5 ms·

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 oppos

by 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.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Ultimately, Snowden probably doesn't know anything that China doesn't already know. (You couldn't say the same thing about the information Manning dumped, by the way). Regardless: I don't think his motives should have much to do with how the law treats him, which makes the concern over which countries he's choosing to visit even more of a sideshow. I think most rational observers understand why Snowden is picking the countries he's picking; he's choosing the large, easily reached countries with the weakest ties to US law enforcement. It's disingenuous to pretend that his arrival in Moscow is a commentary on Russian civil rights.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      > You couldn't say the same thing about the information Manning dumped, by the way How far along the "normal to crazy conspiracy theory" line would it be to question whether, if people like Manning and Snowden can so easily leak this information, couldn't China already have got it themselves? I mean, if spying had reached that level... would we know about it?
kyllo 13y ago
Hong Kong is outside China's "Great Firewall."
- mpyne 13y ago
  I know, that's why I said "country". Was hoping to avoid the technically correct annotation and it would simply lengthen my comment, but then I should have remembered this is HN. :) I'll put it this way; can we all admit that the fact that Hong Kong must defer to the Communist government in Beijing was not accidental on Snowden's part?
rayiner 13y ago
All the upboats for this comment. The false equivocation really has to stop.
peeters 13y ago
He's fleeing to countries which won't fall over themselves to gain the favor of the U.S. and thus extradite Snowden. It might not be a coincidence that countries that would want to shame the U.S. would also not have a great civil liberties record. Just because he's not publicly admonishing these countries doesn't mean that he condones their behavior. Perhaps he's a pragmatist who knows better than to bite the hand the feeds. Or perhaps he is much more impassioned about freedom in the U.S., his native land, sold to him as a bastion of civil liberty, than about freedom in countries that he cares less about.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Perhaps. I do wish that he'd make his reasons clear, however. I something like that is what he thinks, then saying as much would be yet another good PR move; as it stands his actions are getting closer to being indistinguishable from that of any random spy.
  - rdouble 13y ago
    It's weirder than being a spy because presumably a spy wouldn't have made the whole affair public. It looks more like he got himself in over his head and now is being manipulated by others.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    "Snowden, the computer contractor who exposed details of secret U.S. surveillance programs, told Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa that it is "unlikely that I will have a fair trial or humane treatment" if handed over to U.S. officials to stand trial, according to a letter from Snowden read by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino."[1] That seems pretty clear to me. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/nsa-leak/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/nsa-leak/index.html
  - danielweber 13y ago
    I don't like the hero-worship of Snowden, but I can definitely understand why, when asking a big favor of a country, he would not say anything bad about them.
famousactress 13y ago
It's a strawman, and a pretty easy one to get folks to give traction to. People love to identify hypocrisy even though avoiding it has a habit of being wildly impractical. I think hypocrisy gets a bad rap. It's avoidance is a common but subtle excuse for not doing shit that matters. The idea that Snowden has only chosen to rail against the unreasonable privacy violations of the country he's a citizen of, and most familiar with doesn't seem surprising or unreasonable to me. The argument that if he hasn't put similar energies into calling out every other nation that finds itself in violation of these ideals, then he must be lying about his motivation is absurd. Also, he doesn't say 'you' can't get a fair trial in America, he says that he can't get a fair trial in America.
ianterrell 13y ago
"It should be obvious why this argument is absurd, even in principle. Asylum seekers do not have the luxury of choosing states with perfect records from which to seek asylum. That is because no such states exist. " http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html#ECUADOR http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html#ECUADOR
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
> Is he wrong though? He fled to a country that has a "Great Firewall" and Internet censors He fled to Hong Kong, not mainland China. Having been in both places, I can assure you that HK doesn't have a great firewall and internet censors.

by mpyne 13y ago

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.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Ultimately, Snowden probably doesn't know anything that China doesn't already know. (You couldn't say the same thing about the information Manning dumped, by the way). Regardless: I don't think his motives should have much to do with how the law treats him, which makes the concern over which countries he's choosing to visit even more of a sideshow. I think most rational observers understand why Snowden is picking the countries he's picking; he's choosing the large, easily reached countries with the weakest ties to US law enforcement. It's disingenuous to pretend that his arrival in Moscow is a commentary on Russian civil rights.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    > You couldn't say the same thing about the information Manning dumped, by the way How far along the "normal to crazy conspiracy theory" line would it be to question whether, if people like Manning and Snowden can so easily leak this information, couldn't China already have got it themselves? I mean, if spying had reached that level... would we know about it?

kyllo 13y ago

Hong Kong is outside China's "Great Firewall."

mpyne 13y ago
I know, that's why I said "country". Was hoping to avoid the technically correct annotation and it would simply lengthen my comment, but then I should have remembered this is HN. :) I'll put it this way; can we all admit that the fact that Hong Kong must defer to the Communist government in Beijing was not accidental on Snowden's part?

rayiner 13y ago

All the upboats for this comment. The false equivocation really has to stop.

peeters 13y ago

He's fleeing to countries which won't fall over themselves to gain the favor of the U.S. and thus extradite Snowden. It might not be a coincidence that countries that would want to shame the U.S. would also not have a great civil liberties record. Just because he's not publicly admonishing these countries doesn't mean that he condones their behavior. Perhaps he's a pragmatist who knows better than to bite the hand the feeds. Or perhaps he is much more impassioned about freedom in the U.S., his native land, sold to him as a bastion of civil liberty, than about freedom in countries that he cares less about.

mpyne 13y ago
Perhaps. I do wish that he'd make his reasons clear, however. I something like that is what he thinks, then saying as much would be yet another good PR move; as it stands his actions are getting closer to being indistinguishable from that of any random spy.
- rdouble 13y ago
  It's weirder than being a spy because presumably a spy wouldn't have made the whole affair public. It looks more like he got himself in over his head and now is being manipulated by others.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  "Snowden, the computer contractor who exposed details of secret U.S. surveillance programs, told Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa that it is "unlikely that I will have a fair trial or humane treatment" if handed over to U.S. officials to stand trial, according to a letter from Snowden read by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino."[1] That seems pretty clear to me. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/nsa-leak/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/24/politics/nsa-leak/index.html
- danielweber 13y ago
  I don't like the hero-worship of Snowden, but I can definitely understand why, when asking a big favor of a country, he would not say anything bad about them.

famousactress 13y ago

It's a strawman, and a pretty easy one to get folks to give traction to. People love to identify hypocrisy even though avoiding it has a habit of being wildly impractical. I think hypocrisy gets a bad rap. It's avoidance is a common but subtle excuse for not doing shit that matters. The idea that Snowden has only chosen to rail against the unreasonable privacy violations of the country he's a citizen of, and most familiar with doesn't seem surprising or unreasonable to me. The argument that if he hasn't put similar energies into calling out every other nation that finds itself in violation of these ideals, then he must be lying about his motivation is absurd. Also, he doesn't say 'you' can't get a fair trial in America, he says that he can't get a fair trial in America.

ianterrell 13y ago

"It should be obvious why this argument is absurd, even in principle. Asylum seekers do not have the luxury of choosing states with perfect records from which to seek asylum. That is because no such states exist. " http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html#ECUADOR http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html#ECUADOR

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

> Is he wrong though? He fled to a country that has a "Great Firewall" and Internet censors He fled to Hong Kong, not mainland China. Having been in both places, I can assure you that HK doesn't have a great firewall and internet censors.