These men sacrificed their lives to expose the crimes of one of - if not the most -powerful organizations on Earth. And people nitpick that they’re not criticizing the other most powerful entities too. Basically they’re criticizing them for not committing suicide in the name of a people which were impotent of unwilling to do anything with the revelations provided.
I’d be surprised to hear that these people even contradict their boss, never mind reveal any compromising information on anyone.
Has Snowden talked about Putin's war on Ukraine yet?
Meanwhile Chelsea Manning is walking the streets of the US as a free person. Why do people pretend that Snowden's only option was and is to live in Russia, a country that is diametrically opposed to everything he ostensibly stands for?
Snowden ended up in Russia by accident. He was flying from Hong Kong to Ecuador, and his flight happened to be laid over in Moscow when the US government cancelled his passport. He spent a month and a half living in the airport before he gave up trying to leave Russia and asked for asylum.
If he could have gone anywhere else it seems likely he would have done so.
Arguably even CM didn't get leniency (from the courts) - the president overrode the court.
> his decision was wrong from both an ethical
Why ethical?
I believe Snowden fleeing was unethical because facing the consequences of breaking the law is an important part of civil disobedience. To quote MLK: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law." Snowden didn't "willingly accept the penalty" for his actions. At least part of the reason MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail was so powerful was because it was written from Birmingham Jail and not an apartment in Moscow. Snowden lost complete control of the ethical high ground because he chose exile over fighting this issue head on.
Perhaps Snowden disagrees. It's easy to say what he did wrong with no skin in the game.
Everyone also said it was obvious J Depp was going to lose his second case against Amber on the basis that American courts are harder to win in that the British court he already lost in. Look how that turned out.
> breaking the law is an important part of civil disobedience
Protesting unjust laws and whistleblowing are different things. A WB is still effective even when anonymous - this was not "civil disobedience", nor "break[ing] a law that conscience tells him is unjust" in the same sense as civil rights issues.
> To quote MLK
you could very easily quote any number of murdered civil rights leaders. Martyrdom isn't a very convincing argument.
> MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail was so powerful was because it was written from Birmingham Jail
Nice that strategy worked out. Suggesting choosing any other strategy is unethical, or going to jail is some kind of "fight", is nonsense. Do you think the same ethos applies to protesting genocide, or does protesting government with long jail sentences have some kind of honour to it?
E.g. his tweet from not even 2 weeks before the invasion:
>There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war.
https://mobile.twitter.com/snowden/status/149222362658580890...
Why would he blame western media and intel agencies for Putin invading Ukraine?
You can't really have it both ways. While I admire what Snowden did to expose abuses by the NSA, I also recognize that his credibility is severely tarnished by the physical location in which he currently resides.
Why must he be a saint? He did more than most will do their entire lives already.
Maybe if they would annotate who did which section. I bet Ritchie would never have done this.
Definitely related, he used the run up to the war to dunk on US agencies' predictions saying they were war mongering.
Not even two weeks before the war he tweeted: "There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war."
Can you explain how US media pushed Putin to war in the run up to the war rather than just reporting very credible intel from US agencies? Which appears to be a crime in Snowden's eyes.
https://www.coindesk.com/video/recent-videos/edward-snowden-...
"If you don't live in Russia you don't know the whole story"
No but there's enough Ukrainians in my life who don't appreciate their country being invaded and subjected to genocide...
Snowden is clearly trying to be as effective as he can in spreading his message, given his conditions. He's already sacrificed any semblance of a normal/comfortable life, saying he's full of shit just because he doesn't effectively commit suicide strikes me as disingenuous criticism by those who already want to see him dead.
Honestly the only legitimate criticism of Snowden I've read so far is that he may have handed over intelligence as part of his asylum bargain that got operatives killed. But, probably due to the nature of said operatives/operations and the agencies they may/may not have worked for, it's impossible to know from the outside how true that is. It's not like the intelligence community has a history of honesty with the general public, or won't lie to get what it wants. CIA/NSA/Military Intelligence Services seem to step way over the line every 10-20 years or so and some new scandal gets leaked, and we have a big debate over whether the leakers were traitors or patriots. This is just another wave in the signal unless we fundamentally reform the system.
And they were all proven definitively wrong, the only war mongerer is Putin, who just escalated his invasion of Ukraine by ordering a partial mobilization. If you think that the GRU doesn't have the password for Snowden's twitter then you are very gullible.
As I wrote elsewhere in the comments on this story, the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known. There’s nothing new here.
The beginning of Snowden’s post is a surprisingly poor take on Biden’s recent speech, reposting the same zoomed-in image with the red background, ignoring the additional context[0][1] and comparing the presentation to the Nazis. Although he does call it “unintentional”, he still chooses to amplify the same take as the American right-wing even though it’s been a while since the speech and people have mostly moved on. Snowden also does little to actually address the content of what Biden said regarding new and immediate threats to the US, choosing instead to focus on existing problems with the CIA which, while terrible, are not new and not unknown. He claims this is “consideration of [Biden’s] premises” but I think that’s a stretch to say the least.
In short, I think people are right to be critical of this essay and suspicious of Snowden’s motives in this specific case, without taking anything away from his previous actions.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/m7h2PtO
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/02/trump-biden-pennsyl...
I would urge you to consider just how completely obsessive politicians are about every single aspect of appearance: the color of one's tie, the lapel of choice of the day, how you hold your hands while speaking, even the tint of your skin. That his speech evoked the worst of imagery was, unfortunately, not just an unfortunate accident.
Not well-known enough. In my opinion, literally every mention of the CIA in writing or elsewhere in the media should come with the disclaimer (paraphrased from the article):
"...the CIA, mostly known for directing the coverage of American news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments, establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment, launching a long-running series of mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects, interfering with foreign elections, wiretapping journalists and compiling files on Americans who opposed its wars...has the following to say about <--insert latest propaganda-->"
Biden's team staged it that way intentionally. They knew red would be the only color in the background when Biden was the focus. The other lighting was for plausible deniability only. No one focuses on an entire building when a single person is giving a speech. You cannot see the body language. How often does a presidential address get displayed from any side other than directly from the front? The red and military personnel were entirely intentional.
He was a low level tech guy that found an open SharePoint share on a classified network.
He is not to be upheld, he is a small, small criminal.
This stuff makes me sick.
It's not exceptionalism to lament the downfall of the tradition of carefully cultivated discourse. I still remember when this community used to be different, and this site was the one I went to first.
> There's no reason why HN should have a higher quality discussion than some generic subreddit or FB comment sections.
Yes, there is. HN uses to have a higher quality discussion because it was carefully moderated both by the community itself and the moderators. Sadly, it seems that all communities deteriorate eventually.
I've seen some pretty heinous opinions expressed on HN, but because they're expressed with the correct tone, the ones responding to them are the ones that get moderated.
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It's just not a solvable problem. No matter what dang, et al, do, they're creating a place they themselves WANT, and most people conform or skirt just within the edges.
But you can always tell when you're interacting with someone not worth interacting with, because they'll skirt the tone bounardaries while still being just as much of an argumentative jackass as they would on reddit.
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This imagined superiority of discourse is just pompous arrogance on the part of a few people who actually think what dang, et al, have set out to do is solvable. If they solve it, they've solved humans. The only thing they can do is change their view over time on what is acceptable, and that's really what you're seeing. Them changing as humans over years.
He has no special insight into any other aspect of existence.
It is though!
Every government and many companies are trying to exert pressure. People are responding by picking sides. It's a dangerous situation.
I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions.
These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here.
Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.