Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

electrospaces.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 242 posts

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#61

Post by esafak »

neilv wrote: post #53

What's the etymology of the term "Snowden revelations"? People seem to really like that term, and it makes sense. But someone has to have said it first. I don't recall hearing "revelations" used much before then, other than for the book of the Christian New Testament. (Is some of the appeal of the term to allude to an almost biblical impact, or saintly/savior aura around Snowden?)

Before when? It was used right from the beginning, in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#62

Post by holoduke »

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.…

You have no idea how whisleblowers are treated in even the most democratic and rich countries. There are numerous examples of people becoming the enemy of the state and a fair trial never ever happened. The legal system does not apply for those.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#63

Post by esafak »

mike_d wrote: post #42
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…

> 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...

No, we do not know that.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#64

Post by boomboomsubban »

mike_d wrote: post #42
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…

> 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...

Your own article concludes

>Greenwald is not, as many of his critics lazily allege, a Russian agent

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#65

Post by pgeorgi »

mike_d wrote: post #42
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…

> 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...

> We now know ...

> ... was likely ...

That would be "suspect", not "know"

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#66

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

mikem170 wrote: post #37
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good. Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition. I'm curious why you brought that up?

I think the parent is claiming that whistleblower protections don't apply to Snowden. A vigilante's actions can be both morally right and blatantly illegal. There are people that are glad he did what he did, but also believe in the rule of law, and feel his actions might have carried more weight if he turned himself in and accepted the legal repercussions.

Personally, if I were the judge I'd give him a light slap on the wrist because of how hard he worked to bring the information to light in a responsible manner so nobody got hurt. It's hard for me to imagine him not getting absolutely fucked in a real court of law however, and I'm certainly not going to judge him and say, "You should have been willing to throw your whole life away over this, or not done it at all."

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#67

Post by yreg »

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…

I recently noticed how the public perception of Snowden changed on reddit. Years ago it was I think very positive. But with the war going on now when I see him come up, usually there are many users saying that he is a naive Russian asset and so on.

Makes me a bit sad to see.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#68

Post by toufka »

pulse7 wrote: post #52
bandrami wrote: post #16

The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.

Before Snowden people thought you were a conspiracy theorist if you talked about it. Snowden's revelations changed that...

Snowden also brought the goods (actual docs) so that the existing cases and inquiries could proceed without getting the Glomar response - “cannot answer the question of whether you have standing, as we can neither confirm nor deny the program either exists.”

And this was deliberate. Those in the know knew _of_ the program, but could do little actionable with that knowledge without Snowden’s public proof.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#69

Post by pseudalopex »

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…

Did you think to ask what suspicions Snowden had in 2009 in Tokyo? Or why he had them? He stated he read an unclassified report with evidence of illegal activities and significant abuses. The classified version confirmed his suspicions.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#70

Post by gonzo41 »

On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations - the NSA celebrates the hard lesson they learnt about compartmenting their internal networks. No other lessons were learnt. Infect it seems like the real pivot was just to get Internet companies to pick up the ball on dragnet suverliance so they could feed of those instead of doing it themselves.
Post reply on HN