[rhino369]

There is a vast difference between not accepting "just following orders" as a defense for crimes against humanity and allowing people to spill state secrets when it is against their politics.

If Snowden didn't want to be involved in the NSA, he could have quit.

But like I said, you can't let individuals determine government policy by themselves. Otherwise we'd have no ability to keep information classified.

You can come up with a hypothetical that would justify leaking confidential materials, but I would strongly disagree that Snowden or Manning meet that standard.

If Snowden leaked that the US had an extermination camp, yea I'd support him. But the NSA surveillance programs are nothing like that.

The NSA isn't doing something that completely shocks the worlds conscience. The are following the laws Congress wrote for them. Snowden and other civil libertarians are outraged, but so what. You don't get to declassify stuff because it is against your politics.

The law shouldn't and doesn't give you cover for that sort of political action. How could it? Can a pro-peace activist leak military plans? Can a pro-Palestine activist leak Israeli diplomatic cables?

The standard can't just be "one guys thinks this is immoral."

>You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.

Nobody ever has oversight over courts, directly. They are unelected on purpose to protect them from political bias. The People have oversight by writing the laws. If the People don't want FISA courts, ban them.

No warrant proceeding is in open court. You get a magistrate judge to issue you one in private.

As to 95%, that could just as easily be evidence that the DOJ is only requesting warrants in situations that are legitimate. Recall that they are only handing out ~3000 a year (probably many against the same person and many against foreigners). So it isn't like the DOJ is doing this in a dragnet fashion. Also, the FISA court requires substantive revisions of about 25% of those it approves.

The 95% rate is easily just proof that the government isn't abusing the system.

[cryoshon]

I see that your heart is set on being stuck to upholding the "laws" that make up our system of government while steadfastly ignoring the entire "laws are made for the benefit of the powerful and subject to change based upon convenience" reality we live in. To reiterate, this isn't some small-time debate about whether "leaking confidential files" is "legal" or not, but rather a debate about whether the public has the right to know what the government is doing. The public does, in fact, have a right to know what the government is doing in their name. Snowden and whistleblowers need to exist in the current configuration of the government, which favors secrecy because they fear the public's reaction to their bad deeds.

One last try: Snowden leaked information which tells us that the NSA effectively has the power to blackmail anyone in the US or elsewhere. Via whistleblower Russ Tice we know that the NSA was spying on Obama starting from 2004. Anything Obama has done, the NSA has known. Doesn't that seem like it creates an avenue for major abuse?

This sure seems like a backdoor to democracy which would justify letting the members of the democracy know, right? Or is it still more important to maintain confidential materials when the materials show that democracy has a workaround via surveillance?