It is easy to feel anger towards those we perceive as oppressors, but if this nascent movement (I hope it is a movement!) is to have any success, thoughts like these from Gandhi should not be forgotten:

Real noncooperation is noncooperation with evil and not with the evil doer.

Noncooperation is not a hymn of hate.

My noncooperation is with methods and systems, never with men.

Noncompliance and noncooperation have a time and a place. We must avoid the temptation of viewing them as silver bullets simply because we find them pleasant, easy to stomach.

The struggle then becomes one about respect and cooperation, without which no government can last, for even the greatest tyranny is executed not by one man giving orders but by everyone cooperating. The underdog struggles to inspire others. The state struggles to keep the facade of legitimacy. Sometimes the words "you are no longer our legitimate government" are stronger than all the guns in the world.

Imagine if half the country suddenly decided to no longer respect American law. They refused to pay taxes, obey traffic law, etc. What would the government do? In the end, they wouldn't be able to do anything. Once you understand that proposition, Gandhi's methods start looking a lot less gentle and a lot more dangerous.

Start beating the shit out of people, killing them, etc., etc. and the people would very quickly relent.

So the question you have to ask yourself, before non-violently resisting, is whether your oppressors will beat themselves or you down faster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/secret-massacre-slaughter-...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-p...

For those wondering what we are talking about: http://hpmor.com/

(p.s. Fawkes and Azkaban. Damn that shit got real.)

[1] http://www.writersbeat.com/showthread.php?t=15295

Just look for the hero Churchill's view of Indians on the web.

But yeah, "stuff I read in fan fiction" is on the lowest tier of my information-trust-chart. I'm a bit curious about why the British did give up on colonies. Was there really a sea change in British public opinion over the course of the World Wars? Was it a moral decision or an economic one? I could think of a dozen of reasons, which makes none of them worth speculating about aloud, but honestly this part of history is also pretty low on my reading list...

Oh, and the story is shit. One of the better reviews of the fic that I've read: http://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/u5j3l/looking_...

Though the repercussions remain to be seen, this week we find that leaking is possibly the most effective form of protest available today, and certainly more effective than picket signs and camping in parks.

If the leaker had any chance of remaining secret, then I think I would say that the leaker should choose to remain secret, and in doing so live to fight another day. On the other hand, if the leaker suspects that they will be uncovered regardless, it is probably best to choose the circumstances of your unveiling.

They aren't leakers or really protestors, but it is for the best that the Dread Pirate Roberts remain anonymous. If they had to go public though, it would be better for the headline to be on CNN: "Silk Road Founder [Whoever] Says/Does [Whatever]" rather than, on local news: "Local drug kingpin arrested today. Then later: How little Timmy rescued a kitten."

Leaving aside the fact that this is still evolving, how do you propose to measure that effectiveness?

I have nothing against today's English people, they are terrific people. But, Imperialism as a culture should stay consigned in the dustbin of history - it makes monsters out of ordinary men. It should never be revived again with terrorism and national security as future excuses.

Just one example of something that goes beyond Gandhi's approval (which may or may not be necessary in this particular case) is targeted industrial sabotage. Carefully calculated and restrained violence against property and information systems, not against people. Gandhi thought that sabotage put his effort back; perhaps he is correct. However it is hard to deny the valuable role sabotage has played in other conflicts.

This recent comment resonated with me:

"I'm French. France was occupied by Nazi Germany (as every American I ever speak to likes to remind me). Resistants were ordinary French people who blew up trains in order to make the life of Germans in France as difficult as possible -- and of course German propaganda called them terrorists. I'm not putting this word in quotes, because of course that's what they were. They were trying to terrify the occupiers. It was a good thing." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846266

Now plainly I am not advocating that we should start blowing up bridges, or that blowing up bridges might become necessary in some foreseeable immediate future. We are not occupied by a foreign force that is sending our neighbors to death camps. I reference this merely to make the point that the reach of Gandhi's tactics do have a limit.

Edit: Not sure why you deleted your comment. It was a very fair question.

Whether it would be effective for non-believers (i.e. the people who aren't willing to put their lives on the line) against other regimes is hard to say. I'm not sure it has been tested outside of India or ever will be, since it requires suicidal amounts of willpower to follow through.

So, while not advocating suicide-by-aggressor civil disobedience, I also think it's purely speculation as to what would happen if it were tried on a large scale. Closest thing that comes to mind is the Tiananmen square tank man, and that was one guy.

Gandhi's methods have been tested outside of India, perhaps most famously during the civil rights era in the US (if we write off the influence of those who were not wed to nonviolence and noncompliance). In that case they had the benefit of an interested party that consisted of a double-digit percentage of the population (and a far greater percentage in areas with particularly egregious issues.)

The problem with advocating noncompliance and nonviolence is that if you miscalculate the breadth of your support or your oppositions capacity for violence, then not only will you have accomplished nothing but you will have actually damaged your cause by removing yourself from it.

As a radicalized person, there cannot even be futile resistance, because if the violent people were to kill all of their enemies, there wouldn't be any violence left to commit. If so, mission accomplished. It's very much a love thine enemy philosophy.

When I say that Gandhi's methods haven't been tested outside of India, I'm referring to people passively offering up their lives to the state. Did this really happen during the civil rights movement?

Personally I believe that this kind of self-sacrifice is not worth it, even if change is effected.

Nonviolence is not a goal for me. I consider it a tool with limited application. Failing to build a doghouse with a hammer, instead of successfully building the doghouse with a screwdrivers, is nothing to be proud of. The doghouse is what I am interested in, not the application of hammers.

Or to put it in more concrete terms, the world would not be a better place had the French Resistance chosen to adopt nonviolent noncompliance. Their acts of violence were, without any question, justified and "worth it".

And yes, people were absolutely putting their lives at risk during the civil rights era. People were being beaten and in many cases, killed.

It's not about what you build with the hammer that matters to this person. It's that he consistently uses the hammer regardless of what is built or how efficiently it is accomplished, because he believes using the hammer to be the true way of life and far more important than the product being created. By using a more suitable tool he believes that he has already lost.

It's a zen thing.

Had the French Resistance decided that the principles of nonviolence and noncompliance were more important than killing german officers and blowing up trains, then I would think far less of them. If he thinks that they lost the moment they used violence and sabotage, then I think he is wrong.

Edit: I disagree with Gandhi, not him.

If acting according to your beliefs is selfish... well then aren't we all selfish (arguably true)?

Don't be too hasty to judge.

I don't think that Gandhi's writings espouse a general abhorrence of violence or even sabotage. They represent however a willingness to stand above such methods, and to be heroic in every little thing. The salt protest is perhaps a great example. The message is "I don't need to sabotage you because you cannot break me."

The distinction between violence and non-violence is a remarkably difficult one to make. Punching someone in the gut is undeniably violent, but what about deeply insulting a person's character? Why do we draw a line between those? Why is it that razing a bridge is violent but sitting down in the revolving door of a business establishment preventing customers from entering not? So-called non-violent resistance tends to eschew deliberate and overt outward and tangible violence for a more subtle but even more important battleground, that of morale based on legitimacy and the moral high ground.

> I reference this merely to make the point that the reach of Gandhi's tactics do have a limit.

But here's the real dirty secret. It doesn't matter who is in power, the average everyday decisions are made by individuals, and foreign powers rely very heavily on local support. I won't second guess the French resistance (and I don't think Gandhi would have either), but I think it is dangerous to opine what would have happened given that Germany was not really in a position to dedicate a lot of force to France (given that their military was somewhat occupied elsewhere). Both Ghandi and the French Resistance existed in cases where foreign powers were dominating, in a mixture of positive and negative ways, but where the foreign power could not reasonably dedicate significant military forces to reconquer the area. WWII effectively destroyed Great Britain as a world superpower largely due to the toll the Battle of the Atlantic had on their navy. Germans may have been ruthless (look up the night and fog decrees), and they were very careful not to allow visible resistance show up, but that itself can make it a more effective protest. They can't throw all of France in the death camps can they?

Now, things like drones are problems because they are force multipliers. If one person can control several drones at once, it means less people need to be making the decisions but I am not sure what that will mean yet.

He's a hero. Putting the word American in there is very, well, American. The NSA has done a lot worse by foreigners than Americans.

There's absolutely nothing unique about inserting the nationality of a hero that relates to Americans. I see it done regularly by citizens of other countries. In my observation, national pride is nearly universal.

In my observation, it might be universal, but its degree varies greatly, with americans on the high end of the scale.

Nobody would say "a Greek hero".

"A hero of Greece"

"A national hero"

"A hero to the fatherland"

"A hero to the people"

It isn't that untypical. Microsoft, Google, and (to a lesser extent) Facebook have famously hired many high school dropouts.

> Why was Booz Allen paying him (again, as a dropout) $200k for a sysadmin job? Were they?

Because competent sysadmins are hard to find. I'm not at all surprised by this, heck, I got offered $100k for a sysadmin job despite (by my own estimation) not being a very competent sysadmin.

> Why did he choose Hong Kong?

He mentioned the reasons in the interview. But, consider also that he's been working for intelligence agencies for quite some years and thus probably has a better idea of the realities of 'freedom of speech' and surveillance technologies than a lot of us outside it.

edit: it's too bad you deleted your comment -- probably because of the downvotes? I wish you hadn't -- disagreements need to take place for meaningful discussion to happen. Also it breaks the conversation and makes it harder to follow.

"So...you do it too. hahaha. But seriously, I never want to hear this 'spying on your own citizens' crap again. It was funny before, but now it's pathetic."

"Most favored nations give us a hand, from time to time. I would appreciate it as a personal favor if you would put this guy on a plane."

No matter if you're CIA, Google, or Facebook, you're still competing against each other to find competent sysadmins from the same pool of limited applicants. When a promising applicant finally lands in your hands, you don't dismiss him just because he doesn't have a piece of paper.

> That's not a surprising figure to me, but $200k is

That's a nice perk, along with Hawaii relocation isn't it. It's basically a little something to make his life so comfortable that when the decision to be a whistle-blower is being measured, the amenities are a factor in the equation against it.

2. He's a college drop out, not a high school drop out (or at least that how it reads to me - a non-US citizen. I may have misunderstood how your education system works). Also, his family also works for government agencies, so that probably added weight to his application.

3. Because of the secrecy of his job and the clearance he had. It doesn't sound to me like he was your typical sysadmin.

4. He actually addressed that one himself: On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

I can actually sympathize with your skepticism there. Some bits of his story does sound quite hard to swallow. But on the whole I'd say his story seems more plausible than made up. Personally I find it less likely that the US government aren't recording and monitoring that amount of traffic, even if the whistle blower does turn out to be a hoax. And I'm sure many other "democratic" counties are doing the same as well. We've seen how the content industry can basically buy police time and have servers taken unlawfully (in the case of Kim Dotcom) - so I'd be astonished if the government themselves didn't have even further reaching powers.

edit: I really wish you hadn't deleted your comment because while some of the questions had already been answered in the Guardians report, you did raise some worthwhile points. I just hope it wasn't kneejerk down-voters that made you choose to delete your comment (as such voting -in my opinion- hinders discussion)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-n...

"His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma."

High school.

"In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)"

Presumably he obtained his GED at some time after he joined the CIA (when he lacked a high school diploma).

Of course from a semantic perspective you could argue having dropped out of high school he is and forever will be a high school drop out. But as I understand it this is not the traditional way the term "high school drop out" is used.

Or does your education system not work this way? ie once you've dropped out of high school, you're permanently branded a "drop out" even if you later complete your high school diploma?

My country's high schools operate very differently, so the confusion here might be cultural. But in higher education you can leave college / university and later return to complete the course and not be considered a "drop out"

A high-school diploma or GED is generally acquired by the age of 18 in the US, and a GED is often the result of a student "dropping out" of high-school for whatever reason and then continuing their education at that point or at a later time.

A college is generally a small post-secondary educational institution either dedicated to a specific subject matter or a general liberal arts education. A university consists of at least two colleges.

And then we have "for-profit" post-secondary institutions like ITT Tech or University of Phoenix that are run as corporations and often target "non-traditional" students such as working students, parents, and older students. Confusing, I know.

1) He's not on the GS schedule because he's a contractor 2) His clearance level 3) He works for one of the big 5 consulting firms that is considerably higher on the list if you rank by government/CIA/NSA engagements.

As a federal employee, you don't get a multiplying factor for having higher clearance. You merely get to have the job. You actually get a higher boost from living in an area with a locality adjustment due to cost of living adjustments.