On 6/11/2013 12:53 AM, Ryan Simpkins wrote:
On Mon, June 10, 2013 00:44, Ryan Simpkins wrote:
Did Mr. Snowden do the right thing by disclosing PRISM and similar programs to
the world, or did he violate the trust of his employer, government, and fellow
countrymen by reveling secrets that aught not to have been reveled?
When I asked this question I simply had no idea it would turn in to such a
deeply emotional debate. This is arguably one of the most important
discussions to have ever taken place on this list. I want you all to know I
have read every single post and considered them all carefully. Every post has
been incredibly valuable and filled with meaningful point of view. Every
comment was needed (except sjansens, what is wrong with that guy?). I have a
message I'd like you all to read:
Mormon, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Buddhist, Humanist, Hindu, Muslim, and other
isims, ists, and religious or non-religious persons. Here this!
The United States Government has likely been tracking the following
information for all Americans:
* Who you have telephoned.
* Your location during the call.
* The length of that call.
* Who called you.
* What you said via text (presumably).
* Certain aspects of your Internet activities
* Possibly some of your private communications, up to and including phone
calls, e-mails, videos, etc.
The government has been doing this irrespective of your religious points of
view, and in some cases possibly because of them. Do not let those points of
view stop you from applying the same reasoned thinking you brought to the
great top post flame fests of 2010, or the "language wars" of 2008, or even
the heady days of the "editor battles" long ago (vim won, by the way). Turn on
those geek brains and start thinking about how to either solve this problem,
or please go blow away your Ubuntu partition and install Windows 8. If you
can't see why this is important then NO ROOT FOR YOU!
There is a great deal of room for people of all religious points of view and
walks of life. I participate in the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable. An
organization that is dedicated to the understanding and cooperation of all
religious beliefs and backgrounds. Every major faith in the area participates,
as does the LDS church, including most of the minor faiths. What I have
learned will shock you: We are all exactly alike.
It is fine if you point to scripture, philosophy, or science as your moral
guide so long as you come to this basic conclusion: We need to work together
to stand up for what we collectively feel is right. Before we can do that we
need to narrowly decide if the United States Government is right or wrong in
the case at hand. That certainly takes communication. It also takes humility.
Here is a helpful phrase to repeat 10 times a day: "My root partition may be
corrupted. My memory may be throwing errors. Someone may have chmod'd all my
binaries 0400. It is okay to be wrong, so long as I can fix it. I have a
rescue disk."
This list, right here, is one of the last totally open community based public
forums with a culture of rational thought and deep analysis in our area. You
all collectively decide what will fly and what will not. I do have one
suggestion: Please remember that ~500 people will get your message. Therefore,
I trust you will be considerate of their point of view and potential
sensitivity to petty argument and lack of reasoned analysis. Geeks simply
won't tolerate it.
- note -
Please do not respond to this thread unless you include ALL of the following
words in the post: sjansen, bacon, Nazis, soap on a rope, Illuminati, a lyric
from any Pink Floyd song.
-Ryan
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This open dialogue is better than morning caffeine, though morning bacon
still rules. I feel privileged to be a part of a group of diverse
thinkers that are pretty articulate and well written. If this
conversation, as with others were to myopically discuss the finer points
of correctness on the actions of Ed Snowden, I would go back to drinking
diet dew. However, the passion with which these channels of deep
thought have been expressed is nothing short of awesome.
For this post alone Ryan, you are to be commended. My thoughts about
all that has been written led me to a similar stream of thought, but you
wrote it far better than I could have. Nevertheless, I pose the same
question; What can we do to solve this? Note: we have a fellow
technologist, fellow citizen of the world, who had the moral fortitude
to stand up and do what most of us think we'd duplicate in the same
circumstance but we don't have to worry about it too much because he did
it for us. So how can we promote what many of us believe to be the hero
such that he cannot be held criminally responsible for a crime he exposed.
I think we can all surmise what the badger is capable of when
threatened... if not http://youtu.be/LEAGxQqC6hI. Our colleague, sits
in limbo awaiting his fate and our government (the badger) is probably
trying to figure out what they can get away with not "gee whiz, perhaps
he's right and we need to correct this and remember to stay in bounds."
Watch this interview,
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/06/10/tsr-intv-toobin-nsa-leaker.cnn.htmlnotice
how wolf b speaks to the support of ed v. the buffoon. Listen to how
the buffoon paints Ed. Note: the buffoon is staying within "reasonable"
acceptability by the public at large by claiming he may not agree that
the exposed program is all that great BUT, ed is still a criminal as
evidenced by his running away to China. BTW, I don't really think there
is another way to protest such criminal activity. Note the new headline
this morning concerning the coverups of wrong doing within the state
department.
Also, sjansen has made terrific contributions to this 'groupthink',
let's not forget that and negate those contributions because he has a
different approach. Also, Nazis invented soap on a rope and the
Illuminati stole the patent so they could grab that cash with both hands
and make a stash.
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