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His actions were perfectly consistent with his attitude toward global mass surveillance. In particular since there wasn't an individual document that stated "w

His actions were perfectly consistent with his attitude toward global mass surveillance. In particular since there wasn't an individual document that stated "we are surveilling the American homeland in addition to the remainder of the innocent world", Snowden choose - I think history vindicated him in this regard - to grab many documents and let journalists choose what to publish. I think the journalists who disclosed the documents did a wonderful job selecting what to publish directly, what to report on, and what to black hole. They chose to report on what was in the public interest. The public interest included revelations about mass surveillance of allied nations, espionage to help American business prospects, memoranda for allies to spy on one another's citizens, backdooring and infiltrating American products and standards so that they could be military weapons overseas and a great many other things. Another wonderful outcome of Snowden having provided a large collection of documents to journalists is that in reading them as a wholistic collection gave journalists the context to understand the motivations and methods of mass global surveillance - indeed it allowed journalists to effectively question American official denials about its behavior. America had been guessing what was taken and so it wasn't sure about what it could get away with lying about. Journalists were able to publish documents that contradicted the official narrative coming out of the White House when it tried to downplay the massive illegal and unethical apparatus. In any case, it's wrong to abuse Snowden in this case. Journalists made the decision about what to publish. I don't remember anyone's privacy inside the agency getting ruined, but if that did happen the blame rests with the media.

besselheim 10y ago
I'm suspicious of his primary motivation being a distaste of global mass surveillance. This passage is especially damning: > Snowden would later publicly claim that his "breaking point" - the final impetus for his unauthorised downloads and disclosures of troves of classified material - was March 2013 congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. > But only a few weeks after his conflict with NSA managers, on July 12, 2012 - eight months before Director Clapper's testimony - Snowden began the unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks. Given that Snowden claimed his motivation was seeing Clapper "lie on oath", there's some irony in seeing Snowden caught in a lie about this claim, as at that point not only had he already downloaded and exfiltrated much of what he later leaked, but had already been in contact with Greenwald and Poitras for two to three months.
- Clubber 10y ago
  I could see that in a similar manner of wanting to quit your job. You make moves so that it can happen quickly, you save up some cash, you make some calls, but you don't pull the trigger so to speak until you just can't take it anymore; something pushes you over the edge. But that doesn't really matter, does it? I mean we now know we're being spied on either directly, or indirectly (wink wink). Data collection is spying. Metadata collection is spying. It's happening; both parties vigorously support it; and it's most likely unconstitutional. That's what matters.

besselheim 10y ago

I'm suspicious of his primary motivation being a distaste of global mass surveillance. This passage is especially damning: > Snowden would later publicly claim that his "breaking point" - the final impetus for his unauthorised downloads and disclosures of troves of classified material - was March 2013 congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. > But only a few weeks after his conflict with NSA managers, on July 12, 2012 - eight months before Director Clapper's testimony - Snowden began the unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks. Given that Snowden claimed his motivation was seeing Clapper "lie on oath", there's some irony in seeing Snowden caught in a lie about this claim, as at that point not only had he already downloaded and exfiltrated much of what he later leaked, but had already been in contact with Greenwald and Poitras for two to three months.

Clubber 10y ago
I could see that in a similar manner of wanting to quit your job. You make moves so that it can happen quickly, you save up some cash, you make some calls, but you don't pull the trigger so to speak until you just can't take it anymore; something pushes you over the edge. But that doesn't really matter, does it? I mean we now know we're being spied on either directly, or indirectly (wink wink). Data collection is spying. Metadata collection is spying. It's happening; both parties vigorously support it; and it's most likely unconstitutional. That's what matters.