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

U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 113 posts

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#71

Post by craftinator »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

1. Snowden is not a US judge, and hasn't spent the last half decade deciding whether each US spying operation was legal or not. Snowden released the documents that allowed the courts to decide which programs were legal, so he cannot be held responsible for the decision that the courts made, because time machines don't exist.

Holding him responsible would be the same as a person calling the police to report a crime, the cops showing up and arresting a person, then months down the line the courts rule not guilty on the arrestee, so the police now go charge the original caller with false reporting. It's ludicrous to think he could've known which programs would be borderline illegal and which would step over that line. And if it took the US justice system 6 years and millions of dollars worth of man hours to actually make that decision, how could he possibly have correctly come to the same conclusion, beforehand, with no governmental support?

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#72

Post by pps43 »

sneak wrote: post #20
rvz wrote: post #2

Time to give a massive apology and a full pardon to Mr Snowden then.

Having read Barton Gellman’s book that describes and alludes to some of the details of what were in the actual (never published) Snowden files, I do not believe that the US IC would let him continue to live, even if he were fully pardoned. I doubt it will ever be safe for him in the US again, despite his legal status.

Snowden does not have the files. Did not have them when he arrived in Russia. That's why it took so long for the Russians to let him in. They could not believe he did not take any intelligence with him.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#73

Post by raxxorrax »

alilsumpinditto wrote: post #57
raxxorrax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think he asked himself that question. edit: Saying Russia is the main benefactor of the leaks sounds like evidence of long lost cold war thinking to be honest. Perhaps it would also be to the benefit of the targets of surveillance? Because if you wouldn't want to hand Russia a win, not subjecting the population to surveillance would have been quite the strategy in this case.

Would just like to point out, Putin was on record in an interview talking about Snowden, and was pretty open about how these programs make sense from an intelligence point of view, and pretty much said that Russia is doing the same thing. He wasn't pretending like they're not doing the exact same thing. I believe it's somewhat of a don't hate the player, hate the game from the perspective of the CIA/KGB/what have you…

He has the image of a dictator (rightly so) and doesn't need to hide it. He connects the image western people have of him to their own domestic actors. If he just condemned it, he would be the hypocrite. So he opted to redirect animosity towards him to others.

Pointing out mass surveillance isn't an attack on the integrity of the US, it is an attack on the practice you would expect from Putin.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#74

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

Simple solution:

Donald Trump puts his money where is mouth is, pardons him and repatriates him.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#75

Post by natcombs »

Schiendelman wrote: post #23
sneak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read Barton Gellman’s book that describes and alludes to some of the details of what were in the actual (never published) Snowden files, I do not believe that the US IC would let him continue to live, even if he were fully pardoned. I doubt it will ever be safe for him in the US again, despite his legal status.

Sounds like fascism.

No, it sounds like a rogue IC agency. The textbook definition of fascism doesn’t apply here. This word keeps appearing on HN without any reasoning

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#76

Post by __s »

Applejinx wrote: post #49
koheripbal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia was probably his only choice. Every other country would have extradited him. I doubt he is happy with having to live in Russia - the main benefactor of his leaks. It's impossible to imagine that he is able to reconcile his hatred of US spying with the malicious actions of the government he now relies on for protection. ...and that's the ultimate crux of this whole thing. When you go up against the US governmen…

Out of the frying pan into the fire… but I think human nature suggests that he is making himself happy with it. He's dependent on being fine with everything about Russia, because it's that or be killed in one place or the other: last thing he could afford to do is antagonize Putin, he pretty much has to become 'All Russia, all the time' and that's a powerful motivator to persuade himself that now he is in the GOOD pl…

Snowden is critical of Russia, this comes up in every interview he gives

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#77

Post by havetocharge »

alilsumpinditto wrote: post #57
raxxorrax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think he asked himself that question. edit: Saying Russia is the main benefactor of the leaks sounds like evidence of long lost cold war thinking to be honest. Perhaps it would also be to the benefit of the targets of surveillance? Because if you wouldn't want to hand Russia a win, not subjecting the population to surveillance would have been quite the strategy in this case.

Would just like to point out, Putin was on record in an interview talking about Snowden, and was pretty open about how these programs make sense from an intelligence point of view, and pretty much said that Russia is doing the same thing. He wasn't pretending like they're not doing the exact same thing. I believe it's somewhat of a don't hate the player, hate the game from the perspective of the CIA/KGB/what have you…

That's one difference about Russian and American citizens -- the Russians have pretty much accepted this, and reserve all anti government talk to private conversations or avoid it altogether, while Americans are generally in denial or just ignorant about it.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#78

Post by havetocharge »

koheripbal wrote: post #35
raxxorrax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is true and that is why fleeing to Russia was the correct choice. Because the whistle blower channels don't work.

Russia was probably his only choice. Every other country would have extradited him. I doubt he is happy with having to live in Russia - the main benefactor of his leaks. It's impossible to imagine that he is able to reconcile his hatred of US spying with the malicious actions of the government he now relies on for protection. ...and that's the ultimate crux of this whole thing. When you go up against the US governmen…

You know, Snowden has recently wrote and published something of an autobiography called "Permanent Record". You don't need to think or guess, he explained his motivations, thoughts and feelings fairly well there, and they don't quite align with your comment.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#79

Post by sneak »

scaraffe wrote: post #26
sneak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read Barton Gellman’s book that describes and alludes to some of the details of what were in the actual (never published) Snowden files, I do not believe that the US IC would let him continue to live, even if he were fully pardoned. I doubt it will ever be safe for him in the US again, despite his legal status.

what kind of things does the book allude to?

Apparently the documents that he provided to the press had specific descriptions of names, cities, places, and events that had occurred that Gellman didn’t find specifically newsworthy but that the IC really, really wanted kept secret.

The view of people familiar with the matter is that anything placed into the unskilled hands of people like Greenwald or Gellman (although the latter did get professional assistance and take a lot of steps to protect it) got accessed/copied by any of a half-dozen other state-level intelligence services, so presumably the US IC was concerned about these particular not-published-in-the-media secrets being available to the public. (This is not to say they weren’t concerned about them being known to other intel agencies, just that based on the unprofessional hands in which it was placed, that ship had probably already sailed once it was given to those incompetent in safeguarding it.)

Personally, I wish the original unredacted PRISM deck had been published in full to the public. The state derives its authority from the consent of the governed; it is impossible to consent to something of which you are unaware and uninformed.

I heartily recommend reading Gellman’s book about Snowden, Dark Mirror. One of the things he mentioned that surprised me was that Snowden told him that they (the IC) would not hesitate to assassinate him (Gellman, a US citizen on US soil) instantly if they thought it would prevent the leak from going further.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#80

Post by [deleted] »

Schiendelman wrote: post #23
sneak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read Barton Gellman’s book that describes and alludes to some of the details of what were in the actual (never published) Snowden files, I do not believe that the US IC would let him continue to live, even if he were fully pardoned. I doubt it will ever be safe for him in the US again, despite his legal status.

Sounds like fascism.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN