Subj : Re: Clandestine activity is a holy cow of democracy To : Lee Lofaso From : alexander koryagin Date : Tue Jul 30 2013 18:44:27 Hi, Lee Lofaso! I read your message from 29.07.2013 23:30 about Clandestine activity is a holy cow of democracy. ak>> Anyway, Snowden did his best. LL> Snowden swore a national security oath. Snowden violated that oath LL> by leaking information to others, ovbiously without authorization LL> from his superiors. That is called treason, punishable by death. LL> However, our president, being a nice guy, has promised the LL> Russians, as well as the rest of the world, that Uncle Sam has a LL> soft heart, and promised not execute the traitor. Freedom has never been archived without treason of the oppressive regime. Because, when fighters for freedom overthrow a legitimate, but oppressive power they commit an act of high treason. And naturally, they were often hanged, shot etc. Lincoln was a traitor for the slaveholding society that brought him up. French revolution had executed the king and queen. No doubt it was an act of treason. In other words if the state authority does ugly things it cannot be stopped without treason. Another matter is - who are those people for whom the treason is done? If the treason is made for the world it is great; if for money, and many people suffered -- it is a dirty trick. ak>> The state must NOT have full control of its citizens. LL> That is not the issue. Every state has secrets to keep. Those who LL> swear a national security oath are sworn to keep those secrets. LL> Snowden swore a national security oath, and subsequently broke that LL> oath. Therefore, Snowden is a traitor to his country. It depends on the point of view. For some people he is a traitor, but for some he is saving freedom. It can happen that in future an underground resistance and democracy can be one thing. Such things happened in the past. That's why it is an extremely bad idea to create mechanism for rooting out underground resistance completely. Just in case any democratic society must preserve some "woods" where Robin Hoods could hide and fight. ak>> The state must not have power to suppress all clandestine ak>> activity. LL> Again, that is not the issue. Every state has secrets. And some LL> secrets must be protected. Especially secrets concerning national LL> security. Snowden swore a national security oath. Snowden violated LL> that oath. Snowden is a traitor. Snowden defends Holy cow of democracy - freedom, the possibility not to be traced everywhere and every time. Without such a freedom, freedom can come to an end at some pretty day. People don't understand that a free society must imply possibility of resistance. If everything is under control no real resistance can exist - we begin see it in Russia now. ak>> The state must not develop such technical instruments that make ak>> clandestine activity impossible. LL> The state has a duty and an obligation to do whatever it takes to LL> protect itself and its citizens in the name of national security. LL> That includes developing technical instruments that make LL> clandestine activity possible. You probably didn't read the place where I said that there is no guarantee that an oppressive regime cannot hijack power. Well, abstractly, I retell my story in other words, of a movie script: The US state security organization has made a robot-terminator who has to kill all the underground opposition and criminals. But in some time oligarchs and moneybags pay some money to elect their candidates for the presidency, senate etc, to make themselves more powerful and rich. People tries to organize resistance, but after coming to power the moneybags order the terminator to eliminate all democratic opposition, and it will be easy done because the state knows all about all and has a necessary totalitarian mechanism to suppress any underground activity. ak>> Because it is a matter of democracy survival. LL> It is a matter of survival, not just of democracy, but also of the LL> human race. Just think what would happen if terrorists had the LL> means to develop weapons of mass destruction, or even nuclear LL> bombs. It would be not only bye-bye Moscow, but also bye-bye world. Such a spying technology that was disclosed by Snowden doesn't allow to prevent terrors acts! Maximum it can help trace terrorists after a committed terror attack. Or it can provoke a young man to do a terror act and then arrest him and his friends before the attack. Terrorism can be killed only the same way how it was born! The US people must understand why Arabs that were so far from terrorism until WWII became so close to terrorism after the war. The reason is simple -- great injustice. So, the remedy against Arab terrorism is justice, not spying on all the people around the world. ak>> Suppose, the state controls its people to such an extent, that it ak>> knows all people connections. This means that a member of ak>> clandestine organization cannot hide anywhere among his friends, ak>> acquaintances and even people with whom he once had a phone talk. LL> Don't be silly. Maxwell Smart never left home without his shoe LL> phone. I've already said that system is not able to prevent terror attacks. So, calling it an instrument against terror attacks is a foolish idea. If Al Qaeda has a nuclear bomb it will blow it up despite the fact that that Americans are kept under surveillance. The possibility to be tracked after the attack scares them not. LL> Allowing terrorists and bad guys to run and hide is not an option. LL> As George W. Bush said, we have a War on Terror to fight! You heard LL> that? We must make war on a verb! En garde! Ha-ha. And he waged war against poor Afghanistan, although Bin Laden was in his cozy sweet home in Pakistan. And Bush declared that Talibs are terrorists although they had never done any terror acts at that time. Actually there were hundreds of terrorists, but then became millions. Bye, Lee! Alexander Koryagin fido7.debate 2013 --- FIDOGATE 5.1.7ds * Origin: Pushkin's BBS (2:5020/2140.2) .