I don’t think this rises to the level of treason. He’d have to give specific information directly to our enemies. This is the same flawed analysis that those used to claim the Valerie Plame leaker was guilty of treason.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a good deal of overlap between those people and the people calling Snowden a hero.
Look up the definition of espionage.
I don’t agree.
Typically when you break the law you don’t get to choose your own punishment. That’s not quite how the system works.
Oh, now I get it- he isn’t fleeing punishment, he’s only fleeing punishment because he decided the punishment is too harsh.
We’ve already discussed several people who lived up to those standards. Snowden’s looking at a very harsh punishment, but a lot of people face worse without the means to flee to other countries and without the protection of media attention. Then there’s the minor matter of the way the countries he wants help from don’t live up to the principles he says are so important to him. Has he said anything about the way Russia treats its people? Does anyone expect to hear him speak up about the state of affairs in Venezuela if that’s where he ends up?
Gentlemen: to evil!
Probably, but so what? An argument is either correct or not, and it really doesn’t matter what the political leanings of the people are making the argument. In both cases, the argument is not correct, and none of the people involved in either situation is going to be charged with reason.
That being said, I’m still not seeing this guy as a “hero” unless someone can convince us that he had no other, legal choice but to take the course of action he chose. AKAIK, he never even tried anything else.
Smapti you actually posted the relevant statute here. Granted it doesn’t rise to treason in a technical legal sense, but it is in the ballpark.
As far as you know? How would you know? It is against the law for anyone in the know to tell you about any attempt to stop PRISM, just as it was illegal for Snowden to make any attempt to stop PRISM which didn’t involve asking very nicely the same fuckers who created it in the first place.
Well, all I need now is a way to monetize this and finally pointless evil will start paying off for me!
I thought the Plame leak was wrong. I think Snowden is wrong. I thought Manning was wrong.
I’d fit most people’s definition of a US-style liberal Democrat but I guess I don’t have much patience for those sorts of things.
Not according to MLK:
Which highlights the point most people here are trying to make. Even if you accept that the government was doing something illegal and secretive (I don’t), and that Snowden is technically a whistle blower (I don’t), the cowardice and treasonous behavior he has exhibited after the fact are more than enough reason to deny his heroism or courage.
Very astute post that is worth reading for everyone who thinks this guy is a hero.
The only kinds of leaks that are bad are those the government doesn’t like.
Who is “the government”. I am not trying to be flippant here, but I think you are overlooking the fact that “the government” include people like Bernie Sanders, Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison, James Risch, Trent Franks, Darryl Issa, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, etc. There people agree on almost nothing. And that list doesn’t even account for the disparate views of the government employees at almost every agency in the government. What exactly do you think is “bad” for all of them on a collective or individual level?
MLK said those words to assuage the concerns of law-and-order white folk. You can bet your ass he’d have been overjoyed if every civil rights protestor found a way to avoid imprisonment. Or do you think MLK would have thought, during the age of slavery, that fugitive slaves were obligated to turn themselves in and accept their punishment for their disobedience, rather than fleeing to the North?
MLK felt staying in jail could be an effective way to arouse in others the sympathy which would help him achieve his goals. It was a tactic, not a moral obligation. The obligation was only to nonviolence.
Besides, regardless of MLK’s thoughts, it is not morally obligatory to do things the way MLK did them. If disobeying the law in the first place could be moral [and it certainly can, as there are injust laws], then why cannot disobeying the further law about fleeing imprisonment [which would then be also an injust law] be moral in just the same way?
And what sort of tactic would you refer to it when one defends his belief in freedom of the press and freedom from government surveillance by fleeing to a Communist dictatorship, an authoritarian quasi-autocracy, and a failed narco-state run by a former cocaine farmer?
Perhaps not an effective tactic for sympathy, as seen in this thread, but an effective tactic to avoid imprisonment. Or would you have him flee to such countries as would extradite him back to the United States? Because that’s as good as just walking into prison.
He’s not endorsing those countries through his presence. He doesn’t want to be there; he wants to be in the United States. But one punishment he’s taken on in order to do what his conscience asked of him is exile.
Funny that he didn’t say that. But I am sure you know what he meant. Too bad he wasn’t articulate enough to say what he meant instead of what he said (multiple times) :dubious:.
Do you really think the two situations are analogous? Civil disobedience only works in free or mostly free societies. An enslaved population has far fewer legitimate options. But to answer your question, I would guess he would have advocated for changes in the law/culture and general non-violent civil disobedience. Regardless, neither of us are in a position to guess.
Because if you are engaging in civil disobedience in an effort to highlight illegality of immoral laws, you are tacitly endorsing a belief that the rule of law and morality are important in and of themselves; even if you disagree with them currently. Flouting them to leak documents, ostensibly in service to the people’s right to know, is very different from doing it to avoid harm to yourself. One is arguably selfless, which the other is purely selfish. To make no distinction between the two is to support anarchy.
Furthermore, in Snowden’s specific case, his actions are an appeal to the public to right and desire to know about the government’s actions. If you think the people have a desire and right to know, you should have faith that they will see the value in your judgement and actions. He should stand before them and the government to defend his actions. Failing to do so is basically denying his commitment to those who claims to want to help.
If my belief was that the government was wrong to spy on its own people, I wouldn’t flee to countries that spy on their own people as a matter of course.
If my belief was that the government was wrong to jail people for certain actions, I wouldn’t flee to jail for carrying out those actions.
Snowden is not endorsing the countries he is in. His first choice for exile was Iceland, after all. But he was unable to get to Iceland.
Snowden is not endorsing the countries he is in. He’s trying to leave, after all. But he is unable to leave at the moment.
Snowden is not endorsing the countries he is in. He doesn’t want to be there. But he is unable to be where he wants to be.
If they’d done it by beating the criminal cases against them, sure. By fleeing the country to avoid prosecution? No. He wanted to change things in the U.S. and change them for large numbers of people, and running would not have accomplished that goal.
For some reason that doesn’t work for Snowden.
It makes you less effective as an example for your cause because it indicates a dramatically lower level of commitment.
I thought his belief was that the U.S. is carrying out illegal or immoral domestic spying.
He’s able to be there and chooses not to be. And if he is opposed to spying on civilians, what has he had to say about Russia and China?
It occurs to me that Snowden wound up shooting his own cause in the foot by fleeing. If he were here and had been arrested, we’d probably be talking more about the actual surveillance programs since we wouldn’t be talking about his flight from the U.S. and which country he’ll end up in, and those things wound up occupying a lot of the conversation.
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“Exile” is a strange way of spelling “flight from justice”.
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If his first choice was Iceland, what was he doing in the People’s Republic of China?
Being less effective (in achieving sympathy from others) is not being less moral.
That is one of his beliefs. I think it is fair to suppose another of his beliefs is that the U.S. should not be jailing people for revealing its illegal or immoral domestic spying. In fact, it’s a virtual certainty.
Only in the sense that I’m able to walk into the nearest supermarket, walk up to the cash register, and grab all its money. Our best theories of physics permit it, but it will result in my getting tossed in jail. This sort of situation is often summarized with the wording “I’m not able to do that”.
Nothing in support of their spying on civilians, so far as I’ve heard. If simply staying in a country because one would be jailed for going elsewhere is endorsing that country, then, well, every dissident unable to legally leave their country is in fact a supporter of its regime. This would be a ludicrous position.