dagblog - Comments for "Snowden's Dad: Wikileaks is Exploiting My Son"

I thought everybody knew

Aaron Carine — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 16:06:56 +0000

In reply to Al Gore is divorced?! How the

I thought everybody knew about it.

Glenn Greenwald is teasing a

rmrd0000 — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:45:24 +0000

In reply to Snowden's Dad: Wikileaks is Exploiting My Son

Glenn Greenwald is teasing a new story a bout a system that record and store 1 billion phones calls per day. I doubt that this story actually changes a lot. The government meme has been that they were not listening to or keeping track of phone calls. Whether the storage capability changes anything is unlikely. The public wants a flesh and blood victim of the NSA. The whistle-blowers are not getting much sympathy.

Agree with both Erica &

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 06:57:13 +0000

In reply to I think wikileaks was a

Agree with both Erica & Ocean-kat. And I don't mind a bit or even a lot of fun at my expense (as long as it's fun - and there's rum)

Part of the problem with Occupy Wall Street is if you meet these people, many you wouldn't trust to walk your dog. But fighting back against trillion dollar ripoffs, I'm so glad someone is doing something, even if it's a bit futile. Somewhat similar with a leaks group. Activists can be a bit weird, but government officials when they're condoning indiscriminate tasering, drones, full-out assault on a minority group (or even medical marijuana) or just kicking a billion dollars some donor's way can be rather evil in that boring button-down white-shirt kind of vibe.

So it's only because our government has gotten so weird and over-the-top that I find myself cheering some for these fringe types. Government surveillance of anything and everyone is a bad idea, just like freaks leaking all government secrets. So somewhere between Pluto (yeah, I know, it's not a planet anymore) and the Sun lives a more optimal point. But at the moment the Sun is way too hot, so I'm leaning towards Pluto a bit until I get tired. Wish we could settle somewhere in the asteroid belt instead to relax, just drink moquitos, swat the mosqitoes and dodge flying rocks.

Al Gore is divorced?! How the

Orlando — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 05:56:06 +0000

In reply to Now the other issue here:

Al Gore is divorced?! How the heck did I miss that?

So it's back to Benghazi? Or

NCD — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 02:04:02 +0000

In reply to As predicted, little will

So it's back to Benghazi? Or the Great Tea Party IRS Brouhaha?

Oh, no, it's the GOP Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

As predicted, little will

rmrd0000 — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 01:39:00 +0000

In reply to PRISM is the focus.Privacy is

As predicted, little will actually happen in Congress.

PRISM is the focus.Privacy is

rmrd0000 — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 01:05:58 +0000

In reply to Snowden's Dad: Wikileaks is Exploiting My Son

PRISM is the focus.Privacy is the issue. There is a raging debate about the Stop and Frisk program championed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg. A recent poll suggests that only 39% of NYC citizens support Stop and Frisk. 81% of NYC Blacks oppose the invasion of privacy. It is easy to understand a physical invasion of privacy but more difficult to understand an electronic invasion.

Stop and Frisk was marketed as a way of preventing crime.It was a concept that would be a precursor to the Pre-Crime organization in "Minority Report". If electronic invasion can somehow be linked to an image of physical invasion, there may be a larger public outcry.

Outside of actual victims that have been intimidated by PRISM or converting bytes into a threatening physical image, I don't see a great deal of vocal push back against PRISM developing.

Fair enough.

Verified Atheist — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 23:13:49 +0000

In reply to Snowden has got himself stuck

Fair enough.

I think wikileaks was a

ocean-kat — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 23:09:39 +0000

In reply to Peracles, this last comment

I think wikileaks was a flawed concept right from the beginning. It starts from the premise that leaks are good because "information wants to be free." Each individual leak has to be looked at carefully to determine its place on the good/bad spectrum. Sometimes that determination gets very difficult as many factors are weighed. Wikileaks sole purpose was to reveal secret information. Such a narrow focus is a prescription for disaster, especially in this most sensitive of areas. Then Assange asked for hackers to troll computers to get those secret documents. Young immature computer geeks, sometimes teens, geniuses in programming, mostly into the thrill of getting into a secure data base but with little ability to evaluate the information and make rational decisions about how appropriate it would be to release it. Or young men like Manning just dumping 700,000 documents he couldn't possible read. Wikileaks was trust us (read trust me Julian Assange) to make those decisions.

It would take a saint to make wikileaks work and I was very uncomfortable about it from the start. Before they released a single document. Yes they did some good. But I'm not all all surprised to see its downward spiral, the concept was unworkable.

Peracles, this last comment

erica20 — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 22:23:12 +0000

In reply to Now the other issue here:

Peracles, this last comment was so reasonable, that as I read down I thought it must have been someone other than you who wrote it!

(I hope you won't blast me for having a little fun at your expense. Sometimes you do tend to write a little past your actual point and then pretend you meant to do it....)

I agree with your overall point here--viewing these events in context is important, and so is understanding that people do odd things in unfamiliar situations. We've all watched (or heard about) Survivor, where we take people and ask them to do something challenging, and then sit back to enjoy watching previously competent people behave like odious jerks. I think that's the real meaning of the phrase "power corrupts"--most people don't become evil when given extra responsibility, they just don't have much competence at the new thing, and get grumpy and defensive about it. Multiply that by a lot, and over time, previously mild-mannered people come to be dictators.

I suspect that Assange has always been a bit of a nut, with some good ideas and capabilities, weighed down by jerkish tendencies, but it didn't matter as much before he did that one important Wikileaks thing. Now, in order to be seen as even competent, he has to be so much better than his previous self. Should we be surprised that he's not?

The trick for the rest of us is to maintain our own viewpoint and not be pulled into changing it just because someone who also holds it did something dumb. There's a point at which we might lose so much respect for someone that we also examine our view, but it shouldn't be a knee-jerk thing.

Right?