[citation needed]

Actually, you know what, don't bother. From your post history it's obvious that you are unable to engage in a discussion without childish namecalling. In particular, everyone who doesn't agree 100% with you is apparently stupid. I hope you'll grow up some day, and see just how statistically unlikely that is, but I don't see the point in spending any energy toward that goal.

Can YOU read? Because I think I addressed why I think your "traitor" epiphet does not apply here. And what you call the "honorable" way would have landed him in isolation, right quick, as is obvious from earlier attempts on the part of brave whistleblowers.

Oh, grow up. I fail to see how you, or anyone for that matter, would be an authority on who does and does not belong here. And if I were inclined to be childish as well, I might point at our respective UIDs, and claim that I haven't belonged here for a while longer than you haven't :-)

If not 'proper channels', what did you mean when you said Snowden 'could have been honorable'? He would still have had to flee the country, as it is abundantly clear from cases like Drake's that otherwise nothing much would happen about the issues raised, and it is likely that his personal life would have been wrecked, even worse than it is now.

The NSA is supposed to protect the US national security. That does emphatically NOT include things like spying on allied heads of state, foreign competitors of US corporations, or the entire population of supposedly friendly nations. In other words, they are operating way, way, way beyond their brief. And the US taxpayers are funding this -- which is why even those revelations are still bona fide whisteblowing, if you ask me.

No. The NSA (and various other TLAs) have shown, again and again, that there the "proper channels" for whistleblowing are dead ends. Nothing will be fixed or improved, and for your troubles you'll be subjected to endless legal and extralegal hardship.

Snowden apparently knew better than to fall into this trap. I don't think you're actually unaware of this, just trolling. But for others, perhaps, who might be genuinely interested: Thomas Andrews Drake.

Are you saying that we should calibrate our sense of right and wrong using the worst excesses of our adversaries as baseline? That will predictably turn into a race to the bottom with nothing but losers in the end. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" (Ghandi)

This.

Something else I find truly and jaw-droppingly shocking is that all the discussion of terrorism remains selectively detached from our own foreign policies. So on the one hand we always hear about terrorism shaping foreign policy, but never about foreign policy shaping terrorism.

"They" don't hate us because of our freedom. And with the possible exception of a very small fraction of true believers, they don't hate us for not being Muslims. Most of them hate us because we've been overthrowing their democratic governments and propping up the brutal dictators in their countries.

How about peer pressure? Assuming that they're not entirely brainwashed, many of the folks working at NSA are probably a lot like us. Some of them likely even frequent /. for reasons other than subverting the discussion or serving up fake versions of it to selected members.

Not cool, guys, decidedly uncool even. Surely you can find a job which doesn't involve trampling on the Constitution.

That actually works both ways. There is so much entertainment which involves terrorists and serial killers -- it's probably fair to say that the number of fictional serial killers exceeds reality by now. Which might cause the public, and possibly even some of the law enforcers who really should know better, to grossly overestimate the actual danger they're in from day to day. And overreact accordingly when something does happen.

I think that might be accurate. The thing is, though, in a nominal democracy it is up to the People to be aware of what is being done in their name. And when these things continue for decades, across different administrations of all (ahem, both) parties. The rest of the world is not wrong in holding all Americans responsible.

Somewhere along the chain of command, though, the denials do become true. A good underling knows when to grant his masters the ultimate in plausible deniability by simply not filling them in on certain matters.

But why? Parts don't get redesigned unless there is a practical reason or at least a theoretical improvement over the current model. Someone decided this was necessary, justified the costs in terms of benefits, probably had to convince the bean counters. If not in response to some spectacular failure, why this particular change? And why the same part number -- I am not very well versed in automotive engineering but it seems an odd thing to do. (Are there actually regulations about such nomenclature?)

The fact that nobody put it together is, arguably, the failure. It may or may not be subject to litigation, though, I am far from qualified to actually say but I would guess some kind of gross negligence charges. But if it turns out that there have been deliberate actions toward avoiding a costly recall, while in possession of data which would cast even a shadow of doubt on any critical part's specifications, that should be a different matter.

Admittedly I didn't phrase it too subtly... I was suggesting gross negligence with lethal consequences. That it is impossible to engineer everything 100% safe in the first iteration is fairly obvious, but what seems to have happened here is that they realized their mistake (they started making this part differently) and yet they did not initiate a recall.

So if the original part claims lives, after the manufacturer was aware of the problem, but decided not to address the problem for extant parts, then yes I think the manufacturer should be liable for these deaths. Additionally, the fact that they apparently did not use a new part number for the improved version gives at least the impression of wanting to sweep it under the rug.

Actually, I am opposed to capital punishment. The quip about a death sentence for corporations is meant to emphasize a kind of asymmetry about this whole corporate personhood idea, which is that proponents claim they should have all the rights and privileges of an individual person but typically remain quiet about the associated responsibility and accountability that individual persons have.

Finally, too big too fail (in terms of finances or jobs) doesn't exonerate even GM from wrongdoing -- if that is what will be determined to heve been the case here.

Agreed. I might just go along with the corporations-as-people idea just as soon as the first corporation is executed for having policies tantamount to murder, or gross negligence with lethal consequences, such as seems to be the case here.

I thought this documentary made some interesting points. It is reasonably balanced too, e.g. it includes some staunch free market fundamentalists (Milton Friedman trying to explain what externalities are, for instance).

You, and the AC above, are probably right. Poe's law and all that. Of course the corollary to that law is it doesn't actually work unless there really are people who genuinely believe what is being parodied. That includes some of our beloved moderators, in fact; this troll was at +1 when I replied.

And from where I am standing that also includes some of people shaping foreign policy, because the "eff you, we can do whatever we want" attitude is pretty much what the US project internationally.

I appreciate that this is not the opinion of most, or even all that many, Americans. But being a nominal democracy has the flip side that the People have a collective responsibility and accountability for allowing their elected leaders and diplomatic corps to misrepresent them so. This is not a new thing.

And Americans wonder why they have a reputation for being both arrogant and uninformed...

Ironically, this is exactly what many of the beneficiaries of, um, your foreign policy would love you to do: take all your military kit and, respectfully, piss off.

The problem is that your trampling on "weaker" nations is kind of a large part of your being "mighty" and rich (well, one marginal fraction of you anyway) and your leaders are unlikely to give that up.