Ravenman, I am not wrong on this treason thing. Giving aid to the enemy and committing espionage against your own country is treason. Whether he will be actually tried (much less convicted) for treason remains to be seen, if he is even ever again in U.S. custody. But saying that his actions are tantamount to treason as the term is colloquially understood and as is defined by the U.S. constitution is completely reasonable.
However, I am giving it up, because I grow weary of this argument, and in the end I don’t really care. I have no interest in arguing for arguing’s sake, unlike many people.
Fine. The U.S. constitution says that treason is providing aid to the enemy, and it is reasonable to argue that Snowden has done that. No, he has not been explicitly charged with treason, for obvious reasons (e.g. that diplomatically it would be more difficult to obtain extradition, but that all seems moot now, anyway.) But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be, if he were back in U.S. custody, nor does it mean that a plain reading of providing aid to the enemy isn’t applicable.
No, it might have been impossible for him to do this without doing something illegal. I’m not sure of that. But he didn’t need to flee the country and blast the secrets he had to anyone with a computer and a brain, friend or foe.
I consider him a hero, and the knowledge that he leaked information about a program that allegedly is not used domestically doesn’t change my opinion of that.
First, I note that the Times only says that there’s no evidence the program was used domestically. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t used domestically, just that there’s no evidence of it yet. Officials from the NSA have repeatedly lied to Congress under direct questioning, so I don’t really trust anything they have to say on any subject, but particularly not on what they are or are not doing domestically.
Whether or not he’s legally a traitor doesn’t matter to me. The way I see it, there is a powerful extralegal government agency with no effective oversight or control that’s betraying the trust of American citizens (and that of many of our allies). Snowden made a tremendous personal sacrifice to do what he thought was right. That counts as heroic in my book.
I have to say, the argument that because Snowden hasn’t been explicitly charged with treason (as opposed to inferring treason from the charges), it means he’s not guilty of it, is really poor. Are you going to say that OJ isn’t guilty of murder, because he was not convicted of same? Was Al Capone not also guilty of murder, when he was charged with income tax evasion?
Being guilty of a crime and being found guilty in a court of law are obviously distinct. I see no reason why similar usage cannot apply in Snowden’s case regarding treason.
I’ve already said that I can buy the argument that Snowden may be ethically justified in his actions. It is my opinion however that he handled the situation is a remarkably poor way tantamount to treason. No idea whether he’ll ever be tried as a traitor, but I do hope he will face justice in the U.S. some day. Anything beyond that is a guess.
I also agree that good may come from this, since it appears that the NSA may have exceeded its constitutional authority, and better safeguards over that agency’s activities might ultimately be put in place.
What I don’t agree with is the ends justifying the means. Snowden has given aid to enemies of the United States. I’m not ok with that, and I never will be. It would have been better if he had followed a different path to exposing these problems.
If he’d gone to Congress and they had responded - which I don’t think would have happened - the same information would have been made public. Doesn’t that give just as much aid to those “enemies”- and by “enemies” I mean friendly nations as well as hostile nations and people?
You’re comparing two entirely different things. You said that the charges against Snowden are “the equivalent of treason.” Except, there is an actual law against treason, which he hasn’t been charged with. This would seem to indicate that the State, which is the both the body which defines what the term “treason” means, and the party with the most vested interest in punishing Snowden as harshly as possible, does not appear to think his crimes constitute the legal definition of treason.
Convicting someone of a crime is a fairly high bar to pass, and there are any number of factors which can lead to an obviously guilty person walking free. But simply charging a person with a crime is an exceptionally low bar. It’s reasonable to ask, if what Snowden did was “obviously” treason, why the people who are, presumably, most familiar with the definition of the crime of treason, and most personally invested in prosecuting treason, have not applied that crime to Snowden.
I’m not sure how that would work. The “aid” Snowden has given to our enemies consists entirely of exposing the NSA’s activities. Any course of action he may have taken to make the American public aware of what the NSA was doing would give equal aid to our enemies - if he gave it to a Congressman to be read into the record, like Ellsberg did, the information would still reach our enemies, and they would still be aided to the exact degree they have been following his release of this data to the press. What path could he have taken that would have exposed this information solely to the American voting public, but not to our various enemies around the world?
No it isn’t. Maybe in Soviet Russia it is, but this is America. And here in America, according to the American constitution, treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. Publishing secret documents in the media might hurt national security, and it violates dozens of laws, but the law it does not violate is the law against treason.
And if Snowden had gone through the lawful channels, he’d be protected under those whistleblower statutes. So what you’re essentially saying is that protections for whistleblowers aren’t worth having since the only way to blow the whistle is by breaking the law anyway.
I place value on my life. Snowden endangered my life by providing information to our enemies about how we track them, thus making it easier for them to hide and to engage in plots that threaten my life. That’s treason.
And I’d like to know what “secret unconstitutional laws” you’re referring to, because, as far as I know, every single program Snowden has exposed to al-Qaeda was 100% duly authorized by Congress, signed into law by the president, and has been upheld by the courts.
I don’t see Smapti’s assertion as being outrageous.
Due to Snowden’s leaks, any group plotting to, say, plant a bomb at the mall knows not to ever use the Internet or cellphones to communicate. Maybe that’s obvious in retrospect, but maybe not. Phrased differently, do you think Snowden’s actions made anyone in the US safer from terrorist attacks?
I’ll try here: it is impossible to overstate how fucking obvious this already was, and we know for a fact that terrorists were already aware of it. Note that Bin Laden lived in a compound with no internet connection, didn’t communicate by email or phone, and his couriers took the batteries out of their cell phones hours before they went to see him. We can also say that NSA spying didn’t prevent the Times Square bombing attempt, which failed only due to incompetence, or the Boston Marathon bombing. And this is also about spying on U.S. citizens. The rules for people overseas or non-citizens are different. One of the problems here is that the NSA is hoovering up a lot of communications based on low probability that the person communicating is not a U.S. citizen.
Then there’s the whole “bomb at a mall thing.” I’ll say it sounds like a Bush-era fantasy and leave it at that.
We’re already very safe from terrorist attacks because they’re incredibly rare and there are plenty of safeguards against them. I think his actions might make citizens safer from violations of their rights, which is a bigger concern.
You assume that all “terrorists” are sophisticated and knowledgeable. I agree that the many are but not all. And it is the amateur ones who now know better how to avoid detection.
And, please don’t conflate Snowden’s revealing alleged domestic abuses with his exposure of the legal (and I think necessary) foreign surveillance operations (i.e. my OP was focused on the latter).
I can’t help but weigh in on the treason thing one more time: the Constitution says that one type of treason is “adhering to [the United States’] enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Note that the crime is ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES, giving them aid and comfort. Simply doing something that ends up being up a benefit to our enemies, like maybe inventing an encryption scheme that becomes widely available and Al Qaida adopts it, isn’t treason. That’s because the inventor of the encryption isn’t actually adhering to our enemies.
In my view, Snowden isn’t adhering to anyone or anything other than his own agenda. He certainly isn’t adhering to the Constitution, what with his ridiculous comments about how he was “elected” to steal secrets or whatever nonsense that was.
It’s also increasingly ironic to me that people would credulously look upon an IT guy as being an actual expert in these matters. I look around my workplace and think, how much do our IT people understand what work we do here? Sure, they may have a basic understanding of what we do, but having accesses to passwords, backing up stuff, keeping the servers running, and so forth doesn’t mean that one actually understands the substance of anything. Yes, he had access to a lot of files. Librarians have access to a lot of books, too, and nobody expects a librarian to actually understand the content of the books that they help you find.
Snowden basically went into a huge library and stole a bunch of books. The fact that he had a lot of books in his possession doesn’t mean he understands the words written in them – and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Maybe he didn’t go through the proper whistleblowing route because he was afraid he’d be laughed out of the room.
Snowden: “Can you believe it? The NSA is spying on FOREIGN COUNTRIES with COMPUTERS!!! I’m blowing the whistle!!!”
Proper authorities: “No shit, Sherlock. You’re an idiot, and so is the person who hired you.”
The government is already very good at catching the unsophisticated ones through sting operations. And this doesn’t change anything anyway: the amateurs - and all the domestic are all amateurs at this stage, by the way - already know this. And even before Snowden, this did not prevent any attacks or attempted attacks.
I’m not seeing how disclosing the existence of Quantum makes the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorists. It seems to have more to do with China and even if a terrorism knew the capability existed, that doesn’t mean they know it’s being used against them specifically or how they can thwart it.
And as we know, listening to the conversations of Americans without a court order is illegal, even though the government has the capacity to do so at any time.
It’s like saying that the Air Force can drop a 2,000 pound bomb on my house at any time. They have thousands of aircraft, hundreds of thousands of bombs, and the technology to make sure that those bombs land directly on my house. All that stops the Air Force from doing that is the law.
I think these two quotes capture the crux of the disagreement here. One side is (rightly) pointing out that information that is helpful to terrorists has been released in a way that’s against the law. The other side is (rightly) pointing out that the danger posed to us by terrorists is statistically insignificant, while the danger posed by a government agency that spies on all of us with no effective oversight or control is huge.
I’m not sure how to reconcile these two positions (I’m pretty sure arguing over whether Snowden’s acts legally constitute treason is not helping). Does anyone dispute either of them? If so, let’s talk about that. I believe that few dispute either claim. The difference is the moral weight we put on each transgression. Is Snowden as pure as driven snow? Well, clearly not. There’s a huge moral grey area here. The ongoing argument over the word “treason” is an attempt to frame the discussion by establishing the severity of the first point.
I think it’s missing the mark, though. I believe that the second claim is more important, and the validity of that claim is not vacated by applying the word “treason”. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume that Snowden committed treason. What now? Did he do it in the furtherance of a greater good? I think yes. Did he protect us from a potentially much larger danger? I think yes. Is it a good idea to punish people who, by great personal risk, reveal and attempt to protect us from a much greater evil? I think no.
I’d like to see those who argue that Snowden is a traitor address those points. Not “did he do something bad?” (which no one disputes) or “what label shall we apply to the bad thing he did” but “what is the net effect of his actions?”
It’s a bit early to say whether this mess will be upheld by the courts. They haven’t had much time to rule on anything. I expect some of it to be ruled unconstitutional. I also have to question why, if everything the NSA is doing is on the up and up and totally approved by the major branches of the government, the Director of National Intelligence lied under oath to Congress in response to a direct question about exactly the sort of program we’re talking about here (wholesale spying on US Citizens). That fact makes me extremely distrustful of the NSA and any claims they might make about whether they’re obeying the law (in letter or spirit).
I absolutely dispute that claim. I did that just upthread: terrorists know the government is watching them, the government admits that bulk metadata collection hasn’t disrupted any terrorist plots, and there was a terrorist attack on U.S. soil just last year despite all of the stuff Snowden disclosed. I can imagine that other countries might be able to figure out some things about U.S. spying capabilities based on what has been made public, but other countries aren’t about to bomb the U.S. I see no evidence for the claims about terrorism, and that’s not insignificant.
I think this really needs to be emphasized here. Despite all the domestic spying that Snowden disclosed, in April a terrorist attack was planned by a legal permanent resident of the U.S. who the government was aware of and was tracking. They knew he watched jihadist videos and they knew he’d been to a region in Russia where there is a lot of jihadist activity, but he was able to build some bombs and kill and maim people anyway. That poses some important questions about the utility of this kind of surveillance, doesn’t it? If the government couldn’t stop this guy with a lot of specific information and tools, what good are bulk metadata and hacking into Google and Yahoo?