I'm from former soviet country and even I personaly am a bit too young to have experienced full force of soviet surveilance - all this current NSA crap hits quite close to home.
And I do feel that i have more privacy. My governmet is rather to busy trying to shoot itself in the legs repeatedly to implement surveilance of any significant scale.
My online presence probably end's up in NSA hands though. Since it is rather insignificant (i don't use facebook or any other "social" crap) I don't think much of it. It DOES annoy me, don't get me wrong.
I'm from an Asian country, and I have always assumed I have privacy, but that's only because my government is too incompetent to set up any reliable surveillance system.
Mmm, no. I think there is a real and legitimate purpose for a government to be able to tell its employees that certain information shouldn't be shared.
What most of us are bothered about is the way that the classification process is bandied about like a cheap rubber stamp with no justification or review, and worse how it's being used to cover up some pretty alarming (and probably illegal) things themselves.
Classification is a tool, you don't throw out the tool because it's misused sometimes (or even most of the time).
Ellsberg was shielded because he was reporting illegal activity by a government official.
What specific illegal conduct did Ellsberg report? My understanding is that he leaked classified documents about the Vietnam War because he felt the public was being misled and had a right to know. That doesn't seem so different from the justification Snowden has given (assuming he's telling the truth on that).
How was Ellsberg "shielded"? He was put on trial, and Nixon famously sent the plumbers to dig up dirt on him.
If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection.
I am just curious: don't you think that Ellsberg's actions had a positive effect on our society? I actually don't know anyone who with hindsite does not believe that what he did was in the public interest.
I think that the point is that whistle blowers put themselves in harms way because they believe that it is important for the public to know specific information.
This being the top comment on a thread about how HN's new golden boy, Snowden, is just another scumbag says a lot about what HN is now. We have had vapid ranting articles up voted for the last two days in some circle jerk because people who I assume are usually intelligent have temporarily lost all capacity for critical thought in some deluded quest to take down the US. My brother thinks he is taking down the government by not paying taxes but he is only slowly shooting himself in the foot. I am not downplaying the importance of proper oversight of intelligence.
Hmm. I do it all the time.