Re: Snowden Poll

DamonTheViking wrote:

Snowden is a hero, because he did what the ordinary man would never do.He stood up strongly against a government that has far greater power than he will ever have, with his life as the ultimate payment.

The stuff he revealed is not really a great eye-opener as much as confirmation that if you give big government too much power, it will use this power to maintain and possibly increase its power over the individual. American government agencies are out of control, and there is not much the people can do about it at this point. You can mutter in disgust and try to revolt, but fact is they know more about you than your mother does.

The only way I see, to end the usefulness of the tools they have is for the entire worlds collective individuals to flood their systems. I imagine these systems flag down priority targets due to certain key factors such as political views, activism and behavioural patterns based on browsing history, purchases etc...

If people were to go out of their way to ensure they all get flagged, then such systems are put back to step zero, and at the same time they'd have tons of work sorting out what is false information and what is true information in the flood that is maintained.

Basicly what I am saying is the people of the world should have a script created that makes sure one appears to visit certain pages, buy certain objects and part-take in certain demonstrations/gatherings. With this done, the digital trails will be stomped out by brute force and they will have to create new systems and meanwhile go back to "manual mode".


In other words, we all become spammers and trolls?

/me likes it

wink

27 (edited by The Yell 29-Jun-2013 14:38:56)

Re: Snowden Poll

That's in the ZIA manual too, anything u kan imagine they have it kovered


oh sure

but we wouldn't get the blame for it

like David Carradine

The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.

Re: Snowden Poll

Xeno wrote:
The Great Eye wrote:

Render, do you mind if I edit your post to add in C's where appropriate?  tongue


C is actually a pretty redundant letter.

we have S for 's'-sound, and K for k-sounds; there's no need for the letter c.

Well, yeah... but still... it's weird!!!! tongue

Make Eyes Great Again!

The Great Eye is watching you... when there's nothing good on TV...

29 (edited by Justinian I 29-Jun-2013 22:47:51)

Re: Snowden Poll

As I said in the other thread, Snowden is an idiot. People should understand that the foundation of politics is "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." All our cherished values and institutions such as human right, equality, democracy, and world peace are mere shadows on the wall. Snowden is the fool who thought the shadows were real, who then hurt himself and those he loved because he couldn't handle the truth. He's no different from the idiots who die for Allah.

Re: Snowden Poll

he's a traitor...

i could believe that an ordinary man with strong beliefs of freedom of the press who did that could be considered a hero to some people.

however, this man took an oath of secrecy.  he betrayed that. he risked many american lives.  he risked many lives of spies from different countries as well.

an honest hero doesnt flee to russia with the hope of redirecting to china and algeria or w/e he was doing.   

if he believed in what he did then he wouldnt flee and he would martyr himself.

long live coach bombay

So I told the cop, "No YOU'RE driving under the influence... of being a JERK!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c

31 (edited by DamonTheViking 30-Jun-2013 10:45:31)

Re: Snowden Poll

dpenguins wrote:

he's a traitor...

i could believe that an ordinary man with strong beliefs of freedom of the press who did that could be considered a hero to some people.

however, this man took an oath of secrecy.  he betrayed that. he risked many american lives.  he risked many lives of spies from different countries as well.

an honest hero doesnt flee to russia with the hope of redirecting to china and algeria or w/e he was doing.   

if he believed in what he did then he wouldnt flee and he would martyr himself.

long live coach bombay

I agree that he betrayed his oath of secrecy and thus is a traitor to the American government. That does not mean he is a traitor to the American people. The way I see it the people comes before government and his hero-status remains rock solid.

You could of course argue that the government through its agencies is there to protect the people, but you'll find that I think that the roles changed long ago. The governments main priority now is to protect itself and its sources of power, while the people remain as a herd of cows that are there to be milked and slaughtered at the whims of the politician.

By this view you can clearly see why I think Snowden a hero and not a traitor. He is giving the people a second perspective on government as it is now. He is letting people see to what extent the government is willing to go to maintain their powergrip over the people.

Now you could argue that the system that was revealed does have abilities to protect the people from its own, by monitoring them until they decide to rebel, but to be fair you are then arguing for giving the government the ability to put you to sleep as soon as you have any ideas of your own personal freedom. I mean..that is really what this system lets them do.

And can you imagine what would happen if some "innocent" data was sold? Or do you trust that the debt-ridden government has no interest in the cash-value of these databases of information? Big business surely would pay a lot to get it hands on just minor parts of this as it would allow them not only to get your likes and dislikes, but also let them know how you think of them as employers, to what extent you honor your agreements and so on...

Snowden is a hero because he let the people know. He let us all know that we are indeed being watched, and that we should take a little more care to hide our trails when we go out in the public areas of the digital world. And before you hit me with the "I got nothing to hide", it's really not about that. It's about letting the government know what is acceptable behaviour from a group of individuals who were elected. They are no better than the common man, and the common man is the only reason he has a job. If he then decides to mistrust the common man as soon as he has power, then that is the government betraying the people.

In conclusion, the government is the traitor in this story.

  <~ Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum ~>
    ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦       DAMON       ♦ ♥ ♣ ♠
Lemming of Prostitutes and Insanity

Re: Snowden Poll

I think the Russians, the Chinese and Al Qaeda have worse intentions for the bulk of the American population than our own government

The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.

Re: Snowden Poll

The Russians and the Chinese have bigger things and populations of their own to worry about. As for Al Quaida one would imagine they have some reasons to be disgruntled with America, aside from the whole terrorist aspect of it all.

That said. The systems Snowden revealed has no way of really monitoring terrorist-groups like Al-Quaida as they do not generally use conventional ways of digital communications. Make no mistake, these systems are targetet to a much larger degree towards the western population. If these systems were meant to mainly pick up potential terrorist threats the money speant on these systems would be better spent buying information directly from locations of said terrorist-groups.

  <~ Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum ~>
    ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦       DAMON       ♦ ♥ ♣ ♠
Lemming of Prostitutes and Insanity