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It's just awesome what a keen sense Snowden has for this kind of operation. He has an intuitive understanding that information is only one component of power -

It's just awesome what a keen sense Snowden has for this kind of operation. He has an intuitive understanding that information is only one component of power - the other is the spectacle of how you present it. Blowing the whistle is not effective when you simply publish a blog post somewhere. It requires theatrics to establish credibility, interest, and to reach the right audience in a way that can't be ignored.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
This is maybe his first time when such tactic will be successful (maybe...we don't know if he managed to convince people to divest/not invest) The first time he did it, well it was not effective. It's not like people were not informed enough about war crimes. The Abu Grahib dossier had come out 3-4 years earlier. People perceive this sort of stuff as far away, don't want to look at it or just simply block out the information because they want to believe whatever they want to believe. Whistleblowing is ineffective to change the way a system operates. It solely make the system cover up better, and achieves the goal of having some heads roll (more often than not the responsible people for security and info compartmentization)
- escalt 5y ago
  Snowden didn't tell much about war crimes. He was the guy that unveiled just how large the NSAs operations are and what they are capable of. And it was very effective, because since then there was a big move towards encrypting all communications. Nowadays it's almost standard to have end to end encryption in messengers, and the majority of websites support https or are even https-only
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Snowden isn’t what we think about with war crimes. Wikileaks is much more on that front. Snowden’s leaks were about the Patriot Act and surveillance state. Your last paragraph didn’t happen for any recent major leak - Wikileaks war crimes, Snowden. Hell did it even happen with the Panama leak? There was no large change towards transparency. The little I’ve heard, the same usual tax shelters and money hiding continued.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago

This is maybe his first time when such tactic will be successful (maybe...we don't know if he managed to convince people to divest/not invest) The first time he did it, well it was not effective. It's not like people were not informed enough about war crimes. The Abu Grahib dossier had come out 3-4 years earlier. People perceive this sort of stuff as far away, don't want to look at it or just simply block out the information because they want to believe whatever they want to believe. Whistleblowing is ineffective to change the way a system operates. It solely make the system cover up better, and achieves the goal of having some heads roll (more often than not the responsible people for security and info compartmentization)

escalt 5y ago
Snowden didn't tell much about war crimes. He was the guy that unveiled just how large the NSAs operations are and what they are capable of. And it was very effective, because since then there was a big move towards encrypting all communications. Nowadays it's almost standard to have end to end encryption in messengers, and the majority of websites support https or are even https-only
skinnymuch 5y ago
Snowden isn’t what we think about with war crimes. Wikileaks is much more on that front. Snowden’s leaks were about the Patriot Act and surveillance state. Your last paragraph didn’t happen for any recent major leak - Wikileaks war crimes, Snowden. Hell did it even happen with the Panama leak? There was no large change towards transparency. The little I’ve heard, the same usual tax shelters and money hiding continued.