5 ms·

Edward Snowden agrees to give up more than $5M from book and speeches

25 points by vinnyglennon 6y ago

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Not a lawyer. Is it illegal to donate directly to Snowden?
- mercurialshark 6y ago
  Put simply, yes, it's highly illegal. Providing financial or material support to adversarial foreign actors, agents, parties deemed to be national security threats (under sanctions or DOJ/State/Treasury/et. al. special designation) or fugitives from justice violates a number of federal laws.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    I imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) the caveat is that this applies if you're a US citizen or go through US financial infra. Of course, it's not above the US government to attempt to pursue non-citizens for US crimes outside of their borders, the hurdle I imagine would be much higher to extradite though.
    - mercurialshark 6y ago
      DOJ routinely indicts those abroad and either seeks extradition, sanctions (i.e. asset freezing, prohibitions on travel, etc.), and/or local/regional law enforcement cooperation worldwide. As for matters of national security, enforcement of US interests abroad can and often times are addressed with the help of the US military, various regional partners, and intelligence agencies.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Gotcha. I'll engage an attorney to better scope, improve my understanding of the problem space, and possible workarounds for public decimation via a blog post or similar. Appreciate the replies.
        mercurialshark 6y ago
        Thanks for chatting.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        s/decimation/dissemination/, awkward typo.
WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
I see 100 articles, pre-written, with small changes in tone going up in smoke right now. They had one thing in common: Ed Snowden is doing it for the monies, guys, we swear, look at this court case.
fallingfrog 6y ago
https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1308394609421279232?s=21 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1308394609421279232?s=21 Quote from Edward Snowden: “CNN badly misreported this. A) This is not a settlement; I didn't agree to it. B) The judgement from this censorship case is not enforceable while I am in exile, but I've never had that much money anyway. Better headline: "US could gain up to $5m by pardoning Edward Snowden."”
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  CNN is terrible. They consistently warp the truth to make things more clickbaity.
macspoofing 6y ago
I don't understand the respect he gets. The man is a traitor. Even if you want to argue that the information he released had public value[1] - that's only 5% of the things stole[2] - which he then took to China and potentially to Russia. He says he destroyed the rest of the cache of information but then you have to trust either his word (in which case you have to explain why he took it to a foreign adversary), or it was taken from him (maybe even unknowingly) by Chinese or Russian intelligence services [3]. [1] And even that is a little weak. The programs he leaked were legal. They were funded by Congress. Run by the executive branch and overseen by the Judicial branch and Congressional committees. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Potential_impact_on_U.S._national_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Potential_impac... [3] From [2] "On June 14, 2015, UK's Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow."
- kjaftaedi 6y ago
  I'm interested in your logic about why you feel government agencies should be allowed to hack into private companies (without a warrant), and why you feel illegal activity like this should be allowed to continue?
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >I'm interested in your logic about why you feel government agencies should be allowed to hack into private companies, and why you feel activity like this should be allowed to be swept under the rug? I didn't make any value judgment on this. I'm not even that interested in this. I even qualified my statement on Snowden by saying that you can make a case that the disclosure of the collection programs had public interest and journalist value. If that's all Snowden did, then yes, you can also make the argument that he performed a heroic action (I wouldn't agree, but you can make that argument). But that's not what he did and people want to ignore the uncomfortable part. The man stole hundreds of thousands of intelligence documents that had no public interest value and (willingly or unwillingly) handed it to China and Russia.

25 points by vinnyglennon 6y ago

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Not a lawyer. Is it illegal to donate directly to Snowden?

mercurialshark 6y ago
Put simply, yes, it's highly illegal. Providing financial or material support to adversarial foreign actors, agents, parties deemed to be national security threats (under sanctions or DOJ/State/Treasury/et. al. special designation) or fugitives from justice violates a number of federal laws.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  I imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) the caveat is that this applies if you're a US citizen or go through US financial infra. Of course, it's not above the US government to attempt to pursue non-citizens for US crimes outside of their borders, the hurdle I imagine would be much higher to extradite though.
  - mercurialshark 6y ago
    DOJ routinely indicts those abroad and either seeks extradition, sanctions (i.e. asset freezing, prohibitions on travel, etc.), and/or local/regional law enforcement cooperation worldwide. As for matters of national security, enforcement of US interests abroad can and often times are addressed with the help of the US military, various regional partners, and intelligence agencies.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Gotcha. I'll engage an attorney to better scope, improve my understanding of the problem space, and possible workarounds for public decimation via a blog post or similar. Appreciate the replies.
      - mercurialshark 6y ago
        Thanks for chatting.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        s/decimation/dissemination/, awkward typo.

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago

I see 100 articles, pre-written, with small changes in tone going up in smoke right now. They had one thing in common: Ed Snowden is doing it for the monies, guys, we swear, look at this court case.

fallingfrog 6y ago

https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1308394609421279232?s=21 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1308394609421279232?s=21 Quote from Edward Snowden: “CNN badly misreported this. A) This is not a settlement; I didn't agree to it. B) The judgement from this censorship case is not enforceable while I am in exile, but I've never had that much money anyway. Better headline: "US could gain up to $5m by pardoning Edward Snowden."”

nickthemagicman 6y ago
CNN is terrible. They consistently warp the truth to make things more clickbaity.

macspoofing 6y ago

I don't understand the respect he gets. The man is a traitor. Even if you want to argue that the information he released had public value[1] - that's only 5% of the things stole[2] - which he then took to China and potentially to Russia. He says he destroyed the rest of the cache of information but then you have to trust either his word (in which case you have to explain why he took it to a foreign adversary), or it was taken from him (maybe even unknowingly) by Chinese or Russian intelligence services [3]. [1] And even that is a little weak. The programs he leaked were legal. They were funded by Congress. Run by the executive branch and overseen by the Judicial branch and Congressional committees. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Potential_impact_on_U.S._national_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Potential_impac... [3] From [2] "On June 14, 2015, UK's Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow."

kjaftaedi 6y ago
I'm interested in your logic about why you feel government agencies should be allowed to hack into private companies (without a warrant), and why you feel illegal activity like this should be allowed to continue?
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >I'm interested in your logic about why you feel government agencies should be allowed to hack into private companies, and why you feel activity like this should be allowed to be swept under the rug? I didn't make any value judgment on this. I'm not even that interested in this. I even qualified my statement on Snowden by saying that you can make a case that the disclosure of the collection programs had public interest and journalist value. If that's all Snowden did, then yes, you can also make the argument that he performed a heroic action (I wouldn't agree, but you can make that argument). But that's not what he did and people want to ignore the uncomfortable part. The man stole hundreds of thousands of intelligence documents that had no public interest value and (willingly or unwillingly) handed it to China and Russia.