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I'm sorry, but I can't let your aside at the end stand. From my point of view it had nothing to do with ethics, and everything to do with the possibility of fam

• chrischen 13y ago
  You should consider the possibility that the fame was necessary for his personal self-preservation. If he didn't make himself famous, the gov't could potentially do very bad things to him and no one would notice, or care. The publicity could have been his greatest and only weapon against the US.
  • dkuntz2 13y ago
    How was fame necessary for his self-preservation? If nobody knew who leaked how is revealing himself useful? Deep Throat never needed to reveal himself to the world. Things seemed to go fairly well for him. There are better ways to make sure people don't do bad things to you than tell the whole world that you were the leak. A simple program that requires daily interaction that sends an email to one of the people he leaked to if he doesn't interact with it, revealing himself at that point. It was not his "greatest and only weapon". He was someone who wanted his name to be remembered. Tangentially, the reveal made the conversation about him, and not the information.
    • jrochkind1 13y ago
      Because even if "nobody" knew who leaked, the US government would probably find out. And if "nobody" else knew, he'd be disappeared by now. Things have changed a lot since deep throat. As Daniel Ellsberg (from around the same era) wrote, they let him _out on bail_ while waiting for a trial. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-l... Back when the US government assassinating people without trial might actually outrage the public enough to cost politicians their jobs. Times have changed. The "he did it to be famous" thing is exactly the story the government is trying to tell about Manning too, and it's entirely incredible in both cases, just doens't make any sense. Who puts themselves at risk of life imprisonment or death (judicial or extrajudicial) just cause they want to be famous? It doesn't even make any sense.
    • lelandbatey 13y ago
      There are basically two ways that this information leaking game goes down: The first is to play it sneaky, being covert in your dealings and hoping against all Odds that you don't screw up and get silently caught. The second is to do everything in the extreme public eye, so that the accumulated eyes of the world are watching you, but also watching out for you. Both are totally legitimate paths, but the public one has a higher survival rate. It's what I would've done.
    • chrischen 13y ago
      Given the fact that Snowden knew the pervasiveness of the NSA spying programs, I'm guessing he knew that it wouldn't have been hard for the government to deduce that he was the leaker eventually. Plus, it was pretty likely the government kept track of its workers in a way that would have made it even easier to identify the leaker eventually. So he probably decided to just cut to the publicity part to protect himself. In either case, you don't really know he was in it for fame.
• coldtea 13y ago
  Why is that some people trivialize any important political or societal question into BS pop psychology about the actor's motives? We could not care less about those. Perhaps the result of too many bad hollywood movies focusing on "character development", a legacy of puritanism, being conditioned by crap news coverage to turn everything into gossip. Oh, and inexperience with thinking politically. >The personal cost wasn't due his ethics, it was due to his inability to shut up. You just couldn't contain your disdain for the man, right? I see some projection in play here, if you allow me the same BS pop psychology.
• elihu 13y ago
  If he had remained anonymous, the naysayers would have called him a coward. By revealing himself, he's labelled a narcissist.