I don't share the sympathies of him being a hero. I'd wait until seeing all the information before making a judgment:
There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]
There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.
There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.
In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.
He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.
The leaks themselves:
He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.
In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.
It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.
Yes. Those are the questions I'd like to see asked. Right now, it is the convenient talking points that Snowden already seems to have a reply for.
Can you really compare yourself to Daniel Ellsberg, when you take a job with the aim of leaking everything you get your hands on (without being able to vet it)?
Why did Snowden download the entirety of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia What abuses of the constitution did he expect to find in a secure data sharing platform? Were these potential abuses of the constitution worth it to leak its ~255,000 user accounts to a journalist who made his boyfriend travel through customs with an undecrypted USB-stick, thereby globally exposing it?
Why did Snowden steal the passwords from his colleagues and clients to do the leaking? Had he already found documents with abuses of the constitution using this method before? And what about the first time he did this? Was this day-to-day exposure to material that required whistleblowing? Or was this an elaborate hunt for material that could eventually, in part, amount to whistle-blowing-worthy, thereby partly justifying your strange snooping behavior?
Snowden fled to Hong Kong (China) -> Russia -> South-America, and then makes it sound like the US put him in Russian exile.
Then, instead of facing justice in the US, he knew, that by handing over unvetted documents to security-unaware journalists, they would end up in the hands of other security agencies. The damage would be akin to having a administrator-level Russian-China spy embedded in the US IC, leaking everything out. So don't make the damage about "some papers published something about 0.001% of the leaks that was of public interest and of no harm".
About the extract in question: I really believe that if Snowden could have deleted all his old moronic internet posts, he would have. He could not figure it out. Talks about writing an easy script, but then goes on to bloviate about some Southpark "the internet should be a place where people can make mistakes" moral.
> I could put together one tiny little script — not even a real program — and all of my posts would be gone in under an hour. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to do. Trust me, I considered it.
And his girlfriend is still suspicious as hell, given that she visited China and Hongkong for months, before meeting up Snowden by 8'ing all the desk jockey looking men on Hotornot.
Instead of attacking the content of the leaks or his claimed motives you are mainly attacking his character.
It should be obvious that he planned to take the data. Taking it without a plan would be a good way for him to fail to accomplish anything. The main detraction I can see is that he leaked without regard to content, even considering he may not have had time to look over what he had taken (e.g. there is some top level stuff about drones that probably could have been redacted with a quick scan of the documents).
He likely avoided commenting on improvements to remain apolitical; if he had not, it would be more ammunition for character assassination. Other countries may be doing roughly the same but most people's issue is not with the fact spying was occurring but that it was largely turned inward.[1] You do not know he would throw away the whole system. As previously mentioned, he likely had no time to figure out what documents were what and the impact of their release would be.
In any case, he was acting as if he expected his own government to completely ignore the protections it had built in to defend its citizens. That some of the domestic programs he exposed were since cancelled due to public outrage is telling.
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[1]: Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring. We repeatedly see little in the way of domestic terrorism but because inward spying is so much easier to do it seems to make up a disproportionate amount of the information generated; information that is likely not representative of real threats.
Well, he defected. Please understand I'm trying to understand him better myself, because his actions don't match the high-minded platitudes he claims to espouse: he didn't file a lawsuit, write criticism of his bosses, policies, etc, run for congress or started lobbying to improve the system. He bypassed all those mechanisms and dumped programs. We can't have the public oversee every method to gather information, or it wouldn't be very effective.
And judging by the posts/comments I read on here and news sites, I'm not sure people understand the difference between information gathering, criminal investigations, and consumer / medical / etc. privacy. Don't you think it'd be better to agree on a common ground that these are different purposes before engaging in a dialectic on it?
I bring up him having workplace / life stress, because he's human. He fits a model very similar to traitors who worked for their gov that spied for other countries, except he replaced his handler was a journalist. What he says here is spooky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9yK1QndJSM&t=70
Put is this way: Why should I get my safety as a US person put at risk so someone can publicize their story that someone leaked something again? In that video at 1:00. He's trying to make it so classification basically no longer has meaning, if they defect to a journalist.
> Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring.
I'd think a normal person would expect that: if you're a national, your government should be protecting you, not targeting you with those tools. Unless it's your intent to destroy it somehow.
For the sake of encouraging understanding: I think constitution is used as a way to imply subjectivity of what feels right. Unless you have court decisions to mention. The constitution hasn't been updated much and the case law is porous. Example: Unopened email after a certain time is treated as abandoned.
Don't you think the policies around the use of the data gathering tool / method is more important than the tool existing or not? Based on how Snowden evangelization goes: if we took its philosophy to its logical end, people will just leak every source / method, the system will never improve, and it wouldn't be very safe for us!
That's not what I'm saying, the leaking to a journalist is the defection.
The leaker is on the best behavior to impress their new handler. They're suckers and getting played.
An analogy to what Snowden did: How would you feel if you had a significant other that promised themselves to you, but behind your back, connected with someone else, some jester/stranger/charlatan. Hurtfully, you find they were eager to move mountains for them, and all the while criticizing your mere existence as a person. It'd be safe to say they've broke their vow, even though they haven't officially acknowledged yet.
People stood up to the warrant-less searches but were disposed of one way or another. A good example is the Qwest CEO: he wasn't killed, but he was jailed after acting in his own self interest after his company was ruined.
There are occurrences that are less clear cut but still suspicious and that involve long prison terms or death.
>Put is this way: Why should I get my safety as a US person put at risk so someone can publicize their story that someone leaked something again? In that video at 1:00. He's trying to make it so classification basically no longer has meaning, if they defect to a journalist.
You're wanting to trade freedom for security. I disagree that that is a good idea. You also do not know that he is trying to do that; certainly he has not stated as such.
He exposed high crimes. That is why people think he should not suffer punishment.
>For the sake of encouraging understanding: I think constitution is used as a way to imply subjectivity of what feels right.
That is true in the sense that all laws are only what "feels" right. There is a long history of the US federal government twisting laws to give the federal government more power.
It really feels like you're trolling, the last statement does not seem to follow any way I try to read it.
I can acknowledge that yes, there are people out there who want to kill you and take your stuff. Defunding the defense apparatus of the US is not a valid solution. But neither is the status quo.
There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]
There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.
There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.
In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.
He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.
The leaks themselves:
He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.
In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.
It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.
[1] https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hps...