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This doesn't strike me as cognitive dissonance. From the government's perspective, Snowden didn't reveal illegal activity and so is not a whistleblower.

jebblue 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower "or threat to public interest" It doesn't have to be illegal.
grey-area 11y ago
Clapper and Alexander lying to congress is illegal.
agd 11y ago
The bulk collection of phone metadata (which he exposed) was subsequently ruled unlawful: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/07/nsa-phone-records-program-illegal-court http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/07/nsa-phone-rec...
- NullCharacter 11y ago
  That's great and all, but what about the other one million+ documents he absconded with not related to the phone metadata record collection? At what point does he cease being a whistle blower?
  - comrh 11y ago
    I feel like this isn't a bad point. Anyone have a response because the whistlerblower tag gets used a lot but he did release a lot that seemed to be normal spying.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - pfg 11y ago
      His argument was that it should be not his decision whether releasing a document is in the public interest, but rather something journalists should take care of (although he did select those journalists himself, so it's not fair to say it's a completely independent process). Still better than a full dump à la WkiLeaks, but the big question is whether the journalists have the OpSec skills to avoid leaking the documents to other governments.
      - slg 11y ago
        That is an awful defense. You can't just dump all the documents on a journalist and then blame the journalist for what is being released. It doesn't matter if it was directly or through an intermediary, everything that Snowden gave to journalists, Snowden leaked to the public.
        pfg 11y ago
        I'm not saying that he shouldn't be held responsible if all of those documents were to leak. He did, however, specifically select journalists who already experienced heavy surveillance from state actors and had at least some knowledge of proper OpSec and encryption to mitigate this risk to some degree. He acknowledged that it could leak, but still thought it's a risk worth taking (I can't remember his exact words, I think it was brought up in an interview.)
        NullCharacter 11y ago
        Why should he be the one to decide if the leaking of over a million highly classified documents is a "risk worth taking" to inform Americans of the phone metadata program? Doesn't that seem just odd to you? If I wanted to blow the whistle on a program I thought was illegal, I'd gather supporting documents and evidence of that one program (to include supposed emails I had sent in an attempt to follow the proper "channels" for reporting illegal activity - which in Snowden's case are conspicuously absent from the data he stole) so as to not discredit my work/sacrifice by leaking magnitudes more than I needed to. Why not just leak documents related to that one issue? If he had, I would not hesitate in the least to call him a whistle blower, and in fact I think he'd be living as a free man right now if that were the case.
  - grey-area 11y ago
    The phone metadata is just a small part of the lawless behaviour of intelligence services he released proof of to journalists. For example he also released proof of industrial espionage (Petrobras), political spying during negotiations (Belgacom), of tapping internet traffic indiscriminately (Tempora), of undermining encryption standards(Bullrun), installing malware on routers, of personnel misusing selectors to target their loved ones with impunity. Perhaps you believe in your country right or wrong, but many don't nowadays, many feel little allegiance to national boundaries or national agencies which actively undermine our society. What I find most interesting here is that this attempt by security agencies to collect it all actually means that their operation can be compromised by the smallest cogs in their machine whom they foolishly gave full access to. You can be absolutely sure that if Snowden walked out with this data, Chinese, Russian and other spies have the whole trove as well dating back years, because their security around private contractors was awful - GCHQ shared all this with the US without restraint, and of course all their data is now open to the world. So the ambition to collect it all and the entire collection of data (including data on western judges, politicans etc etc) is actually highly damaging to national security, even if you believe that flimsy excuse. At some point if you're exposed to all this you might feel you have to take sides with humanity and take a stand, before these tools are used for widespread repression. At that point you start being a whistleblower, and your life will probably be destroyed by the powers that be (as his has been, or as Binney's was), because they now have that power. http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-program.html http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pro... I think the biggest lesson from Snowden is not technical, but the simple argument that the power of state and citizen must be in balance for society to function, and we must constantly guard against the state aggrandising power, because that is in its nature.

jebblue 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower "or threat to public interest" It doesn't have to be illegal.

grey-area 11y ago

Clapper and Alexander lying to congress is illegal.

agd 11y ago

The bulk collection of phone metadata (which he exposed) was subsequently ruled unlawful: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/07/nsa-phone-records-program-illegal-court http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/07/nsa-phone-rec...

NullCharacter 11y ago
That's great and all, but what about the other one million+ documents he absconded with not related to the phone metadata record collection? At what point does he cease being a whistle blower?
- comrh 11y ago
  I feel like this isn't a bad point. Anyone have a response because the whistlerblower tag gets used a lot but he did release a lot that seemed to be normal spying.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - pfg 11y ago
    His argument was that it should be not his decision whether releasing a document is in the public interest, but rather something journalists should take care of (although he did select those journalists himself, so it's not fair to say it's a completely independent process). Still better than a full dump à la WkiLeaks, but the big question is whether the journalists have the OpSec skills to avoid leaking the documents to other governments.
    - slg 11y ago
      That is an awful defense. You can't just dump all the documents on a journalist and then blame the journalist for what is being released. It doesn't matter if it was directly or through an intermediary, everything that Snowden gave to journalists, Snowden leaked to the public.
      - pfg 11y ago
        I'm not saying that he shouldn't be held responsible if all of those documents were to leak. He did, however, specifically select journalists who already experienced heavy surveillance from state actors and had at least some knowledge of proper OpSec and encryption to mitigate this risk to some degree. He acknowledged that it could leak, but still thought it's a risk worth taking (I can't remember his exact words, I think it was brought up in an interview.)
        NullCharacter 11y ago
        Why should he be the one to decide if the leaking of over a million highly classified documents is a "risk worth taking" to inform Americans of the phone metadata program? Doesn't that seem just odd to you? If I wanted to blow the whistle on a program I thought was illegal, I'd gather supporting documents and evidence of that one program (to include supposed emails I had sent in an attempt to follow the proper "channels" for reporting illegal activity - which in Snowden's case are conspicuously absent from the data he stole) so as to not discredit my work/sacrifice by leaking magnitudes more than I needed to. Why not just leak documents related to that one issue? If he had, I would not hesitate in the least to call him a whistle blower, and in fact I think he'd be living as a free man right now if that were the case.
- grey-area 11y ago
  The phone metadata is just a small part of the lawless behaviour of intelligence services he released proof of to journalists. For example he also released proof of industrial espionage (Petrobras), political spying during negotiations (Belgacom), of tapping internet traffic indiscriminately (Tempora), of undermining encryption standards(Bullrun), installing malware on routers, of personnel misusing selectors to target their loved ones with impunity. Perhaps you believe in your country right or wrong, but many don't nowadays, many feel little allegiance to national boundaries or national agencies which actively undermine our society. What I find most interesting here is that this attempt by security agencies to collect it all actually means that their operation can be compromised by the smallest cogs in their machine whom they foolishly gave full access to. You can be absolutely sure that if Snowden walked out with this data, Chinese, Russian and other spies have the whole trove as well dating back years, because their security around private contractors was awful - GCHQ shared all this with the US without restraint, and of course all their data is now open to the world. So the ambition to collect it all and the entire collection of data (including data on western judges, politicans etc etc) is actually highly damaging to national security, even if you believe that flimsy excuse. At some point if you're exposed to all this you might feel you have to take sides with humanity and take a stand, before these tools are used for widespread repression. At that point you start being a whistleblower, and your life will probably be destroyed by the powers that be (as his has been, or as Binney's was), because they now have that power. http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-program.html http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pro... I think the biggest lesson from Snowden is not technical, but the simple argument that the power of state and citizen must be in balance for society to function, and we must constantly guard against the state aggrandising power, because that is in its nature.