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Comment by sunaookami

23 days ago

>Has the technical and scientific community in the US already forgotten this huge breach of trust?

Have you ever seen the comment section of a Snowden thread here? A lot of users here call for Snowden to be jailed, call him a russian asset, play down the reports etc. These are either NSA sock puppet accounts or they won't bite the hand that feeds them (employees of companies willing to breach their users trust).

Edit: see my comment here in a snowden thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237098

22 comments

sunaookami

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jll29  22 days ago

What Snowden did was heroic. What was shameful was the world's underwhelming reaction. Where were all these images in the media of protest marches like against the Vietnam war?

Someone once said "Religion is opium for the people." - today, give people a mobile device and some doom-scrolling social media celebrity nonsense app, and they wouldn't noticed if their own children didn't come home from school.

  • vladms  22 days ago

    Looking back I think allowing more centralized control to various forms of media to private parties did much worse overall than government surveillance on the long run.

    For me the problem was not surveillance, the problem is addiction focused app building (+ the monopoly), and that never seem to be a secret. Only now there are some attempts to do something (like Australia and France banning children - which am not sure is feasible or efficient but at least is more than zero).

  • sunaookami  22 days ago

    Remember when people and tech companies protested against SOPA and PIPA? Remember the SOPA blackout day? Today even worse laws are passed with cheers from the HN crowd such as the OSA. Embarassing.

  • linkregister  22 days ago

    Protests in 2025 alone have outnumbered that of those during the Vietnam War.

    Protesting is a poor proxy for American political engagement.

    Child neglect and missing children rates are lower than they were 50 years ago.

TiredOfLife  23 days ago

Him being (or best case becoming) a russian asset turned out to be true

  • omnimus  23 days ago

    Like it would matter for any of the revelations. And like he would have other choices to not go to prison. Look at how it worked out for Assange.

    • jll29  22 days ago

      They both undertook something they believed in, and showed extreme courage.

      And they did manage to get the word out. They are both relatively free now, but it is true, they both paid a price.

      Idealism is that you follow your principles despite that price, not escaping/evading the consequences.

    • BlueTemplar  22 days ago

      Assange became a Russian asset *while* in a whistleblowing-related job.

      (And he is also the reason why Snowden ended up in Russia. Though it's possible that the flight plan they had was still the best one in that situation.)

      6 replies →

  • lionkor  22 days ago

    If the messenger has anything to do with Russia, even after the fact, we should dismiss the message and remember to never look up.

  • sunaookami  22 days ago

    In what way did it "turn out to be true"? Because he has russian citizenship and is living in a country that is not allied with his home country that is/was actively trying to kill him (and revoked his US passport)?