10 ms·

Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government

by pvnick 11y ago

Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately. I for one believe that the releases have been done with impeccable professionalism, and in fact if it were up to me I would have been even more liberal with the releases (Greenwald, Poitras, et al. have actually worked with the government during this process).

happyscrappy 11y ago
>gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately Journalists will be tempted to publish regardless of the original intent, let's hope they are not desperate for a story.
jazzyk 11y ago
This. It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak everything indiscriminately).
- cryoshon 11y ago
  There's been a lot of obfuscation to the contrary, including endless bad-faith comparisons with Chelsea Manning.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Yup. Also comparisons with Assange.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  Yes he did, to journalists. Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to have done that. So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    No, from the context of the post above mine, it is obvious that by "leaking indiscriminately" I meant to the general public. You are either lacking context comprehension skills or intentionally splitting hairs to make Snowden look bad...
    - irishcoffee 11y ago
      How are journalists not the general public? Giving classified documents to _anyone_ who isn't cleared to see them is the "general public." Journalists are no exception. Not sure why you think that.
      - jazzyk 11y ago
        Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens. Snowden sent the docs not to any/all journalists, but to a carefully selected group of the most reputable ones: NYT, WP, Guardian. He had followed Poitras/Greenwald for a long time before to make sure the docs end up in responsible hands. Also, the journalists asked the US government to cooperate/redact out some national-security sensitive details, they refused. So they had to use their own judgement.
      - facetube 11y ago
        Are you arguing that Snowden giving all of the documents to me would have produced the same outcome as giving them to journalists to review and redact and write articles about?
        irishcoffee 11y ago
        Yes. What qualifies you, or journalists, to know umpty-squat about national security? 99% of what snowden leaked had _nothing_ to do with the privacy of U.S. citizens. Nothing.
  - facetube 11y ago
    The journalists working closely with him did have time. There is nothing about this situation that the word "indiscriminately" applies to, unless you're talking about the military spy organization that was allowed to indiscriminately target its own citizens.
krapp 11y ago
Nevertheless, journalists work for media companies which run on ad revenue. Their motivation and Edward Snowden's don't necessarily align, now that he has become (perhaps inadvertently) a cult of personality figure and a marketable brand, and attaching his name to anything guarantees readership.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  media companies which run on ad revenue Greenwald worked for The Guardian for the initial release, and works for The Intercept now. The Guardian, although somewhat ad-supported, doesn't appear to be quite as dependent as most US papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_fin.... The Intercept is definitely weirder than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept With respect to The Intercept, I submit that you're technically correct (their motivations and Snowden's aren't identical), but that Snowden's motivations are probably closer to The Intercept's staff than they would be to any other news outlet, even NPR.
NullCharacter 11y ago
I realize Snowden personally didn't leak the documents (unless you qualify handing the trove to journalists as "leaking" which some might). This is why I used the word "abscond" as well as "leak". Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection. But I've never received a straight answer to that question and I guess this is no exception.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection. Going through all the files by himself would be a daunting task that would take years. There are literally 1,000's of documents. Raising the alarm now rather than 8 years from now is important. Given the circumstances, grabbing everything and handing it over to a team of respectable journalists (who have a team of lawyers) to find out what is against the Constitution/not in favor of the people (seeing as journalists represent the people to an extent) to allow them to only leak the relevant ones that were crossing boundaries seems like a best decision act. The journalists can leak documents over the course of years and slowly investigate each one to determine if it crosses boundaries and the alarms should be rung for the public. Snowden would have had a single release of a handful of documents and gone on a very long vacation in a place nobody has ever heard of had he released a few documents himself. It's expensive to pay for a vacation for an entire group of journalists and lawyers.
  - canistr 11y ago
    I disagree. Grabbing everything because you don't have time to sift through the data and passing them to so-called "respectable journalists" doesn't make it right. In the same way that people claim dragnet surveillance is wrong to catch terrorists if it's violating the privacy of everyone else.
    - Nadya 11y ago
      How would you have done it? Gone through 16,000 documents that are all 100's of pages long as an individual? You'd be lucky to finish in your lifetime. Not to mention he's not a lawyer. Should he consult a lawyer to know what is going against the Constitution or just use his best guess? Is consulting a single lawyer better than a team of lawyers? Should have had consulted a team of lawyers? What makes Snowden more trustworthy than journalists? Would he be able to find lawyers to consult while remaining in a country that wouldn't put his life at risk? Should the lawyers relocate to Snowden's location of asylum? Or should they be consult over the constantly monitored internet? Is releasing the information 10 years from now more beneficial than releasing it now? It opens a big can of worms when you question the logistics of doing it differently. Not that I disagree with your statement - it's a lot like dragnet (catch it all to watch a few) but the logistics in this scenario, unlike a dragnet, the resources simply aren't there to do it any other way. Snowden is not a multi-billion dollar government with near unlimited resources.
pdkl95 11y ago
Well said. I would only add that in the end, the specifics of what should be released are usually going to a subjective judgment call. Everybody is going to draw a slightly different cutoff line. In US tradition we have used journalists as a representative of the people to make that decision, and Greenwald et al have been incredibly careful in how they released pieces of the Snowden archive. Too careful, perhaps, but I can certainly understand the desire to take it slowly and carefully. Also, as more documents are released, it's important to remember that Snowden is not the only source. ( https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_us.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_... )

by pvnick 11y ago

happyscrappy 11y ago

>gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately Journalists will be tempted to publish regardless of the original intent, let's hope they are not desperate for a story.

jazzyk 11y ago

This. It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak everything indiscriminately).

cryoshon 11y ago
There's been a lot of obfuscation to the contrary, including endless bad-faith comparisons with Chelsea Manning.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Yup. Also comparisons with Assange.
irishcoffee 11y ago
Yes he did, to journalists. Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to have done that. So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  No, from the context of the post above mine, it is obvious that by "leaking indiscriminately" I meant to the general public. You are either lacking context comprehension skills or intentionally splitting hairs to make Snowden look bad...
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    How are journalists not the general public? Giving classified documents to _anyone_ who isn't cleared to see them is the "general public." Journalists are no exception. Not sure why you think that.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens. Snowden sent the docs not to any/all journalists, but to a carefully selected group of the most reputable ones: NYT, WP, Guardian. He had followed Poitras/Greenwald for a long time before to make sure the docs end up in responsible hands. Also, the journalists asked the US government to cooperate/redact out some national-security sensitive details, they refused. So they had to use their own judgement.
    - facetube 11y ago
      Are you arguing that Snowden giving all of the documents to me would have produced the same outcome as giving them to journalists to review and redact and write articles about?
      - irishcoffee 11y ago
        Yes. What qualifies you, or journalists, to know umpty-squat about national security? 99% of what snowden leaked had _nothing_ to do with the privacy of U.S. citizens. Nothing.
- facetube 11y ago
  The journalists working closely with him did have time. There is nothing about this situation that the word "indiscriminately" applies to, unless you're talking about the military spy organization that was allowed to indiscriminately target its own citizens.

krapp 11y ago

Nevertheless, journalists work for media companies which run on ad revenue. Their motivation and Edward Snowden's don't necessarily align, now that he has become (perhaps inadvertently) a cult of personality figure and a marketable brand, and attaching his name to anything guarantees readership.

bediger4000 11y ago
media companies which run on ad revenue Greenwald worked for The Guardian for the initial release, and works for The Intercept now. The Guardian, although somewhat ad-supported, doesn't appear to be quite as dependent as most US papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_fin.... The Intercept is definitely weirder than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept With respect to The Intercept, I submit that you're technically correct (their motivations and Snowden's aren't identical), but that Snowden's motivations are probably closer to The Intercept's staff than they would be to any other news outlet, even NPR.

NullCharacter 11y ago

I realize Snowden personally didn't leak the documents (unless you qualify handing the trove to journalists as "leaking" which some might). This is why I used the word "abscond" as well as "leak". Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection. But I've never received a straight answer to that question and I guess this is no exception.

Nadya 11y ago
>Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection. Going through all the files by himself would be a daunting task that would take years. There are literally 1,000's of documents. Raising the alarm now rather than 8 years from now is important. Given the circumstances, grabbing everything and handing it over to a team of respectable journalists (who have a team of lawyers) to find out what is against the Constitution/not in favor of the people (seeing as journalists represent the people to an extent) to allow them to only leak the relevant ones that were crossing boundaries seems like a best decision act. The journalists can leak documents over the course of years and slowly investigate each one to determine if it crosses boundaries and the alarms should be rung for the public. Snowden would have had a single release of a handful of documents and gone on a very long vacation in a place nobody has ever heard of had he released a few documents himself. It's expensive to pay for a vacation for an entire group of journalists and lawyers.
- canistr 11y ago
  I disagree. Grabbing everything because you don't have time to sift through the data and passing them to so-called "respectable journalists" doesn't make it right. In the same way that people claim dragnet surveillance is wrong to catch terrorists if it's violating the privacy of everyone else.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    How would you have done it? Gone through 16,000 documents that are all 100's of pages long as an individual? You'd be lucky to finish in your lifetime. Not to mention he's not a lawyer. Should he consult a lawyer to know what is going against the Constitution or just use his best guess? Is consulting a single lawyer better than a team of lawyers? Should have had consulted a team of lawyers? What makes Snowden more trustworthy than journalists? Would he be able to find lawyers to consult while remaining in a country that wouldn't put his life at risk? Should the lawyers relocate to Snowden's location of asylum? Or should they be consult over the constantly monitored internet? Is releasing the information 10 years from now more beneficial than releasing it now? It opens a big can of worms when you question the logistics of doing it differently. Not that I disagree with your statement - it's a lot like dragnet (catch it all to watch a few) but the logistics in this scenario, unlike a dragnet, the resources simply aren't there to do it any other way. Snowden is not a multi-billion dollar government with near unlimited resources.

pdkl95 11y ago

Well said. I would only add that in the end, the specifics of what should be released are usually going to a subjective judgment call. Everybody is going to draw a slightly different cutoff line. In US tradition we have used journalists as a representative of the people to make that decision, and Greenwald et al have been incredibly careful in how they released pieces of the Snowden archive. Too careful, perhaps, but I can certainly understand the desire to take it slowly and carefully. Also, as more documents are released, it's important to remember that Snowden is not the only source. ( https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_us.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_... )