Rep Mike McCall,( R )Texas stated recently. on national TV, that Ed Snowden is a traitor working for a foreign power. Of course he couldn’t name the foreign power or show any proof that Snowden was doing anything except what he said he was doing, which is letting the American public know what is being done to their freedoms by our National Security services. McCall is a dumb clown. Who the hell makes a statement like that without proof? And of course there is no proof because the statement for all anyone in congress, the media or the general public knows, is patently false.
The big debate right now is about NSA and where we stand on security vs privacy. This is a question of significant enough importance, that it must be decided by the American people, not just by politicians or the NSA itself because the answer will define the decide the limits of power allowed for NSA now and into the future. The politicians will always be on the side of security because God forbid they come out on the side of freedom and privacy and someone blows up a half dozen people in downtown Dubuque. We have, it appears, become a nation of cowards.
The result of all life is death. No one, no matter who is protecting them and how careful they are, is immune to the grim reaper or to chance. We cannot protect ourselves 100% from anything. Certainly life is important but no matter how close we hold it, no matter how assiduously we protect it, it cannot be guaranteed, and if it can’t, then we must protect that which has historically made this country special and which we are slowly letting slip away in the pursuit of unqualified safety; our freedom and our privacy.
This year, for the first time in history, America dropped out of the top tem on the freedom index. That’s right, there are currently eleven countries that value and protect their freedoms more than America. It is truly amazing that one single event, 911 has so paralyzed our entire nation with terror, that we are willing to give up these most important rights with no thought of the consequences. I think it’s time we took back our national pride from those who have wrested it from us. This used to be a proud and very special nation because we feared no one. Now we are a cacophony of followers and cowards who peer around corners expecting to see robed bombes at every turn.
We kill far more Americans every single year with handguns than we have lost in the last half-century to terrorists and that includes 91. It’s time we got real. We can’t protect everyone against everything, so the first protection we should look to is that of our rights and freedoms. Then and only then should we start to worry about protecting something so easily lost and so otherwise injudiciously protected, as life,
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Rep Mike Rogers, ® Michigan, of the National Security Committee has definitely become the spokesman and head cheerleader for the NSA, just as he has become the leader of the lynch mob crying for Edward Snowden’s scalp. He is on national TV every chance he gets, spreading snide innuendo and outright lies that Snowden was in league with the Russians when he tapped NSA files that he subsequently revealed to the American people. This is the cheapest kind of character assassination, the most blatant slander since Joe McCarthy was spreading lies about all sorts of Americans being Communist spies and it is obviously being done for the same reason, personal aggrandizement. We all saw how Tail Gunner Joe destroyed the lives of innocent people and now we have Loud Mouth Mike trying the same on a guy who if nothing else has sparked the most important discussion of security and privacy that this country has ever had. Rogers should be ashamed of himself. He has turned into nothing more than a shill for NSA and as such he should be removed from any contact with any security issues to which he now has access. The guy’s a disgrace.
Maybe if Snowden was able to be protected by the government as a whistleblower instead of harassed as a traitor, he wouldn’t be in Russia now. We have a rather pathetic habit in this country of blowing off those who make us uncomfortable and then attacking them when they try to take care of themselves.
I am reminded of a certain Cuban rebel who was attacking a government that was friendly to American business interests. He begged the Kennedy administration for help but they turned him down because our sugar and gambling interests were firmly lodged between the butt cheeks of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The rebel, Fidel Castro came to us time after time, begging for help and when we turned him away, only then did he turn to the Russians. All of a sudden he was a Communist because he had taken aide from the only people who would give it to him and when he threw out the dictator Batista and showed his loyalty to those that had helped him, he became the enemy of those same people who had refused to give him aide when he asked. Draw your own parallels.
It is people like Mike Rogers, Mike McCall and Diane Feinstein, with their unfounded and unlikely accusations about Snowden having been in cahoots with the Russians from the beginning, that are the basis for most of the fight against NSA and its record keeping. They are doing exactly what Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover did in the past and giving any government agency all our personal information is setting up people like Rogers, McCall and Feinstein to do the same thing now. None of them have any provable basis for their accusations against Snowden but they are spewing them out on National TV, attacking the motives of a man who has opened the doors to a desperately needed national debate on what the NSA is doing to undermine our privacy and freedom. The argument that is made by those of us who are against what the NSA is doing, has its basis in exactly what Rogers, McCall and Feinstein are doing now. They attack without evidence. They demean without reason. They condemn without proof. This is exactly what McCarthy did and worse, what Hoover was able to do without basis. It’s terrifying.
They have all called Snowden a traitor, as have any number of others, so let’s look at that term: Traitor: One who harms a group that he belongs to by helping its enemies. Giving aid and comfort to the enemies of ones country. Betraying one’s group for gain or ideological advantage.
Every definition of traitor that I found, including about eight from various dictionaries, refer to the same set of principles and none of them apply to Snowden. They almost all refer to a betrayal of one’s group. Snowden’s group is the citizens of this country and rather than betraying them he has informed them of a situation that is working against their best interests, against their privacy and freedom. If anyone has been betraying this group it is those members of the intelligence establishment that has been leeching away elements of that same privacy and freedom.
By accusing Snowden of having been in league with the Russians from the start, a concept not entered in evidence, Rogers does just what McCarthy and Hoover did; giving us a prime example of what the NSA will be able to do when given carte blanche with the details of our lives.
Rogers stands up on TV and says that Snowden has stolen military secrets and is giving them to the Russians and that he planned to do this from the beginning. Where is his evidence? He has none. He’s just making noise, like Joe McCarthy, but in doing that, he is marking as a traitor, a man who has done this country a great service. This is in violation of every tradition of the law that exists in this country. This is not freedom of speech on Rogers part, this is, until his statements are proven, libel. Of curse he knows that Snowden can’t protect himself because of the assuredly unconstitutional treatment he will receive if he tries to come back here. Rogers is a dangerous man and the antithesis of everything that an American legislator should be.
Obama stated in his speech this week that we needed the work that NSA is doing but that we had to control it so we could be sure that there were no abuses. Both security committees basically agreed with him. He also said that he wanted to ship out the storage of this information to someone other than the government but that really sounds like a bad idea. Mike Morell, former acting Director of the CIA says that there are private corporations who are very good at securing their material and that they could show the government how to do I right. Maybe they could, but Rogers with all his stupidity is right on one thing. We shouldn’t give this material to any private company to hold. It has been proven over and over that private industry, as it should be, is principally interested in profit and that is never a motivation to do the right thing. It just wouldn’t work. What little information the government is ultimately allowed to collect, should be held by them., under the control of warrants by a FISA court. This does two things. It lessens the possibility of that information being leaked and it creates a single source of responsibility.
Morrll also points out, that contrary to what Mike Rogers has said, there have been abuses in the system, not many and mostly privately conducted by employees of NSA but if there have been some, there could be more and where does it stop?
This country has been through Watergate, Hoover’s abuses of the FBI files, McCarthy’s false accusations, the IRS nonsense and any number of other scandals. If the potential for abuse exists, it’s guaranteed that someone will take advantage of it. Newt Gingrich argues that none of the information should travel over to the criminal justice system, mainly because there is already too much proven potential in that system for abuse. Just look at all the people who are in jail on trumped up charges now. With all this additional information the jails would be overflowing, anyone with an ax to grind would be pulling phony info from the system and using it to get even..
Even though Rogers and Feinstein deny the possibility, Mike Morell who is in a far better position to know what’s going on, assures us that abuses do indeed exist. Morrell and a number of other sources also dismiss Rogers and Feinstein’s insistence that this program as it stands is all that is keeping al Qaeda from attacking our country. No one in the government or its security arms, Morrell states, can point to a single instance when the program has affected any act of terrorism. Of course we need security but we don’t need NSA or anyone else sticking their nose in everyone’s business for no reason. Before we allow any government agency to invade our privacy they must be able to show that they know what to do with the information and how to use it to protect us. So far no one in NSA or any other security agency has been able to demonstrate either capability.
Feinstein makes the dumb analogy that businesses collect a lot of data on us but she doesn’t seem to be intelligent enough to understand that Google can’t arrest us or deprive us of our liberty on the basis of that information, We give Google that information which we want to give them and so far most people haven’t given the government permission to tap their phones.
Rogers makes a big deal about Snowden being ready to leave when he took the files. Gee Mike, big surprise. What would you have done? It just proves that Snowden is smarter than Rogers. He keeps referring to military secrets that will cost billions to fix but there is no indication of any military secrets and if he did take them he gave them to Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian to edit and so far we have no indication that either of them sold anything to the Russians.
In fact it should be possible for the NSA to do their job without the bulk collection of every phone call in the world and if they can’t, then they are incompetent and should be replaced. Maybe Diane Feinstein wants to give up her freedom and privacy to protect her ass from all those terrorists and their bombs but many of us think it would be far safer just to get the guns out of the hands of the incompetents that are fondling them all over this country. It’s a proven fact tat we would save far more lives that way than by worrying about any terrorist attacks.