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I still back Snowden for his original motives in 2013. I will not bother listening to anything he has to say these days though, because I have no idea who is pu

I still back Snowden for his original motives in 2013. I will not bother listening to anything he has to say these days though, because I have no idea who is pulling the strings. I have no idea who he's working for, or what his motives are. It's a problem for me that he's holing up in Russia, and has probably already given up enough info to them in exchange for his asylum. I simply can't trust the man at this time. Am I being unreasonable?

racional 2y ago
He definitely has no choice about "holing up" in Russia. His native country revoked his passport, after all. As to whether he has given up information -- we just don't know. I don't know about you, but in situations where I have no concrete indications from which to know (rather than merely speculate) that someone has done something Bad, and even when they did, it probably just doesn't matter very much -- I tend not to worry about it. And not only that, I usually just give them the benefit of the doubt. Life is too short for holding judgements in our head about what people might have done in situations we just don't have any visibility into.
- mdhb 2y ago
  To pretend that he had some option to just say no thanks on giving up information is so incredibly naive. He did have a choice in the sense of go to jail or give up everything he knew for protection. We can all very publicly see the decision he made but whatever his motives may have been for his initial leak (though I would argue it too was in no way a net positive) that clearly doesn’t extend to what happened beyond that when he applied for asylum. I think the truth of the matter is that he didn’t have a clear step 2 in his plan, realised he was in way over his head, panicked and did something very stupid afterwards.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Just going to add a small bit of extra context to this from the eyes of the intelligence community because that doesn’t seem to ever get a look at on Hacker News where for many years there has been a more or less unquestionable assumption that he is some kind of hero. But from their point of view, it’s really in no way obvious that this wasn’t an operation from the very start. The FBIs chief spy catcher was actually working as a liaison officer in Moscow when this happened and he talks about it in some detail here in this interview (will update with timestamps later if I can find it) https://www.youtube.com/live/0NSGOJs150w https://www.youtube.com/live/0NSGOJs150w but in his experience this is actually EXACTLY what he would expect an operation like that to look like and there has never been any clear evidence in the years since that would put a meaningful dent in that theory. The other point I wanted to make was that because people tend to have no real idea beyond movies as to how intelligence agencies actually function in real life they have no context for where he fit into the bigger picture. But Snowden was never some super spy or anything like that, he has zero operational experience or context he was just a Microsoft SharePoint administrator who had a security clearance. He demonstrated numerous times since then that he actually had no meaningful context as to what he was actually leaking for into the wider operational picture or what kinds of controls were in place around its usage. He made a unilateral decision to take as much classified information as he could possibly get his hands on and then leak it with no regards to the consequences that came with it. There are legitimate reasons to be upset with certain actions of the US intel community I am not here to do some wholesale defence on their behalf but this image he has built for himself as some heroic whistleblower is built on incredibly flimsy evidence. There is a reason why he has essentially zero defenders inside the intelligence community and I would put it to you that it’s not simply because “they are all evil”.
    - racional 2y ago
      Can you explain in your own words what kind of "operation" are we talking about here? The video sounds interesting, but I won't be able to give it a look for quite some time. Plus I'd like to know what your view specifically is on the matter.
      - mdhb 2y ago
        Sorry just to be clear the accusation is that he was effectively working for the Russians knowingly and the plan was to leak as much source and methods style information as widely as possible but under the cover of an independent whistleblower with the explicit goal of degrading US capabilities as much as possible. Essentially that his motivations were something entirely different to his version of events. It’s ultimately an impossible question to answer most likely. His stated motivations make sense on the surface for sure but I think there are still some big questions around assuming it’s all true, what steps did he take along the way to minimise unnecessary damage and I can’t recall much on that front worth pointing to.
        DANmode 2y ago
        > what steps did he take along the way to minimise unnecessary damage He left that for a proper class of journalists. Articulate what (even category) of damage you feel he did, that wasn't also about .gov actions that were outright illegal, and/or being hidden from the very citizens paying the bill, and maybe you'll have a discussion here.
    - hulitu 2y ago
      > He made a unilateral decision to take as much classified information as he could possibly get his hands on and then leak it with no regards to the consequences that came with it. As we used to say on /.: "Citation needed".
      - mdhb 2y ago
        It was widely reported at the time that he literally wrote a crawler to grab as much stuff on the network as possible specifically and tweaked it to look for the most classified stuff he could find if I recall correctly.
  - racional 2y ago
    Sounds like you're the kind of person who likes to build on on hypotheticals. I'm not that kind of person. That said you can go on thinking that people who don't share your appetite for rank speculation are blithering idiots, as suits your fancy. I'm fully aware of what he might have done. I just don't find it useful to pretend that I therefore know what he did.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      This isn’t a hypothetical. This is stated as a fact even in the absence of public evidence in intelligence circles that there is just zero chance in hell that he would find himself in that situation where he had zero good moves left that he wouldn’t be actively exploited for everything he knew before he would be offered any kind of asylum. Russia actually had a strong incentive to turn him over if he wasn’t already an asset as not only did they already have all the file he had leaked but it was put to them at the time that this would effectively destroy the intelligence relationship between the two countries and that if he was actually acting independently that they didn’t stand to benefit by protecting him by offering him asylum. Something happened to make that cost worth it to them. Again, this is in no way a controversial statement in professional circles. Edit: I want to tighten up my position here for clarity’s sake. Was Snowden an operation is not taken as gospel in the IC but is a credible theory without compelling evidence against it but if it wasn’t and he effectively was an independent walk in that he would be expected to act as a consultant of sorts in exchange for ongoing protection. Both of those are really shitty outcomes however you look at it.
      - racional 2y ago
        It's certainly a credible thesis that's being offering here, and yours is probably the best formulation I've heard of it. Still, from my own brushings with folks in "professional circles" -- they tend to be pretty consistent about packaging assessments such as these with probabilistic labels (e.g. "likely", "highly likely" and so on). My main concern here is quick toggling to "known" or "near certain" status (or insinuations that "everyone in the IC believes this", which I am noting is not your intention here, but it did sound like it at first). It's also just a general policy I like to follow with events out in the real, messy world. No matter good our "model" may sound (to our own ears) about what someone did or why, it's always entirely possible we're missing something basic -- not so much a piece of bombshell evidence, but about the broader human context; or that our analysis is simply flawed. On top of that there's a significant tail risk that comes with putting too much stake in our models, especially when they get coupled together, and motivated reasoning inevitably starts to kick in. On a finer-grained note (and to explain why I can't assign this narrative too high of a degree of likelihood): It's not automatically clear that the Russians could have traded Snowden in by now -- they may be asking too high of a price (since he's apparently way more valuable than anyone the US has in their trading deck), and since 2014 they may have been coupling it with their hopes that the US will decide to start being "reasonable" about the situation in Ukraine (and so his transfer would be coupled with a deal in regard to that situation), and so forth. I also don't see how we know that "they already had all the files he had leaked", or that anything about his case has the potential to destroy the intelligence relationship (which has always found a way of surviving, despite all the bile and vitriol we see on the surface). (This is all in regard to the "weak" version of this model, that Snowden acted independently but had to have broken once he got stuck in the Motherland and was forced to ask for asylum. The "strong" version in the sibling post -- which asserts that he must have been cooperating with his current hosts from the very start -- has just way too many plotholes, and is way too top-heavy in my view. Not to be dismissive, but I have to limit my time here, so that's all I can offer on it at the moment).
joshstrange 2y ago
I feel very similarly and came here to make almost the same comment. I am glad that Snowden exposed what he did, but I can’t think of a single headline with his name in it over the last decade that I haven’t rolled my eyes at. Often the thought going through my mind is “why do we care what he says?” or maybe “does he have any relevant expertise on this?”. He often seems to weigh in on things only tenuously related to the leaks or not related at all.

racional 2y ago

He definitely has no choice about "holing up" in Russia. His native country revoked his passport, after all. As to whether he has given up information -- we just don't know. I don't know about you, but in situations where I have no concrete indications from which to know (rather than merely speculate) that someone has done something Bad, and even when they did, it probably just doesn't matter very much -- I tend not to worry about it. And not only that, I usually just give them the benefit of the doubt. Life is too short for holding judgements in our head about what people might have done in situations we just don't have any visibility into.

mdhb 2y ago
To pretend that he had some option to just say no thanks on giving up information is so incredibly naive. He did have a choice in the sense of go to jail or give up everything he knew for protection. We can all very publicly see the decision he made but whatever his motives may have been for his initial leak (though I would argue it too was in no way a net positive) that clearly doesn’t extend to what happened beyond that when he applied for asylum. I think the truth of the matter is that he didn’t have a clear step 2 in his plan, realised he was in way over his head, panicked and did something very stupid afterwards.
- mdhb 2y ago
  Just going to add a small bit of extra context to this from the eyes of the intelligence community because that doesn’t seem to ever get a look at on Hacker News where for many years there has been a more or less unquestionable assumption that he is some kind of hero. But from their point of view, it’s really in no way obvious that this wasn’t an operation from the very start. The FBIs chief spy catcher was actually working as a liaison officer in Moscow when this happened and he talks about it in some detail here in this interview (will update with timestamps later if I can find it) https://www.youtube.com/live/0NSGOJs150w https://www.youtube.com/live/0NSGOJs150w but in his experience this is actually EXACTLY what he would expect an operation like that to look like and there has never been any clear evidence in the years since that would put a meaningful dent in that theory. The other point I wanted to make was that because people tend to have no real idea beyond movies as to how intelligence agencies actually function in real life they have no context for where he fit into the bigger picture. But Snowden was never some super spy or anything like that, he has zero operational experience or context he was just a Microsoft SharePoint administrator who had a security clearance. He demonstrated numerous times since then that he actually had no meaningful context as to what he was actually leaking for into the wider operational picture or what kinds of controls were in place around its usage. He made a unilateral decision to take as much classified information as he could possibly get his hands on and then leak it with no regards to the consequences that came with it. There are legitimate reasons to be upset with certain actions of the US intel community I am not here to do some wholesale defence on their behalf but this image he has built for himself as some heroic whistleblower is built on incredibly flimsy evidence. There is a reason why he has essentially zero defenders inside the intelligence community and I would put it to you that it’s not simply because “they are all evil”.
  - racional 2y ago
    Can you explain in your own words what kind of "operation" are we talking about here? The video sounds interesting, but I won't be able to give it a look for quite some time. Plus I'd like to know what your view specifically is on the matter.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      Sorry just to be clear the accusation is that he was effectively working for the Russians knowingly and the plan was to leak as much source and methods style information as widely as possible but under the cover of an independent whistleblower with the explicit goal of degrading US capabilities as much as possible. Essentially that his motivations were something entirely different to his version of events. It’s ultimately an impossible question to answer most likely. His stated motivations make sense on the surface for sure but I think there are still some big questions around assuming it’s all true, what steps did he take along the way to minimise unnecessary damage and I can’t recall much on that front worth pointing to.
      - DANmode 2y ago
        > what steps did he take along the way to minimise unnecessary damage He left that for a proper class of journalists. Articulate what (even category) of damage you feel he did, that wasn't also about .gov actions that were outright illegal, and/or being hidden from the very citizens paying the bill, and maybe you'll have a discussion here.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > He made a unilateral decision to take as much classified information as he could possibly get his hands on and then leak it with no regards to the consequences that came with it. As we used to say on /.: "Citation needed".
    - mdhb 2y ago
      It was widely reported at the time that he literally wrote a crawler to grab as much stuff on the network as possible specifically and tweaked it to look for the most classified stuff he could find if I recall correctly.
- racional 2y ago
  Sounds like you're the kind of person who likes to build on on hypotheticals. I'm not that kind of person. That said you can go on thinking that people who don't share your appetite for rank speculation are blithering idiots, as suits your fancy. I'm fully aware of what he might have done. I just don't find it useful to pretend that I therefore know what he did.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    This isn’t a hypothetical. This is stated as a fact even in the absence of public evidence in intelligence circles that there is just zero chance in hell that he would find himself in that situation where he had zero good moves left that he wouldn’t be actively exploited for everything he knew before he would be offered any kind of asylum. Russia actually had a strong incentive to turn him over if he wasn’t already an asset as not only did they already have all the file he had leaked but it was put to them at the time that this would effectively destroy the intelligence relationship between the two countries and that if he was actually acting independently that they didn’t stand to benefit by protecting him by offering him asylum. Something happened to make that cost worth it to them. Again, this is in no way a controversial statement in professional circles. Edit: I want to tighten up my position here for clarity’s sake. Was Snowden an operation is not taken as gospel in the IC but is a credible theory without compelling evidence against it but if it wasn’t and he effectively was an independent walk in that he would be expected to act as a consultant of sorts in exchange for ongoing protection. Both of those are really shitty outcomes however you look at it.
    - racional 2y ago
      It's certainly a credible thesis that's being offering here, and yours is probably the best formulation I've heard of it. Still, from my own brushings with folks in "professional circles" -- they tend to be pretty consistent about packaging assessments such as these with probabilistic labels (e.g. "likely", "highly likely" and so on). My main concern here is quick toggling to "known" or "near certain" status (or insinuations that "everyone in the IC believes this", which I am noting is not your intention here, but it did sound like it at first). It's also just a general policy I like to follow with events out in the real, messy world. No matter good our "model" may sound (to our own ears) about what someone did or why, it's always entirely possible we're missing something basic -- not so much a piece of bombshell evidence, but about the broader human context; or that our analysis is simply flawed. On top of that there's a significant tail risk that comes with putting too much stake in our models, especially when they get coupled together, and motivated reasoning inevitably starts to kick in. On a finer-grained note (and to explain why I can't assign this narrative too high of a degree of likelihood): It's not automatically clear that the Russians could have traded Snowden in by now -- they may be asking too high of a price (since he's apparently way more valuable than anyone the US has in their trading deck), and since 2014 they may have been coupling it with their hopes that the US will decide to start being "reasonable" about the situation in Ukraine (and so his transfer would be coupled with a deal in regard to that situation), and so forth. I also don't see how we know that "they already had all the files he had leaked", or that anything about his case has the potential to destroy the intelligence relationship (which has always found a way of surviving, despite all the bile and vitriol we see on the surface). (This is all in regard to the "weak" version of this model, that Snowden acted independently but had to have broken once he got stuck in the Motherland and was forced to ask for asylum. The "strong" version in the sibling post -- which asserts that he must have been cooperating with his current hosts from the very start -- has just way too many plotholes, and is way too top-heavy in my view. Not to be dismissive, but I have to limit my time here, so that's all I can offer on it at the moment).

joshstrange 2y ago

I feel very similarly and came here to make almost the same comment. I am glad that Snowden exposed what he did, but I can’t think of a single headline with his name in it over the last decade that I haven’t rolled my eyes at. Often the thought going through my mind is “why do we care what he says?” or maybe “does he have any relevant expertise on this?”. He often seems to weigh in on things only tenuously related to the leaks or not related at all.