Breaking News January 6th Stop the Steal Rally & Capitol Breaching/Storming

[Morphic Tide]

I'd you think the IC is a bigger threat, you are mistaken.

You are not allowed to disprove the opposition on this. You are literally forbidden from clearing the IC's name on the matter. I, frankly, give not a single goddamn fuck about the spygame bullshit you get into, because the core tenants of how the United States is meant to operate include transparency and accountability.

All your talk of Snowden making your job onerous? Your fucking fault for relying on opaque spygame bullshit. Your fucking fault for having zero public accountability. What's the use of official channels when the official channels are, themselves, built for the opaque spygame bullshit?

The literal sole way of reliably assuring the whistle is in fact blown is throwing it in public, in bulk, the way Snowden did. Because, as you've made rather clear, every single layer of how this is "supposed" to be handled is to be kept as secret as remotely possible. The mechanisms of accountability give no notice of rejection, unlike the entire rest of the government.

If the "official channels" have any problems with them, can you honestly say that you'd have any realistic ability to know without breaking procedure? Can you say, with certainty, that you can personally verify the official channels work as intended?

Russia's close to a rump state compared to the USSR, and China could be completely obliterated in literally a week with fuck-all consequences. If China is actually an existential threat, and your lot are doing their jobs properly, why isn't China being sanctioned into the ground? It'd kill their viability as any kind of threat, while being a remarkably mild inconvenience in the grand scheme of things to us.

 

[Bacle]

So....
You are saying a guy who basically told our biggest threats how to make it harder for us to win againstbthem is a hero?
Benedict Arnold must be the hero of all heros then..../s

Zach, no amount of intel to our enemies is a bigger threat to US civies than our own gov violating the Constitution on a regular and ongoing basis.

It's not China and Russia who lied to and abused the FISA courts, or undertook things like Fast and Furious, MKUltra, mass warrant-less surveillance, or all the other domestic shady-shit the US IC has been caught doing.

More and more it seems the IC views itself as a nation unto itself, and that they don't feel they are accountable to the American public at all.

 

[ShieldWife]

So....
You are saying a guy who basically told our biggest threats how to make it harder for us to win againstbthem is a hero?
Benedict Arnold must be the hero of all heros then..../s

The guys who helped our biggest threats to win against us are the people in the IC who didn’t become whistle blowers.

 

[Zachowon]

You are not allowed to disprove the opposition on this. You are literally forbidden from clearing the IC's name on the matter. I, frankly, give not a single goddamn fuck about the spygame bullshit you get into, because the core tenants of how the United States is meant to operate include transparency and accountability.

All your talk of Snowden making your job onerous? Your fucking fault for relying on opaque spygame bullshit. Your fucking fault for having zero public accountability. What's the use of official channels when the official channels are, themselves, built for the opaque spygame bullshit?

The literal sole way of reliably assuring the whistle is in fact blown is throwing it in public, in bulk, the way Snowden did. Because, as you've made rather clear, every single layer of how this is "supposed" to be handled is to be kept as secret as remotely possible. The mechanisms of accountability give no notice of rejection, unlike the entire rest of the government.

If the "official channels" have any problems with them, can you honestly say that you'd have any realistic ability to know without breaking procedure? Can you say, with certainty, that you can personally verify the official channels work as intended?

How can you be fucking transparent and also be effective? It is fucking impossible.
There comes a price in modern times. In order to be strongest one has to give something up.

There is more then one fucking way for what Snowden did to go through the proper channels. There wasn't just one way. There is an act that would have covered his ass had he done it thenproper way.

Zach, no amount of intel to our enemies is a bigger threat to US civies than our own gov violating the Constitution on a regular and ongoing basis.

It's not China and Russia who lied to and abused the FISA courts, or undertook things like Fast and Furious, MKUltra, mass warrant-less surveillance, or all the other domestic shady-shit the US IC has been caught doing.

More and more it seems the IC views itself as a nation unto itself, and that they don't feel they are accountable to the American public at all.

There is nothing more I can argue.

I'm done, please can all of you stop fucking replying to me?

The guys who helped our biggest threats to win against us are the people in the IC who didn’t become whistle blowers.

And this is where you are 100 percent wrong.
But I'm done.

 

[ShieldWife]

I must admit, this is becoming dogpiling, so maybe we should take a break from this argument. Which is a tangent anyway.

 

[Navarro]

Manifestly false, but governments are responsible for the common good and end of their people. By that measure, our betters have failed utterly.

I mean, you've already given us your alternative - neo-barbarian tribes run in a totalitarian fashion killing each other in a fit of mad-Maxery. and furthermore that any going beyond this inevitably leads to moral and societal degradation. What a wonderful, glorious vision of the "common good"!

 

[King Arts]

I was going to reply. But I don't want to dogpile. So I'll stop.

 

[DarthOne]

I mean, you've already given us your alternative - neo-barbarian tribes run in a totalitarian fashion killing each other in a fit of mad-Maxery. and furthermore that any going beyond this inevitably leads to moral and societal degradation. What a wonderful, glorious vision of the "common good"!

That he has and I think neo-barbarianism is a horrible solution, but that also doesn't disprove the general point being made.

 

[Morphic Tide]

How can you be fucking transparent and also be effective? It is fucking impossible.

...Not for the actual on-paper job in current conditions? We're not actively at war, there's not anything we need to be spying on foreign countries for "just in case". For just keeping terrorist plots under control and kicking out foreign spies, making the court proceedings as public as anything to do with smuggling or asshole ambassadors isn't going to completely destroy viability. If it makes your job harder, suck it up, we have due process for a goddamn reason and suspending that shit is supposed to take a formal declaration of war.

The system you work in was built to deal with the USSR in an all-but-declared war for ideological rulership of the world, all we have with Russia and China is that they're unfriendly and putting some pressure on allies. They're regional bullies threatening some friends remarkably close to being able to handle it themselves, not direct opponents like the Soviets were.

To be blunt, if your multi-agency community feels their job has to be so secretive they cannot even justify their protections... The protections should go. We don't need the effectiveness to be an unopposable superpower. We just need to keep our house in order, and by my limited understanding because everything relevant is kept locked away or redacted into oblivion the bulk of things where this is necessary are frequently understood as perfectly viable reason to declare war.

All I can have is your word on the matter. Again, you're literally not allowed to disprove this. You are not allowed to give the evidence required to show that the lack of transparency is needed to do your job, or if just makes it easy to do your job. You are not allowed to publicly confirm or deny the integrity of the channels you criticize Snowden for refusing to use in any detail. To my understanding, there is nothing you are allowed to say that actually shows your job is working as intended.

There is an act that would have covered his ass had he done it thenproper way.

Answer the question: Are you able to personally confirm this is actually a functional system? Can you verify his ass would in fact be covered? I'm not asking for the proof here, I'm asking if you can double-check the integrity of the "official channels".

 

[Navarro]

That he has and I think neo-barbarianism is a horrible solution, but that also doesn't disprove the general point being made.

I'm not arguing the current political system in America is perfect. I'm arguing that its alternatives are generally worse.

 

[DarthOne]

I'm not arguing the current political system in America is perfect. I'm arguing that its alternatives are generally worse.

Not necessarily so. We just need to clean house somewhat (metaphorically and to some extent literally) and move the government closer to the one envisioned by the Founders, as well as reinforce some of the points made by them and fix some legal shenanigns. We don't need to start all over from scratch or throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[Navarro]

Not necessarily so. We just need to clean house somewhat (metaphorically and to some extent literally) and move the government closer to the one envisioned by the Founders, as well as reinforce some of the points made by them and fix some legal shenanigns. We don't need to start all over from scratch or throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Indeed.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

How can you be fucking transparent and also be effective? It is fucking impossible.
There comes a price in modern times. In order to be strongest one has to give something up.

There is more then one fucking way for what Snowden did to go through the proper channels. There wasn't just one way. There is an act that would have covered his ass had he done it thenproper way.


There is nothing more I can argue.

I'm done, please can all of you stop fucking replying to me?

And this is where you are 100 percent wrong.
But I'm done.

mainly for everyone else as you and I have already discussed this. But part of the problem is that America has proudly portrayed itself as being beyond corruptible tactics like espionage. "We don't stab our enemies in the back. We beat them into submission." And anytime the contray is brought up the answer was to always lie and deny even when just a LITTLE bit of the truth would be more efficient. If we can't trust them to even a little bit of the truth, how can we trust them with anything? There is a reason why the huge swaths of the american people are now unironically wondering if the earth is flat and the moon is made out of some kind of cheese.

 

[BlackDragon98]

Living a somewhat normal life? Manning is not in jail for thier crime.

Manning spent 7 years in high level Army prison before Obama let her go because she became trans.

Manning also got people killed

ISIS has also gotten lots of people killed, courtesy of Obama and Co.

 

[Terthna]

The issues surrounding Snowden are complicated because, here's the thing, both sides have very legitimate points.

Snowden did reveal troubling aspects of the US government's actions that arguably are in violation of the US Constitution.

Snow ALSO revealed things that were completely unnecessary to reveal, were completely legal, but caused considerable harm to American international interests. He further clearly gave all that information AND MORE to both the Chinese and the Russians, neither of whom are good actors who act in the interest of the American people.

My personal feelings on him are that, because he did give that damaging information to the Chinese, he is, in fact, a traitor to the American people, not just the US; as the CCP is a government that is explicitly hostile and taking hostile actions against the American people, not just the nation (funding organizations that foment civil unrest and work to destroy the foundation of civic society is attacking the people, not the government).

So while he did do some good things in revealing bad parts of the US government, he threw away any goodwill or grace he earned for that whistleblowing by then turning that and much more information over to the CCP. If you really cared about human rights, you don't go giving secrets to the biggest human rights violator on the planet.

There's no evidence, other than inference, to suggest that Snowden willingly gave information to either the Chinese, or the Russians; and even that inference, that he sold them information to guarantee his safety, makes little sense when you consider that he serves as a focal point for anti-United States government sentiment, which is reason enough for them to safeguard him without him needing to bribe them. In all likelihood, considering how terrible our internal security has consistently been (do I even need to point out how many high ranking individuals the Chinese have subverted? Like, say; our Vice President at the time?), it would be reasonable to assume that they had access to those files well before he leaked them; and even if they somehow didn't, they probably got them by hacking the computers of the journalists he leaked the data to.

China and Russia Almost Definitely Have the Snowden Docs

I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them.

www.wired.com

I must admit, this is becoming dogpiling, so maybe we should take a break from this argument. Which is a tangent anyway.

Yeah, probably best to just ignore Zachowon whenever he voices his opinion on Snowden. Or anything involving the Intelligence Community, to be honest.

 

[Zachowon]

There's no evidence, other than inference, to suggest that Snowden willingly gave information to either the Chinese, or the Russians; not when he serves as a focal point for anti-United States government sentiment, which is reason enough for them to safeguard him without him needing to bribe them. In all likelihood, considering how terrible our internal security has consistently been (do I even need to point out how many high ranking individuals the Chinese have subverted? Like, say; our Vice President at the time?), it would be reasonable to assume that they had access to those files well before he leaked them; and even if they somehow didn't, they probably got them by hacking the computers of the journalists he leaked the data to.

China and Russia Almost Definitely Have the Snowden Docs

I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them.

www.wired.com

Yeah, probably best to just ignore Zachowon whenever he voices his opinion on Snowden. Or anything involving the Intelligence Community, to be honest.

Honestly please.
Unless it involves me personally or the fighting of our enemies, I do not want to get invovled, as they usually end in dog piles against me.

 

[Terthna]

Honestly please.
Unless it involves me personally or the fighting of our enemies, I do not want to get invovled, as they usually end in dog piles against me.

To be fair, you bring it upon yourself by jumping into arguments like this, which you know you can't actually talk about. I'm pretty sure your bosses (who are definitely monitoring your activities on this forum) wish you would exercise a bit more self-control.

 

[Abhishekm]

@Terthna does have a point @Zachowon . Not taking sides on it as I honestly don't know much on the guy. Hey, that stuff was back when I was in highschool. But this is one of those agree to disagree situations atleast in the specifics of it.

Both of you agree that peeping is bad its just a matter of whether potentially compromising a couple kinda important passwords (euphermism for the sake of humor, work with me here) exposing it was worth it or not that the argument is about.

 

[Rocinante]

@Zachowon as I've told you before on discord, I think you should probably stay out of topics you can't talk about, or talk about them using only what you can say, without ever mentioning there's stuff you can't say.

It's probably frustrating that you might lose online arguments that way, but that's just the price of having classified information.

Look, It just rubs people wrong. Everyone by now knows you supposedly know more than we do about Snowden. So it's probably something you just shouldn't talk about because no one is going to accept "just trust me guys, I can't talk about it," in a debate. You're just going to piss people off and get yourself dogpiled.

It's just bad etiquette. All you're doing is pissing people off, and pissing yourself off as a consequence.

 

[Zachowon]

To be fair, you bring it upon yourself by jumping into arguments like this, which you know you can't actually talk about. I'm pretty sure your bosses (who are definitely monitoring your activities on this forum) wish you would exercise a bit more self-control.

They probably do and probably don't. They probably don't care if I am

@Zachowon as I've told you before on discord, I think you should probably stay out of topics you can't talk about, or talk about them using only what you can say, without ever mentioning there's stuff you can't say.

It's probably frustrating that you might lose online arguments that way, but that's just the price of having classified information.

Look, It just rubs people wrong. Everyone by now knows you supposedly know more than we do about Snowden. So it's probably something you just shouldn't talk about because no one is going to accept "just trust me guys, I can't talk about it," in a debate. You're just going to piss people off and get yourself dogpiled.

It's just bad etiquette. All you're doing is pissing people off, and pissing yourself off as a consequence.

I just hate watching people call him a fucking hero. That is my biggest issue.