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Snowden is only a traitor if you believe that "the American people" - who are the primary recipients of the disclosed information - are the enemies of the Ameri

Snowden is only a traitor if you believe that "the American people" - who are the primary recipients of the disclosed information - are the enemies of the American government. Which Andreessen may well.

lisper 12y ago
No, not even then. The government and the nation are not the same thing. The oath of allegiance is to the nation and the Constitution, not to the government, and it specifically includes the proviso of protecting the nation against "all enemies, foreign and domestic". If there are traitors here, they are the ones who violated the Constitution, the ones who helped conceal those violations, and the ones who saw all this happening and said nothing.
mpyne 12y ago
> Snowden is only a traitor if you believe that "the American people" - who are the primary recipients of the disclosed information - are the enemies of the American government. While I don't buy into the "Snowden is a traitor" argument (as traitor has a specific Constitutional definition for a reason, unlike any other crime), you can certainly be guilty of espionage even if you also provide information to the American public. E.g. The Soviet spies who got information on American nuclear weapons development programs were clearly guilty of espionage; note that this is true even if they didn't actually manage to get the information to their Soviet case handlers. But if they leaked those same nuclear weapons programs to the American public (and by extension, the world public) in addition to their Soviet case handlers they'd still be guilty of espionage. Snowden is the Manning case all over again. You can make an argument for whistleblowing for information he revealed showing crimes committed against the American people. For literally all other information (stuff that doesn't reveal crimes, stuff that reveals the NSA doing its literally assigned security mission, etc.) it's illegal espionage, whether the American public happened to be CC'ed or not.

lisper 12y ago

No, not even then. The government and the nation are not the same thing. The oath of allegiance is to the nation and the Constitution, not to the government, and it specifically includes the proviso of protecting the nation against "all enemies, foreign and domestic". If there are traitors here, they are the ones who violated the Constitution, the ones who helped conceal those violations, and the ones who saw all this happening and said nothing.

mpyne 12y ago

> Snowden is only a traitor if you believe that "the American people" - who are the primary recipients of the disclosed information - are the enemies of the American government. While I don't buy into the "Snowden is a traitor" argument (as traitor has a specific Constitutional definition for a reason, unlike any other crime), you can certainly be guilty of espionage even if you also provide information to the American public. E.g. The Soviet spies who got information on American nuclear weapons development programs were clearly guilty of espionage; note that this is true even if they didn't actually manage to get the information to their Soviet case handlers. But if they leaked those same nuclear weapons programs to the American public (and by extension, the world public) in addition to their Soviet case handlers they'd still be guilty of espionage. Snowden is the Manning case all over again. You can make an argument for whistleblowing for information he revealed showing crimes committed against the American people. For literally all other information (stuff that doesn't reveal crimes, stuff that reveals the NSA doing its literally assigned security mission, etc.) it's illegal espionage, whether the American public happened to be CC'ed or not.