Tag: Edward Snowden

Categories
government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies partisanship

The Secret of the Second Impeachment

Assange, Snowden, Trump, impeachment

The impeachment that followed the events of January Sixth was … peculiar. President Trump had just a few weeks to go in his term, thus “removing him” on the way out seemed … almost pointless. 

And we quickly learned that the Senate wouldn’t hear the case until after Trump’s replacement was installed in office.

So why?

Had enough Republicans in the upper chamber jumped ship, what House Democrats would have obtained for their troubles was (1) a prohibition on Trump running again and (2) a twist of the knife.

Key word: Payback.

Democrats had never really “accepted” their defeat in 2016. So they played up Trump’s unwillingness to “accept defeat” in 2020. A poetic revenge — “with a twist.”

But this may have been more than merely partisan payback. 

Here’s the proverbial Rest of the Story: The lame duck president had been seriously considering pardoning Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. And that was something the permanent government of the intel agencies and military-​industrial complex could not allow. So, as Glenn Greenwald reported on Rumble, the Deep State’s most ardent Republican supporters in the Senate — Lindsay Graham being most prominent — threatened to vote against Trump in the impeachment proceedings if the president pardoned either of those … heroes.

By impeaching Trump, Democrats not only humiliated the man, to the extent he could be humiliated, they scored a political win against Snowden and Assange, two men who had humiliated the establishment in general and their party in particular.

The big winner? The Deep State.

And the real loser? Not Trump — the American people.

Because we are left with a Leviathan that spies on us and lies to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Snowden

What Does Snowden Deserve?

Edward Snowden, NSA, spying, surveillance, whistleblower, patriotism

Who is Ed Snowden? And what does he deserve?

On May 20, 2013, 29-​year-​old security specialist Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii; in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. 

In late June, the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, and the Department of State revoked his passport. Two days later, he flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, to which he was restricted for over a month. Russia ultimately granted him right of asylum for one year, and has added extensions until 2020. Mr. Snowden is currently living in an undisclosed location in Moscow and continues to seek asylum elsewhere.

Though the United States Government still seeks his apprehension and prosecution, and politicians across the political spectrum have called him a traitor and worse, Mr. Snowden is far from universally reviled:

“He is a hero who exposed the most extraordinary violations of the Fourth Amendment in the history of the country.”
—Judge Andrew Napolitano

What Mr. Snowden revealed was a secret, illegal program undertaken by America’s Deep State. “It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional,” writes Paul Jacob on this website, “or me, but how a federal judge ruled.” And for this reason many defenders of the Constitution of the United States and of the American way of life dub Ed Snowden not a traitor or fiend, but patriot, whistleblower, hero:

“He has done a great service, because he is telling the truth. The American people are starved for the truth.… Essentially there is no Fourth Amendment anymore, and for somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort.”
—Ron Paul, former Congressman

Even some folks in government have acknowledged the importance of Snowden’s service to our country:

“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made.”
 —Eric Holder, former Attorney General of the United States

The awesome power that Snowden revealed to us is truly astounding:

“When you are on the inside, when you go into work every day, when you go in in to sit down at a desk, you realize the power you have. You can wiretap the President of the United States. You can wiretap a federal judge. And if you do it carefully, no one will ever know because the only way the NSA discovers abuses are from self-​reporting.”
—Edward Snowden

So, what does Ed Snowden deserve?

A pardon. And our thanks!

 

Paul Jacob has been on Ed Snowden’s side — and on the side of the Bill of Rights and citizen-​controlled government — from the beginning. Help in Paul’s effort to promote our shared American ideas and show your appreciation by contributing to This Is Common Sense today. And for $10 show your appreciation for Ed Snowden with this simple and eloquent poster:


18“x24” Edward Snowden Poster
$10 —  Click to go to store page (FREE SHIPPING!)

 

Skeptical? Well, consider:

Mr. Snowden: Five Years a Fugitive

A Birthday Present for the Deep State

 

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Snowden

Structurally Opinionated B. S.

Edward Snowden, iPhone, First Amendment, privacy, Apple, illustration

Edward Snowden, the infamous American whistleblower now exiled in Russia, says the FBI’s claim that it cannot decode the infamous San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone is, and I quote, “Bernie Sanders.”

Oops.

He used another word-​set, also sporting the initials B. S.

I got confused because, though the press has been fretting endlessly about the B.S. coming from Donald Trump, the real corkers of late have come from Bernie Sanders, who seems to think that white people cannot be poor or oppressed* and that the successes of free markets elsewhere serve perfectly as excuses for Big Government interference here in America.**

Mr. Snowden, who knows a lot more about encryption and decryption than I do, has given more weight to my suspicion that the whole FBI case against Apple — demanding that Apple create software to decrypt the company’s customers’ iPhones, and supply (on an allegedly case-​by-​case basis) the decrypted private information to the government — is a sham.

Snowden insists that there are multiple ways to do the job.

“Other technologists have explained how the FBI could have easily accessed the phone’s latest iCloud backup,” a report on Snowden’s judgment elaborated, “if agents working with San Bernardino County had not reset the iCloud password.”

Once again, a government failure leads to another push by government to correct for its failure, burdening citizens.

In this case: folks at Apple.

Interestingly, Apple’s legal defense appears to rest heavily on the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees, arguing that the demanded software is value-​laden speech, is literally made up of such.

The exact term is “structurally opinionated,” which I nominate for the jargon phrase of the year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Sanders has recently said, in one of those interminable debates that I can no longer watch in full, “When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, you don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you are walking down a street or dragged out of a car.” As if “white privilege” amounts to immunity from poverty or oppression.

** Sanders, whose Tweets are as insane as his spoken pronouncements, recently lamented how Romanians in Bucharest have faster Internet speeds than Americans — without realizing they’d achieved these levels of access by wide-​open, unrelenting, and wild competition. That is, Laissez Faire capitalism.

Printable PDF

Edward Snowden, iPhone, First Amendment, privacy, Apple, illustration

 

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar  (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money. Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom government transparency judiciary national politics & policies

Court Vindicates Snowden

Edward Snowden

Sometimes if you postpone something long enough, someone else will do the job.

Last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program unlawful, I immediately saw it as a vindication of Edward Snowden and his “illegal” leaks.

It will be hard to charge the man with treason for uncovering programs that have been determined, in court, to be themselves treasonous — or at least unconstitutional.

But I was busy last week; didn’t have time to make the case.

Nicely, Noah Feldman made it for me, at Bloomberg View. “This is the most serious blow to date,” writes Feldman in his May 7 article, a blow against “the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/​11.”

The linkage with Snowden is in no way an imposition on the story:

The first striking thing about the court’s opinion was how openly it relied on Snowden’s revelations of classified material.  The court described how the program was known — by Snowden’s leaks. It also analyzed the NSA order to Verizon, leaked by Snowden, that proved the existence of the program and revealed indirectly the legal reasoning that the government relied on to authorize the metadata collection.

More importantly, Feldman recognizes that the decision rightly breaks “the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA.”

A republic isn’t a republic if its laws are secret.

Now, of course, it’s time for Americans to cease their procrastination. If we don’t recognize that our government is out of control, no one else’s determination will matter.

Except, perhaps, history’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Edward Snowden

 

Categories
meme Snowden

Edward Snowden Posters

Get FREE high-​resolution 11“x17” versions of these posters, click the thumbnail images below. A downloadable PDF document will open.

snowden_11x17b

“This country is worth dying for.” — Edward Snowden

snowden_11x17_brighterCS

“I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendshipis recorded.”  —Edward Snowden

Want an already printed poster? Look no further…

Paul Jacob has been on Ed Snowden’s side — and on the side of the Bill of Rights and citizen-​controlled government — from the beginning. Help in Paul’s effort to promote our shared American ideas and show your appreciation by contributing to This Is Common Sense today. And for $10 show your appreciation for Ed Snowden with this simple and eloquent poster:


18“x24” Edward Snowden Poster
$10 —  Click to go to store page (FREE SHIPPING!)

 

Categories
First Amendment rights responsibility

Reset the Net?

I don’t know on which version the current Internet is said to be. Internet 4.0? Web 3.1? HTML something-​or-​other? (You may notice: I’m not a tech guy.)

But it’s changing. Streaming video and the fast development of cloud computing are revolutionizing the way we think about the “common space” beyond our computers.

Oh, and then there are all the “post-​PC” devices — smart phones and tablets and the like — metamorphosing with Ovidian avidity.

Nevertheless, there’s one big element that outshines them all: government surveillance. 

Shhh. This is just between me and you, but … this is not just between you and me. The NSA and other branches of our government insist on listening in.

In the past year, since Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks began hitting the news stream, we’ve learned more and more about how intrusive our government spies not only want to be, but can be; not only can be, but are.

So, to celebrate the first anniversary of the beginning of the Snowden Era, folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in co-​operation with good netizens everywhere, have proclaimed today, June 5, “Reset the Net” Day.

A day of protest? More a day of preparation. What can you do to make your Internet presence a bit more secure?

Well, according to the EFF activists, and according to Snowden himself, there are many things you can do. Encryption is one of them.

My advice? Don’t ask me about it. Consult the experts. Let’s think more carefully about life under the eyes of our overlords.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.