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Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

covertactionmagazine.com

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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#131

Post by barney54 »

lettergram wrote: post #93
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

In a democracy almost everything should be public. Our weapons for sure, perhaps not where they are located, but what we pay for yes.

I don’t know why some people are downvoting this comment. What is wrong with transparency?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#132

Post by pastacacioepepe »

lettergram wrote: post #93
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

In a democracy almost everything should be public. Our weapons for sure, perhaps not where they are located, but what we pay for yes.

Exactly right, you can't have democracy without information being available to everyone. But we all know this is just an illusion, all democratic states hide a great deal from their citizens.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#133

Post by bourbonorgin »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #124
kornhole wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohwellian: When you know you are living in a dystopia but couldn't be bothered to change anything.

Egowellian: When multitudes of people around you are suffering but you are profiting so you ensure that they continue to suffer.

Fauxwellian: When multitudes of people around you are suffering and you fabricate evidence as proof of it and then no one believes you because of the fraud

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#134

Post by ako »

penneallagricia wrote: post #119
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing. If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden. What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from…

Maybe there was no response because it was expected. Probably all countries spy on all other countries. Especially during the Trump era, it wasn’t clear that USA was still an ally, so I hope other countries prepared for that by increasing their intelligence on the USA, just to avoid inconvenient surprises.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#135

Post by yarg »

3pt14159 wrote: post #72
realjohng wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

And yet, it is not journalists that are privy to classified material, it is lawmakers, military staff, intelligence staff, and their contractors and consultants. What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options. My basic position on this is that secret holders never have the full picture, but at least they have the tr…

You have not provided (and cannot provide) any proof to back those additional assertions, as such they do nothing to improve your argument.

> What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options?

A history of actually doing their jobs in this regard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#136

Post by GuB-42 »

bowsamic wrote: post #55

I know a lot of people who take a seriously negative view against whistleblowers, which I find very strange. Do you not want to know the messed up shit that the companies and government are doing? I think people just see it as being a traitor.

Because there is a thin line between a whistleblower and a traitor. A whistleblower releases information about "messed up shit", a traitor releases legitimate secret information, how do you call someone who releases both?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#137

Post by kodah »

The article only mentions her as a picture (on purpose, I'm sure), but I'd like to take a second to address this:

Chelsea Manning is a very bad example of a whistleblower. First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known. Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed. Third, she didn't even attempt to use the whistle blowing process in the military that is quite in tact (it was called request mast when I was in but goes by different names depending on the branch). How she was treated afterward was terrible, but to continue validating her story by labeling her a whistleblower is harmful imo. It's okay to say not all whistleblowers are cut from the same cloth while simultaneously promoting the system of request mast/whistleblowing in the government.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#138

Post by penneallagricia »

ako wrote: post #134
penneallagricia wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing. If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden. What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from…

Maybe there was no response because it was expected. Probably all countries spy on all other countries. Especially during the Trump era, it wasn’t clear that USA was still an ally, so I hope other countries prepared for that by increasing their intelligence on the USA, just to avoid inconvenient surprises.

This has nothing to do with Trump per se, it's really a bipartisan issue, as the new pentagon leaks just confirmed.

I also doubt European countries have the capacity to intercept private calls between top level USA govt officials.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#139

Post by kelipso »

penneallagricia wrote: post #119
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing. If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden. What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from…

The US has been the sole superpower for more than 3 decades now. Its relationship to its allies are more like relationships with vassals, see geopolitical interactions with European countries, Japan, South Korea.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#140

Post by imwillofficial »

andrewmutz wrote: post #90
colordrops wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s not how it works. Some random contractor doesn’t know all the code names to all relevant projects.

You should ask yourself more often “is there a reason they did it they way they did” before offering smug suggestions.

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