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Rightly or wrongly, that is not a part of the SF86 form when one applies for a clearance. The SF86 form offers no leeway for moral objections. So in such a sc

• omarhaneef 7y ago
  I see the same issue with the other debate raging on HN: Stallman and Free Speech. The issue is that people -- not sure whether it was OP, or you -- conflate what is moral with what is legal. One person starts off with a moral premise: people should have free speech, or people should have the right to say what the government is doing. Someone else responds with what is legal: the law applies to government curtailment of free speech, or there was a contract in place. Laws should reflect values, not vice-versa. What is legal should not be confused with what is right. Note: I am not taking a moral position myself here. I just wish the legal position would not short-circuit the debate about what the correct moral position ought to be.
  • indigochill 7y ago
    I agree with your observation and statement, but also want to add there is a moral argument that if one objects to a law or a contract, one should remove oneself from under it (leave the country/company) rather than break it, even if the law itself is immoral. Not that I'm arguing one way or another how that applies in this situation, though.
    • TheCoelacanth 7y ago
      Snowden did leave both the company and the country, though.
    • chrisdhoover 7y ago
      There the concept of civil disobedience. You don't simply leave a country because you disagree with it, you change it. Refer to the King and the civil rights movement for more. Go further back to the other Martin Luther for even more.
      • 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
        Isn't the concept of political refugees contrary to what you are saying? The way I see it, we acknowledge that sometimes a government can act outside of it's own boundaries in a repressive manner. That is why we help those who are fleeing persecution based on political activity. Saying you can't push for change and run away when repression comes would mean that a lot of people I admire, including the Dalai Lama, are bad people. I disagree.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • tempestn 7y ago
          There's a difference between saying it's OK to flee repression, which I don't think anyone is disputing, and saying that given the option to flee, it's immoral to instead stay and practice civil disobedience, which was the claim made up thread.
          • 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
            Thanks for clarifying. It seems I was wrong in my understanding.
      • michaelmrose 7y ago
        For many changing it might be more practical than leaving it. For some like many refugees the choice was leave or die.
      • SkyBelow 7y ago
        There is also the option of ignoring it (piracy vs IP laws) and subverting it (many communities refuse to work with cops and handle justice themselves). These are as illegal as civil disobedience (refusing to work with cops might be more legal in some countries). As to if they are more or less moral... what moral framework are we using to judge?
        • 7y ago
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      > I agree with your observation and statement, but also want to add there is a moral argument that if one objects to a law or a contract, one should remove oneself from under it (leave the country/company) rather than break it, even if the law itself is immoral. There may exist a moral argument, but it's pretty easy to disprove that argument: In Nazi Germany, this principle would leave one to just leave Nazi Germany, otherwise cooperating with the Nazis. The principle you're proposing would have led to the demise of many more Jews during WW2.
      • Supermancho 7y ago
        > would have led to the demise of many more Jews during WW2 That maybe has some implicit assumptions. If the entire populace of German adopted what you call the "principle", Germany would have fallen much faster and with less bloodshed. Regardless...moral choices are usually pitted against other moral choices and that's part of what shapes our moral "fiber", for lack of better vocabulary. To do something or do nothing, both have risk analysis. Mostly, we do our best with what we have learned...which also greatly influences what we imagine for the future.
        • kerkeslager 7y ago
          > That maybe has some implicit assumptions. If the entire populace of German adopted what you call the "principle", Germany would have fallen much faster and with less bloodshed. I suppose you're right, but I don't think the assumption that there won't be a mass exodus is a very unreasonable assumption. Many reasonable ethical principles would have prevented the Nazis from even coming into power if everyone in the country applied it. I think if you were in Nazi Germany and as the Third Reich came to power it would be unreasonable to choose an ethical strategy that only works if everyone applies it, since in the moment, everyone was clearly not applying an ethical strategy. We do have the benefit of hindsight here, though. > To do something or do nothing, both have risk analysis. Mostly, we do our best with what we have learned...which also greatly influences what we imagine for the future. Agreed, ethics is very situational, which is why trying to find widely-applicable rules is often a wild goose chase.
    • nostrademons 7y ago
      Bystanders may be interested in Kohlberg's stages of moral development, which provides a descriptive (not prescriptive) framework for classifying moral arguments like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_... The parent comment is a textbook example of stage 4, "law and order". The moral framework behind civil disobedience is stage 5, "social contract".
    • stormbrew 7y ago
      "leaving a country" in terms of being subject to its laws is rather a lot easier said than done.
    • 100100010001 7y ago
      Does that mean every government agent that broke the law and spied on American citizens should be deported?
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • pdkl95 7y ago
    > conflate what is moral with what is legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
    • vincent-toups 7y ago
      I don't think this is the "is ought" problem. Most people recognize the existence of ought, and ought is explicitly recognized as a pre-condition for legal authority. That is to say that we all expect, whether it is justified or not from a philosophical perspective, that ought both exists and that it should be related to legality.
      • Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
        In a free country established by the principle of self government they are more closely related than anywhere else.
  • bb88 7y ago
    > ... conflate what is moral with what is legal. We're not dealing with an authoritarian state. Laws by democratic governments are supposed to be mutable. It's possible say, that the laws haven't caught up to what we (as americans) consider moral. Or it's possible the laws themselves were driven by immoral actors. Or it's possible the law's were passed with good intentions but had side effects that were unforeseeable. Or it's just one big gray area -- which seems to be the case here. People argue that Snowden's act was moral in the most absolute sense to inform the nation and expose the Government's secrets. James Comey, someone I think to be of high moral standards, knew about the program [1] yet didn't release the information to the public. He refused to reauthorize the post 9/11 surveillance program -- going to extraordinary lengths to do so. So what are we to do? Is it more moral to work within the system to change the laws, or to break them entirely? [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-comey-ashcroft-domestic-surveillance-20170517-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-comey-ash... Edited for clarity and succinctness.
    • peterkelly 7y ago
      > So what are we to do? Is it more moral to work within the system to change the laws, or to break them entirely? The United States would not even exist without the latter. Imagine if the founding fathers had tried to "worked within the system" of British rule instead of carrying out what the latter would have considered an extraordinary act of treason. Previous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney tried to work within the system, and that didn't exactly go very well. Snowden learnt from their experiences that the only way to achieve any meaningful outcome was to break the law. I imagine if there had been a viable means for him to bring the issues to public attention legally he might have done so.
      • bb88 7y ago
        > Imagine if the founding fathers had tried to "worked within the system" of British rule. Technically they couldn't since the colonies were without representation in the British Parliament, so they really couldn't, could they? > Previous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney tried to work within the system... Sure but the Obama administration still looks bad for their handling of those whistleblowers. Binney and Drake still look like heros. No one said that whistleblowing was for the faint of heart. Nor were there any guarantees about your livelihood if you report on your employer or customers. The only whistleblower statute I've known to be effective has been around medicare fraud -- first because medicare fraud is in the tens of billions, and second the reportee get's a cut of any future settlement or judgement. It's unclear what Snowden's legacy will be. Sure, he informed us that the government might have been doing illegal things under the cloak of secrecy. But he released a lot of information and he didn't even try to go through the legal whistleblower channels first. If he had gone through whistleblower channels I think it would have been harder for the US to use the word "traitor" to describe him.
• rrix2 7y ago
  > The only people I'm aware of that can publish classified information without punishment are journalists. The only people I am aware of which published this were journalists, since day 0. E: I see this is particularly in the context of his publishing his memoirs now after reading the filing. My apologies
  • logfromblammo 7y ago
    Publishing timely facts makes you a journalist. Publishing older facts makes you a historian. There are no legal qualifications for asserting freedom of the press; everyone can do it. Anyone that has not entered into a contractual agreement with the US to protect classified materials can publish classified materials. It's just that the professional journalists, already established with the large news organizations, are the only ones with the visibility and reputation to not get jailed, vanished, or discredited afterwards. If you think the US won't break its own laws to protect its dirty secrets, you haven't seen enough leaks of its dirty secrets.
    • rrix2 7y ago
      I understand all of that, and what a journalist is, thanks. I simply didn’t realize they were suing over the book and not, say, they yers of reporting from the Guardian, Le Monde, Intercept, etc based on documents passed to those publications’ journalists by Snowden.
      • logfromblammo 7y ago
        Some people believe that being a journalist, and thereby enjoying the lawful protections guaranteed to journalists, requires press credentials. It is important to attack this belief whenever it is suggested, as it endangers all those journalists who are not fortunate enough to have a regular salary and a large media group backing them up. If you take your camera out, and point it at something happening in the street adjoining your home, and plan to post the story to YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, your own web page, send to your local television station, insert into a blog or print book, or have any other form of intent to publish, then for the purposes of exercising your rights, you are in that moment a journalist. There are no special rights that Clark Kent enjoys as a staff reporter that Peter Parker cannot invoke as an independent freelance photographer. --- I believe that specifically, the NDAs in question have a clause requiring personnel who intend to publish books to allow the agency to perform a pre-print review, to ensure no accidental spillage of classified materials through publication. Due to the nature of the contracts, the sole arbiter of whether information is classified is the classifying authority, so even if something has been published internationally in a globally-recognized newspaper, and is now common knowledge to hundreds of thousands of people, the information is still classified until the authority declassifies it. Those subject to the NDAs are technically not even allowed to read that article in the newspaper, or that chapter of the book, unless they then immediately take steps to control the classified in it and report it to their security contact. Which is to say that you are supposed to wrap the newspaper or book up in an opaque cover and drop it off at your security office. The actual security apparatus has evolved, but the legal framework is still very much from the 1950-1980 Cold War era, so if you do not do the patently ridiculous thing, you can be sued or prosecuted. Snowden didn't give CIA, NSA, DIA, or whomever else he may have had NDAs with, the opportunity to edit his book before going to print, for obvious reasons, so he's in violation of the contracts. It is unlikely there is anything in there that has not already been published in newspapers. It seems like they're refusing to declassify information that can no longer seriously be considered secret, with the potential to cause harm to national interests, solely because as long as it remains classified, they can use the contracts to silence, suppress, or retaliate against the whistleblower.
• dx87 7y ago
  Acting members of Congress can do it in a roundabout way, as long as they do it while speaking on the floor. Anything they says becomes part of the Congressional Record, which is available to the public and de facto unclassified.
• henryfjordan 7y ago
  The laws against publishing classified information only apply to people who are authorized to have it in the first place. As soon as that info makes its way to someone who is NOT authorized to see it, they can legally do whatever they want with it. There is no legal definition of "journalist" in this context.
  • tssva 7y ago
    This is simply untrue. The laws regarding publishing classified information to those unauthorized to have it applies across the board. There is no exception for journalists. There has been a tradition of not prosecuting journalists for doing so and the Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case that the government couldn't prevent publication but didn't rule that journalists could not be prosecuted after the fact for doing so. Several justices released their own briefs regarding the opinion because the reason for ruling against the prior restraint varied among the justices. In a few of them justices mentioned that the government could seek, likely successfully, criminal charges after the fact.
• EGreg 7y ago
  Didn’t Obama tout unprecedented whistleblower protections?
  • matt-attack 7y ago
    He didn’t “tout” the protections, he eliminated them.
• grecy 7y ago
  Surely this has nothing to do with moral objections and simply to do with the law. The US Government took away citizens constitutional rights, and Snowden told everyone about it. I like to think that even if Snowden is convicted of that, then that forces the US government to be convicted of wrong-doing also. i.e. you can't be convicted of telling secrets that aren't true.
• andrei_says_ 7y ago
  In an interview, Snowden mentioned that he also took an oath to uphold the constitution. So he had a choice between the form and the oath.
• cwkoss 7y ago
  It's a shame that the government has effectively forced all moral citizens to avoid public service in intelligence.
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  The form itself may not, but it doesn't stand alone. There is the constitution, possibly legislation, legal precedent and gloss, and ultimately, the rulings of a jury, judges, and courts of appeal. Which is why we have a rule of law and a justice system, and not simply contracts.
• Tepix 7y ago
  > The only people I'm aware of that can publish classified information without punishment are journalists. POTUS can also do it.
  • JetSpiegel 7y ago
    When the president does it, it's not illegal.
    • Tepix 7y ago
      That's why he/she can do it.
• DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  > The only people I'm aware of that can publish classified information without punishment are journalists. Everyone has the right to publish classified information, unless they've signed an agreement not to. There's no Constitutional difference between journalists and non-journalists.