Comment by wood_spirit
3 days ago
How can Snowdon possibly feel as the international situation changes so totally since he fled? It boggles the mind.
3 days ago
How can Snowdon possibly feel as the international situation changes so totally since he fled? It boggles the mind.
Probably, that he did the right thing at the right time.
No, he violated a trust given to him, he deserves to be in jail, and if he had an ounce of moral character he'd come back and face trial like a man.
Unlike the movies there aren't secret death squads out to get him, just a courtroom where he can face the consequences of his actions like an adult.
Instead, he's hiding out playing the victim in a country that's actively genociding Ukrainians to a degree beyond anything the Trump or Netanyahu administrations can be accused of.
Even if you believe the law is unjust, MLK Jr still had the balls to go to jail for what he believed.
Who actually cares if the government can't perform a show trial? He did his duty by getting the information out there
The current administration is actively engaged in corruption everyday. Snowden did the right thing and had the knowledge to know he would never get a fair trial. It's too bad he had to end up somewhere like Russia but the world is still better off with him there and alive than being assassinated like MLK Jr. If anything there should be a Gofundme to get him pardoned since all it takes is cash.
He violated the trust of whom? The government who was violating the trust of the American People?
And as for Russia, he didn’t flee there by choice; he got stranded because the U.S. government revoked his passport mid-transit, He was there for a transit and hit final destination was Ecuador ...
2 replies →
lololol sure
more seriously, the difference is he's not doing protest via civil disobedience like MLK Jr, he's a whistleblower
working for an organization like the NSA, the only moral thing you can do is realize your error and bail tf out
You forget the security-state apparatus has secret courts and secret laws
It may not be a fair trial. He's always stated his willingness to undergo a fair one
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https://freedom.press/issues/fact-checking-hillary-clintons-... use reader view, https://archive.is/gamZ8 or whatever.
Also related because of Julian Assange: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/1842885/wikileaks-ci...
vs. (Yeah. Sure...): https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-julia...
Would you not also say that the US government violated a trust given to them at the time? The government has such an imbalance of power compared to one person that it's only fair to hold them to a higher and much more stringent standard. Except wait no, they're often held to a much lower standard compared to the average Joe.
Why not putting NSA officers to the jail first? Can't they "face a fair trial like a men" for illegal spying program?
>No, he violated a trust given to him
He had 2 conflicting trusts, one from the people and one from the government. He chose to honor the people over the government, which is why there's so many bots in this thread who seem very angry with him.
If you read his autobio he was raised with very conservative beliefs, the issue was unlike most conservatives he wasn't able to ignore those beliefs in the furtherance of the state.
>Instead, he's hiding out playing the victim in a country that's actively genociding Ukrainians to a degree beyond anything the Trump or Netanyahu administrations can be accused of.
He would come back if you guys let him. Its not like he has a long list of safe places to go.
>Even if you believe the law is unjust, MLK Jr still had the balls to go to jail for what he believed.
I vastly prefer my anti authoritarians out of jail living their best life with their ~300 kids somewhere in the south of australia.
He is a hero and a true patriot and an excellent litmus test to out people like you.
Quite rich. A moral character would have ignored the mass surveillance and escalated internally? This is plainly stupid and dangerously naive on many levels.
I hope he's still not deluding himself into thinking he did anything positive.
Account created 40 minutes ago, are you sure you are not an NSA employee?
That's rather harsh. Exposing illegal, objectively treasonous activities by the government is not exactly not something positive, regardless of whether the regime has only gotten worse and more totalitarian and tightened its noose even more around the neck of humanity.
By objective measures, having the courage he did to do what he did was courageous, albeit possibly foolish, since his understanding of the USA did not actually match the reality of what the USA long has been, because he has been drinking the Kool-Aid too.
Ironically, the system depended on and somewhat still depends on the very kind of belief in the system that Snowden had, even if he just believed it far more and actually took it serious.
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Why isn't Russia torturing him to get all the secrets out of him?
Because real life is not a Bond movie where the first thing that happens is a British actor with a bad Russian accent starts torturing you like in Goldfinger.
Plus, as the US has found out, torture has been proven a bad way to get the truth out of people, since under duress people will admit and say anything just to make the pain stop, even if they're innocent and have no valuable information.
John Kiriakou talked about just this on JRE. Everyone should watch it; be warned, you'll be absolutely furious by the end of it
It's doubtful Snowden was in possession of his NSA data dump at the time he arrived to Moscow, the things he had memorized would have been of very limited value.
If the Russian government was in possession of his data, I'd consider it fairly surprising that they seemingly never leaked any of the materials.
While it's not strictly impossible that Snowden through the Russian Government was the "second source", given that all the leaks from the second source came after Snowden had landed in Moscow, none of the "second source" files were included within the Snowden dump a bunch of journalists have access to. There are also various more specific reasons to belive that Snowden probably would not have had access to all the things originating from the second source, and even more so many of the things originating from TSB.
Same is true of Snowden possibly being TSB, whether or not "second source" and the TSB were the one and the same. It's just not really credible.
Here's a good starting point if you're not familiar with the second source https://www.electrospaces.net/2017/09/are-shadow-brokers-ide...
Because they already had everything he could provide and the embarrassment weights far more then some tiny details they could get by torturing him.
Because he is a russian asset and already delivered all the information.
He's much more useful being the ultimate tankie online
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There already did? And or little to get since he didn't memorize secrets and most--if not all--his digital copies were given to the press?
That sort of thing doesn't stay hidden these days. Especially someone like Snowden who has a hundred friends who are human rights lawyers.