3 ms·
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 metada
by 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.
- mjevans 11y agoFirst, the reason is because this whistle blowing was /necessary/ due to a /lack of oversight/ and to a lack of eventual release for that oversight to the public. Second, we don't know the number of potential documents, nor how they may have been divided among those to whom they were disseminated. Addressing the first point, it should take work and review, on an ongoing basis, to re-affirm the classification of that material. By default there should be a /reasonable/ and /short/ expiration time. If it costs too much to keep those secrets than that in and of it's self is a reason for not HAVING so many secrets to keep! The cost, otherwise, is to our freedoms; to the very liberty for which our government is supposed to be protecting.