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I still can't wrap my head around the widespread dislike/hatred of Snowden, and politicians still labeling him as a degenerate or criminal that should be brough

by _yb2s 3y ago

I still can't wrap my head around the widespread dislike/hatred of Snowden, and politicians still labeling him as a degenerate or criminal that should be brought to justice, while ignoring the crimes and abuse he revealed. Seems very 1984-esque. My own friends and family don't really remember what he did, but remember him vaguely as some sort of criminal that somehow hurt the USA or sold us out. There's also a narrative that he somehow "defected" to Russia, despite the fact that the U.S. government trapped him there during a flight layover, and he never wanted to go there at all. When I first heard his story I expected him to be hailed as a hero, and thought we might even have a holiday to celebrate him for risking his life, freedom, and career to inform us that our government is doing something deeply unethical in secret with our own money, that violates our basic freedoms. Thank you Snowden.

joemazerino 3y ago
Are you American? Snowden released unredacted classified documents that lead to real-world damage and potentially casualties. Compare that to wikileaks which redacted locations, IP addresses and other sensitive information. He wasn't a hacker by any means. He was a lowly SharePoint admin that was rumoured to have been coerced remotely by the Russians. He was angry with the NSA for being denied a promotion for TAO which drove him over the edge. It isn't hard to theorize that Russian and Chinese assets lurk the corners of chatrooms, looking for depressed/vulnerable US assets to coerce and corrupt. Money well spent for the West's enemies. If a single American intelligence asset lost their life because of Snowden's leaks would your opinion change?
- dTal 3y ago
  Snowden released his intel to a single journalist each from two highly respected publications, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Releases to the general public were made in those publications only, according to the judgement and discretion of those journalists. It was the model of responsible disclosure. Can you point to a specific article in the Washington Post or The Guardian which you believe lead to casualties? (The rest of your comment is rumor, wild speculation, and in the case of 'lowly sharepoint admin', outright misrepresentation)
  - joemazerino 3y ago
    Model of responsible disclosure according to whom? Do you realistically think the Washington Post or The Guardian would make Snowden look bad by aligning IC asset fatalities with his leaks? I doubt it. Consider this: IP addresses and devices of Western assets were leaked in the documents. Counter-intelligence can use those to correlate known or suspected IC assets. This has real-world consequences. The way Intelligence works is much more shrouded in secrecy. Everyone in the know knows he had privileged access via his job and leaked the entirety of the documents without redactions because he was mad at being passed up for the TAO job. His bosses were interviewed which confirms my statements - 1 Swift on Security is an example of a Twitter account with connections to IC. Her statements on the subject echo how the industry feels about Snowden. - 2 1/ https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/what-snowden-gets-wrong-about-its-hero.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/what-snowden-get... 2/ https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/649717123565006848?s=20 https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/64971712356500684...
    - dTal 3y ago
      So to be clear, you assert, entirely without evidence, that Snowden leaked the documents to someone other than The Guardian / WaPo? And you further assert without evidence that these leaks included IP addresses? And your source is "everyone in the know knows", despite being "shrouded in secrecy"? We are to take the statements of NSA officials, the very ones humiliated by his leaks, at face value? Forgive my skepticism! Also your Slate.com link contradicts your explanation for his ostensible disgruntlement - Ctl-F "TAO offered him a job". Not that it ever made the slightest bit of sense in the first place - who would banish themselves from their homeland over that? Snowden's character study is as crystal-clear as it is inconvenient to the NSA: the man was an idealist.
- felixg3 3y ago
  I‘m glad that Snowden revealed the injustices committed towards people around the world; even allies to the United States. Spying on the general public of democratic countries like my country Germany and their elected leaders is a no-no, and it doesn’t matter if a few American intelligence assets lost their life. They played with fire when they joined the criminal organizations and paid the price for it.
  - joemazerino 3y ago
    Do you think Germany's intelligence operations are any more different or virtuous? Or it's neighbours to you?
USB5 3y ago
How else would the ruling class rule? This is how capitalism works.
- b59831 3y ago
  Can you a communist example where someone like Snowden was treated better?
  - tonyg 3y ago
    False dichotomy
    - justinluther 3y ago
      Yes, but you could slightly amend their statement to say "Can you name a non-capitalist government..." to remove the false dichotomy and preserve the original point of the question, right?
  - lukifer 3y ago
    In a commune, there isn't a state which can secretly surveil in the first place, making the issue a moot point.
    - jdbernard 3y ago
      How does that square against every real-world example of communist government?
      - bllguo 3y ago
        i find these arguments quite amusing considering the lengths capitalists have gone to in sabotaging every attempt at socialism
      - kentrado 3y ago
        He just explained to you that there's no state in a comune. Therefore there can't be no such thing as a communist government. A communist country has no government. You probably mean Marxist-Leninist "Communist" states. Those are centralised capitalist states, China, NK, etc. There a lot of explanations regarding why Marxist-Leninism only leads to a more centralised form of capitalism.
alfalfasprout 3y ago
You don't even need to be much of a conspiracy theorist nowadays to realize that mainstream media is controlled by a concentrated set of interests. Just look at how coordinated the media was against "quiet quitting". And then against "work from home". And pushing many, many other anti worker narratives. No surprise, following the leaks Snowden was painted as a traitor that clearly only pandered to Russian interests.
- mcv 3y ago
  It's interesting to read this. My experience is completely different, but I'm Dutch and tend to read either Dutch or online media. And online media mostly in the tech sphere. Everybody is pretty positive about Snowden, and more objective about issues like "quiet quitting" and working from home. I think there's something really fundamentally wrong with US media. And not just with Fox News, but with all of them.
- specialist 3y ago
  Yes and: wrt journalism, corporate media cares more about access than holding power to account. Therefore corporate media ends up defending the status quo, by default or by design.
- aio2 3y ago
  I want to explain this from my perspective so you can maybe see why this is happening: I remember all the talk about quiet quitting and working home and all that, but because media has slowly shifted away from that, I seemed to think about it less. In fact, I completely forgot about quiet quitting until you just mentioned it, when I realized they have slowly blocked it out. Imagine that. It took me a while to realize that. And I still needed something to remind me of it. A lot of people aren't constantly reminded about it, which means they'll think more about whatever is currently in the media and keep falling for their trap.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > 10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? More pieces of the Zeitgeist, really.
- 3y ago
lottin 3y ago
To be honest, he has kind of defected. Yes, he didn't mean to go to Russia initially, but he's chosen to remain there, knowing that the Russians can throw him in the jail whenever they want. By remaining there he's turned himself into Kremlin puppet, to all effects and purposes.
- wilsonnb3 3y ago
  > he's chosen to remain there, knowing that the Russians can throw him in the jail whenever they want It’s not like he has any good options. I don’t blame him for staying in Russia.
  - lottin 3y ago
    I do. I think turning himself in would have been more honourable, in my opinion.
    - comte7092 3y ago
      Sacrificing one’s entire life to live in exile to expose is criminal government is plenty honorable. Frankly as a non American I don’t know why you’re weighing in so strongly on this.
      - lottin 3y ago
        I think revealing the wrongdoings of the US government was honourable, but fleeing to Russia was a bigger dishonour. You don't have to agree, it's a matter of opinion, really.
        comte7092 3y ago
        He fled to Ecuador, he was exiled to Russia.
    - jterrys 3y ago
      You're free to take his place. Why don't you volunteer? It would be the honorable thing to do.
TurkishPoptart 3y ago
This. I have friends who will say "he revealed secrets to our enemies!" and I don't even know how to respond. The U.S. government is a bigger global enemy (and a threat to me) than any Islamist in Iraq/Afghanistan.
bena 3y ago
Snowden is complicated. Yes, the level of wiretapping and surveillance was bad. It should have been exposed. However, that's not all he took. And those documents have had negative effects on U.S. operations and that of their allies. I have my conjectures and speculations, but ultimately, I do not believe Snowden is completely in the right.
- storkhm 3y ago
  I really have no problem viewing him as both a hero and traitor at the same time. I am not sure why we struggle so much with that idea given the complexity of the situation.
- comte7092 3y ago
  Example?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r... Page 20: "As of August 19, 2016, press outlets had published or referenced taken by Snowden.'™ This represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the nearly 1.5 million documents the IC assesses Snowden removed." Page 22: “As of June 2016, the most recent DoD review identified 13 high-risk issues . . . . Eight of the 13 relate to [redacted] capabilities of DoD; if the Russian or Chinese governments have access to this information, American troops will be at greater risk in any future conflict.”
    - comte7092 3y ago
      So basically, “Snowden took a lot of stuff” and there are vague references to “the stuff he took is risky, but not in any tangible way that we can describe, but you’ll have to trust us”. It’s not like I don’t believe that Snowden likely took things that endanger elements of national security. However, I’m going to need a bit more evidence to believe a government that routinely and flagrantly lies to its citizens, and equates “risks to national security” with “things that make us look bad”.
eyphka 3y ago
Snowdens recent conversations around Russia and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have tinted or confirmed biases against Snowden as a traitor and stooge of the Russian government. See: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/18/the-trouble-with-edward-snowden https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/18/the-trouble-wi...
- _yb2s 3y ago
  I read your link and don't get it. He said "Russia should not invade Ukraine" and pretty much nothing else. The criticism seems to be that he isn't more aggressively criticizing Russia? When he is physically located there, in a country that famously does not have any sort of freedom of speech, and has a wife and baby?
  - eyphka 3y ago
    I believe the criticism usually stems from the following tweet and the silence after the invasion of Ukraine. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931
    - dTal 3y ago
      To be fair to him, the silence could fairly be interpreted as humility, particularly given the tweet with which he broke the silence: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1498049577131208705 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1498049577131208705
    - _yb2s 3y ago
      Thanks for the clarifying link. I still don't see the issue here... so he thought Russia was not about to invade Ukraine before it actually happened, but in fact he was very wrong? so? He obviously had a negative opinion about the US government and very little trust for it, so he is quite biased, but that seems expected given his history. I don't read this as him somehow supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
      - 3y ago
rootusrootus 3y ago
> labeling him as a degenerate or criminal Degenerate is a stretch, but 'criminal' does not seem controversial. Whether you agree with the laws or not, hate the USG, love Snowden, whatever, the fact remains that he did most likely break the law. He hasn't been convicted, true, but his own choice to stay out of the US suggests he believes he would be.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  I do think he broke the law (and I still like him. If I could wave a magic wand I'd bring him back and get the judge to give him a token sentence, or remand it to a civil matter -- breach of contract since he was a contractor), but that's just my opinion. I think there's ambiguity with respect to whistleblower laws, and he might want to stay out because he doesn't feel like he will get a fair trial, which, if I were him, I would not expect.
  - teekert 3y ago
    When you have to break the law to show that the government is breaking the law, you have break the law.
    - 9dev 3y ago
      One cannot Stress this enough. As Brecht said, „where injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.“
- slim 3y ago
  so you think whistleblowing is illegal if you work for the NSA ?
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    That's a pretty great example of begging the question. Can you explain why you think what he did was whistleblowing and not whatever he actually got charged with? Further, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on why we should want NSA employees or contractors to make their own judgement call on what information should be made public or not.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
My observation as a non-American (Canadian) -- is that Americans are very much freedom and liberty loving... until it comes to anything about their military, their foreign policy, and their associated intelligence agencies. It's a state whose first president was a general, where the military is treated with a reverence I've seen in no other country, and where I suspect the population is deeply aware that its own economic advantage is tied directly to its military advantage. Snowden, despite the injustices he revealed, fell on the wrong side of American opinion in relation to the military, foreign policy, and associated intelligence agencies.
- simonh 3y ago
  There's a great scene in Casablanca when Claude Raines' police chief character shuts down the gambling den he gambles at, saying that he is "Shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment" before collecting his winnings on the way out. The US thinks it needs to be in the game, wants to win at it and is willing to turn a blind eye to the implications of that. Americans know they have spies, they know the CIA and the NSA exist and have a vague idea what they do. They know it's unpleasant and may be technically illegal and they're fine with delegating their elected leaders to deal with that for them.
  - jrussino 3y ago
    > They know it's unpleasant and may be technically illegal and they're fine with delegating their elected leaders to deal with that for them. I don't know; maybe there are plenty of people like this. But I think there are many (more?) of us who are not OK with these things but feel powerless to do anything about them. And that includes those of us who do appreciate America's hegemony and the relative safety and prosperity that it affords us, but who think that doing things like spying on citizens, bombing weddings, supporting coups, assassinating dissidents, invading and occupying countries for no good reason, torturing (e.g. waterboarding) prisoners, detaining people indefinitely, etc. are both morally wrong and counter-productive toward maintaining our position of power and prosperity and esteem in the world.
- juunpp 3y ago
hayst4ck 3y ago
This is not my personal belief, my personal belief is a lot more nuanced than this, but I do find this to be a very compelling argument against him: Snowden is a half-way martyr. He made the decision to die for a cause, and then backed out of that decision and swore an oath of allegiance to modern day Hitler. He showed an example of someone who didn't like the consequences of his actions and if you want to escape the consequences of your actions, you do that via corruption: swearing loyalty to someone powerful and reaping the benefits of that loyalty (them shielding you from consequences) in exchange for your servitude. In order to prevent being a victim of corruption, he chose to engage in corruption. Him and Wikileaks together delegitimized the American government and ultimately created a fertile ground for a fascist to be elected president. (I think it's more arguable that Obama was the person who delegitimized the establishment). His ultimate fate, to see his legacy largely ignored and unaddressed, to become a slave to a dictator, and to see that his oath of allegiance calls into question his sacrifice... I don't think America could have created a harsher punishment if we had tried. I think America's founding fathers would understand and be sympathetic to his plight, but be disappointed. FWIW, I have been in rooms talking about hardening infrastructure against government malfeasance. There were a lot of engineers at companies mentioned in prism docs that said "lets assume this is true, how did it happen," and worked on hardening infrastructure against the attacks they could imagine. So while outwardly his sacrifice seems largely in vain, it lives in the memory of many engineers who see hardening their systems against government action as a real importance many of whom donate to many organizations like the EFF.
- gdy 3y ago
  "modern day Hitler" Just curious, do you consider Bush, who started the Iraq war, to be a modern Hitler too?
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    No. But I do think he's a war criminal who irreparably damaged this country in countless ways and not subjecting himself to the ICC is a denial of everything America says it represents. Bush did more damage to America than Russia could ever hope to have done. I think he damaged America more than Trump. I think America's time in Iraq was not fundamentally genocidal and I don't remember America violently putting down opposition to the war at home so I think it falls short of "Hitler". While we did destroy the regime, I don't think we tried to destroy the notion of "iraq" or of being "iraqi." I could be convinced that we were worse than I think.
Apofis 3y ago
He's a traitor that defected to Russia, what's not to love???
- nocoolnametom 3y ago
  Prevented from flying anywhere outside of Russia during a layover != defected. He's not there by choice as long as the choice is: stay in Russia and use political optics to safely criticize Putin's regime, or leave Russia and rot in prison away from his family for the rest of his life.

by _yb2s 3y ago

joemazerino 3y ago

Are you American? Snowden released unredacted classified documents that lead to real-world damage and potentially casualties. Compare that to wikileaks which redacted locations, IP addresses and other sensitive information. He wasn't a hacker by any means. He was a lowly SharePoint admin that was rumoured to have been coerced remotely by the Russians. He was angry with the NSA for being denied a promotion for TAO which drove him over the edge. It isn't hard to theorize that Russian and Chinese assets lurk the corners of chatrooms, looking for depressed/vulnerable US assets to coerce and corrupt. Money well spent for the West's enemies. If a single American intelligence asset lost their life because of Snowden's leaks would your opinion change?

dTal 3y ago
Snowden released his intel to a single journalist each from two highly respected publications, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Releases to the general public were made in those publications only, according to the judgement and discretion of those journalists. It was the model of responsible disclosure. Can you point to a specific article in the Washington Post or The Guardian which you believe lead to casualties? (The rest of your comment is rumor, wild speculation, and in the case of 'lowly sharepoint admin', outright misrepresentation)
- joemazerino 3y ago
  Model of responsible disclosure according to whom? Do you realistically think the Washington Post or The Guardian would make Snowden look bad by aligning IC asset fatalities with his leaks? I doubt it. Consider this: IP addresses and devices of Western assets were leaked in the documents. Counter-intelligence can use those to correlate known or suspected IC assets. This has real-world consequences. The way Intelligence works is much more shrouded in secrecy. Everyone in the know knows he had privileged access via his job and leaked the entirety of the documents without redactions because he was mad at being passed up for the TAO job. His bosses were interviewed which confirms my statements - 1 Swift on Security is an example of a Twitter account with connections to IC. Her statements on the subject echo how the industry feels about Snowden. - 2 1/ https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/what-snowden-gets-wrong-about-its-hero.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/what-snowden-get... 2/ https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/649717123565006848?s=20 https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/64971712356500684...
  - dTal 3y ago
    So to be clear, you assert, entirely without evidence, that Snowden leaked the documents to someone other than The Guardian / WaPo? And you further assert without evidence that these leaks included IP addresses? And your source is "everyone in the know knows", despite being "shrouded in secrecy"? We are to take the statements of NSA officials, the very ones humiliated by his leaks, at face value? Forgive my skepticism! Also your Slate.com link contradicts your explanation for his ostensible disgruntlement - Ctl-F "TAO offered him a job". Not that it ever made the slightest bit of sense in the first place - who would banish themselves from their homeland over that? Snowden's character study is as crystal-clear as it is inconvenient to the NSA: the man was an idealist.
felixg3 3y ago
I‘m glad that Snowden revealed the injustices committed towards people around the world; even allies to the United States. Spying on the general public of democratic countries like my country Germany and their elected leaders is a no-no, and it doesn’t matter if a few American intelligence assets lost their life. They played with fire when they joined the criminal organizations and paid the price for it.
- joemazerino 3y ago
  Do you think Germany's intelligence operations are any more different or virtuous? Or it's neighbours to you?

USB5 3y ago

How else would the ruling class rule? This is how capitalism works.

b59831 3y ago
Can you a communist example where someone like Snowden was treated better?
- tonyg 3y ago
  False dichotomy
  - justinluther 3y ago
    Yes, but you could slightly amend their statement to say "Can you name a non-capitalist government..." to remove the false dichotomy and preserve the original point of the question, right?
- lukifer 3y ago
  In a commune, there isn't a state which can secretly surveil in the first place, making the issue a moot point.
  - jdbernard 3y ago
    How does that square against every real-world example of communist government?
    - bllguo 3y ago
      i find these arguments quite amusing considering the lengths capitalists have gone to in sabotaging every attempt at socialism
    - kentrado 3y ago
      He just explained to you that there's no state in a comune. Therefore there can't be no such thing as a communist government. A communist country has no government. You probably mean Marxist-Leninist "Communist" states. Those are centralised capitalist states, China, NK, etc. There a lot of explanations regarding why Marxist-Leninism only leads to a more centralised form of capitalism.

alfalfasprout 3y ago

You don't even need to be much of a conspiracy theorist nowadays to realize that mainstream media is controlled by a concentrated set of interests. Just look at how coordinated the media was against "quiet quitting". And then against "work from home". And pushing many, many other anti worker narratives. No surprise, following the leaks Snowden was painted as a traitor that clearly only pandered to Russian interests.

mcv 3y ago
It's interesting to read this. My experience is completely different, but I'm Dutch and tend to read either Dutch or online media. And online media mostly in the tech sphere. Everybody is pretty positive about Snowden, and more objective about issues like "quiet quitting" and working from home. I think there's something really fundamentally wrong with US media. And not just with Fox News, but with all of them.
specialist 3y ago
Yes and: wrt journalism, corporate media cares more about access than holding power to account. Therefore corporate media ends up defending the status quo, by default or by design.
aio2 3y ago
I want to explain this from my perspective so you can maybe see why this is happening: I remember all the talk about quiet quitting and working home and all that, but because media has slowly shifted away from that, I seemed to think about it less. In fact, I completely forgot about quiet quitting until you just mentioned it, when I realized they have slowly blocked it out. Imagine that. It took me a while to realize that. And I still needed something to remind me of it. A lot of people aren't constantly reminded about it, which means they'll think more about whatever is currently in the media and keep falling for their trap.
DANmode 3y ago
> 10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? More pieces of the Zeitgeist, really.
3y ago

lottin 3y ago

To be honest, he has kind of defected. Yes, he didn't mean to go to Russia initially, but he's chosen to remain there, knowing that the Russians can throw him in the jail whenever they want. By remaining there he's turned himself into Kremlin puppet, to all effects and purposes.

wilsonnb3 3y ago
> he's chosen to remain there, knowing that the Russians can throw him in the jail whenever they want It’s not like he has any good options. I don’t blame him for staying in Russia.
- lottin 3y ago
  I do. I think turning himself in would have been more honourable, in my opinion.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    Sacrificing one’s entire life to live in exile to expose is criminal government is plenty honorable. Frankly as a non American I don’t know why you’re weighing in so strongly on this.
    - lottin 3y ago
      I think revealing the wrongdoings of the US government was honourable, but fleeing to Russia was a bigger dishonour. You don't have to agree, it's a matter of opinion, really.
      - comte7092 3y ago
        He fled to Ecuador, he was exiled to Russia.
  - jterrys 3y ago
    You're free to take his place. Why don't you volunteer? It would be the honorable thing to do.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago

This. I have friends who will say "he revealed secrets to our enemies!" and I don't even know how to respond. The U.S. government is a bigger global enemy (and a threat to me) than any Islamist in Iraq/Afghanistan.

bena 3y ago

Snowden is complicated. Yes, the level of wiretapping and surveillance was bad. It should have been exposed. However, that's not all he took. And those documents have had negative effects on U.S. operations and that of their allies. I have my conjectures and speculations, but ultimately, I do not believe Snowden is completely in the right.

storkhm 3y ago
I really have no problem viewing him as both a hero and traitor at the same time. I am not sure why we struggle so much with that idea given the complexity of the situation.
comte7092 3y ago
Example?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r... Page 20: "As of August 19, 2016, press outlets had published or referenced taken by Snowden.'™ This represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the nearly 1.5 million documents the IC assesses Snowden removed." Page 22: “As of June 2016, the most recent DoD review identified 13 high-risk issues . . . . Eight of the 13 relate to [redacted] capabilities of DoD; if the Russian or Chinese governments have access to this information, American troops will be at greater risk in any future conflict.”
  - comte7092 3y ago
    So basically, “Snowden took a lot of stuff” and there are vague references to “the stuff he took is risky, but not in any tangible way that we can describe, but you’ll have to trust us”. It’s not like I don’t believe that Snowden likely took things that endanger elements of national security. However, I’m going to need a bit more evidence to believe a government that routinely and flagrantly lies to its citizens, and equates “risks to national security” with “things that make us look bad”.

eyphka 3y ago

Snowdens recent conversations around Russia and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have tinted or confirmed biases against Snowden as a traitor and stooge of the Russian government. See: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/18/the-trouble-with-edward-snowden https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/18/the-trouble-wi...

_yb2s 3y ago
I read your link and don't get it. He said "Russia should not invade Ukraine" and pretty much nothing else. The criticism seems to be that he isn't more aggressively criticizing Russia? When he is physically located there, in a country that famously does not have any sort of freedom of speech, and has a wife and baby?
- eyphka 3y ago
  I believe the criticism usually stems from the following tweet and the silence after the invasion of Ukraine. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931
  - dTal 3y ago
    To be fair to him, the silence could fairly be interpreted as humility, particularly given the tweet with which he broke the silence: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1498049577131208705 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1498049577131208705
  - _yb2s 3y ago
    Thanks for the clarifying link. I still don't see the issue here... so he thought Russia was not about to invade Ukraine before it actually happened, but in fact he was very wrong? so? He obviously had a negative opinion about the US government and very little trust for it, so he is quite biased, but that seems expected given his history. I don't read this as him somehow supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    - 3y ago

rootusrootus 3y ago

> labeling him as a degenerate or criminal Degenerate is a stretch, but 'criminal' does not seem controversial. Whether you agree with the laws or not, hate the USG, love Snowden, whatever, the fact remains that he did most likely break the law. He hasn't been convicted, true, but his own choice to stay out of the US suggests he believes he would be.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
I do think he broke the law (and I still like him. If I could wave a magic wand I'd bring him back and get the judge to give him a token sentence, or remand it to a civil matter -- breach of contract since he was a contractor), but that's just my opinion. I think there's ambiguity with respect to whistleblower laws, and he might want to stay out because he doesn't feel like he will get a fair trial, which, if I were him, I would not expect.
- teekert 3y ago
  When you have to break the law to show that the government is breaking the law, you have break the law.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    One cannot Stress this enough. As Brecht said, „where injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.“
slim 3y ago
so you think whistleblowing is illegal if you work for the NSA ?
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  That's a pretty great example of begging the question. Can you explain why you think what he did was whistleblowing and not whatever he actually got charged with? Further, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on why we should want NSA employees or contractors to make their own judgement call on what information should be made public or not.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

My observation as a non-American (Canadian) -- is that Americans are very much freedom and liberty loving... until it comes to anything about their military, their foreign policy, and their associated intelligence agencies. It's a state whose first president was a general, where the military is treated with a reverence I've seen in no other country, and where I suspect the population is deeply aware that its own economic advantage is tied directly to its military advantage. Snowden, despite the injustices he revealed, fell on the wrong side of American opinion in relation to the military, foreign policy, and associated intelligence agencies.

simonh 3y ago
There's a great scene in Casablanca when Claude Raines' police chief character shuts down the gambling den he gambles at, saying that he is "Shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment" before collecting his winnings on the way out. The US thinks it needs to be in the game, wants to win at it and is willing to turn a blind eye to the implications of that. Americans know they have spies, they know the CIA and the NSA exist and have a vague idea what they do. They know it's unpleasant and may be technically illegal and they're fine with delegating their elected leaders to deal with that for them.
- jrussino 3y ago
  > They know it's unpleasant and may be technically illegal and they're fine with delegating their elected leaders to deal with that for them. I don't know; maybe there are plenty of people like this. But I think there are many (more?) of us who are not OK with these things but feel powerless to do anything about them. And that includes those of us who do appreciate America's hegemony and the relative safety and prosperity that it affords us, but who think that doing things like spying on citizens, bombing weddings, supporting coups, assassinating dissidents, invading and occupying countries for no good reason, torturing (e.g. waterboarding) prisoners, detaining people indefinitely, etc. are both morally wrong and counter-productive toward maintaining our position of power and prosperity and esteem in the world.
juunpp 3y ago

hayst4ck 3y ago

This is not my personal belief, my personal belief is a lot more nuanced than this, but I do find this to be a very compelling argument against him: Snowden is a half-way martyr. He made the decision to die for a cause, and then backed out of that decision and swore an oath of allegiance to modern day Hitler. He showed an example of someone who didn't like the consequences of his actions and if you want to escape the consequences of your actions, you do that via corruption: swearing loyalty to someone powerful and reaping the benefits of that loyalty (them shielding you from consequences) in exchange for your servitude. In order to prevent being a victim of corruption, he chose to engage in corruption. Him and Wikileaks together delegitimized the American government and ultimately created a fertile ground for a fascist to be elected president. (I think it's more arguable that Obama was the person who delegitimized the establishment). His ultimate fate, to see his legacy largely ignored and unaddressed, to become a slave to a dictator, and to see that his oath of allegiance calls into question his sacrifice... I don't think America could have created a harsher punishment if we had tried. I think America's founding fathers would understand and be sympathetic to his plight, but be disappointed. FWIW, I have been in rooms talking about hardening infrastructure against government malfeasance. There were a lot of engineers at companies mentioned in prism docs that said "lets assume this is true, how did it happen," and worked on hardening infrastructure against the attacks they could imagine. So while outwardly his sacrifice seems largely in vain, it lives in the memory of many engineers who see hardening their systems against government action as a real importance many of whom donate to many organizations like the EFF.

gdy 3y ago
"modern day Hitler" Just curious, do you consider Bush, who started the Iraq war, to be a modern Hitler too?
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  No. But I do think he's a war criminal who irreparably damaged this country in countless ways and not subjecting himself to the ICC is a denial of everything America says it represents. Bush did more damage to America than Russia could ever hope to have done. I think he damaged America more than Trump. I think America's time in Iraq was not fundamentally genocidal and I don't remember America violently putting down opposition to the war at home so I think it falls short of "Hitler". While we did destroy the regime, I don't think we tried to destroy the notion of "iraq" or of being "iraqi." I could be convinced that we were worse than I think.

Apofis 3y ago

He's a traitor that defected to Russia, what's not to love???

nocoolnametom 3y ago
Prevented from flying anywhere outside of Russia during a layover != defected. He's not there by choice as long as the choice is: stay in Russia and use political optics to safely criticize Putin's regime, or leave Russia and rot in prison away from his family for the rest of his life.