Snowdon is a dummy

AFR: How much of what Snowden has disclosed is legitimate whistle-blowing vs. the illegal release of top-secret information on legitimate and lawful intelligence gathering?

Gen. Alexander: Well, he’s not a whistleblower. A whistleblower would tell somebody that, “Hey, I’ve got an issue with this or that practice”. Our government gives concerned stakeholders many ways of blowing the whistle. They can go through the NSA General Counsel, they can go through the Inspector General. If they don’t trust anybody in that chain, they can go to Congress.

Snowden did none of these things. What he did was illegally steal classified information, betray our trust, and flee to a foreign country to release what he stole and defend his actions. And then he kept on leaking the data he had stolen and he is publicly trying to rationalise his decisions.

Make no mistake, what Snowden’s done is hugely illegal and only a fraction of the leaks have anything to do with Americans’ civil liberties. Here I’d encourage you to look at a summary of all the Snowden leaks published by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with The Brookings Institution.

According to this independent analysis: Snowden has leaked 32 times on our nation’s classified intelligence tools or methods; on nine occasions he leaked the overseas locations of intelligence bases; 25 times he has revealed the identities of foreign officials, governments and capabilities of interest to our intelligence agencies; on 14 instances he disclosed information about companies and governments that facilitate our intelligence activities; and 19 times he released information on technology products and platforms that NSA had been researching.

So Snowden claims he stole American national security secrets for benign reasons, but when you look at the Lawfare Institute’s analysis his leaks cover the whole gamut of what our nation’s foundational intelligence system is based on.

You can’t credibly believe that Snowden is actually doing this to raise awareness about American civil liberties and privacies, when only a tiny share of what he’s been disclosing relates to those issues.

new thred go to
.....define courage...
on my page under
philosophy, metaphysics,

"The oversight and compliance on these programs is greater than any other program in our government. It’s from within NSA by the general counsel, the inspector general, the oversight and compliance directorate; from the DNI’s general counsel and inspector general and civil liberties and privacy officer; by DoD’s inspector general and general counsel; by Department of Justice; by the White House; and by Congress, both committees."
"We protect civil liberties and privacy."

One year after Snowden, the government is defending – in not-so-plain sight – the 'paramount' power to spy on every call and email between you and your friends abroad
[...]
In two significant but almost-completely overlooked legal briefs filed last week, the US government defended the constitutionality of the Fisa Amendments Act, the controversial 2008 law that codified the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program. That law permits the government to monitor Americans' international communications without first obtaining individualized court orders or establishing any suspicion of wrongdoing.

The privacy rights of US persons in international communications are significantly diminished, if not completely eliminated, when those communications have been transmitted to or obtained from non-US persons located outside the United States.

well i will bite.
i did point out contradictions to your "facts" the links.

there is not a thing as self evident facts,

so it's up to you to prove your "facts"

state monopoly on violence, in political science and sociology, the concept that the state alone has the right to use or authorize the use of physical force. It is widely regarded as a defining characteristic of the modern state.

In his lecture Politics as a Vocation (1918), the German sociologist Max Weber defines the state as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Under feudalism, no lords, including the king, could claim a monopoly over the use of violence, since their vassals promised to serve them but remained free to exercise power in their fiefdoms. Moreover, the king and the landed nobility had to share power or compete with the Roman Catholic Church. The modern state, according to Weber, emerged by expropriating the means of political organization and domination, including violence, and by establishing the legitimacy of its rule.

As the use of the term legitimate underlines, this concept does not imply that the state is the only actor actually using violence but rather that it is the only actor that can legitimately authorize its use. The state can grant another actor the right to use violence without losing its monopoly, as long as it remains the only source of the right to use violence and that it maintains the capacity to enforce this monopoly. The state monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is also not refuted by the use of illegitimate violence. Criminal organizations may undermine order without being able to challenge the state monopoly and establish themselves as a parallel source of legitimate rule.

The state monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force can be challenged by a number of nonstate actors such as political insurgents or terrorists or by state actors such as the military forces claiming autonomy from the state.

Some scholars, however, diverge from Weber and, following the tradition set by Thomas Hobbes, instead argue that the ideal of the monopoly of violence concerns not only its control but also its use, such that the state is the sole actor that can legitimately wield violence except in case of immediate self-defense. Seen from this perspective, the state monopoly on violence can also be jeopardized by phenomena such as the growth of private security companies or organized crime.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1916738/state-monopoly-on-violence

i really don't giv a **** if it was illegal, at a time in us history vote was illegal to women and blacks. who writes the laws? the oppresser does.

did it help terrorist attack us? no, it helped them to evade us...

the us does illegal **** all the time

(Reuters) - A U.S. grand jury has indicted five Chinese military officers on charges of hacking American companies and stealing trade secrets, the toughest action taken by Washington so far to address cyber spying by China.

China denied the charges, saying they were "made up" and would damage trust between the two nations. The Chinese foreign ministry said it would suspend the activities of the Sino-U.S. Internet working group.

The indictments mark the first time the United States has filed charges against specific officials of foreign governments, accusing them of corporate cyber spying.

"When a foreign nation uses military or intelligence resources and tools against an American executive or corporation to obtain trade secrets or sensitive business information for the benefit of its state-owned companies, we must say, 'enough is enough,'" U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference.

The suspects targeted companies in the Pittsburg area in the nuclear power, metal and solar product industries. The companies included Alcoa Inc, Allegheny Technologies Inc, United States Steel Corp, Westinghouse Electric Co, U.S. subsidiaries of SolarWorld AG and a steel workers union, Department of Justice officials said.

The move "indicates that DOJ has 'smoking keyboards' and (is) willing to bring the evidence to a court of law and be more transparent," said Frank Cilluffo, head of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at the George Washington University.

American businesses have long urged the government to take action about cyber espionage from abroad, particularly by China.

Secret U.S. State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks traced major systems breaches to China, Reuters reported in 2011. One 2009 cable pinpointed attacks to a specific unit of China's People's Liberation Army.

Skeptics noted that U.S. authorities wouldn't be able to arrest those indicted as Beijing would not hand them over. Still, the move would prevent the individuals from traveling to the United States or other countries that have an extradition agreement with the United States.

"It won't slow China down," said Eric Johnson, dean of the business school at Vanderbilt University and an expert on cyber security issues.

Experts said the indictments would have some impact on those accused of hacking U.S. companies.

Stewart Baker, a former NSA attorney, said the hackers named in the indictments might have trouble getting jobs in China's private sector when they move on from employment with the People's Liberation Army.

"In the long run, it could even hurt your employability in China, because U.S. government is going to look askance at Chinese firms that hire former cyber spies," said Baker, a partner with Steptoe & Johnson LLP.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

FILED UNDER: U.S.POLITICSTECHMEDIACHINA
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[...]
Documents revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the National Security Administration contractor now in Russia, have revealed that the American government pried deep into the servers of Huawei, one of China’s most successful Internet and communications companies. The documents made clear that the N.S.A. was seeking to learn whether the company was a front for the People’s Liberation Army and whether it was interested in spying on American firms. But there was a second purpose: to get inside Huawei’s systems, and to use them to spy on its clients.
[...]

According to the Snowden documents, 300 German business people and politicians were/are spied on by NSA. Perhaps, because of their terrorist background

I am starting to wonder how free our news media is in fact!!!!