But that’s my point. The fact that what the NSA did is illegal shows that there are legislators and judges and other government officials who think it should be illegal. Snowden isn’t some Free Man arguing that taxation is theft. He’s talking about a government agency breaking existing laws.
All Snowden had to do was contact the people in the government who wrote those laws and tell them that the NSA was breaking them. They could have initiated closed door investigations and hearings of the crimes without revealing classified information. That would have been the win-win - the NSA would have been called to account but without harming national security.
This is absolute fucking bullshit. It is immoral to punish someone for something you think is right. That includes punishing yourself. If a law is morally wrong, then letting yourself be punished for it is wrong.
Furthermore, none of your bullshit applies to this case, since no information he gave could possibly help himself. Even if he got to go to some beach and be free, he still loses pretty much everything. There is no rational argument that he did this for anything other than his own convictions.
And, after what happened to Bradley Manning even before the trial, I would also not trust the U.S. Government to do what was right. When you treat someone so poorly that they want to commit suicide, I no longer trust you to do anything right.
The only reason I haven’t been supporting Snowden is that I’ve always thought that he erred in thinking this information was at all important. Everyone with any modicum of sense has suspected this was the case. If what is happening is illegal and thus can be prevented, my opinion changes completely.
I am not going to ever condemn a man for trying to save his own skin against a set of immoral punishments.
No, they don’t. The French Resistance would not have been more heroic if they’d thrown their lives away by offering them to the Nazis. Maybe you long for a return to the 19th century, when people had the good taste to stand there and wait to be shot?
Because the only reason Snowden’s actions are illegal is because the felons in the NSA (and lying to Congress about what you’re doing is a felony) made it illegal. It’s like if we lived in some fucked up world where rapists could make it illegal to mention you were raped. A criminal should never have the power to make it illegal to acknowledge that they committed a crime.
This is different from the claim that all heroes always stick around to be judged. I’ve just gone back through all your posts, and I can just barely believe that the abovequoted is the claim you’ve been trying to defend. But the context of the thread, and several statements you’ve made in which you explicitly or tacitly endorse what others in the thread have said, make it unclear which claim you have really been defending all along.
The claim “All heroes always stick around for judgment” is ludicrous.
The claim “It is logical and reasonable to expect a hero to stick around for judgment” is ludicrous or sensible depending on the context. If the statement is generalized to all contexts, it is false. But if it is supposed to apply only to a particular context, then, like I said, it depends on that context.
It is becoming clear, in any case, that participants in this thread have different ideas about just exactly what the context is. Figuring out who’s right about the context may be more informative and useful than deciding whether Snowden’s a hero or not–indeed, figuring out the context may be a prerequisite to that judgment.
That’s a pretty solid argument LN, but I weigh it less than you in this context. I suspect that we had a situation where we had to topple a few apple carts. And Snowden took one for the team.
Broader context matters here. First, let’s set aside Manning: he was a troll. Snowden in contrast took care to both filter out material that would compromise particular agents in the field (unlike Cheney’s gang) and hand material only to reporters with a national security background (unlike Manning).
Secondly, the security state grew by leaps and bounds after 9/11, a time when many feared that the US was pitted with sleeper cells. It wasn’t, but that was a reasonable fear at the time. There’s a tendency for drip by drip privacy encroachments to work only in one direction: this is sometimes called the ratchet effect. Methinks that both the legal and illegal steps taken by the NSA are out of line, a Nixonian disaster waiting to happen. Leaking info to a Senator would lead to incremental adjustments at best. Worse, it wouldn’t give the public a good picture of what the NSA is up to in a general sense-- something that they really should be made aware of. Finally, I would prefer less attention to something that has killed 3500 people in the last 20 years and more attention to … other matters. Like civil rights or privacy encroachments. Or heck, malaria or the space program, never mind tier one issues like financial regulation or global climate.
Now that last paragraph is highly contentious and it wouldn’t surprise me if parts of it are wrongheaded. I just wanted to say that these background issues very much color my perceptions of some of the procedural issues that have been under discussion in this thread. That said, I see little evidence that Snowden compromised security to the extent that we should be pulling out the pliers and bamboo shoots. Daniel Ellsberg notes that he was set free on bail shortly after being arrested for leaking the Pentagon papers. In stark contrast, if Snowden stayed in the US, he would have been seized, possibly tortured and almost certainly kept incommunicado before trial, then most likely SuperMaxed indefinitely. Perhaps exile is too good for him, but I see no evidence that he deserves the sort of harsh treatment he would receive here. Leaks to the press of classified info are pretty routine after all.
You are very confused here. First, he is not punishing anyone for something he thinks it wrong; the people via the court system are potentially trying him for breaking existing law. Unless you are arguing the law against leaking classified materials is immoral, then you have no ground to stand on.
Even if we buy your interpretations of his motives, that means absolutely nothing. Crimes are not solely dependent on the motivations of the perpetrator.
Why is this so hard for some of you? He is not being charged because he embarrassed the US, he is being charged because he broke the law by leaking classified documents. Do you honestly not see the merits of such a law in general? The specifics would obviously be hashed out in a trial, but to act as though there is no reason to charge a guy who does what he did is blatant stupidity.
Then you haven’t been reading what I have said. Not sure there is much I can do about that given I cannot comprehend it for you. Furthermore, nobody in this thread is arguing what you allege given such a blanket statement makes no sense absent context. When people say civil disobedience requires sticking around to be judged, they are not literally saying every act of heroism means subjecting yourself to punishment. The point is that the term civil disobedience applies to acts done in a free or semi-free society to highlight a narrow illegal or immoral act in an otherwise functional system. The whole point is that you trust the people to exercise their judgement of both law/act and your stand against it. Thinking it means runaway slaves should turn themselves in is just beyond stupid, and incredibly disingenuous.
Has anyone said that? What does that even mean absent the context discussed in this thread?
How do you know this? Cite?
This has nothing to do with government, and more about people willingly trading privacy for technology and convenience. After all, everything the NSA has is data that is ALREADY being collected by private companies. Government can hardly encroach on territory willingly ceded by the public to various entities; entities that have and will continue to use the info more often and for more nefarious purposes than the government likely would. In fact, it is only regulation that prevents these companies from fully monetizing and utilizing this info they collect in more intrusive ways than they do now. If your beef is with the loss of privacy, you should be fighting this fight in Silicon Valley, not Fort Meade or DC.
More importantly, this digital government privacy encroachment is being used to mitigate real world government privacy intrusions. It is what will allow us to ease rules about what you can bring on planes, and will allow us to make more sensible, data based laws that are less burdensome to the regular public. It helps us differentiate between terrorists and some guy calling his parents in Yemen. Being able to crunch all that big data means some officer doesn’t have to tail that guy for weeks. That’s what I think people are missing here.
Yes, that information can theoretically be used in bad ways, but “the government” hardly needs metadata to thoroughly screw you if they wanted to. There is no reason to undertake such a herculean effort if their goal is anything other than basically what they say it is. This idea that the NSA is so concerned with your mundane daily activities and associates, or even fairly major illegal acts is just no borne out by ANY evidence that has come out so far.
Now I don’t say to say that to imply that the government should have carte blanche with absolutely no oversight, but the nature of their aims makes secrecy a necessity. Furthermore, there is significant congressional and judicial oversight at this point. Yes, you need to verify, but you also need to trust. But the fact that YOU personally don’t get to judge and critique every action the government takes does not speak to the efficacy of oversight. That has been the mistake many of these leakers make. They think oversight means unfettered public scrutiny. It doesn’t.
The problem is that employees of the government are doing things that are illegal. The FISA court apparently authorized the Verizon metadata collecting, which I didn’t know before, and that collection to me clearly violates the Fourth Amendment, and I don’t think it should be upheld if challenged. But the employees of the government lied to Congress about what they were collecting. If the “government” and “the people” are the same entity in your view, how does that hold up when the employees lie to our representatives?
I heard that Colbert summed it up nicely when he said something like “If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you should have nothing to fear from this massive government program that they’ve been hiding.”
I don’t buy that at all. From what I’ve heard, Snowden is very familiar with crypto techniques, even to the extent of leaving copies of the data with others, but with the decryption keys available only if something happens to him (like a dead-man switch). The idea that China or Russia could have access to the clear text data by copying the hard drives is just ludicrous.
The awareness is the point - with civil disobedience, there would be no awareness unless a person is jailed or prosecuted. If Rosa Parks had sat at the front of the bus but then ran away before being arrested, no one would have heard about it. Her arrest was the act of disobedience that got attention to the cause. But that’s completely different from the situation in Snowden’s case. He got attention by releasing the data. Facing arrest and charges were unnecessary and not helpful.
What stridency? I admitted I hadn’t heard all the details, informed you of what I had heard and my opinion based on that, and explicitly invited anyone to add to my understanding.
The only part that I was strident about was the notion that a hero always takes his punishment. I can’t believe that there are actually respected members of this forum who hold that position. To me, it’s bizzarro-land batshit-crazy kind of thinking, and I can’t even imagine how anyone can hold it, but hey, it’s an opinion.
Really? I think the opposite is true - I don’t mind at all that Google wants to find out more about me so that they can display ads that are more relevant to my interests. What they can’t do is put me behind bars. There are restrictions on government prying for a reason, and we the public have to be on guard against giving away our freedom in exchange for the promise that government will make us more secure.
And this is the same NSA that lied to Congress?
How can you know this? He would have to know that this would, at least for a while, put him in exile. Cushy? WTF?
This is one of those “have you been reading the same thread as me?” moments. John Mace and Marley, at least, have repeatedly, emphatically, insisted in no uncertain terms that no hero ever flees. Attempts to ask them clarifying questions to see whether they mean a modified, less universal version of this claim have been to no avail. They said it, and they really mean it. (ETA: And my confusion about your claim came from the fact that, after they said these things, you often responded to indicate that you agreed with them. Apparently, you did not agree with them, you agreed with a weaker, more plausible claim. I comprehend what you said just fine, the fact is (apparently) what you said is not clearly reflective of what you meant.)
CurtC, I’m interested as well. (The request above is for further information about Snowden filtering out info about specific agents and dealing with reporters with national security backgrounds only.)
Here, let’s just check and make sure we’re not getting stuck on a misunderstanding.
Interpret the following statement completely generally and literally, please, and indicate whether it is true or false. I’m particularly interested, of course, in John Mace and Marley23’s opinion.
The statement is:
No hero ever flees in order to stave off negative (for him) consequences of his purportedly heroic act.
(I had “his or her” but it was just too much. Also, I wanted to just put “no hero ever flees” but with my request for a completely general literal interpretation you might worry about, for example, a case in which someone is a hero, and also when they were a kid they once fled from a bear or something.)
That was a statment made by Measure for Measure, not me. Sounds reasonable, based on what I do know about how he’s taken care to encrypt the data and make sure it’s available if something happens to him, but I hadn’t heard about the filtering.
It’s not that simple. The Courts have always distinguished between the content of a telephone call and metadata. The state needed a warrant for the former, but not for the latter. What distinguishes the PRISM program is that there’s much more metadata now. It’s not something that the courts would “strike down in a heartbeat.” There is a valid argument that this program is constitutional under Smith v. Maryland.
If it was authorized by the FISA court, it is legal (at least for now). It’s also highly unlikely that any court would rule otherwise. Seeing as you haven’t seen the evidence, and are likely not a constitutional scholar, I fail to see why anyone should take your comment that such actions are a clear violation seriously.
That people lie? Not sure what you think this is supposed to mean? Even putting aside the fact that when Clapper “lied” to congress is debatable, the ability for one person in government to lie to another person in government does not mean the government isn’t made up of, and subject to the will of the people.
It’s a good joke, but it does not make any real serious points. Are you saying the government never has a right to secrecy? What point do you think he was really making there?
Right, because this barely educated hacker is much better than the Chinese government who have routinely broken into the most secure systems on Earth. this is despite several articles stating they have in fact copied all his data. Edward Snowden’s stuff is uncrackable :dubious: Are you fucking kidding me? You cannot be this naive.
You realize other people before Rosa Parks did the same thing and were arrested, right? If the whole point is to be punished, why didn’t they have the same impact? The punishment can be part of an act of civil disobedience’s effectiveness, but it is not the point, nor is it sufficient to cause change. Additionally, most acts don’t involve punishment or arrest at all.
Bullshit. Part of the reason people are talking about him, and not the information is because he acted like a traitor and coward. If he stayed around, it certainly would have been helpful to the discourse he sought to inspire.
Then how about you read something before you draw a conclusion. You seemed pretty comfortable saying people were making unstated assumptions, that certain things are “clearly illegal” (they are not), and that talking to congresspeople would be ineffective. All of these things are assumptions you probably shouldn’t make if you are knowingly operating from a place of ignorance. Maybe if you read anything about the issue, you might know some of the data he has allowed to get into foreign government hands, or about how other NSA leakers have comported themselves.
You keep missing the point. The issue is that in a case like this, you need to stick around to allow the public to judge you and also so that you can earnestly contribute to the discussion. People are not saying you need to stick around to be punished, they are saying you if you feel so confident that your actions are beneficial to the public, and that are exposing an unabigious wrong, then you should have confidence that public will come to the same conclusion in the event of a trial. It’s about believing that your actions are subject to the same rule of law the government’s is. By absconding, you are basically admitting that the ends justify the means; which is exactly what the government would say. How heroic is that? Do you honestly want to live in a world where any criminal with seemingly noble justifications is morally justified in evading any kind of legal repercussions?
The government cannot put you behind bars for any of those things either. Yes, they have powers Google and Apple don’t, but those company affect your life on a daily basis far more often, and with greater consequence. Do you even understand what the government is collecting? It seems as if you are unclear on what they have, and how they use it.
The NSA isn’t one guy. Besides, what would you do in that situation. Let’s say you have a secret child that for some reason, you can never talk about. If someone asks you under oath if you have said child, what do you say? Obviously saying you cannot answer that question, or that the answer is classified is basically answering in the affirmative.
I already linked to him commenting that he planned to fight extradition while living in HK. I’ve been to HK. It’s great, and it’s certainly not the type of place that represents a downgrade in one’s standard of living. Especially if you can count on becoming a well-paid hero to a bunch of misguided idiots.
This is where I ask if you understand the context in which those comments were made? To interpret it the way you wish to makes absolutely no sense given most hero have nothing to “flee” from.
I could see that if the guy lived in a totalitarian state not run by the rule of law that “fleeing” might be the best recourse. But we don’t live in anything near that sort of situation. Or, if he truly feared for his life. But the only thing he has to fear is to face the justice system that he decided to bypass in order to leak this information. He knew he was breaking the law, and if he wanted to elevate himself to hero status, he should have stayed specifically so he could be put on trial and get the law changed.
I would also add that the other key feature here that disqualifies him from hero status is the lack of any effort on his part to work within the system to get this changed before he decided to just take things in his own hands and leak the information.
You’re right that I’m not a constitutional scholar, but marching into Verizon and demanding that they turn over all their records sure seems to violate the Fourth Amendment. Same with the PRISM program, where they had to put a tap on a data stream that belonged to a service provider (as is my understanding).
Nowadays it’s child’s play to unbreakably encrypt your data, and the Chinese government certainly isn’t capable of getting to it if you did that. Snowden wasn’t highly formally educated, but he apparently was very knowledgeable in computer security systems. I think we can just about take it for granted that they couldn’t get the data unless he gave them the key, and I don’t think that is a realistic scenario.
Again: “Attempts to ask them clarifying questions to see whether they mean a modified, less universal version of this claim have been to no avail.” In case you missed it, that’s me addressing the context of the comments
Your point about it making no sense, by the way, doesn’t work. If a hero has nothing to flee from, then of course they don’t flee. The maxim “a hero never flees,” then, is not contradicted in such cases.
So despite your repeated explicit claims to the contrary, including doubling down on the claim after others have argued that it is not always true, and including continuing to maintain it even after others have given you a chance to clarify, you are here finally clarifying, correct, that you do not believe “a hero never flees.” Correct?
