Julian Assange (not a whistleblower, I know) said wars are a way to transfer public money into private hands.
Everything in the US is about the same. Like quantitative easing.
Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
41–50 of 510 posts
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#42Earlier 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.
The point of sharing it only with trusted established journalists was that their qualified to know what needs redacting. Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#43It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.
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.
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the whole Snowden ordeal was not discovering hard proof we've been living in a borderline-Orwellian surveillance state, but the utter indifference of the American people at this revelation.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance, or at least screen out as much of the foreign intelligence methods as much as possible. Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
It gets a bit complicated with the whole 5-eyes mutual back scratching thing though.
Exactly. The existence of, and participation in, FVEY is treason against the people of the United States.
There is no such thing as an “allied intelligence agency”, by their very nature all non-US intelligence agencies are hostile to American citizens.
Thus, our domestic agencies conspiring with hostile foreign entities to defraud and undermine the citizens of the United States is treason.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US also has laws protecting whistleblowers, which to me just highlighted the complete moral bankruptcy of some Republican members of the US Congress when they tried to out the whistleblower who brought Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president to light, but more importantly, when they tried to impugn his motives. The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that i…
I found the treatment of Julian Assange to be the disgusting poltics; after that its just more of the same, innit?
The treatment of Assange defies belief, and the hypocrisy is off the scale.
The defense from many people who would nominally be appalled by this, seems to rest on the poor character of Assange, so he gets written off. The poor character point may or may not be correct, but is completely irrelevant, and if it relates to civil or criminal offences then it has never been allowed to be tested.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#46Just look at this thread of “hackers” saying “well the law is the law.” It’s an embarrassment the degree to which smart educated leading edge communities have totally and utterly forfeited their own power for the security blanket of these domination based systems. Actually it’s worse, the official ethos of success in America is now some cynical mix of “If you’re not scamming someone you’re not trying” and “Altruism i…
I was prepping to reply and you hit my point in your last paragraph. Through my youth I always assumed that people either saw through the corruption or had the wool pulled over their eyes, but the after working at a couple companies with several ex military contractor types and some some new inlaws, I've realized that for some people, tribe is above all. They are patriotic and loyal to the US system, which can do no wrong, and any perceived security or survival needs will always trump law and morals. These are the same thought processes that fuel the rise of fascism.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance, or at least screen out as much of the foreign intelligence methods as much as possible. Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
It gets a bit complicated with the whole 5-eyes mutual back scratching thing though.
What mutual backscratching? No such program was in the Snowden leaks. If you're claiming that the US gets other countries to spy on its citizens, that would be utterly illegal.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#48Earlier 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.
The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.
PRISM was both illegal and unconstitutional.
The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple.
Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#49In the EU we already have a law for protecting whistleblowers: https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun... Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers. Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesal…
Yet the EU continues to make life very difficult for EU whistleblower Roelie Post [0].
Perhaps because she fought against child trafficking and US-based adoption firms are lobbying in the EU for adopting vulnerable children from countries like Romania.
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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#50Earlier 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.
The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.
Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal.
That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.