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

Post by LockAndLol » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

elmo2you wrote: post #13

LockAndLol wrote: post #5

So, are the espionage charges against Snowden going to be dropped? Otherwise they want to convict a man of exposing illegal activity, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Don't be daft. They'll argue that in the exceptional case of state security, exposing any kind of secretive information (illegal or otherwise) is still a crime. They'll just argue that only "normal citizens" shouldn't be barred from reporting criminal activities. Of course it is bullshit .. but since when did that stop them? Exceptionalism has been the key word, used almost every time the government violated a laws o…

Post by 3np » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #82

arghwhat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whistleblower protection are bit tricky to define. When is something whistleblowing, when is it a leak, when is it malicious, and when is it espionage? It's easy to allow leaks about illegal acts, but if you start allowing leaks about secret but legal acts too, then things get blurry. I personally don't think a government, ultimately a servant of the people, should be allowed to keep secrets from the people, but that…

The problem is that if you inform your citizens, you also inform your enemy (who can read your language, are among the citizens). With the globalization due to electronics and the Internet, this is even more true, compared to medieval times or Cold War times (where this was also true, but there was arguably higher latency on information, and a higher language barrier as well).