Comment by ok123456

4 days ago

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 ...

    • What you said takes 5 minutes to research, too. But the party line by idiots and currently in-the-CIA people like approved mouthpiece Bustamante say "Well, he fled to Russia"

    • He fled to China by choice and gave them plenty of documents about Chinese targets, some of which are in the article we are discussing.

      The government wasn't violating the trust of the American people. If you ask about the single illegal domestic data collection program in the leak (phone metadata collection) and how it was used (to find associates of surveilled foreign agents working against the national security of the U.S.), you will find that most people don't care.

  • 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

  • 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?

  • Quite rich. A moral character would have ignored the mass surveillance and escalated internally? This is plainly stupid and dangerously naive on many levels.

  • >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.

I hope he's still not deluding himself into thinking he did anything positive.

  • 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.

    • He sought revenge after not getting a desired job promotion. There was nothing noble about his intentions, just narcissistic fury with what he, in his narrow world view, saw as unfairness towards himself.

      I find it amazing how many people have been taken in by the bullshit narrative he concocted about human rights and privacy. So gullible.

      He helped our adversaries on an immense scale, and even went to live under the protection of one of them. Some patriot he is, gladly embracing the Russian regime.

      4 replies →