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On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

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Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#41

Post by testcaseuser »

jakobnissen wrote: post #36
mike_d wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly host…

He didn't go to a hostile country. He went to Ecuador, not a hostile country. The US government cancelled his passport while he was connecting in Russia, and then the Russian airport refused to let him leave. The fact that he's now in Russia is 100% on the US. Also, he didn't bring any stolen information to Russia. He says he was contacted by Russian intelligence but that they pretty quickly figured out he had nothin…

In 1997 during the handover ceremony for Hong Kong there was a part that involved the PLA marching into Hong Kong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-Sr_t_kE4

To pretend that they weren't in control of the situation when he was there from a national security standpoint is a bit naive. Ultimately the decision to allow him to depart Hong Kong was made in Beijing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said-to-...

"The Chinese government made the final decision to allow Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, a move that Beijing believed resolved a tough diplomatic problem even as it reaped a publicity windfall from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, according to people familiar with the situation."

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#42

Post by mike_d »

jakobnissen wrote: post #36
mike_d wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly host…

He didn't go to a hostile country. He went to Ecuador, not a hostile country. The US government cancelled his passport while he was connecting in Russia, and then the Russian airport refused to let him leave. The fact that he's now in Russia is 100% on the US. Also, he didn't bring any stolen information to Russia. He says he was contacted by Russian intelligence but that they pretty quickly figured out he had nothin…

> what he gave to the journalists.

We now know Glenn Greenwald was likely a Russian asset at the time he was given access to the Snowden files. For a member of the intelligence community, he sure did a piss poor job of vetting who he chose to whistleblow with.

https://thespectator.com/topic/why-glenn-greenwald-backs-put...

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#43

Post by [deleted] »

AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #20

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the do…

[deleted]

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#45

Post by [deleted] »

bhawks wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #2

I still haven't gotten my head around the valorization of Bill Binney, who does not appear to have been an opponent of dragnet surveillance, as he's so often portrayed, but rather of inefficient and poorly managed dragnet surveillance. ThinThread, the system he designed and left NSA over when they didn't pursue it, still left it up to NSA to determine which data to make available, and still presumed NSA would collect…

Whatever system there is in place doesn't seem to do much to address: + lone wolfs such as Uvalde, Las Vegas, Nashville, Waukesha... + Cross border drug operations + Transnational incidents like Nord Stream, spy balloons, COVID. + Military operations in Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan We are asked to relinquish so many freedoms and spend so much money on what, exactly? The 'we can't tell you because it'll jeopardize all…

[deleted]

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#46

Post by mikem170 »

mike_d wrote: post #34
aaron_m04 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Is this what you would've done in Snowdon's shoes?

Absolutely. When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms. Any major US news publication or the EFF would have put their legal team to work protecting him. He could have fled to a friendly country like France that has strong civil liberty protections. He could have gone to a neutral country like Switzerland.…

> When you make the choice to become a whistleblower, you are making the decision that the information you have is more important than your personal freedoms.

So it's wrong to expose a corrupt government without becoming a martyr? It's better to let the public to be fooled?

Not everyone thinks this way. Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't.

> he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection

Do you have a source for the above statement?

It's my understanding that the U.S. revoked his passport while he was en-route to Ecuador, trapping him in Russia. I haven't heard that he gave the Russians any intelligence.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#47

Post by quarterdime »

mike_d wrote: post #30
AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #20

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the do…

> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly host…

The espionage act famously does not allow for whistleblowing as a defense. Tulsi Gabbard [1], Rashida Tlaib [2], Ron Wyden and Ro Khanna [3] (and perhaps others) have tried to introduce legislation to change this. For example, Reality Winner was unable to make any public interest arguments in her defense [4]. Ed Snowden has repeatedly said he would happily return to the US to face trial if he were allowed to make a public interest defense. For example, in a 2019 NPR interview [5]:

> My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States. And I've actually had conversations with the government, last in the Obama administration, about what that would look like, and they said, "You should come and face trial." I said, "Sure. Sign me up. Under one condition: I have to be able to tell the jury why I did what I did, and the jury has to decide: Was this justified or unjustified." This is called a public interest defense and is allowed under pretty much every crime someone can be charged for. Even murder, for example, has defenses. It can be self-defense and so on so forth, it could be manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. But in the case of telling a journalist the truth about how the government was breaking the law, the government says there can be no defense. There can be no justification for why you did it. The only thing the jury gets to consider is did you tell the journalists something you were not allowed to tell them. If yes, it doesn't matter why you did it. You go to jail. And I have said, as soon as you guys say for whistleblowers it is the jury who decides if it was right or wrong to expose the government's own lawbreaking, I'll be in court the next day.

[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/crsj-fe... [2] https://theintercept.com/2022/07/12/whistleblower-espionage-... [3] https://www.rcfp.org/espionage-act-reform/ [4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reality-winner-espionage-act-60... [5] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/761918152/exiled-nsa-contract...

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#48

Post by jakobnissen »

testcaseuser wrote: post #41
jakobnissen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't go to a hostile country. He went to Ecuador, not a hostile country. The US government cancelled his passport while he was connecting in Russia, and then the Russian airport refused to let him leave. The fact that he's now in Russia is 100% on the US. Also, he didn't bring any stolen information to Russia. He says he was contacted by Russian intelligence but that they pretty quickly figured out he had nothin…

In 1997 during the handover ceremony for Hong Kong there was a part that involved the PLA marching into Hong Kong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-Sr_t_kE4 To pretend that they weren't in control of the situation when he was there from a national security standpoint is a bit naive. Ultimately the decision to allow him to depart Hong Kong was made in Beijing. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said…

You're claiming this with no evidence and calling me naive. What's more, there is a good explanation for choosing Hong Kong - it's the only non-US aligned country in the area with a history of free speech (well it was, back then). New Zealand or Australia has free speech too, but if he had gone there he would have been black bagged and sent on a plane to USA, Guantanamo style.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#49

Post by testcaseuser »

jakobnissen wrote: post #48
testcaseuser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1997 during the handover ceremony for Hong Kong there was a part that involved the PLA marching into Hong Kong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-Sr_t_kE4 To pretend that they weren't in control of the situation when he was there from a national security standpoint is a bit naive. Ultimately the decision to allow him to depart Hong Kong was made in Beijing. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said…

You're claiming this with no evidence and calling me naive. What's more, there is a good explanation for choosing Hong Kong - it's the only non-US aligned country in the area with a history of free speech (well it was, back then). New Zealand or Australia has free speech too, but if he had gone there he would have been black bagged and sent on a plane to USA, Guantanamo style.

Hong Kong is China and in 2013 the process to take over administrative control by the CCP was already well under way. But looking at it from a national security standpoint China was in control. Why would I look at it from a national security standpoint? Given who he was and what he was carrying it has to be viewed that way. Let's not forget that he was carrying information on NSA espionage on China when he landed in Hong Kong.

2014 - NYTimes: "N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat" https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-c...

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#50

Post by hooande »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #27
AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #20

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the do…

The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower: “ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how i…

In all these years I'd never seen this. Ironic, but not surprising, that according to this account Snowden did exactly what he accused the US government of doing: mass collecting data with no authorization or purpose and then using it to accuse someone he disagreed with of crimes.
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