I don't mean to be cynical, but a mere petition is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a government agency that is commiting widespread breach of privacy. A petition will not be respected. It's an OK start, but it will be essentially meaningless.
If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace.
The ease of an action corresponds to what it can achieve. Do you want change? Show the government how badly you want it. Fight for your rights. Don't just click a link.
They've demonstrated they don't care for the voice of the people. So change the domain to something they do care about.
A more effective list of tactics (for the long term):
1. poison databases; feed bogus information to surveillance systems at all levels, do this as a matter of course, make it pop culture.
2. build darknets: for instance wifi nodes disconnected from the internet that multiple communities use as a dropbox and rendezvous point ( a linux box, a solar cell, some git magic (or UUCP/Usenet for the old school feel ), and you have something that exists beyond the knowledge of the network ) for extra kicks confine it to only a few locations and times. Or build entire networks air-gapped from the internet; wire your neighborhood and make your own media.
3. If everybody's an informant, make a game of it. Rat out your enemies to the authorities, better yet rat out the informants as rabble rousers...
4. Get serious; break into secret databases, copy them and spread them around.
5. Identify effective advocates of the national security state and neutralize them. But only the effective ones. If you're doing the job right the 10 people within the NSA who are politically adept and technically competent should be in jail for child pornography by this time next year. Any mid-level member of the intelligence community who isn't regularly getting hit with bogus charges and stupid anonymous pranks is probably grossly incompetent.
6. If you know anyone who works in the intelligence community, shame them socially; ask them why they are making the USA into East Germany.
I suggest everyone get a copy of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and read it. It's a fun read, and is a really good basic outline for how to dismantle a tyrannical regime from the ground up.
If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace.
Do you have any backups for that? I mean, any historical proof that rioting will make change?
You know, Tunisia went on a relatively peaceful revolution and now we have less freedom and more problems/unemployment. It's even worse for countries where the revolution is violent.
Having lived that experience, I'll be against rioting/civil disobedience any time and for any cause.
Want to make change? Educate people. nothing else.
As another example, the U.S. is actually on its second government, not its first.
After the American Revolution we setup a government under the "Articles of Confederation". To put it bluntly, this new government sucked and was useless.
A convention was held to suggest improvements for the Articles; they decided instead to do it over again and propose a government that could actually stand the test of time.
The framers of this new Constitution then had to convince the rest of the country to adopt this different form of government. In the process of this debate and feedback it was decided to further specify Amendments that became known as the Bill of Rights to satisfy some reluctant states.
All of this happened peacefully.
The United States of America peacefully transitioned to its second form of government on March 4, 1789.
It hasn't been all peaceful, all the time, after ratification, but it should be in my opinion. We've managed to achieve so much as a nation with non-violent resistance and protest, there's no reason not to do that here to push for transparency.
Ain't going to happen, because PRISM simply doesn't make the lives of 99+% people significantly worse. People riot when there's high unemployment, because that has a big impact on their daily lives. We don't have enough info about PRISM to correctly evaluate what impact does it have on our lives.
Do you have any backups for that? I mean, any historical proof that rioting will make change?
Then you say this:
Want to make change? Educate people. nothing else.
Your teachers must have omitted teaching you about the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War protests. And those are only two examples where protesting and rioting actually made a huge difference.
This is foolish. Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law, Gandhi did the same and freed India from the British empire. And today we're much more networked and able to communicate directly, P2P, without the media or government as message passer. Our system works remarkably well, considering how poorly it works ;) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater- these government agencies can be reined in, they live on government budgets every year just like the rest of government. It is the End of privacy, and that's okay.. But as an aside, I reckon surveillance equipment should also gaze back at the Police State itself. Google glass and Steve Mann's ideas about "sousveillance" will hopefully continue to evolve, they're all much smarter people than me. Every gov official should be under 24-7 video and email surveillance ;). i think a good rule is, the more power you have the more you have to be spied on constantly by the people.
Civil disobedience is a subset of nonviolent protest. The point is you actually have to do something that forces the state's hand. Not sit at home and sign a petition.
For example shutting down a city's infrastructure indefinitely via mass-scale physical sit ins is likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition. Labor strikes en masse are likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition. _INSERT_REAL-WORLD_ACTION_HERE_ is likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition.
If the state knows that it can violate its subjects with the worst backlash being an internet petition, guess what -- the state will continue violating its subjects indefinitely.
I think non-violent protests only work when the state (or entity you are protesting against) is forced to negotiate. By that I mean all these non violent protests occured at a time during violent protests. Martin Luther King Jnr was given negotiating power because the State preferred a non violent entity over the black panthers and other militaristic groups.
If there is no threat of repercussion, why would any entity bother negotiating with you?
Actually, the national security budgets are remarkably insulated from the rest of the government, and there is plenty of evidence that the CIA at the very least, has not been shy about creating other sources of income to fund it's off the books activities.
But yes, transparency should go up as well as down.
> Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law
The was Malcolm X though. The threat of militant and violent backlash was there and served like a booster for the non-violent factions. Otherwise look at Occupy movement. How many bankers are in jail? None. There _has_ to be a background and credible threat to the system so it would consider the peaceful alternative as a pretty good deal.
>This is foolish. Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law, Gandhi did the same and freed India from the British empire.
What ridiculous nonsense. King would have gone nowhere had it not been for the Black Panthers blowing shit up (he even mentioned "the blast heard round the world" in one of his speeches, so he knew this). Likewise Gandhi would have just been ignored or killed had it not been for courageous revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh.
The truth is, a proper revolution requires violence (or the threat of it) and a peaceful side. The violent part is requires to force actual change and the peaceful side is needed so the targeted party have someone to give the power over too. The British empire would never have handed the reigns to someone like Bhagat Singh. But once Singh and co had made holding onto India simply not worth it, they gladly stepped back and claimed it was because of Gandhi. This way, the next time they're doing some awful the people will hopefully think they can be like Gandhi and they would be free to just ignore/kill them.
Governments don't want people to understand just how effective violence actually is (if violence isn't effective why do governments use it so much and try to maintain a monopoly on it?) because they don't like to lose.
"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."
"In a rare public filing in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Justice Department today urged continued secrecy for a 2011 FISC opinion that found the National Security Agency's surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act to be unconstitutional. Significantly, the surveillance at issue was carried out under the same controversial legal authority that underlies the NSA’s recently-revealed PRISM program." [1]
There is a survivorship bias when looking at the history of activism.
It looks like it takes extremely high effort to achieve anything worthwhile: look at what the labor and civil rights movements had to endure, for instance.
But, there are plenty of examples of other change that was achieved at lower cost. The environmental movement, for instance, generally did not face levels of institutional rejection and physical violence that labor and civil rights did. Why? Because they had a message that a broad swath of Americans could believe in. Regardless of party, ideology, or race, no one wants their kids to get sick from pollution.
So, the first steps in activism should be the easiest steps. They might work! And if they don't, having tried them creates the moral authority for more aggressive tactics.
Movements that jump straight to civic unrest are typically rejected by the broader American culture. Most people highly value law and order, and are only willing to tolerate departures when they think it's absolutely necessary.
Talk is cheap. What sort of riot do you plan on participating in? The sort where you surround a government building, or the kind where you just trash whatever comes to hand?
True, but let us give them the chance to ignore yet another petition and truly prove to us that we as citizens have little say in the status quo in the government that is supposed to represent all its people. More fuel for the fire couldn't hurt eh?
How many more times do they need to prove this to us? "Well, I know he punched me in the face, kicked me in the balls and raped my girlfriend in front of me but I'm still not convinced he wants trouble".
You need to have been convicted to receive a pardon, the petition should be not to prosecute.
Despite the semantics, this is a good idea to let the administration know that a lot of citizens do not consider what Snowden did to be a crime and support his actions.
Nixon received a "full, free, and absolute pardon" from Gerald Ford [0], despite not actually having even stood trial, let alone having been convicted.
In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Garland that the pardon power "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment."
A petition not to prosecute, even if it was granted, would be worthless. If someone's pardoned, then they can't be prosecuted again. If they're just not-prosecuted, they can easily be prosecuted later.
This won't do any good. White House policy is to not comment directly on pardons, but to direct such petitioners to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (http://www.justice.gov/pardon/).
There's a lot of negativity in this thread, so I'll simply say two things.
1) If you do nothing, nothing will change. Protesting might not be the best choice, but it's better than no action at all. This petition will change absolutely nothing, especially if it only reaches the minimum required signatures. There are 311,000,000 people in the United States which means a menial 100,000 signatures accounts for 0.0003215434% of the total population. Not even 0.01%.
2) Martin Luther King Jr changed the course of a nation with civil disobedience. To say it can't be done again is ignorant and foolish.
The sole purpose of these petitions is to collect mailing lists for people concerned about specific issues. Here is an example where I may not want to be associated with... though I guess they probably have access to my bank accounts, and taxes, and can see I donate to the EFF every year...
on a separate note, I really do worry about the well being of this guy.
I'm still making my mind up about what I think about the activities of Edward Snowden. (I was just reading some of the press coverage about him, especially the extensive story about him in The Guardian.) And I am on record here on HN sharing information about mass popular movements to fight tyranny
of tackling your concern about government data-gathering programs than posting White House petitions. If you like the petitions, share them in your social networks in which you see your friends, but discuss the real, powerful democracy hacker tools here.
Sign here to admit you are treasonous terrorist-loving scum who should be under constant surveillance by the NSA for the protection of all fine, upstanding, compliant 'merican citizens.
If it got that far I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed to have strong and compelling evidence of grave harm ... But cannot reveal it due to security concerns.
Isn't it a bit soon for this? We don't even know if he's released anything of substantial value. As I understand it Glenn Greenwald is retaining the "best" for later.
You're right that there is a certain paradox in what I wrote.
"If he has leaked something of value to America and the world then he should not be punished. But if he has leaked nothing of value then there was no need for it to be secret, and he should not be punished!"
I dunno. At the very least it would be nice to have the evidence out in full before jumping to conclusions.
I find it an oxymoron that you have to sign up for an account to a government website to sign a petition asking for them to stop invading my privacy. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
Web tools finally able to tip the balance of government more towards direct democracy rather than representative. Signed. eventually, these networked tools will threaten to snowball into actual political change, and their makers will shut them down. but it's pretty easy to make a clone once people have an expectation that this is how government should work.
There is no way this petition can succeed. The powers that be speak realpolitik, and you don't. It's just that, with easier worldwide media outlets, their secrecy is occasionally exposed for a brief while until we forget.
Go home. Get on with your life. If you're not already playing in the big leagues, there is literally nothing you can do.
It's a good start. If enough people sign, it will force the administration to answer the petition. Even if it doesn't push the administration to give a positive answer, it can help fuel more protests and actions.
It doesn't force anything. The petition can be completely ignored, some bullshit answer given, etc., etc. How many more ineffective petitions will you people piss away your time with before you understand it's just a distraction?
In the West Wing, a US TV Show that is no longer on air after 8 seasons, the White House communications director leaked to the press that the US had a military space shuttle. He leaked this so that astronauts on board a disabled shuttle could be rescued. In the TV show, the public generally agreed with what he did and treated him as a hero.
(This is where the relevant part comes into play)
Before the communications director was unceremoniously fired by the President, the President told the communications director:
"When you walk out of here, there'll be people out there, perhaps a great many, who'll think of you as a hero. I just don't for a moment want you thinking I'll be one of them."
(disclaimer/spoiler: The communications director was pardoned by the President after much deliberation on the President's part. This was mainly due to his very close friendship, and the fact that the communications director had a family on the way)
This seems like a bit much. Why not a petition not to prosecute him, or not to extradite him?
A blanket free-ride for any and all crimes just won't ever happen. What if he murdered several people along the way, let's say they weren't government employees or involved in PRISM at all, does that mean he should be pardoned for that? The language on this petition needs serious work to get real support, or to have a reasonable chance of being addressed.
"Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs."
If Edward Snowden murdered people that were not government employees or involved in PRISM, then that plainly would not be crimes related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs. If it was at all ambiguous, it could be argued in court.
Not necessarily, also, I was using an extreme example to make a point, I can imagine many scenarios where he killed a civilian "related to blowing the whistle," but since that obvious exaggeration failed to get my point across I'll move along.
women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children why won't someone think of the women and children women and children WOMEN AND CHILDREN women and children why aren't you crying yet
This should be read as an indictment of what the site has become, not just an example of it.
"Where's the petition to NOT pardon him!!"
I will do it. I will ragequit. This site is turning into a libertarian silicon valley version of freerepublic.
When you've found civilisation, America, in 1000 years or so you'll realise that autoritarianism works and that's why you've got it.
If we had a fascist government, everyone would be in prison except me. I'm sick of the police failing to do their job because they don't know that it IS: to provide a level playing field, that I can see, so I have no need or temptation to cheat in the first place. As an average HN reader, you know this is correct. Ever been pulled over for speeding on a road where everyone else gets away with worse? Until the state STOPS the bad guys having all the fun, you, the state, down to every beat cop, haven't done this. More government now. Much much much much more. Make 50% of the population into prison officers and cops if necessary. There'll be zero unemployment.
Well whaddya know. The great recession has caused Europeans to return to fascism. Way to go Dick Fuld(!)
@pg : either ban all politics from the site or deal with the fires of hell that start in 5 4 3 2 1
You'd think that the crowd who reads hacker news would understand that the data on Twitter, Facebook, and Google is not their own property.
You are not entitled to outrage over data you freely gave away.
And the NSA has had domestic phone metadata since the 1970's, the only thing different is the speed and scale.
The real focus should be on the guy who gave up state secrets and then defected to China. Did he make some kind of deal? There were a dozen better ways to handle the abuse he perceived at the NSA - he chose what was most convenient for him.
He does not get my respect, and he is certainly not a hero.
I don't mean to be cynical, but a mere petition is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a government agency that is commiting widespread breach of privacy. A petition will not be respected. It's an OK start, but it will be essentially meaningless.
If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace.
The ease of an action corresponds to what it can achieve. Do you want change? Show the government how badly you want it. Fight for your rights. Don't just click a link.
They've demonstrated they don't care for the voice of the people. So change the domain to something they do care about.
A more effective list of tactics (for the long term):
1. poison databases; feed bogus information to surveillance systems at all levels, do this as a matter of course, make it pop culture.
2. build darknets: for instance wifi nodes disconnected from the internet that multiple communities use as a dropbox and rendezvous point ( a linux box, a solar cell, some git magic (or UUCP/Usenet for the old school feel ), and you have something that exists beyond the knowledge of the network ) for extra kicks confine it to only a few locations and times. Or build entire networks air-gapped from the internet; wire your neighborhood and make your own media.
3. If everybody's an informant, make a game of it. Rat out your enemies to the authorities, better yet rat out the informants as rabble rousers...
4. Get serious; break into secret databases, copy them and spread them around.
5. Identify effective advocates of the national security state and neutralize them. But only the effective ones. If you're doing the job right the 10 people within the NSA who are politically adept and technically competent should be in jail for child pornography by this time next year. Any mid-level member of the intelligence community who isn't regularly getting hit with bogus charges and stupid anonymous pranks is probably grossly incompetent.
6. If you know anyone who works in the intelligence community, shame them socially; ask them why they are making the USA into East Germany.
7. Occupy
8. Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
Good idea. Overwhelm the system with the keywords they're flagging.
i.e., bomb. pentagon. drop-point. fertilizer. sarah jessica parker.
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I suggest everyone get a copy of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and read it. It's a fun read, and is a really good basic outline for how to dismantle a tyrannical regime from the ground up.
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Just curious, how old are you?
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If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace.
Do you have any backups for that? I mean, any historical proof that rioting will make change?
You know, Tunisia went on a relatively peaceful revolution and now we have less freedom and more problems/unemployment. It's even worse for countries where the revolution is violent.
Having lived that experience, I'll be against rioting/civil disobedience any time and for any cause.
Want to make change? Educate people. nothing else.
As another example, the U.S. is actually on its second government, not its first.
After the American Revolution we setup a government under the "Articles of Confederation". To put it bluntly, this new government sucked and was useless.
A convention was held to suggest improvements for the Articles; they decided instead to do it over again and propose a government that could actually stand the test of time.
The framers of this new Constitution then had to convince the rest of the country to adopt this different form of government. In the process of this debate and feedback it was decided to further specify Amendments that became known as the Bill of Rights to satisfy some reluctant states.
All of this happened peacefully.
The United States of America peacefully transitioned to its second form of government on March 4, 1789.
It hasn't been all peaceful, all the time, after ratification, but it should be in my opinion. We've managed to achieve so much as a nation with non-violent resistance and protest, there's no reason not to do that here to push for transparency.
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Ain't going to happen, because PRISM simply doesn't make the lives of 99+% people significantly worse. People riot when there's high unemployment, because that has a big impact on their daily lives. We don't have enough info about PRISM to correctly evaluate what impact does it have on our lives.
First you say this:
Do you have any backups for that? I mean, any historical proof that rioting will make change?
Then you say this:
Want to make change? Educate people. nothing else.
Your teachers must have omitted teaching you about the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War protests. And those are only two examples where protesting and rioting actually made a huge difference.
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Revolution in France in 1789. We don't learn history in school for nothing I hope.
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Pretty much every place that ever one it's independence did so through violence or the threat of violence (yes, India very much included).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unre...
Boston Tea Party?
This is foolish. Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law, Gandhi did the same and freed India from the British empire. And today we're much more networked and able to communicate directly, P2P, without the media or government as message passer. Our system works remarkably well, considering how poorly it works ;) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater- these government agencies can be reined in, they live on government budgets every year just like the rest of government. It is the End of privacy, and that's okay.. But as an aside, I reckon surveillance equipment should also gaze back at the Police State itself. Google glass and Steve Mann's ideas about "sousveillance" will hopefully continue to evolve, they're all much smarter people than me. Every gov official should be under 24-7 video and email surveillance ;). i think a good rule is, the more power you have the more you have to be spied on constantly by the people.
Civil disobedience is a subset of nonviolent protest. The point is you actually have to do something that forces the state's hand. Not sit at home and sign a petition.
For example shutting down a city's infrastructure indefinitely via mass-scale physical sit ins is likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition. Labor strikes en masse are likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition. _INSERT_REAL-WORLD_ACTION_HERE_ is likely to be much more effective than signing an internet petition.
If the state knows that it can violate its subjects with the worst backlash being an internet petition, guess what -- the state will continue violating its subjects indefinitely.
I think non-violent protests only work when the state (or entity you are protesting against) is forced to negotiate. By that I mean all these non violent protests occured at a time during violent protests. Martin Luther King Jnr was given negotiating power because the State preferred a non violent entity over the black panthers and other militaristic groups.
If there is no threat of repercussion, why would any entity bother negotiating with you?
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Actually, the national security budgets are remarkably insulated from the rest of the government, and there is plenty of evidence that the CIA at the very least, has not been shy about creating other sources of income to fund it's off the books activities.
But yes, transparency should go up as well as down.
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> Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law
The was Malcolm X though. The threat of militant and violent backlash was there and served like a booster for the non-violent factions. Otherwise look at Occupy movement. How many bankers are in jail? None. There _has_ to be a background and credible threat to the system so it would consider the peaceful alternative as a pretty good deal.
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>This is foolish. Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law, Gandhi did the same and freed India from the British empire.
What ridiculous nonsense. King would have gone nowhere had it not been for the Black Panthers blowing shit up (he even mentioned "the blast heard round the world" in one of his speeches, so he knew this). Likewise Gandhi would have just been ignored or killed had it not been for courageous revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh.
The truth is, a proper revolution requires violence (or the threat of it) and a peaceful side. The violent part is requires to force actual change and the peaceful side is needed so the targeted party have someone to give the power over too. The British empire would never have handed the reigns to someone like Bhagat Singh. But once Singh and co had made holding onto India simply not worth it, they gladly stepped back and claimed it was because of Gandhi. This way, the next time they're doing some awful the people will hopefully think they can be like Gandhi and they would be free to just ignore/kill them.
Governments don't want people to understand just how effective violence actually is (if violence isn't effective why do governments use it so much and try to maintain a monopoly on it?) because they don't like to lose.
I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean we should be violent. I specifically said civil disobedience because I meant non-violent protest.
Just to be clear, which law was it that you think they broke?
I'd happily agree what the NSA did was just as wrong as, say, making it to easy to get mortgages. But the law and morality don't always agree.
"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."
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"In a rare public filing in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Justice Department today urged continued secrecy for a 2011 FISC opinion that found the National Security Agency's surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act to be unconstitutional. Significantly, the surveillance at issue was carried out under the same controversial legal authority that underlies the NSA’s recently-revealed PRISM program." [1]
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...
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Taxation without representation.
Personally, I think that anyone against this should show a civil disobedience by refusing to pay taxes.
Exactly. The FISA court probably ok'd it, which makes it legal (as far as that goes).
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I'd understand if you wanted to do additional actions that can help.
But signing this petition takes 30 seconds and is useful. I urge you to consider it.
Citation needed that it's even remotely useful because I've only ever seen evidence to the contrary.
> If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience.
How do you define "to riot", and "civil disobedience". They sound mutually exclusive to me.
The 'civil' in 'civil disobedience' refers to disobeying the civil government, not disobeying politely.
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A riot where you obey the authorities isn't much of a riot.
> The ease of an action corresponds to what it can achieve.
Well put.
There is a survivorship bias when looking at the history of activism.
It looks like it takes extremely high effort to achieve anything worthwhile: look at what the labor and civil rights movements had to endure, for instance.
But, there are plenty of examples of other change that was achieved at lower cost. The environmental movement, for instance, generally did not face levels of institutional rejection and physical violence that labor and civil rights did. Why? Because they had a message that a broad swath of Americans could believe in. Regardless of party, ideology, or race, no one wants their kids to get sick from pollution.
So, the first steps in activism should be the easiest steps. They might work! And if they don't, having tried them creates the moral authority for more aggressive tactics.
Movements that jump straight to civic unrest are typically rejected by the broader American culture. Most people highly value law and order, and are only willing to tolerate departures when they think it's absolutely necessary.
If you want results, riot in the streets.
Talk is cheap. What sort of riot do you plan on participating in? The sort where you surround a government building, or the kind where you just trash whatever comes to hand?
There is certainly more you can do, specifically non-violent ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk1XbyFv51k http://beautifultrouble.org/
True, but let us give them the chance to ignore yet another petition and truly prove to us that we as citizens have little say in the status quo in the government that is supposed to represent all its people. More fuel for the fire couldn't hurt eh?
Besides it's summer time…
How many more times do they need to prove this to us? "Well, I know he punched me in the face, kicked me in the balls and raped my girlfriend in front of me but I'm still not convinced he wants trouble".
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Don't just click a link, but still click the link!
They are cunning and you should be above it.
Or use Bitcoin exclusively instead of the USD.
Have to put your full name in to sign (I did). Ominous captcha: http://i.imgur.com/P0Ff5Kd.jpg
You need to have been convicted to receive a pardon, the petition should be not to prosecute.
Despite the semantics, this is a good idea to let the administration know that a lot of citizens do not consider what Snowden did to be a crime and support his actions.
Nixon received a "full, free, and absolute pardon" from Gerald Ford [0], despite not actually having even stood trial, let alone having been convicted.
[0]: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26847.html
It's not clear if this would have stood up in court, since Nixon was never prosecuted.
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In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Garland that the pardon power "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment."
A petition not to prosecute, even if it was granted, would be worthless. If someone's pardoned, then they can't be prosecuted again. If they're just not-prosecuted, they can easily be prosecuted later.
It's also much less clear a statement, as there can be other reasons not to prosecute (lack of evidence, for instance).
This won't do any good. White House policy is to not comment directly on pardons, but to direct such petitioners to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (http://www.justice.gov/pardon/).
See eg. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-full-pardon-..., a past pardon petition.
There's a lot of negativity in this thread, so I'll simply say two things.
1) If you do nothing, nothing will change. Protesting might not be the best choice, but it's better than no action at all. This petition will change absolutely nothing, especially if it only reaches the minimum required signatures. There are 311,000,000 people in the United States which means a menial 100,000 signatures accounts for 0.0003215434% of the total population. Not even 0.01%.
2) Martin Luther King Jr changed the course of a nation with civil disobedience. To say it can't be done again is ignorant and foolish.
It is the government that should be petitioning the public and the planet for a pardon.
That would be an interesting world to live in.
The sole purpose of these petitions is to collect mailing lists for people concerned about specific issues. Here is an example where I may not want to be associated with... though I guess they probably have access to my bank accounts, and taxes, and can see I donate to the EFF every year...
on a separate note, I really do worry about the well being of this guy.
No, it isn't.
I'm still making my mind up about what I think about the activities of Edward Snowden. (I was just reading some of the press coverage about him, especially the extensive story about him in The Guardian.) And I am on record here on HN sharing information about mass popular movements to fight tyranny
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html
of tackling your concern about government data-gathering programs than posting White House petitions. If you like the petitions, share them in your social networks in which you see your friends, but discuss the real, powerful democracy hacker tools here.
It may as well read:
Sign here to admit you are treasonous terrorist-loving scum who should be under constant surveillance by the NSA for the protection of all fine, upstanding, compliant 'merican citizens.
They apparently already think that about us, so why not put it on the line.
When we say "put your John Hancock" on it, there's a reason...
Fine with me. Hell, petition to award Snowden the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.
You already potentially are. That is why the US gov spies industrially on its own people.
Nah, they know that the people who'd sign a petition like this aren't a threat whatsoever.
I don't understand your comment. Are you suggesting it's stupid to sign this petition because doing so is asking for trouble?
Thanks for creating this. Signed.
How many others dare to let the administration know your opinion about transparency?
Should submit it with many public figures public email address: zuck@fb.com etc...
Please sign this petition now.
Upvoting and discussion on HN is important, but if 50% of the people who read this take 30 seconds to sign the petition, it could truly help.
Why can't I login with my Google or Facebook accounts? :-)
lol
We're going to have to go to the streets to do this. This is something where a government needs to see physical people to be swayed.
A trial would be FAR better for everyone, at least if it happened openly (which it wouldn't)
Imagine the US Government having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this disclosure caused "exceptionally grave damage to US national security."
If it got that far I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed to have strong and compelling evidence of grave harm ... But cannot reveal it due to security concerns.
Show support and solidarity. I submitted this about changing GitHub avatars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850659
Isn't it a bit soon for this? We don't even know if he's released anything of substantial value. As I understand it Glenn Greenwald is retaining the "best" for later.
If his leak was not of particular value, then he is more deserving of punishment?
This would have a chilling effect on leaking, to say the least. Miscalculating the public's capacity to care should not increase your sentence.
You're right that there is a certain paradox in what I wrote.
"If he has leaked something of value to America and the world then he should not be punished. But if he has leaked nothing of value then there was no need for it to be secret, and he should not be punished!"
I dunno. At the very least it would be nice to have the evidence out in full before jumping to conclusions.
No, because by the time they have to post a response, the dust will have settled.
I find it an oxymoron that you have to sign up for an account to a government website to sign a petition asking for them to stop invading my privacy. Maybe I'm just being cynical.
Web tools finally able to tip the balance of government more towards direct democracy rather than representative. Signed. eventually, these networked tools will threaten to snowball into actual political change, and their makers will shut them down. but it's pretty easy to make a clone once people have an expectation that this is how government should work.
There is no way this petition can succeed. The powers that be speak realpolitik, and you don't. It's just that, with easier worldwide media outlets, their secrecy is occasionally exposed for a brief while until we forget. Go home. Get on with your life. If you're not already playing in the big leagues, there is literally nothing you can do.
To everyone saying the petition is useless:
It's a good start. If enough people sign, it will force the administration to answer the petition. Even if it doesn't push the administration to give a positive answer, it can help fuel more protests and actions.
It doesn't force anything. The petition can be completely ignored, some bullshit answer given, etc., etc. How many more ineffective petitions will you people piss away your time with before you understand it's just a distraction?
In the West Wing, a US TV Show that is no longer on air after 8 seasons, the White House communications director leaked to the press that the US had a military space shuttle. He leaked this so that astronauts on board a disabled shuttle could be rescued. In the TV show, the public generally agreed with what he did and treated him as a hero.
(This is where the relevant part comes into play)
Before the communications director was unceremoniously fired by the President, the President told the communications director:
"When you walk out of here, there'll be people out there, perhaps a great many, who'll think of you as a hero. I just don't for a moment want you thinking I'll be one of them."
(disclaimer/spoiler: The communications director was pardoned by the President after much deliberation on the President's part. This was mainly due to his very close friendship, and the fact that the communications director had a family on the way)
I would sign the petition to pardon Edward Snowden but to create an account they require an email address and I didn't want that to be tracked.
www.hushmail.com
I see signatures growing at steady clip, I am happy. This witch hunt where rapist are walking and decent people get locked up is not right.
Mark Zuckerberg should apologize for calling the press reports stemming from Snowden's actions "outrageous".
This seems like a bit much. Why not a petition not to prosecute him, or not to extradite him?
A blanket free-ride for any and all crimes just won't ever happen. What if he murdered several people along the way, let's say they weren't government employees or involved in PRISM at all, does that mean he should be pardoned for that? The language on this petition needs serious work to get real support, or to have a reasonable chance of being addressed.
"Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs."
If Edward Snowden murdered people that were not government employees or involved in PRISM, then that plainly would not be crimes related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs. If it was at all ambiguous, it could be argued in court.
Not necessarily, also, I was using an extreme example to make a point, I can imagine many scenarios where he killed a civilian "related to blowing the whistle," but since that obvious exaggeration failed to get my point across I'll move along.
This is the perfect distillation of everything that is right and hopeful and beautiful about the internet.
This petition has less of a chance than the one about building a death star.
It's a trap by the NSA!
A pardon implies that someone broke the law. This isn't the case here.
Don't you have to be convicted first before you can be pardoned?
Why would it be only a one day partition. One day to reach 100,000.
Believe it's a month long.
One month.
My mistake, thanks.
If you sign the petition, your name goes on another list, too. ;)
Firefox can't find the server at petitions.whitehouse.gov.
Like I'm actually going to sign that...
Please fix the typo "a a full"...
women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children why won't someone think of the women and children women and children WOMEN AND CHILDREN women and children why aren't you crying yet
(referred to this thread -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846391)
(i'll keep posting this, enjoy)
Don't worry, this means an awful lot to many out here, even in America
This should be read as an indictment of what the site has become, not just an example of it.
"Where's the petition to NOT pardon him!!"
I will do it. I will ragequit. This site is turning into a libertarian silicon valley version of freerepublic.
When you've found civilisation, America, in 1000 years or so you'll realise that autoritarianism works and that's why you've got it.
If we had a fascist government, everyone would be in prison except me. I'm sick of the police failing to do their job because they don't know that it IS: to provide a level playing field, that I can see, so I have no need or temptation to cheat in the first place. As an average HN reader, you know this is correct. Ever been pulled over for speeding on a road where everyone else gets away with worse? Until the state STOPS the bad guys having all the fun, you, the state, down to every beat cop, haven't done this. More government now. Much much much much more. Make 50% of the population into prison officers and cops if necessary. There'll be zero unemployment.
Well whaddya know. The great recession has caused Europeans to return to fascism. Way to go Dick Fuld(!)
@pg : either ban all politics from the site or deal with the fires of hell that start in 5 4 3 2 1
Hi there NSA readers, keep it up.
Why not just stand up and cool off? The focus of the story is privacy on the internet, and predictably it gets huge play on this website.
You'd think that the crowd who reads hacker news would understand that the data on Twitter, Facebook, and Google is not their own property.
You are not entitled to outrage over data you freely gave away.
And the NSA has had domestic phone metadata since the 1970's, the only thing different is the speed and scale.
The real focus should be on the guy who gave up state secrets and then defected to China. Did he make some kind of deal? There were a dozen better ways to handle the abuse he perceived at the NSA - he chose what was most convenient for him.
He does not get my respect, and he is certainly not a hero.
> This site is turning into a libertarian silicon valley version of freerepublic
GOOD!