This is wrong. It took a LOT more than that. It took one man forgoing his life and liberty, and a group of people endangering theirs to assist him. Snowdon is not going to get his life nor his liberty back, ever.
It took multiple institutions dedicated to publishing the truth to actually bring the news to a wide audience, and it didn't end without a degree of betrayal.
Snowden is currently in political exile and probably closely monitored, likely for the rest of his life. US congressmen have openly called for his assassination. If he were to return to this country it's highly likely he would spend the rest of his life in a federal prison, at best.
Please explain how 'all it took was for someone to burn their career' isn't utterly misconstruing the cost being addressed?
This should have been the case as in normal whistleblower cases. Seems it was not. I also suspect that Russia will eventually try and call the favor to coerce him to do something for them
EDIT: had no idea this would be so negatively viewed. If you're going to down vote please indicate what you're against...
And as for why your post was down voted, you stated that a whistleblower should lose their career for their uncovering the truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an...
Examples such as the Climate Change hoax, Moon Landing hoax, COVID-19 hoax, New World Order and so on abound and I probably should not even give them the courtesy of repeating them here because they are like little bits of actively infectious DNA that will sooner or later encounter a fertile medium for reproduction.
If fringe theories would be susceptible to reason then the bulk of them wouldn't exist and the remainder would not be classified as a belief system but just another theory waiting for confirmation or rebuttal.
> I would have ignored it out of hand
Those two next to each other is kind of amusing.
The issue is that by not acknowledging that there are two separate uses, people end up lumping any theory about a conspiracy into "conspiracy theory".
For example, I remember reading a comment on HN around 2010 from someone who worked at an internet backbone. They said that there was some secret fiber cables, nobody knew what they were for, but they were not allowed to touch them. However they were the same size/caliber as the other cables that went to the next backbone, so the reasonable conclusion was that basically all traffic that went out of one pipe went out the other one too. And it was some kind of US government thing.
That, plus other things I've seen over the years, convinced me that the US had a massive domestic spying operation, like the NSA. There were news articles about the NSA building massive new facilities post 9/11 -- what would the point be of them? Turns out I was right, thanks to the Snoweden revelations, and honestly I didn't understand why they were such a big deal. OK, it was hard evidence, but it blew my mind that people were sooo surprised that it existed. Sometimes, occam's razor suggests a conspiracy.
This is a far-cry from the theory that the world is ruled by lizard people.
This list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories
Does not include anything even remotely like 'The NSA is listening in on all of us'. At present it is not even a theory, it is established fact but at no point in the past would I have put that on the same level of the items on that list.
The paranoid irrational beliefs one is the one that I think best covers the payload. The second one is only interesting from a pedantic/academic point of view.
Or, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#MK... which we actually know as having been real (though not necessarily all of the related theories are true, as I don't know what they are. But I am pretty sure that if you said "the goverment is kidnapping Americans and doing chemical mind control experiments on them" before all the facts abotu MKUltra came out, people would have labeled you a conspiracy theory nut.
As for the MKUltra stuff: the whole crux of a good conspiracy theory is that it is rooted in some real world event and then puts a crazy spin on it. People probably don't even realize when they step off the cliff of reason into the world of the nut cases.
No, it's not. It's a theory that a conspiracy has taken place.
Snowden's leak is a good example of something that proved a lot of conspiracy theories to be true
At that stage it was 'just a theory', with little support.
That some people then went a step further and mislabeled it is mostly their problem, they should have realized that the standard of proof required to shift it one way or the other wasn't available. Snowden gave us that proof.
Your average conspiracy theory is trying to make claims that go against available evidence to try to come up with some kind of alternate history of what must be true. Typically these involve privileged knowledge, powerful people and internally inconsistent claims.
The NSA could be listening in on a lot more than they are letting on theory never had any of those problems.
The NSA engaged in a conspiracy, which was to "hoover up everything in sight". There was a theory (which was largely dismissed) that the NSA was in fact doing this.
It was therefore a conspiracy theory that the NSA was doing what it was doing. That is the point: please use the phrase correctly.
You've taken the phrase and made up a new definition for it. I'm saying that the phrase already has a definite meaning. Feel free to make up your own phrase though...so long as it's unique.
The idea that "conspiracy theory"===false comes right out of COINTELPRO. You know, the big secret (at the time) conspiracy to subvert domestic US movements. In fact, much of the 20th C was defined by secret conspiracies - the Bolshevik revolution, the rise of the Nazis, every post-colonial coup, etc. Project Echelon was well understood in the 80s. What is the USS Jimmy Carter even for?
As an admin at BAH he was using his colleagues' passwords for discovery. He was willing to burn their careers to hack access to more leaks.
So much leaks that he could not vet these all. This was no Ellsberg tasked with copying some confidential papers and reading lies in them. It was wholesale collection of all Snowden could get his hands on.
Then, instead of making his point with his own whistleblower findings, he went to journalists and handed them over all the documents, instantly making them available to intelligence agencies all over the world, burning all NSA/CIA analysts with records in the dump (for instance, everyone who contributed to Intellipedia, which had zero reason to be in a dump meant for whistleblower purposes).
Then instead of facing justice (and there are whistleblower protections for doing the right thing), he cooperated with Wikileaks and fled to China and Russia, causing a permanent PR disaster for US intelligence with his new public speakings, book deals, and social media influencing career.
The reason Snowden's leaks got a lot of attention is that they "proved" (we never got confirmation that they were real) that data on Americans is being collected. We already knew, by law, that the Americans are allowed to fully spy on European civilians. That's how they are able to warn on impending terrorist attacks and improve their buy-in with European countries leadership (or how they are able to perfectly copy Germany-invented motors or Belgium-invented speech-to-text technology before these countries are even building it, because a strong US economy is a matter of national security).
I think it was pretty well understood at the time that the Obama administration could not be dependant on upholding whistle blower protections.
This is literally part of what whistleblowers do.
> instead of facing justice (and there are whistleblower protections for doing the right thing)
Whistleblower protections that didn’t really exist?
> causing a permanent PR disaster for US intelligence
One which they got for callously breaking the law?
> The reason Snowden's leaks got a lot of attention is that they "proved" (we never got confirmation that they were real)
What kind of confirmation do you want? You can’t just put things in quotes and hope to weaken them.
No, this is outsourcing your whistleblowing activities to journalists. It is leaking unvetted data in the hope that there is something of public note/damaging to your employer in there (of course there is, top secret and noforn classifications are there for a reason)
> Whistleblower protections that didn’t really exist?
They existed. Just because Snowden did not like his chances with American justice does not mean whistleblower protections do not exist. Obama even pardoned Chelsea Manning (I believe that leak was part of a suicidal life style).
> One which they got for callously breaking the law?
I am not saying the PR disaster is not warranted. I am noting the extend of the PR disaster. I am also adding the soft-ball questions from journalists, and Snowden's meticilously prepared talking points.
> What kind of confirmation do you want? You can’t just put things in quotes and hope to weaken them.
The NSA coming out and saying these documents are real. Thread OP was talking about proof, but proof requires a better standard. Of course, it is highly likely these were real documents, and the Chinese or Russians did not add false documents to muddy it, like they do with their own leaks. I actually added the quotes, not to be pedantic, but to ward against pedantic replies.
One of the strategies can be to completely poison information, as you said "label". In that way it would be hard to distinguish between "true" and "untrue", and in that way basically force researchers to even approaching subject. In that way only person from inside could uncover truth... I guess ...
And this is same problem like with corrupt government, if they hold all the keys it is very hard to overthrow dictator, as it is very hard for truth to surface out.
This is likely why people just combined theory, conspiracy theory all together, because the moment you look at the grey area, it becomes nuanced.
Not particularly nitpicking.
However, Snowden risked his whole life. He was pretty sure that he will be sentenced as traitor, and putting him life on the line.
They didn't have the legal right.
> All it took was one person willing to burn their career to provide the proof.
Snowden proved that the NSA does not vacuum everything up in the US and only vacuums everything in a few countries. You seem to be reading different documents from the ones that Snowden released.
And yet I believe crime exists regardless of its legality.
> Snowden released a trove of internal documents not vetted by the secret keepers
Why on earth should the secret keepers be the ones to vet documents about themselves when they are being whistleblown on?
> And yet I believe crime exists regardless of its legality.
Well over 99% of the time, the government does not go out of their way to break laws. I didn't claim that the fact that it is illegal proves they didn't do it. I simply said that the fact that it is illegal makes it more likely that they didn't do it. Do you disagree?
> Why on earth should the secret keepers be the ones to vet documents about themselves when they are being whistleblown on?
Who said they should? My point was that despite the fact that they weren't combed through by the secret keepers, the documents did not say that the NSA did the illegal things that GGP claimed. Instead, these documents supported the opposite conclusion — that the NSA didn't do those things — by repeatedly citing the laws that they follow that don't allow them to do those things.
Corruption can be the result of individualism, but it only takes a small number of individualistic and immoral people to leverage all the selfless people into giving up their freedom and material assets (i.e. dictators around the world). I don't know how to solve that, but it seems far too simple to say "America has corruption because of individualism" when America appears to be pretty mid-grade or slightly better than average in terms of corruption (https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi#)
The UK is massively corrupt. Guess what? They made it legal. Problem solved, let the money laundering and arms sales flow.
Using their measures is the opposite of individualism. This is the USA, a thin cloak of individualism that directs unthinking behaviour. Individuals seeking their own gain without really understanding the currents they swim in, which allows them to believe they are acting within a reasonable framework. Doubtless I'll be told there is no absolute truth and that it's not for me to say, which is also part of the same framework that allows clearly immoral behaviour to proceed.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/roberto-savi...
Every one of your complaints is a criticism of institutional incentives and publicly traded corporations rather than individualism.
There is no journalist alive who prefers, as an individual, to hold their tongue to avoid antagonizing sponsors. The possibility of doing otherwise was only ever enabled by the members of the local community who had enough resources to not have to care about losing sponsors by doing the right thing, and who were then willing to stand behind the journalists as the owners of the media company.
Today the companies are publicly traded, and doing that costs the shareholders money (or the parties votes, for political institutions), so anybody who does it is replaced by someone who doesn't. That is what's wrong. But that, ironically, is the consequence of a form of collective ownership. It's the principal-agent problem, where the shareholders as people don't actually want that but the institution is configured to prioritize making more money and you, as the owner of a retirement account which is the owner of an index fund which is the owner of a corporation, are not actually consulted on the decisions being made in your name.
Much of this would be solved if we had fewer layers of indirection between the principals and the agents, i.e. more smaller companies rather than fewer larger ones, or government which is more local and less central, so that the stakeholders who never wanted any of this to begin with are closer to the decisions that are being made in ways they don't prefer and have a better chance of causing them to be made in a different way. That's more of an increase in individualism than anything, though.
What parent calls "[flawed] culture", you call "layers of indirection between the principals and the agents". The number of these layers is a vital characteristic of the business culture, and you cannot just wish them away and claim victory.
Have an idea for a system that will work with as many people but less layers - please do tell about it (and about its relation to individualism, if there is any). But my guess it'd be radically different from the current one.
That isn't a cultural problem at all, it's a regulatory problem. We need the rules to be easier on smaller entities and harder on larger ones. So that more of the decisions actually are in the hands of individuals rather than large institutions, and individuals are once again given the authority to choose to do the right thing instead of being constrained by perverse institutional incentives.
More to the point, the parent's complaint was about the culture of individualism in particular, not some generic cultural problems that you can shoehorn any arbitrary failing into just because it's possible to describe anything systemic as cultural.
Would he have been happy if he found out one of his immediate reports had been helping the French to get gunpowder in for a cut? Analogous to the wholesale tax dodging today.
Seems today "it's just business", back then he'd have been hung. Yes life back then wasn't all knights in shining armor, but now, good god.
Even if people didn't always comply to the code, there was a code and that code wasn't "every man for himself". They would have regarded that as insanity.
BTW I might read the Hamilton one next, I imagine it's Chernow you are reading, he has an engaging writing style.
There were many people who were going out on a limb with the assertion that the NSA was probably vacuuming it all up, they had means, motive and opportunity handed to them on a golden platter, on top of that it corresponded with what we would expect to do ourselves when in that position (not that there was any such temptation). The hacker community was well capable of seeing this as a theory, rather than as a conspiracy simply for absence of proof. That didn't stop others from labeling the hacker community as a bunch of conspiracy theorists simply because they could not imagine it to be the truth, but a lack of imagination is not the same as proof and the output of such a process is better described as wishful thinking than rational thought.
Snowden changed all that. All it took was one person willing to burn their career to provide the proof. But beyond that nothing much has changed.