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Edward Snowden in His Own Words: Why I Became a Whistle-Blower
- kerkeslager 7y agoWhile it's certainly interesting, I don't think this excerpt from his book explains at all why he became a whistleblower.
- knodi123 7y agoSure it does. > Over the course of my career, it became increasingly difficult for me to ask these questions about the technologies I was responsible for and not about my country. And it became increasingly frustrating to me that I was able to repair the former but not the latter. He was trying to repair our government by judicious application of sunshine.
- jacobush 7y agoImagine how many tried moonshine before that.
- arminiusreturns 7y agoThere is a reason alcoholism was/is rampant in many three letters, but is quietly ignored.
- kerkeslager 7y agoThe thing you quoted does not say what you say it says. I think we agree on why Snowden blew the whistle, I just don't think it says that in the excerpt.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoThis little bit seriously has me questioning myself. Wow.
- peterkelly 7y agoThe wired.com link is showing up as a 404 for me. Here's a mirror: http://archive.is/CmYkJ http://archive.is/CmYkJ
- codychan 7y agoI can open that link. Try VPN? But I cannot open the archive.is link, not even with VPN.
- peterkelly 7y agoIt turned out to be an issue with cookies. I deleted all my cookies for wired.com and then it worked. Strange, because the front page of the site showed but not the article. There's some DNS issues with archive.is that you may run into e.g. if using Cloudflare's resolver: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
- whytaka 7y agoI have nothing to comment specifically other than to reiterate my profound respect for Edward Snowden.
- smhost 7y agoDoJ is suing ed snowden for all proceeds from this book. https://archive.is/M0L8j https://archive.is/M0L8j
- mirimir 7y agoSomehow I doubt that he cares much about that. Or at least, not about the money, per se.
- einpoklum 7y agoRemember he is now rather difficult to employ; and needs to avoid the appearance of inappropriate alegiances. So - making money off of a book should be kind of a big deal for him. Also, it takes a whole lot of time and effort to write a book (which could theoretically have gone towards supporting himself otherwise).
- greatpatton 7y agoThis book is already translated in many languages by a lot of different publisher (just saw the French version published by Seuil at a bookshop). Good luck with trying to get the money for all the sales outside of the US....
- wpdev_63 7y agoHe really needs to setup a monero/bitcoin wallet for which we can donate to.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago> I would say sort of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie on oath to Congress. There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. https://edwardsnowden.com/2014/01/27/video-ard-interview-with-edward-snowden/ https://edwardsnowden.com/2014/01/27/video-ard-interview-wit...
- whataburg 7y agoThis article reinforces the idea that Snowden is a delusional narcissist. He makes this absurd leap from being a technology expert to taking it upon himself to betray his oath and his country. Notice that he follows only the NSA on twitter. If he really wasn't about attacking the NSA he'd follow some other accounts. It's part of a huge F--- Y-- from Edward Snowden to the NSA, to America, to the people who actually maintain their lifelong oath. F Snowden.
- lettergram 7y agoQuite frankly, Edward Snowden is the only person I can think of that is “beyond reproach”. He put his life on the line to let other people (us) know about what was happening. He gave us the option to choose our fate. That’s more than anyone in the government did for us. We chose to do very little, but that’s in us.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cm2187 7y agoI am a big Snowden supporter but I wouldn’t go as far as “beyond reproach”. A whistle blower is seeing wrongdoing, and reporting it. What he did instead is grab all the files he could get hold of, send them to journalists and tell them “I know there is wrongdoing there, find it among all this legitimately secret stuff that should have never left the NSA”. You can see why the NSA would find the approach more than cavalier. I think given how it affected the public debate, he should certainly be given leniency if not pardon. But that is not to say he did nothing wrong.
- goatinaboat 7y agoWhat he did instead is grab all the files he could get hold of This is addressed in the book.
- emilsedgh 7y agoHow else would you handle it?
- ryanthedev 7y agoI can't believe we label this guy a traitor. I never understood how someone who tells the American people/journalist's that their government is breaking the law is a bad thing. We need less politicians and more people like him in office. America needs to stop being solely capatial driven and more democracy driven. Money buys laws.
- 19ylram49 7y agoNow, wave at your camera to the lovely NSA agent tracing you.
- emilsedgh 7y agoHire a PR firm to "pivot" and "get ahead" of the story. It's Ed Snowden, with limited availability vs. PR firms and "patriotic" media with limitless budget. War is peace.
- YinglingLight 7y agoYour skepticism is healthy, but its directed on the wrong target.
- alvern 7y agoFreedom is a police state.
- dboreham 7y agoWe?
- dfxm12 7y agoKeep this in mind as there are some important elections coming up soon in America.
- chooseaname 7y ago> I never understood how someone who tells the American people/journalist's that their government is breaking the law is a bad thing. The U.S.A. is now a country where laws like the "Patriot Act" have survived both parties being in control. There's really no going back.
- jokoon 7y agoWhat Snowden made me realize, is that how all countries in the world are fighting for a buck, and their own interest. It's difficult to understand what is at stake because there is a duality between the peacefulness of civilized life, and the distrust between countries, even when they're allies, which we call diplomacy. Civilian life is structured by law, but there are no courts to sue countries when they harm each other. Snowden highlighted a trivial fact, which is that intelligence agencies will spy. Countries will fight for their self-interest. It's important to remember that countries can do whatever they want if the citizen see that it's in their interest. Snowden just reminded us to always keep Machiavel in mind. That's how nations operate, and I don't think the UN will change this. It goes for terrorism, oil, climate change, standard of living, electronics, trade. If something is not in the interest of a country, it will probably be dismissed.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI think you're right. I think a big problem the world has is that the big countries with all the power say and act like it's wrong when the smaller countries do it. A complete double standard.
- jacobush 7y agoI nodded at first, but something rubs me the wrong way. I don't know if you intended it, but I read this a little defeatist. I also agree countries will forever jostle their power against each other, because there is no higher court to take complaints. But there is no unwritten law which says we must let our spy orgs spy completely unfettered on their own citizens. If we let them do that, we might just as well give them the keys to the kingdom. Democracy will die, the feedback loop between corrupt leaders and the three letter orgs will eventually be to strong and everything will be a charade until there is no need for even the pretense of rule of law. This is the danger we are fighting. (With mixed success I think.)
- brbrodude 7y agoGovernments also fight for their self-interest even if against their populations. This is deffo not restricted to country x country dynamics. It's also important to remember that increasingly countries do not do what's their citizens "will", so that would be an idealized view instead of an empirical one. Also since laws are passed by gov, when it suddenly forgets to put the checks and balances for itself, it is lawlessness too.
- BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 7y agoI read three quarters of the book over the weekend, and for anyone remotely interested in anything surrounding Snowden (whether the motivations of a whistleblower, a dive into three-letter agency corporate structure, or Snowden himself) it is excellent, and heartily recommended. There's a point where he talks about metadata, how the NSA is able to justify their "bulk collection" by not considering data accessed until someone actively _looks up_ something from their wide capture net, and that metadata isn't just a byproduct of bulk collection, but the downplayed gem itself. It was at that point I wished we had that information with Snowden's understandable and informative writing style, that I could recommend to people who have no or negative interest in Snowden. I love the book, but regret it's only going to reach the hands of the choir already preached to.
- Boulth 7y agoI just finished the book and I agree, it's excellent. Although I knew most of the facts reading it from the source in one cohesive work along with the background looks impressive.
- Zolt 7y agoI am about half way through the book. Do you feel he revealed additional details in the book that the CIA/NSA does not appreciate? IE, location and purpose of buildings?
- Zolt 7y agoI am really curious why I got a down-vote or two. I was not being facetious. Outside the classified materials Ed leaked and we all know about, he shares details about hotels he stayed at during training and his trips into what seemed to me as classified information about government building locations. I was really curious if this is ‘common knowledge’ or if other readers felt he disclosed additional classified information. As others have recently said, it seems like this site has changed quite a bit in the recent years from the site I once knew.
- decoyworker 7y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/12/edward-snowdens-claim-that-as-a-contractor-he-had-no-proper-channels-for-protection-as-a-whistleblower/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Whistleblower_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Whistleb... http://www.dodhotline.dodig.mil/programs/whistleblower/index.html http://www.dodhotline.dodig.mil/programs/whistleblower/index... Snowden is not a whistle-blower- he is a coward, a liar, or a traitor. Snowden did not use the whistle-blower protections that are afforded to him and lied that there weren't any.
- Hitton 7y agoHave you even read the links you posted: >He cannot quite make the blanket claim that there are no protections for contractors, but he may have been correct in believing that there appear to be no clear protections, especially from retaliation. And if you looked at the dates in the third link, you would notice they are from after the leaks. I would recommend you to read https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ex-us-official-reveals-risks-faced-by-internal-govt-critics-a-1093360.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ex-us-official-re...
- decoyworker 7y agoI have. Being a hero means some risk to yourself does it not? Ultimately if you piss off a government you're going to run the risk of things going poorly for yourself. All I know is the last place he should have went was to a foreign country. Official channels -> congress -> media, and this is at great risk but this is what Ellsberg did. With all this said- whistle-blower protections ought to become mandatory training for all DoD contractors, government employees, or anyone who handles classified information.
- vidarh 7y agoWhy would anyone trust statements about whistleblower protections are truthful when the top brass lies to Congress?
- paulcole 7y agoI’ve been reading the book this article is excerpted from. So far my key takeaway is that just because you did something interesting doesn’t mean that your life is interesting or that you have anything interesting to say.
- atomi 7y agoThe more this guys is persecuted the more of a martyr he becomes - like the Romans nailing a certain someone to a cross. I don't think that worked out as well as the Romans hoped. Fundamentally this isn't about the 'man' it's about freedom and that idea will transcend no matter what the government suits do or what becomes of Snowden.
- dfsegoat 7y agoI would tend to agree. When Snowden first 'came out', I was 100% onboard that he was a treasonous, self-aggrandizing traitor. Even though we sort of knew what NSA was doing to an extent - there were rumors about NSA or AT&T monitoring all internet traffic in San Francisco since the 90s [1][2] - I would not give the argument that what he did was patriotic even a moment of consideration. Now that things have settled a bit, and perhaps having gained some more perspective, I do feel that what he did was justifiable, perhaps even patriotic. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A 2 - https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...