Could you please elaborate on this? I recently had dinner with a friend in intelligence, who was trying to convince me that Snowden was in bed with Russia from the get-go, and that the 90% of the leak had nothing to do with privacy concerns.

I took his opinions with a grain of salt given his background, but also couldn't refute due to being relatively unfamiliar with the Snowden saga.

Every bit of the leak was about mass surveillance--how could it not have to do with privacy concerns?

The "in bed with Russia" thing is just a smear. No one has produced any evidence of this, and it's really hard to make it match up with how everything unfolded.

And if someone did produce such evidence, they would be obligated to ask for that very same person's arrest for the breach of trust involved in such wistleblowing!

Your friend is full of shit. If they knew anything real they wouldn't be allowed to tell you.

The biggest clue that what your friend says is wrong that Snowden wouldn't have gone public and announced himself if he was spying for Russia.

Good grief, Your friend actually said that with a straight face?

Perhaps attributed to the infamous Upton Sinclair quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Russia was one of his last choices as a refuge; they were just one of the only countries to accept him.

I doubt he's fond of Russia, either, and he's made some passive-aggressive jabs at them on his Twitter.

That said, it can't be ruled out that he divulged even more secret information to Russia's intelligence services as a condition for asylum, but I don't think there's any evidence it was one of his motives when leaking.

He wasn't even trying to stay in Russia. He was just traveling through on his way to Ecuador but he got stuck there because the US revoked his passport.

That is the consensus of US intelligence, yeah, but they have no actual proof. Basically it's his word against their hypothesis.

Do you really believe Snowden was a double-agent, or that he was a conscientious whistle-blower? That's what it comes down to.

Some serious amnesia in this thread. But the reaction is all too common, people who just go "we knew all of that already" and switch back to sports while others out there risk their life to produce the documents that can bring about actual change.

Even if you don't care for the content of the cables, the fact that an estimated 3 million people have access to them with nothing worth mentioning in the form of access control should give you serious pause. The 1% are real, they are just not all billionaires.

> the fact that an estimated 3 million people have access to them with nothing worth mentioning in the form of access control should give you serious pause. The 1% are real, they are just not all billionaires.

Ok... there are probably far, far worse hidden scandals in terms of access control/data security in the US government. I don't see your point. I don't think that's the point anyone was trying to make. It's bad, for sure, but it doesn't warrant leaking all of the documents.

>while others out there risk their life to produce the documents that can bring about actual change.

What in the diplomatic cables brought, or could have brought, actual change?

NSA surveillance leaks could (and, to a small extent, did) bring about actual change. The cables accomplished nothing positive for anyone.

> NSA surveillance leaks could (and, to a small extent, did) bring about actual change. The cables accomplished nothing positive for anyone.

I don't know, it taught me a lot about the US attitude towards the rest of the world. I feel that is worth knowing.

> But the rest was basically just normal communications.

Which may have had wide-reaching consequences, with respect to the Arab Spring.

"May"? We're way past "may". The Arab Spring was catastrophic.

What part of it can be attributed to Manning..? And what part of it can be contributed to food insecurity, economic downturns, the despots running those countries tightening the screws, the CIA's involvement, a civil war in Iraq, the Department of State jumping on the opportunity to stick it to Putin by destabilizing Assad?

Are any other architects of these disasters serving 35 years?

That's impossible to measure quantitatively. It's very clear that the leaks contributed to some degree, much like the email leaks and FBI notes to congress contributed to the election results, but how much? Nobody will ever know.

My point is that if you want to crucify Manning for starting the Arab Spring, there's a long, long line of people, who were actually responsible for the problems she exposed.

It was catastrophic because despotism fought back and (mostly) won. But that doesn't mean the uprisings or the actions leading to it were wrong or futile. It's a long road.

Yes, the results were catastrophic, even though the protests themselves had pure motives. But results matter.