Edward Snowden and you: liberty or blissful ignorance?

What do you think about Snowden's actions?

  • It needed to be done - the government is overstepping its bounds.

    Votes: 25 92.6%
  • His actions were illegal -the programs are in place to combat crime and we don't need to fear them.

    Votes: 2 7.4%

  • Total voters
    27
  • Poll closed .
That's a total strawman, hence you are the one not making sense. Human life does not exists in sperm or unfertilized eggs. Those will naturally die of their own accord unless combined. A fertilized egg naturally becomes a full grown human barring an abortion or miscarriage.
 
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Life begins before fertilization. What's so magical about fertilization? There's no science, no real thought in your ideas. Just superstition.
 
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Life exists in spermatozoa and unfertilized eggs, so should masturbation and periods be banned too? You're not making a lot of sense.

Actually until fairly recently masturbation WAS considered a sin ... just saying ...
 
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Life begins before fertilization. What's so magical about fertilization? There's no science, no real thought in your ideas. Just superstition.

I already explained it above. Just because you choose to ignore that doesn't make it superstition. In fact what I posted was purely scientific. You should try to come up with a better argument if you want to continue this.
 
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No you didn't explain anything. You just made some statements, that ignore that life exists also in fertilized eggs and sperm. What makes that life less important than a fertilized egg? Unfertilized eggs and sperm can become human beings, too.
 
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And this relates to Snowden or PRISM exactly how?
 
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And this relates to Snowden or PRISM exactly how?

Didn't you hear? The NSA learned by using PRISM Snowden is pregnant, with some kind of parasyte, their baby, and wanted to force him to get rid of it, to get an abortion - many want Snowden, says Snowden, to keep and feed it, because it's vital, for some reason.

Question BN and Thrasher are basically asking is: would the NSA have acted differently if Snowden was a woman?

Capiche?
 
Back to topic with a quote?

"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." Frank Church, chairman of the select committee on intelligence after investigating the NSA in 1975.

I realise my last post on the topic may be too much speculation and conspiracy theory, but there is a very real danger: when people just accept what E. Snowden revealed and the government institutions note that the majority of people is willing to give up their privacy for an intrinsically unknown measure of additional security, the control that is in place now will erode. And even now, there is the question whether you trust the current generation of politicians to be able and willing to effectively supervise and limit the NSA and related agencies.

Also, one should not be fooled by the NSA only intentionally spying on the online activities of foreigners: agencies collaborate, and when the NSA spies on everyone outside the US and the GCHQ on everyone including US citizens, there is still full coverage.
 
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So Snowden is getting temporary asylum in Russia. I support Snowden, and I consider his actions to actually be quite patriotic, but it is amazing how the Putin regime has manged to spin this whole situation for their own propaganda purposes. For Snowden, it's a chance to further evade capture, but from the perspective of the Russian government, it is merely an opportunity for a good propaganda ploy. Putin is one of the worst offenders in the persecution of political dissidents and whistle blowers; just look up Sergei Magnitsky for a good recent example of this.
 
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Today's been an interesting "opinion article" in the local newspaper :

This data collection, the commentator wrote, is going against the EU (and German) laws of individual "data protection" ("Datenschutz").

Since the data collection ignores the EU laws, it does so as if the EU laws didn't exist at all.

And THAT is THE fundamental breach into ANY state or country : The laws of the countries of the European Union (and, especially, Germany, since Germany appears to have been the "primary target" of it all - are pushed away as if they didn't exist at all.

No laws exist. No states do exist. No countries exist - in terms of legislative etc. .
The "data collectors" do as if nothing in fact existed. No laws of protection - which is the ultimate breach expressing : No laws exist whatsoever. They collect anyway, regardless of *any* data protection laws.

It's all void by now. Why build a state on laws if these laws can be broken by any other country any other time ?

To say that this is a loss of respect towards the other countries - and towards individial persons especially, is an understatement.

But - the UNO and all of the other states just LIVED through respecting each other.
And each others' laws.
Without respect, there would be no reason left not to invate any other countey and claim its territory for one's own country.

And this has actually happened. A country virtually invaded another country - by declaring its peoples' laws as voind and collecting the data regardless.

In terms of Philosophy, this is a huge thing. The very fundament has been broken.
 
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That seems like a bit of an extreme interpretation. You could apply that logic to any form of spying, as it is all technically illegal.
 
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Well, that's how Philosophy goes : You scratch at the very fundamentals of life. And that's how (and why) all known natural sciences evolved from Philosophy.


Besides : It appears as if Microsoft helped quite a bit, too ...
 
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You can't make a law that extends beyond your border and have to enforce your laws on your own.

I agree it's wrong, though. It should be not just local thing but international treaty where any violators are pursued but it will never happen.
 
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The irony is that the US government asks us to understand their need for secrecy, harshly prosecuting whistleblowers like never before in history, while nonchalantly denying everyone on the planet the right to keep their own communications private.
 
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