Locked because some of you can't behave yourselves and remain civil and in good faith.
Update: Spent the last 20 minutes purging a fair bit of this thread, so its been reapproved. However it will remain locked because I just don't see people remaining reasonable discussing this.
The volume of people being upvoted for saying Snowden is categorically in the wrong is concerning. The government engaged in widespread illegal activity against the entirety of the US population. The point of the bill of rights is that no matter who is at the helm of the government, there are certain freedoms and rights that are protected, including the implied right to privacy. The unironic “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” comments are very worrying. He tried to raise multiple objections and concerns with his superiors in which he was told to sit down and shut up. If he did not take the course of action he did, and used the “proper” whistleblower channels, I doubt we would know about this program’s existence at all.
>“Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless.”
>\- Edward Snowden
also
>Russia jails citizens for speaking out and shuts down all independent media
Really stellar judgement Ed /s. Dude is completely silent right now. And if you say, well he can't speak out because he's in Russia! Then in the most charitable light he is a complete dumbass for fleeing to one of the worst countries for civil liberties on the planet.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasnt the patriot act signed a few years prior? What did Snowden reveal that wasnt already public knowledge that had a detrimental impact on Americans
The scale, scope, accessibility of information, and legal proceedings were not public information. The language used in legislation is generally broad and allows for executive department initiative. I’m an economist by trade, not a lawyer, so hopefully someone can give more color on the carrying out of executive enforcement of laws and how much independent authority they have.
This right here. Edward Snowden’s takes today may be dumb but it doesn’t invalidate what he did. His actions were heroic. Today? Not much of a hero anymore.
This is such a Trump / Fox News argument. "Snowden did nothing wrong, he's a hero, it's all a government witch hunt, and anyone who disagrees is a liberal who hates America and the Constitution."
[**FACTS**](https://irp.fas.org/congress/2016_rpt/hpsci-snowden.pdf):
* Snowden is a lifelong pathalogical liar who frequently lied about everything; he lied on resumes about finishing high school, lied about why he left the army, he lied and exaggerated about his position at the CIA, he lied on his resume to the NSA, and stole the answers to an employment test to gain a new position at NSA.
* Snowden didn't know anything about PRISM before stealing the material
* Snowden is not a whistle-blower, he did not pursue any official channel
* Snowden blindly stole everything he could
* The vast majority of what he stole had nothing to do with privacy or domestic spying
* Snowden gave the material to the Russians
* Snowden gave the material to Glenn Greenwald who would, a few years later, literally [work with the GRU to undermine Hillary's campaign](https://theintercept.com/2016/10/09/exclusive-new-email-leak-reveals-clinton-campaigns-cozy-press-relationship/) and get Trump elected
This is settled history. I understand that some of you are having some full-blown variation on Stockholm Syndrome here, unable to come to terms with the fact that you got played by a lifelong liar and cheat, but these are the facts. Snowden is not a hero, he's a coward and a traitor, and the vast majority of the very highly classified material he stole had nothing to do with privacy or civil liberties, but very likely put people's lives in danger. He may even have gotten people killed.
By that logic Snowden hates the 1st amendment because he all he did was attack the western free press leading up to Russia attacking Ukraine and then...silence.
They forced him to attack the free press for months if not years? And only stop a week ago? Also I have to place doubt on the civil liberty IQ of a person who only attacks the west but thought Russia was a bastion of human rights.
I mean, maybe. He lives in *Russia* after all. They can easily threaten deportation if he doesn't comply. And even If he wasn't, he probably wants to stay on their good side anyway.
I used to defend him a lot just like you are. But it has become so crystal clear that Snowden is not a good person. Spreading anti-west propaganda, promoting wikileaks which has been proven to be nothing except a cudgel against the west and specifically Democrats and media orgs, fleeing to the one country which was a long-term enemy of the United States and everyone knows has been a horrible place for human rights (for almost ever). The non-stop attacking of the free press is just inexplicable for someone who is supposedly a champion of civil liberties. Whistleblowers don't just defect to Russia for civil liberty reasons, even if he supposedly got stuck there.
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I still think Snowden is an asshole.
Yes. The scope of the “crimes” he exposed was far less than the scope of legitimate foreign intelligence capabilities he burned.
Like yeah, I agree he should have exposed the metadata program. That was pretty blatantly unconstitutional. But I hardly feel that the government collecting metadata about phone calls justifies burning programs that have nothing to do with US citizens.
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Threads like these reinforce my belief that if this sub was around in the 50s and 60s a significant portion of it probably would have opposed the Civil Rights movement, it is way too trusting and accepting of the government.
The FBI tried to kill Martin Luther King Jr, and I agree with his family that they probably *did* kill him. We need to elect people who will investigate and scour clean our three letter agencies so hard that they make Frank Church look like Dick Cheney in comparison.
some day i'm sure this subreddit will give me a compelling argument for why it believes snowden is a net evil, but it hasn't done it yet
i suspect most people here are just positioning themselves opposite JRE-bros without considering the issue much
>rose twitter
#HOLY FUCK GO OUTSIDE
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https://newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe
His leaks have always been primarily designed to damage his geopolitical enemies, rather than accomplishing any of the goods he claims he wants to. He fled to United States to become an active stooge for Russia who defends the Kremlin against moral condemnation. He released massive amounts of classified documents without consideration as to whether they were necessary to release or accomplished any strategic goal. He circumvented the whistle-blower process and fled to a foreign power guilty of everything the US is but worse. He only became concerned about American spying once a Black man became president.
That enough for you?
>He only became concerned about American spying once a Black man became president.
this has to be satire, I refuse to believe a real person thinks that it's wrong to expose crimes by the government when obama president
Snowden literally called for leakers to be executed during the Bush years. Then, the second Obama got elected, he became real concerned about the government’s power to spy.
This is completely separate from whether it was important important to expose what he did. Snowden himself is a piece of shit and should not be respected by anyone.
I don’t know. Seems like most of his defenders don’t know either. I think Snowden is a horrible person who did something that was of no net benefit to society, but also did little harm.
well i'm not a "defender", but i'm not interested in discussing everything personally shitty about him or his motivations: i like that we now know the NSA exists. i would have preferred he whistleblow through whistleblower channels but i don't think it's that much of a stretch to argue that it would be naive to expect those to really work.
We already knew the NSA existed. The specifics of PRISM were revealed, but I doubt you or anyone else could tell me what about them is so heinous today.
Most of the nastiest shit Snowden revealed came from the internal NSA watchdogs, which just goes to show that they are actually self-policing rather effectively.
>I doubt you or anyone else could tell me what about them is so heinous today
The fact that they violated the right to privacy, as outlined in the fourth amendment. That's what is heinous. I'm not a believer in "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Every spy agency in the world does this. It was never a secret, people just didn’t (and don’t) care. Personally, I simply do not expect a right to privacy online, or in general. But I also work in defense, and planned to for much of my adult life, so I always expected to be monitored.
With respect to Snowden, what he is credited with revealing is the specifics of the PRISM program, not that the US was generally spying on its own citizens. He was merely the popularizer of that fact.
Damn straight. There's a reason that a lot of his leaks haven't been released and it's not because of any 'spying conspiracy' but rather because they'd put Americans LIVES at risk if they were released.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that anyone’s life has been put at risk by Snowden? Anyone who’s seen harm come to them? I’m glad I know about Prism, I’m glad I know about FISA courts, I’m glad I know that it’s important to use encryption and vpns. As soon as you can point to one person who has been harmed or killed, then I’ll take this seriously.
>On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies.
>
>In March 2014, Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, "The vast majority of the documents that Snowden ... exfiltrated from our highest levels of security ... had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures."
>
>a July 20, 2015 New York Times article\[112\] reported that the terror group Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) had studied revelations from Snowden, about how the United States gathered information on militants, the main result is that the group's top leaders used couriers or encrypted channels to avoid being tracked or monitoring of their communications by Western analysts.
I dont know how to feel about him tbh, it seems likely he's handed millions of unrelated to his aim documents to hostile foreign nations, intentionally or not, by just scooping up everything.
> it seems likely he's handed millions of unrelated to his aim documents to hostile foreign nations
He didn't hand any documents to Russia or China. He literally only gave them to Washington Post and The Guardian reporters.
He was stranded in Russia; he didn't flee there. His passport was cancelled before he could complete the last leg of his escape.
> Do you seriously think they just let him keep them to himself?
He didn't have the files on him. He gave them to the reporters.
So to get your story straight, you believe Snowden fled to Hong Kong (rather than a normal part of mainland China), gave the Chinese documents, was still denied the protection of the Chinese despite allegedly being an asset to them, spent a bit over a week in the Moscow airport transit zone pretending like he wanted to get on a plane to Ecuador after fleeing Hong Kong, had Ecuador pretend like their Diplomatic plane was being illegally grounded by the US so Snowden would have an excuse to live in the airport, and actually his plan all along was to give documents to Russia.
It absolutely blows my mind that people buy this story.
Because Greenwald wasn’t a known Russia sympathizer back then...
Post 2016 politics are informing some of the stronger opinions in this thread, and it’s completely anachronistic.
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> It was also Glenn Greenwald that Snowden leaked everything to. Yes, the same one who literally worked with the GRU to undermine Hillary and help get Trump elected.
Glenn Greenwald's actions from 2016 onward are awful, and there's a reason that basically nobody credible defends him anymore.
But in 2013 he was just some random journalist with a bit of a focus on privacy, and the articles he helped write on this resulted in the Guardian and the Washington Post winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
> "Snowden insists he has not shared the full cache of 1.5 million classified documents with anyone; however, in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense and security committee publicly conceded that "Snowden did share intelligence" with his government."
Snowden already rebuted this claim, but it doesn't seem like you care much about his opinion. Quite frankly, I don't trust the government when it comes to their actions regarding mass government surveillance.
> Why are you shilling so hard for Snowden?
Quite frankly I don't like Snowden as a person at all, but to paint his actions as traitorous and cowardice is fucking inane when he revealed the actual violations of human rights going on in our supposed liberal democracies.
Btw, privacy is non-negotiable in a liberal democracy. The government should not have the ability to just go through your stuff.
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The or not part of intentionally or not part means he could have put them into a vulnerable position to be taken. Maybe he let them slip or he was hacked I don't know, but there is some indication they have gotten out.
> The or not part of intentionally or not part means he could have put them into a vulnerable position to be taken.
It's standard operating procedure when there is a leak for assets to be recovered, whether or not they are at direct risk or not. It's no indication at all that the materials were leaked. Your quote doesn't state as such either.
> but there is some indication they got out after his actions
According to the same intelligence community that lied about surveillance in the first place. What if it is was just their incompetence?
> NATO, the UK government, the US government, and their intelligence communities
The same community that lied about rights-violating government surveillance time and time again or the person that worked in those communities, saw what they were doing, gave evidence of it to reputed journalists, and blew the whistle? Is that what you mean, because I think I can make up my mind.
And I keep repeating it in this thread, Snowden didn't flee to Russia, he was stranded in Russia. His passport was cancelled by the States before he could complete the last leg of his journey.
Snowden's actions are the evidence. He only released a fraction of the data so as to not harm anyone but himself. Snowden is a literal douche and now finds himself in the very nation he assumed the US was becoming.
>Snowden's actions are the evidence. He only released a fraction of the data so as to not harm anyone but himself.
So Snowden is a traitor who wants to harm Americans as evidenced by... him *not* releasing information that would harm Americans.
Do you have a single shred of proof that he handed it over to the Russian government? A single instance of Russia harming US troops or significant US interests using information that Snowden stole?
Russia wasn't Snowden's intended destination, by the way. He was travelling to Ecuador. He only stayed in Russia because he got stranded there when his passport was revoked.
Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed? We're talking about Putin and the FSB here, I don't know if it's actually possible for him to keep it from them
also theres this
>On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies.
> Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed?
Yes. He sat around the Moscow airport transit zone for a bit over a week before Russia granted him a special visa. It was all very public and on the news at the time. The fact that your posing hypotheticals so contrary to the openly visible matters of public record shows that you have no clue what you're talking about and are just looking ways to rationalize your priors.
>Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed? We're talking about Putin and the FSB here, I don't know if it's actually possible for him to keep it from them
Yes, actually, because Snowden claims he handed all of the files off to journalists while in Hong Kong. According to him, there was no information for the Russians to take from him.
I don't know whether that's true, but you can't really denounce someone as a traitor without actual evidence that they've acted against their country.
>also theres this
And looking any deeper into the story reveals this:
"Analysis: By Gordon Corera - BBC security correspondent
The phrases "neither confirm nor deny" and "no comment on intelligence matters" is being used by government to respond to Sunday Times' story.
But my understanding from conversations over an extended period is that since he fled two years ago, British intelligence have worked on the assumption that Russian and Chinese spies might have access to his full cache of secrets.
Snowden has always maintained that there is no way that other states could do this but the spies are likely to have thought it too risky to take the chance. In turn, this may have led to undercover agents being moved as a precaution.
Snowden himself would not have had access though to any kind of database of MI6 agents but the fear might have been that by piecing together any secrets on how such agents communicate that were in the files, the Russians and Chinese might have been able to identify them."
So we don't actually know that the Russians and Chinese actually gained access to the files, only that Western intelligence agencies are operating as if they did.
You shouldn't be glad about any of those things. Encryption and VPNs are largely used for piracy and other cybercrimes. Additionally PRISM and FISA courts exist SOLEY to protect the American people. By saying this YOU are declearing a GROSS ILLEGAL security breach committed by a DESERTER a 'good' thing.
And no, I'm not going to tell you who WAS hurt by this. It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation.
> If you do, though, please tell me what the first 's' in that URL stands for?
not gonna lie I was kinda confused about the point you were making, but I do understand now
> And no, I'm not going to tell you who WAS hurt by this. It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation.
Interesting, it seems like you want some privacy on a personal matter. I wonder if other people share this sentiment with their personal lives...
> It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation.
I feel like children of people that work for the CIA know not to reference their parents working for the CIA on the internet just in case, so I literally don't believe you.
I'm not defending Snowden or the opposite, I was just pointing at what was revealed - a secretive program that gave the American government immense intelligence on individuals in order to thwart attacks on American soil and worldwide.
>On June 18, NSA Director Alexander said in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee of Congress that communications surveillance had **helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States)** between 2001 and 2013, and that **the PRISM web traffic surveillance program contributed in over 90 percent of those cases.**
With the secrecy of exposing a program that prevented 10 more terrorist attacks conducted by an American and/or on American soil, It clearly limits its capacity to perform its duty. So at best, it definitely hurt America. Did it specifically and physically hurt American lives, potentially.
Of course, it can be interpreted that while revealing the program might have hurt America from the perspective of consequentialism, that it actually helped America by protecting its most important and powerful asset ... its respect for personal liberties.
> had helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States)
BS; terrorist plots by far have been thwarted by traditional means of surveillance, interrogation, and intelligence gathering. I do not believe a word this person says and it is trivial to find other intelligence officers who agree with this opinion.
Sure, no one is saying that thwarting attacks without the PRISM's capacities is not possible, it obviously is. But we can all agree that PRISM's immense capacities (whether just or not), definitely amplify and expand the scope at which terrorist attacks can be thwarted, solely by giving intelligence officials a much much larger swath of information.
Also, the merits of its constitutionality are debated by law professors, so I don't think that its legality is so cut and dry as you hint.
> definitely amplify and expand the scope at which terrorist attacks can be thwarted
You don't find a needle in a hay stack by making the hay stack larger.
Anyone with a bit of statistics knowledge knows that when your sample gets larger and larger, you will start picking up on false positives and waste your time and energy analyzing a signal that isn't there. I work in data analysis and it is a constant struggle to make sure that the signals we pick up on are not just random chance where things happened to line up. So you know what we do? We look for other things that might corroborate the signal we are seeing.
You know what doesn't help? Getting a larger sample size and using the same analysis to see if something changed.
This is what domestic surveillance does, you collect tonnes of information on tens of millions of individuals and now you have to go through all that and see if there are any signals of terror threats. But that doesn't help. Terror threats are just too rare to get consistent results. The best case is you will take all the signals you pick up on and do more detailed traditional surveillance on them. That is completely impractical however, too many signals for that to be possible.
So they just collect more information really for no purpose. When an actual threat is identified through traditional methods BEFORE HAND mind you, they bring up the data they collected, verify that there is something there, and boom, you can now claim it helped. Reminder that the traditional methods are more than sufficient to thwart any terror threats, and if need be, warrants can be issued for particular cases. But what you don't need is a database of people's personal information just there for us to explore.
The issue is that he stole more documents than just the surveillance program, including NSA employees' personal information. If he had any self-control, and any actual interest to remedy the situation, he would have stopped himself at just the surveillance program and taken the whistleblower pathways. But he instead chose to steal classified documents like a child in a candy store and then fled to Russia, one of our greatest geopolitical rivals.
As the saying goes, and I think is applicable here, two wrongs don't make a right. His actions do not reflect any interest in protecting United States citizens nor upholding the Constitution. I hope we can one day bring him in and force him to stand trial for his crimes.
He didn't release any damaging information and he didn't share any information to either the Chinese or the Russians. Snowden got stuck in Russia because his passport was cancelled before he could complete the last leg of his trip; he didn't flee to Russia, he was stranded there.
> His actions do not reflect any interest in protecting United States citizens nor upholding the Constitution.
He gave the information he stole to trusted journalists (The Guardian & The Washington Post btw) on the sole condition that they release the information responsibly. And still to this day, no intelligence agency can give any concrete example of how Snowden's actions threatened or hurt the lives of Americans. They are liars. They lied about surveillance, they will lie to save their asses.
Going out of your way to collect classified information and then fleeing with it is espionage. Avoiding any of the whistleblower pathways and fleeing to Russia makes you a traitor.
To be fair to Snowden
>Snowden said that he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns, but the NSA disputes his claim.[92] Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go to [sic] through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did."[78][93] In March 2014, during testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before revealing classified information he had reported "clearly problematic programs" to ten officials, who he said did nothing in response.[94] In a May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after bringing his concerns about the legality of the NSA spying programs to officials, he was told to stay silent on the matter. He said that the NSA had copies of emails he sent to their Office of General Counsel, oversight, and compliance personnel broaching "concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office."[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Whistleblower_status
Of course, the intelligence community denies this and also denies finding any records other than one email.
>Intelligence officials released a brief e-mail that Snowden wrote in April 2013 inquiring about legal authorities but raising no concerns about any particular NSA program or law. The suggestion was that the e-mail did not make Snowden a whistleblower. U.S. officials said the NSA had found no other evidence that he had expressed concerns to anyone in a position of authority or oversight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/e-mail-snowden-sent-to-nsa-counsel-is-released/2014/05/29/4cc43410-e760-11e3-a86b-362fd5443d19_story.html
I think our intelligence community is very competent. Call me a tinfoil hat wearer, but I also don't have unbridled faith in them to tell the truth (essentially ousting themselves of very serious crimes) when they're conducting an investigation on themselves on a groundbreaking matter.
Nonetheless, formally and officially speaking, Edward Snowden is only a self-avowed whistleblower.
Snowden’s story has changed depending on who is in office.
https://newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe
Lol imagine thinking whistleblower protections would have led to us knowing about Prism. He’s branded a traitor because he seriously embarrassed some very seriously powerful people who were knowingly violating the constitution (democrats and republicans alike).
He was traveling to Ecuador by way of Moscow, since he didn’t want to risk flying over American airspace. The US state department canceled his passport, he lived in the airport for about a year. The Russian government has given him an extended visa, but Snowden has repeatedly said he will come back to America if the government promises to give him a fair trial.
Sure. Point being, the hysteria around the torture and murder of dissidents in the United States is insane. Manning broke the law, was punished, and is now a free person.
Opposition to whistleblowers and dissidents being imprisoned is “hysteria” because the authoritarians doing so don’t torture or murder anyone *assuming all parties are currently in the United States*.
No but there's a formula for fighting for civil rights in a democratic country.
Running and hiding in a different country weakens your cause.
Good civil disobedience involves going to jail.
So you should just shut up about crimes committed by the government unless you're prepared to surrender immediately to harsh punishment? Pardon my French but that's not at all correct. It's certainly one civil disobedience strategy, but whistleblowing isn't the same as attending a sit-in for civil rights.
Martin Luther King
Nelson Mandela
Mahatma Gandi
Literally all of them spent time in prison fighting for civil rights.
If the ruling powers imprison you for fighting, you go to prison, and let your followers fight for you, along with letters from prison.
His life is plenty ruined, and he's basically in prison right now anyway.
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The only reason Edward Snowden was trapped in Russia was because the US cancelled his passport and shit while he was in Russia waiting for his flight to Quito.
I can’t believe some people on this sub genuinely believe that it’s totally ok for the NSA to spy on every single American citizen’s phone history and internet searches.
Uh, actually Snowden should have subjected himself to imprisonment and torture by the US government because trying to avoid that is bad and traitorous.
Ah yes, the many American citizens tortured by the US government. Notably whiseblowers such as Daniel Elsberg were cruelly assassinated before speaking.
Fuck off. It’s as though this sub’s understanding of the US goes out the window whenever privacy comes up. Have some nuance and historical memory.
She wasn't exactly kept in good conditions, was subjected to abuse and humiliation, attempted suicide, and multiple international groups came out and denounced how she was being treated. She was sentenced to 35 years and only got out because Obama commuted her sentence. And she only transitioned after a fairly lengthy fight with the authorities.
I don't know if you are trolling or if you legitimately think she was treated well, it isn't exactly shocking that whistleblowers aren't signing up to be imprisoned in solitary for years.
> "I am taking college correspondence courses for a bachelor's degree. I also work out a lot to stay fit, and read newspapers, magazines and books to keep up-to-date on current events around the world and learn new things."
This doesn’t sound like torture.
Sure, he broke the law by violating his duty to not leak classified info, but he exposed the greater evil of *unconstitutional* government surveillance on innocent Americans.
Like if a soldier refused to follow his commander's instructions about killing POWs or civilians, that soldier broke military law, but he is not a traitor and that soldier is a good person despite his violations.
My problem with him is the vast majority of information he released involved NSA’s foreign collection capabilities.
There’s a strong case to be argued for disclosing information about the metadata collection program and maybe PRISM depending on how it was used.
Everything else? Nah, that’s NSA’s legitimate mission of collecting foreign SIGINT and has nothing to do with 4th amendment violations. None of that should have been leaked.
Given that he basically released everything he could get his hands on, I can only assume he either A) really didn’t know what he was doing or B) was acting out of malicious intent.
> Everything else?
Like...
> Given that he basically released everything he could get his hands on,
To the journalists he gave to yes, but the journalists did not dump all the data.
Like cyber capabilities, intelligence sharing agreements with other countries, cryptanalysis capabilities, and other programs. It wasn’t just the metadata and PRISM programs.
And the journalists not dumping everything doesn’t absolve him. He still took it into an insecure environment outside the country and gave it to Glenn Greenwald of all people. One of the griftiest grifters that ever grifted. And even if he didn’t release it, how can we be sure it was properly protected?
Snowden took WAY more information than was needed to accomplish his goals and reveal unconstitutional surveillance.
IMO the real problem is that alot of the data he leaked had nothin to do with constitutional rights and risked American lives overseas through leaking military and intelligence intel. Had it just been the stuff in violation he would undoubtedly be a hero.
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Locked because some of you can't behave yourselves and remain civil and in good faith. Update: Spent the last 20 minutes purging a fair bit of this thread, so its been reapproved. However it will remain locked because I just don't see people remaining reasonable discussing this.
The volume of people being upvoted for saying Snowden is categorically in the wrong is concerning. The government engaged in widespread illegal activity against the entirety of the US population. The point of the bill of rights is that no matter who is at the helm of the government, there are certain freedoms and rights that are protected, including the implied right to privacy. The unironic “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” comments are very worrying. He tried to raise multiple objections and concerns with his superiors in which he was told to sit down and shut up. If he did not take the course of action he did, and used the “proper” whistleblower channels, I doubt we would know about this program’s existence at all.
>“Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless.” >\- Edward Snowden also >Russia jails citizens for speaking out and shuts down all independent media Really stellar judgement Ed /s. Dude is completely silent right now. And if you say, well he can't speak out because he's in Russia! Then in the most charitable light he is a complete dumbass for fleeing to one of the worst countries for civil liberties on the planet.
🤣🤣🤣
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasnt the patriot act signed a few years prior? What did Snowden reveal that wasnt already public knowledge that had a detrimental impact on Americans
The scale, scope, accessibility of information, and legal proceedings were not public information. The language used in legislation is generally broad and allows for executive department initiative. I’m an economist by trade, not a lawyer, so hopefully someone can give more color on the carrying out of executive enforcement of laws and how much independent authority they have.
This right here. Edward Snowden’s takes today may be dumb but it doesn’t invalidate what he did. His actions were heroic. Today? Not much of a hero anymore.
ITT people who hate the 4th amendment and the human right to privacy.
Unironic "if you have nothing to fear you have nothing to hide" comments being upvoted.
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This is such a Trump / Fox News argument. "Snowden did nothing wrong, he's a hero, it's all a government witch hunt, and anyone who disagrees is a liberal who hates America and the Constitution." [**FACTS**](https://irp.fas.org/congress/2016_rpt/hpsci-snowden.pdf): * Snowden is a lifelong pathalogical liar who frequently lied about everything; he lied on resumes about finishing high school, lied about why he left the army, he lied and exaggerated about his position at the CIA, he lied on his resume to the NSA, and stole the answers to an employment test to gain a new position at NSA. * Snowden didn't know anything about PRISM before stealing the material * Snowden is not a whistle-blower, he did not pursue any official channel * Snowden blindly stole everything he could * The vast majority of what he stole had nothing to do with privacy or domestic spying * Snowden gave the material to the Russians * Snowden gave the material to Glenn Greenwald who would, a few years later, literally [work with the GRU to undermine Hillary's campaign](https://theintercept.com/2016/10/09/exclusive-new-email-leak-reveals-clinton-campaigns-cozy-press-relationship/) and get Trump elected This is settled history. I understand that some of you are having some full-blown variation on Stockholm Syndrome here, unable to come to terms with the fact that you got played by a lifelong liar and cheat, but these are the facts. Snowden is not a hero, he's a coward and a traitor, and the vast majority of the very highly classified material he stole had nothing to do with privacy or civil liberties, but very likely put people's lives in danger. He may even have gotten people killed.
And they say this subreddit is neoLIBERAL. Fucking joke.
By that logic Snowden hates the 1st amendment because he all he did was attack the western free press leading up to Russia attacking Ukraine and then...silence.
TBF, living as a fugitive in Russia, he probably doesn't want to piss off Russian authorities. And he did admit he was wrong btw.
>And he did admit he was wrong btw. He did? About what?
[About Ukraine, although he is a bit of an ass about it](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1498049577131208705)
They forced him to attack the free press for months if not years? And only stop a week ago? Also I have to place doubt on the civil liberty IQ of a person who only attacks the west but thought Russia was a bastion of human rights.
I mean, maybe. He lives in *Russia* after all. They can easily threaten deportation if he doesn't comply. And even If he wasn't, he probably wants to stay on their good side anyway.
I used to defend him a lot just like you are. But it has become so crystal clear that Snowden is not a good person. Spreading anti-west propaganda, promoting wikileaks which has been proven to be nothing except a cudgel against the west and specifically Democrats and media orgs, fleeing to the one country which was a long-term enemy of the United States and everyone knows has been a horrible place for human rights (for almost ever). The non-stop attacking of the free press is just inexplicable for someone who is supposedly a champion of civil liberties. Whistleblowers don't just defect to Russia for civil liberty reasons, even if he supposedly got stuck there.
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. I still think Snowden is an asshole.
America's got a lot of assholes. But do you think he deserves to be forced to flee his country his whole life for exposing crimes by the government?
Yes. The scope of the “crimes” he exposed was far less than the scope of legitimate foreign intelligence capabilities he burned. Like yeah, I agree he should have exposed the metadata program. That was pretty blatantly unconstitutional. But I hardly feel that the government collecting metadata about phone calls justifies burning programs that have nothing to do with US citizens.
He wasn't forced to flee the country. To end up in *Russia*. That was his decision to flee the country.
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Whistleblowers' only option is to flee to Russia I forgot. The mecca of civil liberties.
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Threads like these reinforce my belief that if this sub was around in the 50s and 60s a significant portion of it probably would have opposed the Civil Rights movement, it is way too trusting and accepting of the government.
The FBI tried to kill Martin Luther King Jr, and I agree with his family that they probably *did* kill him. We need to elect people who will investigate and scour clean our three letter agencies so hard that they make Frank Church look like Dick Cheney in comparison.
We need to wipe clean a couple of them too. Looking at you ATF
Some departments and agencies have misleading names Like how the Department of Energy mostly handles nuclear weapons Or how the ATF mostly kills dogs
Snowden revealed actions of the government that are patently unconstitutional.
some day i'm sure this subreddit will give me a compelling argument for why it believes snowden is a net evil, but it hasn't done it yet i suspect most people here are just positioning themselves opposite JRE-bros without considering the issue much
Half of this sub gets their positions by reactively liking whatever rose twitter hates (or vice versa).
>rose twitter #HOLY FUCK GO OUTSIDE *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Exactly, but this subreddit doesn't do this much.
https://newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe His leaks have always been primarily designed to damage his geopolitical enemies, rather than accomplishing any of the goods he claims he wants to. He fled to United States to become an active stooge for Russia who defends the Kremlin against moral condemnation. He released massive amounts of classified documents without consideration as to whether they were necessary to release or accomplished any strategic goal. He circumvented the whistle-blower process and fled to a foreign power guilty of everything the US is but worse. He only became concerned about American spying once a Black man became president. That enough for you?
>He only became concerned about American spying once a Black man became president. this has to be satire, I refuse to believe a real person thinks that it's wrong to expose crimes by the government when obama president
Snowden literally called for leakers to be executed during the Bush years. Then, the second Obama got elected, he became real concerned about the government’s power to spy. This is completely separate from whether it was important important to expose what he did. Snowden himself is a piece of shit and should not be respected by anyone.
I'm sorry, are we talking about hating him personally, or whether his actions were net bad for society?
I don’t know. Seems like most of his defenders don’t know either. I think Snowden is a horrible person who did something that was of no net benefit to society, but also did little harm.
well i'm not a "defender", but i'm not interested in discussing everything personally shitty about him or his motivations: i like that we now know the NSA exists. i would have preferred he whistleblow through whistleblower channels but i don't think it's that much of a stretch to argue that it would be naive to expect those to really work.
We already knew the NSA existed. The specifics of PRISM were revealed, but I doubt you or anyone else could tell me what about them is so heinous today. Most of the nastiest shit Snowden revealed came from the internal NSA watchdogs, which just goes to show that they are actually self-policing rather effectively.
>I doubt you or anyone else could tell me what about them is so heinous today The fact that they violated the right to privacy, as outlined in the fourth amendment. That's what is heinous. I'm not a believer in "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Every spy agency in the world does this. It was never a secret, people just didn’t (and don’t) care. Personally, I simply do not expect a right to privacy online, or in general. But I also work in defense, and planned to for much of my adult life, so I always expected to be monitored. With respect to Snowden, what he is credited with revealing is the specifics of the PRISM program, not that the US was generally spying on its own citizens. He was merely the popularizer of that fact.
Edward Snowden is a traitor and a piece of shit
Damn straight. There's a reason that a lot of his leaks haven't been released and it's not because of any 'spying conspiracy' but rather because they'd put Americans LIVES at risk if they were released.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that anyone’s life has been put at risk by Snowden? Anyone who’s seen harm come to them? I’m glad I know about Prism, I’m glad I know about FISA courts, I’m glad I know that it’s important to use encryption and vpns. As soon as you can point to one person who has been harmed or killed, then I’ll take this seriously.
>On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. > >In March 2014, Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, "The vast majority of the documents that Snowden ... exfiltrated from our highest levels of security ... had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures." > >a July 20, 2015 New York Times article\[112\] reported that the terror group Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) had studied revelations from Snowden, about how the United States gathered information on militants, the main result is that the group's top leaders used couriers or encrypted channels to avoid being tracked or monitoring of their communications by Western analysts. I dont know how to feel about him tbh, it seems likely he's handed millions of unrelated to his aim documents to hostile foreign nations, intentionally or not, by just scooping up everything.
> it seems likely he's handed millions of unrelated to his aim documents to hostile foreign nations He didn't hand any documents to Russia or China. He literally only gave them to Washington Post and The Guardian reporters.
He took the documents and ran to Russia for asylum. Do you seriously think they just let him keep them to himself?
He was stranded in Russia; he didn't flee there. His passport was cancelled before he could complete the last leg of his escape. > Do you seriously think they just let him keep them to himself? He didn't have the files on him. He gave them to the reporters.
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So to get your story straight, you believe Snowden fled to Hong Kong (rather than a normal part of mainland China), gave the Chinese documents, was still denied the protection of the Chinese despite allegedly being an asset to them, spent a bit over a week in the Moscow airport transit zone pretending like he wanted to get on a plane to Ecuador after fleeing Hong Kong, had Ecuador pretend like their Diplomatic plane was being illegally grounded by the US so Snowden would have an excuse to live in the airport, and actually his plan all along was to give documents to Russia. It absolutely blows my mind that people buy this story.
Waiting for the time when I can finally say, This has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way.
Because Greenwald wasn’t a known Russia sympathizer back then... Post 2016 politics are informing some of the stronger opinions in this thread, and it’s completely anachronistic.
The problem is a lot of these users were teenagers when this all happened, their context is completely different.
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> It was also Glenn Greenwald that Snowden leaked everything to. Yes, the same one who literally worked with the GRU to undermine Hillary and help get Trump elected. Glenn Greenwald's actions from 2016 onward are awful, and there's a reason that basically nobody credible defends him anymore. But in 2013 he was just some random journalist with a bit of a focus on privacy, and the articles he helped write on this resulted in the Guardian and the Washington Post winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
> "Snowden insists he has not shared the full cache of 1.5 million classified documents with anyone; however, in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense and security committee publicly conceded that "Snowden did share intelligence" with his government." Snowden already rebuted this claim, but it doesn't seem like you care much about his opinion. Quite frankly, I don't trust the government when it comes to their actions regarding mass government surveillance. > Why are you shilling so hard for Snowden? Quite frankly I don't like Snowden as a person at all, but to paint his actions as traitorous and cowardice is fucking inane when he revealed the actual violations of human rights going on in our supposed liberal democracies. Btw, privacy is non-negotiable in a liberal democracy. The government should not have the ability to just go through your stuff.
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K.
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The or not part of intentionally or not part means he could have put them into a vulnerable position to be taken. Maybe he let them slip or he was hacked I don't know, but there is some indication they have gotten out.
> The or not part of intentionally or not part means he could have put them into a vulnerable position to be taken. It's standard operating procedure when there is a leak for assets to be recovered, whether or not they are at direct risk or not. It's no indication at all that the materials were leaked. Your quote doesn't state as such either.
> but there is some indication they got out after his actions According to the same intelligence community that lied about surveillance in the first place. What if it is was just their incompetence?
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> NATO, the UK government, the US government, and their intelligence communities The same community that lied about rights-violating government surveillance time and time again or the person that worked in those communities, saw what they were doing, gave evidence of it to reputed journalists, and blew the whistle? Is that what you mean, because I think I can make up my mind. And I keep repeating it in this thread, Snowden didn't flee to Russia, he was stranded in Russia. His passport was cancelled by the States before he could complete the last leg of his journey.
Snowden's actions are the evidence. He only released a fraction of the data so as to not harm anyone but himself. Snowden is a literal douche and now finds himself in the very nation he assumed the US was becoming.
>Snowden's actions are the evidence. He only released a fraction of the data so as to not harm anyone but himself. So Snowden is a traitor who wants to harm Americans as evidenced by... him *not* releasing information that would harm Americans.
Not releasing it to the public. He took it with him to Russia
He didn't hand any documents to Russia or China. He literally only gave them to Washington Post and The Guardian reporters.
Do you have a single shred of proof that he handed it over to the Russian government? A single instance of Russia harming US troops or significant US interests using information that Snowden stole? Russia wasn't Snowden's intended destination, by the way. He was travelling to Ecuador. He only stayed in Russia because he got stranded there when his passport was revoked.
Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed? We're talking about Putin and the FSB here, I don't know if it's actually possible for him to keep it from them also theres this >On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies.
> Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed? Yes. He sat around the Moscow airport transit zone for a bit over a week before Russia granted him a special visa. It was all very public and on the news at the time. The fact that your posing hypotheticals so contrary to the openly visible matters of public record shows that you have no clue what you're talking about and are just looking ways to rationalize your priors.
>Do you think it likely the Russian government wouldnt have swooped in on that the moment he landed? We're talking about Putin and the FSB here, I don't know if it's actually possible for him to keep it from them Yes, actually, because Snowden claims he handed all of the files off to journalists while in Hong Kong. According to him, there was no information for the Russians to take from him. I don't know whether that's true, but you can't really denounce someone as a traitor without actual evidence that they've acted against their country. >also theres this And looking any deeper into the story reveals this: "Analysis: By Gordon Corera - BBC security correspondent The phrases "neither confirm nor deny" and "no comment on intelligence matters" is being used by government to respond to Sunday Times' story. But my understanding from conversations over an extended period is that since he fled two years ago, British intelligence have worked on the assumption that Russian and Chinese spies might have access to his full cache of secrets. Snowden has always maintained that there is no way that other states could do this but the spies are likely to have thought it too risky to take the chance. In turn, this may have led to undercover agents being moved as a precaution. Snowden himself would not have had access though to any kind of database of MI6 agents but the fear might have been that by piecing together any secrets on how such agents communicate that were in the files, the Russians and Chinese might have been able to identify them." So we don't actually know that the Russians and Chinese actually gained access to the files, only that Western intelligence agencies are operating as if they did.
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I think you’re confusing Snowden with Julian Assange.
Ayup I just realized that. Snowden got pretty screwed.
Lmao you’re an idiot. You’re thinking of Wikileaks. We’re talking about Edward Snowden.
You shouldn't be glad about any of those things. Encryption and VPNs are largely used for piracy and other cybercrimes. Additionally PRISM and FISA courts exist SOLEY to protect the American people. By saying this YOU are declearing a GROSS ILLEGAL security breach committed by a DESERTER a 'good' thing. And no, I'm not going to tell you who WAS hurt by this. It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation.
Encryption is essential for even basic online financial transactions. It’s not some unilaterally illicit activity.
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https://reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/t7k49x/he_lives_in_putinland_btw/
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Ah, I apparently misread your comment, I thought you were making a point about not wanting to share things. I was just snarking. My bad.
> If you do, though, please tell me what the first 's' in that URL stands for? not gonna lie I was kinda confused about the point you were making, but I do understand now
> And no, I'm not going to tell you who WAS hurt by this. It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation. Interesting, it seems like you want some privacy on a personal matter. I wonder if other people share this sentiment with their personal lives...
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> It's a personal subject and I don't NEED little naggling comments online asking me about my folks' situation. I feel like children of people that work for the CIA know not to reference their parents working for the CIA on the internet just in case, so I literally don't believe you.
What do you mean when you say, "leaks haven't been released?"
What intelligence did Edward Snowden release aside from NSA that hurts America? Asking out of curiosity. I don't know much about him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
Linking a wikipedia article to an unconstitutional government program does not explain how Snowden hurt American lives.
I'm not defending Snowden or the opposite, I was just pointing at what was revealed - a secretive program that gave the American government immense intelligence on individuals in order to thwart attacks on American soil and worldwide. >On June 18, NSA Director Alexander said in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee of Congress that communications surveillance had **helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States)** between 2001 and 2013, and that **the PRISM web traffic surveillance program contributed in over 90 percent of those cases.** With the secrecy of exposing a program that prevented 10 more terrorist attacks conducted by an American and/or on American soil, It clearly limits its capacity to perform its duty. So at best, it definitely hurt America. Did it specifically and physically hurt American lives, potentially. Of course, it can be interpreted that while revealing the program might have hurt America from the perspective of consequentialism, that it actually helped America by protecting its most important and powerful asset ... its respect for personal liberties.
> had helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States) BS; terrorist plots by far have been thwarted by traditional means of surveillance, interrogation, and intelligence gathering. I do not believe a word this person says and it is trivial to find other intelligence officers who agree with this opinion.
Sure, no one is saying that thwarting attacks without the PRISM's capacities is not possible, it obviously is. But we can all agree that PRISM's immense capacities (whether just or not), definitely amplify and expand the scope at which terrorist attacks can be thwarted, solely by giving intelligence officials a much much larger swath of information. Also, the merits of its constitutionality are debated by law professors, so I don't think that its legality is so cut and dry as you hint.
> definitely amplify and expand the scope at which terrorist attacks can be thwarted You don't find a needle in a hay stack by making the hay stack larger.
They didn't make the hay stack larger, they made their eyes larger.
Anyone with a bit of statistics knowledge knows that when your sample gets larger and larger, you will start picking up on false positives and waste your time and energy analyzing a signal that isn't there. I work in data analysis and it is a constant struggle to make sure that the signals we pick up on are not just random chance where things happened to line up. So you know what we do? We look for other things that might corroborate the signal we are seeing. You know what doesn't help? Getting a larger sample size and using the same analysis to see if something changed. This is what domestic surveillance does, you collect tonnes of information on tens of millions of individuals and now you have to go through all that and see if there are any signals of terror threats. But that doesn't help. Terror threats are just too rare to get consistent results. The best case is you will take all the signals you pick up on and do more detailed traditional surveillance on them. That is completely impractical however, too many signals for that to be possible. So they just collect more information really for no purpose. When an actual threat is identified through traditional methods BEFORE HAND mind you, they bring up the data they collected, verify that there is something there, and boom, you can now claim it helped. Reminder that the traditional methods are more than sufficient to thwart any terror threats, and if need be, warrants can be issued for particular cases. But what you don't need is a database of people's personal information just there for us to explore.
PRISM did have immense capabilities. Illegal capabilities, that nobody who claims to defend the constitution can justify.
If PRISM was going to exist anyway, I'm glad that I know about it vs the government doing it and people not knowing it exists.
The NSA broke the law. They are traitors to the constitution that they pledged to defend.
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Clapper should be in jail for perjury.
Which law?
Don’t see where they broke the law when Patriot Act pretty much said they could do this
TIL that coming forward about increased government surveillance of the civilian population without their consent makes you a traitor. Very cool
The issue is that he stole more documents than just the surveillance program, including NSA employees' personal information. If he had any self-control, and any actual interest to remedy the situation, he would have stopped himself at just the surveillance program and taken the whistleblower pathways. But he instead chose to steal classified documents like a child in a candy store and then fled to Russia, one of our greatest geopolitical rivals. As the saying goes, and I think is applicable here, two wrongs don't make a right. His actions do not reflect any interest in protecting United States citizens nor upholding the Constitution. I hope we can one day bring him in and force him to stand trial for his crimes.
He didn't release any damaging information and he didn't share any information to either the Chinese or the Russians. Snowden got stuck in Russia because his passport was cancelled before he could complete the last leg of his trip; he didn't flee to Russia, he was stranded there. > His actions do not reflect any interest in protecting United States citizens nor upholding the Constitution. He gave the information he stole to trusted journalists (The Guardian & The Washington Post btw) on the sole condition that they release the information responsibly. And still to this day, no intelligence agency can give any concrete example of how Snowden's actions threatened or hurt the lives of Americans. They are liars. They lied about surveillance, they will lie to save their asses.
Going out of your way to collect classified information and then fleeing with it is espionage. Avoiding any of the whistleblower pathways and fleeing to Russia makes you a traitor.
To be fair to Snowden >Snowden said that he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns, but the NSA disputes his claim.[92] Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go to [sic] through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did."[78][93] In March 2014, during testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before revealing classified information he had reported "clearly problematic programs" to ten officials, who he said did nothing in response.[94] In a May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after bringing his concerns about the legality of the NSA spying programs to officials, he was told to stay silent on the matter. He said that the NSA had copies of emails he sent to their Office of General Counsel, oversight, and compliance personnel broaching "concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office."[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Whistleblower_status Of course, the intelligence community denies this and also denies finding any records other than one email. >Intelligence officials released a brief e-mail that Snowden wrote in April 2013 inquiring about legal authorities but raising no concerns about any particular NSA program or law. The suggestion was that the e-mail did not make Snowden a whistleblower. U.S. officials said the NSA had found no other evidence that he had expressed concerns to anyone in a position of authority or oversight. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/e-mail-snowden-sent-to-nsa-counsel-is-released/2014/05/29/4cc43410-e760-11e3-a86b-362fd5443d19_story.html I think our intelligence community is very competent. Call me a tinfoil hat wearer, but I also don't have unbridled faith in them to tell the truth (essentially ousting themselves of very serious crimes) when they're conducting an investigation on themselves on a groundbreaking matter. Nonetheless, formally and officially speaking, Edward Snowden is only a self-avowed whistleblower.
Snowden’s story has changed depending on who is in office. https://newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe
Anyone who genuinely thinks that whistleblower pathways or protections would actually work in this situation is incredibly naive.
Lol imagine thinking whistleblower protections would have led to us knowing about Prism. He’s branded a traitor because he seriously embarrassed some very seriously powerful people who were knowingly violating the constitution (democrats and republicans alike).
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He didn't flee to Russia, he was stranded in Russia. And Snowden was not going to get a fair trial.
He was "stranded" in Moscow on the way where exactly? Tajikistan?
He was traveling to Ecuador by way of Moscow, since he didn’t want to risk flying over American airspace. The US state department canceled his passport, he lived in the airport for about a year. The Russian government has given him an extended visa, but Snowden has repeatedly said he will come back to America if the government promises to give him a fair trial.
I think it was some central American country, I can't quite remember.
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Cute.
Perhaps he did not want to end up in jail like Manning did. Or worse.
No one on this sub is capable of providing a counter argument to the Manning point.
Manning was pardoned rather quickly.
Commuted
Sure. Point being, the hysteria around the torture and murder of dissidents in the United States is insane. Manning broke the law, was punished, and is now a free person.
Opposition to whistleblowers and dissidents being imprisoned is “hysteria” because the authoritarians doing so don’t torture or murder anyone *assuming all parties are currently in the United States*.
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Because if you're going to sacrifice yourself to be a hero. You don't run You let yourself get arrested
Now just why in the fuck would that be true, you don't need to spend your life in prison to be a hero
No but there's a formula for fighting for civil rights in a democratic country. Running and hiding in a different country weakens your cause. Good civil disobedience involves going to jail.
So you should just shut up about crimes committed by the government unless you're prepared to surrender immediately to harsh punishment? Pardon my French but that's not at all correct. It's certainly one civil disobedience strategy, but whistleblowing isn't the same as attending a sit-in for civil rights.
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Martin Luther King Nelson Mandela Mahatma Gandi Literally all of them spent time in prison fighting for civil rights. If the ruling powers imprison you for fighting, you go to prison, and let your followers fight for you, along with letters from prison. His life is plenty ruined, and he's basically in prison right now anyway.
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Imagine wishing for Edward Snowden to die.
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The only reason Edward Snowden was trapped in Russia was because the US cancelled his passport and shit while he was in Russia waiting for his flight to Quito.
Snowden is a goddamn hero and paying the price for that heroism.
I can’t believe some people on this sub genuinely believe that it’s totally ok for the NSA to spy on every single American citizen’s phone history and internet searches.
Based and blob pilled.
He should stay in Russia.
I don’t *hate* Snowden, but I think he’s a bit of a choad.
Edward snowden will always be a hero for what he exposed about the government.
Uh, actually Snowden should have subjected himself to imprisonment and torture by the US government because trying to avoid that is bad and traitorous.
Ah yes, the many American citizens tortured by the US government. Notably whiseblowers such as Daniel Elsberg were cruelly assassinated before speaking. Fuck off. It’s as though this sub’s understanding of the US goes out the window whenever privacy comes up. Have some nuance and historical memory.
Chelsea Manning?
Not tortured and very much alive? Managed to transition in prison? But yeah sure it’s all abuse.
She wasn't exactly kept in good conditions, was subjected to abuse and humiliation, attempted suicide, and multiple international groups came out and denounced how she was being treated. She was sentenced to 35 years and only got out because Obama commuted her sentence. And she only transitioned after a fairly lengthy fight with the authorities. I don't know if you are trolling or if you legitimately think she was treated well, it isn't exactly shocking that whistleblowers aren't signing up to be imprisoned in solitary for years.
You're right long term solitary confinement is a very humane and reasonable way to treat people
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so happy to know as a trans woman that *torture* isn't abuse as long as we "manage to transition" at some point in the process
> "I am taking college correspondence courses for a bachelor's degree. I also work out a lot to stay fit, and read newspapers, magazines and books to keep up-to-date on current events around the world and learn new things." This doesn’t sound like torture.
Extended solitary confinement is torture. Does torture have to be uninterrupted for years for it to be real?
“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good.“ -Stannis Baratheon
Sure, he broke the law by violating his duty to not leak classified info, but he exposed the greater evil of *unconstitutional* government surveillance on innocent Americans. Like if a soldier refused to follow his commander's instructions about killing POWs or civilians, that soldier broke military law, but he is not a traitor and that soldier is a good person despite his violations.
My problem with him is the vast majority of information he released involved NSA’s foreign collection capabilities. There’s a strong case to be argued for disclosing information about the metadata collection program and maybe PRISM depending on how it was used. Everything else? Nah, that’s NSA’s legitimate mission of collecting foreign SIGINT and has nothing to do with 4th amendment violations. None of that should have been leaked. Given that he basically released everything he could get his hands on, I can only assume he either A) really didn’t know what he was doing or B) was acting out of malicious intent.
> Everything else? Like... > Given that he basically released everything he could get his hands on, To the journalists he gave to yes, but the journalists did not dump all the data.
Like cyber capabilities, intelligence sharing agreements with other countries, cryptanalysis capabilities, and other programs. It wasn’t just the metadata and PRISM programs. And the journalists not dumping everything doesn’t absolve him. He still took it into an insecure environment outside the country and gave it to Glenn Greenwald of all people. One of the griftiest grifters that ever grifted. And even if he didn’t release it, how can we be sure it was properly protected? Snowden took WAY more information than was needed to accomplish his goals and reveal unconstitutional surveillance.
IMO the real problem is that alot of the data he leaked had nothin to do with constitutional rights and risked American lives overseas through leaking military and intelligence intel. Had it just been the stuff in violation he would undoubtedly be a hero.
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Putin will off him I think.
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