vunicipna

Someone who demands that others refer to him as "it", as if he's not even human, doesn't deserve to have any of his 'preferred pronouns' respected.

Then please respect my use of "he" to refer to someone who is clearly male.

I'm certainly not going call anyone an "it", as if some sort of corpse.

There's no evidence that Snowden brought his supposed 'concerns' to anybody in his chain of command, prior to defecting to Russia. The documents he began stealing in 2012 weren't targeted towards the bulk data collection program - he exfiltrated whatever he could lay his hands on, which of the hundreds of thousands of items were mostly military secrets, and classified information on intelligence work abroad. The claim that this was all driven by watching Clapper testify in committee is a convenient lie, a cover-up for what he was really doing: a massive theft of secrets across the board.

Serial liars do often go back and 'clarify' their lies once called out, it's part of spinning a web of deception. Admitting any wrongdoing, as normal people might do, isn't on the agenda for people like Snowden, all puffed up and full of ego, living off their own bullshit.

Not only did he defect to Russia and enjoy being celebrated there, he also has many people in the US and allies lauding his espionage, filmmakers and journalists gushing over his narrative and airbrushing out inconvenient facts. What a series of accolades for a liar and thief. He seems to revel in this 'wise whistleblower-in-exile' act he's carved out for himself while remaining Putin's pet. This treacherous escapade worked out better than he ever could have imagined.

In an attempt to sound like he had noble reasons for leaking hundreds of thousands of unrelated secret documents to journalists, Snowden claimed it was watching James Clapper's congressional testimony in March 2013 that triggered him to start downloading and exfiltrating classified material.

This was a lie. He'd actually started collecting his trove of stolen documents many months prior, in mid-2012, coinciding with arguments with his managers. He had a grudge against his employers, and he acted upon it.

Snowden also never mentions that nation-state adversaries got all of this material too. The intelligence agencies of China and Russia must have been rubbing their hands in glee when he fled to them in quick succession. No wonder Russia continues to protect Snowden from being brought to justice in the US, from their point of view he did a stellar espionage job for them.

That's not the only bullshit from Snowden either. Even little things like his claimed $200k salary when it was actually closer to $100k-ish. He's a serial fabricator full of grandiose claims about himself and what he did.

His elevation to hero status is a moral travesty.

Reading that wiki page, it sounds like he's on his way to a long stint in prison, or worse. Wouldn't be surprised if he gets black-bagged now that he's attacking critical national infrastructure and encouraging others to do so.

That just highlights how irresponsible he's been with previous leaks though. Stealing source code and making it public isn't really helping anyone, most likely this is just an ego-inflation bragging exercise.

A lot of these so-called hacktivists claim noble goals but then it later transpires to be down to other more selfish reasons, e.g. Edward Snowden's mass theft and leaking of NSA secrets.

I wouldn't be surprised if he gets added to the list as well after pulling this stunt.

Interesting hack, but this seems quite the brazen confession to a fair number of computer crimes. If I were the author, I'd be worried about getting arrested and potentially extradited for this. Especially as he deliberately downloaded a load of confidential information after gaining access, and then shared it around. He'd be looking at years in prison for this, in the US.