re: #330 piratedan

and I was supposed to know that how exactly?

then…. as a courtesy, don’t attribute it to me….

you wanna support GG and Snowden, feel free. You want to point out the potential abuses in the system, that is a fine and noble calling but you are missing a couple of extremely key items imho… both GG and Snowden have alleged that the US Government and specifically the NSA have broken laws. I have yet to see any proof in any publication listing what laws have been violated and how they have been violated.

the only laws that anyone has any proof of being broken are by Snowden himself, in illegally downloading classified documents in violation of the Espionage Act, which Snowden has freely admitted to doing. I have a pretty solid understanding that breaking laws that you feel are unjust can very well be an act of civil disobedience, as I’ve cited above, the people who do so (engaging in civil disobedience) break those laws and turn themselves in, in order to protest the existence of those laws.

The gentleman that you so stoically defend hasn’t done that. I don’t want to hear that his life is in danger, it’s not like this guy is some black teenager in a hoodie in a white neighborhood. He’s a middle class white guy with a good government contractors job who has contacts with Wikileaks and GG, this bullshit about his life being in danger is just that, bullshit. If Glenn fucking Beck and Rush Limbaugh or even Pamella Geller haven’t been jailed for sedition, then this guy has nothing to worry about other than making his case and doing his time.

The only way to know if the NSA is breaking the laws is to take them to court. And now, after the leaks, that is what organizations like the ACLU and EFF are doing. See, just conveintly, that laws are constucted so that just knowing about them is against the law so you can’t go to court. This has actaully happened twice before in this case. Snowden changed that. Targetpractice is on record above saying that Wyden and Udall should do the same thing rather than just propose laws that let us have the information so that we can take it to court ourselves.

As far as which laws the NSA may have violated being published. In a NYT article posted here by Charles 2 laws proffesors list at least 2 laws and the Constitution.

Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.

nytimes.com