Snowdon is a dummy

I'm not going around in circles with you Frank. He was tortured therefore the trial was not fair. It's very simple. Now you can splutter and deny all you want much that's just how it is.

In Edward Snowden's archive on NSA spying activities around the world, there are numerous documents pertaining to the agency's operations in Germany and its cooperation with German agencies. SPIEGEL is publishing 53 of them, available as PDF files.

I thought Snowden and Greenwald said they kept the information which would help terrorist and wouldn't publish it (something like that). I thought that was bad enough, leaving it in the hands of those who are neither approved nor qualified to make those decisions, but now just anyone can download and read everything regardless of how it harms lives? I suppose you all think that is good thing. Horrible in my opinion.

WASHINGTON — A classified Pentagon report concludes that leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have set back U.S. efforts against terrorism, cybercrime, human trafficking and weapons proliferation, leaders of the House Intelligence Committee say.

A damage assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency indicates most of the estimated 1.7 million classified documents that officials say Snowden copied from NSA computers involve U.S. military operations, said committee Chairman Mike D. Rogers (R-Mich.) and the ranking Democrat, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.

Until now, the leaks have chiefly revealed NSA surveillance systems aimed at foreign governments and their leaders and at terrorism suspects in the U.S. and abroad. Military operations have largely escaped notice. But the NSA, which is part of the Pentagon, is both a combat support and intelligence agency.

The assessment, sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees Monday, described the preliminary conclusions of a task force set up to assess the impact of the leaks on the military

Well, there must have been something else because the UK government felt the need to remove some agents because of the Snowden files. A link was left the other day to that effect.

Ok, scratch that. Nevertheless unless we are not to believe Pentagon reports or congress or anyone is those capacities, then the stolen Snowden Files have had a negative impact on things other than the surveillance programs.

Has anything else happened in ... the UK in regards to Snowden or related events?

Agency violated its own procedures by retaining emails, investigatory powers tribunal rules in case brought forward following Edward Snowden revelations

GCHQ’s covert surveillance of two international human rights groups was illegal, the judicial tribunal responsible for handling complaints against the intelligence services has ruled.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

The PATRIOT Act allows for wiretaps of telephones without court order.

Cite?

Wikipedia refers to searched telephone records specifically in regard to the government not needing court orders: "Opponents of the law have criticized its authorization of ...the expanded use of National Security Letters, which allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order..."(Patriot Act, details.).

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

It doesn't authorize phone metadata collection.

Patriot Act Section 215: Access to records and other items under FISA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patriot_Act,_Title_II#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA

The only mention of phone metadata in that article is that the Second Court of Appeals ruled that the Patriot Act did not authorize the bulk collection of phone metadata.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

PRISM is the phone metadata collection program.

oralloy wrote:

I thought PRISM was something about recording everything on the internet.

"PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN.[5][6] The PRISM program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.[7] The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the Internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier,[8][9] and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things.[10]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29

Yeah, that's the phone metadata collection that Snowden revealed.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

The threat of abuse by the government of this enormous power that it granted to itself is too great to be accepted.

The threat would have been minimal with Congressional and judicial oversight of the programs.
But oh well. We'll learn to get along without such oversight.

The executive, legistative and judicial branches of this regimes are all violators of the Constitution. Expect more whistle-blowers to expose this regimes' machinations.