Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Sometimes you live in Russia if you have no other options.
Vindman didn't flee to Russia, he also didn't get tricked by a foreign nation. He's a real whistleblower.
Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
81–90 of 510 posts
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#82It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.
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I might be missing something, but it seems the only reason that Russia has much of any leverage on him now is specifically because we are persecuting him in the first place?
https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-kgb-spy-the-russians-tric...
Like, to the extent to which an early plan to target him was a success, it involved a critical later step where the United States goes on a hunt for Snowden, allowing Russia the ability to later get him stuck there and under their control... delete that part and I am unsure what the plan would have been.
I'd claim the reality of the morality here is that we should not have to rely on the awkward motives of some enemy intelligence agency to target people and maneuver them into doing something good because, in our zeal to prevent something good, we do bad things that allow them to get an indirect benefit that results in something bad.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of PRISM's legality, it's deeply unethical and immoral for a government to spy on their own citizens with nothing more than a permission slip stamped by a stamping body that approves 99.97% of the requests that cross their desk, which is exactly what the FISA court is.
PRISM doesn't involve data from US citizens' accounts. Please review what PRISM is before claiming it is illegal or unethical. It is neither. If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or th…
I'm sorry, but you understand that if a tool necessitates a warrant to be used, it does not ensures that people can use the tool without a warrant?
"We've conducted an internal investigation proving no malfeaseance took place. We will not be releasing any data on our usage of the tool. Trust us."
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
While foreign allies showed a lot of interest in his revelations. Notwithstanding his morally high intentions, it's debatable whether the USA as a whole got a positive outcome from his actions.
What do you mean it's debatable? The govt was literally spying on the whole country without any disclosure. The actual people who live and were being spied on have at least an idea of their true circumstances now.
"it's debatable whether the USA as a whole got a positive outcome from his actions."
I could make the case that while what Snowden did was heroic, and praiseworthy in a just and educated nation, the US is ultimately neither a just nor educated nation, and too little changed as a result of his whistleblowing. Go ask 100 truly random people what they think of Snowden's revelations and you may find yourself quite disappointed. John Oliver did an episode on this and it was more than a little depressing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. He worked with journalists to try the make the leak safe. Let’s focus on impact- Now everyone is at least aware that digital activities are under surveillance including phone call metadata. We have made that trade off for some security. Thank you Snowden.
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the whole Snowden ordeal was not discovering hard proof we've been living in a borderline-Orwellian surveillance state, but the utter indifference of the American people at this revelation.
Ohwellian: When you know you are living in a dystopia but couldn't be bothered to change anything.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle. Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all: https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.
I'm about 3/4 through the page and it's all related to spying to me.. are you specifically referring to something?
Spying is what the NSA is supposed to do
Domestic spying is the controversial/illegal activity he was blowing the whistle on.
Dumping info on legal NSA activities (like foreign surveillance), while fascinating to read, is not whistleblowing.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I might be missing something, but it seems the only reason that Russia has much of any leverage on him now is specifically because we are persecuting him in the first place? https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-kgb-spy-the-russians-tric... Like, to the extent to which an early plan to target him was a success, it involved a critical later step where the United States goes on a hunt for Snowden, allowing Russia the abil…
He fled to the country with directions from russia before releasing the classified Intel.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#88It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.
He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance, or at least screen out as much of the foreign intelligence methods as much as possible. Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
I don't understand why people who make this argument think it's OK for the US government to spy on the private communications of all Chinese citizens but not for it to spy on those of American citizens. Is it OK for China to spy on American citizen's private communications, then?
It becomes even more problematic within the Five Eyes cooperation context, because if the NSA is spying on British private citizen communications, and GCHQ is spying on American private citizen communications, and the NSA and GCHQ are exchanging data without any limits, well???
Universal standards of human behavior and the right to personal privacy are hardly limited to some arbitrary nation-state boundary line, are they?
As far as targeted spying on government authorities and military operations, well, that's justified. Indeed it's a good thing that different countries are paying attention to each other in this manner, it has a stabilizing influence and can help to avoid conflicts if everyone knows what everyone else is up to.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#89Anyone have a good example of a good “whistle blowers policy” from a private organisation or non-profit? Im interested to roll out a local policy in some of the non-profits I’m connected with.
I think a good first step would be reaching out to Snowden to have a quick zoom call on what he has to say - I've seen him do quite a few zoom conferences, I can't imagine he would'nt be interested in chatting with you if you are serious.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle. Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all: https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.
He had to take a quick dump of whatever he could and filter through it later. It's not like he could leisurely spend weeks vetting the docs.
I don't really buy this. He couldn't search through the dump for the names of the projects that he was blowing the whistle on? Can't use grep?
Handling over a mountain of secrets to journalists and let them sort out the illegal from the rest of it, (and trusting them not to publish things that are newsworthy/salacious but legal) is completely irresponsible