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

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

guardian.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 304 posts

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#181

Post by acqq »

laumars wrote: post #153
[deleted] wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

1. He went out of his way to obtain that information because there's no point being a whistle blower without having some evidence to back up your claims. 2. He's a college drop out, not a high school drop out (or at least that how it reads to me - a non-US citizen. I may have misunderstood how your education system works). Also, his family also works for government agencies, so that probably added weight to his appli…

Re 2 read again:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-n...

"His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma."

High school.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#182

Post by saalweachter »

[deleted] wrote: post #166
jlgreco wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gandhi's tactics, while plainly effective in his time and place, against his aggressors, should not be accepted as universalizable. It is not the only way to realize change, nor it is necessarily the most effective way to realize change in any particular situation, nor is it even necessarily a way that works in the slightest in any situation. Noncompliance and noncooperation have a time and a place. We must avoid the…

[deleted]

As Harry Potter in _Methods of Rationality_ observed, non-violent resistance only worked against the British because (at the time; not to say the British haven't had some bloody years) the had no stomach for butchering helpless men. Against the Nazis, however, it would be useless, because their capacity for violence was much higher.

So the question you have to ask yourself, before non-violently resisting, is whether your oppressors will beat themselves or you down faster.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#183

Post by jlgreco »

saalweachter wrote: post #182
[deleted] wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

As Harry Potter in _Methods of Rationality_ observed, non-violent resistance only worked against the British because (at the time; not to say the British haven't had some bloody years) the had no stomach for butchering helpless men. Against the Nazis, however, it would be useless, because their capacity for violence was much higher. So the question you have to ask yourself, before non-violently resisting, is whether…

Man I have got to read that. Every time I hear somebody reference it, it sounds even better.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#185

Post by gsibble »

cromwellian wrote: post #81

Seriously, Edward Snowden, China was your first choice to hide from the NSA? Holy shit that was a bad choice for many reasons. I can't think of a worse place to go, other than Russia or Iran with respect to the intense desire of those nations to extract as many secrets about NSA capabilities as possible. These are the most secret of the secret capabilities of US intelligence. He even boasted that he knows many more s…

Think of it this way.....if China tries to grab him, the US will suddenly offer him immunity to come back home. He's put both countries in a very interesting position.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#186

Post by paganel »

adventured wrote: post #179
Spearchucker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned, Edward Snowden is an American hero... He's a hero. Putting the word American in there is very, well, American. The NSA has done a lot worse by foreigners than Americans.

I think it's clear he meant that he is a hero to/for Americans, without anything further being implied in the positive or negative. There's absolutely nothing unique about inserting the nationality of a hero that relates to Americans. I see it done regularly by citizens of other countries. In my observation, national pride is nearly universal.

I'm not American but I was clapping and cheering him loudly by the end of the interview. He is a hero for me.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#187

Post by nostrademons »

rdl wrote: post #138

I'm kind of surprised he's 29. Generally, whistleblowers tend to be very young (and idealistic), or middle aged/old (with money problems, or facing political setbacks, or feeling they have nothing to lose). I personally am against granting TS clearances to anyone under ~30 and S to anyone under ~25 due to the difficulty in doing background investigations on people of young age (illegal to bring in stuff before 18, an…

...which makes me wonder if the actual reality isn't worse than I'd assumed, with actual widespread abuses and not just theoretical abuses.

From the video, it sounds like he was just ground-down by the cavalier attitude of the people around him towards the citizens whose privacy they were entrusted with. Eventually he couldn't reconcile that anymore with his internal moral compass, and so he leaked it and figured "let the American people decide". I don't get the sense of personal insecurity from him that you assume with many other people who blow the whistle.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#188

Post by malandrew »

monkmartinez wrote: post #12

Words escape. The brilliant aspect to this is asymmetrical release of information. Keep this in the top news cycle as long as possible it seems. Think about what is going on at the White House and NSA right now. They've got to be thinking, "Shit, what are they going to release in the next 6 hours || 12 hours || tomorrow?" Everything they say in public will be cast against what is released in the future. F'ing Brillia…

I hope there is a steady stream of information to last months that becomes increasingly more damning, until not only the US public but governments all over the World start legislating against the use of any services and software produced by the US technology industry. I say this as a software developer in Silicon Valley. It is only when this escalates to the point of causing us specific and measurable economic harm that people will actually fight back against it.

Hopefully, both Snowden and Greenwald have put several dead man's switches into effect to ensure the continued leaking of information regardless of whatever attempts the intelligence community make against their lives or credibility.

I'm hoping that future leaked information includes accounts of wiretapping judges, economic espionage and wiretapping of legitimate pacifist activist groups. i.e. enough information to completely destroy the argument that this system is about catching terrorists.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#189

Post by jacquesm »

This guy is a hero for doing the right thing. Hopefully the NSA ranks will find a lot more heros amongst their number in the future, it's one way in which those that are the hands and brains behind these programs can redeem themselves.

Unfortunately, with every Manning or Snowden that does their job there is one more person to be made an example out of to show future wanna-be whistle blowers what happens when you embarrass your three-lettered employer like this.

I wish Edward Snowden a lot of good luck in the near future, and I wished he'd chosen Iceland instead of Hong-Kong as his place to hang out.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#190

Post by michaelt »

acqq wrote: post #181
laumars wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. He went out of his way to obtain that information because there's no point being a whistle blower without having some evidence to back up your claims. 2. He's a college drop out, not a high school drop out (or at least that how it reads to me - a non-US citizen. I may have misunderstood how your education system works). Also, his family also works for government agencies, so that probably added weight to his appli…

Re 2 read again: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-n... "His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma. " High school.

It also says:

"In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)"

Presumably he obtained his GED at some time after he joined the CIA (when he lacked a high school diploma).

Of course from a semantic perspective you could argue having dropped out of high school he is and forever will be a high school drop out. But as I understand it this is not the traditional way the term "high school drop out" is used.

Post reply on HN