Topic: The Jester

[Right Wing Nut Job]

This guy is fantastic.  His tweeter feeds are fantastic as well.  If any of you aren't familiar I encourage you to check him out.  I REALLY enjoy his work and what he stands for.

http://jesterscourt.cc/

[Libertas]

Yeah...

One bone to pick...

A self-described "hacker" goes all righteous on Snowden and calls him a bad human?

Pot, meet kettle.

From his Snowden post -

"Get a life. sh*t, the average iPhone or Nikon SLR captures more identifying data and meta-data about you than PRiSM, are you getting all crotchety with Apple or Nikon too? Do you think PriSM is new? Just because YOU don’t know about it doesn’t mean it’s ‘new’ – try googling ‘Echelon‘ or ‘Carnivore‘, it’s just an natural extension of the same, things move on you know? Quit crying about it."

OK, pooh pooh the very real sins of our can-never-do-any-harm government because, well sh*t, nothing we can do about and nothing we should do about it unless we also set Apple and Nikon HQ's on fire too...I guess, so STFU and forget about it.

Now, despite indirect eveidence the Snowden leaks (who jester describes as a "low-level gimp") caused JihadiLand to suddenly get good at encrypting their communications, there is no hard evidence I have seen (or Jester) to prove they got something critical to subvert Intelligence Community efforts and the extrapolated endangered lives.

And his party line on whistleblowing...again in his own words - "He didn’t have to do it this way. Any rules regarding government employees, especially NSA, not being permitted to blow whistles, don’t apply here, he didn’t work for NSA. He worked for a civilian contractor." - is bullsh*t.  How many whistleblowers are being targeted by this Regime?  All of them.  They are imprisoning a reporter for not revealing sources of a leak for crying out loud, and you think Snowden could have chosen another path?  Wake the f**k up!  And as far as the "fabricated digital keys" that allowed him to "steal" secrets goes, well, pot/kettle Mr. Hacker!  what you do isn't exactly "legal" either!

I think this guy is further behind the rest of us, he still suffers from the "United States That Was" Effect, he thinks things like honor, fair play and duty and country apply any more...people that willingly handcuff themselves before their enemies, willingly allow them to snoop, spy, hack, incarcerate, detain, search and order about at will IMO are not thinking clearly. 

Security at any cost?  Umm, no...I thought that is why people refuse to live in terror...

Guess I am all sort of f**ked up...

Oh well.

[Right Wing Nut Job]

Really?  What the pot and the kettle hold are entirely different.  This guy is on my side and I'm not on Eddies side.  Sorry you think Jester is unpatriotic.  You seem fun.  Maybe look closer?

[Glock32]

I think what Libertas is trying to point out is that all our institutions, all the apparatus of state, have been commandeered and repurposed by the Left.  There are some in conservatism who can't or won't recognize this, and continue to venerate those institutions and agencies as if they were still defending Mom and Apple Pie.

There is nothing good about what the NSA is doing to private American citizens. There are any number of motivations behind the massive hoovering of data, and none of them are friendly to liberty.

[trapeze]

I'm kind of split on the Snowden question, myself. On the one hand it is a fact that what the NSA is doing is wrong but on the other hand there is no doubt that he has offered aid to the enemy by revealing sources and methods.

I do not know if he profited from his disclosures but even if he did he has, so far, paid a heck of a price for what he did. I sure wouldn't want to leave this country. I've travelled in this life. Not all over the world but certainly to enough places to know that I don't want to live anywhere else.

[ChrstnHsbndFthr]

I'm kind of split on the Snowden question, myself. On the one hand it is a fact that what the NSA is doing is wrong but on the other hand there is no doubt that he has offered aid to the enemy by revealing sources and methods.

I do not know if he profited from his disclosures but even if he did he has, so far, paid a heck of a price for what he did. I sure wouldn't want to leave this country. I've travelled in this life. Not all over the world but certainly to enough places to know that I don't want to live anywhere else.

Well said, Trap. Well said.

[Libertas]

Really?  What the pot and the kettle hold are entirely different.  This guy is on my side and I'm not on Eddies side.  Sorry you think Jester is unpatriotic.  You seem fun.  Maybe look closer?

I did not say Jester was unpatriotic, I merely said he seems terribly naive about the level of privacy invasion the Federal government is getting away with today, all in the name of "safety" and "security".

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1755

I for one will not fall into the trap of having patriotism redefined to mean blind obedience to the State and whatever it desires in the name of "safety" and "security", but this is the danger that arises when a people grow so fat, lazy and stupid...they forget that their safety and security is best served first by themselves.  The "let someone else do it, it's not my problem, you're not a Patriot!" crowd are condemning us all to a future where we are subservient to a Fascist state, and I for one do not hold with that!

And I am not saying Snowden is a hero, but I am not saying he is a demon either, but keeping people in the dark about what their government is doing was not an option and people may not like what he did but without it the issue of the massive Hoovering of innocent private citizens data (well beyond the "meta data" parroted by fools!) would never have entered the public debate.

I suspect Jester still has ties to the Community, and the Community is beholden to the masters that feed it funding, so...I think I have looked close enough and know all I need to know.

My soul and conscious is clear, when the time comes we can ask Jester how he's feeling on that score.   

But I'll probably be dead by then...