Time to Pardon Edward Snowden? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#91

Post by outoftheabyss » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #86

outoftheabyss wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing how Assange suddenly became a Russian asset after 2016, this charge never appeared when he spent years going after the Bush admin

The Special Counsel investigation publicizing a Russian connection to Wikileaks' release of Hillary Clinton's damaging emails was far more recent than 2016 [0]. For myself, and I presume much of the general public, that would be the point in time where awareness of Assange's role in an alleged Russia-involved conspiracy manifest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_...

I said after 2016. Wikileaks is a media company that reports info/intel from their sources, no different from the NYT, CNN, fox etc. There were no questions coming from these sections of the general public and the media you allude to when it was bush and it's very convenient for the intelligence community to discredit where they can. Snowden addresses the case against Assange in his latest episode on Joe Rogan, a very interesting listen.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#92

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

avmich wrote: post #8

trident1000 wrote: post #3

The reason he will never be pardoned has nothing to do with if his leaks were merited or not merited (they clearly were as the activities of the govt were proven illegal). Its because then you green light a govt leaker in critical programs you open pandoras box for govt secrets spilling out and you can lose control. Keeping employees/contractors in fear that they will never stop chasing you is a good way to stop peop…

> Keeping employees/contractors in fear that they will never stop chasing you is a good way to stop people from doing this. This is contradicting to the idea of government existing for people and serving people. If government uses fear to reduce accountability, it needs to be changed.

I think time has shown that even the people whom the government supposedly exists to serve don't want it to do that. They actively seek to elect and support wannabe dictators, as long as they are dictating things that hurt people they don't like.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

nip180 wrote: post #47

GekkePrutser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those of the rest of the world. Especially those of us in X eyes countries.

Hey may have defended the rights of people in the rest of the world, but only American citizens have rights protected by the US constitution.

[deleted]

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#94

Post by runamok » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #82

runamok wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the secret program he leaked was ultimately determined to be unlawful says he is vindicated and should be pardoned. "A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program has been ruled unlawful, seven years after it was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden." https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54013527

He leaked a lot more US government programs than that one, and all of those were legal. Had he only leaked phone metadata collection, he would have a case.

It took 7 years for the courts to finally figure that out even though it seemed like ridiculous overreach to everyone.

Off the top of my head I recollect they were intercepting hardware like switches and compromising it, inserting spying equipment in Google data centers forceing them to now to end to end encryption and many other shady things.

Not to mention the collection of zero days that almost certainly will get discovered by other nation states and bad actors and risk our security. They used parallel construction with other law enforcement orgs as they leaked run of the mill criminal behavior (not national security related) so as to not disclose the real way they got the info.

There are many more examples of overreaches he brought to light but I don't recall all of it. The core concern I have is all this apparatus are tools of fascism and control of any dissenting voices including the opposing political party. Where we are politically today I think would be hard to fathom back when Snowden leaked all this.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#95

Post by dirtnugget » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

> he fled immediately to Russia

He did not flee to Russia. He got stuck there on transit to Ecuador because his passport was allegedly cancelled. He came from Hong Kong. Read his book.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#96

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #80

LatteLazy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposing the phone meta data program would expose it both domestically and internationally. That exposure would limit the US ability to keep doing it internationally and open him to exactly the critism made above. The issue here is that none of these programs care about national boundaries (or citizenship etc). So exposing domestic surveillance exposed it internationally as well. There was no way to avoid that. So cr…

> Also, 99% of the programs he exposed were Illegal. The only US program he leaked that was illegal was the phone metadata collection. The vast majority of programs he leaked involved surveillance on foreign targets outside the US. > SCOTUS has refused to rule on any of it None of it has made it to SCOTUS due to the vast majority being completely legal, so SCOTUS hasn't even had a chance to refuse to rule on any of i…

[deleted]

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#97

Post by nix23 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #81

nip180 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey may have defended the rights of people in the rest of the world, but only American citizens have rights protected by the US constitution.

> only American citizens have rights protected by the US constitution. Untrue, though this is a popular myth. There are a few Constitutional rights explicitly restricted to citizens (voting is the big one), but pretty much all the rest are rights of people generally that the government (either federal or state, depending on which Constitutional provision is involved) is restricted from intruding on. Both the plain te…

The NSA was not allowed to spy on US citizens.

>U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that the U.S. surveillance of phone records was indeed illegal.

The U.S. surveillance

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#98

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #88

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " And yes, this harmed America by undermining the trust that those countries had in it " That seems unlikely. At the international level, it's well understood that alliances aren't permanent as de Gaulle's famous quote " [Nations have] no friends, only interests. " illustrates. For example, Russia, Japan, and the US were allies during the First World War but were on opposing sides in the Second.

Defecting against everyone you meet is a losing strategy in an iterated multi-actor prisoner's dilemma. Establishing and maintaining mutual trust, to cooperate with those who are willing to cooperate with you, is in a nation's interests.

> "...everyone you meet..."

As the old joke goes "Don't anthropomorphize countries; they hate it when you do that." There is no guarantee of continuity in leadership or national policy because of periodic leadership turnover (elections, etc.) so exactly what would a country be extending trust to?

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#99

Post by HashingtheCode » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

bobwall wrote: post #64

HashingtheCode wrote: post #5

If Assange isn't being pardoned for the nonsensical "crime" of exposing war crimes by the US Government, there is no chance that Snowden will be pardoned. Snowden willingly stole state secrets whereas Assange only published. Still, when you consider that Snowden is living in Russia, essentially free, and Assange is in a 3.5x2m cell, I don't think Snowden has anything to worry about, except that the royalties from his…

He sort of has his freedom, if you consider life within Putin's Russia containing freedom.

As far as we know, he is free to travel through all of Russia. That's a lot of freedom

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#100

Post by georgeplusplus » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #37

georgeplusplus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I think he’s a tool of Russia and got paid to tarnish America and diplomacy worldwide.

The American government tarnished itself, Snowden just revealed it to us all (at great personal sacrifice). I consider him a patriot.

Again, I disagree.

He exposed what basically any G20 nation does and lives pretty damn well by virtue of doing the bidding of a foreign government that seeks to undermine democracy in the world.

Somehow that makes him a patriot.