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

About the Reuters article

guardian.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 81 posts

Re: About the Reuters article

#5

Post by mikemoka »

"the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message. That attempt will undoubtedly be made here."

looking back at all the articles recently published on HN about it, this has undoubtedly happened here as well in a sense.

My feeling is that people are already starting to somehow forget about the revelations by replacing them in their mind with the engaging story of a whistleblower on the run.

Re: About the Reuters article

#6

Post by reneherse »

Slightly off topic: The article mentions a "dead man's switch" set up by Snowden prior to making his disclosures. If he is assassinated, apparently all the documents will be publicly released.

Greenwald also mentioned that the totality of what Snowden controls is "enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States." Let's assume that's not an entirely hyperbolic statement.

From the point of view of the Obama Administration, the real threat is not Snowden's/Greenwald's principled (even patriotic) drip of information, but that an enemy of the US might kill Snowden, and stage it to look like a US op, thus tripping the dead man's switch. Snowden has, on his own, made himself a prime target for any sufficiently ambitious US antagonist.

And so the US wants Snowden back not only to prosecute him, but also to "protect" him. (Nothing like four years of solitary to keep you safe, comrade.)

Until and unless he is granted a pardon or some other form of immunity from prosecution, it seems that Snowden's best interest is to stay in the strongest and most secure country he can find. A country with a highly developed security apparatus (to protect him from hostile agents), one that is adversarial to America (to disallow his rendition or extradition), but not openly antagonistic (to want to kill him to harm the US).

And that is exactly the country where he finds himself right now.

Obama and Putin have quite the chess match coming up. God bless the man whose life is in their hands.

[Edited for clarity]

Re: About the Reuters article

#7

Post by oleganza »

Every mainstream newspaper, tv and radio channel has to have a state-issued license to operate. This means that state can always find a reason to dismiss the license and make business shut down. This fact creates a great bias towards discussing something safer in the eye of the state. Talking about Snowden character is so much safer than speaking openly about how NSA spies on everyone by forcing companies to give them access to communication channels and hardware and then forces them to lie to their customers about privacy.

"Free speech" exists only when there is no license to get and no armed SWAT team that will come if you don't have one.

Re: About the Reuters article

#8

Post by decryptthis_NSA »

reneherse wrote: post #6

Slightly off topic: The article mentions a "dead man's switch" set up by Snowden prior to making his disclosures. If he is assassinated, apparently all the documents will be publicly released. Greenwald also mentioned that the totality of what Snowden controls is "enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States." Let's as…

don't think it's hyperbole. Snowden planned this for a while and looks like he had access to and knew where to find everything. USA probably spends $100+ Billion in intel and knowing what foreign leaders, generals and business leaders say and write can be more powerful than a few aircraft carriers.

Of course then there is the trust issue, many world leaders will be pissed to learn that their "friend" has been reading their emails and monitoring their phone calls, even private ones.

Re: About the Reuters article

#9

Post by mikemoka »

reneherse wrote: post #6

Slightly off topic: The article mentions a "dead man's switch" set up by Snowden prior to making his disclosures. If he is assassinated, apparently all the documents will be publicly released. Greenwald also mentioned that the totality of what Snowden controls is "enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States." Let's as…

solitary confinement could trigger it as well probably, it depends on how things have been set up.

Obama should have handled this in a totally different way, he should have treated him as a partner for having shed light upon a corrupted practice of the NSA, and should have asked the people heading the NSA to resign.

This would have been a checkmate against any other US antagonist in my opinion, but I admit that is definitely too easy to judge things you don't know in every aspect from the comfort of your own home.

Re: About the Reuters article

#10

Post by weinzierl » 

    then by bullying small countries out of letting him land 
    for re-fueling.
As far as I know Cuba was the country were a stop for re-fueling was planned on the way to South America.

I have read about pressure on Ecuador, but not Cuba. Does that sentence mean that Greenwald (and probably Snowden and Wikileaks) have information that a stop in Cuba is not save?

Post reply on HN