
Ask HN: Why has nobody else 'defected' from NSA/GCHQ since the Snowden incident? - Theodores
I am not looking to start a rambling thread here, however, we like to believe that conspiracies don&#x27;t exist because surely someone would speak out.<p>Yet, within the fun world of NSA&#x2F;GCHQ, nobody has came forward since Snowden to tell the world what it is that the spies are really up to or even how the Snowden stories affected morale in Peeping-Tom-Land.<p>Clearly there are penalties for speaking out, i.e. jail terms, however Snowden also showed how it is done. Why haven&#x27;t any other NSA&#x2F;GCHQ persons booked themselves a &#x27;holiday&#x27; in some place like Bolivia&#x2F;China&#x2F;Russia?<p>This is a genuine question.<p>-EDIT-<p>Compare the situation with the sex abuse scandal that has gone on at the BBC. (Where, for many decades, many of the BBC&#x27;s top presenters&#x2F;DJs were able to rape&#x2F;abuse children&#x2F;young adults on BBC premises &#x27;safe&#x27; in the knowledge that they would never get caught.)<p>Nothing is said until a year after the BBC&#x27;s most voracious paedophile dies, then the whistle gets blown. Thereafter, all of a sudden hundreds of people that never had the courage beforehand come forward. Previously they did not think they would be believed, now they know they will, so, for them it is desirable to speak up even though they are still taking on powerful people.<p>A similar thing of &#x27;disbelief&#x27; has gone on with spying. Before Snowden nobody would have believed that the government taps everything, now we know. So claims that might once have sounded ludicrous could now be taken seriously. You would think others would be incentivised to speak up, surely?
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Phlarp
Consider the possibility that others have come forward and leaked documents,
which have then gone on to be published (perhaps even by Greenwald et al) with
sources listed as "NSA documents obtained by $publication". Everyone would
assume they came from Snowden without much question giving excellent cover for
other leakers who want these things to be known but aren't willing to give up
drastically above average salaries in tropical locations to do so.

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ksherlock
Snowden wasn't the first NSA whistleblower. Wikipedia lists 4 other NSA
employee whistleblowers. And every one of them was investigated by the FBI,
subject to armed raids, or otherwise persecuted. Surely NSA employees know
what they're dealing with better than we do (and I don't mean that in a good
way).

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Uhhrrr
Greenwald et al haven't finished their run yet, and have done a good job of
keeping the story in the news. A second leaker probably wouldn't change the
trajectory of the story right now. They may want to stay and see if things
change. If real reforms happen, there's plenty of fun stuff to work on at NSA.
If some programs are continued despite those reforms, then it's time to blow
the whistle.

And if only bogus reforms happen, then they would be in a good position to
leak Feinstein's phone calls from last week.

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phaus
Its not the same thing at all. The people coming forward about a sex offender
have absolutely nothing to fear; they weren't the ones that broke the law.

On the other hand, revealing classified information will send you to prison
for decades. Depending on what you do for a living, it could even result in
the death penalty. Best case scenario, you will spend the rest of your life
living in a country with a government worse than your own, wondering when a
member of the intelligence community is going to murder you.

The comparison really doesn't hold up.

Also, think of how badly this has damaged not only the U.S. government, but
also the private sector. No company in its right mind, foreign or domestic,
still wants their data to traverse networks from the United States. They might
not be able to avoid it, but that's besides the point. By the time all is said
and done, tens of billions, if not trillions of dollars in damages will have
been done to the U.S. economy. The NSA's shenanigans have been the most
detrimental thing to happen to the United States in at least a decade.
Unfortunately, the government doesn't blame themselves, they blame Edward
Snowden. And so you can be sure that billions of dollars and tens of thousands
of man-hours are being dedicated to the task of closing any holes that allowed
Snowden to leave the country with large amounts of classified information.

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atmosx
Pedophilia is a taboo in the entire western world. Especially, homosexual
pedophilia is something that you _never_ get away with. When you can't win an
argument against bitcoin or TOR for example, all you have to do is drop the
sentence 'pedophiles use it to [...]' and you're able to see even the most
liberal people taking a step back.

That's to say that pedophilia is something unacceptable by 99,9999% of UK's
(and probably large part of the world's) population.

What Snowden did, was eventually hailed by some newspapers, but not without
very cautious words. No one in the 'establishment' called him a _Hero_. Keith
Alexander is still there IIRC the Obama administration didn't accept any sort
of discussion about bringing him back without penalties, etc. Most
importantly, the political hypocrisy is backed by the sentiment of _betrayal_
which is strong even among the US population. Even in this thread you can see
people arguing that _it was planned_ \- which IMHO is stupid and doesn't make
sense but anyway - or it was a mistaken move, etc.

So while the one situation finds all parts aligned the other, even after the
revelations came true and minor actions where taken in the right direction,
doesn't. And if the IT community understands the repercussions of his actions,
so much that you compared the two situations, most people don't know enough to
understand and care about what's going on and how important online privacy
will be in the future. But give them a pedophile and people will burn him
alive (maybe, just maybe... rightly so).

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mindstab
cus he still can't go home, or see his family, friends or anyone, and is in a
precarious position with another super power and occasionally has to pawn
along basically for his survival now. I doubt too many other people want to
sacrifice their entire lives. He has shown us how it's down, and the price and
I don't think anyone else wants to pay (and that's if they are lucky, there is
still large risk it could go much worse)

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turbojerry
"To Arendt’s mind, Eichmann willingly did his part to organize the Holocaust —
and an instrumental part it was — out of neither anti-semitism nor pure
malice, but out of a non-ideological, entirely more prosaic combination of
careerism and obedience."

[http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/hannah_arendts_original_a...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/hannah_arendts_original_articles_on_the_banality_of_evil_in_the_inew_yorkeri_archive.html)

And the original book,"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil" in PDF -

[http://platypus1917.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_ei...](http://platypus1917.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/arendt_eichmanninjerusalem.pdf)

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forgottenpass
You're taught that ethics mortality legality are someone else's job to worry
about.

People tend to adapt their personal set of ethics to suit the things that pay
them. See almost every website that runs advertizements, and/or sells user's
data.

Plus all the legal and financial risk.

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benologist
It's an interesting question. I think most people wouldn't have the
combination of courage, access to sensitive info, and be able to uproot their
life potentially forever.

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us0r
I kind of hope they wait until we get proper "reform" which is treated like a
piece of toilet paper at the agency and they continue business as usual.

------
staunch
Snowden himself might not have left the NSA if someone like himself had blown
the whistle as effectively.

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massappeal
you should check out Frontline's The United States of Secrets
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-
sec...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/)

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superflit
Who says snowden has "defected"?

Maybe it was on purpose..

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nza88
because they like their jobs? because they're afraid of retribution?

