Nevertheless my eagle eye has spotted the bug in your brain. Kakaw.
The topic of this thread is whether or not he is a hero. Is he? Yes or no. You can make your argument for or against afterwards. If you want to argue some other topic, perhaps you should start a separate thread to do so.
When was this? Who did he contact?
There are quite a few intersecting questions here:
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How do government “whistleblowers” differ from corporate ones, if at all?
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Is illegality sufficient justification for revealing otherwise classified information?
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How should we as a people feel about individuals judging for themselves what the public “needs to know”?
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Should government whistleblowing be consequence-free? What factors should be considered?
And that’s just off the top of my head. It’s a bit of a complex issue, IMO, a little more so than “is Snowden a hero or not?”
The “no heroism” thing is a front. They just want Snowden in prison so they can gloat about it.
I probably shouldn’t ask, but gloat about what? I don’t think I’m in line for any prize money if he gets arrested.
Unbelievable. This is insane.
Your argument that he is not a hero is a bad argument. That is the summary of my contribution to this thread over whether he is a hero or not.
If I started a new thread to say that, the thread would quickly be merged with this one. You know this, John. Or at least, you should, and at any other time, you would.
Gloat about what? Presumably they wouldn’t gloat if they thought he was a hero.
Corporations don’t have law enforcement powers. So you don’t have to worry about being arrested if you blow the whistle on a corporate employer.
No. We have an entire system set up to deal with law breakers. If you have information of somebody breaking the law - including the government official you work for - there are legal avenues you can pursue.
In general, I’m against it. Individuals should not be able to substitute their own opinions for the collective will of our elected government. When the NSA and the CIA hide stuff from the rest of the government, they’re wrong. And when some government employee decides to reveal classified information, he’s also wrong. Both are claiming they alone have some special authority to decide what people should know.
As long as it’s kept within the government, yes. Government employees should be able to report when their superiors or their agency is breaking the law or doing something unethical. But there’s a major difference between reporting information about a crime to the proper authorities and going public.
You know who I never understood all the hero-worship for? George Washington. I could take the violation of the law, perhaps even excuse the treason, but the man lacked the moral fiber to legitimize his disobedience by submitting to the authorities’ imprisonment. Snowden’s got nothing on that guy… well, except for nonviolence, I suppose.
Yeah, I’m not really finding the heroes dutifully submit to their captors argument convincing. I think that describes a martyr.
Foreign powers huh? I’d say Greenwald is as much of a foreign power as I am. And giving an open interview to the Hong Kong press doesn’t count either: how many battalions does the South China Morning Post have? I understand it was edited until recently by that flaming red Reginald Chua, formerly deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Look, I’m not saying he shouldn’t be prosecuted for something like unauthorized distribution of government property. Organizations can’t operate without certain rules. But espionage? Really? For leaking to credentialed and experienced members of the press? Something routinely done in the executive branch? I mean it’s not like he outed a nuclear weapons proliferation specialist like Valerie Plame. That’s dangerous. This isn’t squat.
Snowden has taken his punishment: it’s called exile. What he hasn’t done is risk torture like Manning experienced or 20 years in a Super Max facility at best. If the Snowden had the option of being thrown in a low security prison for 5 years, that would be different.
h/t Kevin Drum Jumping the Shark on Edward Snowden – Mother Jones
Well, it’s swell that you believe China just let him go “rent free” as it were. Not all of us are so… believing.
But, those Pollyanna beliefs aside, revealing what he did to the Chinese media is indeed informing foreign powers about our intel. What, you think it doesn’t count unless it’s in a brown paper envelope left on the Xi Jinping’s desk? “Oh, well sure I gave away secrets but it was just to a Chinese newspaper, so that doesn’t count!”
Good lord, the attempts to pretend this didn’t happen so you can convince yourself he’s a “hero” is absurd. What Snowden did had nothing at all to do with protecting my US liberties or whatever. It’s inexcusable. If you guys want to keep trying to paint him as a glorious defender of US Freedoms, you’re going to need something better than handwaving and saying “Doesn’t count!”
Oh, and then there’s the fact that he says he’s given the information to several other people to hold as a blackmail tool against the US. So now there’s four or five points for our security secrets to be disseminated. Wow, I can’t thank this guy enough for taking this enormous sacrifice for my civil rights.
He is no hero. Did he do contract work for the NSA under the impression that they would be rescuing kittens? Does the NSA gather data on countries that do not themselves gather all the available data on the US that they can? He had moral qualms about contracting for a clandestine agency that is, by definition, in a very grey area.
Not everybody gets to act on their conscience. A criminal lawyer who has a pedophile football coach walk into his office is obligated to represent him to the best of his ability. A priest has to take the confession of a mass murderer without calling the cops. A doctor has to treat the blocked heart arteries of a corporate raider. A waiter has to give Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow both the same excellent service. And a contractor for the NSA has to restrain the urge to run to the newspapers–and the RUSSIANS, for God’s sake–with his incredible finds. This guy has more in common with Linda Tripp, another narcissist with a bloated notion of his/her own historic importance, than with Daniel Ellsberg.
If you encounter criminal activities in a professional pursuit where you reasonably expect there not to be any, whistleblowing is a moral option. I’m not convinced this was the case with Mr. Snowden.
But I can’t figure out why you feel that way. The fact that his actions were undertaken in response to a bad thing doesn’t make those actions automatically admirable no matter what they are. If you commit a crime in response to a crime, you’re still a criminal.
Here’s how the situation looks to me. Some people in the government saw that other people were doing things that were wrong - terrorism, mostly, but also probably other lesser crimes (but things that we all agree are unambiguously wrong). These people decided that the terrorists and thieves and what have you ought to be stopped… and they further decided that in the interest of stopping acts so heinous, no “nattering about legalities and technicalities” really mattered. So they did things that were possibly illegal and certainly unethical, in my opinion.
And then Snowden came along. He saw that the government was doing things that were wrong - spying on its own citizens, mostly, but also probably other crimes (things that we probably mostly think are wrong). Snowden decided that those spies ought to be stopped… and he further decided that in the interest of stopping acts so heinous, no “nattering about legalities and technicalities” really mattered. So he did things that were definitely illegal and certainly unethical, in my opinion.
For example, bringing classified information to other countries. Hell, fleeing prosecution is a crime in and of itself, whether or not you are guilty of the original crime. If I am a suspect in a murder, and I know I’m innocent but it looks bad, so I resist arrest and force the police into a car chase and manhunt, I will (rightly) be in trouble for that part of it even if I’m exonerated for the murder.
Snowden was right to bring this stuff to light. But for the way he went about it, he’s a criminal and (probably) a traitor.
And most people around the world try to avoid those outcomes. Your standards are nice and poetic, but let’s be serious. About 99.999% of people who fight a system don’t break the law openly before surrendering to the authorities. They break the law anonymously. They hide their actions and their persons. They plot in secret. And if they’re about to be caught, they flee, hide, etc… Essentially all the people we consider heroes did that or would have done that. Try making a list of people/group of people generally considered heroic, and look how many broke the law and then walked up to the authorities/ennemy/whatever to be jailed/hanged/whatever.
Stop having impossible standards, please. Apparently, in order not to be a coward, you’re obligated to walk in front of a tank Tien An Men style. You’re not allowed to leave the square when the tanks come in. That’s basically what you’re asking for.
Seriously, I don’t think it really matters whether or not Snowden should be considered a hero. What should matter is what has been disclosed. However, calling him a coward because he didn’t met absurd standards that essentially nobody ever met historically is way over the top. Maybe you’ve been too brainwashed with civil disobedience during the civil right movement or something, but realize that it’s a rare exception, not the norm. Good guys and bad guys alike, when they break the law, try to avoid being caught and punished. That’s what people have always done.
By the way, the “you” is generic, in this post. I’m answering to more than just Marley23’s statement.
You are feigning incredible naivety. This is a government that by their own actions clearly considers whistleblowers like Snowden worse than any war criminal. You can torture innocent civilians, destroy incriminating evidence and then write a fucking book gloating about how you were in the right, and the Obama administration doesn’t give a fuck. But actually bring said crimes to light, and they’ll come after you. Nothing of worth can be achieved by throwing yourself upon the mercy of such degenerates.
To gloat over the fact that he’s being tormented for doing the right thing.
You’re not allocating blame/responsibility properly here. The problem STARTED when the NSA broke the law and started doing surveillance of phone records of everyone, guilty or innocent, whether or not they were part of an investigation or not. If the NSA had not broken the law in the first place, there would be no whistles to blow.
The attempts by the government to conceal its malfeasance by prosecuting Snowden when they became known are wrong and shameful. And what part of the Washington establishment should Snowden have trusted? Hell, even the Washington Post, one of the publications he leaked to has condemned Snowden for leaking! Snowden wisely went to one of the few actual investigative journalists out there, Glenn Greenwald, to get his story out. I mean, it’s not like he’s dealing with an agency that doesn’t know how to keep a secret.
Snowden’s lawbreaking was COMPELLED by the NSA’s lawbreaking, hence, that’s on the NSA, not Snowden.
Treason is “the right thing”?