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I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle. Just take a look at the

• esrauch 3y ago
  The point of sharing it only with trusted established journalists was that their qualified to know what needs redacting. Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
  • dingusdew 3y ago
    [dead]
  • drewcoo 3y ago
    > he point of sharing it only with trusted established journalists was that their qualified to know what needs redacting Really? I assumed it had more to do with Constitutional protections for journalists, so whatever they did publish would stay published. IIRC, the US had already called Assange's journo creds into question by then, so Snowden sought out established outlets.
    • notjulianjaynes 3y ago
      There is no special credential that makes one a journalist in the eyes of the United States Constitution, nor does the first amendment grant any special protections to journalists that do not otherwise apply to the general population.
• colordrops 3y ago
  He had to take a quick dump of whatever he could and filter through it later. It's not like he could leisurely spend weeks vetting the docs.
  • lern_too_spel 3y ago
    The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.
    • newZWhoDis 3y ago
      PRISM was both illegal and unconstitutional. The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple. Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
      • lern_too_spel 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • newZWhoDis 3y ago
          That’s a failure of the courts to apply standing. You can’t sue because you have no standing, because you can’t prove you were spied on, and proving it would be illegal so… checkmate. :) PRISM is a clear violation of the 4th, and if we had supremes that were worth a damn all bulk collection programs would be prohibited.
    • devmor 3y ago
      Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal. That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
• nmqsxc 3y ago
  According to Greenwald there were millions of pages, largely because everything from parking spaces to nuclear weapons were frivolously marked "top secret" in order to increase the perceived importance of bureaucrats. Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff. How could Snowden have gone through that pile in a couple of days while on the run and possibly afraid for his life?
  • jstarfish 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • evantbyrne 3y ago
      That's one way to look at it. Another interpretation would be that he knew about specific things, assumed there were other bad things he hadn't learned about yet, and couldn't filter through it himself.
    • namdnay 3y ago
      He sent the documents to be filtered by trusted journalists working for one of the worlds number one investigative newspapers. It’s not like he sold them to the Daily Mail There’s a slight irony in your comment about his performance reviews - how did that get out? Apparently leaking isn’t always a problem :)
    • HeckFeck 3y ago
      Not all of us can grep as well as we'd like. Besides, swiping only the most telling and highligy classified documents would've aroused suspicion. He might have been including some line noise to distract a system looking for patterns. Also, including unrelated but genuine documents would make his leak easier to verify because it proves he has access to the source.
    • xtian 3y ago
      The government is not a person so your rhetorical device is as nonsensical and irrelevant as your unsubstantiated character assassination. Moreover, a criminal organization can make no claims to ‘fairness’. Criminal governments are no different.
• f6v 3y ago
  > Most of them are not about domestic spying at all: Then he owed it to humanity and acted on it. Kudos to him.
• dmbche 3y ago
  I'm about 3/4 through the page and it's all related to spying to me.. are you specifically referring to something?
  • andrewmutz 3y ago
    Spying is what the NSA is supposed to do Domestic spying is the controversial/illegal activity he was blowing the whistle on. Dumping info on legal NSA activities (like foreign surveillance), while fascinating to read, is not whistleblowing.
    • dmbche 3y ago
      I think it's fair to say that the extent of the spying on global citizens being so absurdly extreme was also worth whistleblowing - it's not location of hidden bases and spies, it's that General Dynamics " collect the contents or metadata of all cell phone calls in the Bahamas, Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya. The Australian Signals Directorate has cooperated with NSA on the collection in the Philippines" and so on. Being Canadian, I see him as a whistleblower as well, since the extent of canadian surveillance was also revealed. I'd argue it's even better that he did the jobs of multiple whistleblowers by sharing the extent of domestic spying in other countries. No need to wait years for other people to put their lives in jeopardy.
    • drewcoo 3y ago
      > the controversial/illegal activity I wasn't aware that it was only one controversial activity. And I wasn't aware that one could only blow the whistle on illegal activity.
• lettergram 3y ago
  In a democracy almost everything should be public. Our weapons for sure, perhaps not where they are located, but what we pay for yes.
  • barney54 3y ago
    I don’t know why some people are downvoting this comment. What is wrong with transparency?
    • goodpoint 3y ago
      Perhaps many people in US would rather have a "strong government" than democracy.
  • pastacacioepepe 3y ago
    Exactly right, you can't have democracy without information being available to everyone. But we all know this is just an illusion, all democratic states hide a great deal from their citizens.
    • HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago
      I want to add- there is significant value at the world level, of keeping secrets. Eveybody wants warfare to be asymmetric and biased towards them- why would we want to give a potential adversary perfect information about what weaponry we have as well as its exact capabilities? Unfortunately, when you want to keep a secret, you can't tell all of your citizens and trust that they won't tell anybody...
      • guide42 3y ago
        > why would we want to give a potential adversary perfect information about what weaponry we have as well as its exact capabilities To be fair and let the best win? There is just no honor anymore.
      • LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
• penneallagricia 3y ago
  As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing. If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden. What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Imagine what the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
  • ako 3y ago
    Maybe there was no response because it was expected. Probably all countries spy on all other countries. Especially during the Trump era, it wasn’t clear that USA was still an ally, so I hope other countries prepared for that by increasing their intelligence on the USA, just to avoid inconvenient surprises.
    • penneallagricia 3y ago
      This has nothing to do with Trump per se, it's really a bipartisan issue, as the new pentagon leaks just confirmed. I also doubt European countries have the capacity to intercept private calls between top level USA govt officials.
      • zirgs 3y ago
        What makes you think that they don't? They surely would keep that capability secret.
        • penneallagricia 3y ago
          > They surely would keep that capability secret. Like the USA itself couldn't? Strongly doubt, the amount of recent leaks we're just discussing proves me right. No nation could have such an espionage system in place without it ever leaking out in some way.
      • 3y ago
• jackmott 3y ago
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• Danjoe4 3y ago
  Exposing illegal government surveillance programs is far more important than "national security". His leak exposed US foreign operations; who cares? Maybe don't do stuff that is so illegal and immoral that your own citizens feel compelled to risk everything to expose it.
• 0xDEF 3y ago
  As a European I actually think Snowden's primary motivation was opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US. If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world. Obviously for the rest of the world Snowden is a net positive that raised awareness about mass surveillance by US Big Tech. But I cringe whenever Americans declare him "an American hero". I am sure Snowden cringe even more at that term to be honest.
  • nagkl 3y ago
    Snowden contacted Laura Poitras first, with this famous mail: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitras/ https://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitr... "You ask why I picked you. I didn't. You did. The surveillance you've experienced means you've been selected, a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern sigint system works." I wish everyone here would watch the movie Citizen Four to learn more about the backgrounds and the actual events. He was an anti-surveillance activist. Is it because of the Ukraine conflict that people are now trying to link him to anti-US foreign policy sentiments? Why wasn't this the topic in 2012?
    • 0xDEF 3y ago
      >trying to link him to anti-US foreign policy sentiments Being anti-US foreign policy is generally a good thing and the only reason you are going to leak to Glenn Greenwald of all people in late 2012. Snowden also exposed that it was not Bashar al-Assad's legitimate democratically elected government that turned off the Internet in Syria in 2012. It was actually the NSA: https://time.com/3107684/snowden-nsa-syria-cybersecurity/ https://time.com/3107684/snowden-nsa-syria-cybersecurity/ No other "anti-surveillance activist" would have stood up Assad in 2012. Only Snowden dared to do that because he is a heroic world citizen opposed to US influence and control of the world.
• psychlops 3y ago
  Perhaps if they weren't trampling on the law they wouldn't run the risk of legitimate secrets being let out from numerous malcontents.
• pnt12 3y ago
  Weren't there millions of pages or documents to review? But even so, those demand him to be 100% ethical, why don't they also demand that from the NSA and the rest of the state? He did it in a responsible way. Perhaps if there was better support for whistle-blower he could have done it even better.