Breaking per MSNBC: President Obama Has Commuted Chelsea Manning's Sentence

[s0crates]

32 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

As I've stated, I'm not sure of what Manning leaked, but I'd be very much against pardoning Snowden.

 

Snowden went to China and told China what organizations we were spying on and how.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/evan-osnos/why-china-let-snowden-go

 

Nowhere does that article say that Snowden told China anything. What it does say is that China got access to the Snowden documents, although it doesn't offer much evidence to support even that weaker claim. I recall the same claim about China being thoroughly refuted when it was made by others:

 

https://theintercept.com/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/snowden-files-read-by-russia-and-china-five-questions-for-uk-government

[tshile]

Oh, and before we get too carried away praising Obama let's remember the Obama admin has used the espionage act to charge more whitelblowers than any other administration.

 

You can get really pissy about what Swden did, for example, but you should realize at least 2 other people attempted to blow the same whistle but were unsuccessful because they tried to do it the right way and the government headed them off and charged them with various crimes.

 

I'm not someone looking for conspiracy around every corner, but I also know our government does some ****ed up things they don't want us to know about. Some of them are terrible and someone should be held responsible for them, others are just things I'm glad I don't have to decide to do.

[Zazzaro703]

1 hour ago, skinsmarydu said:

She hasn't been charged with a crime, she can't be pardoned for anything.  You can't "blanket pardon" future offenses. 

She wasn't charged with a crime because the FBI ruled she was too stupid to realize she was compromising national security. She used the Dave Chappelle Chip skit "Officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that" excuse and walked. Some may accept that outcome, others do not because it's a huge pile of horse****. The Clintons and their foundation should be independently investigated once and for all to put issues to rest. No partisan politics, secret meetings on runways, no friends in high places and no people with an axe to grind against them muddying the waters involved. Something tells me Qatar won't be giving Bill Clinton 1 million dollars for his birthday this year and these lucrative donations and speaking fees won't be funneling into the Clinton Crime Foundation this year now that her political career is dead. 

 

Im glad Manning is getting out of jail. She exposed things that needed to be stopped immediately. These people need to be exposed and reminded that they are not above the law because their actions are conducted in secret. Yeah it sucks she put our soldiers in harms way, but that blood is on the hands of the guilty and not hers. Had they not been lying and covering up their crimes there would be nothing to expose. 

[bearrock]

There should be a viable, safe way to whistleblow, without fear of reprisal but also without posting all manner of classified info on the Internet.  Such disclosure should be thoroughly investigated and to the maximum extent possible, investigation should be held accountable to the public.  Current whistleblowing system is broken for many reasons (see Thomas Drake). Both parties acknowledge this, legislations have been introduced, but here we still are.

 

Snowdon and Manning cases are complicated because we have to judge their actions in a world where whistleblowing is deeply flawed, especially in the intelligence community.  The bigger issue to me than Snowdon or Manning is what the United States will do to ensure there won't be another Thomas Drake.

[PeterMP]

32 minutes ago, s0crates said:

 

Nowhere does that article say that Snowden told China anything. What it does say is that China got access to the Snowden documents, although it doesn't offer much evidence to support even that weaker claim. I recall the same claim about China being thoroughly refuted when it was made by others:

 

https://theintercept.com/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/snowden-files-read-by-russia-and-china-five-questions-for-uk-government

 

From my link:

 

" In an interview, he said that the N.S.A. “does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data”; he described the hacking of university computers in Beijing and of systems run by Pacnet, a telecommunications company. Xinhua, the state news agency, responded with glee. “These, along with previous allegations, are clearly troubling signs. They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.” "

 

 

And of course the said in the above links to here:

 

" Snowden said Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese University in Hong Kong, home of some of the country's major Internet traffic hubs, were targets of extensive hacking by U.S. spies this year. He said the NSA was focusing on so-called "network backbones" in China, through which enormous amounts of Internet data passes. "

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/snowden-says-us-targets-included-china-cell-phones-073119007.html?ref=gs

 

Here is the South China Morning Post with even more detail:

 

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-snowden-classified-us-data-shows-hong-kong-hacking-targets

 

"Snowden, the man behind explosive leaks of information on the US government's Prism programme that collected phone and web data from its citizens, has pledged to stay in Hong Kong to fight any attempts by his government to have him extradited.

The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period.

They also include information indicating whether an attack on a computer was ongoing or had been completed, along with an amount of additional operational information.

The small sample data suggests secret and illegal NSA attacks on Hong Kong computers had a success rate of more than 75 per cent, according to the documents. The information only pertains to attacks on civilian computers with no reference to Chinese military operations, Snowden said.

"I don't know what specific information they were looking for on these machines, only that using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law. It's ethically dubious," Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday.

Snowden, who came to Hong Kong on May 20 and has been in hiding since, said the data points to the frequency and nature of how NSA operatives were able to successfully hack into servers and computers, with specific reference to machines in Hong Kong and on the mainland."

And that's what made the public.

Are you really calling for Obama to pardon somebody without even knowing even what is in the public domain of what he did?

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

48 minutes ago, Zazzaro703 said:

She wasn't charged with a crime because the FBI ruled she was too stupid to realize she was compromising national security. She used the Dave Chappelle Chip skit "Officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that" excuse and walked. Some may accept that outcome, others do not because it's a huge pile of horse****. The Clintons and their foundation should be independently investigated once and for all to put issues to rest. No partisan politics, secret meetings on runways, no friends in high places and no people with an axe to grind against them muddying the waters involved. Something tells me Qatar won't be giving Bill Clinton 1 million dollars for his birthday this year and these lucrative donations and speaking fees won't be funneling into the Clinton Crime Foundation this year now that her political career is dead.

You must be pretty pissed at Trump and the entire GoP for deciding that after 20 years of investigations, millions & millions of wasted dollars, and 18 months of bloviating about she was a criminal and that they were gonna lock her up that they've suddenly decided that none of that actually mattered after all.

 

Also, don't you think the Bush family should all be in jail? If the answer is "no", can I ask why not?

 

Here's what I want you to do. Pull up the "news" sites that you use to get your "information". Take a look at them really hard. Does every single article on there give you the information all spun up the way you like? Does it all sort of fit into this same theme? If so, you need to find some new sources.

[s0crates]

@PeterMP I'm not really sure what you're trying to establish. I think I may have taken you to be making a stronger claim than you meant. 

 

I thought you were accusing him of sharing detailed intelligence secrets with the Chinese government when you said, "Snowden went to China and told China what Chinese organizations we were spying on and how," but now I gather you just meant that Snowden gave a "small sample" of data and a vague interview to a Chinese reporter revealing the NSA was spying on Chinese civilians (assuming the veracity of the South China Morning Post report for the sake of argument), and the Chinese press used this report as an opportunity to point out our hypocrisy.

 

I'm sorry but I just don't see the big deal about that. Do you think the Chinese government learned something they didn't know from that newspaper report? Are we just mad that China used the news to score a rhetorical point against us?

[nonniey]

3 hours ago, elkabong82 said:

Good decision IMO.

 

Those leaks revealed a lot of messed up stuff we've been doing abroad, especially the messed up stuff involving DynCorp and even how Japan and our ambassador over there were warned about Fukushima in advance and they ignored it.

What?? We warned them an Earthquake and Tsunami were coming? Amazing what people believe about any given story. As for Manning I think he probably should have stayed in a few more years - the complaint was he got a heavier sentence than any other individual for knowingly passing classified intelligence and information. Commutation should have just shortened the sentence a bit but it still should have been heavier than the average sentence for this crime as his actions were more damaging than average -  particularly damaging to State Department efforts. Now he is getting off lightly for what he did.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

7 minutes ago, nonniey said:

What?? We warned them an Earthquake and Tsunami were coming? Amazing what people believe about any given story.

Yes it is.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8384059/Japan-earthquake-Japan-warned-over-nuclear-plants-WikiLeaks-cables-show.html

[PeterMP]

21 minutes ago, s0crates said:

@PeterMP I'm not really sure what you're trying to establish. I think I may have taken you to be making a stronger claim than you meant. 

 

I thought you were accusing him of sharing detailed intelligence secrets with the Chinese government when you said, "Snowden went to China and told China what Chinese organizations we were spying on and how," but now I gather you just meant that Snowden gave a small sample of data and a vague interview to a Chinese reporter revealing the NSA was spying on Chinese civilians (assuming the veracity of the South China Morning Post report), and the Chinese press used this report as an opportunity to point out our hypocrisy.

 

I'm sorry but I just don't see the big deal about that. Do you think the Chinese government learned something they didn't know from that newspaper report? Are we just mad that China used the news to score a rhetorical point against us?

 

It wasn't small.  It was 4 years worth of data, and included dates and if the program was closed or not.  As to what all the IP addresses were (were they all Chinese JUST citizens or were some of them IP addresses associated with the Chinese government or Chinese military), you are just making things up. You have no clue if it was JUST citizens or not.

 

He gave them a list of IP addresses the US was spying on, he explained how we were doing it (focusing on network backbones), and he gave them start and end dates, which gives them more data to figure out how we were able to hack into the systems to start with (i.e. go back and review the systems at that time to identify things that might have been tied to the original hacking).

 

Do you believe the Chinese press didn't give the data that Snowden gave them to the Chinese government?

 

What do you think would happen to a member of the Chinese press that refused to give to the information to the Chinese goverment?

For all we know, Snowden might have given every IP address that the NSA managed to hack in China over a 4 year period to China.

 

Quit trying to down play it by making things up!

[BornaSkinsFan83]

I'm ok with this. Her sentence was absurd 

[Springfield]

I don't have much of an opinion on this but it seems like maybe people are a bit more upset than they need be.

 

I mean, he freed a few notoriously convicted people.  Oh well.

[s0crates]

@PeterMP

 

It seems to me you're making some pretty strong claims based on some pretty flimsy evidence, and further that you're engaged in your usual hair-splitting.

 

Granting the veracity of the information you linked, it really doesn't tell me much other than that Snowden told the press that the NSA is spying on Chinese civilians, but that doesn't mean he was a treasonous double agent working for the Chinese government. He also told the press the NSA is spying on German, Brazilian, French, Spanish, Italian, and Norwegian citizens, but I don't think that means he was a double agent working for all those countries either.

 

He's just a guy who blew the whistle, and I tend to think he was careful not to release more than he had to in order to substantiate his claims. He was selective in what he released, this was not a massive document dump, and he released the information through reporters.

 

I know there were a bunch of puffed up accusations made in the establishment press about Snowden being a Chinese and/or Russian spy, and I tend to think they were pure propaganda. I'm also fairly confident that Snowden never gave any information to the Chinese or Russian government.

 

In my view, he was a whistleblower, not a spy, and Obama promised not to prosecute whistleblowers.

 

P.S. There are some important distinctions between Hong Kong and the rest of China that we're glossing over here. Hong Kong is much more democratically minded than you seem to imagine.

[BornaSkinsFan83]

11 minutes ago, Springfield said:

I don't have much of an opinion on this but it seems like maybe people are a bit more upset than they need be.

 

I mean, he freed a few notoriously convicted people.  Oh well.

 

To me it's a sign of how ****ed the mentality is in this country when it comes to prisons and punishments. I really wish everyone could spend a few weeks in solitary confinement before they opened their mouths. Or at least judges and prosecutors. 

 

(and that's what this commutation is about in my opinion. The punishment, the prison and the time. Not the crime.) 

 

 

 

PS Snowden can eat a dick. 

[elkabong82]

1 hour ago, nonniey said:

What?? We warned them an Earthquake and Tsunami were coming? Amazing what people believe about any given story. As for Manning I think he probably should have stayed in a few more years - the complaint was he got a heavier sentence than any other individual for knowingly passing classified intelligence and information. Commutation should have just shortened the sentence a bit but it still should have been heavier than the average sentence for this crime as his actions were more damaging than average -  particularly damaging to State Department efforts. Now he is getting off lightly for what he did.

 

Rather than post a silly question and make yourself look uninformed you could've just taken a minute to google it. The IAEA warned the Japanese government and the US ambassador there that the facility was in danger due to seismic activity in the area, that their safety guides for such had only been updated 3 times in 35 years. It was ignored and then exactly what they warned about happened. This was a major incident that killed people and is affecting environments around the globe still today. The leak exposed that there were warnings ahead of time that went ignored. Amazing what people will brush off to fit a pre-determined POV.

 

Getting off lightly for exposing child trafficking cover ups, ignored threats to a nuclear facility, the US actively helping Haiti prevent minimum wage laws, the US military ordering its members not to investigate torture in Iraq, and more. If that was your kid who was saved from trafficking would you still be typing what you did, or would you be praising the person for exposing it and saving your kid?

 

 

[visionary]

 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

4 hours ago, elkabong82 said:

Rather than post a silly question and make yourself look uninformed you could've just taken a minute to google it.

Right? It's not like information is hard to access these days. I tore into a few people last year for posting stupid conspiracy **** on social media and saying things like "I'd really like to know _______"

 

"Well the answer is _______. It took me 10 seconds to find it. So, did you really WANT to know or did you just want to shoot your mouth off on Facebook?"

[Popeman38]

12 hours ago, s0crates said:

 

She may be a bit off in the specifics, but her statement is mostly true. Learn something:

 

 

Holy ****. Did you even listen to what was said in this video? It doesn't say they know every keystroke EVERYONE types. It targets specific shipments. Seriously, it is impossible to intercept EVERY router, modem, computer, tablet shipped to EVERY person in the world. Think about the scope. If every system took an hour, each day would require every second to be spent doing this. Glen Greenwald states VERY CLEARLY that the goal of NSA is to end privacy. Goal means it HASN'T happened. Additionally, there is no evidence to support that claim, it is his opinion from reading the Snowden leaks. And like I have said from day 1, PowerPoint graphics, which were used A LOT to get the Snowden data out, are not normally used to provide detailed diagrams. They are generally 10,000 foot views of what you are trying to say. Anyone that uses PowerPoint frequently knows this. Yet the PowerPoints leaked were taken and presented as 100% gospel without ever thinking they were showing things to get the attention of stars and bars. 

 

Snowden revealed some very important information about what our government was doing. I am not comfortable with everything they were doing. But the way the information has been used to demonstrate that the govt has EVERY packet EVER transmitted on the Internet is ridiculous. NOTHING would be a mystery if this was true. Why would they govt need Apple to unlock a iPhone? Everything that is sent or received from the iPhone uses the Internet. And according to interpretations of the leaks the government is intercepting 100% of all telecommunications companies traffic. So everything said on the iPhone was in the governments hands as well. So what is the benefit to having a very public fight with Apple about unlocking the iPhone? Did they think the iPhone had detailed information that wasn't transmitted? But wait, the video just posted purported that there is malware on the phone placed by NSA that gives them complete control of the device! So again, how do they not have access to what was on the iPhone? How do the Feds ever not catch someone? How can they evade capture for years when all of their information is in the governments hands? 

 

Critical thinking skills are important skills to have. 

[tshile]

27 minutes ago, Popeman38 said:

 Seriously, it is impossible to intercept EVERY router, modem, computer, tablet shipped to EVERY person in the world. Think about the scope.

 

I'm not watching that video because I know there's nothing in it for me to learn and there's a high chance they exaggerated things, and yes the use of the word EVERY is incorrect.

 

But you might want to tone it down a bit because it appears, based on what you posted, that you don't actually know what you're talking about.

 

Trailblazer, Prism, and various other NSA programs we are unaware of (remember, there are just the ones we know about, courtesy of whistle blowers of course...) do exactly what you're trying to paint as ridiculous. They collect large swaths of information, dumping it into a database for parsing and analyzing later. They have been hollowing out mountains all around the country to turn into data centers. They have one near me, they're constantly trying to get more power run to it.

 

We know they've developed hardware devices that can be installed at the ISP level to MITM SSL encrypted traffic without you knowing. These devices are regularly sold to law enforcement around the world and aren't expensive or hard to use; you just need the ability to get a warrant to force it to be installed.

 

We know they have fake cell towers that fit inside a backpack that snag cell phones within a certain radius and intercept the data. Cheap and easily purchased by a regular person at this point.

 

Other random things you have wrong:

The government didn't need Apple to break into the iPhone. They got in just fine without them.

 

No, not everything transmits over the internet, so that's just not a correct argument.

 

Just because you have the data doesn't mean interpreting it is easy, or done. In fact, that's the hard part. Connecting the dots is something really smart people spend their lives working on with this stuff. Data analysis is a huge industry, and the NSA/CIA aren't the only ones doing it. Collecting the information is the first step, and the simplest, trying to get a good signal-to-noise ratio and turn that into quality investigative work is going to be a long process with lots of mistakes along the way.

 

Yes, saying every packet ever is being watched is a bit over the top. You're not really doing a good job discussing the topic yourself, though.

 

 

 

[PeterMP]

13 hours ago, s0crates said:

P.S. There are some important distinctions between Hong Kong and the rest of China that we're glossing over here. Hong Kong is much more democratically minded than you seem to imagine.

 

There was no reason for him to takes a list of IP addresses that we had hacked in China and related information to China much less then giving them to the press in China.  Nobody doubts that we are hacking people and things in China.

 

I don't think he really was a spy, and he certainly might have intended to only be a whistle blower, but to me he went too far.  Whether you are actually a spy or not or despite your honest intentions, that doesn't mean that you can't go too far in releasing information to the point that you actually do damage.  There is a line that has to be walked in the context of what good is the data you are releasing doing.

 

(And the China thing is just one example of that.)

 

While individuals in Hong Kong are much more democratically minded (I don't know why you think I wouldn't imagine they were considering they under control of Britain for decades and there are regular reports of protests against the main land government), realistically, the main land government exerts significant control and if they want to take somebody they can and will do it even if they people are in other countries:

 

http://time.com/4567570/hong-kong-yau-wai-ching-independence-democracy-china/

 

" By then, Hong Kong was wracked with political anxiety. Two months earlier, just after Christmas, a controversial local bookseller named Lee Bo had disappeared from his warehouse on the eastern end of Hong Kong Island. He was one of the proprietors of a firm called Mighty Current Media, which published gleefully pulpy books about the scandals, real or imagined, of Beijing’s party elite: stories of power struggles, how Chinese President Xi Jinping’s wife lost her virginity, etc. They were wildly popular among tourists from the mainland, where, it goes without saying, such publications were illegal. Four of Lee’s colleagues had vanished while overseas months before, and it was soon learned that all of them had been imprisoned in the mainland. "

 

But they have no problem grabbing people out of Hong Kong too:

" “The threats to the civil and political rights of Hong Kong residents after 1997 are abundantly documented,” the 71-page report reads. “But the abduction of Hong Kong residents — one of them from Hong Kong soil — in apparent retaliation for their acts of expression and commerce conducted within Hong Kong raises these threats to a disturbing new level.” "

[skinsmarydu]

22 minutes ago, tshile said:

Yes, saying every packet ever is being watched is a bit over the top. You're not really doing a good job discussing the topic yourself, though

If it's even done to ONE, without a warrant and without the assumed's knowledge, it's wrong. 

[tshile]

Just now, skinsmarydu said:

If it's even done to ONE, without a warrant and without the assumed's knowledge, it's wrong. 

I go back and forth on how wrong it is to do each one.

 

There's certainly a way for them to do it without violating the rights of US citizens and extracting meaningful information. We even have evidence that suggests they at least tried to do it like that in some ways.

 

We also know they abuse it, and we know the intelligence community is prone to thinking the rules don't apply to them simply because they're trying to stop a terrorist attack. Our military has a similar issue at times.

 

*shrug*

 

[Larry]

12 minutes ago, tshile said:

But you might want to tone it down a bit because it appears, based on what you posted, that you don't actually know what you're talking about.

 

Trailblazer, Prism, and various other NSA programs we are unaware of (remember, there are just the ones we know about, courtesy of whistle blowers of course...) do exactly what you're trying to paint as ridiculous. They collect large swaths of information

 

 

Uh, you might want to tone it down a bit, because your post makes it clear that you don't know what you're talking about.  

 

Those programs do something similar to what he's trying to paint as ridiculous.  (And which you're trying to, can you guess the next part?, paint a false equivalency to.)  

 

You see, what Pope was referring to was the claim that "Everyone at Langley has everything you've ever typed."  (That's why he emphasized the word "every", in the very material you quoted.)  

 

Which is ridiculous, and even you know it.  Which is why you decided to

 

1) Wave a magic wand, and remove the word "every" from his post.  (Despite the fact that that word was the point of his post.) 

2) Run from there, to pointing out that, if you're vague enough, it's possible to create a phrase that applies to both of these two things.  

3) Run from there, to creating a false equivalency between these two things.  

4) Run from there, to constructing a personal insult.  (And, simultaneously, trying to paint yourself as superior.)  

5) Then lead with the insult.  

 

It's become a common schtick, for you.  Several people have been pointing it out, for months.  (And your reaction is to get mad that people are pointing it out, and keep doing it.)  

 

It was old, a month ago.  

[tshile]

He got more wrong than that Larry, but that's OK we can pretend that wasn't part of the conversation so you can do your shtick.

 

Which is never pointed out by anyone and definitely isn't old.

[Larry]

19 minutes ago, tshile said:

I go back and forth on how wrong it is to do each one.

 

There's certainly a way for them to do it without violating the rights of US citizens and extracting meaningful information. We even have evidence that suggests they at least tried to do it like that in some ways.

 

We also know they abuse it, and we know the intelligence community is prone to thinking the rules don't apply to them simply because they're trying to stop a terrorist attack. Our military has a similar issue at times.

 

*shrug*

 

 

I suspect that we're kinda similar, with the "I'll decide on a case by case basis" position.  (And I think we have the identical policy, when it comes to the morality of leaking classified information, for whistleblowing purposes.  I'll judge how important the classified information is, and how important is the whistle being blown.)  

 

But I suspect that you and I have very different opinions as to "without violating the rights of US citizens and extracting meaningful information".  

 

Call me silly, but I'm kinda under the impression that I have the right to make a phone call without AT&T notifying the federal government that I've made a phone call, who it was to, and the exact location where I, and the other party, were, at the time, based on no probable cause higher than "we might want that information, somewhere down the road".  

 

That, to me, seems a whole long way from "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."  

 

---

 

9 minutes ago, tshile said:

He got more wrong than that Larry

 

Then maybe you should have pointed that out, instead of what you did.