Discussion for article #235047
Uh, oh – I hope Oliver doesn’t have an active Twitter account or a public email address, because he is about to get bombarded by the Greenwald cultists. The dude-bros and emo-progs don’t like anyone making light of Fast Eddie. This could get pretty entertaining.
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I cannot stand John Oliver, but I am resigned to having to suffer through seeing prominent recaps of his stupid show on TPM for the time being. But to answer his charge: I’m still waiting to hear how the constant flow of stolen information is pertinent to my Fourth Amendment rights. Because I don’t care about spying on other countries at all. But none of Snowden’s disciples can ever tell me how that affects my Constitutional rights, much less offering other countries help to avoid U.S. spying directly helps American citizens.
It’s at this point, Snowden’s disciples’ palm fronds turn into swords, as they pillory and vilify anyone who dares to question their messiah and lecture the rest of us about “the bigger picture” or “you’re a sheep! Wake up!” I’d like our stolen information back, because I didn’t appoint this guy my spokesman for anything. Then we can talk outrage.
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I am rapidly becoming convinced that John Oliver is going to be a bigger force for positive social change and public engagement on the issues than Jon Stewart ever was. This bit was pure unadulterated genius, and along with his Net Neutrality piece, may get more folks talking about this issue than ever.
It’s very interesting to see how CNN spins the piece, though. CNN doesn’t link to any of the discussion about “dick pics”, which while ribald, is IMHO arguably the most important part of the piece – beceause its point is we need to get the general public to care about this issue so we can have a meaningful discussion on privacy and the renewal of the Patriot Act (which won’t happen if the key truths are buried in technical jargon about IP packet routing and server architecture). But as far as CNN is concerned, the only thing to know was that Oliver “GRILLED” Snowden (only showing the earlier clip where they talked about how much of all the documents he released which he had read, making it seem as Oliver’s only point was that Snowden is just an irresponsible twerp).
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Later on, Oliver dropped any pretense of humor and grilled Snowden on not having read all the documents he leaked to journalists.
This is perhaps the most pertinent part of the interview. Snowden is NOT whistle-blower. He’s a thief that stole thousands of document of which he had no idea what they contained. The same applies to Chelsea Manning. Yes her treatment was horrific, but she was in no way shape or form a whistle-blower. She was a disgruntled soldier that stole thousands of documents, with no idea what they contained and turned them over to an arrogant jackass.
Edit: And this is how you do an interview (when it takes a comedian to actually tell the insufferable Snowden he’s basically an idiot, you know journalism is dying):
Oliver didn’t pull any punches. “How many of those documents have you actually read?” he asked Snowden with a palpable air of skepticism. “I do understand what I turned over,” the ex-CIA systems admin mumbled.
Not good enough. “There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading what’s in the documents… because when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents the last thing you’d want to do is read them,” Oliver said.
He continued, “So The New York Times took a slide, didn’t redact it properly, and in the end it was possible for people to see that something was being used in Mosul on al Qaeda.”
“That is a problem,” Snowden replied.
“Well, that’s a fuckup,” said Oliver.
“It is a fuckup, and those things do happen in reporting. In journalism, we have to accept that some mistakes will be made. This is a fundamental concept of liberty,” Snowden said.
“Right. But you have to own that then,” grilled Oliver. “You’re giving documents with information you know could be harmful, which could get out there.”
Snowden is stunned to near-silence, not expecting such a contentious line of questioning from the bespectacled late-night host.
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I enjoyed the Daily Show, but in my opinion Oliver has already accomplished more with his show (from an activist standpoint) than Stewart did with his.
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Guess the Comedy Channel isn’t available in Moscow. Otherwise Snowden would have known what was going to happen.
I found myself reflexively rushing in to make a comment before the thread devolved into a shitstorm, then I remembered that’s why TPM now has its own commenting system. And at this moment, I’m willing to acknowledge, as I am on any thread where the story invites us to make fun of Rand Paul, that maybe it was worth the additional risk of epistemic closure, after all.
But, yeah, I don’t merely not give a shit about foreign intelligence gathering, I applaud it and support it. What I don’t give a shit about is whether foreigners are invading my privacy by spying on us, because it’s in their interest to keep what they know about me secret. And, no, he didn’t read all the documents, he clearly didn’t understand many of the ones he read and none of his or Glennzilla’s supporters have any conception of the extent to which a simple reading of the fractions of the documents cited in Greenwald’s reports revealed that they were being mercilessly spun.
I especially liked the way Greenwald phrases things in a way that invited the reader to draw inferences he didn’t actually make himself because they are not actually inferences that can be drawn from the source document cited, which is a fucking Powerpoint presentation more often than not.
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I usually get in trouble for this…but in many ways I feel that what happened with Manning was the military’s own fault. They knew she had gender dysphoria and several mental disorders which prevented her from being allowed to carry a weapon. Despite that, they let her into a military intelligence situation rather than discharging her for medical reasons. Gender dysphoria is grounds to dismiss someone on medical grounds last I knew.
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Well crap.
This was the article I was hoping for.
Early on April 15th.
Cuz Unfading Green’s ban lifts later that evening. 
jw1
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Snowden didnt leak to foreign governments. He leaked to us so we would know what was going on, and I for one am horrified at what our government has done…and in most cases it isnt even the government but contracted to private “for profit” companies. We never question the huge budgets these agencies get, but yet congress clamors to cut food stamps.
There are cases now where the NSA collects data that makes its way to the DEA (which is completely illegal on several fronts), where local law enforcement intercepts your cell phone calls with technology provided by the feds.
We have a fourth shadow branch of government…the military industrial complex…and if we dont reign it in soon…we can kiss our form of government goodbye.
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If I thought that I might face a lengthy prison sentence for doing what I considered an essentially patriotic act, I would definitely consider fleeing. I don’t see why offering yourself up for an egregious punishment is ¨manly.¨
And I think it’s likely that Ethyl Rosenberg was innocent for the most part, and certainly didn’t deserve her fate.
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I neither intend to demean nor make light of your perspective.
But the truth is that:
The genie is out of the bottle.
Having worked long enough in IT-- the WWW is the greatest aggregator of data the world will ever know.
And that clumsy attempts to regulate how the data is collected, stored, and disseminated-- are absolutely superficial.
We can bitch all we like-- and really that’s all there is left to do.
So, in my perspective? I’d prefer our technology to continue to outpace foreign efforts.
If it’s of any comfort?
The amount of data created is now doubling annually.
Sifting it will become increasingly more complex-- and thus more random-- for all involved.
jw1
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I suppose one’s view depends on whether you think that the revelations of NSA spying on Americans were worth knowing. I for one do. And suggesting that Snowden, or anyone, should submit themselves to a MLK- or Gandhi-like level of self-sacrifice is not something I’d demand of anyone. (Including MLK or Gandhi, for that matter: I don’t either imagine that either one of them, unlike Jesus, was shooting for martyrdom.)
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I learned things that I did not know, despite my awareness of the Patriot Act. I think most people did.
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I agree and I wasn’t a devotee of the Daily Show because it conflicted with the shows I watched on MSNBC so I didn’t know Oliver that well. It even took me a while to catch his new show but when I did I was very impressed and on Snowden, he is spot on,
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Of for fucks sake, he told the Chinese media exactly which buildings the NSA was monitoring. He told the media, through his mouthpiece, Greenwald, which governments were being spied, which individual foreigners were being spied, what technology was being used and a whole lot more. And you’re trying seriously claim he didn’t leak anything to foreign governments?
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That really sad part? Based on the piece by John Oliver, those are the only people that STILL understand what’s happening. It was kind of funny, though, watching Snowden’s face while he saw how little American’s know or cared about anything he did.
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What Edward Snowden did is exactly what happens after giving an external contractor root. And if he was able to do it, then there were a lot of other contractors out there doing the exact same thing. Nothing particularly noble about any of that.
The only real consolation in all of this is that the NSA has created the largest database of cat videos and porn in the known universe. Which has netted very, very little in actionable intelligence. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack, which has been covered in two tons of elephant dung.
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It’s a fundamental human rights question. Do you believe in human rights? If a foreign nation (presumably much more powerful than the US) were spying on you, would you consider it a violation of your human rights? Or perhaps you believe in American Exceptionalism.