Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
Really? I assumed it had more to do with Constitutional protections for journalists, so whatever they did publish would stay published.
IIRC, the US had already called Assange's journo creds into question by then, so Snowden sought out established outlets.
Handling over a mountain of secrets to journalists and let them sort out the illegal from the rest of it, (and trusting them not to publish things that are newsworthy/salacious but legal) is completely irresponsible
You should ask yourself more often “is there a reason they did it they way they did” before offering smug suggestions.
If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or that of any other country in the world to wiretap a foreigner who is outside of the country requesting the data. The fact that the US requires a court order is rare, and by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed.
There is so much you got wrong here, that it's hard to figure out where to begin.
1. Apple did not have any data to wiretap until people started using iCloud mail. Microsoft ran Hotmail since time immemorial. That's why they prioritized the integration of wiretap data from Microsoft first.
2. There are plenty of examples of companies challenging government orders that came from the Snowden leaks themselves. The Twitter thing is just that the government reported TOU violations to Twitter, and Twitter decided if they were violations and took action if so. The government did not have unilateral control over Twitter.
> It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests
What percent of warrants do you think are approved? You clearly have no idea how the world works. The government wouldn't waste its time asking for a court order unless it thinks the court order will be granted. If it wastes the judge's time by filing lots of requests that are illegal, the judge will punish the government for doing so.
"We've conducted an internal investigation proving no malfeaseance took place. We will not be releasing any data on our usage of the tool. Trust us."
> The leaked information came after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls to the NSA.
That's not what PRISM was. PRISM was a data integration project to ingest wiretap data from the FBI. That wiretap data came from court orders for specific accounts belonging to non-US citizens living outside the US.
Can you explain why there are countless stories such as this:
NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...
You keep writing they were not spying on US citizens, but clearly they were or NSA employees would not be using it to spy on friends/family would they?
Did they coin the term "LOVEINT" because this was a one-off situation?
Either way, it's clear they're not coming from a place of promoting transparency or a critical perspective of the government's actions. There's nothing wrong with being a patriot but this is a conversion about government misbehavior, not a loyalty contest.
It's probably best to just ignore them, which is what I'll be doing going forward.
The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple.
Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
Also, what is up with your note to mods? This discussion isn't about politics but about understanding what is real and what isn't.
You can’t sue because you have no standing, because you can’t prove you were spied on, and proving it would be illegal so… checkmate. :)
PRISM is a clear violation of the 4th, and if we had supremes that were worth a damn all bulk collection programs would be prohibited.
That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
No, phone metadata collection was ruled illegal. Ingesting court ordered FBI wiretaps on foreigners living outside the US who are of interest to national security has never been illegal in the US or in any other country.
> That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
It isn't hidden from the American public. The documents describing the data ingested into PRISM have been declassified.
It wasn't illegal, therefore going through the proper channels wouldn't have exposed it.
It is only by going through alternative/leaking means that the program could have gotten exposed to the public.
This is the government's job. Why do you feel it needed to be exposed?
Well because it is basically at scale warrantless wiretapping, of almost every major communication platform(technically its on the internet, and not the phone system, I know).
You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess.
But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
If you don't care about at scale warrentless wiretapping, feel free to just say so. Just say "I don't care if the government has a warrant or not, before they spy on every major communication platform".
Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
How many ways do people need to tell you that it doesn't? It can send wiretap requests for specific accounts to tech companies, which needs to approve each individual request.
> But a lot of people did not know that the government had this,
It doesn't.
> and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
Where? Which document says they have backdoor access to the tech companies. I'll give you a hint: none of them do. Snowden and Greenwald were both too stupid to read the documents they had obtained and claimed otherwise, but all the rest of the tech media, like CNET and the NYT, reported it correctly.
> Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
This is something I care deeply about. That's why I'm glad Snowden's documents and the declassified documents both agree it's being followed.
> both agree the law is being followed.
Notice how I didn't say that anything was illegal. The fact that it was legal, is entirely the problem!
I think it is very important for the government to get a warrant, before making these requests.
You can feel free to not care about warrants for these types of requests, but I care about them.
Not for people who aren't US citizens who live outside the US, no. Is this really news to you? Do you know of any country in the world that requires its intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant for surveilling non-citizens outside its borders?
Ok, well a lot of people care about warrants.
You can feel free to not care! But a lot of other people care about warrants.
Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Including me.
> Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Once again, no country in the world requires its intelligence agencies to get a warrant to surveil a foreigner outside its borders who has information relevant to national security. This is both legal and something we all expect, and we already knew this before Snowden's leaks. To reveal the code names of systems that ingest this data, Snowden also leaked compromised Chinese computer systems. Is that something we should celebrate?
Even Snowden (and probably 99.9% of all people) would disagree with your position. His statements show he thought he was revealing something other than what his documents actually said.
Apparently not for this situation. Because in this case, no warrants are required, and you don't care about that.
So the point stands. For a situation like this, there are people who care about getting warrants. And for this situation, you don't care that it does not require a warrant.
You can feel free to not care about warrants for this situation. But a lot of people do. So thats why they care.
> This is both legal
once again, the fact that it is legal is exactly the problem, and why exposing it with leaks was the only solution, if you care about the fact that no warrants were required.
Well, you don't for this specific circumstance.
So then you concede that for this specific circumstance, you do not care about getting a warrant.
You can have this opinion, but for people who care about getting a warrant, for this situation, those people would be glad that this stuff was revealed.
Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff.
How could Snowden have gone through that pile in a couple of days while on the run and possibly afraid for his life?
That's the problem.
He didn't/couldn't bother to filter out unrelated documents? So he just stole a bunch of shit and leaked it all to the media and hoped they would find enough outrage in it to justify his behavior?
This isn't whistleblowing, it's reckless espionage, and fruit of the poisoned tree as well-- you wouldn't want the authorities doing this to you (the irony of him exposing the gov doing this by doing the same thing himself...).
Whistleblowing would have meant he caught wind of something illegal, secured enough evidence to prove it and leaked that to the media. Everything exfiltrated beyond that is not in scope.
I hear stories of him being a poor performer about to be fired from his job at the time, hence the urgency to mass exfiltrate. If true that makes this a revenge play, not an act of heroism.
There’s a slight irony in your comment about his performance reviews - how did that get out? Apparently leaking isn’t always a problem :)
Besides, swiping only the most telling and highligy classified documents would've aroused suspicion. He might have been including some line noise to distract a system looking for patterns. Also, including unrelated but genuine documents would make his leak easier to verify because it proves he has access to the source.
For the same reason, I don't believe Assange was a rapist.
Your talking about legality is a straw-man anyway: the point is mass surveillance being highly unethical. Not even the law reflecting that fact makes the reality of it only worse.
Nice comment under an article that specifically calls out state gaslighting (false claims that portray the whistleblower as a bad/immature/insane person, or discredit them in another way).
Say you exfiltrate not enough and are fired. You're shit out of luck, and there is no way to infiltrate someone else to your position to get the rest out.
I doubt you can honestly see his actions as reckless or revengeful.
This is a real problem, but I suspect the reason is more laziness than increasing power. That's no score card on number of classified documents one has access to.
Rather, it is time consuming and risky to determine classification level. No one is going to get in trouble for mistakenly over classifying something, but theoretically risks jail and fines for under classifying a document, not to mention the real harm that could arise from such an error.
This!
I once had the opportunity to work on a project with DoD folks to help them write software to speed up the declassification process.
I was astonished by the current manual process. Imagine a decision tree 50 pages long that you have to apply by hand to each sentence of a document to determine what can be unclassified or not.
These were such nice people and overwhelmed by the work and genuinely trying to make it better so more information could be declassified, faster.
I realized it was a hopeless task. The only real solution is to move toward a world where next to nothing needs to be classified. To do more in the open. That needs to be the vision. Laws need to be justified so that these crazy complicated rubrics don't need to be created at all.
[The end of the story is I opted not to join that project. LLMs provide at least some hope that they can make it somewhat better, lacking the changes at the legal and organizational level that I mentioned]
That's pretty naive.
> theoretically risks jail and fines for under classifying a document
The whole system is designed to make declassification risky and expensive. And you think that has nothing to do with power?
Is it just a coincidence that criminal gangs have a similar code of life-long silence?
Then he owed it to humanity and acted on it. Kudos to him.
Domestic spying is the controversial/illegal activity he was blowing the whistle on.
Dumping info on legal NSA activities (like foreign surveillance), while fascinating to read, is not whistleblowing.
Being Canadian, I see him as a whistleblower as well, since the extent of canadian surveillance was also revealed.
I'd argue it's even better that he did the jobs of multiple whistleblowers by sharing the extent of domestic spying in other countries. No need to wait years for other people to put their lives in jeopardy.
I wasn't aware that it was only one controversial activity.
And I wasn't aware that one could only blow the whistle on illegal activity.
Eveybody wants warfare to be asymmetric and biased towards them- why would we want to give a potential adversary perfect information about what weaponry we have as well as its exact capabilities? Unfortunately, when you want to keep a secret, you can't tell all of your citizens and trust that they won't tell anybody...
To be fair and let the best win? There is just no honor anymore.
There can be. But secrets can also be unimportant, or easily learnable through other public means. We need to analyze what we're keeping secret and optimize.
The democracy answer is omni-present. People can't really be said to support something they don't know about and if secrets encompass too much of their government it becomes, for practical purposes, illegitimate.
The cost of keeping the secret has to be weighed along with the cost of it leaking and the chance of that happening. It's not practical to keep everything a secret for reasons of censorship limiting other valid activity or just the increased bookkeeping in tracking secrets without revealing them.
And ultimately, not everything is all or nothing. You can have an undisclosed number of weapons for instance, but have a process where civilians can band together and form a special body, get some people vetted, and be granted access to otherwise secret information that they, because of their unique skills or interests, may have input on. This exists today in the form of aerospace companies, etc, who have access to many secrets to aid in the planning and construction of further tools.
Even public information about our military is not commonly known, so we don't have a well-informed citizenry.
How many Americans are aware of this, clearly public info because Al Jazeera has it?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...
If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden.
What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Imagine what the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
Your argument boils down to giving up our supposedly better values in order to defeat the "evil guys".
I also refuse to accept that our future is under the hegemony of any single nation. So far the only country we have proof of going for hegemony is the USA. Russia and China are concerned with their borders and it's trivial to verify my assessment Is correct. Just compare military expenses and amount of military bases owned across the world.
Russia is invading a neighboring country, and from talking to Lithuanians, the Russia people seem rather keen on returning to the "good old days" of the Soviet Empire.
Except very extreme fringes, every big party will bend over to do whatever USA tells them to do, regardless of what their voting base thinks.
See how they are changing the laws so that it's legal to send kurds in turkey to die.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying that the statement "my most immediate concern..." is incorrect. What's more likely: 1) demands from Swedish citizens to the USA actually stopping the USA from using Sweden in its geopolitics? Or 2) Demands from Swedish citizens to the government they empower?
If it's only the extreme fringes, then maybe most people in Sweden simply don't have much of a problem with it or don't care either way, or have more immediately pressing problems to deal with, or something else. Whatever the reason, if you don't like it then your most immediate problem is dealing with the roadblocks to getting your government to stop doing it.
You might write all the long comments you like, and suggest me to vote (lol, i see that's working very well in USA as well), but the fact remains.
Assange is just one example, merely an outlier. Random immigrants, perfectly productive and integrated into the country, including children, are being deported everyday for no special reason. Families are being separated, careers are being destroyed, just because they want to look "strong".
On the other hand, not a single criminal or terrorist is deported; why? Because they will make a fuss. Because there is a bunch of spoiled Swedish people who never experienced hardship with nothing better to do than to defend outdated ridiculous socialist/communist ideas, and they will kick and scream if a criminal is deported. And the coward government is afraid of having to deal with that.
Deport a working, honest immigrant, and they will not say anything. They comply, go out, and try again. If you're one of them, that is what you should be concerned with.
Uuuh??? They are the ones talking about taking away citizenship from people (with dual citizenship I hope, otherwise it's against human rights), exactly to be able to deport even swedish citizens.
At this point becoming a citizen would become completely meaningless.
And they got voted in power, so I guess they have support from the majority of people.
The US government is the most destructive force in history
Stable? We had an honest-to-god raid on the capitol just a few years ago.
At the very least I’d be a little bit nervous about the prospects of democracy if the organizer of that raid gets re-elected.
Don't get me wrong; I'm center-left and democrat-aligned, but with all due respect, if you cannot see how your country has an incredible foundation, you are naive and has a shallow understanding of the world.
I also doubt European countries have the capacity to intercept private calls between top level USA govt officials.
They surely would keep that capability secret.
Like the USA itself couldn't? Strongly doubt, the amount of recent leaks we're just discussing proves me right. No nation could have such an espionage system in place without it ever leaking out in some way.
The French: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electro... The Germans: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-arrests-foreign...
Lets not forget that most of the EU is wrapped up in the Pegasus spy scandal: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-watergate-the-pegasus-spyware-scand...
Playing holier than thou with intelligence services is a losing game. There is no holy intelligence service and there is no nation without an intelligence function.
You can search all you want but there is no evidence or proof whatsoever of EU countries spying USA top government officials.
The question here is how can you call yourself an ally in good faith when you spy on your allies?
There's plenty of evidence of the EU spying on allies. I can't tell if your implication is "Europe can't maintain smart enough computer scientists and engineers capable of spying on the US" or "Europe has the moral high ground and doesn't spy on allies".
Both are naive.
Nonsense. https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar... https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...
The second is based on some yet unreleased documents that Der Spiegel claims to have reviewed years ago.
Still no evidence to be found, only claims.
If you're willing to believe a US whistleblower -- whose evidence you can't personally verify -- you have to be open to believing the _former head of the agency_.
Familiarize yourself with this concept https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
Realpolitik are the reason why I consider the USA and NATO a bunch of hypocrites, altho the USA surely championed the practice.
They fill their mouth with good intents, justice, peace and all that is good in public but act like criminals behind the scenes.
At the very least, countries like Russia and China seem to be much more open about their practicing Realpolitik.
That's a lie so big it's visible from space.
Nations spying on nations (even allies) feels terrible but in practice is probably a net good for all. It reduces uncertainty, and uncertainty has historically been a major trigger for armed conflict as one side feared the other side was preparing to strike, so struck first to gain the initiative in case their fears were well-founded. History has shown that judgment to be inaccurate in some significant cases. Wars have also been avoided by good intel.
On the non-kinetic side, espionage better informs policymakers as international agreements are forged and followed. Uncertainty between nations is generally a bad thing for both nations.
We badly need to address nations spying on their own citizens, especially reciprocity arrangements to circumvent restrictions on such. But pending an unlikely utopia of humans all learning how to cooperate at scale for the first time in human history, nations spying on nations is probably a good thing for the planet.
Is there any evidence of this being true or speculation?
here is 1 such example off the top of my head: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
Getting corrupt spies to be exposed doesn't really seem to be a great datum to back your argument. He might have actually saved more lives indirectly since he stopped them from leaking secret Soviet information to the US. Anything else?
labeling the victims as "corrupt" is also weak
saying 'ok you're right but maybe it's a good thing' is weak
none of the arguments really seem great against the evidence presented. anything else?
Two corrupt spies being regularly tried and executed is definitely not "tons troughout history". That was your claim, not "someone killed as a result of an intel leak", and if all you have is other spies dying then I don't have any problem with it.
What I would have a problem with is civilian deaths resulting from leaks, but for what I see generally leaks reveal more often unauthorized civilian killings than they cause them.
but which do not actually matter here, because the example presented satisfied the condition of a person killed due to an intel leak:
- whether you agree with the killing
- whether it is 2 or 2 million
- what their profession is
- whether they are civilians
- whether you personally think they're corrupt
- what you personally have a problem with
literally none of your above views matter to the question here, because the question was whether an intel leak has ever gotten people killed (meaning >1), not "what do you, a random person on the internet, think about the fact that intel leaks have gotten people killed"
QED. anything else? Maybe the killings doesn't count because it's Tuesday, or some other new silly exclusionary criteria you made up?
I'm asking for stronger evidence because the example provided is not very good given the obvious vocational risk with being a spy. Presumably there are stronger examples available.
Also, whistleblower policy has been a subject of presidential campaigns (Obama 2008). Fixating on a false choice is going to draw the ire of many who have written books and debating this topic at great depth and length.
sorry you don't like the people in the examples (or maybe just don't like how they prove the claim right) but your opinion of them doesn't really matter, as my previous post says. The only thing that matters is that evidence was presented of >1 people being killed by an intelligence leak. QED.
any other stupid 1-upping games, to avoid the fact that the claim has been proven true?
Sources?
Abu Grahib for one. How did that leak cause anyone to die? It has probably saved lives or prevented further abuse by causing accountability.
Assange's "US Army manual for Guantanamo prison camp" leak. Who knows how much further abuse that prevented from happening?
Assange's "Video of US helicopter fire killing civilians in Iraq"
And so on, and so on. You could actually say in this case that there are "tons of cases troughout history" and I'm presenting several to you that had a large impact. Where are your tons of cases with large impact? We're still waiting.
There's overwhelming evidence that leaks cause more good than they do harm. Prove otherwise if you can.
Another question I have is, why are you more concerned by the potential deaths caused by a leak than by the deaths the leak is exposing?
maybe, maybe not, but completely irrelevant to the discussion, since we're evaluating one simple, objective, yes or no question you can find at the bottom of this post, not comparing anything
> Your claim being true (even tho your "tons of evidence" amounts to 1 weak case so far) or not, the opposite claim is a much stronger and compelling one.
the opposite claim to >1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak, is <=1 humans in history being killed by an intelligence leak, which, again, my example proves false (and is a ridiculous claim for you to make)
the rest of your post repeats, for at least the third time, nothing but irrelevant, mostly emotional opinions, trying to distract the topic at hand:
Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by an intelligence leak?
Yes. QED
> the opposite claim to >1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak, is <=1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak
No.
I'm debating if leaks are a net positive overall, so my claim is that it doesn't matter if leaks sometimes cause deaths as leaks save more lives than they take, especially the lives of innocents. And by the way my claim is 100% clear in all of my comments. If you choose to engage me then accept to debate my claim or stop wasting time.
> Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by an intelligence leak?
This is a ridiculous thing to debate on, and you know it really well. Next thing we're going to debate idiotic stuff like "Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by drinking too much water?"
If all you cared about was "winning" the debate on a technicality, congratulations! Shame that it doesn't amount to anything in the real world.
If the point was to have a constructive discussion and gain some additional insight on the topic, then this was a complete waste of time, at least as long as you refuse to listen what other people have to say and fixate on a technicality.
No.
You're arguing with the claim that intelligence leaks have killed greater than 1 humans in history.
Everything else is a distraction from that question. If you can't agree on a common set of facts, like that one, you aren't ready to graduate to the next discussion, whether it be a comparative discussion of benefits or anything else.
Your inability to acknowledge the simple truth to the question we're discussing only shows that you seem to be the one treating this as a debate, and you're the one insisting on "winning" by refusing to acknowledge even a basic set of facts.
Until you can do that, you're not ready for the next topic, which, obviously, necessarily builds upon that shared set of facts. "Alternative facts" don't count here.
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by having too vigorous sex?"
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by getting into a heated discussion about a stupid topic?"
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by riding a bike?"
I rest my case, this is a complete waste of time and I give it up.
by failing to acknowledge the answer (again: "yes") you fail to graduate to the next discussion, which, obviously, necessarily builds upon a shared understanding of facts
Espionage, gathering secret intelligence, is arguably a net good for the planet.
Because they're all doing it too. Any attempts at retaliation what have been hypocritical and met with callouts.
> Because they're all doing it too. Any attempts at retaliation what have been hypocritical and met with callouts.
Source? I can tell you already there is none. We have plenty of evidence that the USA is spying Europe and other allies, none of the opposite.
.0: https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2014-01-...
.1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/germany-arrest...
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/europe-spyware-scandal-...
As I've already answered you on another comment and as the very first line of the article you shared points out, Pegasus has been used for domestic espionage. The issue at hand is foreign espionage.
Like how Denmark helped the US spy on the EU?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/denmark-helped...
Yes, EU nations are somehow totally incapable of a thing every country is doing. That is naive.
Provide evidence please, but we both know there is none.
> Like how Denmark helped the US spy on the EU?
Yet another case of the US spying on its allies.
Edit: You keep editing your comment so it's hard to properly answer.
> Allies not OK, citizens OK?
I've already wrote you here[0] that I find both cases despicable, but we're simply talking about US foreign espionage here.
I'm not sure if you're being obtuse or just didn't bother reading.
Denmark was complicit in the US spying on Germany, Sweden and Norway.
https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
France and Germany both have admitted they have spied on the White House.
https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar...
https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...
Germany has been found to helping the US spy on EU allies:
https://www.dw.com/en/parliamentary-report-finds-spying-by-b...
This is a childish and naïve stance.
Also, I'm not American. You can stop referring to me in the second person.
geopolitics 101? why would any country not have spies and passive surveillance of both enemies and allies that could one day threaten their power and economy?
You are just proving that the US is not behaving like a positive force for the world, which was entirely my point. I never said that European countries are saints. I just fear with good reason a US hegemony given their behavior.
How is 2/5 "almost all"?
The US hegemony is rightfully feared, but only because on their relatively unchecked power, not because of any inherent ethical superiority.
I never said that the US is or isn't a positive net on the world: I said that spying isn't evidence of your point. Because by your definition no country is positive net on the world.
Spoken like a true devil's advocate. Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine. The fervor with which you scrambled for evidence to only tangentially counter my argument suggests me otherwise, but oh well.
If all you want is evidence that the US is currently not a positive net for the world, you just need to look at the work CIA has done. You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing. It's how powerful those services are and what they are used for.
By the way you realize that other countries being bad doesn't make the US any better? If nothing you're helping me prove that NATO altogether is a band of criminals, which I might have to thank you for, afterall.
I do have a point, you just don't like it. The point is thus: Europe spies on their allies and enemies just as much as the United States does.
> You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing.
I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.
> By the way you realize that other countries being bad doesn't make the US any better?
I never said it does. I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.
"Just as much" is simply false, as the extent and scope of USA espionage is unrivaled in Europe.
> I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.
Spying per se might be not, the intent behind it clearly does tho. You might spy to exert your power over or disrupt another country, or you might spy as a precautionary measure. We all know which country has the goal to make the world unipolar.
> I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.
I obviously didn't, and I still believe Russia foreign interference isn't comparable with what the US has done.
As for being a positive force in the world, that depends what they do with the information. It’s a different concern.
They're basically vassal states. With no meaningful armies of their own, they rely on the US for their protection, so they're in no position to challenge it.
If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Obviously for the rest of the world Snowden is a net positive that raised awareness about mass surveillance by US Big Tech. But I cringe whenever Americans declare him "an American hero". I am sure Snowden cringe even more at that term to be honest.
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitr...
"You ask why I picked you. I didn't. You did. The surveillance you've experienced means you've been selected, a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern sigint system works."
I wish everyone here would watch the movie Citizen Four to learn more about the backgrounds and the actual events. He was an anti-surveillance activist. Is it because of the Ukraine conflict that people are now trying to link him to anti-US foreign policy sentiments? Why wasn't this the topic in 2012?
Being anti-US foreign policy is generally a good thing and the only reason you are going to leak to Glenn Greenwald of all people in late 2012.
Snowden also exposed that it was not Bashar al-Assad's legitimate democratically elected government that turned off the Internet in Syria in 2012. It was actually the NSA:
https://time.com/3107684/snowden-nsa-syria-cybersecurity/
No other "anti-surveillance activist" would have stood up Assad in 2012. Only Snowden dared to do that because he is a heroic world citizen opposed to US influence and control of the world.
Nothing wrong with Greenwald besides being a well-written PITA. He also saw the story though, at substantial risk to himself. A great choice to be included, even from hindsight.
I read GGs pieces on Salon about the Bush Admin in the early 00s and was impressed enough to remember his name later. At no time do I remember him being an “axis of evil” apologist.
This isn't why he went to Greenwald, he did so to avoid American outlets like the New York Times, since before the leak they censored the illegal wiretapping story (Room 641A) at the request of the Bush Administration.
Snowden found himself in a situation where both the Government and the Media were in cahoots to cover up criminal behavior. At that point I don't blame him, going to Glenn and then fleeing to Russia was exactly the right thing to do. If he didn't the story would have been covered up and he'd be sitting in a dark cell right now, with none of us none the wiser.
But even so, those demand him to be 100% ethical, why don't they also demand that from the NSA and the rest of the state?
He did it in a responsible way. Perhaps if there was better support for whistle-blower he could have done it even better.
Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations
If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.