I’m a leftist, not a libertarian, but I always feel compelled to bring up a specific point in Snowden’s defense when he is mentioned to divisive opinions:
He did speak up correctly, using the correct channels, and the proper channels told him to shut the fuck up.
Then he again did what he did the rightest way he could, by giving the data to one of the oldest members of the fourth estate, the press, to decide proper course, ONLY AFTER the primary state failed him spectacularly.
Do you know why he had to out himself? Why didn’t he give stuff to the papers and stay hidden?
They were state secrets with a very well documented list of individuals to which it had been disclosed and he was documented as having had taken issue with the program. It’s reasonable that it would be traced back to him and that he would not be given protections or a fair trial.
Which still would have given him more time to get to somewhere like Cambodia that doesn’t extradite. No this was an ego thing. Either that or he was already compromised by the Chinese and they demanded it to trap him.
And had he stopped there it would be fine. He then went on to give secret documents to China and Russia.
This work survey is anonymous and won’t be associated with any identifying information. Feel free to voice your authentic opinions.
“I don’t feel strongly about anything” if it’s required, deleted email if it’s not
At work, you keep your opinions to yourself.
It doesn’t matter if you are asked for your opinion by your boss, in an “anonymous” survey, or by a co-worker at a seemingly innocuous kids birthday party. There are no friends in business. Stick to business. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
I’m not a very political person. I don’t have strong feelings about it sir. Taking care of business is my priority.
Stay safe out there folks.
He revealed massive warrantless domestic surveillance. The 1700s equivalent would be if the post office made copies of every single letter everyone sent and then promised not to read them unless the sender or recipient was one day subject to a valid warrant. Whoever revealed this info would’ve been a hero and a patriot back then, and it should be the same today.
Snowden leaked his info about these programs more than a decade ago. If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.
If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.
It’s publicly available information that almost all social media companies have all of your private posts and the ability to release them to anyone they desire. People just don’t care.
Read the Cuckoo’s Egg from 1989. NSA were at the very least tapping all international calls in the 1980s.
The people that cared knew about this for a long time.
All Snowden did was give up sensitive intel to foreign adversaries and got NSA capabilities that anyone that cared already knew about talked about more in the media.
And nothing has really changed. There’s no international law against this so there’s nothing preventing Russia and China from looking at your data. There’s also nothing prevent five eyes countries from spying on each other’s citizens and sharing it back with the country whose citizens they spied on. Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other’s citizens?
If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.
They would have all data that any company has about you that has been sold to a marketing company. It’s trivial to create a shell company posing as a ad agency and legally buy all that data. And given the enshittification of everything there is data on basically everything you do. You buy groceries with a loyalty card? It’s on an NSA database being analyzed by an AI for suspicious activity. You didn’t read the fine print when you got that loyalty card that said they would share the data to third parties? It means the data will be shared to anyone that’s willing to pay them for it, and that includes the NSA. Why do you think they were giving you that discount? Because they’re nice? Nope, it’s because they can sell your data.
This is happening because it’s the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.
So now you understand that the NSA is likely doing these things because they can, do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?
Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other’s citizens?
but then,
do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?
Government doing it in secret vs a citizen exposing it? I’m going to back my fellow citizen in this one.
This is happening because it’s the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.
That’s some serious bootlicking there, you think they’re only collecting “legally” obtained information? Let’s also gloss over the anti-consumer practices that companies employ to obtain that sweet third party data on you.
“you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.” - JFC you have some weird logic going on in your head. Let’s just forget what’s required in today’s society, the data that has to be shared to perform basic functions like employment now adays. The average citizen is not a privacy expert and no one is educated in K-12 to be consensual informed.
I’m going to back my fellow citizen in this one.
Your “fellow citizen” is a citizen of Russia. Ya think he’s going to expose all the data collection Russia is doing? LOL
Let’s also gloss over the anti-consumer practices that companies employ to obtain that sweet third party data on you.
Indeed. Everyone glosses that over because it’s considered acceptable for every scumbag marketing person to know everything about you so they can manipulate you into buying shit you don’t need. That’s fine as long because you’re too paranoid over the NSA to give a shit about the fact that privacy doesn’t even exist anymore. You’re data is so boring to the NSA it gets filtered out with one pass of an algorithm. The marketing companies are data mining the shit out of your data.
There’s no such thing as privacy now, the only thing Snowden accomplished was compromising intel which Russia rewarded him for. Dude is a straight up traitor.
I just spent the entire time reading this just aghast at the audacity for you to voice an opinion like this in 2024, with rising fascism throughout the world.
How deeply under a rock must your mole-hill have been built, how jingoistic and nationalistic must one become to have such… such a collosally naive take? I am so angry with you right now.
Yeah and where is a lot of the propaganda promoting fascism coming from? The country where your hero Edward Snowden lives and is now a citizen of?
How much data do you think Russia is collecting about you? How much data are they collecting on their own citizens? Do you think Snowden is brave enough to blow the whistle on that kind of activity happening in the country he’s currently a citizen of?
Who is the one really living under a rock here?
I don’t think it was feasible at the time (2013) for the average American to know and understand the concept that their government was capturing essentially all mobile cellular and internet communications for storage and analysis in giant fusion centers.
The real tragedy is that many people now know and still don’t care, or have given into this bizarre cynical defeatism that we might as well just accept it. Hard disagree on those points.
He would have been a hero if he had just stayed in place or gone directly to a non-extradition country without a ton of secrets. Instead this dumbass ends up in China with several laptops and hard drives.
I still remember when everything came out and so much FUD was out there calling him a traitor.
I think to this day a large chunk of folks have no idea the breadth of what he told us and what he gave up to do so.
I couldn’t do it, i don’t think
I remember a lot of it was weird. It’s was like he “only” had a high school diploma and his ex-girlfriend was a model. Like the most pointless crap you’ve heard of. He’s a patriot, he saw a lot of bad crap going on. He tried to report it and then he gave up his freedom to let us know. I’m not sure I could do it either.
Yeah, and any programmer knows how much important software is written by people with “only” a highschool diploma
I still don’t understand why he had to leave the country and can never come back,
and where is he anyway? Who is taking care of him? How does he earn money to survive? What is he doing?
Last I heard he’s in Russia because everywhere else was going to extradite him, and Russia was stoked to have him in the country as a big FU to the USA.
I thought Russia and the USA stopped animosity with each other after the Cold War was over.
He immediately got charged under the Espionage Act. If he didn’t leave or if he came back he’d be tried, without a jury, and get either life in prison or the death penalty.
Lol no. He got charged and had his passport suspended a month after he left. He was in Hong Kong on May 20th and they charged him/suspended his passport on June 21st. After he’d been in Hong Kong with top secret documents for a month. He had plenty of time to fly to any of several non extradition countries.
Furthermore he would certainly have a jury and the federal government hasn’t handed down a death sentence for anything less than murder since the Rosenbergs.
Yeah that’ll happen when you go on the run to China and Russia with classified laptops full of shit you downloaded from the top secret Internet.
Had he stayed or simply gone to a non extradition country without the laptops he would be a hero. Hell he’d have been out of prison by now. The longest sentence anyone’s ever gotten for whistle blowing in the modern era is 5 years.
Listen. How the fuck it it possible that people understand:
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propaganda exists, and
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that it is in a government’s interest to keep an unpopular project secret from its citizens
and not even think to question the narrative that comes out of the media?
Do you mean to tell me you uncritically believe the notion that there is some way Snowden could have exposed government secrets and the government would be like: “whoa kay, ya got me, its true, and go ahead and listen to what he has to say?”
or do you suppose that maybe the government would still put a bit of FUD out to minimize the damage, keep its citizenry from wanting to look too deeply? I mean, wouldn’t that just be a smart decision? We aren’t talking about bastions of transparency right? we’re talking about the same govt that just got caught wiretapping its citizens.
Rant over, lemme boil down what i’m looking for here:
Which of the many negative things that came out about Snowden do you believe was the truth vs FUD?
What are your feelings on how the media focused on Snowden himself rather than the content of the leaks?
Who do you suppose benefitted from that choice in focus?
That’s funny from the crowd that routinely says he’d have been renditioned and tortured when there are multiple cases of actual whistle blowers getting a 3-5 year prison term and being treated completely normally in the system.
Why is he special?
He was in Hong Kong for a month. Why couldn’t he fly to a non extradition country in the month before they stopped his passport?
You’re right that the story doesn’t add up but it’s not the governments story.
Instead of arguing about the guy why don’t people simply focus on what he leaked?
his persecution is the distraction from the crimes he exposed.
They tell us he endangered our operatives, yet not one example has surfaced in over a decade. You know they would be shouting that shit from every rooftop if it happened.
This is how the USA treats heroes. We persecute them for exposing our evil.
What’s funny about this picture is Obama was seeking his extradition for the leaks. I’d still vote for him again though.
