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His failures to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance I

• greenyoda 13y ago
  The Obama administration has cordial relations with some countries that aren't very big supporters of civil rights, such as Saudi Arabia. For that matter, I haven't heard very much criticism of China or Russia coming from the Obama administration either.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    This is a great point, actually. The Saudis are not very kind of their own people either, and if anything their Internet controls are just as strict (from what I've heard).
• camus 13y ago
  nope,that's the "we are better than everybody" complex.
• mpyne 13y ago
  Is he wrong though? He fled to a country that has a "Great Firewall" and Internet censors and then to a country where journalists are routinely killed for opposing Putin. Isn't Pussy Riot still in prison? Most people are not hypocritical about principles they care deeply about, so it's fair to ask whether Internet freedom is itself the principle Snowden is concerned about (in which case, why allow for hypocrisy), or whether it's something else entirely. After all one thing people pretty much can't say about RMS is that the man doesn't stand behind his principles. (edited to fix verb tense) Now I'm even starting to be confused about what precisely Snowden's motives are. On some topics he talks about how people in general have rights, then he starts talking about how he's worried about America and Americans specifically as if he's a patriot that doesn't care as much about the rest of the world. He talks about violating 4th Amendment rights and needing warrants and then says that you can't get a fair trial in America.
  • tptacek 13y ago
    Yes, he's wrong. The logic doesn't work. Supposed human rights abuses in the US don't actually have much to do with abuses in Russia; there's little the US could have done to affect the outcome for Pussy Riot. If the conditions aren't somehow causally related, then they're independent, and the onus isn't on Snowden to account for every independent human rights abuse in the world. I've actually been more aggravated by this argument coming from the "other side". When it was announced that Snowden was heading for Ecuador, Human Rights Watch (among others) began posting to Twitter about Ecuador's terrible record with press freedom (shortened: there is freedom of the press in Ecuador as long as the press isn't criticizing the Correa administration). People immediate set about slamming HRW for drawing attention to Ecuador's problems without accounting for every problem in the US. Same problem: if Ecuador is jailing journalists, seizing their property, or even torturing and killing them --- all things alleged by human rights groups about Ecuador --- that's a problem regardless of what the US is doing. Similarly, if the NSA is unlawfully stretching the FISA process to surveil Americans, that's something worth publicizing no matter how many journalists Russia and China kill. I have a lot of the same problems with the Snowden story that you do, but I was disheartened to read that Carney had made that argument today.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      Well, I do agree that independent events can be treated independently. I think the one big thing I can't get around is the cognitive dissonance of wanting more of the 'rule of law' around things like FISA but then globe-hopping because the 'rule of law' has become inconvenient. Certainly where the law is not being followed that should be fixed, and good on Snowden for noting that. But how can it be true that the same judiciary that issues warrants under the 4th Amendment cannot be trusted to run a fair trial? If the judiciary is untrustworthy then adding warrants to more spots in the NSA cannot fix the issue. So is that what Snowden wants, or does he want to prevent the government from even having the ability to monitor communications, even with a warrant? Similarly, if Snowden is such a patriot I can't believe that he has putting himself, his brain, and all the TS that he's carrying or has access to within 100 miles of Russia. He's potentially one $5 wrench away from spilling a lot of TS, voluntarily or otherwise, to people who are not as kind as Assange and Greenwald. I just don't know what to think about him anymore, and I think that's what is bugging me more than anything.
• brown9-2 13y ago
  Why does it puzzle you? What aim did leaking the NSA's hacking of China serve the civil liberties of Americans back home? edit: or to reveal that the NSA listened to Medvedev's phone calls at the G8?
  • bluehex 13y ago
    People have a right to know what their government does in their name. It serves the civil liberties of the people by giving them truth about how their govt. is acting, and giving them the opportunity to speak out about it.
  • bluehex 13y ago
    People have a right to know what their government does in their name. It serves the civil liberties of the people by giving them truth about how their govt. is acting, and giving them the opportunity to speak out about it.
  • bluehex 13y ago
    People have a right to know what their government does in their name. It serves the civil liberties of the people by giving them truth about how their govt. is acting, and giving them the opportunity to speak out about it.
  • peeters 13y ago
    You're attacking a strawman. The quote was not >His exposing of classified NSA activity suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance Internet freedom and free speech it was: >His failures to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance Internet freedom and free speech Maybe Snowden's intention was to hurt the U.S.; I couldn't say. But it certainly doesn't follow logically from Snowden not admonishing other countries.