19 ms·

Five hours with Edward Snowden

327 points by henrik_w 11y ago

NN88 11y ago
.@ggreenwald: "What bothered Snowden the most was not the spying itself but the fact that it was all carried out in secrecy" #newsnight https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/662041192541089792 https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/662041192541089792 Snowden really doesn't know as much as he claims to. Not to mention he's careless and the he exposed legitimate intelligence operations on foreign countries
tsunamifury 11y ago
I've view Snowden has a hero in a time where it is very hard to stand up and cast a light on national wrongdoing. I often struggle when I return to the US Midwest and my family and others complain that Snowden is a traitor. I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. Since its the Bible belt I often find myself reminding people of the story of David [1] who hid with the Philistines when his nation and leader of Israel and turned on him. The irony is almost overwhelming to them since Snowden so closely fits the exact profile of the story. Some nights in my darker moments I worry that we and by extension myself, have become the bad guys in that story, more akin to the egotistical and delusional King Saul than David. [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2027 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2027 [2] My relevant history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444512
- Sven7 11y ago
  Don't worry about it. We have always taken time to recognize our heroes. History is littered with people who were called traitors who now have roads and schools named after them. But I do wonder if our politicians were to trying to pull off another Iraq Invasion type event, whether it would be as easy today as they made it appear in 2003. Would it be easier for a whistleblower to disrupt it today? It doesn't feel so.
- lisper 11y ago
  > I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. It's because traditional Christian values have been hijacked by business leaders who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority. (They're probably right about that too.)
  - tptacek 11y ago
    This is an uncharacteristically dumb comment from you.
    - lisper 11y ago
      Well, thanks for the backhanded compliment. But why do you think it's dumb? It seems self-evidently true to me.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That what this thread needs is a bunch of culture war bullshit about traditional Christian values?
        lisper 11y ago
        If the shoe fits...
        tptacek 11y ago
        Really? "Wake up sheeple" is all you have?
        lisper 11y ago
        Um, no. Let's review: the comment to which I was responding was by someone who considers Snowden a hero and couldn't understand why his midwestern family considered him a traitor. The OP specifically couched his confusion in terms of Christian values, and even cited a Bible passage. I responded with an answer to the question that he posed in the terms in which he posed it, and which made a factual claim that I believe to be correct, and which I can support with evidence. That's what I meant by "if the shoe fits..." (Just in case you're not aware: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits)
- nordsieck 11y ago
  > erodes our values There's your problem right there. Your implication is that the people you talk to are blind to their own values. In reality, they simply value different things than you.
  - tsunamifury 11y ago
    The story of David is meant to illustrate that we actually share the same values, but for some reason have chosen to demonize people we would otherwise lionize in retrospect.
    - riskable 11y ago
      That right there is your bad assumption: That self-declared Christians have anything remotely resembling "shared values". Take two random self-described Christians and have them write down, "what would define a 'true Christian'" and you'll get two completely different sets of answers. All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter.
      - explorigin 11y ago
        > All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter. You're using a lot of absolutes in your statement. It's as if you have some secret knowledge about the way all religious people think. Care to expand on your reasoning?
        riskable 11y ago
        I'm a Sith.
      - fabulist 11y ago
- tptacek 11y ago
  Because two wrongs don't make a right? Some of what Snowden did seems straightforwardly heroic, and some of it... much less so, to me at least. Not everyone thinks exactly the same way you do. Believe it or not, outside message boards like this, there are a lot of people that don't care about NSA surveillance of US Internet traffic at all, and care a lot more about Islamic terrorism (to be clear: I am not one of those people).
  - lisper 11y ago
    > some of it... much less so Like what?
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Delegating to journalists he hardly knew a cache of documents so large that he could not possibly have read them, cheerleading the disclosure of intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans.
      - lisper 11y ago
        Delegating that job to journalists has always seemed to me like a responsible decision on his part. What would you have had him do instead? If the journalists released "intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans" (it's not clear to me that they did, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief here) isn't that on them, not Snowden?
        davidw 11y ago
        They obviously wouldn't have the stuff to release in the first place if it weren't for him.
        Nadya 11y ago
        I never understand this reasoning. That all the burden should be placed on Snowden to pour over the documents and determine what is breaking the law and what isn't. He was fairly certain a majority of it was - at that point it's most responsible of him to hand it off to people who are in a better decision to make those calls. 1) Do you expect a single person to go through 1000's of documents with their rudimentary understandings and interpretations of the law? Would you and why would you trust him if so? 2) Should he have a lawyer go through the documents with him? 3) Should he get second opinions on whether or not something is breaking the law? 4) Should he trust a team of respected journalists and their team of lawyers to go through the documents on his behalf? The journalists he released the documents to have trust that they've established for years. That makes them hard to dismiss as looney bins. Snowden does not have that trust and would have been easy to dismiss by himself.
- evook 11y ago
  > I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. I can't keep up self-satisfaction when I've to admit that I am lacking deeper understanding of my environment. The simplest solution to that problem would be that I tell myself with as much other people as possible that understanding my environment isn't that important, because we've managed life until here without it. We declare ourself as normal and defame everyone not belonging to our social bubble. Maybe we even declare the minority of people that get whats going on as an undesirable to be in group. But you've to remember that those processes are normal and healthy. People getting sucked up in reality tend to depression.
- lucozade 11y ago
  IANAP but could it be that you and your kin have a different view as to what the leadership of a nation is for? For example, they could see the primary role as protecting the safety and prosperity of the citizenry of the USA. You, maybe, see it as protecting the values of the USA as, for example, enshrined in the constitution? I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter. I don't believe that he did but I could understand if someone believed that he took an unnecessary risk. I think there is also an argument that says that to give up ones values if to forsake the need for protection as what's left isn't worth protecting.
  - Floegipoky 11y ago
    >> I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter This is actually addressed in the article: "CIA, NSA and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) Directors all have been brought on the floor of the congress and they have been asked by my strongest critics, begged for any evidence, that any national security interest has been harmed, that any individual has come to harm. And not in any single case have they shown concrete evidence that this occurred."
    - caskance 11y ago
      Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Perhaps it is simply that they, unlike Snowden, don't blase-ly reveal classified information.
      - vkou 11y ago
        Perhaps the Snowden leaks prevented Sauron from reclaiming the One Ring. There's no evidence for that theory, either. So, all we have to go on is "Trust us! And don't verify!" - from people who lie through their teeth at congressional hearings.
        caskance 11y ago
        Indeed. An unfortunate dilemma of espionage.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > when I return to the US Midwest ... Since its the Bible belt For those unfamiliar: The Bible Belt isn't in the US Midwest and generally the regions aren't much alike. The Bible Belt is the most conservative region in the US and is in the American South. The Midwest has historically been liberal, even progressive in places, the home of unions and democratic voters. (Also the Midwest isn't in the middle west, but you can find a map.) That's not to say that there are no Midwestern areas where people are more religious or conservative, or that tsunamifury's family doesn't live in one.
  - andreyf 11y ago
    The more interesting point, stands, however: Snowden's actions are not a Christian vs non-Christian issue. Their effects on the NSA and the international cybersecurity community have been enormous, and whether their totality served the public good is an incredibly interesting debate without a clear answer.
  - subliminalbrad 11y ago
    Speaking as someone in a solidly midwestern state (though the definition is murky[0]) I don't think it's fair to say the midwest is historically liberal. There are a few liberal cities but there are also states like Missouri and Kansas. It's a mix of both. [0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-m...
- fineman 11y ago
  For me the angle is accountability. Whatever your family wants, and it'll be different than you individually, they all want the elected and appointed officials of the government to carry it out honestly and without corruption. Proper separation of the bodies of government is important for everyone, conservative and liberal alike. The domestic spying not just on average citizens, but also specifically on (potential) political opponents (like then-senator Obama, for example) weakens all of us. It sounds efficient to some, to imagine one monolithic law-enforcement entity without its hands tied so the idea of parallel construction, for instance, doesn't bother them. But it's not a "rights of the guilty" leftist tree-hugging issue, it's a corruption prevention issue. By separating our agencies and making them work through official channels we have a check on any one getting out of control. Be you Right or Left, the government are our employees and Snowden is the one who came to tell us the rest had their hands in the cash register. (And worse, were forging our name with the bank, etc...)
strictnein 11y ago
> "I didn’t choose Russia. They chose Russia." But he was on his way to Cuba, which would have been his choice. It would have been a bad choice, because the US would have grabbed him there. It's a pretty quick jaunt from anywhere in Cuba to the US base at Gitmo. What this article makes clear is that he is heavily guarded by the Russians. It's not a coincidence that this meeting took place in a hotel filled with high ranking Russian military. Would Cuba have afforded him the same level of protection?
- Thrymr 11y ago
  > But he was on his way to Cuba, which would have been his choice. His destination was Ecuador. It's not like he had a lot of choices, or he didn't try other countries: https://edwardsnowden.com/asylum-requests https://edwardsnowden.com/asylum-requests
  - strictnein 11y ago
    Okay, I was just going by this article, which just stated Cuba. Regardless, it'd be pretty easy for the US to put a boat off the coast of Ecuador and get out of there quickly. Different story with Moscow.
    - fabulist 11y ago
      I don't think your assessment of the situation is correct. I doubt the logistical challenges involved of kidnapping Snowden would give the US military and intelligence communities much pause if he were in Russia, Cuba, Ecuador, or anywhere else. Physical proximity to Guantanamo Bay and the US mainland are neither required nor particularly advantageous, these are global organizations with secret prisons in many places. What keeps him safe is that there is nothing to be gained in stealing him, he is a public figure, and another sovereign nation has granted him amnesty.
nateabele 11y ago
Great piece of reporting, but the style makes it really hard to follow.
- jonalmeida 11y ago
  It has the form of a podcast that was transcribed to text. Yes, it would have been easier to follow if it was all audio. It took me a few to realize when the conversation was changing from the narrator to Snowden.
wahsd 11y ago
When I think of Edward Snowden, a video comes to mind, where there are three cattle in a corral and a butcher kills one of them with a riffle from close range. The cow obviously doesn't quite make it out of that situation and basically just falls over on its side. The shot and the cow falling kind of startles the other two cows and they jump an take a few steps but then just kind of stand there and look around and slightly take a look at their fallen comrade, but otherwise go about just kind of standing there, continuing to do their cow things. That's kind of how I see society. What Snowden revealed has been going on and it's really just the tip of the iceberg and it will only get worse. But what do we do? We say "that's not cool" and then get back to posting our whole life on facebook and trusting the assurances of the same government that does far more lying than not. Here we are, you are maintaining your own government surveillance dossier on facebook, with all the connections and associations listed and conveniently connected. It is any and all past authoritarian dictatorships' wildest dream they could have never even imagined. yet it continues, the business media proclaims that there is no stopping facebook's domination, which will include what Zuckerberg's slip-up from yesteryear of intending to fully replacing the internet even if just in perception of people's minds. (see his free access to facebook in emerging markets where he is trying to head off the internet becoming a thing in people's minds) It will be quite interesting to see how this all plays out. I am not going to hide the fact that no matter how I look at it, even if things seem all rosy and nice and pretty now, there are far more wildly risky and probably catastrophic outcomes down the path society has and seems to insist on taking.
- alexro 11y ago
  People think Facebook and other social networks help them run faster... except they run in the wrong direction.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  No, not quite. I publish things on Facebook, et al when I want them to be public. It's the equivalent of a bulletin board for me. When I want something to be between myself and a specific person or group of people, I make a phone call or email. Obviously it's not as restrictive as saying something in person, as you might for something truly private. But there are degrees. The only way to keep something truly private is not to tell anyone but it's not fair to equate a private conversation with a public broadcast, just because you sometimes use the public broadcast.
littletimmy 11y ago
"Edward Snowden reached 1.5 million followers in no time. He only follows one himself – the NSA’s official account." That's funny. On an unrelated note, what a hero this man is. The US should consider itself fortunate that it has people who at great personal cost would expose wrongdoing. It's a pity the irrationally scared public doesn't consider him a hero.
- HiroshiSan 11y ago
  I wouldn't consider him heroic, I recently watched Citizen Four and the impression he gave me and the way he put it was that he was just fed up. That being said, I'm not sure I'd have it in me to do the same, though I haven't found anything I truly believe in to the deepest depths of my core...yet.
plainOldText 11y ago
Technology is truly augmenting ourselves and this medium "shapes the scale and form of human association and action", as Marshall McLuhan once said. With that given said, compare a whistleblower, say 20 years ago, with one today. Snowden not only had the world's greatest communication platform at his disposal, to disseminate whatever information he cared about, but now he can still address millions of people, speaking at the world's greatest universities and giving interviews, while being in exile. Regardless on where you stand on these privacy/spying issues, I think it's hard to deny the fact that he started a dialog, and now the entire world can be part of it.
- mbrock 11y ago
  McLuhan also wrote: > With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published "The Concept of Dread." > [...] When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result. Our electronic world now calls for a unified field of global awareness; the kind of private consciousness appropriate to literate man can be viewed as an unbearable kink in the collective consciousness demanded by electronic information movement. http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_... The sensual intimacy of what Snowden revealed is hard to convey to people who don't live on the internet. They don't understand the violation and the anxiety. Even John Oliver can't change that.
  - laotzu 11y ago
    >Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. -McLuhan
jokoon 11y ago
I wonder what is the future for him. I guess when the next president comes in office, and those leak story blow over, maybe he'll get pardoned, or maybe he'll stay in Russia for the rest of his life. The sure thing is that nobody will forget him. Although I wonder if it can be proven or argued (or not) that Snowden is not working with Russia. Maybe in the realm of intelligence nothing can really be proven, and it doesn't really mean anything for me to trust my gut about Snowden not working against the US. Are there any articles debunking those theories ?
- jackweirdy 11y ago
  I've read some of them, but they all fail to provide a motive for why he'd work against the US, or how Russia would have even contacted him. There's also a mix of stories that say he was flipped before going to Russia which fail to suggest how Russia made contact with him in the first place, and stories that say he was flipped in Russia, with no real suggestion of what he's doing.
- revelation 11y ago
  You can find the argument in the article. If you want to spy for Russia, you don't do it by dumping a bucketload of articles to a guy living in Brazil writing for the Guardian. Theres no value in the press for Russia.
- fineman 11y ago
  If he'd had a choice he wouldn't be in Russia. It was literally the last place left to go. Also, they changed the passwords when he left.
enlightenedfool 11y ago
"During the Bush administration, people were kidnapped all over the world and dumped in secret prisons, where they were tortured. During the Obama administration, the kidnappings, the secret prisons and the torture, have been replaced by death lists and extrajudicial executions of people, carried out by pilotless aircrafts, known as drones." I spent hours and hours in 2007/08 watching Obama with the hope that change is real this time. And now, it's painful just to hear his name. With the current candidates on either side, just bracing for worse.
- antocv 11y ago
  Back in 2008 some friends invited me to celebrate Obama party. I was only one who told them then he is a damn liar, a good one, but a liar. Was a good party anyway. And Im telling you know, a candidate will come a few months from now which will again win your hearts and minds and promise what you want, and you'll again fall for it. Youre american presidential election is an strong illusion of partifipating in governmental decisions. Thats all it is, you dont have anyone reasonable to vote for.
  - mtgx 11y ago
    My favorite part about American politics is that apparently a candidate is declared the "winner" a year and half before the actual election.
    - junto 11y ago
      My favourite part of the US elections is the false premise of voting for either a bullet in the left side of your brain, or as a pleasant alternative, the right hand side.
      - chiph 11y ago
        Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
  - raddad 11y ago
kyle4211 11y ago
> I had everything set up in such a way that my family could cut ties with me and condemn me if things went poorly. And I was okay with that; I was prepared to accept that. Snowden was acutely aware of the consequences his actions could have. This really drives that home.
nashashmi 11y ago
Where is the tl;dr version? I really am beginning to lose my appreciation and patience for this padded editorial stuff.
marcusgarvey 11y ago
>In 2007, FBI agents carried out so-called morning raids at the homes of people who worked or had worked at the NSA, and had tried to blow the whistle on a mass surveillance program they felt had gotten out of control. One man was dragged out of the shower in his home, a gun to his head, in front of his family. Another man opened his door and soon had the house full of black-clad agents in Kevlar vests searching his home until late at night. The home of Thomas Drake, a senior executive at the NSA, was searched, his passport was cancelled and he lived under the threat of 35 years imprisonment for four years, prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He lost his job, his pension and spent everything he owned on his defense lawyer. Today he works at an Apple store in Maryland and has been able to establish that the only person, who was investigated and prosecuted, after trying to talk to his superiors about the mass surveillance, was himself. I remember the first time I read 1984, in middle school. To my young mind it was extremely frightening, and every time I would put it down I would have the same feeling one has when they wake up from a nightmare: relief that it was just a fiction. That it was unlikely to ever happen in real life. Snowden's revelations made me feel like that relief is gone forever. Right after the revelations came out, I discussed it with a former journalist in Silicon Valley, who was also Jewish American. I could not believe it when he used the, "I'm-not-worried-because-I-have-nothing-to-hide" argument. I guess he never heard the reason why the Nazis were so successful in killing and imprisoning Amsterdam's Jewish population, at a rate that far exceeded other European countries. The Dutch, you see, are meticulous record keepers. Even today you can find property records that date back to 1600s and earlier. And, at some point along the way, someone thought it would be a good idea to record people's religion, in addition to the more typical things like address and date of birth. Oh, they had been doing it long before Adolf Hitler conceived of his final solution. It must've seemed like a good idea at the time. They probably never thought those records would be used the way they were after the Germans took over the country....

327 points by henrik_w 11y ago

NN88 11y ago

.@ggreenwald: "What bothered Snowden the most was not the spying itself but the fact that it was all carried out in secrecy" #newsnight https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/662041192541089792 https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/662041192541089792 Snowden really doesn't know as much as he claims to. Not to mention he's careless and the he exposed legitimate intelligence operations on foreign countries

tsunamifury 11y ago

I've view Snowden has a hero in a time where it is very hard to stand up and cast a light on national wrongdoing. I often struggle when I return to the US Midwest and my family and others complain that Snowden is a traitor. I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. Since its the Bible belt I often find myself reminding people of the story of David [1] who hid with the Philistines when his nation and leader of Israel and turned on him. The irony is almost overwhelming to them since Snowden so closely fits the exact profile of the story. Some nights in my darker moments I worry that we and by extension myself, have become the bad guys in that story, more akin to the egotistical and delusional King Saul than David. [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2027 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2027 [2] My relevant history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444512

Sven7 11y ago
Don't worry about it. We have always taken time to recognize our heroes. History is littered with people who were called traitors who now have roads and schools named after them. But I do wonder if our politicians were to trying to pull off another Iraq Invasion type event, whether it would be as easy today as they made it appear in 2003. Would it be easier for a whistleblower to disrupt it today? It doesn't feel so.
lisper 11y ago
> I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. It's because traditional Christian values have been hijacked by business leaders who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority. (They're probably right about that too.)
- tptacek 11y ago
  This is an uncharacteristically dumb comment from you.
  - lisper 11y ago
    Well, thanks for the backhanded compliment. But why do you think it's dumb? It seems self-evidently true to me.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      That what this thread needs is a bunch of culture war bullshit about traditional Christian values?
      - lisper 11y ago
        If the shoe fits...
        tptacek 11y ago
        Really? "Wake up sheeple" is all you have?
        lisper 11y ago
        Um, no. Let's review: the comment to which I was responding was by someone who considers Snowden a hero and couldn't understand why his midwestern family considered him a traitor. The OP specifically couched his confusion in terms of Christian values, and even cited a Bible passage. I responded with an answer to the question that he posed in the terms in which he posed it, and which made a factual claim that I believe to be correct, and which I can support with evidence. That's what I meant by "if the shoe fits..." (Just in case you're not aware: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits)
nordsieck 11y ago
> erodes our values There's your problem right there. Your implication is that the people you talk to are blind to their own values. In reality, they simply value different things than you.
- tsunamifury 11y ago
  The story of David is meant to illustrate that we actually share the same values, but for some reason have chosen to demonize people we would otherwise lionize in retrospect.
  - riskable 11y ago
    That right there is your bad assumption: That self-declared Christians have anything remotely resembling "shared values". Take two random self-described Christians and have them write down, "what would define a 'true Christian'" and you'll get two completely different sets of answers. All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter.
    - explorigin 11y ago
      > All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter. You're using a lot of absolutes in your statement. It's as if you have some secret knowledge about the way all religious people think. Care to expand on your reasoning?
      - riskable 11y ago
        I'm a Sith.
    - fabulist 11y ago
tptacek 11y ago
Because two wrongs don't make a right? Some of what Snowden did seems straightforwardly heroic, and some of it... much less so, to me at least. Not everyone thinks exactly the same way you do. Believe it or not, outside message boards like this, there are a lot of people that don't care about NSA surveillance of US Internet traffic at all, and care a lot more about Islamic terrorism (to be clear: I am not one of those people).
- lisper 11y ago
  > some of it... much less so Like what?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Delegating to journalists he hardly knew a cache of documents so large that he could not possibly have read them, cheerleading the disclosure of intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans.
    - lisper 11y ago
      Delegating that job to journalists has always seemed to me like a responsible decision on his part. What would you have had him do instead? If the journalists released "intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans" (it's not clear to me that they did, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief here) isn't that on them, not Snowden?
      - davidw 11y ago
        They obviously wouldn't have the stuff to release in the first place if it weren't for him.
        Nadya 11y ago
        I never understand this reasoning. That all the burden should be placed on Snowden to pour over the documents and determine what is breaking the law and what isn't. He was fairly certain a majority of it was - at that point it's most responsible of him to hand it off to people who are in a better decision to make those calls. 1) Do you expect a single person to go through 1000's of documents with their rudimentary understandings and interpretations of the law? Would you and why would you trust him if so? 2) Should he have a lawyer go through the documents with him? 3) Should he get second opinions on whether or not something is breaking the law? 4) Should he trust a team of respected journalists and their team of lawyers to go through the documents on his behalf? The journalists he released the documents to have trust that they've established for years. That makes them hard to dismiss as looney bins. Snowden does not have that trust and would have been easy to dismiss by himself.
evook 11y ago
> I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. I can't keep up self-satisfaction when I've to admit that I am lacking deeper understanding of my environment. The simplest solution to that problem would be that I tell myself with as much other people as possible that understanding my environment isn't that important, because we've managed life until here without it. We declare ourself as normal and defame everyone not belonging to our social bubble. Maybe we even declare the minority of people that get whats going on as an undesirable to be in group. But you've to remember that those processes are normal and healthy. People getting sucked up in reality tend to depression.
lucozade 11y ago
IANAP but could it be that you and your kin have a different view as to what the leadership of a nation is for? For example, they could see the primary role as protecting the safety and prosperity of the citizenry of the USA. You, maybe, see it as protecting the values of the USA as, for example, enshrined in the constitution? I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter. I don't believe that he did but I could understand if someone believed that he took an unnecessary risk. I think there is also an argument that says that to give up ones values if to forsake the need for protection as what's left isn't worth protecting.
- Floegipoky 11y ago
  >> I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter This is actually addressed in the article: "CIA, NSA and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) Directors all have been brought on the floor of the congress and they have been asked by my strongest critics, begged for any evidence, that any national security interest has been harmed, that any individual has come to harm. And not in any single case have they shown concrete evidence that this occurred."
  - caskance 11y ago
    Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Perhaps it is simply that they, unlike Snowden, don't blase-ly reveal classified information.
    - vkou 11y ago
      Perhaps the Snowden leaks prevented Sauron from reclaiming the One Ring. There's no evidence for that theory, either. So, all we have to go on is "Trust us! And don't verify!" - from people who lie through their teeth at congressional hearings.
      - caskance 11y ago
        Indeed. An unfortunate dilemma of espionage.
hackuser 11y ago
> when I return to the US Midwest ... Since its the Bible belt For those unfamiliar: The Bible Belt isn't in the US Midwest and generally the regions aren't much alike. The Bible Belt is the most conservative region in the US and is in the American South. The Midwest has historically been liberal, even progressive in places, the home of unions and democratic voters. (Also the Midwest isn't in the middle west, but you can find a map.) That's not to say that there are no Midwestern areas where people are more religious or conservative, or that tsunamifury's family doesn't live in one.
- andreyf 11y ago
  The more interesting point, stands, however: Snowden's actions are not a Christian vs non-Christian issue. Their effects on the NSA and the international cybersecurity community have been enormous, and whether their totality served the public good is an incredibly interesting debate without a clear answer.
- subliminalbrad 11y ago
  Speaking as someone in a solidly midwestern state (though the definition is murky[0]) I don't think it's fair to say the midwest is historically liberal. There are a few liberal cities but there are also states like Missouri and Kansas. It's a mix of both. [0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-m...
fineman 11y ago
For me the angle is accountability. Whatever your family wants, and it'll be different than you individually, they all want the elected and appointed officials of the government to carry it out honestly and without corruption. Proper separation of the bodies of government is important for everyone, conservative and liberal alike. The domestic spying not just on average citizens, but also specifically on (potential) political opponents (like then-senator Obama, for example) weakens all of us. It sounds efficient to some, to imagine one monolithic law-enforcement entity without its hands tied so the idea of parallel construction, for instance, doesn't bother them. But it's not a "rights of the guilty" leftist tree-hugging issue, it's a corruption prevention issue. By separating our agencies and making them work through official channels we have a check on any one getting out of control. Be you Right or Left, the government are our employees and Snowden is the one who came to tell us the rest had their hands in the cash register. (And worse, were forging our name with the bank, etc...)

strictnein 11y ago

> "I didn’t choose Russia. They chose Russia." But he was on his way to Cuba, which would have been his choice. It would have been a bad choice, because the US would have grabbed him there. It's a pretty quick jaunt from anywhere in Cuba to the US base at Gitmo. What this article makes clear is that he is heavily guarded by the Russians. It's not a coincidence that this meeting took place in a hotel filled with high ranking Russian military. Would Cuba have afforded him the same level of protection?

Thrymr 11y ago
> But he was on his way to Cuba, which would have been his choice. His destination was Ecuador. It's not like he had a lot of choices, or he didn't try other countries: https://edwardsnowden.com/asylum-requests https://edwardsnowden.com/asylum-requests
- strictnein 11y ago
  Okay, I was just going by this article, which just stated Cuba. Regardless, it'd be pretty easy for the US to put a boat off the coast of Ecuador and get out of there quickly. Different story with Moscow.
  - fabulist 11y ago
    I don't think your assessment of the situation is correct. I doubt the logistical challenges involved of kidnapping Snowden would give the US military and intelligence communities much pause if he were in Russia, Cuba, Ecuador, or anywhere else. Physical proximity to Guantanamo Bay and the US mainland are neither required nor particularly advantageous, these are global organizations with secret prisons in many places. What keeps him safe is that there is nothing to be gained in stealing him, he is a public figure, and another sovereign nation has granted him amnesty.

nateabele 11y ago

Great piece of reporting, but the style makes it really hard to follow.

jonalmeida 11y ago
It has the form of a podcast that was transcribed to text. Yes, it would have been easier to follow if it was all audio. It took me a few to realize when the conversation was changing from the narrator to Snowden.

wahsd 11y ago

When I think of Edward Snowden, a video comes to mind, where there are three cattle in a corral and a butcher kills one of them with a riffle from close range. The cow obviously doesn't quite make it out of that situation and basically just falls over on its side. The shot and the cow falling kind of startles the other two cows and they jump an take a few steps but then just kind of stand there and look around and slightly take a look at their fallen comrade, but otherwise go about just kind of standing there, continuing to do their cow things. That's kind of how I see society. What Snowden revealed has been going on and it's really just the tip of the iceberg and it will only get worse. But what do we do? We say "that's not cool" and then get back to posting our whole life on facebook and trusting the assurances of the same government that does far more lying than not. Here we are, you are maintaining your own government surveillance dossier on facebook, with all the connections and associations listed and conveniently connected. It is any and all past authoritarian dictatorships' wildest dream they could have never even imagined. yet it continues, the business media proclaims that there is no stopping facebook's domination, which will include what Zuckerberg's slip-up from yesteryear of intending to fully replacing the internet even if just in perception of people's minds. (see his free access to facebook in emerging markets where he is trying to head off the internet becoming a thing in people's minds) It will be quite interesting to see how this all plays out. I am not going to hide the fact that no matter how I look at it, even if things seem all rosy and nice and pretty now, there are far more wildly risky and probably catastrophic outcomes down the path society has and seems to insist on taking.

alexro 11y ago
People think Facebook and other social networks help them run faster... except they run in the wrong direction.
soylentcola 11y ago
No, not quite. I publish things on Facebook, et al when I want them to be public. It's the equivalent of a bulletin board for me. When I want something to be between myself and a specific person or group of people, I make a phone call or email. Obviously it's not as restrictive as saying something in person, as you might for something truly private. But there are degrees. The only way to keep something truly private is not to tell anyone but it's not fair to equate a private conversation with a public broadcast, just because you sometimes use the public broadcast.

littletimmy 11y ago

"Edward Snowden reached 1.5 million followers in no time. He only follows one himself – the NSA’s official account." That's funny. On an unrelated note, what a hero this man is. The US should consider itself fortunate that it has people who at great personal cost would expose wrongdoing. It's a pity the irrationally scared public doesn't consider him a hero.

HiroshiSan 11y ago
I wouldn't consider him heroic, I recently watched Citizen Four and the impression he gave me and the way he put it was that he was just fed up. That being said, I'm not sure I'd have it in me to do the same, though I haven't found anything I truly believe in to the deepest depths of my core...yet.

plainOldText 11y ago

Technology is truly augmenting ourselves and this medium "shapes the scale and form of human association and action", as Marshall McLuhan once said. With that given said, compare a whistleblower, say 20 years ago, with one today. Snowden not only had the world's greatest communication platform at his disposal, to disseminate whatever information he cared about, but now he can still address millions of people, speaking at the world's greatest universities and giving interviews, while being in exile. Regardless on where you stand on these privacy/spying issues, I think it's hard to deny the fact that he started a dialog, and now the entire world can be part of it.

mbrock 11y ago
McLuhan also wrote: > With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published "The Concept of Dread." > [...] When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result. Our electronic world now calls for a unified field of global awareness; the kind of private consciousness appropriate to literate man can be viewed as an unbearable kink in the collective consciousness demanded by electronic information movement. http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_... The sensual intimacy of what Snowden revealed is hard to convey to people who don't live on the internet. They don't understand the violation and the anxiety. Even John Oliver can't change that.
- laotzu 11y ago
  >Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. -McLuhan

jokoon 11y ago

I wonder what is the future for him. I guess when the next president comes in office, and those leak story blow over, maybe he'll get pardoned, or maybe he'll stay in Russia for the rest of his life. The sure thing is that nobody will forget him. Although I wonder if it can be proven or argued (or not) that Snowden is not working with Russia. Maybe in the realm of intelligence nothing can really be proven, and it doesn't really mean anything for me to trust my gut about Snowden not working against the US. Are there any articles debunking those theories ?

jackweirdy 11y ago
I've read some of them, but they all fail to provide a motive for why he'd work against the US, or how Russia would have even contacted him. There's also a mix of stories that say he was flipped before going to Russia which fail to suggest how Russia made contact with him in the first place, and stories that say he was flipped in Russia, with no real suggestion of what he's doing.
revelation 11y ago
You can find the argument in the article. If you want to spy for Russia, you don't do it by dumping a bucketload of articles to a guy living in Brazil writing for the Guardian. Theres no value in the press for Russia.
fineman 11y ago
If he'd had a choice he wouldn't be in Russia. It was literally the last place left to go. Also, they changed the passwords when he left.

enlightenedfool 11y ago

"During the Bush administration, people were kidnapped all over the world and dumped in secret prisons, where they were tortured. During the Obama administration, the kidnappings, the secret prisons and the torture, have been replaced by death lists and extrajudicial executions of people, carried out by pilotless aircrafts, known as drones." I spent hours and hours in 2007/08 watching Obama with the hope that change is real this time. And now, it's painful just to hear his name. With the current candidates on either side, just bracing for worse.

antocv 11y ago
Back in 2008 some friends invited me to celebrate Obama party. I was only one who told them then he is a damn liar, a good one, but a liar. Was a good party anyway. And Im telling you know, a candidate will come a few months from now which will again win your hearts and minds and promise what you want, and you'll again fall for it. Youre american presidential election is an strong illusion of partifipating in governmental decisions. Thats all it is, you dont have anyone reasonable to vote for.
- mtgx 11y ago
  My favorite part about American politics is that apparently a candidate is declared the "winner" a year and half before the actual election.
  - junto 11y ago
    My favourite part of the US elections is the false premise of voting for either a bullet in the left side of your brain, or as a pleasant alternative, the right hand side.
    - chiph 11y ago
      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
- raddad 11y ago

kyle4211 11y ago

> I had everything set up in such a way that my family could cut ties with me and condemn me if things went poorly. And I was okay with that; I was prepared to accept that. Snowden was acutely aware of the consequences his actions could have. This really drives that home.

nashashmi 11y ago

Where is the tl;dr version? I really am beginning to lose my appreciation and patience for this padded editorial stuff.

marcusgarvey 11y ago

>In 2007, FBI agents carried out so-called morning raids at the homes of people who worked or had worked at the NSA, and had tried to blow the whistle on a mass surveillance program they felt had gotten out of control. One man was dragged out of the shower in his home, a gun to his head, in front of his family. Another man opened his door and soon had the house full of black-clad agents in Kevlar vests searching his home until late at night. The home of Thomas Drake, a senior executive at the NSA, was searched, his passport was cancelled and he lived under the threat of 35 years imprisonment for four years, prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He lost his job, his pension and spent everything he owned on his defense lawyer. Today he works at an Apple store in Maryland and has been able to establish that the only person, who was investigated and prosecuted, after trying to talk to his superiors about the mass surveillance, was himself. I remember the first time I read 1984, in middle school. To my young mind it was extremely frightening, and every time I would put it down I would have the same feeling one has when they wake up from a nightmare: relief that it was just a fiction. That it was unlikely to ever happen in real life. Snowden's revelations made me feel like that relief is gone forever. Right after the revelations came out, I discussed it with a former journalist in Silicon Valley, who was also Jewish American. I could not believe it when he used the, "I'm-not-worried-because-I-have-nothing-to-hide" argument. I guess he never heard the reason why the Nazis were so successful in killing and imprisoning Amsterdam's Jewish population, at a rate that far exceeded other European countries. The Dutch, you see, are meticulous record keepers. Even today you can find property records that date back to 1600s and earlier. And, at some point along the way, someone thought it would be a good idea to record people's religion, in addition to the more typical things like address and date of birth. Oh, they had been doing it long before Adolf Hitler conceived of his final solution. It must've seemed like a good idea at the time. They probably never thought those records would be used the way they were after the Germans took over the country....