
U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal - nabla9
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying/u-s-court-mass-surveillance-program-exposed-by-snowden-was-illegal-idUSKBN25T3CK
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merricksb
Huge discussion still active on the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24356741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24356741)

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chrisbennet
I doubt Snowden was ignorant about what happened to those who "followed the
rules". Their lives were ruined and nothing changed.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-
pentagon...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon..).

 _" None of the lawful whistleblowers who tried to expose the government’s
warrantless surveillance – and Drake was far from the only one who tried – had
any success,” Devine told me. “They came forward and made their charges, but
the government just said, ‘They’re lying, they’re paranoid, we’re not doing
those things.’ And the whistleblowers couldn’t prove their case because the
government had classified all the evidence. Whereas Snowden took the evidence
with him, so when the government issued its usual denials, he could produce
document after document showing that they were lying. That is civil
disobedience whistleblowing.”_

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naringas
how's is Snowden any different?

he had to go live in exile and nothing changed

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agumonkey
The point was about the trust in government's response. The other one tried to
play nice. At least Snowden didn't let the system crush him for free.

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parsimo2010
Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should
pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some
things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status.

1\. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal.
Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA
he signed when he was given a security clearance.

2\. Even if all the information he disclosed revealed illegal activity,
Snowden's actions make him ineligible for whistleblower protection.
Whistleblower protection for the intelligence community[1] is only provided if
a person follows the proper procedure to securely notify their Inspector
General and/or Congress. Since he's not automatically protected, it would take
Congress or the President to decide to offer him protection. Snowden
(allegedly) did not even attempt to notify the proper authorities before going
public with the information, so not only is he ineligible, it's not likely
that anyone will take pity on him.

3\. There's a chance that this ruling won't stick as the legal system chugs
along and a few more judges look at it, and even if they were willing to help
Snowden, nobody in Congress is going to take action until there is some
permanence with the ruling. IANAL, but I think this would be decided if the
Supreme Court either decides to decline or hear the case. If it's declined,
then it's pretty much final. If they decide to hear the case, then it could be
another year or so before they make a decision.

[1] IC whistleblower protection is a little different than standard
whistleblower protection:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Community_Whistle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Community_Whistleblower_Protection_Act)

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AnthonyMouse
What you're saying is that the existing whistleblower protections are
inadequate:

> 1\. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was
> illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation
> of the NDA he signed when he was given a security clearance.

Requirement of perfection and a superhuman level of ability to sift through
more information than any individual could before sharing it with anyone who
could help with doing so.

> Whistleblower protection for the intelligence community[1] is only provided
> if a person follows the proper procedure to securely notify their Inspector
> General and/or Congress.

Requirement to do something that can get you put on a list, and thereby either
lose access to the information or get put under surveillance so that you can
no longer release the information if the official channels are fruitless.

Moreover, "official channels" even when they work don't disclose the existence
of the program to the public, which is a necessary public good, because
otherwise even if that gets it shut down, the structures and incentives that
led to its creation aren't addressed and it just happens again until they get
it running with a group of people not willing to risk their own careers to
report it up the chain.

> There's a chance that this ruling won't stick as the legal system chugs
> along and a few more judges look at it

So a whistleblower has to spend how many years in exile before they get their
vindication?

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arghwhat
Whistleblower protection are bit tricky to define.

When is something whistleblowing, when is it a leak, when is it malicious, and
when is it espionage? It's easy to allow leaks about illegal acts, but if you
start allowing leaks about secret but _legal_ acts too, then things get
blurry.

I personally don't think a government, ultimately a servant of the people,
should be allowed to keep secrets from the people, but that's currently legal
for e.g. military reasons, and thus needs to be considered.

Imagine for a second a parallel universe where the government _wasn 't_ evil,
and while some of the released documents was showing illegal activity, others
did not and in fact contained secret information about national security
matters where releasing the information undermines the work (e.g.
Russia/China/... monitoring, intercept measures, etc.).

> So a whistleblower has to spend how many years in exile before they get
> their vindication?

The legal system would be fundamentally broken if you could evade judgement by
going into hiding, regardless of reason.

Snowden should have been pardoned a long time ago, but his time in hiding is
and should be inconsequential from a legal standpoint until laws are changed
and pardons are made. It's up to the citizens of the U.S. to fix their country
and welcome him home.

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Fnoord
The problem is that if you inform your citizens, you also inform your enemy
(who can read your language, are among the citizens). With the globalization
due to electronics and the Internet, this is even more true, compared to
medieval times or Cold War times (where this was also true, but there was
arguably higher latency on information, and a higher language barrier as
well).

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arghwhat
> The problem is that if you inform your citizens, you also inform your enemy

Indeed, but the enemy usually has the intelligence services to know it
_anyway_ , leaving your citizens uninformed as the only real side-effect.

I don't think secrecy is important in national security anymore. On the other
hand, the secrecy is used for evil, such as keeping citizens in the dark
around government plans to control popular opinion in their favor, falsely
positioning themselves as the people's superiors.

~~~
Fnoord
> but the enemy usually has the intelligence services to know it anyway

Depends per subject and intelligence service and enemy (there is more than
one).

> I don't think secrecy is important in national security anymore.

Why?

Think of it this way. I'm Dutch. Our secret services hacked into the GRU's
camera system. This allowed attribution. Our secret services also did the
physical last mile infiltration of Stuxnet.

Did I, as random Dutch citizen have to know this? No. As the enemy does not
know it, and will know it when the Dutch population knows. These are two
examples where a need to know basis makes sense, and is very limited.

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AnthonyMouse
There is a difference between operational secrets and methodological secrets.
If you're about to stage an operation against the enemy, do you publish the
fact that you're coming? No. But then when the operation is over, there is
nothing more to keep secret, and the public can find out what has been done on
a timescale that allows them to reasonably cause bad actors to be punished or
prevent it from happening over and over.

By contrast, with something like a secret mass surveillance program, there is
no "end" where you keep something a secret for 18 months but then everybody
finds out about it through official channels, so things like that don't get to
be a secret. One way or another the public needs to timely find out what's
being done in their name.

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harry8
Crimes are no issue for the persecution of Snowden.

Clapper lied, on camera, under oath, admitted it and has had zero
consequences. Kept his job. Has not had to defend a prosecution. Now he's
using is former position and influence to get rich. It's lawbreaking from the
top. Nothing to discuss about it.

Sadly the rule of law and equality before it is a thing that needs to be re-
established.

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rvz
Time to give a massive apology and a full pardon to Mr Snowden then.

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sneak
Having read Barton Gellman’s book that describes and alludes to some of the
details of what were in the actual (never published) Snowden files, I do not
believe that the US IC would let him continue to live, even if he were fully
pardoned.

I doubt it will ever be safe for him in the US again, despite his legal
status.

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Schiendelman
Sounds like fascism.

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natcombs
No, it sounds like a rogue IC agency. The textbook definition of fascism
doesn’t apply here. This word keeps appearing on HN without any reasoning

~~~
metiscus
In the modern zeitgeist anything authoritarian or that can be interpreted from
the center-left to be slightly right of center is being called fascism as
shorthand for "bad policy I disagree with". The conflation of authoritarianism
vs policy difference is where some danger lies.

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osmarks
I'm sure they'll stop all their illegal surveillance any day now.

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uCantCauseUCant
Illegal Memory access at 0xDEADBEEF

Watching_the_watchmen_recursive has detected a stackoverflow and was aborted.

A core dump has been created and can be viewed at constituion.hex.

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captn3m0
So does the data get deleted?

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sneak
[http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com/](http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com/)

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LockAndLol
So, are the espionage charges against Snowden going to be dropped? Otherwise
they want to convict a man of exposing illegal activity, which doesn't make a
lot of sense.

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elmo2you
Don't be daft. They'll argue that in the exceptional case of state security,
exposing any kind of secretive information (illegal or otherwise) is still a
crime. They'll just argue that only "normal citizens" shouldn't be barred from
reporting criminal activities.

Of course it is bullshit .. but since when did that stop them? Exceptionalism
has been the key word, used almost every time the government violated a laws
or moral boundary (both domestically and abroad).

Why would anyone expect sense, from a government that will never receive
actual jail time from any national court, in a country were potential
punishment appears to be the main motivator for powerful people to not do
everything illegal?

Why on earth would anyone still expect any sense, after the USA went as far as
creating laws to justify military invasion of a foreign country, if an
international tribunal would ever charge them with violating international
law?

Why are so many American citizens still so naive about the real nature of
their own government. Always thinking it's the other party that's the bad guys
.. never wanting to accept that the party really doesn't matter (just ask any
foreign country that received an unhealthy dose of "freedom and democracy").

~~~
havetocharge
US government is complicated. There ARE many good parts to it, and many good
elected and unelected people who genuinely serve their people. There is also a
big dark part to it as well. Issues with police that are being exposed
recently and widely is one example. There is corruption. And there are
extremely secretive and dark aspects as well, but the average person isn't
aware of them, and would have a hard time reconciling them with the genuine
good that I mentioned previously. Things are not black and white, and that's
my opinion, a non-American who lives in the US.

~~~
elmo2you
I get what you are trying to say, but I don't think that's ever a valid
argument. Illegal actions are just that: illegal, no matter who commits them.
I don't see why a "good" person should get away with it.

To drive that point even a little further, the mafia (the actual one, in
Italy) also had done many good things, helping many local people out, often
when it was the government that totally failed those people. But none of that
made it any less of a ruthless criminal organization.

Should any of the US government's good deeds (if any, because I have never
seen the USA do anything abroad that wasn't first and foremost good for them,
only in second place for the local population) ever excuse any of their
criminal activities?

I don't see what is complicated here. To me, the answer is just as clear as
with the Italian mafia (during its heydays): no! Crimes are crimes, no matter
who commits them.

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defnotashton2
All of this legal infighting is our tax payer dollars fighting tax payer
dollars to stop the spending of tax payer dollars on the spying of the tax
payers..

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nabla9
I think it's time to get into discussing how Snowden should be judged or
pardoned.

(1) There is no question that he broke the law, he is not denying it.

(2) There is very strong evidence and argument to be made that legal routes
were blocked and/or broken and the only way forward was to go public outside
the US.

Snowden paid attention to what happened to three earlier attempts to report
illeagal activity using leagal means in the NSA global surveillance
program–Roark, Binney, Wiebe, Drake and Loomis–for example.

They complained to their superiors, to the NSA general counsel, to the Defense
Department Inspector General Office, and to both the Senate and the House
intelligence committees. The DoD Inspector General Office violated
confidentiality agreement and gave their names to the FBI and falsely accused
them of leaking. FBI raided their houses and started to investigate them
instead.

Pardon exists just for cases like this. Breaking the law for common good can
be morally justified, even heroic.

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softwaredoug
This will certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. I’d be surprised if the
to uphold this ruling.

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prtkgpt
Of course, it was. Snowden has been saying it for years now. May be Prezi DJT
will pardon him.

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oxymoran
Ok but what is going to change? Is anybody going to be held accountable? Is
Snowden going to be pardoned? If the answer is no to any/all of this, then
this is just window dressing.

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ashjsf
Obama-Biden administration was wrong on this issue.

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rbreve
Will Trump pardon Snowden? that will be interesting.

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hablameiato
Trump's base is very pro-military and a lot of them believe that Snowden put
military lives at risk (and also confuse him with Chelsea Manning / Julian
Assange). So I don't see how that could ever happen.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
That might prevent it from happening before the election, but win or lose he's
still President between November and January and win or lose this is his last
election.

