Post by somethingimpromptu on Apr 2, 2016 16:47:02 GMT
I just saw a story on CNN, in passing, where Obama was criticizing the Turkish state's treatment of journalists. Now, obviously he's right-- the Turkish state is repressive, authoritarian, and terroristic, and its crimes are hardly limited to repressing journalists. But the hypocrisy of Obama criticizing other states for repressing journalists is just cringe-worthy.
Obama has used the Espionage Act more times than all previous administrations combined. He has made a regular policy of using it to block and punish government whistleblowers (people like Edward Snowden, but often on a much smaller scale), which was never its professed purpose. Obama also very often invokes the State Secrets privilege to limit the ability of journalists' and whistleblowers' to share information about secret programs that we never voted on, consented to, or were told about. Many Americans simply take the NSA's mass surveillance programs for granted at this point (I literally can't tell you how many times I've spoken-- even to left-leaning liberals-- who have given the argument that they "have nothing to hide, so it doesn't matter," and who continue to defend the NSA's recording of literally every digital communication by every American even when informed that studies have proven that this mass surveillance program has yet to prevent a terrorist attack that wouldn't have been prevented by more traditional, targeted surveillance means) and don't seem to realize how recent and disturbingly Orwellian this development really is.
This mass surveillance program is a prime example of a program that we still wouldn't know about if it hadn't been for government whistleblowers. In March 2013, James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence (head of the NSA) lied to Congress under oath. He was asked "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He said "no," unequivocally. Even the Senate Committee on Intelligence didn't know about these programs, and after lying under oath, Clapper is still the Director of National Intelligence-- that is something we should find deeply disturbing. It was only Edward Snowden's leaks that informed Americans that this surveillance was happening, and which brought these programs into public dialogue. And for this, Edward Snowden has been threatened and demonized, has been hunted by the CIA and FBI, has faced possible charges of treason (which would mean the death penalty) by the Obama administration, and has had little hope of anything more than a meaningless show-trial if he were to return to the US.
And this is just one case among many where Obama's administration has sought to silence the people who shed light on repressive policies and actions by the state which we were never notified about. This is just one of many ways in which Obama followed the Bush administration's lead, after campaigning on "change." And people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning may be the most prominent cases, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Clearly, if it were up to Obama, we would still be blissfully unaware that every time we send an e-mail, a text, a file-transfer, engage in a video/text chat, a phone call, etc., it is being recorded to an NSA database, and he is doing all he can to prevent journalists and whistleblowers from telling us about the next big secret program. I just needed to get this rant out of my system, because it really wound me up to hear him taking a moral high-ground on issues of freedom of speech. It's like if he criticized another state for warrantless, chargeless, evidenceless drone assassinations.
Obama has used the Espionage Act more times than all previous administrations combined. He has made a regular policy of using it to block and punish government whistleblowers (people like Edward Snowden, but often on a much smaller scale), which was never its professed purpose. Obama also very often invokes the State Secrets privilege to limit the ability of journalists' and whistleblowers' to share information about secret programs that we never voted on, consented to, or were told about. Many Americans simply take the NSA's mass surveillance programs for granted at this point (I literally can't tell you how many times I've spoken-- even to left-leaning liberals-- who have given the argument that they "have nothing to hide, so it doesn't matter," and who continue to defend the NSA's recording of literally every digital communication by every American even when informed that studies have proven that this mass surveillance program has yet to prevent a terrorist attack that wouldn't have been prevented by more traditional, targeted surveillance means) and don't seem to realize how recent and disturbingly Orwellian this development really is.
This mass surveillance program is a prime example of a program that we still wouldn't know about if it hadn't been for government whistleblowers. In March 2013, James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence (head of the NSA) lied to Congress under oath. He was asked "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He said "no," unequivocally. Even the Senate Committee on Intelligence didn't know about these programs, and after lying under oath, Clapper is still the Director of National Intelligence-- that is something we should find deeply disturbing. It was only Edward Snowden's leaks that informed Americans that this surveillance was happening, and which brought these programs into public dialogue. And for this, Edward Snowden has been threatened and demonized, has been hunted by the CIA and FBI, has faced possible charges of treason (which would mean the death penalty) by the Obama administration, and has had little hope of anything more than a meaningless show-trial if he were to return to the US.
And this is just one case among many where Obama's administration has sought to silence the people who shed light on repressive policies and actions by the state which we were never notified about. This is just one of many ways in which Obama followed the Bush administration's lead, after campaigning on "change." And people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning may be the most prominent cases, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Clearly, if it were up to Obama, we would still be blissfully unaware that every time we send an e-mail, a text, a file-transfer, engage in a video/text chat, a phone call, etc., it is being recorded to an NSA database, and he is doing all he can to prevent journalists and whistleblowers from telling us about the next big secret program. I just needed to get this rant out of my system, because it really wound me up to hear him taking a moral high-ground on issues of freedom of speech. It's like if he criticized another state for warrantless, chargeless, evidenceless drone assassinations.
