Hillary Clinton asserted at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “stole very important information that has unfortunately fallen into a lot of the wrong hands.”
She seemed to be darkly intimating that the information Snowden gave to journalists in Hong Kong before he was granted asylum in Moscow also ended up with the Chinese and/or Russian governments.
But that conclusion is entirely unsupported by the evidence; it’s a political smear that even the most alarmist Obama administration intelligence officials have not asserted as fact.
As Snowden has repeatedly explained, after turning over copies of the heavily encrypted files to reporters, he destroyed his own before he left Hong Kong.
He did not take the files to Russia “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he told the New York Times in 2013. “There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times newspaper ran a front-page story in June asserting that Russia and China had “cracked the top-secret cache of files” that the paper, citing anonymous sources, claimed Snowden had brought with him to Moscow. But the story was thoroughly debunked and a video clip of the reporter acknowledging that “we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government” went viral.
Apparently, Clinton was engaging in similarly hyperbolic, unsupported scare tactics — that is, unless by “the wrong hands” she meant ours: journalists and the public.
Snowden’s attorney, ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner, was one of many who suggested as much on Twitter on Tuesday night:
@froomkin @Snowden Maybe she means the public?
— Ben Wizner (@benwizner) October 14, 2015
Government transparency advocate Daniel Schuman reached the same conclusion:
@froomkin By the wrong hands, of course, she means the public finding out about the gov'ts unlawful behavior.
— Daniel Schuman (@danielschuman) October 14, 2015
Or did she mean us?
@froomkin @the_intercept @Snowden the wrong hands according to #Hillary would be @ggreenwald and @laurapoitras
— Mike Hinton (@crakaveli) October 14, 2015
Snowden turned over his cache of documents to Intercept founding editors Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, and the result has been the exposure — to the public — of the extraordinarily expansive and invasive surveillance apparatus that the U.S. government had secretly built over the years.
In the U.S., laws have already been changed — if only a little. Europeans are balking at sending their data to U.S. servers. And surveillance and privacy are now major issues in the presidential campaign.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said during the debate that “Snowden played a very important role in educating the American people to the degree in which our civil liberties and our constitutional rights are being undermined.”
Sanders said Snowden should face a penalty, but that “what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration.” (That is also Snowden’s position.)
Sanders also said he would immediately shut down the warrantless domestic surveillance program that Snowden exposed. “I’d shut down what exists right now … that virtually every telephone call in this country ends up in a file at the NSA. That is unacceptable to me.”
Clinton’s comments on Snowden were flawed in more than one way. She also insisted, incorrectly, that he could have accomplished his goals by going through normal channels.
“He could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that,” she said.
But Snowden, as a contractor, was not covered by whistleblower protections. He did try going through established channels, but he said his concerns fell on deaf ears. And the response to his leaks has made abundantly clear that no one in his chain of command was the least bit interested in going public with the information.
Some Republicans were delighted with Clinton’s statements about Snowden — though their reasoning varied. Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer cheered Clinton on:
Good for Hillary on Snowden.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 14, 2015
Right-wing Clinton-haters found another angle of attack, comparing her response to Snowden with the accusations that her private email server was a security risk:
Clinton worried about Snowden info falling into wrong hands? What about your emails, Hillary? #DemDebate
— Michael Brown (@MichaelBrownUSA) October 14, 2015
Statements like Clintons assure that she will continue to allow the police-security state to run wild and out of control (except for exerting total control over the Exec branch) if we are so unfortunate to have the DIMwitted Party manage to elect her. A neocon fraud, dishonest, lying, scheming clown, who an’t even get the facts about the Snowden case correct, she is NOT QUALIFIED to be a candidate by virtue of having not a single locatable virtue (being a woman does not count, we can vote for Dr. Jill Stein—AGAIN).
Hillary Clinton asserted at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “stole very important information that has unfortunately fallen into a lot of the wrong hands.”
And quite possibly, her classified State Dept emails ended up “in the wrong hands”, in fact it is much more likely than anything Snowden carefully disclosed to responsible journalists (hint: Clinton is not a responsible government hack).
We send our best into exile (Snowden, Poitres, Applebaum, Greenwald) and our worst to Congress and the Exec (Obomber, Feinslime, Schumer, Clinton, most of the Dims and all of the Rethugs).
I think she means they weren’t her hands.
Sanders is not a socialist, he is a neo-socialist. IOW: a fascist. He voted for the bailout in 2008. Why would someone go against the desires of their constituency and vote to cover billions of dollars of bad bet private debt with pubic funds.
The debates would probably be closer to the truth if the candidates debated the cuel treatment of the dog by Foghornleghorn when he convinced bird that it was not a chicken hawk, or was it the dog was a chicken.
How can a 700 billion dollar get out of jail free card for banisters even remotely translate into a benefit to citizens paying the tab.
When yu vote ask the guy running the poll if there is anyway to connect your vote to to polling id. Ask if the vote can be audited. Then ask yourself why you’re wasting gas and time to participate in a meaningless task.
Clinton meant that they fell into the hands of journalists who made the crimes of the USG public to we who are spied upon. She is not fit for any other option, certainly not to be a candidate for POTUS, than retirement.
Snowden, Hero…the before and after staff of The Intercept, Hero’s All…does the NSA bother me? sure…what scares me the most?, Apple…Apple? come on, what?…a ton of money, off shore most likely, great brand recognition, great innovators and there is so much under the hood of the new OS that you have no idea what it’s doing, but it looks great…right?…read the logs that any computer produces, these will show that the OS knows more about you than the NSA or Google…follow the money, the NSA wears rags compared to computer companies pin-striped suits…HRC was very wise in owning her own server, she had the money to do it…follow the money…it would be nice to see Mr. Showden come home as a free man, it would also be nice to see a postage stamp with his face on it but in the real world(?)………
Sanders chose his words carefully: “Snowdon played a very important role in educating the American people to the degree in which our civil liberties and our constitutional rights are being undermined.”
I suspect Sanders believes that Snowdon acted as a “whistleblower” when he revealed the extensive surveillance of Americans within our national borders but may have turned into a “traitor” when he exposed our nation’s post-9/11 foreign surveillance and spying. It is this distinction that is often lost in most discussions, whether pro or con, concerning Snowdon.
Who the frack cares. People want GMO labels, environmental responsibility, a tax on Wall St, extend pubic education thru college, end to usury; but as to Snowden – who the hell cares.
If the FBI is investigating Clinton’s emails, the FBI must also investigate the case where FBI agents themselves were material witnesses to the Bush Torture Program. Anything less could be viewed as a federal Hatch Act violation.
This is not even circumstantial evidence, FBI agents witnessed the Bush torture program with their own eyes. Instead if arresting the torturer architects and interrogators, the FBI walked away essentially throwing innocent torture victims to the wolves. In the Bush case they have solid evidence of eyewitness FBI agents.
How is Snowden’s crime any worse than Hillary’s email crime? The results are the same.
When our intelligence and national security agencies were created the 9th Amendment and Supremacy Clause [Article VI] of the U.S. Constitution was the “supreme law of the land” that every intelligence official and contractors, like Snowden, swore supreme loyalty.
The American loyalty oath, oath of office, is an indirect oath – the oath is not to the nation directly, not to the people directly and not to national security directly. The Framers of the Constitution believed that following the constitutional rule of law was the best way to protect the American people and national security.
In other words our intelligence and national agencies don’t have authority to violate the U.S. Constitution. Snowden witnessed disloyal supervisors within his agency betraying that supreme loyalty oath that they swore to uphold. Snowden could have leaked far more damaging information if his motive was to harm the United States. The U.S. government engineered Snowden being stuck in Russia.
Snowden is the most loyal government servant, he turned down a six-figure income working in Hawaii to uphold his loyalty oath. Why isn’t Clinton defending this genuine American hero?
Snowden is more man than the Clintons( because they re both men)..He is more man than all Americans who see the truth but close their eyes. He is more man than most of us as he try to put US on its right path of freedom and justice, instead of invation and tyrany.
The main thrust is correct: secrecy is rarely about concealing information from our adversaries and almost always about concealing it from the domestic public and those charged with oversight.
Hillary + Clinton Foundation + selling of Public Office = ?
I think Hillary meant to say she was sorry this information fell on the ears of the hundreds of millions of free thinkers in this world who don’t believe a damn word people like her say. Thank you “The Intercept” for being an outstanding source of news and facts the regular media hasn’t the decency, honesty or fortitude the write about. It’ s sickening the level of deception our officials will go to providing cover for the dark forces which serve to protect the State, not the people.
Clinton could only make a statement like that, if it were a true statement, if she knew for a fact the information fell into the wrong hands. How would she know whose hands the information fell into? Was she there? Did she talk with the people who now purportedly have the information? If she has(d) that information shouldn’t she have come forward with the information when she learned the information had been handed over? Was she given the information by a foreign informant? Did she hire a private investigator to gather the information for her? When she made the statement at the debate, was she questioned regards the details of how, when, what, who and why? Perhaps she, Clinton, shared the information that she’s intimating someone else let fall into the wrong hands. It’s possible.
Everyone has to remember: Hillary and her husband are the biggest liars in history!
Why is anyone still listening to her?
That is an awfully nice interpretation. My interpretation is that the wrong hands were the people – us.
Incidentally if We the People supposedly own our government instead of being owned by our government(s), isn’t this sort of debate pretty horrible in the first place? The concept of ownership… If you drive your car, does it own you? If you are in an intramural football league, does it own you? If you go to school and write a PhD dissertation, do you own your paper or by writing it does the school own you merely for granting you a degree based on your research? If you are assaulted or abused and the hospital and police take pictures of that, do they own the right to put that in the public realm for all and sundry to see and gawk over? Who serves who and what owns what? Do people own the right to the data their governments create if their taxes pay for it? Who gets to decide these things? Corporations? The pols with the biggest PACs? Sincere questions. Is pay for use going to become how we are valued and how we value humanity? Sure you can rent thatNetFlix video but we’re gonna debit that from your total lifetime credit bank of choices you can make.
Are there ever ‘right hands’ for things to fall into? Or just left hands? Bad joke, sorry. Begs the question if the game is always rigged and outcomes preplanned for any scenario, does Hillary (or Sanders for that matter) benefit from either giving in, fighting, or engaging in the debate at all? With every politician and side attempting to pull and manipulate these sorts of issues like taffy, the chips are gonna always keep seeming like they’re falling until the polls take place.
At the end of the day how many of our politicians wind up truthful and honest anyway? How can we even gauge their answers at all, especially when (like with the whole Wyden incident) a lot of the politicians either have no idea what is going on, do but cannot say, or are thoroughly bought out?
By “wrong hands” she meant the general public.
Public disclosure of “sensitive” material has always been viewed by the intelligence community as being far more serious than its being made available to a foreign nation.
In my lifetime I have never seen such a power hungry,lying,evil person as Hillary Clinton.No one comes close,not even Dick Cheney.
I’d say you’re being too hard on HRC. She and The Dick are about the same. They accumulate wealth for themselves and their families, and bomb the women and children of other countries. I’d call that equal. The real crime will be when supposedly intelligent Dems vote for the criminal HRC.
Thank you for all of your service to enhancing my knowledge base. I always stop what I’m doing if I see you speaking, on link tv or free speech tv. I live in Red hook ny at nannick farm. If you ever are in the Hudson Valley and wish to stay, please call 845-756-5350. My son David is going to Brazil in Nov. I saw you interviewed near your home, it looked very serine. Stay fine and send hugs from me to Mr. Snowden. nancy
Snowden is a hero. PERIOD He should be given a tickertape parade in NY while those scumbag criminals Bush/Cheney, Michael Hayden, Clapper, Alexander, Feinstein, Rogers and other IC committee members, Brennan and any other US officials and contractors that conspired to illegally foist the largest Surveillance state fraud in history on the US people, should be in prison for 30 yrs.
Unfortunately, their oath to uphold the US Constitution is also a fraud.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/spooner/NoTreason/
Amen.
Ain’t it grand that those who committed war crimes are richer now and still walking free among us? While those who provided a public service to American citizens are either rotting in jail, Chelsea Manning, hold up in an embassy in London or in Asylum in Russia.
There is something horribly wrong here regardless of what political warmongers decry!
I don’t believe a word Hillary utters.
This kind of surveillance practiced and cherished by the neo-cons exceeds what Korea’s Song / Syria’s Assad / Iraq’s Hussein / Libya’s Kadhafi put in place in their respective countries.
Since this mass surveillance was implemented in total secrecy and without the consent of the people, the neo-cons have lost legitimacy. The neo-cons are far worse than any authoritarian regime they claim to abhor.
We live in a time in which a warmonger right-wing corporatist (Hillary) calls herself a progressive with a straight face in front of millions! The Snowden comment is icing on the cake.
Wow, only in America. The candidates for the top public representative office in the land, with a few exceptions, come out for mass surveillance, ….and likely won’t suffer censure in any meaningful manner. While in some instances, they do give lip service to the public interest vs mass surveillance, their seething anger at Snowden betrays their position. Good on Sanders for his clear statement in support of Snowden although I question why a hero should receive any penalty for his selfless deed.
it’s unfortunate that in the USA there are two groups those who defend edward snowden and those who do portray him a traitor;most in washington see him as a traitor;hrc backs obama. wonder how most americans really feel towards this;myself hopes that obama will give him a pardon( one that sets him free without any stipulations) before he leaves office. think hrc was just placating the crowd back in washington Free Edward Snowden
Obama has no spine, so don’t expect him to do the right thing and pardon Snowden. He’d rather drone bomb another dozen countries than demonstrate a just act.
As for Hillary she was being her true self, not playing to DC. She really is a right wing neocon police state shill. Electing her would be as bad as giving Obomber another term. He is a war criminal, she voted for a criminal war. No difference between the two; she is more hawkish as demonstrated by her opinion on Syria.
as Chomsky has said repeatedly, the ruling class thinks the public has nothing to do with deciding “public” affairs or “public” policy.
You’re right, but it’s hard to totally wrap our minds around how unimportant we are to our leaders. I saw Chomsky speak many years ago. He said that the Wall Street Journal was the only place you might read the truth; they had to print the truth because business people needed to know what is going on. The public was to be kept in the dark. That was before the Web so things may have changed somewhat. I would guess that it’s worse now. In a similar vein, he said the Ivy league schools were the only universities teaching what is really going on because that’s where future business/government leaders are trained.
She’s probably talking about her emails.
Obviously Citizenfour is not Hillary’s favorite documentary and her accusation is a sign of disappointment that courage is not only acknowledged but also awarded.
“wrong hands” means anyone they can’t control,threaten,bribe , blackmail or immediately murder to shut them up.
you got it!
I read this a few months back. It gives weight to the idea that Snowden’s actual crime was giving info to us and not foreign governments.
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/course-china-russia-snowden-documents/
Mr Snowden has done more for freedom of the press than any politician has in over 100 years. Listen to whatever lies you want – THAT IS THE TRUTH
Ding! Ding! Ding! Give this man a prize.
Unfortunately, there is a portion of the US that can’t handle the truth.
And another portion that don’t want to hear it, and another that refuses to believe it cause it upsets their delusional view of the world.
And then there is us.
And what is that truth?Our nation,under Zion,has decided to destroy all opposition to the borg of injustice,avarice and hatred expressed by the psychotic paranoid racist monsters.
How else can one explain our total fealty to evil?
Hilary is a politician -saying anything to get elected……
She started her political career by forum shopping to see where she had the best chance of being elected to public office. New York lost out
> She ran for the Senate saying that was the only job she wanted – to be the best damn $enator from N.Y. that N.Y. has ever had. Stated further this is not a stepping stone? Her first run for the presidency was on the stepping stone platform. As $enator she voted for authority for George Bush to preemptively start WAR…which was against her constituents that got in touch with her – – you can quote how she said she had seen secret documents and was voting for it anyway.
While running for president she did not resign from the $enate to ensure her constituents were represented ( but neither did John McCain or Barrack Obama). After the defeat she did not return to the only job she wanted. Instead she decided on $ecretary of $tate – approved by both parties “saying there was no PRID PRO QUO”
IF you want honest government she is not the one to vote for ( my opinion based on her actions so-far)……..and on and on
Not only did NY lose out but JFK jr lost his life.
he was murdered….
actually Hillary is a vicious monster, with not a whiff of democracy within light years of her, attempting , as did president Obama, to stomp and burn the constitution out of existence, and using CNN’s idiot questions as a springboard.
I find it interesting that she is so adamant about the information “getting into the wrong hands”, when she is being INVESTIGATED for an insecure email account!
Nothing insecure about it. She didn’t want her emails, about crimes and corruption carried out in the name of US “foreign policy,” with her imprimatur, to reach the American public, the owners of those documents.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz…no-one cares any more
It is absolutely clear that Edward Snowden could not get a fair trial in America and Secretary Clinton’s remarks are only another example of the extreme prejudice of the political establishment to any presumed innocence. Sheppard v. Maxwell and others rulings do not allow public officials to render verdicts before trial and, if done, a fair trial would be deemed impossible.
Snowden should be allowed to come home and be given the same slap on the wrist that Petraeus got. As for Hillary, she feels that it’s enough for her to say she’s sorry for breaking the law. Obeying laws is for little people.
I take issue w/someone wanting to “slap” Snowden. Hillary, on the other hand, have at it. I find her most annoying even when she remotely “attempts” to tell the “truth”. It was nice to see how nicely Bernie toasted her butt regarding Wall St.
Didn’t mean to be redundant w/the word “nice”. My bad.
And to proscute ALL the U.S. officials that have violated our privacy “takes a village”.
Cynical, vacuous, dishonest … that was always Hillary.
Several months after the revelations were made public by Glenn & Co., story came out how poorly background checks were handled by a private contractor. Given the access Snowden had and given the background sieve, I am convinced the Russians and probably other national spy agencies, knew all about what Snowden revealed and knew. In fact, I would even hazard to guess that the Russians used America’s surveillance technologies to help them spy. For example, the Russkis tell their spies or more likely their paid compromised lackies to look up all the phone calls around a building owned by some defense contractor. In time, Russkis find out name of everybody working at the defense contractor site. Or listen in on oil executives on their business moves on Gazprom maybe. Not picking on Russians, but just as likely the Chinese also knew before Snowden revealed anything.
Everyone knows that to prevent information from falling into the wrong hands, you keep it on a private server (hence the word ‘private’). Security specialists will no doubt attempt to make it appear more complicated than that, but they have a vested interest in doing so.
And even if, due to Snowden’s status as a contractor, it isn’t legally obliged to do so, I’m sure a new Clinton administration would be willing to advance the same whistleblower protections to Snowden that were accorded to Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou et al.
Hillary should have watched that little presentation Snowden did for Greenwald, early on, explaining encryption (one of my favs.).
Who knows why Hillary would accuse Snowden, a recognized security expert, of letting classified info fall into the ‘wrong hands’?
The Guardian suggests …
Where “a fuck-up” is linked to this Snowden interview with John Oliver … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGzB-yYKcc
*I’ve seen this clip ‘linked’ in news articles several times recently. Iirc, Snowden didn’t ”supply” any information to the NYT? (The Guardian did, iirc) The linked segment concerns Snowden’s thoughts on adequate ‘passwords’ and, afaict, has nothing to do with “Snowden’s own admission that inadequate redaction of classified images he supplied to the New York Times was “a fuck-up”. “
“This is a highly biased article by a pro Snowden fanatic. It has absolutely no bearing on US foreign-policy or what was going on behind enemy lines at the time.” My friend’s response after linking her this article and having a discussion last night regarding Snowden and how she thinks he should be executed for putting the American people at risk from an enemy retaliation. Another response and I’m paraphrasing, “Even if Snowden didn’t reveal the NSA program, anyone who is smart enough would have figured it out” Ahhh I’m just so frustrated.
Sometimes I think all these politicians do is to look up trending keywords on google and incorporate them into a speech or interview to get buzz.
Senator Sanders is correct when he enthuses that he would stop the NSA gathering our information , as opposed to Clinton’s desire to do nothing except gag Snowdon.
Snowdon traded secrets for the public good and is a traitor, Petraeus traded secrets for pussy and he is a Presidential adviser and confidant…still!
However, Sanders’ candidacy is based upon getting 60% of eligible voters to stop watching sillyball on TV, get off their fat arses and vote!
If one considers that the POTUS has to consult with TV corporations to make sure any address to the nation,he wishes to make, does not conflict with any sillyball game; the possibility of any widespread movement on the part of any non-functioning Americans is a fairy story (Brothers Grimm versions)
Americans constantly brag that America is the greatest democracy in the World and then sit back and watch the plutocrats run the country, into the ground.
Unconvinced by your argument. Whether he gave it directly to some bad guys or he gave it to greenwald who published it ‘to the public’ where the bad guys could get it… The result is the same!
In other words, the public is the enemy. The public is the “bad guys”.
I’m going to have trouble growing a Snidely Whiplash moustache. :-s
Maybe you could take on roll of Natasha Fatale of Boris and Natasha fame!
Wiki for Boris Badenov
“The result is the same!”
And what of it? I think the benefit of revealing the tyranny and constitutional violations by the government far outweighs any risk that “bad guys” find out, or even benefit from that. I suggest that the near silence of any significant damage caused, other than well deserved embarrassment, supports that notion. The Republic itself is what’s important here , not whether some particular advantage is lost, or “lives are endangered.” Get your priorities straight.
I think we are the bad guys,and you,if you support any of our depredations worldwide which have brought absolutely nothing to Americas but dead bodies,world wide disgust,and a disaster of foreign relations.
The enemy is not Russia,China or Syria,it is ourselves,and our master Zion,which drives all .
I would think the subtext of what Bernie said would be to try and if convicted, recieve a suspended sentence and/or then immediately issue a presidential pardon.
That is the very least he could do for Snowden. It is the very least we could all do for Snowden. Bring him back home.
One can only hope. I fear though, that if the entrenched power cabal in this country told their followers it’d be a bad idea to raise MLK Jr, Ghandi, Mother Teresa etc from the dead (assuming we could) and bring them back, the blind flock would passionately agree. Whoever MSM tells the masses is a hero…-becomes- that hero… and a villain….the villain. And in cabal-think, the only heroes are those who protect, serve and preserve the status-quo with unwaivering loyalty.
…..and they are the only ones to receive pardons too, as only the cabal itself can grant them.
Clinton’s email defense is that “she didn’t know better and she’s sorry”. Being stupid, reckless and irresponsible clearly qualifies her for the US Prez job. Or, like her husband used to say, “there is no sexual relationship with that woman” so… move on.
She doesn’t have to worry about pissing off Snowden supporters, she knows they won’t be voting for her anyway.
er husband Bill Clinton, when in power was a compulsive liar. The president remembered for having his cock sucked by a member of staff. She Hillary Clinton, is a compulsive liar and a evil bitch. George Walker Bush, Was a semi-illiterate mentally retarded ex alcoholic. Barmy Obama, is a compulsive liar and a warmonger with a nobel peace prize. And one of his “closest allies” has sex with dead pigs. Goodness gracious me what a ridiculous soap opera. Stop this crap now! put an end to this… just stop it…. stop it… stop it… stop it… stop it!
B.S., Either Clinton is a F-N liar or the Intercept founding editors Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras .
Clinton’s innuendo statement reminds me of those who say “If you knew what I know, you’d agree with me.” aka, U.S. Gov. of Liars.
Did this trove of documents ever exist? So far all we’ve seen is a few powerpoint presentations of NSA bragging they own us all, and some low-level tech manuals. The Guardian’s disk drive is smashed, Snowden has no archive, and The Intercept isn’t publishing 1% of the alleged documents… leaving, what? A public acknowledgement of the spying followed by an appeal for a transition to data retention, all of which makes perfect sense if the NSA simply wanted this stuff to be discoverable in regular criminal/civil prosecutions. Maybe there never were any documents but that …
Snowden is not a problem, government crimes he disclosed are.
The so-called debate was a spectacle of infantile lies, insults to human intelligence and populist promises never to be implemented after sheeple stand in line to vote thinking that they mean something while they absolutely mean nothing.
The significant issues that every candidate should put seriously on their agendas at minimum, and in the process endanger their lives I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/notes-on-buddy-politics/
Ms. Clinton frets about government secrets “falling into the wrong hands”?
Smells like a crock of red herring gone well past its sell date.
Yes, Hillary’s dishonest about whose hands the Snowden docs are in.
But now that they’re in Greenwald’s and Poitras’s, and presumably yours, very few of them are in the public’s hands. Couldn’t you at least publish a scandal a month for a while?
Not to worry. The female dog hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the election and everyone knows it. Game over. As for Sanders, with each appearance and published statement he is proving himself to be quite less desirable an option than he originally portrayed himself to be. On the bright side, this saves electing another Obama that doesn’t shed it’s skin until its already in the White House.
You do know she’s running against the GOP, right? Having less-than-nothing to run against, she has more than a snowball’s chance.
So many candidates so many poor chooses. The good qualities of all might make one good man or woman.
I’m very happy with Sanders and what he said in the debate. I’m not a Democrat, I always vote 3rd party in presidential elections, but I’d vote for him. Sanders has enough of what I care about for me to provide enthusiastic support.
I find it curious by the way that so many people seem to need to predict the outcomes of future elections. It crosses party lines and ideologies and politics, and it’s just weird.
Reading between the lines of my comment above, one might conclude that I don’t give a fuck who anybody “knows” will or will not be elected, and I’d address that comment to you, the reader, or to the best-paid pundit fucks with equal vehemence, because of my essentially egalitarian good nature.
Of course,with her terrible record of zero accomplishments and serial lying,you’d think she wouldn’t,but the Zionists have chosen her as their candidate,and will deaden brain cells to get her in.
in this kabuki skit, bernie will wind up supporting her
‘comparing her response to Snowden with the accusations that her private email server was a security risk’
That’s pretty rich. Snowden published classified info deliberately as a personal sacrifice and public service whereas Clinton put classified info at risk because of incompetence and, I assume, laziness.
Clinton put classified info at risk because of incompetence and, I assume, laziness.
My own assumption is that she was neither incompetent nor lazy but rather made a calculated decision designed to evade public accountability for actions taken while Secretary of State. She may have been inept in her application of the technicalities, but she is in extensive company with respect to her desire to make decisions and take positions that she feels no one has the right to challenge.
Exactly right! One cannot help but wonder why the repugnicans continue beating the dead horse of Benghazi, when there is the genuine issue of her wanton disregard for security that is established fact.
It is impossible to conceive that no classified documents were handled by her server. That the computer was not protected in accordance with established procedures for the protection of classified information makes it a crime. Period. But Obama, who puts someone in jail for talking to a reporter about classified information, who gives General Petraeus a free pass for giving CIA material to his girl friend, and so on, ignores the law once again and fails to even charge Hillary with a security violation. Typical.
No. She wanted to keep her actions and the actions of the government secret from the American people, at whose pleasure she is supposed to serve. She didn’t want the American public to be able to access records of her and her State Department’s crimes, like her heinous war on Libya, (not to mention her revolting approval of the sickening murder of Gaddafi), which paved the way for ISIS now using Libya as training ground…
This article disregards the very first candidate to respond, Lincoln Chafee, who defended Snowden and said we need to bring him home.
I think I would vote for Chafee simply on his defending Snowden and saying we need to bring him home.
I thought that her Snowden response was a disgusting. She really is not a very good liar; it appears to me that her voice rises in pitch just a bit and her eyes appear to wonder. I do not think I am making this up; it happened on some of the other topics also.
I am more than a bit disturbed that the NYT claims she trounced Sanders; Sanders was a bit hesitant in explaining some of his “nuanced” positions, but it seems that the NYT thinks that a lie is better.
The MSM is trying hard to sell that narrative, but the public apparently thinks the opposite, by all measures, such as new Twitter followers.
I can tell she’s lying by the pitch change and cadence. It screams dishonesty; looking at her generates the same feeling.
Shillary.
I can tell she lying by the fact that her mouth is open.
Most people breath to live. Hillary lies to live. Like a freshwater fish urinating all the time to maintain homeostasis, if Hillary didn’t expel lies at every instant, the buildup would kill her.
Sanders,while OK on domestic policy,is terrible on foreign policy,with the same borg mind as the hell bitch.
Can you all stop being amazed and aghast at these people and just start getting them out of jobs? Take the guns away from the lunatics, please. We don’t need any more evidence. This is the problem with journalists, they just resort to journalism AND THAT SOLVES NOTHING. You hide behind your “special protection” and snipe from the leftfield whilst the rest of us get mangled and abused and crushed. America’s biggest ally in this madness, the UK, will probably manage to vote in Labour and begin the process of dismantling whatever they can of this foul mechanism, probably at huge personal cost to the people involved. It will mean nothing if America does not follow their example.
I do not see ANY realistic signs of that even slightly happening in America, and I genuinely believe if that does not happen, then America will go all out for war. War has never hurt America, it has only gained after initial setbacks and that fact will not be lost on its strategists. But every gain has come at a horrendous cost. Waiting too long before commiting during both World Wars made America a superpower, but it also triggered the rise of Communism, the Cold War, the slaughter of millions of people, allowed the holocaust to progress, left vast areas devastated and wounds that will never heal. America seems ready again to reap that whirlwind.
You are just continually scratching the surface here. It is decent, bold journalism but, to an outsider, every aspect of American society seems corrupted towards achieving the goals of this shapeless yet extremely powerful regime: your banks, your major corporations, your telecomms and IT industries, your military, your police, your secret service, your mass media, your foreign policy makers, your security industries, your alies and your darker forces are all being met with minimal, apathetic consent from a population which stands to lose the most and be beaten down the easiest from it all. Can’t you see where this is heading? The German people thought they would benefit or be safe from the Nazis, but they suffered hideously and now carry a shame that no people should ever have to carry. My grandfather escaped from one of the east Polish towns split in two by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he had to kill Soviets AND Nazis to be free, because the big-speaking, high-thinking but small-acting and selfish Russian and German peoples were similarly apathetic and thus eventually culpable for the insane crimes of the 20th century. That’s Americans now. Culpable through apathy and false hope – your denial will make you lose everything at the hands of madmen who are not the sharing, caring kind.
Listen, you want to come off like a self-righteous freaky radical bombthrower.
You are more typical than you realize. Your first words, after all, are “Can you all stop being amazed…” Hey, you are a conformist internet citizen, bud.
This is a variation on absolutely THE BIGGEST CLICHE IN INTERNET COMMENTING. Yes, you are taking part in the most everyday boring version of internet commenting there is: your slightly more hysterical variation on the wretched “why is anybody surprised by this” or “why is this news” or the unfunny versions like “in other news, water is wet” — in other words, a comment one could read dozens of times, every single day, on any thread on any story, anywhere. It boggles my mind that people continue to write variations on this comment, and every single person who writes it seems to think they have arrived at some kind of major breakthrough by announcing it.
This desire that news and commentary be a surprise party arranged just for you is, ironically, the Very Least Surprising Comment a person could write, it adds absolutely nothing, it presumes condescendingly and wrongly that the rest of us actually ARE surprised, when usually we are not……I mean, you’re just a third rate hack already the minute you go to this. Only takes a few words, suddenly you are in the “meh” zone.
There’s some funny shit to be sure. “Take the guns away from the lunatics, please. We don’t need any more evidence.” You first, hero. There’s one, go to it. We’ll miss ya.
But thanks for writing the following preposterous sentence anyway, which at least isn’t like anything I constantly see:
“This is the problem with journalists, they just resort to journalism AND THAT SOLVES NOTHING.”
All righty then!
Now, don’t be a stranger. Do continute to let us in on your well-constructed plans for fixing everything.
This following bit is also laughable:
Then he goes on to ask, “ “Can’t you see where this is heading?” No, we’re insiders. We can’t “see where this is heading.” Only those outside of America, and especially those blessed with profound insight — such as Zeusblahblahblah — “can see where this is heading.”
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ… You have successfully deflected the direction of the dialogue. Your NSA handlers will be very proud of you.
….it continues to be interesting on how Snowden, and the impact of his disclosures, continues to be buried by the popular media on a regular basis….only during these debates does the issue arise and none seem to be able to recite the facts accurately….they have listened to their own popular political “gossip”…..
….what makes anyone think that Snowden could get an equitable resolution to his situation within this current political and legal environment?
She’s defaulting to the Feinstein of false dopes. What a sorry excuse for her own shite. Blame the kid for the monster of megadoom she’s become.
Does anyone remember when someone at the start asked Dianne why can’t the phone companies hold our data for the government, and without even having to think she snapped, “You’ll have to pay for that!!!” Oh, this is a FREE surveillence package you got us carrying for you, Dianne? Like you don’t profit either way.
Pick up, Hillary! Is this what you REALLY wanted to say? Who’s gonna watch over our dope since we can’t trust the government to care for our own shite? Get ready for the Big Shift in storage scams, Dell!
“Sanders said Snowden should face a penalty, but that “what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration.”’
Sanders didn’t know about NSA surveillance? Clinton didn’t know about it?
Sanders is not a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and so he has plausible deniability, although he should have at least suspected. The fact that the ATT hub at SF was being fed directly to the NSA has been public knowledge since well before Snowden. Clinton, on the other hand, surely had access to many of the NSA products, so has no excuse.
It is hard to tell who has tickets and who doesn’t, because one of the things that they make you promise when you get one is to never reveal that you have it. Then, when you are debriefed (give it up), you have to promise never to tell that you did. Originally conceived to make counterintelligence more difficult for the other side, it has taken on a life of its own, and is used in large measure to avoid oversight. Those who are more equal than the rest of us then argue that we simple folk don’t really want to know what they do to protect us, that we could not handle the truth. And so we go about in a fog, wondering why so many people hate Americans, and why some become so desperate that they become willing to lose their own lives to take a few of us out.
Way to drive those tired of your floppity BS into giving to Bernie, generously, Hillary.
She’s not the only lady with the funky BlackBerry.
Murdoch’s UK CEO carried the same personal/professional quasi set up when she was busted for hacking dead girls. Not surprisingly, she had the company server and her own wiped against a court order. Odd, FOX seems to ignore that failure to abide by those on their inside, aka perversion of justice, when they could only hope Hillary had shown same tendency to ignore legalities.
Then Murdoch hands the police his wiped company server to scour while they conveniently ignore the CEO’s quasi HillBerry resulting in the arrest of 72 people, but somehow NOT getting the corporation burned for FCPA fines. Corrupting a foreign government to buy the whole Sky piechart was the obvious slam dunk. But this government accused of fielding Murdoch’s corruption preferred to look away rather than catch another pervy telemogul at foul play. Consider YOUR conscience, Cameron!!
Say, how did Cameron’s email content in same CEO’s confiscated Berry just vanish into thin air after a month’s stay in the Met’s spa? GCHQ, you know Tempora takes a month to shed those pounds of humiliating corpulent content, and you did tell NSA that very quarter you’d cracked the Berry’s compression technology. Don’t be shy…Take a bow, Cover Guys!
Hillary and Murdoch are NO DIFFERENT! Big bullies who will not give up their cudgels. Punch him, Judy!
The “Snowden moment” appeared to be a mass retreat by all 5 candidates to that safe ground so that no one can call you a commie. If any of the five were going to defend Snowden I expected it to be Sanders but he was a little extreme also. I guess I hoped Sanders would have said “no legal action – he’s my hero” but I guess that’s unrealistic. My biggest take away from that question was the incorrect and contrived response from Clinton.
BTW – I expected a ton of coverage on this question from Big Media but The Intercept seems to be one of the few to cover it – and with the facts too.
Considering most of big media own the very cable connection you’re piping through and the print that goes with, you have to consider their sources of income, campaign ads, and then some. Of curse, they just pipe that icing right back to the pols behind our backs, but who knows what’s going around these days, SuperFlu?
This is why no broadcaster has reported Murdoch got away with a $2 billion dollar FCPA fine in the UK; because they too corrupt foreign governments for show, Charlie. See Sky Pie Buy, and then ask the other guy why he’s not hammering his competition over it…Syndicated.
Hillary Clinton has been quite clear in the past that “public release” is the real problem. Back in 2010 she addressed the Manama Dialogue, a high level security summit in Bahrain. She was asked about the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables release. Her audience includes representatives of the Chinese and Russian governments who she seems to refer to as “all of us”.
https://www.iiss.org/en/events/manama%20dialogue/archive/manama-dialogue-2010-3790/opening-dinner-and-special-address-362b/opening-dinner-and-special-address-qa-session-54fc
For the same reason, she so desperately opposes public release of her emails, which detail the crimes of her State department, to the US public, whom she is supposed to be serving. Her modus operandi is: being in power means you can do whatever you want, e.g. completely destabilize Libya, allowing ISIS to come in and start using it, or drone murder people by the thousands, but you never need to explain or even show your actions to the useless peons comprising the American public.
Just out of college, Hillary Clinton, wrote a fraudulent legal brief among other acts to get the House Judiciary Committee to change the House rules to deny Nixon legal counsel during his Watergate related impeachment trial…3-8-2014 Carol Fader of Florida Times Union-jacksonville.com
To me this shows the foundation to claims that Hillary is well aware of the legalities involved with using a “personal” email server for government business….. And, she did it anyway?
How is that not a concern but what Snowden and Glenn and Laura did wrong? Snowden, Glenn and Laura are national treasures! Hillary Clinton is a national turd that deserves to be flushed! Anything she touched was put in the wrong hands….
Great piece Mr Froomkin!
She has babbled that incorrect nonsense before. It has been known since some time in 2013 that what she said about Snowden and the laws associated with whistleblowers is nonsense. It has been painstakingly explained to anyone who is willing to take the time to read or listen why it is nonsense. Is Clinton continuing to lie, or is Clinton being wantonly ignorant. Has no one sat her down and explained to her that she is either ignorant of the facts, or that she is exposing herself as pathologically lying about those facts? Is Clinton so lazy about doing her homework that she honestly does not know the facts? If so, what else of utmost importance has she lazily chosen to remain ignorant about?
Along with a bunch of other politicians, about a year or so ago, Clinton was asked what her book reading list was and or is. Since she rifled off such a ridiculously long list of books that no human could read them all in the time she had claimed to have read them, I’m reasonably assuming that she lied about that also. But if she wasn’t lying about that (she was) then she must be able to find the time to put one of her hundred books down and learn the facts about Snowden and the laws associated with whistleblowers. Would someone please confront her face to face about this subject?
She lies because she knows that the average voter will lap it up. Most people are mouth breathing morons truth be told and many get their opinions on US and owrld events from headlines not articles ;) She knows this.
The line that most morons will take from her nonsense is “Snowden aided the enemy” without specifying that enemy, obviously it is us the public but it to the average schlubb it will mean Russia. The logic goes “he could have been a whistleblower” means “he did not need to give the data to Russia, he wanted to”.
She is as sleazy as they come, her and Bill make my skin crawl
I guess she hasn’t read The Grennwald.
I guess she hasn’t read The Grennwald.
At the very least, in the circles she inabits, it would be poor taste to admit to such.