That's a very optimistic view of the US justice system's treatment of whistleblowers (surely they would contend that all of their programs were legal), but now his being granted asylum by Russia isn't evidence but a new incongruous fact we need to explain since the hypothesis is now apparently that he is a Chinese turncoat. So I don't see how this helps the case.

I once publicly stated here that I think some accounts are astroturfers, and I think some are deep state too. I am not making specific accusations.

i just had that conversation about 'industrial' effort and 'actors', we have recent examples of monetary corruption in the sacklers.

For some reason people think psychological operations are some kind of urban legend.

and for some reason, some of those people jump on these posts when you name that our hacker news-emperor-forum has no clothes.

If a commenter posts a thing that I disagree with, then their motives are bad. Whereas all opinions of mine are pure and in good faith.

> now his being granted asylum by Russia isn't evidence but a new incongruous fact we need to explain since the hypothesis is now apparently that he is a Chinese turncoat.

Putin wanted him in Russia, and Snowden happened to be passing through. Simple as that. I already explained the clear evidence (from Snowden's own mouth) that Snowden initially wanted to gain asylum in Hong Kong by leaking hacks of Chinese infrastructure in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49784968.

Snowden didn't grow up wanting to be Chinese. He simply misread the PRISM documents and imagined a USA that completely ignored the 4th Amendment. Somebody in such a state could easily imagine a USA that would ignore the 8th Amendment, and so he had to flee in order to get the news out about the former, which he talked about nonstop the moment he got journalists' ears. It turned out that he was wrong about PRISM, and he was wrong about the government ignoring the 4th Amendment because the only extant program that might have been in violation was shut down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785016

The lesson in all this? Stay in school.

>and imagined a USA that completely ignored the 4th Amendment.

Haha. Tell us another one. I don't have enough comedy in my life.

He said so himself. I take him at his word. Meanwhile, the actual USA stopped doing the one extant program in his leaks that was ruled a violation of the 4th Amendment.

>the actual USA stopped doing the one extant program in his leaks that was ruled a violation of the 4th Amendment.

To move it to another program, classified and unreported, under which it could hide again. Don't be naive.

> To move it to another program, classified and unreported, under which it could hide again. Don't be naive.

Why? They first made a more limited program to comply with the law and then shut that down because the data wasn't useful. If they made another program exactly like the original, the SSCI would shut it down, or a whistleblower would point out a program that they know to be clearly illegal, whereas the original program was arguably legal, with the government's justification in the leaks. After the ruling, the government would not be able to provide justification for obtaining that data from the telcos with their old legal argument because it is invalidated by precedent.

If one country wants to kill you why wouldn't you flee to a different one and give them everything you have against the first country?

Sorry, but is Russia or the USA the one most likely to kill Snowden? Oh, yeah, it isn't Russia, because Snowden avoids saying things that could trigger his KGB handlers to disappear him... Like denouncing a genocidal war of aggression against a neighbor, or the assassination of journalists and political opponents, or the repression of any opposition in the streets...

By leaking American info, Snowden painted a target on his back that can be reached by the USA and all allies with extradition agreements. That leaves him with very few superpowers who won't hand him over to the FBI/CIA and execution or imprisonment.

If I were in his shoes, I too would relocate to a superpower not allied with the USA and avoid getting involved in anything political over there.

Execution? A few years of imprisonment at worst. Trump has pardoned worse people (the guy from SilkRoad for instance).

Russia may execute him anytime though. And his family. Easy to pretend he was killed by an Ukrainian bombing.

Well when Trump pardons him, he'll come back. Trump won't pardon him, because Trump supports deep state mass surveillance.

Just like with John Kiriakou, the only man ever convicted in connection with the torture program? He went to prison for two years despite only ever leaking information about illegal programs, lost his wife, lost all his money; is that the mercy you expected Snowden to submit to?

Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC describing waterboarding on December 10, 2007, in order to defend the practice. The government did not charge him with any crimes at the time. Three years prior, Newsweek had reported on a secret memo from Yoo justifying the use of waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah. None of the people who leaked that memo were charged with crimes. Three months prior to Kiriakou's interview, "current and former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials" said that three prisoners had been waterboarded, including Zubaydah. None of them were charged with crimes.

Four years after Kiriakou's interview, he was charged with giving the names of CIA agents to two journalists, a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment, not for describing waterboarding, which if he had leaked would have been covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act.

He said "as Americans, we're better than that", does that sound like defending? That he was conflicted about it isn't too surprising, he was ratting out his colleagues and the institution he had worked for through the entire of his professional life.

To the rest, you've fallen for their trick. Three CIA threw the book at him, and indeed tried to convict him for his leaks: "The five-count indictment against Kiriakou charged him with violations of both the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (for allegedly revealing the identity of a covert agent) and the Espionage Act (for allegedly revealing national defense information to unauthorized individuals such as journalists). He was also charged with making false statements to the CIA about a book that he was seeking to publish."

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act is just the charge that stuck. When you're revealing government secrets, it's very, very hard not to accidentally cross the line, especially when you consider that the whole justice system is arranged in their favor, not yours.

The result is that lots of people say they support whistleblowers, but anytime someone actually whistleblows they back the government line and say "they went too far". Why is the onus on whistleblowers, acting in secret and with fear of retribution at every step, to perfectly separate the illegal actions from the legal, and punish only the former? Why is the onus not on our government, the elected representatives who ought to serve us and obey the law, to not commit crimes against humanity in the first place?

If you demand perfection from whistleblowers but accept faults in your government, don't be surprised if you don't get many whistleblowers.

That's a conspiracy theory I haven't heard before which I'm pretty sure I'll never hear a shred of evidence for.

It's well documented. Snowden himself has admitted as much, and it requires no conspiracy — only the stupidity of a single high school dropout.

https://amp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3178655...

https://amp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-s...

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/article/1266821/us-hacks-chi...

Snowden wasn't stupid. He was the world's best Sharepoint administrator.

It was probably unwise of him to insult the T group director publicly, which led to the entire subsequent chain of events.

Your president literally does illegal things all the time and your Supreme Court just declares it’s legal because it’s the president.

You have zero moral ground or credibility to stand on.

What the current president does now has no bearing on what was done then, with a somewhat functioning Supreme Court and an adversarial Congress. The conspiracy theories spread by Snowden helped lead to Trump, and that is the main point I want to get across. While spreading his conspiracy theories, he also helped the CCP, and that is something for which he would stand trial for in the U.S.

If he stayed in the U.S., his punishment would already be over. Now with the current president directly telling DOJ what to do, who knows what would happen if Snowden were to stand trial today, but that isn't a possibility Snowden faced when he fled.