice concept of catma (temporary relative disbelief)

Edward Snowden truly is a hero for freedom. Anyone who donates, props.

You've got this backwards. Citizens around the world have each others back AGAINST their governments... Even if they don't realize it.

Sadly too many on this thread, especially runam0k, have no clue what anarchy is; only what GOVERNMENTS tell them it is...

Anarchy, a lack of rulers, has many times throughout history, resulted in peaceful coexistence. Even in the "Wild" west, the only instances of wildness were due to government intervention, on an otherwise peaceful and harmonious existence.

There are volumes written on this subject, but I guess reading would be too much of an inconvenience, especially when you believe that the state is good for you. (For those of you who don't, hop over here and be amazed: Historical list of anarchy without lawlessness (http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/history.htm))

Seriously, it makes me really sad for the human race sometimes. I guess there is nothing to do but break out the instructional tools once again. Check out this vid runam0k:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMoPBDz5ycA

That perfectly defines what anarchy is, and what it isn't.

It's in everyone's best interest to have each other's back by nature... Only something as evil and twisted as government can change that.

And then there is Bitcoin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhR1bI7ecT8

I guess it's easy to become an economic superpower when you murder and displace the indigenous people of a whole continent.

The guy makes $200k+ per year while working at the NSA, he probably don't need money right now.

I watched the whole thing and it turns out I had a pretty good understanding of what anarchy means.

I just don't think anarchy is viable (for many, many reasons which I won't bore/annoy you with). Please don't take the fact I disagree with you to mean I am indoctrinated or brainwashed, I am not (although I am sure that's exactly what all the indoctrinated and brainwashed say). Rather, it just means I disagree with you.

Does anarchy not allow for disagreement? ???

And I'm going to take a wild stab here and guess that you don't live in a community governed by anarchy. Correct me if I am wrong. If so, why is that?

quoted for the lulz  ;D

Actually, he lied about that, too.

Actually, it wasn't a lie. 200k was his career high. He worked in many areas, that is why he knows so much.
The government (via the NSA - our new Govt) is really scrambling to quiet the Shit Storm.
Here is another whistleblower going into a bit more. http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-685-russ-tice-reveals-the-truth-about-nsa-spying/ (http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-685-russ-tice-reveals-the-truth-about-nsa-spying/)
Long live freedom (of choice)...

How anyone can side with a government that has lied (e.g. Iraq weapons of mass destruction, Afghanistan, etc) is beyond me. 

Can also pin the SSL cert to your Android app and avoid all cert authorities completely. It's what Moxie Marlinspike did while at Twitter, hardening their apps with pinned certs because of all the fascist regimes in the middle east hijacking traffic with spoofed certs.

Update: Snowden charged with espionage/treason (no surprise) and arrest warrant ordered. Apparently he has a private jet on standby to fly him to Iceland that somebody is paying for, so US trying to keep him in HK under arrest. Chinese authorities probably responded that the US should hand over all the Falun Gong sect members and corrupt politicians currently hiding out in the USA first, then they will send over Snowden.

Update 2: He claims to have a ton more super seekrit NSA files held in some sort of escrow if he's shot in the face/ricin poisoned/polonium spiked drink lol spies.

Just because I call Snowden out as a treasonous liar doesn't mean I support unconstitutional actions by my government.

I think is just about a given ... a spook learns early to keep an ace up their sleeve. It is how the corruption proliferates, they all hold the goods on each other. It is why secret societies, secret govt. is incompatible with open, liberal democracies since you never really know what the agenda of any individual or sect is behind the public actions.

The off-hand comment he made in his first interview about analysts being able to monitor anyone, including the president is maybe a message that he has something on Obama .... drone spike absurd?

Of course it does. No hard feelings at all.

This subject takes a lot of time and 'unlearning' before 99% of people will understand them at all. It was my silly mistake to think that people supportive of bitcoin would naturally be 'unlearned' enough to make the rest of the jump easily.

Because the bad guys control every single inch of habitable land on the whole globe.

It's actually a deeper question than just that though; If the vast majority of folks woke up to Voluntaryism right now, but there were still a ruling class plus 1% or more of the people around like yourself that simply won't let go of your precious state, then the media would of course keep reporting that Team Blue beat Team Red for the presidency this year and all would continue as it does now... Even people who love and understand freedom wouldn't know that they are the majority... So the majority of the people could never have what it wants!

This is literally true because Voluntaryists won't vote and simply do not attack. Both are against our core principles of common decency.

Snowden definitely has a bag of secrets he's been siphoning from NSA servers for a long time, apparently since 2004. Today in response to the US extradition request he  leaked some more NSA hacking antics (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed) stamped top secret to the South China Post detailing how the NSA is stealing multi millions of text messages from their nationalized telecoms, a lot of it from backdoored proprietary firmware sold by US corps. Ruhroh

You'd think China would be smart enough not to drop a US corporate blackbox onto any of their networks

Treason requires helping a foreign nation.  Which nation are you alleging he is helping, making war against or seriously injuring the US to the benefit of...?
Does this seriously hurt the USA?  It looks like most seem to be taking it in stride.
I'd guess the AG will go after a lesser crime, easier to prove, but which might still warrant extradition.

However if he is exposing unlawful activity, as some in the US congress have stated, then he may have some sort of immunity.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I appreciate what he did to protect the freedoms of man, but
https://i.imgur.com/4hBi9SK.jpg
I couldn't resist!

Had someone done the same thing as Snowden (and leaked docs) during Hitler's tenure, perhaps things would have went differently.
The black or white message in your image reminds me of the Nürnberg trials. Many of the Nazi soldiers didn't understand why they were being tried, they said "We were just following orders."  :'(
Rules and laws should never undermine humanity.

Think and Love,
Its about Sharing

USA is at a cross-roads. Snowden is the signpost, he clearly points out in no uncertain terms that if America wants to go down this path facism, tyranny, authoritarianism and lots of well-known bad things will come from it ... and also points to the another way.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/

From here on, there can be no excuses, no-one can say "we didn't know". The devil is sitting at the cross-roads too, deal in hand waiting for America's signature. Do you want to sign off on this? The choice is now crystal clear and no abdication of responsibility can be had from what happens from here on in.

Choose wisely.

I'm just severely worried for our future generations. All this surveillance will just be seemless and they will accept it as the norm.

1984 much?

Snowden on the move
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/23/politics/nsa-leaks

I actually don't have a problem with a transparent society - I think it is the future. But when the current government is controlled by lobbyists, corporations and corruption, then it only takes a few bad apples (i.e. - What basically has happened) to pull of something like Hitler did, or worse...

We must be careful now as marcus of augustus said...

If all that everyone did were knowable to everyone...
Would anyone bother with lies, would there be shame?
Anger, violence, theft?
Would we be left
with only honest dealing based on our efforts?
Are we now closer or further from finding out?

Snowden leaves Hong Kong

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23021237

Universal security cameras, at least in "public" places.

Being Hollywood adjacent, and having produced some film, I've contemplated doing my next one entirely by security camera.
My actors and actresses can act out their scenes under the view of security cameras around the city, when cut together, the greater whole emerges.

Sure to be a stealth blockbuster.  Oscar here I come.

You can do the close ups as seen by cell and laptop cameras.

Beautiful news. If we could just get Assange out of the UK as well.

Looking Forward to a weekly  Snowden internet based TV show...

Russia Today, the Kremlin's hilarious propaganda channel offered Assange his own show at one time, probably will offer Snowden a weekly show to punch the US gov in the nuts repeatedly though I don't think he's staying in Russia. Seems like his plan is to go to Cuba and then apply for safe haven in Ecuador like Assange is doing.

Equador it is:  http://rt.com/news/ecuador-asylum-request-snowden-135/ (http://rt.com/news/ecuador-asylum-request-snowden-135/)

Of note, RT is the propaganda outlet for Russia. But each country is the same - CNN, FOX, etc. do likewise for the US. Max Keisser went into this and made some good points in a past episode.

are you guys all still worrying about some criminal that broke his oath? ???

go back to bed padalin, your government is in control. You are free, to do as we tell you. You are free, to do as we tell you.

You mean Obomba? Yeah, what's not to worry about?

General Keith Alexander's oath to uphold the Constitution?

his oath to what the constitution? where does it say in the constitution that one must aid and abed rogue agencies in crimes against humanity?

what constitution? Are you talking about The one we are seeing shred little by little  :'(
In the name of keeping us ignorant helpless US Citizens safe from the Terrorist who will kill us
for no other reason other than we are who we are and worship a different god not Alah ???

Yeah, the US Gov will keep you and me safe at all costs from the Snowden`s of the world.

... just going to file here in the "Absurd" bin for posterity ...
 
http://ktla.com/2013/06/21/exclusive-hastings-sent-colleagues-email-hours-before-crash/#axzz2X5MJsCFG

http://ca.movies.yahoo.com/news/lapd-officially-confirms-michael-hastings-car-crash-victim-233000393.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345332/Paranoid-Michael-Hastings-told-WikiLeaks-lawyer-investigated-FBI-hours-deadly-car-crash.html


Just wondering if it is possible to remotely hack a 2013 Mercedes C250 instrument system and set throttle to full? Or would a separate remote control device need planting on the vehicle to effect such an outcome?

Hastings last piece on Buzzfeed, pretty chilling stuff:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-on-americans (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-on-americans)

I think this is one of the most dangerous delusions man can have. Government governs you. This has nothing to do with "working for you".

If you're in a prison cell, would you say the prison guard with a gun and the keys to your cell is working for you?

+1

For more reading re: drone killing:
   
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1687.htm

It is funny to me that the US has been politely asking for Snowden back only to get a lukewarm response back from the countries he has fled to. Seems like getting caught spying on your neighbors with cameras and bugs, then going back over to ask for a cup of sugar.

Any word on actually getting Snowden some funds somehow? I feel if he had some kind of plan to do this at some point he would have secured himself financially somehow with such a high paying position, obviously he didn't just jump out of bed one morning and go "You know, I feel like dickpunching my government today and throwing away my life and career". Despite that, this man deserves some support for his sacrifices in exposing the real life Big Brother for what it is.

Snowden's passport was revoked, which means he wasn't allowed to travel period. Let's face it, he paid China and Russia for help - not with bitcoins, I might add.

... well that's pretty out there, but hey, extra-judicial drone strikes on US citizens who are a threat to "national security" are now legal according to Obama and Holder so who knows ... ?

... since "national security" can seem to mean anything you want it to mean for congress critters, judges, officials and sundry washington elites regarding 'legal spying' on Americans I suppose the same threshold is appropriate for extra-judicial killings for 'national security' threats ?

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad man." - John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron

Implying making US mad isn't worth much more than money

specifically when he signed to agree to keep secret info secret. A real "hero" would do the release and then turn himself in recognizing that he too broke the rules.

Author, I just read the TITLE only and found that you used "BitCoins". Sorry to say that you are not among us.

FTFY

Snowden touches down in Moscow .... ooops, honey trap, send moar bitcoins boyz!  :D

http://fotogaleri.ntvmsnbc.com/Assets/PhotoGallery/Pictures/0000349845.jpg

http://blog.ste-global.net/?p=1292

LOL right! with all this publicity I am sure they could get away with that! Sorry but back in the real world that just doesn't hold water. With him halving worked for the CIA earlier in his career he would also know that. I myself am ex military and had high level clearance. There are many other ways to have done this. If for some reason he couldn't figure any of those out (would have to be a complete idiot.) and he felt it was really worth it for the good of the country (the people not the corrupt government leaders) He would have both done the release and then took the hit himself. That would be a person I could consider worth respecting.

Also please don't confuse my lack of respect for him as a person as agreement with the systems he exposed.

Of course you would have made a wiser choice.

I would hope so. I also hope that the 2 children that I have raised and are now in the military (US NAVY and Marine) and the 1 that is currently try to get into the US Air force academy would.

EDIT.. This is exactly what I had told them when this first started.

Is that supposed to be a good thing somehow?

Yes.  Just because people have misused and abused a word..

 (note: representative democracy is neither)

doesn't mean that the thousands of years old concept is unworthy. 
The concept has even proven its ability to solve the Byzantine General's problem.  In fact it may be only now coming of age and actually could be implemented. 

Because the actual posting of the address could reveal his IP.

Yeah I'm sure an ex CIA agent doesn't know how to hide his ass

Am I alone in thinking that raising the Byzantine General problem in this context is ironically hilarious?
( who are the traitor(s) )

You seem to be talking about the true concept of Democracy...I wonder what that is.

These guys have raised $23,000 for his future defense fund

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/snowden?refcode=SnowdenDefenseFund.com (https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/snowden?refcode=SnowdenDefenseFund.com)

Their Paypal account will be frozen in 3...2....1  :D

All this is such BS -- Snowden in a non-martyr for a pseudo-cause.

How can he claim to be a libertarian if he flees the freest country in the world and seeks refuge with dictatorships -- hopping from China, Russia (who all happily plundered the contents of his laptops), via Cuba to Equador?

Mr Snowden seems more bold than wise.  Many could have been wiser.

Is that what they learn in US class rooms? Did you ever consider being biased by PoV? You know there are always two versions for the same story... and that it varies according to who wrote the class book (historians from where, when, do they have an agenda etc.).

My tip to better understand the world: settle for at least two years somewhere in Asia, then in Europe, then in Canada maybe... and don't skip South America if you want to see other people can be happy with less GDP per capita, too... anyway. And don't spend your time trying to evangelize others about how you have it right and they have it wrong, but just spend time observing how things happen around you, how their political system work, how much society is decoupled with the mainstream media, the government, or not, etc. etc.

Or, keep on thinking the USA will ever stay TheKingOfTheWorld, that other governments are suckpuppets of evil communist / islamic / whatever dictator (terrorists, yaya...). And don't think about the ending of that 1997 movie...

Besides, I like the USA, but I'm always stunned that many people in the US don't realize they do have fierce competition on the global economic level, currently mostly with Asia and especially China.

What free country did he flee?

He's looking to get to Equador. Apparently Wikileaks people arranged that for him.

It's always good to have a dictator to buddy buddy with.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/23/edward-snowden-ecuador_n_3487546.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/23/edward-snowden-ecuador_n_3487546.html)

Troll spotted.  ::)

http://www.informationweek.com/security/client/air-force-seeks-fake-online-social-media/229219056 (http://www.informationweek.com/security/client/air-force-seeks-fake-online-social-media/229219056)

http://btc.to/cja

Edward Snowden BTC address (http://btc.to/cja)

WOW, have you seen how old that article is and how it practically hasn't been seen by anyone at all??

It doesn't suprise me one bit that they're doing that; it's just the social media version of PRISM. -But for no one to have seen that 2011 article is worrysome, especially after PRISM's leak.

This kind of tech literally makes it so 99% of the country could all strongly feel that Snowden deserves the Peace Prize, but they all think that they are in the 1%.

This is how elections are rigged, IMHO. This + media propaganda.

Scary isn't it. Land of the free and home of the brave Air Force on-line social media war. Since when was the Air Force doing counter espionage anyway? Don't they have other agencies for that?

Every regime now has their own propaganda chorus to manipulate discussion, and there's been plenty of shady startups ready to provide them with everything a government could need to monitor, influence and identify dissent on social media http://www.ntrepidcorp.com/tartan.php

It was pretty big news at the time.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17852/army_of_fake_social_media_friends_to_promote_propaganda
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
It wasn't the last one either:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6ef12558b44258382452fcf02942396a&tab=core&_cview=0
The USAF has lots of guidance for its folks:
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120327-048.pdf

And this:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=223d75584bd260d9922acf328f2c0064&tab=core&_cview=0
Of primary interest are those programs which seek to develop capabilities which are intended to directly influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making information/abilities of adversaries, or those intended to protect our own. Likewise, programs which aim to improve/automate the planning and integration of such capabilities into military plans are relevant. Programs designed to determine, track, or assess characteristics of the information environment (such as population attitude/sentiment trends, social media data mining, political or cultural upheaval prediction, etc.) are also relevant to this data call.
The legacy definition of Information Operations described the core capabilities of Electronic Warfare, Psychological Operations, or PSYOP, (now called Military Information Support Operations, or MISO), Military Deception (MILDEC), Operations Security (OPSEC), and Computer Network Operations (CNO), and the supporting capabilities, including Combat Camera, Information Assurance, and Counterintelligence. R&D programs in these fields are of peripheral interest to this data call, and will be accepted.

This stuff is the public bits, the tip of the iceberg.
They even use the term "sock puppet" in the RFP.

Thanks for these. A pretty good case against against the american electoral process and democracy itself can now be made with these links and what we know about the media put together.

Poor Paul followers in 2012 never knew what they were up against...

They militarised the Internet quite few years back (after the 3 planes-4 buildings attack) ... militarisation of 'social' media is a more recent phenomena, but more disturbing imho.

I don't know what kind of person thinks it is normal for the military to be routinely twisting the minds and discussions of free association in a civil, democratic society ... they are like a sickness that has infected the halls of power. Dick "We need to go over to the dark side" Cheney would be proud, his 5th heart will be beating out of its chest.

Older people think back to how the West used to view this kind of behaviour in the former communist Eastern bloc and Nazi Germany with absolute abhorrence. The movie "The lives of others" is relevant.

Ed? ... is that you?

Great movie(!), but perhaps a bit OTT suggesting we have it as bad as people did in East Germany.

You have no idea how bad it is since it is all tied up in sealed orders, secret courts and closed-door briefings ... that's just the way they like it.

The real widespread damage only begins when the populace realises the grey-hand of the State envelopes their every thought and move ... the widespread chilling effect on the psyche of the society is deeply damaging and long-lasting. There are studies about it, people from the East were basically suffering post-traumatic stress after living in a surveillance society.


Edit: Steve Wozniak says ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/21/wozniak-guilty-nsa-surveillance-snowden (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/21/wozniak-guilty-nsa-surveillance-snowden) ... constitutional crimes, all the way to the top I'd say on an honest appraisal, judges, generals, politicians, bureaucrats ... but who's going to prosecute them?

Just wondering if it is possible to remotely hack a 2013 Mercedes C250 instrument system and set throttle to full? Or would a separate remote control device need planting on the vehicle to effect such an outcome?

Sorry.  Lost the quote codes...

http://autos.yahoo.com/mercedes-benz/c-class/2013/c250-coupe/features.html

It looks like there is electrical assistance for steering, throttle, and brake controls.  Whether these can override operator inputs to the point of causing a lethal accident is an open question.

A hack versus an external device is also an open question.  There certainly is a capability to remotely operate subsystems. 

I'm thinking I will be sticking with older model, manual vehicles.

The thing is we just can't know that.

The nature of our predicament today is that they're better at controlling our BELIEFS. So perhaps it is better in that they aren't forcing us to do so much against our beliefs, but they could be forcing us to do 10x as much stuff against what we'd believe without their mindgames.

I guess we'll know when it becomes publicly accepted to commit mass Genocide again, like the last time this experiment was run. Personally, I'm not waiting around.

Yes, it appears so... (piece of article)

From the International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/michael-hastings-car-hacking-theory-latest-attempt-explain-suspicious-death-richard-clarke-says (http://www.ibtimes.com/michael-hastings-car-hacking-theory-latest-attempt-explain-suspicious-death-richard-clarke-says)


...


...

What the hell do you mean by "they militarized the internet" -- the "internet" STARTED as as a military project. ARPANET was a US Defense department project of a network of trusted US universities and national research labs. It was Senator Albert Gore Jr. who managed to pass the 'High Performance Computing Act' (the "Gore Bill) in 1991 (and signed into law by Bush Senior), which opened up this technology to private actors. Only then did the internet take off. It was a state-made invention that later became an economic and social success in private hands. Similarly, the TOR-network started as a defense project that was later privatized. 

They already have the 100,000 signatures necessary but the more the merrier:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD)

It's going to be hilarious to see the whitehouse's attempt to respond to this while not simultaneously making their case for hypocrites of the century.  

I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance occurring when they try to dismiss the pro-snowden people as right-wingers looking to score partisan points, when the issue is one that the left supposedly champions (transparency / civil liberties), and an issue the president ran on.  His words in defending the NSA could have just as easily been uttered by Bush, Clinton, etc.  If times like this don't wake people up to the fact that both US political parties are the same (authoritarian), I don't know what will.

Quite right ... but you are going back in time before anyone really cares ... should have said they de-militarized it (Tim Berners-Lee and www era) before they re-militarised it (ISP intercept equipment installs).

Edward Snowjob is just another government meme.

Any real leaker wouldn't be given mainstream media press coverage.

What? Why do you say that?

Because ALL mainstream media is crafted to serve a purpose and 99% of it is complete made up bullshit - not biased covering of events, but complete fabrication.

Most americans already know that the NSA can listen in whenever they want - nothing new has been revealed.

So you think they fabricated a story about Snowden because you think they want America to think they can't trust their government? That sounds a little nuts.

Um..no. Please try to avoid making strawman arguments.

If you don't understand what a strawman is, it generally takes this form "So you think [inject something other person didn't say here], that's crazy!"

What I think is that everyone already knows that the government spies on them, and no one trusts the government already. Pretty much every independent poll ever done on gov trust confirms that.

Why this Snowden story? Not sure, but the folks over at the Daily Bell have some good guesses: https://www.thedailybell.com/29215/Edward-Snowden-Limited-Hangout-or-a-Globalist-Step-Back

Do you or do you not believe the Snowden case is real?

I don't believe anything, so the answer to your question is "no", even if I thought it was real. I don't know anything about the guy personally, and I KNOW the media plain makes shit up, and I know that if he is all over the msm, it is because the powers that be want him to be on it, and that they are using the story to push an agenda.

Pretty ironic that your sig is "GROUPTHINK kills braincells!!!!!!"

Groupthink requires that you THINK! What your saying sounds like mad rambling paranoia. What agenda could they possibly have for making the government look bad? The "powers that be" wouldn't happen to be aliens would they?

Why don't you follow your own advice. You didn't even read what I wrote or any of the article. You've switched from strawman to ad hominem fallacies. I think we're done here.

No, I did read it. I just thought maybe you were the "staff reporter" they credited. You're right, it's all a big conspiracy. It just sounds like a lot of effort wasted on a country full of people that care so little about the inner workings of their government that they seldom even vote. lol

I'm no conspiracy buff, but wouldn't that put j.assange and wikileaks on the inside of the conspiracy as well?  Are they sock-pups?

Your logical fallacy is in forgetting that other countries do not have the same goal in their propaganda as we do in ours.

The reason you're hearing Snowden's name in america is because other countries are more than happy to report on how f*cked up america can be.

The enemy of your enemy is your friend.

No, I actually don't think it's a conspiracy. I was just saying that to get the loon off my back (don't tell him or he'll tell aliens to come get me). lol

OK, well then to put some more spin on the theoretical alien ball game, if Obama doesn't expect Putin to extradite Snowden, does forcefully demanding it give Putin more credibility domestically in Russia?  Is Obama doing Putin a favor with this?
The NSA by now likely know just how much Snowden has and can have accommodated.  So now it would be more gamesmanship and public opinion management?  The Byzantine-General voting tally, as it were.
Conspiracy theory makes for fun script writing, but other than that, is it useful for anything?

 Obama's advisors will direct him toward the most favorable outcome for a bad situation so definitely there will be careful management of the situation. That's why the Executive Office of The President has such a huge staff. Conspiracy theories are very useful. They make us think about situations from every angle but they need to be tempered with good judgement. If not we would all be hiding under our beds and afraid to go outside.

rolf

I baleeted my msg and just ignored the guy. He's a disinfo agent sent here by the government lol

speaking of irony...


Yes, my friends, switching from thinking in dogmas to thinking in catmas (http://fxus.deviantart.com/journal/discordian-catma-234973218) takes time, practice and FIVE TONS OF FLAX!

On a more serious note I like the theory you brought up. I can imagine people behind the gubment going all like "hmmm our fascist surveillance state is becoming so glaringly obvious that it's harder and harder to deny and overlook. We should expect opposition so we might as well create, manage and control the supposed opposition so it seems like there is some, when indeed it will be controlled by us!" (insert evil mastermind laugh)

All the more reason for everyone to make their own conclusions and make their voices heard.

Name, for the record, of the secret court Judge who signed off on the 4th amendment breaching espionage ... Kollar-Kotelly.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-court-judges-upset-at-portrayal-of-collaboration-with-government/2013/06/29/ed73fb68-e01b-11e2-b94a-452948b95ca8_print.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-court-judges-upset-at-portrayal-of-collaboration-with-government/2013/06/29/ed73fb68-e01b-11e2-b94a-452948b95ca8_print.html)

Pretty clear cut ... round up the criminals. Time to clean out the stables.

Edward Snowden just apparently left Moscow airport... finally!

Source? I can't find anything

Breaking news on BBC, no more details yet

Indeed, I saw an other stating the same thing

Info from his Russian lawyer: Temporary asylum in Russia
Russia Today saw him leaving the airport

Best coverage on Snowden is http://www.theguardian.co.uk

They have covered both Assange/Wikileaks and Snowden more than most sources.

You might be surprised how little Americans know about what the government does.
Do not underestimate our capacity to ignore even what might seem obvious.

Your assessment of the media is also interesting, but consider the media coverage in the Snowden case.
It focuses 99% on the personage of Snowden.  Almost zero coverage about what was revealed.
This method is not new, it is repeated with each whistleblower.
The effect is to maintain the ignorance about what is revealed, and focus entirely on the intrigue of the manhunt.  It becomes an adventure and human interest story rather than anything that can affect policy or government.

It was the same with Bradley Manning.  Americans know a lot more about his sexual issues than they do about anything that he revealed.

Americans are instructed to be afraid of our "enemies".

So how does this XKeyscore thing work ... is it like a credit rating ... to see how close to being a terrorist any one person might be?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data


I bet it is built on top of linux ...

I just read that and all I can say is... holy shit!

Every email provider worth mentioning is being tapped for content.
Every IM provider worth mentioning is being tapped for content.
Every search engine worth mentioning is being tapped for content.
Every social media <whatever> worth mentioning is being tapped for content.
and last but not least probably every ISP worth mentioning is being tapped for content.

Correct!

Since you got that joke, here's one even funnier...
That Guardian Webpage you just browsed and linked here has all the social media "like" buttons and "share" buttons embedded on it.
You can see them on the left.

The Java script those buttons include on the page are enough to provide this tracking information through those social media sites,
So even if Guardian were not providing this browser tapping directly, the java from those "like" buttons would be doing it anyway. EVEN if you don't use them, or Facebook.
Every time you see that little thumbs up, you know you have just added your browsing data to the XKeyscore system.

moving forward there will never be a time that we will have privacy from government. the age of privacy is and forever will be a thing of the past. the good news is that the internet is a two way looking glass. for the first time in history we can stare right back at them.  ;D

To be fair, Snowden made this all about him anyway.  In front of the camera from day 1, regular interviews and statements, flirting with various countries for asylum, etc.  Bottom line, his story quickly became way more interesting than the NSA-spies-on-people shocker.

Anyway, put your bitcoins away.  Snowden's getting plenty of Rubles for his troubles. ;D

Do you imagine that Snowden is in control of the edit?  Or even when the camera is on or where it is pointed?
Or that he has a choice of whether a picture of PRISM or his face is on the screen for the masses?
If so, than even you sir, have been duped along with all the rest of us.


He may be his generations Annie Machon (MI5 whistleblower on the Qadaffi assassination plot), if he survives so long.
http://anniemachon.ch/

Americans generally do not know any of this, mostly because of apathy.

Snowden's other option (if he wanted to out these systems due to his burden of conscience) would have been to leak the information anonymously.  What would have happened then is a massive internal manhunt to the great detriment and suffering of a vast number of his colleagues.  So taking the heat on it personally was probably less to do with his egoism than you might suggest.
I would never have done it myself.   I have far too much to lose to be revealing secrets, about anything.  And I selfishly value my trustworthyness more than any imagined potential benefit to society that might come from what he did.  Due to the the political perversity principle, it is just as likely to have the opposite of whatever effect Snowden intended.

But it can be fun to point out what is in the public domain already, and taking a fresh look at the relevant interests and how they are aligned and opposed is engaging for some strategic thinkers.
I don't have any reason for, (or even any way of) either being for or against him as a person, a criminal, or a hero, but observing the interplay of reactions has to be engaging food for analysis.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/08/email-company-reportedly-used-by-edward-snowden-shuts-down-rather-than-hand-data-over-to-feds/

Lavabit, an email provider allegedly used by Snowden.  Lavabit doesn't provide info to government so it shutters the business rather than surrender 1st amendment protections.

any basement-dwelling anarchists hacker types around? (i know, we are all conformist legal eagles now ... ) but anyhoo ...

... you might like this new twist in the theatre of the absurd .gov has vomited up in the Snowden case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07/why-a-former-nsa-chief-just-made-a-big-mistake-by-dissing-hackers/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07/why-a-former-nsa-chief-just-made-a-big-mistake-by-dissing-hackers/)


... yeah, these are the guys responsible for establishing the State surveillance Leviathan ... trolling like hormone-charged 15yos.

Snowden had a 200,000$ salary, I'm sure that with Russia buying his confidential information he will be doing great.

i would donate.

If you call being the target of a global manhunt by a world superpower with global reach and a vindictive streak for truth tellers great ... yeah, then he's doing "great".

Doing great financial wise, manhunt wise the blood is on your hands, you are the ones that let Mohammed give ya the terrorism scare and strip your rights away, if you are looking at someone to blame you can look in the mirror.

It's now possible to do this:

https://wikileaks.org/freesnowden (https://wikileaks.org/freesnowden)

At the bottom of the page:

He was basically working for the Federal Reserve, helping the CIA/NSA to obtain trade secrets, etc.  Without an alternative, anonymous currency, the options for someone in his position ;)

Snowden is a hero.

Just sent 5BTC to the defense fund.

I wish for him to be able to start a real life again sometime...

Amazing: 5'000 Dollars of the donated 11'000.- until today come from the 1 Percent, the Bitcoiners.

https://blockchain.info/address/1snowqQP5VmZgU47i5AWwz9fsgHQg94Fa
https://wikileaks.org/freesnowden

So big win for wikileaks for enabling bitcoin donations.

I was donating to WikiLeaks directly before Snowden was offered Asylum. Hoping some of the btc sent there and not to the 1snow cacount still went to him

ill be glad to donate him a few bitcoins..

Just sent 1 BTC to our hero.

Great move by WikiLeaks to go broad with the Snowden fund, which seems to be building up a template for future whistleblowers to be granted safe haven when exposing how completely corrupt and out of control our governments have become.


It is good to see the Bitcoin magnates stepping forward as well

USA official declare him enemy of state so why you call him hero

Because he is a hero.

yes I agree first hero declares as enemies and then they became heroes

.. it's just how it happens with rogue states. Lies are Truth, up is down, black is white, bad is good ... everything goes crazy because the governing infrastructure is effectively at war with the citizenry so nothing seems to make sense any more. It's kind of tearing itself apart, the fabric of society is being disintegrated by the legal and moral contradictions spewing out in the form of decrees and edicts.

Because the government of the USA are terrorists.

That's a tautology, dear Marcus of Augustus. A state is by definition a rogue. And it is more than that: It's organized violence.



The state has been at war against humankind since the invention of the state, 10'000 years ago. Citizenry is the result of that. Citizenry is the cartoon of humankind - a citizen is not a human, but a cartoon of it, a collectivist, a protection money payer, an enforced mafioso.

now they will start war against you and may be deployed you in sea that you are against their views

Nah, it is apparent from Prism that few people are buying the government line anymore. They know it and they are sweating.

They are going all out to stay in control, but it looks like they are losing their grip.
The whole Syrian thing is not going well for them. They wanted to be in there with their latest false flag attack (Assad using chemical weapons when it looks like the Rebels did) but that didn't work and Russia
has stepped things up. Luckily, we the people have friends. And Obama's charade is falling apart as well.

Apparently we have friends in the US military who are not buying into things...

Hopefully the criminals clinging to power don't get their war or whatever means they will try for to stay, or regain control.

It is important for people to speak their minds and not let the panopticon direct their actions. We are our own "public relations"...

Enjoy the show, and we got the Universe on our side.  ;)

I have a question for Mr Snowden pls

What about this?
Holographic Versatile Disc (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318859.0)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/12/16/an-nsa-coworker-remembers-the-real-edward-snowden-a-genius-among-geniuses/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/12/16/an-nsa-coworker-remembers-the-real-edward-snowden-a-genius-among-geniuses/)


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-16/judge-rules-nsas-indiscriminate-arbitrary-invasion-privacy-likely-unconstitutional (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-16/judge-rules-nsas-indiscriminate-arbitrary-invasion-privacy-likely-unconstitutional)

Oh how the tide is turning, beware of the flood tide of truth when it comes. Wonder why it is Libertarians seem it be over-represented by genius ... hmmm, I wonder, think they know something?

I saw the 60 minutes piece with NSA. And then I read the guardian story about it later on.

NSA is of course trying desperately to regain public trust, but it's all a play, it's all scripted.

Personally I think it's so sad that honesty does not exist in this world. You can't believe a word that you hear.

While Snowden was depicted as a cheater and a weirdo by the NSA, a former colleague of Snowden called him a genius among geniuses.

It's also really comforting that this FISA court has no way of enforcing or overseeing their rulings, they just need to trust NSA to do the right thing.

Meanwhile, the nobel price peace winners home country, the US of A killed a dozen people in a wedding convoy in Yemen:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/15/world/meast/yemen-drones/

So let me get this right.

1. Terrorists are humans who kills innocent people. The people killed are often random passers by, or just being at the wrong spot at the wrong time.

2. The US Govt. just killed a dozen people in a wedding convoy, most of them completely innocent people.

How does this not make the US Govt terrorists? This is only collateral damage, not to be concerned about?

I think this question is warranted: How would you feel about it, if you went to a wedding with your spouse, to celebrate some of the finest day in someones life, and then all of a sudden pure carnage took place. Your wife had her intestines spilling out of her gut, while her head is shot off from the blast, and she's bleeding to death. Your son is nothing but wet spagetthi on the ground, looking like somebody just prepared a meat pudding. Yourself, you can't see a thing, as you just got both blinded and deafened by the blast. A dozen of the people you love and care about are dead. Life will never be the same again, your health and your family is ruined. The survivors will grow an intense hate towards the people who committed this atrocious crime. And thus new terrorists are born.

The industrial-millitary complex keeps churning, making, maintenance and contracts regarding drones, sattelites and ground stations. Everything is profit for the businesses involved. The lives of innocent civilians does not matter.

The lives of people in Yemen are worth exactly zero. Imagine the outrage if this happend in London, in Berlin or in Washington.

The interesting thing is however that what somebody does against someone else, it can always be returned. If the US can develop drone technologies and do drone attacks, who else can? And can the payload and casualties be increased? What will happen in the world in the years to come - that's the interesting question.

Nobody could imagine that NSA would put their hands down and say: Yes, we did wrong - and we will mend our ways.

By the end of the day - everybody working at the NSA, or any business in the millitary industry complex, or for any other state millitary has the same basic needs. Everybody needs to have somebody to love and to be loved, everybody enjoys time in harmony and peace with their family. So in the protected environment of our homes, we make love, we show love, we pet our dog, we feed our cat, but once we go out the door, we put on the iron mask. We do not care about other people. Somebody having a breakdown of their car on the highway? We don't stop, it could be a trap, not our business, they'll get help anyway.. Somebody just died in an accident on the highway. Well, bad luck we say - and keep driving. Somebody got droned in Yemen, well that's just as interesting as knowing there was snowing in Chicago last saturday and their basketball team lost a match. We yawn and keep driving, finally arriving home, taking off the iron mask, placing it in the entrance, and for a few hours we become human with our family before it's time to repeat it all over again. And in the end... what happens.. ? Who knows. Perhaps you become the victim of a terrorist attack caused by someone who was turned into a terrorist by having their family killed in a drone attack? Or perhaps you get killed in a dark alley by a petty thief that just wants your money, but you rejected his demands, or while you put on lipstick waiting for the green light on your daily drive to your job as a consultant at Fort Meade.

A hollywood movie with a karma theme would be quite interesting.

The same arguments that the US Government uses to excuse their "collateral damage" could legitimately be claimed by the 9/11 hijackers.

If you look at the amount of damage the US's economic hit men (http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081) did to countries around the world, any resident of those countries could plausibly claim that the Pentagon and World Trade Center contained legitimate military targets from their perspective.

If you apply even the slightest bit of logical consistency to the matter,  the US DoD and Al-Qaeda are in the same category - either both are terrorist organizations, or neither of them are.

How does one provide Edward Snowden a bitcoin address without anyone else gaining access to it. He's kinda in hiding right now so it's not like you can simply go and whisper the private key in his ear so he can gain access to all his donated coins. Until that problem has been solved I'm not donating anything.

"flirting"???  What would have had him do instead...just come back to the USA and spend a life in prison?  Very weird veiew you have of it is struggle for survival.

Snowden didn't have editorial control.  What you saw is what the media wanted you to see, and what would sell advertisements.
Media is the natural ally of the government propaganda in these cases.  What sells the adverts is also what hurts the whistleblower the most.  The focus on the person, the human interest drama, the chase scene.
All the hard facts and technical details about why the whistleblower did it and what was revealed is only a minor element in the plot of the story.  Those are purely secondary to the love interests, the sordid pasts, the flight vs the captivity.

βλεπoμεν γαρ αρτι δι εσoπτρoυ εν αινιγματι
Through a glass, darkly.

Edward Snowden truly is a hero for freedom. Anyone who donates, props.  :D

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA christ you kids crack me up.


The reason this kid 'left all behind' is because he was foolish enough to mistake his childish and vainglorious 'revolutionary' urge as something 'heroic'. He left his family, 'girlfriend' (a more selfish and self-absorbed bitch I have seldom seen - pole dancing shallow whore that she is), and his job not because he is an established and determined revolutionary - he is suffering under a VERY CHILDISH delusion that what he has done is something 'remarkable' and 'like a fighter for freedom'.

His every word and actions in running from the results of his actions prove him nothing less than a pathetic fool on the same level as bradley manning - insecure, infantile, and infinitely gullible kid easily manipulated and cajoled by reality who is only a hero in his own mind, along with multitude of similarly lacking peoples. His ultimate goal is self-congratulation, self-masturbatory delusions about 'standing up for something'. Well, he certainly didn't even attempt to stand up to something in a position that presented even a remote threat to him - he ran like a bitch to cower behind something else and spout their shallow nonsense from safety of someone else's skirt.

Is there any wonder why authorities and people in power look upon you with contempt when your standards are so pathetic?

Sitting behind a computer and bitching about 'civil liberties' must have felt very comfortable in the relative safety of 1st world nation, but I am sure reality slapped him around a few times when he decided to book it to china then russia, beacon of democracy and civil liberties that they are. I am sure MSS and FSB/SVR had much fun tossing this kid around like a cheap piece of meat and holding his strings.


Cowards like snowden exemplify everything that's wrong with younger 1st world generations today, and the fact that this loser and coward is being held up as a 'hero' by ignorant and petulant fools stands as an embarrassment for all who are citizens of those nations. His profile is practically a textbook example of insecure, childish internet 'hero' (a weaboo on top of that) whose notion of 'determination' consists of running away anything that presents even a slight real challenge.

Save your money. Save your pseudo-intellectual platitudes about 'liberty' and 'democracy'. If anyone's doing more to damage those two causes, it's you who think democracy and liberty are sunday morning cartoon themes.

Fish rots from the head - and the ultimate head of democracy is supposed to be the public. Your state is rotten indeed.


For Fucks sake, please grow a pair and grow the fuck up. 1st world doesn't need fools like these getting too mouthy for their own good.

This. I cannot let the previous post be the last post in this topic for more than a few minutes.

He is a criminal and a traitor and he doesn't deserve anything but prison time. It's just fools, other criminals and anarchists that also belong prison that keep trying to support this idiot.

Anyone who is donating is just aiding and abetting a fugitive and belongs in prison with him.

Snowden doesn't need anyone's help to 'demonize' and embarrass himself :)

Ok, If I look away from your tone in this post. I have a few questions.

1. What should Snowden have done?
2. Was it wrong of him to disclose the information that he did?
3. Do you assume that Snowden thought that his action would have no consequences and that he never assumed at some point that he even might have been killed?
4. When he did what he did, would it be better to stay in the USA and face the consequences, would that make him 'more of a man' ?
5. You mention Manning as well, was what he did wrong?
6. When governments or governmental organizations does anything wrong, should this never be disclosed?
7. What do you need to do to become a hero in your eyes?
8. Can you only be a hero if you're on the battlefield exposed for live bullets?
9. What do you get out of ridiculing Snowden and Manning?
10. Are the US Govt always right?

He got away with it..he won and you lost.  He isn't going to prison....he is going to live in Brazil and have a very full and rich life, unlike yourself.

He should be Time's "Man of the Year" but I doubt they would go with a controversial pick, however deserving he is.

It's cute that you believe that. All the US Gov has to do is say the word and Putin is ready to make a deal and they can acquire him, Not sure why they havent yet. So again, all he is deserving is being someone's prison bitch.

Too funny watching the americans raging about the fact that the rest of the world now know about their attempt at global espionage/control/surveillance/ruining encryption/whatelse  :D

A traitor? As an european i have to thank him, for showing us what usa did to europe  ;)

Ummm, actually Snowden has exposed whole Institutions full of Fourth Amendment criminals, perpetrating crimes wantonly and persistently over many years.

Charges, prosecutions and punishments should be fitting for such criminals. Let the chips fall where they may. Choose your sides wisely, history does not play well for losers.

Indeed. If you honestly think he's a traitor your retardedness is beyond words and I sincerely hope you don't reproduce (sadly these are usually the people that aren't smart enough to comprehend the use of contraceptives).

Agreed and enhanced to support meaning.

Does Honeypot hate America and post only to draw others to hate it?  Methinks YHBT

Then you are too ignorant to realize that every other country with an intelligence agency is doing the same thing...

Every country is (although mine is likely REALLY amateuristic). This doesn't make it right. It also does NOT make someone who actually proves this beyond a gut feeling (and shows it to people who are too stupid to guess this is happening themselves, which is most people) a traitor.

He was trying to make the world a better place and went through great risk and self-sacrifice to do so. That's my definition of hero (even though the effect will likely be small).

I never said anything about it being right. I never even said the US Gov wasn't wrong for their actions, as well any other gov doing the same thing. But Snowden was part of that game and he broke the rules of it, among the players he is a traitor. And consider with the number of nations outraged over the incident, what of the result is an ensuing war or some violent action, what of your hero then? What if his actions are catalyst to that kind of result? It would only make him an instigator in addition to being a traitor. Treachery is bad all the way around.

He's not responsible for the consequences at all. Many other people are, but not him.

Not responsible, but catalyst for it. People's actions are their own of course. I know for one however, I would definitely feel the weight of it, if I did some action that spurned others into reacting violently.

I would not. Not for a second.

Ever thought to have no cares about you being the catalyst for something of that magnitude would most likely make you look like a sociopath?

If anyone believes that Snowden could have made a tiny dent in NSA and government behaviors by following normal channels of communication, I have 10 million Dogecoins i want to trade you for 10 million BTC.

THERE IS ZERO POSSIBILITY that the NSA or government would have done anything if Snowden would have followed proper channels. ANY Channel available to him would have led to 1) losing his job 2) worse 3) the government plugging the holes that Snowden used and furthering their lies to the American people. There is no end to corruption and manipulation in an organization that has every email about every person at their disposal. How many Senators would Ed Snowden have had to talk to before he found one that was incorruptible and had not dirt in his email closet. ALL OF THEM and he would have failed.

Snowden will go down in history as a hero of our times. I doubt if anyone criticizing him would have ever had the courage to do what he did or the foresight to understand the folly of doing anything else.

The exposure and change we are seeing related to our privacy has been nothing but amazing and we have only one man to thank and that is Edward Snowden.

Snowden was a defector against a web of tyranny and deceit where even our own elected officials were lied to and completely ignorant. 

History is littered with the uprising of tyranny and just as littered with people that bury their heads in denial while they let those that value their lives less throw themselves in front of the train of oppression.

great!

Snowden is a real hero. I wish there were more people like him.

Exposure and change?
The exposure is more international than US.  US is losing lots of international IT service business due to the revelations, but other than that, not much changed.  

Its approved and backed at the highest levels.  Nothing meaningful is likely to change, you can believe that.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/07/transcript-what-obama-said-on-nsa-controversy/

Obama rhetoric includes:
"when it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program" (leaving out all of the data collection in that briefing, just the voice)

" I think at the outset, it’s important to understand that your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing." (whether or not representatives are briefed, it is important that you believe that this is normal procedures - a new normal).

"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls." (They are computer transcribed, voice analyzed, and data processed, not listened to)

"if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge" (far a rubber stamp with no oversight, unless they decide it is an emergency, then they can do this later)

"I think, on balance, we — you know, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about" (He want's the American people to feel comfortable with the way it is - so no changes need be implemented.)

Unless there is a very outspoken public within the USA, there will be no change except maybe something around the margins as window dressing, probably to include some more funding and an expedited surveillance approval process.

It is costing the USA business, but the government doesn't feel that.  They don't need to make a business work, so long as there is enough tax "revenue".

 He's a hero! I love him.:D

SO wrong and misguided.

Lets look at some of your assertions:

 - Delusional that he has done something remarkable (exposed the largest, broadest, most abused spying program ever seen)

 - Running makes him level with Manning (who didn't run, rotted in solitary and is now imprisoned)

 - Cowardly because he sat behind a computer and exposed lies (risking life and liberty in standing up for his beliefs)


You seem to be upset that people could believe in the ideals under which the US was born or any ideals of justice, privacy etc.

Now, these ideals may not represent reality and global geopolitics may not leave room for niceties or equality (which seems to be what you are saying), but that isn't the point.

The point is that people deserve their own privacy and that the US has been invading, bombing, sanctioning and jailing in the name of the very ideals it had been violating on a massive unprecedented scale.

If the (Socrates) question were would you rather be a bad man who appears good, or a good man who appears bad, Snowden has unmasked the US.

The NSA almost succeeded in making the whole encryption process a ridiculous masquerade by backdooring the PRNG (http://blog.0xbadc0de.be/archives/155)

Actually, the NSA are doing a really good job, since they are by definition supposed to crack any kind of encryption, and establish global surveillance over global communications.

The question is why bother with "official" encryption in the first place, when we know that it's so weak. If I wanted to plot against the US Government, I wouldn't trust my /dev/random to be really (even pseudo-) random, when it comes from a "Designed in Cupertino" machine. Likewise, I wouldn't use any cipher algo that was designed by... the NSA itself :D

IMHO, the real Snowden effect is just a confirmation that mainstream, consumer-grade encryption is a farce: one the one hand, you have the US Gov. (DHS etc.) admitting that they will spy on any foreign (?...) communications, on the other hand, you have legal systems that are sold with the claim that they offer "privacy". It's just not compatible.

Many non-US businesses (i.e. cloud) are already benefiting from the Snowden effect, and the trend should continue. It's so obvious...

Thanks for this, it is some detailed work that ought be repeated and confirmed by any with doubt.  FIPS is an interesting set of requirements, and raises the cost of a government contract significantly.

You are completely naive I don't know where to start with your little drivel about what you THINK is an American Ideal. Or any ideal for that matter.


I love it when fools are all of a sudden experts on US constitution and champion of liberty when they need to find excuses to bitch at US.

Have you read the profiles of Manning and Snowden? Do either of them remotely seem like even che guevara material (a false hero and a coward who met the result of his childish ignorance and adventurism in the forests of bolivia and had to be held on a leash by more level headed castro)?

You sermonize about 'ideals' of US when it's convenient. I expect you to follow them when they are not.

Look at the state of affairs in the rest of the world, the REAL state underneath all the excuses and bitching that fools empty gullible 1st world children. Who is in a position to sermonize to US about what its ideals are? At least past events have proven US is much more capable of ultimately bringing results where it really matters. But of course, every one conveniently forgets them.

Maybe you think, perhaps as an American citizen, you have the right to take potshots at your own country in the same tone and voice as those foreigners who seek to denigrate US. When all you can do is sit there and moan without knowing why such measures were necessary, you expose yourself not as an independent, proactive citizen but a mere complacent fool who doesn't know what it means to act as a member of society where the best results come from each and every individual carrying the heavy and powerful responsibility of being relatively independent. You are truly free when you can live up to your ideals in action and demeanor, as a person. Not when you sermonize about them.

You are right about ideals not being matched with reality. Therefore you disregard them as irrelevant when arguing about how important they are? 'That's not the point'? Ideals and goals are backed by will to power through the opposition. Those rights, no privileges, are granted as an opportunity, inalienable by actions or pressures of external origin. They are most DEFINITELY alienable by your own lack of virtue and ability uphold them as an individual. With your kind of selective mentality that is really just excuse making when convenient, I doubt you even know what that means.

The "evil empire" bull shit again? We are brining pain and misery to those who are fully asking for it. Their excuses and rationale are but a veneer of hypocrisy that changes words when it's convenient. Their cultures are full of 5000 years of 'glorious' hypocrisy that they never truly addressed and kept compounding upon itself. Results are much more poignant proof than any self-deceptive delusions about how they are 'spiritually, mentally' better. You are clearly too shallow to be influenced by such cheap self-serving bitching of these fools.

Snowden and the likes of Manning are all hiding behind excuses of 'constitution' while their actions clearly indicate they have no ability to become an actual professional for anything save childish self-glorification and spines of a jellyfish. They are both very insecure, empty individuals who are trying to act heroes.

'Risking his life and liberty'? Don't make me laugh. Being too self-absorbed to even maturely care about what he would do to his own self doesn't constitute courage. That's self-deluded fantasy at its lowest, most infantile form. When reality of the consequences hit him, snowden ran to fucking china and russia. He betrayed all that mouthy attitude in one moment, when he was truly challenged. Make whatever excuses. He and manning are just a couple of scared bitches, just like Assunge. 


"I have already won" LOL you can't make this shit up.

Bitch please.

Honeypot ... sounds like you are champion for

- indefinite Guantanamo Bay detentions without charge,
- extra-judicial drone killings,
- ubiquitous mass-surveillance,
- unaccountable militarised policing forces
- court martial for dissidents, whistleblowers
- political protest movement infiltration by State agents
- IRS politically-motivated harassment

rah, rah ... Hitler luvs thuggy guys like you, Jefferson not so much.

Do you know what you stand for anymore besides USA, USA, USA, rah-rah-rah!?

Well fuck obama for one thing. Put a god damn infantile monkey in charge and this is what we get. Colin Powell, Condi or McCain would have done a better job of at least keeping things stable in terms of power on global stage, sans palin.

I am in favor of a dedicated nation who is willing to do what it takes, and citizens who are responsible and worthy of the privileges and opportunities that they were born with as Americans.

Do you stand for anything? You should ask your question to any idiotic anti-US fools around the world about what they stand for.

Always with the bitching. Try to apply that standard for once outside of US and see how many people even deserve to live to see the next sun rise. At least US produced resulted and even now ensures the stability of key aspects around the world.

You know what?

As a liberal, non-US citizen, I agree with the last part of your reasoning.

When I was 14 (I'm now 32), I was admiring the US so much, it was really the land of my dreams, as it embodied my ideal of a leading nation in the world, producing most of its technological advances, enforcing an ideal of freedom and democracy, etc.

I had the map of the US pinned to my wall. I learned the (US) English language, the geography and the 50 states, the history, the constitution, I impregnated myself with the culture through the exported TV shows and movies (at least the mainstream thing, carried by the mass media). I learned about Thanksgiving, Halloween, jocks and nerds, bullies in high school, the proms, US football and the cheerleaders, so many things we didn't have on the other side of the pond.

Overall, my vision of politics and the world — as a teenager in the 1990s — was that US standards were indeed far above those of other countries, and that what could be perceived as arrogance was merely a byproduct (or collateral damage as they would later say) of excellence, or simply plain jealousy. But all in all, the US deserved respect from the rest of the world because they had achieved so much.

It's hard for me to say that my vision has changed since then. Of course, I'm no longer a teenager and even the thought of any nation embodying any ideal seems totally naive to me now. But specifically about the US, I have visited that country almost 10 times in my life now and since that infamous 9/11 (or is it a coincidence?), and I feel like things have changed.

I still have a positive opinion, overall, and a lot of respect for the US as a nation in the world. But I'm afraid that many US citizens are blinded by the fantastic achievements of their nation in the 20th century. The world is evolving, very fast, and the focus of economical growth has shifted to Asia and other places in the world. The US is still among the world leaders, but it's got competition.

tl;dr:
You WERE right, 30 years ago.
Now that we're in 2014, I would strongly recommend more modesty towards the rest of the world, for your own sake!

Cheers

PS: some useful fact checking here (i.e. US still doing good but competing with many others)

• List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita)
• List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita)
• List of countries by Human Development Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)
• PISA 2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA_2012_Tests) test results
• List of countries by military expenditures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

... and don't forget about the debt, we are Bitcoiners for a reason ;-)

The terrorists didn't like the freedoms the people of the US had; so the government bowed down and systematically eroded those freedoms away. Who is the traitor again?

Have you seen this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h__uutzcQXc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dh__uutzcQXc

This is a very good piece that pretty much says it all...

I still believe the US has all the dynamics needed to move forward, adapt and compete in this new world setting, but those who missed the wind of change have yet to acknowledge that new setting first.

The Snowden Defense Fund address now contains more than US$120,000

https://blockchain.info/address/1snowqQP5VmZgU47i5AWwz9fsgHQg94Fa


It is no exaggeration to say that were it not for Bitcoin, it might not have been possible to get him any money.


Without Bitcoin, a repeat of the Wikileaks Blockade by PayPal/Visa/Mastercard would have been likely.
With Bitcoin, such a Blockade would be pointless.


                This is an incredible victory that cannot be understated.


A system of financial Tyranny has been neutralised.
People have LOST WARS for less and thought it was worth it.


To the Entire Bitcoin Community, from Satoshi, to the coders, to the Basement miners,
right down to the confused forum trolls, whether you agree with Snowden or not


               You should all be immensely proud of what has happened here, such victories are rare.



And to the cynical Wielders and abusers of the world financial system.
You made Bitcoin necessary with your systematic abuse, it broke your stranglehold.
There is more to come. Butthurt Much?

Thanks all for getting out and voting with your wallets!

Financial tyranny is subtle yet every bit as evil as any other.

If Snowden was russian, russia already would have killed him.

However, it's admirable that has given up a normal life to protect the freedom of others

Well said.. It's unfortunate that our public news channels in the US are being used to propagate his demonization to the public.

It is not a one-sided discussion on the media.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/01/02/does-edward-snowden-deserve-clemency/4288535/
New York Times and USA Today are widely circulated.

Am I on a list now?  :P

Well mocking the US government with alternative methods to sponsor Snowden are just going to provoke a negative backlash.

They have the power to over regulate Bitcoin or to ban it completely and we are giving them the incentive to do it, by doing this.

I can see why people want to do this and I also support transparency and privacy, but this might have bad consequences for Bitcoin.

It's a typical Win-Lose situation.  :(

Sorry but they already legitimized (regulated) Bitcoin thinking because they can track it, it wouldn't be a problem. The cat is out of the bag, and Bitcoin was the Trojan horse.

mocking is out then ... so you are saying freedom of speech is dead too?

Strange quote from a man that reauthorized the Patriot Act extension. Lazy Americans don't deserve freedom because they refuse to rise up against the leaders that are taking it away from them.

You cannot rise up against a minority, you are simply then a racist or worse.

Words are important.

It is because people are blinded by political correctness and no longer see clearly. Political correctness is new age religion, and you do not question your religion you just take it as it is without thinking.
I am glad I am part of this community because humanity within the most of us is not imposed by laws.
http://libertycrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/First-responsiblity-to-question-authority.jpg

Ok, that's a good edit.

Your words are not hyperbole. There is a new religion that is upon us. The internet is proliferating this hive mind religion. Every country that has the internet will become converted in only a few decades. The power of shaming those that do not fit in the mainstream religion is so strong there will be no voices of dissent left. I work for a major company, i cannot speak out, i cannot say anything even if it is benign and relatively neutral, if am publicly called out my career would be over. The control is almost complete already.

No need to blame the ordinary Americans. They are being subjected to relentless brainwashing 24x7. A small minority is capable of understanding all this and stand up against the propaganda. The remaining are just helpless.

I would donate some BTCs to the man, unfortunately im as broke as ever so I can't donate to literally anything that isn't paying my own bills and food.

I would too, but now it's illegal  >:(

No, you can blame them unless they dropped out of K-12 in the 3rd grade and don't understand anything about the system they live under. Everyone in the country saw the way the storm troopers handled the Boston bombing. Now, it's different if they see it and they want a new country where the storm troopers are allowed to bust your door down whenever they want to. That's a conscious choice to relinquish your freedom. Then they are not lazy but simply the worst kind of fool.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/media.wbur.org/wordpress/11/files/2013/04/0419_watertown-search.jpghttp://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/watertown-search_3-620x409.jpg