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I will take all of this at face value, but the greater point is something that she mentioned at the end; that the political smearing/prosecution of whistleblowe

• at-fates-hands 13y ago
  As much as I'm for what he did and revealing the Prism program, he stopped being a whistleblower when he released top secret, classified documents. There's a ton of different ways to prove what the NSA was doing without leaking a mountain of classified documents.
  • twentysix 13y ago
    No, there wasn't any alternate way to do it. Watch the three guys who tried to do it via official channels, explain why it doesnt work and why they think he did the right thing. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...
    • gruseom 13y ago
      One detail from that interview that didn't get much attention: when those guys went through official channels inside NSA and brought their allegations of wrongdoing to the Inspector General, the Inspector General recommended criminal prosecution of them. From the article: Jesselyn Radack: Not only did they go through multiple and all the proper internal channels and they failed, but more than that, it was turned against them. ... The inspector general was the one who gave their names to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act.
  • chr1 13y ago
    How can one be an whistleblower, if he doesn't release top secret documents? Governments should not have `classified' documents, and laws against revealing information. They see everything people can do and be people must be able to see everything they do.
    • TeMPOraL 13y ago
      Of course they should, unless you really want to see things like codes for ICBMs or "Report on how to shut down half the national power grid because of XYZ" plastered all over Reddit. There are some things government, unfortunately, must keep secret to ensure safety of the governed.
  • bobwaycott 13y ago
    How exactly do you see he could have blown the whistle without releasing supporting evidence, classified or not? Had he come out and made these claims without any supporting evidence, do you think anyone would have noticed? Or would he have just been relegated to the sidelines, denounced as a crackpot, etc.?
    • at-fates-hands 13y ago
      Remind me again how telling the Chinese when and how the NSA was hacking them makes us or our country safer? http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/06/nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-reveals-new-us-hacking-accusations/ http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/06/nsa-leaker-edward-snowd... "has divulged information to the Post which showed how computers in the SAR and on the mainland had been targeted by the NSA over a four-year period." Pointblank, this had NOTHING to do with the domestic NSA surveillance he was uncovering. It just gives the Chinese a really good idea of how you're carrying out your surveillance and allows them secure their networks. For all of the security stories about the Chinese hacking Google and other US companies and stealing their secrets, I find it ironic nobody seems to care this country had been trying to locate and disrupt this sort of state sponsored hacking. So yeah, this is WAY beyond what I consider "whistleblowing"
      • SamReidHughes 13y ago
        Explain how it makes the U.S.A. more dangerous, please.
      • bobwaycott 13y ago
        So I take it you support American cyber aggression? Locate and disrupt state-sponsored hacking with more state-sponsored hacking? If you're okay with your government hacking other sovereign nations, that may explain why you have a strange line in the sand that whistleblowing is only for domestic purposes. Others may not be so charitable.