Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview with Edward Snowden

spiegel.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 168 posts

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#61

Post by seppin »

kamyarg wrote: post #31

> if I had wanted to live a safe life, I would still be sitting in Hawaii in paradise with the woman I love collecting a huge paycheck to do almost no work. Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity. People that sacrifices their safety or lives to help a good cause are the ones I respect the most. I hope he will be able to visit his country safely sometime. p.s. Please fix the title, it is clic…

> Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.

Edward Snowden became an international celebrity because of what he did, and traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow. Please don't speak of him in the same vein as, for example, a disappeared Chinese dissident who has actually sacrificed everything for what they believe.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#62

Post by jonahbenton »

pdonis wrote: post #60
dilippkumar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please consider alternative narratives. No. > He acted selfishly, not morally. No, he acted morally. > Deep thoughts and intellectual defenses are not so hard to construct, should not be uncritically accepted with significant corroborating evidence, and should certainly not be taken in any way to imply morality, as shown by the growing list of deep thinkers who supported and participated in Jeffrey Epstein's scheme…

> No. It's simple. Snowden = Good. Sure, if you only read his side of the story. Anyone looks good if they get to make up their own narrative about themselves. The fact is that anyone with half a brain should have known decades ago that the US government, like all governments, does all kinds of surveillance and classifies all kinds of information, and not all of it is going to be pretty. When you tell the government…

Well said.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#63

Post by ryacko »

jonahbenton wrote: post #23
galaxyLogic wrote: post #13

He comes off as a guy with integrity. But what about Julian Assange? The consensus in the US media now seems to be that he just wanted to hurt Hillary by helping Donald Trump, and thus was working for team Russia?

The ad hoc but exceedingly purposeful collaboration between Wikileaks, Russian military and civilian agents, the Trump campaign and other actors is documented extensively in the Mueller report. The Report[1] podcast does an excellent job of making it more accessible. Longtime US intelligence community players eg [2] have made explicit claims that Wikileaks is in part a Russian intel operation. Those claims should be…

If you can prove knowledge and intent, you can charge under a whole variety of crimes.

Has the US criminal justice system gotten so weak from prioritizing easy wins for the sake of getting hired at a private law firm that they don’t even know how to prosecute or even ask Congress for transparent mechanisms to prosecute?

What is even the end goal beyond giving US intelligence a bad day? Your allegations do not pass muster.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#64

Post by guerrilla »

tomc1985 wrote: post #57
slg wrote: post #18

>The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're going to make the world better." I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You certainly h…

This is the sort of "you're either with us or against us" attitude that democracy could do without. The average persons' ability to change anything re: climate change is minimal, especially if the bulk of carbon emissions originate in authoritarian regimes on the other side of the planet. Would you accuse the Swiss of endorsing the Third Reich on account of their neutrality? Is an impartial judge abdicating his judic…

> Would you accuse the Swiss of endorsing the Third Reich on account of their neutrality? Is an impartial judge abdicating his judicial and political responsibilities by refusing to take sides in a case?

Yes and yes, by the original principle.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#65

Post by tyri_kai_psomi »

protonfish wrote: post #52
slg wrote: post #18

>The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're going to make the world better." I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You certainly h…

I think it's even worse than you say. By avoiding politics you tacitly endorse the status quo. You can't opt out - everyone's speech and actions affect the political landscapes no matter how much you would rather pretend that you are above it.

> By avoiding politics you tacitly endorse the status quo.

A statement wrong on so many levels. Good grief, we really need to start emphasizing philosophy again in our society.

> no matter how much you would rather pretend that you are above it.

And a very wrong assumption that people who would rather not engage in politics, or at least public displays of political affiliation somehow must all think they are "above" it.

I usually have a word to describe people who tend to think along these lines: young.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#66

Post by avmich »

slg wrote: post #59
insickness wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people on HN can agree on is climate change. There are many aspects of the climate change issue where disagreement is reasonable. Does industrial progress need to be sacrificed to prevent climate change? How much governmental intervention is helpful? How accurate are predictions of what is coming? What is the most efficient way to prevent climate change and how effective will those actions be? There is no corr…

You are right, I could have phrased that better. We certainly won't all agree on the specific path forward. What I meant was that most people on here can probably agree that our current path is not adequately addressing the problem, that changes need to be made going forward, and those changes require political action.

Importantly we need to understand that we can't require first to have that agreement and only after that start addressing the problem itself. Just like with space exploration, where we can't postpone it till there will be no hunger on Earth, we can't postpone acting on climate crisis until we agree on how to act.

We have to act without full agreement.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#67

Post by pathseeker »

slg wrote: post #59
insickness wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people on HN can agree on is climate change. There are many aspects of the climate change issue where disagreement is reasonable. Does industrial progress need to be sacrificed to prevent climate change? How much governmental intervention is helpful? How accurate are predictions of what is coming? What is the most efficient way to prevent climate change and how effective will those actions be? There is no corr…

You are right, I could have phrased that better. We certainly won't all agree on the specific path forward. What I meant was that most people on here can probably agree that our current path is not adequately addressing the problem, that changes need to be made going forward, and those changes require political action.

So what are you supposed to do in the US if you agree that climate change is a problem? The democratic party is not interested in solving it in the time-frame required (i.e. anti-nuclear) and the republican party might be okay with nuclear but isn't really that interested in solving the issue.

Which party do you try to participate in to affect change? Both have effectively given up on evidence-based policies.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#68

Post by forgingahead »

slg wrote: post #18

>The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're going to make the world better." I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You certainly h…

Please stop this. You're just buying into the false narrative, pushed specifically by media companies, that "you can't disengage". This specifically serves their purpose of creating content for the sake of conflict, in order to make money off your attention.

You can disengage. In fact, I highly encourage it, and one's mental health greatly benefits from it. You're not more "enlightened" or "wise" if you follow along the twists and turns of every silly development, most of which can ultimately turn out to have no impact on daily life. Forest for the trees and all that.

Trust the system you live in, and for most HN readers, from developed western economies, things will self-correct. If you have specific ideas and a platform that you feel isn't represented, jump into the political arena yourself, it's certainly your right. But please don't force the rest of us to tag along.

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#69

Post by leftyted »

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #65
protonfish wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even worse than you say. By avoiding politics you tacitly endorse the status quo. You can't opt out - everyone's speech and actions affect the political landscapes no matter how much you would rather pretend that you are above it.

> By avoiding politics you tacitly endorse the status quo. A statement wrong on so many levels. Good grief, we really need to start emphasizing philosophy again in our society. > no matter how much you would rather pretend that you are above it. And a very wrong assumption that people who would rather not engage in politics, or at least public displays of political affiliation somehow must all think they are "above"…

> I usually have a word to describe people who tend to think along these lines: young.

"Ask the young. They know everything."

Re: Interview with Edward Snowden

#70

Post by forgingahead »

tomc1985 wrote: post #57
slg wrote: post #18

>The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're going to make the world better." I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You certainly h…

This is the sort of "you're either with us or against us" attitude that democracy could do without. The average persons' ability to change anything re: climate change is minimal, especially if the bulk of carbon emissions originate in authoritarian regimes on the other side of the planet. Would you accuse the Swiss of endorsing the Third Reich on account of their neutrality? Is an impartial judge abdicating his judic…

It's a pity to see the downvotes you're getting for a very reasonable comment. This is exactly the problem with the original parent comment, "you're with us or against us". Zealotry for political issues is still zealotry, and has no place in a civil society. It's a shame if the HN zeitgeist has really turned into that.
Post reply on HN