There are secure ways to whistleblow inside the org he was in and not to the press and not to Congress itself. He didn’t use those avenues.

He also leaked information that didn’t need to be leaked which had nothing to do with the privacy issues people keep being up (which btw were not ruled to be in violation of the 4th amendment only that they went beyond the FISA approved collection standards)

> There are secure ways to whistleblow

... when your adversary is the NSA? We're circling back to my original message.

You report it to the Inspector General (IG). How are you not familiar with it ? Snowden even talked to them before not about this but something else. He is a traitor. The other stuff he leaked had nothing to do with Americans “privacy concerns”. It was fairly minor

Ah yes, he "even talked to them". You don't think that perhaps therefore Edward Snowden might've had a better conception of the viability of "the proper channels" than you do?

And, before you answer that too hastily - have you ever heard of William Binney? How about Thomas Drake? Do you know what happened when they used "the proper channels"? If so, your failure to mention them when discussing Snowden's motivation is in bad faith. If not, you're simply not informed enough to be coming into threads speaking authoritatively about this.

“Snowden talked to the IG” only applies to his conversation with the CIA IG about management and IT. There was no NSA IG complaint about surveillance which contrasts with the others (Binney and Drake that you mentioned). So no he did not even try. Was the Binney and Drake incidents ugly? Yes. But neither are in jail and both still live in the US.

Snowden did it completely the wrong way.

Binney and Drake only got listened to as a result of Snowden though.

They say so themselves.

That’s not what they said.

They said that Snowden caused a shift in the public debate not that nobody listened to them beforehand (you should know they were raising concerns going back to 2002).

Baltimore Sun was reporting on Drake in 2006. Binney was publicly talking about it to Wired News and Democracy Now in 2012. Snowden happened in 2013.

… and nothing happened.

So that makes my point even plainer than it possibly could have been made. The people who did the right thing by your definition got nothing done (and this was what caused Snowden to do it the way he did) and since Snowden, those previous cases were taken seriously by the government

Well their complaint triggered a formal DoD IG investigation and produced a highly critical audit plus fraud investigations. Trailblazer program was killed in 2006. That all happened well before Snowden. Snowden skipped all of those channels entirely. Binney and Drake were taken seriously but you are glossing over all do the other stuff that Snowden leaked that had nothing to do with the privacy concerns deemed that went beyond what FISA courts authorized (and no court found violation of 4th amendment).

Snowden did it completely wrong and you can’t convince me otherwise. I don’t see this conversation going further as you move the goalposts.

I'm "glossing over it" because you are, I explicitly asked you in another thread what he leaked that wasn't relevant for the public interest.

I'm not sure what your angle is, but the NSA proved that they were beyond contempt when they lied to the Senate and there were people in the room that knew the situation who didn't pull them up on it.

Regarding Binney specifically; the IG's report largely supported his claims, but it was classified and changed little. Thomas Drake, a serving NSA official who raised similar concerns internally, also got nowhere.

The government's serious attention came only after the New York Times revealed warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, and it came as a leak investigation. In 2007 the FBI raided the homes of Binney, Wiebe, Loomis and Roark; Binney has said agents drew guns on him while he was in the shower.

Drake was indicted under the Espionage Act in 2010. The case collapsed in 2011, he pleaded guilty to a minor misdemeanour, and the judge sharply criticised the prosecution's conduct. So the substance of Binney's warnings was mostly ignored or denied.

Binney went fully public around 2012, and NSA officials publicly denied that they kept files on ordinary Americans.

The core contrast is that Binney went through proper channels, took no documents and was not believed. He was investigated anyway and achieved almost no reform. Snowden bypassed every channel, took vast amounts of classified material and was pursued far more aggressively, but he forced a public debate and concrete legal changes.

You can pretend that's not true, but you'd be ignoring reality.

It’s clear you want the last word with AI help so I’ll let you have it.

Since you have no actual answer to anything, even provably true things.

Thanks!

Exactly coming from a London-Swedish guy the spewing nonsense is what I should have expected. What business of the US is what we do anyways?

That GCHQ was involved definitely interests me, that GCHQ was being used by NSA to spy on US citizens (and vice-versa) to bypass citizen protections should be of interest to civilians of both countries.

I don’t trust civil servants to not abuse access into everyones communications, the damage a stalker or pedophile can do is immeasurable, and we have some statements that was happening.

Goalposts moved again. Started with 4th amendment argument then keep changing your tune. Goodbye

I’m following your lead.

Who do you leak to when you believe even your organization is compromised/complicit? Who watches the watchmen? He chose 'the people' and I can't fault him for it.

You report it to the Inspector General (IG). How are you not familiar with it ? Snowden even talked to them before not about this but something else. He is a traitor. The other stuff he leaked had nothing to do with Americans “privacy concerns”. It was fairly minor

Funny, I consider him a national hero. Agree to disagree I guess.