We'll know the American government has truly gone sour if an earnest attempt on his life is traced to the "Intelligence Community". Until then, he is our beloved revolutionary sweetheart telepresent in our thoughts.
"ISIS was one of the terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS"
Despite how seriously misleading this statement is I can't help but laugh. Been rolfmao way too much since the Snowden leaks. From the .gov puppets desperate to find a angle on the debate, to the FBI desperate to counter the tides of technological evolution.... im laughing. Will probably continue laughing even after their baton's hit my back because some citizens actually took these absurd statements from the CIA/NSA/FBI/WhiteHouse as something other than a joke.
The OP should have made it clear that the NYT was quoting a book by Morell. The entire quote is as follows:
“ISIS was one of the terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS,” Mr. Morell writes in “The Great War of Our Time,” offering no elaboration.
I think the fact that the NYT editorialised with the comment "offering no elaboration" changes it entirely.
"Haha no elaboration, what a zinger! That'll show those swarmy conservatives", said the well off Marin county progressive as he sipped his morning smoothie and read another New York times article.
That is classic Michael J. Morell. I can't take anything he says seriously. Listening to Mr. Morell is like listening to some of the right wing republicans describe the administration as socialist. US public debate should be above this, nobody benefits from this nonsense.
It's the usual "put everything on terrorists" argument, Snowden is now responsible of the rise of ISIS ! (and also of the world hunger ?) The last decade of war in the middle-east is just a coincidence apparently.
I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on.
He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
I can't say what he should have done. I can say what I would do if I made the choice to whistleblow. I would stay and face the trial. Make a very big fuss about it. After all, I've decided to stand up for something. Something big. If I'm going to make that sacrifice, I will go all the way. I wouldn't risk casting shadows on my selfless act by going to an overly ambitious political rival of the US. Who also happens to have significantly worse practices in the very same domain. It's like exposing corruption in the police department and then only hanging out at the mafia's restaurant. How am I supposed at look at that guy now?
That's not to say the initial act has no value. It most certainly has. But everything he says afterward I just don't value at all.
I don't think you should desert to the enemy if you're trying to fix your battalion.
You would be locked in a cell and nobody would hear from you again. You wouldn't be able to communicate your defense to the outside world, you'd be much much worse off.
I understand that you think it is more complicated than that, but I don't think it is.
Do you remember what happened with Chelsea Manning?
Because that is what the GP is referring to.
When you get put in military prison, they basically get to do whatever they want to you.
Snowden has made a lot of powerful people very uncomfortable, so a fair trial and access to the media is unlikely.
> It's like exposing corruption in the police department and then only hanging out at the mafia's restaurant. How am I supposed at look at that guy now?
The whole point of staying in Russia is that he can't leave because the US made sure his travel documents were revoked, and Russia is unlikely to extradite him under political pressure from the US. If it was Snowdens goal to pass on information to Russia, he wouldn't have made such a big fuss about releasing that info to the media. So it's actually more like exposing corruption in the police department, and then seeking refuge from the wrath of those corrupt police, and the only safe place you can find is the maffia's restaurant.
I think he should have kept quiet about leaking the documents. It may be that he never would have been caught and could have kept his freedom. I'm unsure if this would have helped his cause though. Perhaps by coming forward it served to bring further attention to it.
If currently-serving national-level politicians are calling for your extrajudicial assassination, Russia is one of the safer places on Earth for you to be.
Exactly. The best place to hide from the US is staying in a country who won't quickly deliver you to the US with just a fingersnap, like a good dog. Like any EU country would. Even if that means a not so free country.
I don't think we agree or disagree with you so much as you haven't made any strong statements to agree or disagree with. What do you think his fate would be now, had he released the documents then turned himself over to US authorities?
I replied to a commenter who asked if there were people who don't think Snowden is a hero. I don't think Snowden is a hero. That's my opinion and that was my reply. The overgrown kindergarteners of HN of course disagree and they have to show it by downvoting.
Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone. You should expect that comments made on political topics are going to get downvoted by people who strongly disagree with you. But moderating your tone and angle of attack on such topics can go a long way towards avoiding them and can even get people who disagree with you to upvote you.
Complaining about downvotes is only going to earn you more of them.
Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone.
No. It isn't.
How would you feel if people shut you out of a discussion because they disagreed with you?
If someone says something you disagree with, debate them. If they say something factually incorrect, correct them. They may even thank you for it. And guess what, they may end up changing your mind, or correcting a mistake on your part.
Actively seeking to censor somebody for having a different perspective on something is frankly abhorant.
I find it ironic that this kind of behaviour is being encouraged in this thread of all. Snowden's actions will prove to be a giant waste of effort if your kind get their way.
I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. I close the phone on unwanted calls, I mark unsolicited emails as spam, I tell salesmen showing up on my door to fuck off and whenever deeply flawed opinions are spoken by my friends or family (on matters important to me, like racism, privacy, free speech), I get up and leave. It's how I keep sane.
And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have
ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-)
Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.
Totally agree as long as you're making a good faith effort to distinguish noise (which I agree blumkvist's posts basically are, especially after the first one), from unfamiliar patterns of thought.
I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time.
And if you're down-voting comments on Hacker News you're also shutting them out for me as well as everyone else on this site.
Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise.
No it's not. It's not going to win "insight of the month" but it's not a bait-and-switch, or a spambot, or a troll. It's a reply to a question. Do we all need to start practicing our poetry writing skills or something?
The downvoted comment was this:
I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on.
He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
I happen to believe that Snowden's asylum to Russia makes sense given the circumstances, I would have preferred Europe to give him asylum but unfortunately we are bending over whenever the US wants us too. Plus I don't see any connection with Crimea.
Now back to the point, the opinion that Snowmen is guilty of treason is held by a majority. And to me that doesn't make sense, because I personally want to live under the rule of law and in such a nation nobody should be above that law, not a secret service, not the president, nobody. That the US government is capable of illegally spying on their own citizens, using the taxes of those citizens to do it, well I want to know about it. That Germany is spying on their own citizens in cooperation with the US, I want to know that as well. I also happen to believe that my right to privacy should be above your right for security and if that ain't gonna happen, then at the very least I want to know where my taxes are going. And last but not least, we happen to live in a society in which the mass-media is constantly failing us and our rights are being constantly eroded. Therefore I consider Snowden to be a hero, because regardless of his motivations, his actions were the right thing to do.
And I could go on with lots of reasons for why I believe the above, but I'm tired of doing that for everybody that regurgitates a mainstream opinion without at least making an effort to explain why. Hence I believe that the comment in question is noise.
I tend to read the downvoted comments first. I figure if someone doesn't want me to read something then that something is probably important/interesting.
This is a common complaint from people who get downvoted, while it's been held in the community by dang and pg that people should downvote whatever they feel should be downvoted. There's no specific prescription to what can or can't be. Disagreement is often a bad reason for downvoting someone, but in this case it's disagreement with someone who is lacking facts. Also note that the guidelines note that you shouldn't comment about being downvoted.
PS. Nice, ad hominem. You want to be taken seriously? I can't tell.
Well, while we're throwing around logical fallacies, you just made an appeal to authority. I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid.
That said, I did downvote blumkvist, firstly because he stated his opinion without really providing any reason for having it other than "oh we don't really know what's going on" (this is annoying, but everyone does it sometimes and it isn't such a big deal). But secondly and much more importantly, even after being asked to follow up on his assertion and have a discussion, he chose to continue on his anti-HN rant.
(And seriously, why is going to Russia "super fishy" when you've got US Congressmen suggesting on national fucking television that the CIA ought to assassinate you? And why do those Congressmen get a pass for saying it? They disgraced their office in doing so. Still like an answer for this, blumkvist.)
>>I don't care what dang or pg say - downvoting someone because you disagree with them is stupid.
Well... I don't care what you say, downvoting based on opinion is perfectly valid and I will continue to do so as I see fit. Especially when the opinion is based on assumptions that I believe has been proven false many times in the past and rehashing the debate on HN turns into a multi-page endless arguing.... kind like this is turning into.
So your opinion on downvoting is different from mine, where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a bunch of otherwise well thought-out comments which, in spite of their quality, are hard to read for no reason other than the first person to bother to vote was having a bad day or is an idiot, etc.
I'm not complaining because I get down-voted - I don't contribute enough for that - I'm complaining because it constantly hinders my ability to read discussions, which is what I come to HN primarily to do.
Maybe PG and co. need to add an option in the settings to switch off the censorship for those who don't want it.
I get downvoted all the time, I do not feel as if the downvoters have shut me out of a discussion. I continue to post in the same threads, and usually I get more upvotes than downvotes. Over time the downvoted comments typically get upvoted to 0 or 1 or so.
Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such.
Down-voting fades out the text of the comment, making it harder to read. I've had to modify the CSS of comments before now just to read what they say, only to find out that I found the post thought provoking or even insightful.
I have to do that enough that I'm thinking I might just write a bookmarklet to automate the process.
Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such.
Participation is a constructive activity. This is more like graffitiing over someone's comment to make it invisible. As far as I'm concerned, that's shutting him out.
The intent of fading downvoted comments out seems to be to make them more annoying to read than most users would be willing to put up with, and far easier to simply skim over and ignore, regardless of their quality (even when they're not faded enough to be illegible - the fading provides the visual cue to the casual reader that "this isn't worth your time.")
It's similar to the reason text posts are faded by default - to make those posts more annoying to read the longer they are, in order to discourage using them as personal blog posts.
If you don't particularly want your hand held like that and are capable of reading more than a paragraph at a time without suffering mental exhaustion or ennui, you may well find these practices to be condescending and passive-aggressive.
I have a userscript that I use to unfade everything[0] and have showdead on and I find that neither has negatively affected my experience much. Although of course everyone's mileage may vary.
You want to know why you are downvoted? How about inflammatory statements like this:
> That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain.
You are claiming that people who disagree with you don't have "at least an ounce of critical thought" in their brain. It's a stone's throw from name-calling. How is this intelligent discourse?
He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else. Russia was never intended to be more than a stop-gap.
Considering how disgustingly subservient all of Europe has been to bend over backwards to the US (e.g. forcing the landing of a presidential plane because someone suspected it was carrying Snowden) you can't really blame him. Russia is the only country in the region that doesn't care whether the US wants him or not (and would even refuse to co-operate simply to flip them off).
Heck, I'd love to see him be granted asylum somewhere else but all of Europe would drop him like a hot potato the second the US told them to hand him over.
> and would even refuse to co-operate simply to flip them off
Indeed -- the decision on Snowden came around the same time Obama was getting ready to invade Syria.
Putin is a de-facto old-school dictator, but on this he did everything right. I wish he'd completed the job by sneaking Snowden to Ecuador via submarine, but I can understand why he didn't -- he can play that card next time he desperately needs a propaganda boost.
Incidentally, the decision not to get more involved in Syria was probably the better choice at the time. No matter what you think of the dictator's morals, a good portion of the rebels was basically made up of radical Islamists. Exactly who you don't want to be in charge when ISIS enters the scene.
It was interesting to see how suddenly our media (in Germany) stopped their sympathetic reporting on the Syrian rebels and how desperately they need our support (i.e. at least give them some guns) when ISIS began making headlines.
I remember thinking that supporting the rebels in Syria (though it viscerally felt like the "right thing" to do) was probably the worse bad choice to make even before Russia & al heavily spoke against it. It's easy to forget that both the direct intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the less direct support of the rebellions during the "Arab Spring" resulted in very unstable situations and a very disconcerting shift towards Islamist extremism in those regions.
This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in).
According to that article, the Ecuadorean travel document was only revoked five days after it was used. Pretty much by definition, if your travel documents are accepted and let you travel, they are valid.
No, according to the article, it was issued by the Ecuadorian consul in London, who issued the document because he felt it was an emergency and he couldn't get in contact with the Ecuadorian president. The Ecuadorian president clarified several days later that the consulate in London did not have the authority to issue that document. The safe passage document wasn't revoked, it was never valid to begin with.
> He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else.
That implies that it's the fault of the US government that he is currently in Russia (I think it also forwards the misconception that Snowden was in Russia when his passport was revoked). He didn't have to flee to Hong Kong to begin with. When the US government requested extradition and revoked his passport in order to keep him inside Hong Kong, he fled using what turned out to be an invalid travel document. Snowden has ended up in purely out of his own actions. The US isn't preventing him from traveling - he can walk down to the embassy at any time he wants and get a plane ticket home.
Snowden probably doesn't like the Russian government, but he was stuck in a Russian airport with a revoked passport. Even if he had free choice, Russia is one of the few countries willing and able to withstand US pressure to extradite him. Being on trial in the US isn't an option for him because what he did may have been just, but was striclty illegal.
Russian-US relations were at a low and Russia generally likes sending little fuck-yous. Granting Snowden asylum is also good PR for Russia because they appear strong against perceived US injustice.
For both sides the choices appear completely rational without implying any foul play or hidden relations.
Crimea debacle? You should go read GlobalResearch.ca, CounterPunch.org, WSWS.org ETC – non-MSM news outlets to get the other side of the picture.
Crimea is a very strategic area to get hold of which NATO wants to break into Russia through color revolutions ETC just because Putin refused to be US dog.
When Ukraine democratic government was forcefully overthrown by a US-backed Nazi military coup what choice Russia had? Just imagine how US would respond if China or Russia back coup takes place in Mexico or Canada?
Why pivot to Asia, why redrawing Middle East, dividing Iraq into three small states? Supporting rebels against Serian government while helping Saudi dictatership to kill Yemen civilions just to suppress another rebels. All sugarcoded IN the name of democracy and freedom? which even US is failing to provide to its citizens.
We're listening about China aggression, Russian aggression, while US is at war in almost the whole world directly or through proxies.
US has accumulated enough bad karma to insure its decline, those who don't remember history are bound to repeat it. This war game and greed for hegemony by bullet at all cost has happened countless times in the past and has always resulted in complete destruction of empires and civilizations sooner or later.
But public is sleeping as always, only with a vein optimism that "this won't happen to us, we're unique in the human history!" You're not unique, you're just a spec of dust in the cosmos which has eternal law of upholding justice. It's just that it comes at the right time when the bucket is full.
You have to do better than this. I know enough about the Ukraine situation to automatically be skeptical of any story valorizing Russia's involvement. But I have no idea what "GlobalResearch" is. Which, to me and, I think, most HN readers, makes your comment a smirking personal attack rather than a contribution to the conversation.
Next time, buy some room for your outraged response with a couple sentences of explanation.
> While many of Globalresearch's articles discuss legitimate humanitarian or environmental concerns, the site has a strong undercurrent of reality warping throughout its pages, especially in relation to taking its news from sources such as Russia Today RT[2] and Press TV.[3] Its view of science, the economy and geopolitics seems to be broadly conspiracist.
> Whenever someone makes a remarkable claim and cites Globalresearch, they are almost certainly wrong.
I agree about the low quality of blumkvist's reply.
Yep! This context is more than enough. It's not that you have to prove it, you just have to spell out what your claim is, rather than indignantly implying that everyone else should grok it.
>was forcefully overthrown by a US-backed Nazi military coup
The ignorance here is mindblowing. Russians live in a perpetual conspiracy theory it seems. Autocratic states are known for their information control and propaganda it seems even when historically controlled media has been highly inaccurate, yet somehow the populace keeps buying into statements from state controlled media. I guess the state knows how to deliver information by exploiting both ignorance and patriotism. Two things Russia has high supplies of.
I'm not Russian, I just don't buy into MSM propaganda.
Let me give you simple fact which you can search for. during dissolution of USSR, it was agreed between West and Russia that NATO wouldn't expand into Eastern Europe but look at now, NATO is in most of Easten Europe and with Ukraine under control, it comes right on Russia's border.
You say autocratic, what democratic government example you can give me in the world. Don't say US, it's just oligarchy bipartisan system where only those who comply with the elite interests reach at the helm and by chance if a true patriotic reaches there and wants to assert US people's true interests, he'd be brutely killed as it was with JFK [0].
It doesn't seem to be a very popular opinion on HN/Reddit/etc. I've noticed a couple other people besides myself, although casting it as hero/villain is a bit of a simplification - I think what he did was reckless and I don't think he's been forthcoming about his motives. I've seen a lot of people downplay the comparison between Snowden's actions and Manning's actions. As I see it, Manning took thousands of sensitive documents that he didn't read and handed them over to Julian Assange, but on the hand Snowden took thousands of sensitive documents that he didn't read and handed them over to Glenn Greenwald. Personally I think the biggest difference is that Manning owned up to what he[1] did, but Snowden washed his hands of all responsibility and insists that any harm that may have come from his actions is the fault of the media, neglecting the fact that he was responsible for the media having those documents to begin with.
Then there's the issue of the reporters he chose to give the documents to, who I think have been sensationalizing the issues in order to milk these documents for as long as possible. If Snowden had stopped at the first document that was released, I'd probably have a different opinion. It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations, with some language thrown in to say "there is no indication as to how many Americans or innocent civilians have been targeted under this program," with the implication that you, your family and loved ones may have been spied on by the NSA. It's a scare tactic to bring in more viewers and more advertising dollars. Every time a news outlet does actually reveal groups actually being targeted (like Russia, China, Al Qaeda, etc.), I tend to think that it's exactly the kind of people I want the NSA to be spying on.
[1] Preemptively: yes, I am aware of the Bradley/Chelsea thing. No, I am not trying to make a statement. At the time that Pvt Manning plead guilty, he was known as Bradley. Now she is known as Chelsea, and it just gets confusing trying to figure out which pronoun to use when referring to events in the past.
> sensationalizing the issues in order to milk these documents for as long as possible
That's the only way to fight politicians who know how the news-cycle work: just sit tight for a couple of weeks and anything will be forgotten. By "refreshing" every few months, they kept the issue on the agenda. Recent legislative wins in this area are almost entirely due to this strategy: in the first month after release, there was massive support behind Feinstein and her likes; now that side has slowly been eroded down to a few securocrats and the usual hawks, which is why wins are happening in courts and in Congress.
> It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations
We really don't know how "legitimate" those descriptions of people hacking equipment in transit were. Besides, there is a world beyond the US -- Greenwald publishes from Brasil, he doesn't have to follow the wishes of the US government. Would you have kept quiet on the Bay of Pigs operation just because it was a "legitimate" foreign operation from a US-gov perspective?
Journalism is not about covering government press releases.
> We really don't know how "legitimate" those descriptions of people hacking equipment in transit were.
That's actually a perfect example of what I was talking about. When Greenwald initially published the short blurb talking about intercepting routers, he didn't say who they were being used against, implying that anyone's router might be intercepted and backdoored - maybe even your own! When the full document was released sometime later, it was revealed that the NSA only used it for hard targets; in this case, targets in Syria[1].
Greenwald does this all the time - he cuts down documents to just a sentence, paragraph or picture. When the full documents come out later on, it turns out that he was selectively quoting to fit with the message he wanted to convey.
> implying that anyone's router might be intercepted and backdoored - maybe even your own!
But that's exactly the point -- it could be. We now know that a body with almost no oversight not just can but does backdoor US-produced equipment. This is not conspiracy-theory territory anymore, it's hard fact and anyone making decisions on procurement from now on will have to deal with it, not just "hard targets" -- because you never know when you will become a "hard target" for a body with basically no oversight.
So in that sense, there is nothing wrong with Greenwald's reporting.
There is something wrong with reporting that is misleading, especially if that is intentional.
If you report that a specific thing is being done, that isn't the same as reporting that it "could be" done. If you don't know what I'm doing in my basement, it doesn't make it responsible to report that I am making bombs on the grounds that I "could be" doing so as far as you know.
Yes, it could be done, just like the police could go door-to-door shooting everyone they see. They have guns, after all. The military could take over the White House if a presidential candidate is elected that the Joint Chiefs of Staff don't like.
None of these things are actually happening, though...
The difference is that police and military have very well-defined protocols for oversight, carried out mostly in the open, with multiple authorities being involved and clear chains of responsibility. If a policeman shoots an unarmed man, there will be investigations and trials, and somebody will have to say why it happened as it did (maybe the policeman, maybe his bosses, maybe a mayor, etc). Punishment may or may not happen, but there will be a process carried out mostly in the open.
For the NSA, that's not the case. Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"? Who decided about that? Why did they need to do it, considering Google was already cooperating? Why did they lie about what they were doing even to the authorities they supposedly answer to? They basically dished "network brutality" with impunity, and now there is no process to hold anyone accountable.
With the NSA, we now know that what they "could" do, they actually did do, and unlike all those other corps, now there is no way to hold anyone accountable.
> The difference is that police and military have very well-defined protocols for oversight, carried out mostly in the open, with multiple authorities being involved and clear chains of responsibility.
So does the NSA through both the FISC court and the Congressional Intelligence and Judicial Committees. As much as people like to gloss over them and brush them off as rubber stamps, if you actually read the released FISC opinions you'd see there was a good deal of pushback (see [1] as an example of the NSA overstepping their bounds and being forced to stop by the court). Likewise, you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other. Right now we also have a major disagreement between the Judges on the FISC and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the phone records program, which likely won't be resolved unless the law is renewed and it's appealed to the Supreme Court.
There is oversight. Yes, it is done in secret for the sake of protect intelligence sources, but it does in fact exist. And, frankly, I think the Snowden disclosures themselves show that they largely work. Before the Church/Pike reforms back in the 70s, the NSA was specifically targeting anti-war protesters, civil rights activists and even congressmen[2]. Now, despite his best efforts, Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
> Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"?
I would probably be really pissed off if that's actually what they did. I'm assuming you're referring to this[3], in which the authors start off trying to suggest that the NSA is breaking into Google and Yahoo data centers, but when you read further and look at the source documents it becomes apparent that what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted, and GCHQ was picking it up on one of their fiber taps. Now stop and consider that every other country that those leased fiber lines passed through was probably doing the exact same thing. I don't see this as NSA abuse, I see this as Google getting caught not protecting its customers' information.
And in line with my complaint in my above comment, the article finishes with "It is not clear how much data from Americans is collected and how much of that is retained." So what kind of data is collected? Who is being targeted? Why are they being targeted? What is the data being used for? Am I being targeted? Are other Americans being targeted? The article doesn't answer any of these questions, nor does it give me any indication as to who else might be listening in and what data they're collecting.
If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care - good for them. If the NSA was using that access to collect data on the Russian government, and now that intelligence source has dried up, then the Washington Post has just done disservice to the American people. If the NSA is using it to collect American data, or if the Russians are listening in on American communications using similar techniques, now that's newsworthy.
... that in practice amounted to absolutely nothing, because the NSA kept doing what it wanted pretty much all the time. They just lied a few times more here and there, like Clapper did. It took Snowden to show that they were lying through their teeth.
> you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other.
That's not oversight, that's 4 people deciding what is kosher and being totally forbidden from discussing it in public anyway, as they themselves made clear. That's not how it should be.
> Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough, to be honest. It's not in Greenwald's docs, but if you sum it to the capabilities that Greenwald reported, it's pretty damning.
> what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted
In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it. Or rather it should be -- it took Snowden to discuss what the NSA should and should not do at the political level.
> The article doesn't answer any of these questions
If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure that will harm people on the ground etc etc etc. From your POV, Greenwald is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't; but it's clear from the subsequent fallout that Greenwald was right to publish what he did and how he did it.
> If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care
> that in practice amounted to absolutely nothing, because the NSA kept doing what it wanted pretty much all the time.
Did you read the article I linked to? If so, how does your statement mesh with the fact that, based on the order issued by judge discussed in that article, the NSA was forced to change their collection and minimization procedures and delete all of the data that had been previously collected under that program[1]? This was all very much pre-Snowden.
> They just lied a few times more here and there
Like where? I keep seeing this argument - Clapper said something in a Congressional hearing that turned out to not be true, therefore everything anyone in the government says is a lie. Greenwald has documents on everything the NSA is doing; why haven't I seen any other documents catching officials lying to the public?
> That's not oversight, that's 4 people...
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence currently has 22 members; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has 19 members; the FISC has 11 judges. That doesn't include their any of their staff.
> All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough
When Reuters broke the parallel construction story, they mentioned this in the reporting[2] (emphasis mine):
"Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE."
...
"Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst."
> In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it.
The NSA has a responsibility to protect US national security; it is under no obligation to protect to security of foreign communications. Like I mentioned in my comment, if groups outside the US were taking advantage of this to spy on Americans, then that's something I'd like to see in the headlines. If that's the case, the NSA would need to justify prioritizing its foreign spying over protecting US interests.
> If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure
I think disclosing how the NSA conducts its operations without any further justification is irresponsible. If a news agency (especially an American one; I can understand why a foreign one wouldn't care) goes and tells the world exactly how a US intelligence agency is collecting information without showing me evidence of abuse, all they're doing is tipping off legitimate intelligence targets on how to avoid being spied on. In order to show evidence of abuse, you need to answer at least a few of those questions that I posed. I want abuse stopped, not legitimate intelligence work. This article doesn't show abuse.
> As I said, there is a world beyond the US border.
Which is exactly why we have spies. Do you think the NSA has no legitimate purpose?
But it's only you presuming a limitation on the NSA's actions with no basis for making that assumption. The fact that certain documents X have come out showing that Y happened in place Z does not mean that Y isn't happening elsewhere as well.
Indeed, the document you link to says "our targets throughout the world". Your characterization of the program/document as "only used for hard targets in Syria" is just an outright lie.
>Every time a news outlet does actually reveal groups actually being targeted (like Russia, China, Al Qaeda, etc.), I tend to think that it's exactly the kind of people I want the NSA to be spying on.
I'd be interested in seeing some links.
Be careful where you get your leaks from. If "a news outlet" isn't the Washington Post, The Guardian, or The Intercept, then it's not a primary source. In particular, if it's a 'leak' that hasn't even been reported by any of those three, then you're actually reading propaganda and not news.
It seems quite unbelievable, but we actually have proof that NSA/GCHQ are willing to leak their own legitimate activities to the media, provided they are reported as being leaked by Snowden:
I strongly suggest you read at least the first paragraph of that article and ask yourself "where did The Independent get that 'leak', and why did they attribute it to Snowden when that's clearly a lie?"
> If Snowden had stopped at the first document that was released, I'd probably have a different opinion.
This is true. You'd have have no idea about the full scope of the extent of the NSA's activity and this whole thing would have just blown over. For several weeks after the first leak the US or UK government denied something one day and the next day another leaked document was published showing that they were lying. They would have found a cover up much easier if only one document had been released. Or even if all had been released at once.
Regarding pronouns. Just use she. Manning has made it clear that she thinks of herself as a woman at least give her that.
Almost everyone I talk to in person thinks Snowden is a criminal. These people believe the US government was caught doing something it shouldn't have, but Snowden himself is a bad guy to these folks because he's seen as betraying his country.
I think HN is much more pro-Snowden than the general population is, but I think the general population doesn't deny the value of exposing what the US government did. I live in DC however, so there's certainly a pro-government feeling in this down, possibly more so than many other places in the US.
Edit: To add some support for my anecdotes, here's a somewhat recent poll I found from April 21st citing 64% of people hold a negative opinion of Snowden [0].
I guess this is kind of where I'm at with him. Although I don't really think he's a "bad guy". What he did was treason and it was "wrong", but I think in this case the ends justify the means. What he exposed was far worse than how he did it.
You do realize that the crime of treason is codified in the United States Constitution, and that what Snowden did in no way meets the criteria enumerated there. Careful throwing the word "treason" around like that, it can make you appear ignorant.
It's likely he'll see the charges of "Aiding the Enemy", "Illegal disclosure of Classified Information", and "Unauthorized removal and retention of Classified information". That said, Treason isn't as hard to apply as people are making it out to be.
“If you think that one, Al Qaeda and similar groups are the enemy for purposes of treason; two, his actions assisted them in operations against the U.S.; and three, that was his intention,” Harrison said, “then the argument that it was treason is pretty good.” - John Harrison UVA LAW specializing in constitutional law and history.
> These people believe the US government was caught doing something it shouldn't have, but Snowden himself is a bad guy to these folks because he's seen as betraying his country.
That logic should scare the living hell out of people.
Why? I myself am not over the moon about what Snowden did, though I recognize the necessity for it, and don't hold any personal grudge against him for it.
I just don't trust people to accurately asses whether or not something is "leak worthy", and I don't want to create a safe path for folks just because they thought what they were leaking was important for the world to know. It ruins the concept of holding government secrets, something I think benefits the US and other governments more than it harms them and the people they serve.
I think it should be a huge risk, and carry dire consequences, in general, when you release classified information. In this specific case, perhaps the fact that the US courts, congress, and the US people have all collectively been appalled at what the US government has been doing should exonerate Snowden, but only in this specific case. I would not like any kind of precedent to be set, for the aforementioned reason.
I hope Obama pardons him in his last days in office, or offers him a deal where he is allowed back in the US without serving any jail time.
Because Snowden told the public what they're own government is doing - things they shouldn't be doing. Operations that people would have considered Orwellian a decade or two ago. Things they've blatantly lied about [1]. Another user in this thread, jordigh, covers why this has been important in the past.
You're not really addressing what I wrote -- specifically, the general precedent of allowing state secrets to be leaked without severe punishment seems harmful to any nation state.
It makes sense to me that the default reaction to the release of state secrets is that of disapproval. From there, we can of course move further away from acceptance or closer to it depending on the specific scenario, but most folks aren't taking a close look at Snowden -- I'd even argue that they probably don't need to. What matters here is the info he released, not really Snowden specifically.
There's no way to notify your population of an action without also notifying your enemies of that action. No argument exists, to my knowledge, that a nation-state can be successful without hiding some information from other nation-states, and therefore from its people, given my first sentence.
It's one reason we elect representatives, in fact.
Considering there has never been a time in human history where a nation state has not had any opposition from other nation states, I suspect your suggestion is literally impossible.
I guess what you are saying is that nation states are not a good governing structure for progress, into the future? Who are our enemies? The enemies of my country are not necessarily my personal enemies. In fact I quite like many people who come from 'enemy' territories. There is a disconnect between the reality I experience in my everyday life and the one put forward but my/our government/s.
I don't think anybody here is advocating for thoughtlessly dumping all state secrets in the open.
The thing is, when given the power to eavesdrop into anyone's life without consequences, it takes a rather uncommon kind of person to do what Snowden did in order to make the public aware of what is going on.
Because the most common behaviour when receiving that power would be to exploit and abuse it, regardless of whether we are talking about an individual, an institution, or a whole government.
So I am not worried about Snowden, I'm worried about the thousands of his ex-colleagues who are still sitting on their desks every day.
> I don't think anybody here is advocating for thoughtlessly dumping all state secrets in the open.
I am. Why should a state have secrets? Rulers ought to be in power under the consent of the ruled. If the ruled don't even know what the rulers are doing, how can we be giving them consent for something we don't know about?
A "zero secrets policy" is still not tenable. There are enough legitimate government uses for secrets. For example:
* Police are investigating a crime and have not made all details of the crime publicly known. Under questioning, a suspect independently corroborates these details, which he would not have known unless he was the perpetrator. The prosecution now has a stronger case.
* Three high-ranking members of ISIS are in fact CIA informants. They meet their CIA contact biweekly in a falafel shop in Mosul. The identities of the informants, their contact, and the falafel shop are all state secrets.
* A defense contractor is building a secret weapon that is decades ahead of competing powers. The design and specifications of this weapon are state secrets.
* The government maintains a health insurance system for the disabled, poor, and elderly.
* The military is performing operations somewhere in the world. Their exact order of battle and battle plan are secret.
* The military is planning an amphibious assault on Beachhead B. Using a ruse, they convince the enemy that they are instead landing at Beachhead A.
There are reasonable and good-intentioned debates to be had about state secrets, but to say there is never a legitimate purpose for them is the practical equivalent of anarchism.
> * Police are investigating a crime and have not made all details of the crime publicly known.
This isn't exactly the same as the government itself having secrets, but a secret police can generate a lot of problems, as you're doubtlessly aware.
> * The government maintains a health insurance system for the disabled, poor, and elderly.
These are not government secrets either. The secrecy is for people who are being served by the government, not for employees of the state.
> * Three high-ranking members of ISIS are in fact CIA informants
> * A defense contractor is building a secret weapon that is decades ahead of competing powers.
> * The military is performing operations somewhere in the
world.
> * The military is planning an amphibious assault on Beachhead B.
These are militaristic problems created by having a state in constant war to begin with. These are webs of lies that have to be perpetuated due to initial lying.
As an outsider, it's really amazing how blind US citizens are to their own country's incessant war-mongering. They breed war with lies and have to maintain that war with lies.
I never said that it was, but as recently as the 1940's, the US had a clear-cut moral imperative to engage in war, and that required the US government to hold secrets. (For instance, in my analogy of the amphibious assault, Beachhead B was Normandy and Beachhead A was Pas-de-Calais.)
If your theory of government doesn't allow for all the good things the US government has done in the past century, it's not a credible theory of government.
The possible precedent of not punishing leakers is far preferable to the actual precedent of giving the government a way to shield all of its wrongdoings.
I understand this sentiment, but I doubt you'd continue to hold it in the event of a leak that was much less beneficial for you in particular.
Consider for a moment the fictional scenario that all US tax documents were leaked, or perhaps only the tax documents of folks whose names started with Warren B. We might (in this fictional scenario) find out about some very significant tax evasion on the part of Warren Buffet (just a hypothetical example, almost certainly not true), but how might Warren Beaufort feel?
To provide another (completely fictional) example, what about if the medical information of all federal US employees gets leaked. The US public is shocked to discover the huge misappropriations of funds towards unnecessary procedures for US congressmen/women, but at the same time Joe Normal, who works for a middle school, loses his job because it's revealed he has AIDS and the parents petition his removal from the classroom.
I don't want to give these folks who might have access to this data any hope of exoneration or leniency if they use their privileged position to reveal secrets.
>who works for a middle school, loses his job because it's revealed he has AIDS and the parents petition his removal from the classroom.
Once again, blaming the leaker is blaming the wrong individual here.
There is already a cost to society of people not seeking treatment for mental health issues on the possibility the info might be leaked, not because the leak itself is a feared occurrence (in reality it is rare) but because of how irrational society reacts (especially when mental disorders are treated as moral failings).
If I send my kid to visit his dad, knowing full well his dad is going to abuse him, am I at fault for sending him anyway, or are you exclusively arguing that his dad would be at fault, and I would carry zero blame?
You are not guilty of child abuse. You are guilty of endangerment. The father is guilty for child abuse. That said, the responsibility a parent has a child far exceeds the responsibility in most other relationships. Also the analogy is quite distant.
Consider a closer analogy of report a number of child abusers to the police. One of these abusers is a father who abuses their child. Enough info is made public during the trial that the child is shamed for it (even though we can agree they should not be shamed for it). Are you guilty for shaming the child? Say another child is taken from their parents, both of whom had abused them but stopped and placed into foster care where they are abused again. Are you guilty for their continued abuse?
My analogy was designed to demonstrate the responsibility of an actor who has knowledge of a consequence of his/her behavior, whether or not the actor is in control of the consequence itself.
In the event of a shamed child, I am indeed responsible (not guilty, that has a legal connotation that's undesired here) for a child's shaming if I am the one who acted, and the result of which was the shaming, regardless of other outcomes. Had I not acted, the child would not have been shamed. Therefore I am the responsible actor in the child shaming (not exclusively, obviously).
You're apparently mixing both morality and legality, as well as what is happening vs. what ought to happen [0]. I am explicitly speaking in the realm of what is happening. You are responsible for the shaming of the child, the beating of the child, or the exposure of Joe Normal's loss of his job. Whether or not you were acting morally is an issue I'd like to address, but only once we've agreed on the premise that an actor is considered responsible for all direct consequences of his/her action.
Then given that we are responsible for the actions our governments take, and since all governments have taken actions that have caused children to be molested (such as putting a child in a foster care), even if those actions were reasonable given the known information at the time (removing the child from a parent who was giving them meth and putting them in a foster care home that was safe by all indications), we are all responsible for child molestation.
Honestly, the fact that it's only 64% raises my opinion of Americans slightly. The barrage of propaganda you have to put up with there is truly remarkable, and especially considering the rivers of bullshit that streamed out of every single major media outlet in the wake of this, the fact the over one in three Americans still thinks he's an alright guy, with one in ten considering him a hero, speaks volumes for their resistance to it. Nice work, America.
Would this be the same population polled in 2010 when 41% of them could not name the vice president of the United States in an open-ended (not multiple choice) question? [0] Or last September when 64% of them could not name the three branches of government? [1] (35% could not name a single one)
Buried near the bottom is, "60% believe it is acceptable to monitor the communications of American leaders."
Raise your hand if you think it's good for a healthy democracy for the executive branch to monitor the private communications of congresspeople, senators, and federal judges?
Hah, I don't think anyone would disagree with you if your thesis here is "most people are generally uninformed".
That being said, technically speaking yes, it probably was a different set of people polled, just considering how the nature of polling works!
What you're not understanding though is that people actually seem to separate the content of the leak with the act of the leak. All it takes is a quick Google of "NSA spying program polling" to see polls affirming that hypothesis (folks disapprove of Snowden, but also heavily disapprove of the NSA spying program).
Snowden himself has been known to beg folks during his interviews to stop caring about him or what he did, and focus on the content of the information he released, and I'd agree. So what if folks don't like Snowden?
Watching through the John Oliver episode with Snowden [1], that's pretty clear.
To sum up the interviews with people they did in the episode:
- When asked if people knew who Snowden was, they often either had no clue or confused him with Julian Assange. They often associated him with Wikileaks, even to the point of believing him to be leading it.
- They often saw his actions as damaging the US and its troops in the Middle East.
- They near consistently had a negative view of him.
- When given a simple to understand explanation of what he revealed (the government can see your dick pics), nearly all of them were surprised, had no idea that it was true (and exactly what Snowden had shown us) and shared the view that the government shouldn't have that kind of power.
Edward Snowden seems like a good guy, but what he did was wrong. Betrayal and theft should not be condoned under any circumstances. He made the wrong choices and should be held accountable for them in a court of law.
If someone I trusted unilaterally decided that I was breaking the law and then used that as a justification to steal documents from me and give them to journalists, I would be very upset. That's just wrong, man.
Snowden was essentially in charge of doing data backup transfers from the pacific to Washington, DC. This means that the NSA trusted him like many of us are trusted every day. The world would descend into chaos pretty quickly if we all decided to start reviewing and passing judgement on the data that we're in charge of, instead of just making sure that it goes where it's supposed to go without incident. No matter how noble his intentions or how despicable the actions of others were, what he did was unethical, illegal and immoral.
It's not about heroes and villains. We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us. We can't make exceptions because someone is popular or because we agree with their motives. If a jury of Edward Snowden's peers are so taken by his celebrity and upstanding moral character that they find him not guilty, then so be it. But all of us should be hoping that he comes home to face that jury. Because it's the right thing to do.
In a system of laws, it is bad (unjust and in other ways problematic) to give particular people special exceptions. Does that tell you which "good" is being talked about? The "all of us" is all the people covered by a particular system of laws.
Your statement diregards completely the reason we have laws in the first place.
The reason we create laws is not to obey them because they are laws. That would be stupid.
If the laws are unjust, unethical or problematic for all but the powerful, they should be eliminated.
Also, the whole Snowden thing happened because the NSA was operating against the laws and because
what they did was obviously unethical.
If my employer does something unlawful or unethical should I continue to cover for him, just because
an employee must obey the orders of his/her employer?
> We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us. We can't make exceptions because someone is popular or because we agree with their motives.
Oh yeah, like the former General turned CIA Director who provided classified material to his mistress/biographer and was able to avoid felony charges?
If the fate of US security was undermined by Snowden, we're fucked anyway. Everything revealed from a threat POV thus far has been predicted by security experts in the public domain since the 90s, and by the government itself in warnings about travel in China. I think the reaction to the Snowden documents makes it very clear that there is no bright line from a moral POV. The fact that the government hasn't really been able to discredit him is evidence in my mind that he is what he says he is.
Snowden will almost certainly end up imprisoned as part of some sort of deal with the Russians someday. History may bring clarity (assuming it isn't classified forever or destroyed), but some kangaroo court or "jury of peers" certainly won't.
Saying "no matter what this is about, not following any rule/breaking trust" is automatically "unethical, illegal and immoral" is wrong. If that was true, the concepts of ethics and morals wouldn't exist much in the first place. In some situations breaking a law or disobeying an order is a must, i.e. when ordered to commit a war crime. So, why not have a look at the specifics of the situation at hand instead of dismissing it outright?
What are you trusted with? Safety inspections? Overseeing any compliance issues? I could see many areas and many scenarios where I would hold you accountable to not just do as you are ordered, but speak out against wrongdoings.
>We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us.
This line refutes the whole premise of your argument. Clearly the rules were not being enforced so Snowden had no choice but to leak the mass and systemic breaking of those rules or be complicit. Snowden wouldn't get a fair trial so it would be reckless for him to come home.
US law only applies to US Citizens, while I understand your sentiment it's written that way for a reason. EU Law loosely allows for all persons regardless of country protection with the same laws of the EU.
Frustrated or not, Protecting their country and their countries assets is. If you don't think this is going on around the globe then you're not looking for answers. The fact that there were checks and balances (some that may not have worked) is still way more than the rest of the world. For example the russian SORM system flat out forces a 1:1 copy of all internet traffic to the FSB. Meta data at gateways vs full capture, where's the uproar on behalf of the Russian citizens? Not to mention russian provides internet access / connectivity for many African, middle eastern, and even eastern european companies (direct and through proxy organizations) all subject to the same SORM rulings.
This isn't about who the NSA (or anybody else) chose to place their trust, and it certainly isn't about some right-wing-authoritarian[1] desire for social order (the world isn't going to descend into chaos if critical thinking starts taking over from blindly following orders.
This is about our duties to the great ideals of freedom that this country was founded upon... and the oath Snowden took[2] to defend the same. The question you should be asking is why isn't everybody else that took this oath doing something similar?
The oath in question: (emphasis added)
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will *support and defend the Constitution*
of the United States against all enemies, foreign *and domestic*; that I will bear true faith
and *allegiance to the same*; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation
or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the *duties of the office*
on which I am about to enter.
Note that it does include a reference to the duties of the office. The problem is when those duties are in conflict with the first part of the oath, to "support and defend the Constitution". This oath is very clear about what you're supposed to prioritize ("I will bear... allegiance to the [Constitution]").
So no, Snowden's actions were not unethical, illegal, or immoral. In fact, it may be one of the few things anybody could do that is by definition patriotic. Any law he may have been in conflict - and certainly any duties he had to the NSA - are lower priorities than his defense of the constitution.
I do not envy anybody who is placed by his superiors into a situation that forces a choice between following those same superiors or following an oath to a greater ideal. That has to be one of the hardest decisions to make.
[1] meaning Bob Altemeyer's term, not the usual political meaning
Our laws should be based on our sense of morals and justice - not the other way around. You currently seem to have them reversed.
An important line from stage 6 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development - "Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws."
The linked page describes a theory of moral reasoning and ethical behavior ( and their various developmental stages ).
Your view corresponds very closely with level 4 (copied below) - you believe that laws should be absolute, inviolable and should be applied equally and blindly.
Some of the replies to your comment are speaking at level 5 or 6. They do not believe that the police, justice system or the government are absolute moral authorities and can make no mistakes.
Copy paste from wikipedia follows:
In Stage four (authority and social order obedience driven), it is important to obey laws, dictums and social conventions because of their importance in maintaining a functioning society. Moral reasoning in stage four is thus beyond the need for individual approval exhibited in stage three. A central ideal or ideals often prescribe what is right and wrong. If one person violates a law, perhaps everyone would — thus there is an obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules. When someone does violate a law, it is morally wrong; culpability is thus a significant factor in this stage as it separates the bad domains from the good ones. Most active members of society remain at stage four, where morality is still predominantly dictated by an outside force.
Post-Conventional
The post-conventional level, also known as the principled level, is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from society, and that the individual’s own perspective may take precedence over society’s view; individuals may disobey rules inconsistent with their own principles. Post-conventional moralists live by their own ethical principles — principles that typically include such basic human rights as life, liberty, and justice. People who exhibit post-conventional morality view rules as useful but changeable mechanisms — ideally rules can maintain the general social order and protect human rights. Rules are not absolute dictates that must be obeyed without question. Because post-conventional individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior, especially at stage six, can be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.
Some theorists have speculated that many people may never reach this level of abstract moral reasoning.
In Stage five (social contract driven), the world is viewed as holding different opinions, rights and values. Such perspectives should be mutually respected as unique to each person or community. Laws are regarded as social contracts rather than rigid edicts. Those that do not promote the general welfare should be changed when necessary to meet “the greatest good for the greatest number of people." This is achieved through majority decision and inevitable compromise. Democratic government is ostensibly based on stage five reasoning.
In Stage six (universal ethical principles driven), moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles. Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws. Legal rights are unnecessary, as social contracts are not essential for deontic moral action. Decisions are not reached hypothetically in a conditional way but rather categorically in an absolute way, as in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[18] This involves an individual imagining what they would do in another’s shoes, if they...
A chef of a wealthy businessman helped steal leftover scraps and give them to me. I used the food to feed a starving child on the streets. The food was going to be tossed into the trash, so there is no negative impact towards the wealthy businessman by my stealing of it. It is a victim-less crime. The chef and I are breaking the law. Should we go to jail for what we are doing? Is what we are doing 'wrong'?
In your world of absolutes - yes. The chef and I would go to jail or be fined for theft and the child may starve to death. All over food that otherwise would have been trash. That doesn't seem logical or moral on any level.
To allow for my lazy analogy, let's pretend we asked the wealthy businessman if we could donate any scraps to an orphanage and he was a Scrooge and said no.
>If someone I trusted unilaterally decided that I was breaking the law and then used that as a justification to steal documents from me and give them to journalists, I would be very upset. That's just wrong, man.
That sounds like something the mafia might say of a rat. "Dude, I trusted you. WTF? Why would you tell about our drug smuggling to the police?" The important thing about Snowden's whistleblowing is that they were violating the law.
>The world would descend into chaos pretty quickly if we all decided to start reviewing and passing judgement on the data that we're in charge of, instead of just making sure that it goes where it's supposed to go without incident.
"Absolutely no questions asked" is a dangerous policy and once again smells of a criminal ring. "Don't ask what's in the package. Just get it to where it needs to be." What if someone is paid to transfer a trojan to your computer. Should they simply move the payload without questioning what it is or why or the legality of it?
>We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us.
The system is constantly revised, outdated laws are thrown out. Some laws are reworded. Laws are a reflection of the values of a society. These values can and do change. If it is the popular opinion that Snowden did the right thing then he did the right thing. That's that.
> Are there folks here who see him as less a hero more a villain?
I see him as neither hero nor villain.
He has undertaken certain actions, such as leaking the NSA's illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans, that took a lot of courage and may result in positive changes if we really make use of what was leaked. For this he should be commended. He sacrificed his life in the US for this. Let's do what we can to make it worthwhile.
He has also undertaken certain actions that, in my opinion, do not relate to American civil liberties and could be damaging.
For instance, leaking how the US is spying on foreign nations, which is the whole reason for the NSA to exist. These actions make it easy to cast Snowden as at worst a traitor (not my belief) and at best misguided (which is what I personally believe; he should have been more discriminating in his leaks).
> For instance, leaking how the US is spying on foreign nations, which is the whole reason for the NSA to exist.
True, but this also paints the US leaders as hypocrites. Snowden showed that the NSA was hacking Chinese computers at a time when the US was loudly proclaiming innocence while denouncing "Chinese hacking."
Of course the US denies that. China denies they do it to the US, but they "hack" the US every single day. China has to deny it as well. Admitting hacking could be seen as an act of war. Use your brain.
> Admitting hacking could be seen as an act of war. Use your brain.
It's less about the US openly admitting to it, and more about the general public not using their brains and eating up what the politicians are serving them. Many in the US take those "evil Chinese hackers" statements at face-value and would believe that the US would only be hacking military targets in China (rather than hacking the Chinese general public to create botnets, etc).
> For instance, leaking how the US is spying on foreign nations, which is the whole reason for the NSA to exist.
Similarly how a military is designed to potentially fight against other nations, but is usually not doing that all time in an all-out fashion, intelligence agencies have their place but should not necessarily spy indiscriminately on everyone, all the time.
While we are mostly civilized enough not to have random troops roaming around like in the Thirty Years' War, the concept of using restraint in surveillance, or cyber warfare in general is not developed very much.
Why is leaking a massive spying program on innocent Americans courageous, but leaking a massive spying program on innocent non-Americans misguided? Morality doesn't stop at the border, people on the other side of it are humans too.
> For instance, leaking how the US is spying on foreign nations, which is the whole reason for the NSA to exist.
As a non-US citizen I wholeheartedly thank Snowden for doing this, as it also shed light on the threat to me from the US (NSA) and from my own UK government (GCHQ).
There is nothing I could ever think badly of him for in this situation.
I tend to dislike the hero/villain dichotomy that is usually held up. I think the Snowden leaks have caused tremendous damage to the US geopolitically, and I think the manner in which he is releasing the documents has elements of narcissism and carelessness in regards to the sensitivity of the information.
That being said, Snowden probably would not have absconded with this massive trove of information if the US government did not suppress the whistleblowers who came before him. Binney [1], Weibe and Loomis tried to stop the precursors to the NSA's current activities back in 2002, and they paid for it with legal harassment. Those three men were real patriots, and did not dump thousands of documents about intelligence activities that were going on.
Unfortunately, when you don't let pressure bleed off gently in a system things build up until then next opening results in a catastrophic failure.
> I think the Snowden leaks have caused tremendous damage to the US geopolitically, and I think the manner in which he is releasing the documents has elements of narcissism and carelessness in regards to the sensitivity of the information.
Could you expand on why you think this? From my perspective, what's caused tremendous damage is the way U.S. agencies have acted. I'd like these policies to at minimum be up for a vote, but we can't vote on something if we have no idea what's being done.
Absolutely. Ill clarify here and state that I think what the US government was doing was wrong, and that by uncovering the illegal (in my mind, though there is some debate about this point) activities of our spy agencies the world is better off. Of course, leaking the information could not have happened if the original programs had never existed, but the leaks were the proximate cause for the damage to the U.S. geopolitically.
However, that doesn't negate the fact that by having their dirty laundry aired the U.S. has gotten a tarnished reputation. Its given ammunition to anti-US groups, lent legitimacy to other state actors acting poorly when it comes to cyber-intelligence/warfare, and damaged the economic interests of U.S. tech companies trying to have a presence internationally. I will leave it up to you to pass your own judgement as to whether this damage to the U.S. was appropriate/justified/legitimate/deserved, but I think we can agree that it has happened.
Now, to expand on my comment that there are elements of carelessness and narcissism. I think - and this is just my opinion - that Snowden has demonstrated an enjoyment of the limelight, and has started to model himself as a digital champion. I don't say this to condemn him, merely to point out that he is a human who has an ego, and isnt so selfless angel. Second, the carelessness that I refer to is things I have heard regarding failures in redacting information[1]. This doesn't necessarily mean that such failures aren't a cost that is negated by the public gain of knowing about these surveillance programs, but it is still a cost that must be recognized.
Who gave the documents to the NYT? Obviously this is a failure on the part of the NYT, but given that Snowden talks about how security conscious he is then he should bear at least some of the responsibility for not controlling the release.
I wasn't talking about whether other leaks have been more damaging, I was talking specifically about the lack of nuance contained in the Edward Snowden hero/villain dichotomy.
We can talk about the White House's absolutely shameful wrist slapping of Petraeus, or the leaks mentioned in the article you source, but that still doesn't address whether Snowden messed up when he facilitated the NYT in releasing unredacted information. Just because hypocrisy exists doesnt mean that anytime we critique someone we have to also bring out a laundry list of other people who messed up even worse.
>I tend to dislike the hero/villain dichotomy that is usually held up. I think the Snowden leaks have caused tremendous damage to the US geopolitically
If I report someone for a crime and they are arrested, is the damage to their life my fault or their own?
I see the point you are trying to make, but the analogy misses some nuance. A question that captures more of the muddiness of this is "If I find out someone is committing a crime and I prove it by indiscriminately publishing their emails, is the embarrassment that is created when it is revealed they were having an affair my fault or their own?"
Even then, they choose to have the affair. While I do like privacy, I don't like blaming others for the consequences of exposing one's own misdeeds (even when they are not illegal).
Determining an acceptable level of collateral damage is a very, very tricky problem. In the Snowden case I think the damage that was done is acceptable in order to root out illegal activity, but that doesn't mean that collateral damage wasn't done, or that perhaps steps could have been taken to minimize that damage.
But ultimately, the calculus for what is acceptable when it comes to collateral damage is extraordinarily subjective. I don't know of any concrete way to judge it so I am usually forced into using my own value system as to what is important in my life.
I can see how it would be easy to read my post as a judgement as to whether the Snowden leaks were worth it, but I wasn't trying to make that point. If I was to rephrase my original comment using your analogy, I would say it something like this.
"The doctor who used chemotherapy to remove the cancer in America's body has caused spillover damage to other organ systems, but this course of action was only necessary because recommendations in the early stage of the disease to remove the tumor before it spread were ignored. When we ignore the warning signs early on it forces subsequent treatments to be far more indiscriminate"
Yes, Snowden's leaks did end up causing damage to US interests, and some would rightfully condemn him for it.
But we also need to keep in mind that there really wasn't any other viable option to shed light into these programs and raise public awareness (and yes, the public did absolutely need to be aware of these programs). The agencies were set up to hide information about their programs from the public at all costs and it was clear that traditional whistleblowing wasn't going to get any results.
I'd think another important consideration for Snowden when making this decision was that a more persistent effort at traditional whistleblowing from within the US could in fact have led to even more dire personal consequences.
I find it amazing that the messenger gets shot when unveiling a massive criminal conspiracy that goes to the highest levels of government. If there was no crime in the first place there would be nothing to unveil and Snowden would still mostly likely be sitting at his desk in an NSA data center somewhere doing his job. Do you also want any witnesses to petty crime and more serious personal crimes such as murder locked up because they happened to witness someone else committing a crime?
I'm sure all the statists in this thread would be singing snowdens praises if he had only been a senator or maybe worked at a large international bank, cause those people break all sorts of laws all the time and these apologists don't seem to mind.
I think its a huge gray area Snowden walked into and while he could have handled things better I suspect operational constraints have more to do with the flaws in his plan than an actual desire to disclaim ownership.
I'm pretty sure Snowden believed the NSA [among others] would catch onto him very quickly and he had to dump everything to keep it from falling into "hostile" hands as soon as practical. Given that, I think he made the only practical choice he could but he isn't a "good" guy in the sense of a hero. More of just a guy who made mistakes, like anyone else.
The hero/villain dichotomy is very...cliche. Good and evil are really points of view that depend on your perception of reality and the position you occupy within the framework of a global society. The reality is the US Government is as much a villain as Snowden is. At which point, is it really fair to call Snowden a villain as the weaker party?
To most of the world, Snowden was a clear "good" as its brought the spying of the US into the light where Governments no longer have to react privately [ I'm pretty sure every Government that claimed ignorance had some clue of the capability, they have spies too after all ] but can take proper public steps to counteract the US's capabilities.
From a US nationalistic perspective, Snowden harmed the national prestige and possibly tipped off what few adversaries the US has that were too small to have the capability to accurately estimate the US's capabilities. And no, that isn't a group like ISIS. I'm talking small groups. I'm pretty sure ISIS has a good estimate on the practical capabilities of US intelligence pre-Snowden.
But honestly, the US public [the tech illiterate ones who were oblivious to what was going on] needed to be aware of it to make an informed decision to consent to it. Sadly, the outcome is they care more about the illusion of perfect security, bread & circuses than they do being informed citizens.
The part of all this I honestly find frightening is this:
The reality is the majority of the US population holds a negative opinion of Snowden. I find it frightening that the majority of the country happily makes an opinion formed entirely on propaganda. The reality is the US's security forces are the greatest to its citizenry. The fact the general population blindly takes their side is...disturbing on a level I can't really express.
Wait, he appeared before the Swedish parliament to receive and award?
As a swede, I had no idea this happened. Also, it surprises me considering the hunt of Assange began here. I really have to see if there's video of that award ceremony.
I'm glad to see that Snowden gets to witness the changes that his revelations have initiated.
The failure of governments worldwide to protect their citizens from being spied upon by foreign intelligence services is distressing. Thanks to Snowden, everyone is aware of it and the administrations can no longer pretend to be clueless.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadDespite how seriously misleading this statement is I can't help but laugh. Been rolfmao way too much since the Snowden leaks. From the .gov puppets desperate to find a angle on the debate, to the FBI desperate to counter the tides of technological evolution.... im laughing. Will probably continue laughing even after their baton's hit my back because some citizens actually took these absurd statements from the CIA/NSA/FBI/WhiteHouse as something other than a joke.
“ISIS was one of the terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS,” Mr. Morell writes in “The Great War of Our Time,” offering no elaboration.
I think the fact that the NYT editorialised with the comment "offering no elaboration" changes it entirely.
Anyone else, any clue?
He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
That's not to say the initial act has no value. It most certainly has. But everything he says afterward I just don't value at all.
I don't think you should desert to the enemy if you're trying to fix your battalion.
Do you remember what happened with Chelsea Manning? Because that is what the GP is referring to. When you get put in military prison, they basically get to do whatever they want to you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence
I'm not sure how that is an improvement.
> It's like exposing corruption in the police department and then only hanging out at the mafia's restaurant. How am I supposed at look at that guy now?
The whole point of staying in Russia is that he can't leave because the US made sure his travel documents were revoked, and Russia is unlikely to extradite him under political pressure from the US. If it was Snowdens goal to pass on information to Russia, he wouldn't have made such a big fuss about releasing that info to the media. So it's actually more like exposing corruption in the police department, and then seeking refuge from the wrath of those corrupt police, and the only safe place you can find is the maffia's restaurant.
Complaining about downvotes is only going to earn you more of them.
How would you feel if people shut you out of a discussion because they disagreed with you?
If someone says something you disagree with, debate them. If they say something factually incorrect, correct them. They may even thank you for it. And guess what, they may end up changing your mind, or correcting a mistake on your part.
Actively seeking to censor somebody for having a different perspective on something is frankly abhorant.
I find it ironic that this kind of behaviour is being encouraged in this thread of all. Snowden's actions will prove to be a giant waste of effort if your kind get their way.
And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-)
Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.
The downvoted comment was this:
I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on. He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
Now back to the point, the opinion that Snowmen is guilty of treason is held by a majority. And to me that doesn't make sense, because I personally want to live under the rule of law and in such a nation nobody should be above that law, not a secret service, not the president, nobody. That the US government is capable of illegally spying on their own citizens, using the taxes of those citizens to do it, well I want to know about it. That Germany is spying on their own citizens in cooperation with the US, I want to know that as well. I also happen to believe that my right to privacy should be above your right for security and if that ain't gonna happen, then at the very least I want to know where my taxes are going. And last but not least, we happen to live in a society in which the mass-media is constantly failing us and our rights are being constantly eroded. Therefore I consider Snowden to be a hero, because regardless of his motivations, his actions were the right thing to do.
And I could go on with lots of reasons for why I believe the above, but I'm tired of doing that for everybody that regurgitates a mainstream opinion without at least making an effort to explain why. Hence I believe that the comment in question is noise.
PS. Nice, ad hominem. You want to be taken seriously? I can't tell.
That said, I did downvote blumkvist, firstly because he stated his opinion without really providing any reason for having it other than "oh we don't really know what's going on" (this is annoying, but everyone does it sometimes and it isn't such a big deal). But secondly and much more importantly, even after being asked to follow up on his assertion and have a discussion, he chose to continue on his anti-HN rant.
(And seriously, why is going to Russia "super fishy" when you've got US Congressmen suggesting on national fucking television that the CIA ought to assassinate you? And why do those Congressmen get a pass for saying it? They disgraced their office in doing so. Still like an answer for this, blumkvist.)
Well... I don't care what you say, downvoting based on opinion is perfectly valid and I will continue to do so as I see fit. Especially when the opinion is based on assumptions that I believe has been proven false many times in the past and rehashing the debate on HN turns into a multi-page endless arguing.... kind like this is turning into.
So your opinion on downvoting is different from mine, where does that leave us?
Maybe PG and co. need to add an option in the settings to switch off the censorship for those who don't want it.
Downvotes are nothing more than another kind of participation in the discussion and should be treated as such.
I have to do that enough that I'm thinking I might just write a bookmarklet to automate the process.
Participation is a constructive activity. This is more like graffitiing over someone's comment to make it invisible. As far as I'm concerned, that's shutting him out.I may be misunderstanding you, or missing something obvious, but I just highlight faded comments with my mouse (or finger if on mobile), works well.
It's similar to the reason text posts are faded by default - to make those posts more annoying to read the longer they are, in order to discourage using them as personal blog posts.
If you don't particularly want your hand held like that and are capable of reading more than a paragraph at a time without suffering mental exhaustion or ennui, you may well find these practices to be condescending and passive-aggressive.
I have a userscript that I use to unfade everything[0] and have showdead on and I find that neither has negatively affected my experience much. Although of course everyone's mileage may vary.
[0]https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93
Downvoting because a post is rude or factually inaccurate is fine though.
Even dead posts can be read if you have showdead on.
> That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain.
You are claiming that people who disagree with you don't have "at least an ounce of critical thought" in their brain. It's a stone's throw from name-calling. How is this intelligent discourse?
Considering how disgustingly subservient all of Europe has been to bend over backwards to the US (e.g. forcing the landing of a presidential plane because someone suspected it was carrying Snowden) you can't really blame him. Russia is the only country in the region that doesn't care whether the US wants him or not (and would even refuse to co-operate simply to flip them off).
Heck, I'd love to see him be granted asylum somewhere else but all of Europe would drop him like a hot potato the second the US told them to hand him over.
Indeed -- the decision on Snowden came around the same time Obama was getting ready to invade Syria.
Putin is a de-facto old-school dictator, but on this he did everything right. I wish he'd completed the job by sneaking Snowden to Ecuador via submarine, but I can understand why he didn't -- he can play that card next time he desperately needs a propaganda boost.
It was interesting to see how suddenly our media (in Germany) stopped their sympathetic reporting on the Syrian rebels and how desperately they need our support (i.e. at least give them some guns) when ISIS began making headlines.
I remember thinking that supporting the rebels in Syria (though it viscerally felt like the "right thing" to do) was probably the worse bad choice to make even before Russia & al heavily spoke against it. It's easy to forget that both the direct intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the less direct support of the rebellions during the "Arab Spring" resulted in very unstable situations and a very disconcerting shift towards Islamist extremism in those regions.
Hanlon's razor kills conspiracies.
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-...
> He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else.
That implies that it's the fault of the US government that he is currently in Russia (I think it also forwards the misconception that Snowden was in Russia when his passport was revoked). He didn't have to flee to Hong Kong to begin with. When the US government requested extradition and revoked his passport in order to keep him inside Hong Kong, he fled using what turned out to be an invalid travel document. Snowden has ended up in purely out of his own actions. The US isn't preventing him from traveling - he can walk down to the embassy at any time he wants and get a plane ticket home.
US English must have diverged quite a lot from UK English if 'home' now means 'prison'.
Snowden probably doesn't like the Russian government, but he was stuck in a Russian airport with a revoked passport. Even if he had free choice, Russia is one of the few countries willing and able to withstand US pressure to extradite him. Being on trial in the US isn't an option for him because what he did may have been just, but was striclty illegal.
Russian-US relations were at a low and Russia generally likes sending little fuck-yous. Granting Snowden asylum is also good PR for Russia because they appear strong against perceived US injustice.
For both sides the choices appear completely rational without implying any foul play or hidden relations.
Crimea is a very strategic area to get hold of which NATO wants to break into Russia through color revolutions ETC just because Putin refused to be US dog. When Ukraine democratic government was forcefully overthrown by a US-backed Nazi military coup what choice Russia had? Just imagine how US would respond if China or Russia back coup takes place in Mexico or Canada? Why pivot to Asia, why redrawing Middle East, dividing Iraq into three small states? Supporting rebels against Serian government while helping Saudi dictatership to kill Yemen civilions just to suppress another rebels. All sugarcoded IN the name of democracy and freedom? which even US is failing to provide to its citizens.
We're listening about China aggression, Russian aggression, while US is at war in almost the whole world directly or through proxies.
US has accumulated enough bad karma to insure its decline, those who don't remember history are bound to repeat it. This war game and greed for hegemony by bullet at all cost has happened countless times in the past and has always resulted in complete destruction of empires and civilizations sooner or later.
But public is sleeping as always, only with a vein optimism that "this won't happen to us, we're unique in the human history!" You're not unique, you're just a spec of dust in the cosmos which has eternal law of upholding justice. It's just that it comes at the right time when the bucket is full.
Wait, wait, wait. When did this happen? Because I think I might've missed something.
Yanukovych was democratically elected and overthrown by popular protests (backed by the EU / US?).
Next time, buy some room for your outraged response with a couple sentences of explanation.
> While many of Globalresearch's articles discuss legitimate humanitarian or environmental concerns, the site has a strong undercurrent of reality warping throughout its pages, especially in relation to taking its news from sources such as Russia Today RT[2] and Press TV.[3] Its view of science, the economy and geopolitics seems to be broadly conspiracist.
> Whenever someone makes a remarkable claim and cites Globalresearch, they are almost certainly wrong.
I agree about the low quality of blumkvist's reply.
The ignorance here is mindblowing. Russians live in a perpetual conspiracy theory it seems. Autocratic states are known for their information control and propaganda it seems even when historically controlled media has been highly inaccurate, yet somehow the populace keeps buying into statements from state controlled media. I guess the state knows how to deliver information by exploiting both ignorance and patriotism. Two things Russia has high supplies of.
0]: http://www.globalresearch.ca/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-why-he-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Then there's the issue of the reporters he chose to give the documents to, who I think have been sensationalizing the issues in order to milk these documents for as long as possible. If Snowden had stopped at the first document that was released, I'd probably have a different opinion. It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations, with some language thrown in to say "there is no indication as to how many Americans or innocent civilians have been targeted under this program," with the implication that you, your family and loved ones may have been spied on by the NSA. It's a scare tactic to bring in more viewers and more advertising dollars. Every time a news outlet does actually reveal groups actually being targeted (like Russia, China, Al Qaeda, etc.), I tend to think that it's exactly the kind of people I want the NSA to be spying on.
[1] Preemptively: yes, I am aware of the Bradley/Chelsea thing. No, I am not trying to make a statement. At the time that Pvt Manning plead guilty, he was known as Bradley. Now she is known as Chelsea, and it just gets confusing trying to figure out which pronoun to use when referring to events in the past.
That's the only way to fight politicians who know how the news-cycle work: just sit tight for a couple of weeks and anything will be forgotten. By "refreshing" every few months, they kept the issue on the agenda. Recent legislative wins in this area are almost entirely due to this strategy: in the first month after release, there was massive support behind Feinstein and her likes; now that side has slowly been eroded down to a few securocrats and the usual hawks, which is why wins are happening in courts and in Congress.
> It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations
We really don't know how "legitimate" those descriptions of people hacking equipment in transit were. Besides, there is a world beyond the US -- Greenwald publishes from Brasil, he doesn't have to follow the wishes of the US government. Would you have kept quiet on the Bay of Pigs operation just because it was a "legitimate" foreign operation from a US-gov perspective?
Journalism is not about covering government press releases.
That's actually a perfect example of what I was talking about. When Greenwald initially published the short blurb talking about intercepting routers, he didn't say who they were being used against, implying that anyone's router might be intercepted and backdoored - maybe even your own! When the full document was released sometime later, it was revealed that the NSA only used it for hard targets; in this case, targets in Syria[1].
Greenwald does this all the time - he cuts down documents to just a sentence, paragraph or picture. When the full documents come out later on, it turns out that he was selectively quoting to fit with the message he wanted to convey.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35669.pdf
But that's exactly the point -- it could be. We now know that a body with almost no oversight not just can but does backdoor US-produced equipment. This is not conspiracy-theory territory anymore, it's hard fact and anyone making decisions on procurement from now on will have to deal with it, not just "hard targets" -- because you never know when you will become a "hard target" for a body with basically no oversight.
So in that sense, there is nothing wrong with Greenwald's reporting.
If you report that a specific thing is being done, that isn't the same as reporting that it "could be" done. If you don't know what I'm doing in my basement, it doesn't make it responsible to report that I am making bombs on the grounds that I "could be" doing so as far as you know.
None of these things are actually happening, though...
For the NSA, that's not the case. Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"? Who decided about that? Why did they need to do it, considering Google was already cooperating? Why did they lie about what they were doing even to the authorities they supposedly answer to? They basically dished "network brutality" with impunity, and now there is no process to hold anyone accountable.
With the NSA, we now know that what they "could" do, they actually did do, and unlike all those other corps, now there is no way to hold anyone accountable.
So does the NSA through both the FISC court and the Congressional Intelligence and Judicial Committees. As much as people like to gloss over them and brush them off as rubber stamps, if you actually read the released FISC opinions you'd see there was a good deal of pushback (see [1] as an example of the NSA overstepping their bounds and being forced to stop by the court). Likewise, you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other. Right now we also have a major disagreement between the Judges on the FISC and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the phone records program, which likely won't be resolved unless the law is renewed and it's appealed to the Supreme Court.
There is oversight. Yes, it is done in secret for the sake of protect intelligence sources, but it does in fact exist. And, frankly, I think the Snowden disclosures themselves show that they largely work. Before the Church/Pike reforms back in the 70s, the NSA was specifically targeting anti-war protesters, civil rights activists and even congressmen[2]. Now, despite his best efforts, Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
> Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"?
I would probably be really pissed off if that's actually what they did. I'm assuming you're referring to this[3], in which the authors start off trying to suggest that the NSA is breaking into Google and Yahoo data centers, but when you read further and look at the source documents it becomes apparent that what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted, and GCHQ was picking it up on one of their fiber taps. Now stop and consider that every other country that those leased fiber lines passed through was probably doing the exact same thing. I don't see this as NSA abuse, I see this as Google getting caught not protecting its customers' information.
And in line with my complaint in my above comment, the article finishes with "It is not clear how much data from Americans is collected and how much of that is retained." So what kind of data is collected? Who is being targeted? Why are they being targeted? What is the data being used for? Am I being targeted? Are other Americans being targeted? The article doesn't answer any of these questions, nor does it give me any indication as to who else might be listening in and what data they're collecting.
If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care - good for them. If the NSA was using that access to collect data on the Russian government, and now that intelligence source has dried up, then the Washington Post has just done disservice to the American people. If the NSA is using it to collect American data, or if the Russians are listening in on American communications using similar techniques, now that's newsworthy.
[1] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/the-nsa-documents-part-ii...
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/25/secret-cold-war-documen...
[3] toyg ↗ > you'd see there was a good deal of pushback csandreasen ↗ > that in practice amounted to absolutely nothing, because the NSA kept doing what it wanted pretty much all the time.
... that in practice amounted to absolutely nothing, because the NSA kept doing what it wanted pretty much all the time. They just lied a few times more here and there, like Clapper did. It took Snowden to show that they were lying through their teeth.
> you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other.
That's not oversight, that's 4 people deciding what is kosher and being totally forbidden from discussing it in public anyway, as they themselves made clear. That's not how it should be.
> Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough, to be honest. It's not in Greenwald's docs, but if you sum it to the capabilities that Greenwald reported, it's pretty damning.
> what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted
In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it. Or rather it should be -- it took Snowden to discuss what the NSA should and should not do at the political level.
> The article doesn't answer any of these questions
If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure that will harm people on the ground etc etc etc. From your POV, Greenwald is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't; but it's clear from the subsequent fallout that Greenwald was right to publish what he did and how he did it.
> If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care
As I said, there is a world beyond the US border.
Did you read the article I linked to? If so, how does your statement mesh with the fact that, based on the order issued by judge discussed in that article, the NSA was forced to change their collection and minimization procedures and delete all of the data that had been previously collected under that program[1]? This was all very much pre-Snowden.
> They just lied a few times more here and there
Like where? I keep seeing this argument - Clapper said something in a Congressional hearing that turned out to not be true, therefore everything anyone in the government says is a lie. Greenwald has documents on everything the NSA is doing; why haven't I seen any other documents catching officials lying to the public?
> That's not oversight, that's 4 people...
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence currently has 22 members; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has 19 members; the FISC has 11 judges. That doesn't include their any of their staff.
> All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough
When Reuters broke the parallel construction story, they mentioned this in the reporting[2] (emphasis mine):
"Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE."
...
"Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst."
> In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it.
The NSA has a responsibility to protect US national security; it is under no obligation to protect to security of foreign communications. Like I mentioned in my comment, if groups outside the US were taking advantage of this to spy on Americans, then that's something I'd like to see in the headlines. If that's the case, the NSA would need to justify prioritizing its foreign spying over protecting US interests.
> If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure
I think disclosing how the NSA conducts its operations without any further justification is irresponsible. If a news agency (especially an American one; I can understand why a foreign one wouldn't care) goes and tells the world exactly how a US intelligence agency is collecting information without showing me evidence of abuse, all they're doing is tipping off legitimate intelligence targets on how to avoid being spied on. In order to show evidence of abuse, you need to answer at least a few of those questions that I posed. I want abuse stopped, not legitimate intelligence work. This article doesn't show abuse.
> As I said, there is a world beyond the US border.
Which is exactly why we have spies. Do you think the NSA has no legitimate purpose?
[1] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/the-nsa-documents-part-iv...
[2] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc...
Indeed, the document you link to says "our targets throughout the world". Your characterization of the program/document as "only used for hard targets in Syria" is just an outright lie.
I'd be interested in seeing some links.
Be careful where you get your leaks from. If "a news outlet" isn't the Washington Post, The Guardian, or The Intercept, then it's not a primary source. In particular, if it's a 'leak' that hasn't even been reported by any of those three, then you're actually reading propaganda and not news.
It seems quite unbelievable, but we actually have proof that NSA/GCHQ are willing to leak their own legitimate activities to the media, provided they are reported as being leaked by Snowden:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-gove...
I strongly suggest you read at least the first paragraph of that article and ask yourself "where did The Independent get that 'leak', and why did they attribute it to Snowden when that's clearly a lie?"
This is true. You'd have have no idea about the full scope of the extent of the NSA's activity and this whole thing would have just blown over. For several weeks after the first leak the US or UK government denied something one day and the next day another leaked document was published showing that they were lying. They would have found a cover up much easier if only one document had been released. Or even if all had been released at once.
Regarding pronouns. Just use she. Manning has made it clear that she thinks of herself as a woman at least give her that.
I think HN is much more pro-Snowden than the general population is, but I think the general population doesn't deny the value of exposing what the US government did. I live in DC however, so there's certainly a pro-government feeling in this down, possibly more so than many other places in the US.
Edit: To add some support for my anecdotes, here's a somewhat recent poll I found from April 21st citing 64% of people hold a negative opinion of Snowden [0].
[0] - http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowde...
“If you think that one, Al Qaeda and similar groups are the enemy for purposes of treason; two, his actions assisted them in operations against the U.S.; and three, that was his intention,” Harrison said, “then the argument that it was treason is pretty good.” - John Harrison UVA LAW specializing in constitutional law and history.
That logic should scare the living hell out of people.
I just don't trust people to accurately asses whether or not something is "leak worthy", and I don't want to create a safe path for folks just because they thought what they were leaking was important for the world to know. It ruins the concept of holding government secrets, something I think benefits the US and other governments more than it harms them and the people they serve.
I think it should be a huge risk, and carry dire consequences, in general, when you release classified information. In this specific case, perhaps the fact that the US courts, congress, and the US people have all collectively been appalled at what the US government has been doing should exonerate Snowden, but only in this specific case. I would not like any kind of precedent to be set, for the aforementioned reason.
I hope Obama pardons him in his last days in office, or offers him a deal where he is allowed back in the US without serving any jail time.
What's wrong with my logic?
[1] http://rare.us/story/nsa-chief-i-didnt-lie-to-congress-about...
It makes sense to me that the default reaction to the release of state secrets is that of disapproval. From there, we can of course move further away from acceptance or closer to it depending on the specific scenario, but most folks aren't taking a close look at Snowden -- I'd even argue that they probably don't need to. What matters here is the info he released, not really Snowden specifically.
And is it also harmful to the citizens of that nation state?
What are our rulers doing that they don't want us to know about? Why should we not know everything that they are doing?
It's one reason we elect representatives, in fact.
The thing is, when given the power to eavesdrop into anyone's life without consequences, it takes a rather uncommon kind of person to do what Snowden did in order to make the public aware of what is going on.
Because the most common behaviour when receiving that power would be to exploit and abuse it, regardless of whether we are talking about an individual, an institution, or a whole government.
So I am not worried about Snowden, I'm worried about the thousands of his ex-colleagues who are still sitting on their desks every day.
I am. Why should a state have secrets? Rulers ought to be in power under the consent of the ruled. If the ruled don't even know what the rulers are doing, how can we be giving them consent for something we don't know about?
This is not a good reason to be having secrets.
* Police are investigating a crime and have not made all details of the crime publicly known. Under questioning, a suspect independently corroborates these details, which he would not have known unless he was the perpetrator. The prosecution now has a stronger case.
* Three high-ranking members of ISIS are in fact CIA informants. They meet their CIA contact biweekly in a falafel shop in Mosul. The identities of the informants, their contact, and the falafel shop are all state secrets.
* A defense contractor is building a secret weapon that is decades ahead of competing powers. The design and specifications of this weapon are state secrets.
* The government maintains a health insurance system for the disabled, poor, and elderly.
* The military is performing operations somewhere in the world. Their exact order of battle and battle plan are secret.
* The military is planning an amphibious assault on Beachhead B. Using a ruse, they convince the enemy that they are instead landing at Beachhead A.
There are reasonable and good-intentioned debates to be had about state secrets, but to say there is never a legitimate purpose for them is the practical equivalent of anarchism.
This isn't exactly the same as the government itself having secrets, but a secret police can generate a lot of problems, as you're doubtlessly aware.
> * The government maintains a health insurance system for the disabled, poor, and elderly.
These are not government secrets either. The secrecy is for people who are being served by the government, not for employees of the state.
> * Three high-ranking members of ISIS are in fact CIA informants
> * A defense contractor is building a secret weapon that is decades ahead of competing powers.
> * The military is performing operations somewhere in the world.
> * The military is planning an amphibious assault on Beachhead B.
These are militaristic problems created by having a state in constant war to begin with. These are webs of lies that have to be perpetuated due to initial lying.
As an outsider, it's really amazing how blind US citizens are to their own country's incessant war-mongering. They breed war with lies and have to maintain that war with lies.
If your theory of government doesn't allow for all the good things the US government has done in the past century, it's not a credible theory of government.
Consider for a moment the fictional scenario that all US tax documents were leaked, or perhaps only the tax documents of folks whose names started with Warren B. We might (in this fictional scenario) find out about some very significant tax evasion on the part of Warren Buffet (just a hypothetical example, almost certainly not true), but how might Warren Beaufort feel?
To provide another (completely fictional) example, what about if the medical information of all federal US employees gets leaked. The US public is shocked to discover the huge misappropriations of funds towards unnecessary procedures for US congressmen/women, but at the same time Joe Normal, who works for a middle school, loses his job because it's revealed he has AIDS and the parents petition his removal from the classroom.
I don't want to give these folks who might have access to this data any hope of exoneration or leniency if they use their privileged position to reveal secrets.
Once again, blaming the leaker is blaming the wrong individual here.
There is already a cost to society of people not seeking treatment for mental health issues on the possibility the info might be leaked, not because the leak itself is a feared occurrence (in reality it is rare) but because of how irrational society reacts (especially when mental disorders are treated as moral failings).
Consider a closer analogy of report a number of child abusers to the police. One of these abusers is a father who abuses their child. Enough info is made public during the trial that the child is shamed for it (even though we can agree they should not be shamed for it). Are you guilty for shaming the child? Say another child is taken from their parents, both of whom had abused them but stopped and placed into foster care where they are abused again. Are you guilty for their continued abuse?
In the event of a shamed child, I am indeed responsible (not guilty, that has a legal connotation that's undesired here) for a child's shaming if I am the one who acted, and the result of which was the shaming, regardless of other outcomes. Had I not acted, the child would not have been shamed. Therefore I am the responsible actor in the child shaming (not exclusively, obviously).
You're apparently mixing both morality and legality, as well as what is happening vs. what ought to happen [0]. I am explicitly speaking in the realm of what is happening. You are responsible for the shaming of the child, the beating of the child, or the exposure of Joe Normal's loss of his job. Whether or not you were acting morally is an issue I'd like to address, but only once we've agreed on the premise that an actor is considered responsible for all direct consequences of his/her action.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Am I missing anything here?
My favorite poll is this one: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/03/16/americans-privacy-stra...
Buried near the bottom is, "60% believe it is acceptable to monitor the communications of American leaders."
Raise your hand if you think it's good for a healthy democracy for the executive branch to monitor the private communications of congresspeople, senators, and federal judges?
[0] http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-s...
[1] http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-know-su...
That being said, technically speaking yes, it probably was a different set of people polled, just considering how the nature of polling works!
What you're not understanding though is that people actually seem to separate the content of the leak with the act of the leak. All it takes is a quick Google of "NSA spying program polling" to see polls affirming that hypothesis (folks disapprove of Snowden, but also heavily disapprove of the NSA spying program).
Snowden himself has been known to beg folks during his interviews to stop caring about him or what he did, and focus on the content of the information he released, and I'd agree. So what if folks don't like Snowden?
To sum up the interviews with people they did in the episode:
- When asked if people knew who Snowden was, they often either had no clue or confused him with Julian Assange. They often associated him with Wikileaks, even to the point of believing him to be leading it.
- They often saw his actions as damaging the US and its troops in the Middle East.
- They near consistently had a negative view of him.
- When given a simple to understand explanation of what he revealed (the government can see your dick pics), nearly all of them were surprised, had no idea that it was true (and exactly what Snowden had shown us) and shared the view that the government shouldn't have that kind of power.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
If someone I trusted unilaterally decided that I was breaking the law and then used that as a justification to steal documents from me and give them to journalists, I would be very upset. That's just wrong, man.
Snowden was essentially in charge of doing data backup transfers from the pacific to Washington, DC. This means that the NSA trusted him like many of us are trusted every day. The world would descend into chaos pretty quickly if we all decided to start reviewing and passing judgement on the data that we're in charge of, instead of just making sure that it goes where it's supposed to go without incident. No matter how noble his intentions or how despicable the actions of others were, what he did was unethical, illegal and immoral.
It's not about heroes and villains. We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us. We can't make exceptions because someone is popular or because we agree with their motives. If a jury of Edward Snowden's peers are so taken by his celebrity and upstanding moral character that they find him not guilty, then so be it. But all of us should be hoping that he comes home to face that jury. Because it's the right thing to do.
Might want to rephrase that? Or be more specific about which "good" you're talking about and who's "all of us"?
The reason we create laws is not to obey them because they are laws. That would be stupid. If the laws are unjust, unethical or problematic for all but the powerful, they should be eliminated.
Also, the whole Snowden thing happened because the NSA was operating against the laws and because what they did was obviously unethical.
If my employer does something unlawful or unethical should I continue to cover for him, just because an employee must obey the orders of his/her employer?
That is obsurd.
Off the top of my head, here are some ways that laws have been broken:
* By refusing to sit at the back of the bus.
* By refusing to pay taxes on tea.
* By housing Jewish refugees.
* By helping runaway slaves.
* By marrying someone of a different ethnicity than your own.
* By declaring a country's independence.
* By telling people what their government was doing.
* By writing software that could be covered by patents.
Not all of these had or could have had a resolution in courts. Breaking laws is sometimes the only way to make any progress.
In conclusion, laws should be broken when they are unjust. For the good of us all.
Oh yeah, like the former General turned CIA Director who provided classified material to his mistress/biographer and was able to avoid felony charges?
If the fate of US security was undermined by Snowden, we're fucked anyway. Everything revealed from a threat POV thus far has been predicted by security experts in the public domain since the 90s, and by the government itself in warnings about travel in China. I think the reaction to the Snowden documents makes it very clear that there is no bright line from a moral POV. The fact that the government hasn't really been able to discredit him is evidence in my mind that he is what he says he is.
Snowden will almost certainly end up imprisoned as part of some sort of deal with the Russians someday. History may bring clarity (assuming it isn't classified forever or destroyed), but some kangaroo court or "jury of peers" certainly won't.
"When you see injustice and do nothing, you are an accomplice."
This is not about Edward Snowden, anyway, this is about the violation of our constitutional rights on a massive scale.
What are you trusted with? Safety inspections? Overseeing any compliance issues? I could see many areas and many scenarios where I would hold you accountable to not just do as you are ordered, but speak out against wrongdoings.
This line refutes the whole premise of your argument. Clearly the rules were not being enforced so Snowden had no choice but to leak the mass and systemic breaking of those rules or be complicit. Snowden wouldn't get a fair trial so it would be reckless for him to come home.
Except for us who are not US americans. Whose rights the US routinely tramples. Snowden is a hero.
> If a jury of Edward Snowden's peers are so taken by his celebrity and upstanding moral character that they find him not guilty
Like he'd get a fair trial.
Frustrated or not, Protecting their country and their countries assets is. If you don't think this is going on around the globe then you're not looking for answers. The fact that there were checks and balances (some that may not have worked) is still way more than the rest of the world. For example the russian SORM system flat out forces a 1:1 copy of all internet traffic to the FSB. Meta data at gateways vs full capture, where's the uproar on behalf of the Russian citizens? Not to mention russian provides internet access / connectivity for many African, middle eastern, and even eastern european companies (direct and through proxy organizations) all subject to the same SORM rulings.
It was illegal. Illegal and wrong are often at ends.
>Betrayal and theft should not be condoned under any circumstances.
Theft to survive? A child betraying an adult's trust by reporting abuse?
This is about our duties to the great ideals of freedom that this country was founded upon... and the oath Snowden took[2] to defend the same. The question you should be asking is why isn't everybody else that took this oath doing something similar?
The oath in question: (emphasis added)
Note that it does include a reference to the duties of the office. The problem is when those duties are in conflict with the first part of the oath, to "support and defend the Constitution". This oath is very clear about what you're supposed to prioritize ("I will bear... allegiance to the [Constitution]").So no, Snowden's actions were not unethical, illegal, or immoral. In fact, it may be one of the few things anybody could do that is by definition patriotic. Any law he may have been in conflict - and certainly any duties he had to the NSA - are lower priorities than his defense of the constitution.
I do not envy anybody who is placed by his superiors into a situation that forces a choice between following those same superiors or following an oath to a greater ideal. That has to be one of the hardest decisions to make.
[1] meaning Bob Altemeyer's term, not the usual political meaning
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/daniel-e...
An important line from stage 6 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development - "Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws."
Read this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of...
The linked page describes a theory of moral reasoning and ethical behavior ( and their various developmental stages ).
Your view corresponds very closely with level 4 (copied below) - you believe that laws should be absolute, inviolable and should be applied equally and blindly.
Some of the replies to your comment are speaking at level 5 or 6. They do not believe that the police, justice system or the government are absolute moral authorities and can make no mistakes.
Copy paste from wikipedia follows:
In Stage four (authority and social order obedience driven), it is important to obey laws, dictums and social conventions because of their importance in maintaining a functioning society. Moral reasoning in stage four is thus beyond the need for individual approval exhibited in stage three. A central ideal or ideals often prescribe what is right and wrong. If one person violates a law, perhaps everyone would — thus there is an obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules. When someone does violate a law, it is morally wrong; culpability is thus a significant factor in this stage as it separates the bad domains from the good ones. Most active members of society remain at stage four, where morality is still predominantly dictated by an outside force.
Post-Conventional
The post-conventional level, also known as the principled level, is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from society, and that the individual’s own perspective may take precedence over society’s view; individuals may disobey rules inconsistent with their own principles. Post-conventional moralists live by their own ethical principles — principles that typically include such basic human rights as life, liberty, and justice. People who exhibit post-conventional morality view rules as useful but changeable mechanisms — ideally rules can maintain the general social order and protect human rights. Rules are not absolute dictates that must be obeyed without question. Because post-conventional individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior, especially at stage six, can be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.
Some theorists have speculated that many people may never reach this level of abstract moral reasoning.
In Stage five (social contract driven), the world is viewed as holding different opinions, rights and values. Such perspectives should be mutually respected as unique to each person or community. Laws are regarded as social contracts rather than rigid edicts. Those that do not promote the general welfare should be changed when necessary to meet “the greatest good for the greatest number of people." This is achieved through majority decision and inevitable compromise. Democratic government is ostensibly based on stage five reasoning.
In Stage six (universal ethical principles driven), moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles. Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws. Legal rights are unnecessary, as social contracts are not essential for deontic moral action. Decisions are not reached hypothetically in a conditional way but rather categorically in an absolute way, as in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[18] This involves an individual imagining what they would do in another’s shoes, if they...
In your world of absolutes - yes. The chef and I would go to jail or be fined for theft and the child may starve to death. All over food that otherwise would have been trash. That doesn't seem logical or moral on any level.
To allow for my lazy analogy, let's pretend we asked the wealthy businessman if we could donate any scraps to an orphanage and he was a Scrooge and said no.
>If someone I trusted unilaterally decided that I was breaking the law and then used that as a justification to steal documents from me and give them to journalists, I would be very upset. That's just wrong, man.
That sounds like something the mafia might say of a rat. "Dude, I trusted you. WTF? Why would you tell about our drug smuggling to the police?" The important thing about Snowden's whistleblowing is that they were violating the law.
>The world would descend into chaos pretty quickly if we all decided to start reviewing and passing judgement on the data that we're in charge of, instead of just making sure that it goes where it's supposed to go without incident.
"Absolutely no questions asked" is a dangerous policy and once again smells of a criminal ring. "Don't ask what's in the package. Just get it to where it needs to be." What if someone is paid to transfer a trojan to your computer. Should they simply move the payload without questioning what it is or why or the legality of it?
>We have a system of rules that must be enforced equally, for the good of all of us.
The system is constantly revised, outdated laws are thrown out. Some laws are reworded. Laws are a reflection of the values of a society. These values can and do change. If it is the popular opinion that Snowden did the right thing then he did the right thing. That's that.
I see him as neither hero nor villain.
He has undertaken certain actions, such as leaking the NSA's illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans, that took a lot of courage and may result in positive changes if we really make use of what was leaked. For this he should be commended. He sacrificed his life in the US for this. Let's do what we can to make it worthwhile.
He has also undertaken certain actions that, in my opinion, do not relate to American civil liberties and could be damaging.
For instance, leaking how the US is spying on foreign nations, which is the whole reason for the NSA to exist. These actions make it easy to cast Snowden as at worst a traitor (not my belief) and at best misguided (which is what I personally believe; he should have been more discriminating in his leaks).
True, but this also paints the US leaders as hypocrites. Snowden showed that the NSA was hacking Chinese computers at a time when the US was loudly proclaiming innocence while denouncing "Chinese hacking."
It's less about the US openly admitting to it, and more about the general public not using their brains and eating up what the politicians are serving them. Many in the US take those "evil Chinese hackers" statements at face-value and would believe that the US would only be hacking military targets in China (rather than hacking the Chinese general public to create botnets, etc).
Similarly how a military is designed to potentially fight against other nations, but is usually not doing that all time in an all-out fashion, intelligence agencies have their place but should not necessarily spy indiscriminately on everyone, all the time.
While we are mostly civilized enough not to have random troops roaming around like in the Thirty Years' War, the concept of using restraint in surveillance, or cyber warfare in general is not developed very much.
As a non-US citizen I wholeheartedly thank Snowden for doing this, as it also shed light on the threat to me from the US (NSA) and from my own UK government (GCHQ).
There is nothing I could ever think badly of him for in this situation.
That being said, Snowden probably would not have absconded with this massive trove of information if the US government did not suppress the whistleblowers who came before him. Binney [1], Weibe and Loomis tried to stop the precursors to the NSA's current activities back in 2002, and they paid for it with legal harassment. Those three men were real patriots, and did not dump thousands of documents about intelligence activities that were going on.
Unfortunately, when you don't let pressure bleed off gently in a system things build up until then next opening results in a catastrophic failure.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_%28U.S._intellig...
Could you expand on why you think this? From my perspective, what's caused tremendous damage is the way U.S. agencies have acted. I'd like these policies to at minimum be up for a vote, but we can't vote on something if we have no idea what's being done.
However, that doesn't negate the fact that by having their dirty laundry aired the U.S. has gotten a tarnished reputation. Its given ammunition to anti-US groups, lent legitimacy to other state actors acting poorly when it comes to cyber-intelligence/warfare, and damaged the economic interests of U.S. tech companies trying to have a presence internationally. I will leave it up to you to pass your own judgement as to whether this damage to the U.S. was appropriate/justified/legitimate/deserved, but I think we can agree that it has happened.
Now, to expand on my comment that there are elements of carelessness and narcissism. I think - and this is just my opinion - that Snowden has demonstrated an enjoyment of the limelight, and has started to model himself as a digital champion. I don't say this to condemn him, merely to point out that he is a human who has an ego, and isnt so selfless angel. Second, the carelessness that I refer to is things I have heard regarding failures in redacting information[1]. This doesn't necessarily mean that such failures aren't a cost that is negated by the public gain of knowing about these surveillance programs, but it is still a cost that must be recognized.
[1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140128/08542126021/new-y...
And when other people leak far more relevant information? (by topic and by time)
We can talk about the White House's absolutely shameful wrist slapping of Petraeus, or the leaks mentioned in the article you source, but that still doesn't address whether Snowden messed up when he facilitated the NYT in releasing unredacted information. Just because hypocrisy exists doesnt mean that anytime we critique someone we have to also bring out a laundry list of other people who messed up even worse.
If I report someone for a crime and they are arrested, is the damage to their life my fault or their own?
But ultimately, the calculus for what is acceptable when it comes to collateral damage is extraordinarily subjective. I don't know of any concrete way to judge it so I am usually forced into using my own value system as to what is important in my life.
I also think these MRIs that show the spead of cancer have done tremendous damage to the body medically.
"The doctor who used chemotherapy to remove the cancer in America's body has caused spillover damage to other organ systems, but this course of action was only necessary because recommendations in the early stage of the disease to remove the tumor before it spread were ignored. When we ignore the warning signs early on it forces subsequent treatments to be far more indiscriminate"
Hopefully that clarifies
Yes, Snowden's leaks did end up causing damage to US interests, and some would rightfully condemn him for it.
But we also need to keep in mind that there really wasn't any other viable option to shed light into these programs and raise public awareness (and yes, the public did absolutely need to be aware of these programs). The agencies were set up to hide information about their programs from the public at all costs and it was clear that traditional whistleblowing wasn't going to get any results.
I'd think another important consideration for Snowden when making this decision was that a more persistent effort at traditional whistleblowing from within the US could in fact have led to even more dire personal consequences.
I'm pretty sure Snowden believed the NSA [among others] would catch onto him very quickly and he had to dump everything to keep it from falling into "hostile" hands as soon as practical. Given that, I think he made the only practical choice he could but he isn't a "good" guy in the sense of a hero. More of just a guy who made mistakes, like anyone else.
The hero/villain dichotomy is very...cliche. Good and evil are really points of view that depend on your perception of reality and the position you occupy within the framework of a global society. The reality is the US Government is as much a villain as Snowden is. At which point, is it really fair to call Snowden a villain as the weaker party?
To most of the world, Snowden was a clear "good" as its brought the spying of the US into the light where Governments no longer have to react privately [ I'm pretty sure every Government that claimed ignorance had some clue of the capability, they have spies too after all ] but can take proper public steps to counteract the US's capabilities.
From a US nationalistic perspective, Snowden harmed the national prestige and possibly tipped off what few adversaries the US has that were too small to have the capability to accurately estimate the US's capabilities. And no, that isn't a group like ISIS. I'm talking small groups. I'm pretty sure ISIS has a good estimate on the practical capabilities of US intelligence pre-Snowden.
But honestly, the US public [the tech illiterate ones who were oblivious to what was going on] needed to be aware of it to make an informed decision to consent to it. Sadly, the outcome is they care more about the illusion of perfect security, bread & circuses than they do being informed citizens.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowde...
The part of all this I honestly find frightening is this:
The reality is the majority of the US population holds a negative opinion of Snowden. I find it frightening that the majority of the country happily makes an opinion formed entirely on propaganda. The reality is the US's security forces are the greatest to its citizenry. The fact the general population blindly takes their side is...disturbing on a level I can't really express.
http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-ki...
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/04/police-killed...
As a swede, I had no idea this happened. Also, it surprises me considering the hunt of Assange began here. I really have to see if there's video of that award ceremony.
The failure of governments worldwide to protect their citizens from being spied upon by foreign intelligence services is distressing. Thanks to Snowden, everyone is aware of it and the administrations can no longer pretend to be clueless.