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Largely, yes, I believe he's done some great work bringing to light constitutional abuses. I am glad Mr. Ellsberg believes him to be his hero. I believe he is a

by plorg 13y ago

Largely, yes, I believe he's done some great work bringing to light constitutional abuses. I am glad Mr. Ellsberg believes him to be his hero. I believe he is a flawed hero, though I also believe that all humans have their own flaws. However, this is somewhat tangential to my post. Whether you want to call him a criminal, a miscreant, a hero, or even a minor deity on account of his actions, you cannot do so while simultaneously claiming that the information the public receives from these leaks is, morally speaking, completely removed from Mr. Snowden because he handed it off to media outlets. That's what Mr. Greenwald is arguing, and it's confounding. Finally, Greenwald's post was literally written to respond to the claim that the info released about the NSA compromising Huawei has little to nothing to do with the upholding the Constitution. If that's what the leaks are about (which you seem to be suggesting), this is the wrong place to use that as a basis for calling the leaker a hero.

acqq 13y ago
Ellsberg also leaked a lot of material to the press. The press then decided what to publish. Snowden did the same. Do you believe Snowden had to leak only a few pages? It simply wouldn't work. It is doubtful if even the attention the topic received up to now is going to result in any change to the politics. If the political conditions present now remain even after the future articles covering Snowden's material then Snowden still leaked too little and not too much and the press failed to make the change using what he leaked. The world is still in the middle of the attempt to induce a change, we certainly can't consider it done, even if the particular agencies would prefer that.
- plorg 13y ago
  Let me make this explicit: I am not trying to address whether Snowden is lawful, chaotic, good, bad, or neutral. That is left as an excercise to the reader, though I guess I've proposed some of my ideas above, since that's apparently what you think I want to talk about. I am talking of Greenwald's argument. His argument, again, is as follows: once Snowden handed off the documents, he was absolved of moral responsibility in the matter because he gave the authority to release information to [a list of publications apparently excluding the NYT, but not in such a way as to prevent the NYT from collaborating with the institutions]. This argument seems willfully off-base, because without his participation - or, actually, his instigation - the journalists wouldn't have papers to release at all. He is obviously, then, the prime mover, and so trying to pretend that he doesn't exist as a moral agent is an exercise in willful ignorance.

by plorg 13y ago

acqq 13y ago

Ellsberg also leaked a lot of material to the press. The press then decided what to publish. Snowden did the same. Do you believe Snowden had to leak only a few pages? It simply wouldn't work. It is doubtful if even the attention the topic received up to now is going to result in any change to the politics. If the political conditions present now remain even after the future articles covering Snowden's material then Snowden still leaked too little and not too much and the press failed to make the change using what he leaked. The world is still in the middle of the attempt to induce a change, we certainly can't consider it done, even if the particular agencies would prefer that.

plorg 13y ago
Let me make this explicit: I am not trying to address whether Snowden is lawful, chaotic, good, bad, or neutral. That is left as an excercise to the reader, though I guess I've proposed some of my ideas above, since that's apparently what you think I want to talk about. I am talking of Greenwald's argument. His argument, again, is as follows: once Snowden handed off the documents, he was absolved of moral responsibility in the matter because he gave the authority to release information to [a list of publications apparently excluding the NYT, but not in such a way as to prevent the NYT from collaborating with the institutions]. This argument seems willfully off-base, because without his participation - or, actually, his instigation - the journalists wouldn't have papers to release at all. He is obviously, then, the prime mover, and so trying to pretend that he doesn't exist as a moral agent is an exercise in willful ignorance.