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10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effecti

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the domestic branch of the war on terror. And yet, what shocks me to this day is how feckless the Congressional and Administrative responses were to public outcry. The government bet on the scandal blowing over, and for the most part it was right. Snowden's whistleblowing should have led to widespread changes in the law and in agency policies - and in a healthy democratic society that would have been the result. Instead, he'll never be able to return to the US because DOJ has made him tantamount to Public Enemy No. 1.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower: “ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned." With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it. In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”
- mikem170 3y ago
  A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good. Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition. I'm curious why you brought that up?
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    I think the parent is claiming that whistleblower protections don't apply to Snowden. A vigilante's actions can be both morally right and blatantly illegal. There are people that are glad he did what he did, but also believe in the rule of law, and feel his actions might have carried more weight if he turned himself in and accepted the legal repercussions. Personally, if I were the judge I'd give him a light slap on the wrist because of how hard he worked to bring the information to light in a responsible manner so nobody got hurt. It's hard for me to imagine him not getting absolutely fucked in a real court of law however, and I'm certainly not going to judge him and say, "You should have been willing to throw your whole life away over this, or not done it at all."
    - datavirtue 3y ago
      He would have been executed.
      - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
        What peacetime charge carries the death penalty for espionage or related?
        boomboomsubban 3y ago
        Do any of the relevant laws specify needing to be at war? Both the treason clause of the Constitution and the Espionage Act specify helping "enemies," but I'm not sure they specify needing to be at war. The Rosenberg's were executed despite the US never officially declaring war on the USSR or even North Korea.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    > I'm curious why you brought that up? It’s a direct quote from the article.
    - mikem170 3y ago
- marricks 3y ago
  He argued the American people had a right to know what was occurring and make a decision as to whether it should be done. That likely isn’t “by the book” whistle blowing since governments can and do make what they do in the shadows “legal enough” to avoid scrutiny. Guess it’s weird it’s that much of a discussion but many people care more about laws than morality.
- hooande 3y ago
  In all these years I'd never seen this. Ironic, but not surprising, that according to this account Snowden did exactly what he accused the US government of doing: mass collecting data with no authorization or purpose and then using it to accuse someone he disagreed with of crimes.
  - DharmaPolice 3y ago
    I think we should be holding governments to a higher standard than some random dude.
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      And we do. The difference is that Snowden did the crimes he is accused of. The US government, on the other hand, did not commit the crimes Snowden accused it of.
- DANmode 3y ago
  That seems to be the only way to subvert the very compartmentalization that normally keeps people from seeing such patterns or systemic abuses that he exposed - no?
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Did you think to ask what suspicions Snowden had in 2009 in Tokyo? Or why he had them? He stated he read an unclassified report with evidence of illegal activities and significant abuses. The classified version confirmed his suspicions.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Indeed, this struck me as weird, and so I went and re-read the Japan chapter. In which he also explains why metadata is more important than data, which this article later also completely ignores. Since this website otherwise seems to be well-done, has been repeatedly popping up on HN, and related HN discussions seem to have an influx of pro-NSA new accounts : https://i.imgur.com/2aVZBIj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/2aVZBIj.jpeg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570407 I'm afraid that I must entertain the possibility that the website itself is owned by the NSA, and the best thing to do is to ignore information on it, however well it might be presented. (I do not think that I'm smart enough to prevent a NSA team from tricking me.)
mike_d 3y ago
> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly hostile country (not even a quasi-neutral country or a non-extradition country) and allowed all of his stolen material to fall into the hands of a foreign intelligence service.
- aaron_m04 3y ago
  > He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Is this what you would've done in Snowdon's shoes?
  - mike_d 3y ago
    Absolutely. When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms. Any major US news publication or the EFF would have put their legal team to work protecting him. He could have fled to a friendly country like France that has strong civil liberty protections. He could have gone to a neutral country like Switzerland. Instead of trying any of these things, he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection - which plays a lot more like an asset coming home than a legitimate whistleblower.
    - mikem170 3y ago
      > When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms. So it's wrong to expose a corrupt government without becoming a martyr? It's better to let the public to be fooled? Not everyone thinks this way. Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't. > he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection Do you have a source for the above statement? It's my understanding that the U.S. revoked his passport while he was en-route to Ecuador, trapping him in Russia. I haven't heard that he gave the Russians any intelligence.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yreg 3y ago
I recently noticed how the public perception of Snowden changed on reddit. Years ago it was I think very positive. But with the war going on now when I see him come up, usually there are many users saying that he is a naive Russian asset and so on. Makes me a bit sad to see.
- varjag 3y ago
  If you choose the path of martyr you ought to follow it. "I did it for your freedom and that's why am now with your sworn enemy" can only work for so long.
- MikusR 3y ago
  [flagged]
- titzer 3y ago
  You think Russian intelligence just let him have asylum (and be granted citizenship) without finding everything he knows about how the NSA operates? That'd be extremely naive to believe. Witting, willing, or not, Snowden has been extremely useful to Russia.
  - yreg 3y ago
    Then perhaps the US shouldn't have forced him to stay in Russia?
    - titzer 3y ago
      According to what I am reading on Wikipedia about the specific timeline, the US revoked his passport before he left Hong Kong. He claims he was planning to fly to Ecuador and was just going to pass through Moscow. And yet there are direct flights from Hong Kong to Ecuador. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the... The US government is not responsible for him flying to or staying in Russia.
      - 3y ago

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower: “ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned." With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it. In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”

mikem170 3y ago
A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good. Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition. I'm curious why you brought that up?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  I think the parent is claiming that whistleblower protections don't apply to Snowden. A vigilante's actions can be both morally right and blatantly illegal. There are people that are glad he did what he did, but also believe in the rule of law, and feel his actions might have carried more weight if he turned himself in and accepted the legal repercussions. Personally, if I were the judge I'd give him a light slap on the wrist because of how hard he worked to bring the information to light in a responsible manner so nobody got hurt. It's hard for me to imagine him not getting absolutely fucked in a real court of law however, and I'm certainly not going to judge him and say, "You should have been willing to throw your whole life away over this, or not done it at all."
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    He would have been executed.
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      What peacetime charge carries the death penalty for espionage or related?
      - boomboomsubban 3y ago
        Do any of the relevant laws specify needing to be at war? Both the treason clause of the Constitution and the Espionage Act specify helping "enemies," but I'm not sure they specify needing to be at war. The Rosenberg's were executed despite the US never officially declaring war on the USSR or even North Korea.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > I'm curious why you brought that up? It’s a direct quote from the article.
  - mikem170 3y ago
marricks 3y ago
He argued the American people had a right to know what was occurring and make a decision as to whether it should be done. That likely isn’t “by the book” whistle blowing since governments can and do make what they do in the shadows “legal enough” to avoid scrutiny. Guess it’s weird it’s that much of a discussion but many people care more about laws than morality.
hooande 3y ago
In all these years I'd never seen this. Ironic, but not surprising, that according to this account Snowden did exactly what he accused the US government of doing: mass collecting data with no authorization or purpose and then using it to accuse someone he disagreed with of crimes.
- DharmaPolice 3y ago
  I think we should be holding governments to a higher standard than some random dude.
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    And we do. The difference is that Snowden did the crimes he is accused of. The US government, on the other hand, did not commit the crimes Snowden accused it of.
DANmode 3y ago
That seems to be the only way to subvert the very compartmentalization that normally keeps people from seeing such patterns or systemic abuses that he exposed - no?
pseudalopex 3y ago
Did you think to ask what suspicions Snowden had in 2009 in Tokyo? Or why he had them? He stated he read an unclassified report with evidence of illegal activities and significant abuses. The classified version confirmed his suspicions.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Indeed, this struck me as weird, and so I went and re-read the Japan chapter. In which he also explains why metadata is more important than data, which this article later also completely ignores. Since this website otherwise seems to be well-done, has been repeatedly popping up on HN, and related HN discussions seem to have an influx of pro-NSA new accounts : https://i.imgur.com/2aVZBIj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/2aVZBIj.jpeg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570407 I'm afraid that I must entertain the possibility that the website itself is owned by the NSA, and the best thing to do is to ignore information on it, however well it might be presented. (I do not think that I'm smart enough to prevent a NSA team from tricking me.)

mike_d 3y ago

> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly hostile country (not even a quasi-neutral country or a non-extradition country) and allowed all of his stolen material to fall into the hands of a foreign intelligence service.

aaron_m04 3y ago
> He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Is this what you would've done in Snowdon's shoes?
- mike_d 3y ago
  Absolutely. When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms. Any major US news publication or the EFF would have put their legal team to work protecting him. He could have fled to a friendly country like France that has strong civil liberty protections. He could have gone to a neutral country like Switzerland. Instead of trying any of these things, he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection - which plays a lot more like an asset coming home than a legitimate whistleblower.
  - mikem170 3y ago
    > When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms. So it's wrong to expose a corrupt government without becoming a martyr? It's better to let the public to be fooled? Not everyone thinks this way. Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't. > he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection Do you have a source for the above statement? It's my understanding that the U.S. revoked his passport while he was en-route to Ecuador, trapping him in Russia. I haven't heard that he gave the Russians any intelligence.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yreg 3y ago

I recently noticed how the public perception of Snowden changed on reddit. Years ago it was I think very positive. But with the war going on now when I see him come up, usually there are many users saying that he is a naive Russian asset and so on. Makes me a bit sad to see.

varjag 3y ago
If you choose the path of martyr you ought to follow it. "I did it for your freedom and that's why am now with your sworn enemy" can only work for so long.
MikusR 3y ago
[flagged]
titzer 3y ago
You think Russian intelligence just let him have asylum (and be granted citizenship) without finding everything he knows about how the NSA operates? That'd be extremely naive to believe. Witting, willing, or not, Snowden has been extremely useful to Russia.
- yreg 3y ago
  Then perhaps the US shouldn't have forced him to stay in Russia?
  - titzer 3y ago
    According to what I am reading on Wikipedia about the specific timeline, the US revoked his passport before he left Hong Kong. He claims he was planning to fly to Ecuador and was just going to pass through Moscow. And yet there are direct flights from Hong Kong to Ecuador. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the... The US government is not responsible for him flying to or staying in Russia.
    - 3y ago