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> 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 withou

> 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.

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.