This is the face of individuals with real principles

[Mischief]

no, what he did was release information about the factory farm in the US. Information that wasn't available before. He isn't suppressing information about the dogs being skinned.

Good grief. The information about government surveillance wasn't any more of a secret than factory farms are, to anyone who has bothered to pay attention to legislation and news in the last several decades. What Snowden did was release a bunch of classified, specific, information which became obsolete almost immediately upon release, and did nothing more than possibly cost some operatives working undercover in various less than desirable areas of the world their lives. The rest is simply posturing, just like various governments act outraged when there's a news story about one government spying on another, friendly, government. ZOMG! The Israelis have operatives in the U.S.! The U.S. is listening in on Merkel's phone conversations! The Russians are bugging the U.S. embassy! The horror! None of us is doing anything like that!

When I'm online, I keep having ads for things I've looked at on other sites pop up in my current window. I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but that tells me that what I do online is being tracked by commercial interests. If every freakin' insignificant site I visit, every product I look at, is being tracked to maximize the chances that someone can sell me something, I'd have to be incredibly naïve to think that the government doesn't have the same capacity that merchants do. So, even if I had never read a news item, never paid any attention to things like the Patriot Act, the surveillance capabilities of the government would not have come as a great big shocking surprise to me.

I'm also still waiting for a list of U.S. citizens in the public eye who have been made to "disappear"....

 

[Blobbenstein]

I've assumed that every phone call I've been on has been tapped since the 80s.


or potentially anyway.

 

[Mischief]

Yeah, and wireless communications in particular can be listened in on by anyone who chooses to buy the equipment, whether it's a nosy neighbor or a security program set to pick up certain "danger" words.

 

[ledboots]

I think that finding a list of people the US has made to disappear, if there are any, would be difficult to procure. How does one prove it? The government certainly wants the leaked information to disappear, however. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html?hpid=topnews

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/surveillance-technology-government-censorship

 

[Mischief]

I think that finding a list of people the US has made to disappear, if there are any, would be difficult to procure. How does one prove it? The government certainly want the leaked information to disappear, however. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html?hpid=topnews

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/surveillance-technology-government-censorship

The question I asked, in response to the assertion that Snowden would have been made to "disappear" if he hadn't fled the U.S., was this:
what U.S. citizens in the public eye (as Snowden was and is) have disappeared? That should be an easy question to answer; after all, I'm talking specifically about people who were the focus of lots of media attention (like Snowden) who just suddenly disappeared. The only ones I can think of are the Lindbergh baby and Amelia Earhart, and as far as I know, not even the most died in the wool conspiracy buff believes that those were disappearances orchestrated by the U.S. government.

 

[Trinity]

What Snowden has done is a lot like this: I sabotage a factory farm in the U.S. and then leave the country to evade prosecution. I seek refuge on a dog fur farm in China, where I continue to talk about the evils of factory farming in the U.S. while remaining remarkably silent about dogs being skinned alive outside my window.

He brought the corruption to people's attention about what was actually going on.... for those who actually have ears to listen.
In my eyes, he's a hero too.
What he did was sacrificed his own liberty and freedom (being trapped in another country and hunted down) in the hope that a corrupt system would be exposed, to give other people the opportunity for freedom.

I get the feeling that you actually really don't know the real story and are just going by to propaganda you've heard in the mass media.

 

[Trinity]

The question I asked, in response to the assertion that Snowden would have been made to "disappear" if he hadn't fled the U.S., was this:
what U.S. citizens in the public eye (as Snowden was and is) have disappeared? That should be an easy question to answer; after all, I'm talking specifically about people who were the focus of lots of media attention (like Snowden) who just suddenly disappeared. The only ones I can think of are the Lindbergh baby and Amelia Earhart, and as far as I know, not even the most died in the wool conspiracy buff believes that those were disappearances orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Try a google search for something like whistleblowers murdered for speaking up (or something) if you are really interested - we get tonnes of stuff like that here.
I've read loads of stories over the years.

 

[Mischief]

I'm talking about a high profile person, who is all over the news, like Snowden. Give me a name of a high profile, high publicity U.S. citizen who has "disappeared."

I'm continuing to wait. just as I'm continuing to wait for Snowden to denounce Russia.

 

[Trinity]

I'm talking about a high profile person, who is all over the news, like Snowden. Give me a name of a high profile, high publicity U.S. citizen who has "disappeared."
I'm continuing to wait. just as I'm continuing to wait for Snowden to denounce Russia.

And you called Snowden immature

It actually sounds like you don't really want to know the real story.

 

[yakherder]

Really, am I the only person on this board who sees the laughable absurdity of this?!

No, I just don't care to debate it. The first place I was ever stationed as a young military crypto nerd was an NSA facility in Japan, and I'd rather just sit back and laugh at the paranoid BS people come up with. One time a protester from the Japanese Democratic Party accused us of using our AN/FLR-9 (just a big direction finding antenna really, which is now obsolete and has been dismantled) to control the weather. Alas, how do you argue against those who are, through no fault of their own, naive, without betraying operational security? Secrecy is a survival necessity, there's no way around it. It has nothing to do with privilege or a desire to screw over anyone.

But whatever. The governments of every country in the world are well aware of the need for a sophisticated intelligence gathering system and, just as important, the need to protect their methods of gathering that intelligence. The people living in their bubbles can believe what they want, I care less and less.

 

[Second Summer]

I'm talking about a high profile person, who is all over the news, like Snowden. Give me a name of a high profile, high publicity U.S. citizen who has "disappeared."

I'm continuing to wait. just as I'm continuing to wait for Snowden to denounce Russia.

I dunno about disappeared - though there are certainly examples of that (such as Jimmy Hoffa, though that is a good while ago), but more often they tend to be assassinated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations#United_States

 

[Mischief]

I dunno about disappeared - though there are certainly examples of that (such as Jimmy Hoffa, though that is a good while ago), but more often they tend to be assassinated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations#United_States

By the U.s. government?

 

[ledboots]

By the U.s. government?

http://rt.com/usa/us-government-drone-killing-660/