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

Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 178 posts

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#31

Post by toyg »

csandreasen wrote: post #25
jgrahamc wrote: post #6

I sometimes think that HN is pro-Snowden. Are there folks here who see him as less a hero more a villain?

It doesn't seem to be a very popular opinion on HN/Reddit/etc. I've noticed a couple other people besides myself, although casting it as hero/villain is a bit of a simplification - I think what he did was reckless and I don't think he's been forthcoming about his motives. I've seen a lot of people downplay the comparison between Snowden's actions and Manning's actions. As I see it, Manning took thousands of sensitive…

> sensationalizing the issues in order to milk these documents for as long as possible

That's the only way to fight politicians who know how the news-cycle work: just sit tight for a couple of weeks and anything will be forgotten. By "refreshing" every few months, they kept the issue on the agenda. Recent legislative wins in this area are almost entirely due to this strategy: in the first month after release, there was massive support behind Feinstein and her likes; now that side has slowly been eroded down to a few securocrats and the usual hawks, which is why wins are happening in courts and in Congress.

> It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations

We really don't know how "legitimate" those descriptions of people hacking equipment in transit were. Besides, there is a world beyond the US -- Greenwald publishes from Brasil, he doesn't have to follow the wishes of the US government. Would you have kept quiet on the Bay of Pigs operation just because it was a "legitimate" foreign operation from a US-gov perspective?

Journalism is not about covering government press releases.

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#32

Post by dimino »

jgrahamc wrote: post #6

I sometimes think that HN is pro-Snowden. Are there folks here who see him as less a hero more a villain?

Almost everyone I talk to in person thinks Snowden is a criminal. These people believe the US government was caught doing something it shouldn't have, but Snowden himself is a bad guy to these folks because he's seen as betraying his country.

I think HN is much more pro-Snowden than the general population is, but I think the general population doesn't deny the value of exposing what the US government did. I live in DC however, so there's certainly a pro-government feeling in this down, possibly more so than many other places in the US.

Edit: To add some support for my anecdotes, here's a somewhat recent poll I found from April 21st citing 64% of people hold a negative opinion of Snowden [0].

[0] - http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowde...

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#33

Post by hobs »

blumkvist wrote: post #28
mlrtime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be locked in a cell and nobody would hear from you again. You wouldn't be able to communicate your defense to the outside world, you'd be much much worse off.

It's much more complicated than that, but I'm not really interested in discussing this further.

I understand that you think it is more complicated than that, but I don't think it is.

Do you remember what happened with Chelsea Manning? Because that is what the GP is referring to. When you get put in military prison, they basically get to do whatever they want to you.

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#34

Post by dublinben »

csandreasen wrote: post #29
pluma wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else. Russia was never intended to be more than a stop-gap. Considering how disgustingly subservient all of Europe has been to bend over backwards to the US (e.g. forcing the landing of a presidential plane because someone suspected it was carrying Snowden) you can't really blame him. Russia is the only coun…

This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in). [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...…

According to that article, the Ecuadorean travel document was only revoked five days after it was used. Pretty much by definition, if your travel documents are accepted and let you travel, they are valid.

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#35

Post by JupiterMoon »

csandreasen wrote: post #29
pluma wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else. Russia was never intended to be more than a stop-gap. Considering how disgustingly subservient all of Europe has been to bend over backwards to the US (e.g. forcing the landing of a presidential plane because someone suspected it was carrying Snowden) you can't really blame him. Russia is the only coun…

This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in). [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...…

How does this change the main point? (That he got stuck in Russia during transit due to invalid travel documents.)

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#36

Post by kr4 »

blumkvist wrote: post #9
jgrahamc wrote: post #6

I sometimes think that HN is pro-Snowden. Are there folks here who see him as less a hero more a villain?

I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on. He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.

Crimea debacle? You should go read GlobalResearch.ca, CounterPunch.org, WSWS.org ETC – non-MSM news outlets to get the other side of the picture.

Crimea is a very strategic area to get hold of which NATO wants to break into Russia through color revolutions ETC just because Putin refused to be US dog. When Ukraine democratic government was forcefully overthrown by a US-backed Nazi military coup what choice Russia had? Just imagine how US would respond if China or Russia back coup takes place in Mexico or Canada? Why pivot to Asia, why redrawing Middle East, dividing Iraq into three small states? Supporting rebels against Serian government while helping Saudi dictatership to kill Yemen civilions just to suppress another rebels. All sugarcoded IN the name of democracy and freedom? which even US is failing to provide to its citizens.

We're listening about China aggression, Russian aggression, while US is at war in almost the whole world directly or through proxies.

US has accumulated enough bad karma to insure its decline, those who don't remember history are bound to repeat it. This war game and greed for hegemony by bullet at all cost has happened countless times in the past and has always resulted in complete destruction of empires and civilizations sooner or later.

But public is sleeping as always, only with a vein optimism that "this won't happen to us, we're unique in the human history!" You're not unique, you're just a spec of dust in the cosmos which has eternal law of upholding justice. It's just that it comes at the right time when the bucket is full.

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#37

Post by bad_user »

marrs wrote: post #30
vinceguidry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone. You should expect that comments made on political topics are going to get downvoted by people who strongly disagree with you. But moderating your tone and angle of attack on such topics can go a long way towards avoiding them and can even get people who disagree with you to upvote you. Complaining about downvotes is only going to earn you more of them.

Disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting someone. No. It isn't. How would you feel if people shut you out of a discussion because they disagreed with you? If someone says something you disagree with, debate them. If they say something factually incorrect, correct them. They may even thank you for it. And guess what, they may end up changing your mind, or correcting a mistake on your part. Actively seek…

I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time. I close the phone on unwanted calls, I mark unsolicited emails as spam, I tell salesmen showing up on my door to fuck off and whenever deeply flawed opinions are spoken by my friends or family (on matters important to me, like racism, privacy, free speech), I get up and leave. It's how I keep sane.

And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-)

Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#38

Post by [deleted] »

csandreasen wrote: post #29
pluma wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He only had to take asylum in Russia because the US revoked his passport and prevented him from going anywhere else. Russia was never intended to be more than a stop-gap. Considering how disgustingly subservient all of Europe has been to bend over backwards to the US (e.g. forcing the landing of a presidential plane because someone suspected it was carrying Snowden) you can't really blame him. Russia is the only coun…

This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in). [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...…

[deleted]

Re: Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

#40

Post by dTal »

csandreasen wrote: post #25
jgrahamc wrote: post #6

I sometimes think that HN is pro-Snowden. Are there folks here who see him as less a hero more a villain?

It doesn't seem to be a very popular opinion on HN/Reddit/etc. I've noticed a couple other people besides myself, although casting it as hero/villain is a bit of a simplification - I think what he did was reckless and I don't think he's been forthcoming about his motives. I've seen a lot of people downplay the comparison between Snowden's actions and Manning's actions. As I see it, Manning took thousands of sensitive…

>Every time a news outlet does actually reveal groups actually being targeted (like Russia, China, Al Qaeda, etc.), I tend to think that it's exactly the kind of people I want the NSA to be spying on.

I'd be interested in seeing some links.

Be careful where you get your leaks from. If "a news outlet" isn't the Washington Post, The Guardian, or The Intercept, then it's not a primary source. In particular, if it's a 'leak' that hasn't even been reported by any of those three, then you're actually reading propaganda and not news.

It seems quite unbelievable, but we actually have proof that NSA/GCHQ are willing to leak their own legitimate activities to the media, provided they are reported as being leaked by Snowden:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-gove...

I strongly suggest you read at least the first paragraph of that article and ask yourself "where did The Independent get that 'leak', and why did they attribute it to Snowden when that's clearly a lie?"

Post reply on HN