
Marc Andreessen says Snowden is a traitor - sabelo
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101733893#_gus
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tptacek
I would not under almost any circumstances, including the revelation that he
was working directly with the FSB† when he decided what to leak, use the word
"traitor" to describe a national security leaker. In addition to being
inaccurate, the word sucks all the oxygen out of the room and makes it
impossible to have a dispassionate discussion about what happened.

But if you can get past Andreesen's unfortunate choice of framing, this story
is useful as an indicator of how captive we are to our filter bubbles. The
valence of Andreesen's feelings about Snowden isn't at all weird. Lots of
people share the perspective that Snowden is doing more harm than good, but
people on HN seem to have a hard time believing that.

† _Which I doubt; it 's too interesting, and the most boring narrative always
wins._

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2close4comfort
Well I guess he falls in the "I am complicit giving over your stuff to the
government" side of things. Good to know if you are a conscious consumer.

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gatehouse
I'm inherently suspicious of a one-word quote, but it seems to be essentially
what he said.

I don't think "everybody knew" that the NSA was moonlighting in the drug war:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-
intel...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-
laundering)

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wutbrodo
Leaving aside the meat of the article, I found this quote interesting:

""" Andreessen said he was not surprised that the National Security Agency was
spying. "The biggest surprise for me was that people were so shocked, because
I thought we've been funding this agency for 50 years that has tens of
thousands of employees and spends tens of billions of dollars a year." """

Does anyone else find this to be the case too? I feel like the actions of
taxpayer-funded agencies like the CIA/NSA have been despicable for decades,
and I'm puzzled as to why this is the first time that people seem to actually
care (which, don't get me wrong, is great). For those of us who gave a shit
before Snowden, I feel like there was a sense of being resigned to the fact
that most people (even in tech circles like HN) simply don't care; similar to
something like climate change. I know that these revelations are relatively
novel in that they involve surveillance of Americans' data as well as foreign
nationals, but that was the case for warrantless wiretapping in the 2000s.
That made news, but there DEFINITELY wasn't as much fuss made about it (to my
bafflement at the time).

~~~
jgon
This is now the bog standard reply of the closet fascists who support the NSA
and their rampant spying. They've had to switch to this response because their
previous response "You're just being paranoid", has been utterly blown apart
by the Snowden revelations and thank god for that.

Both replies avoid grappling in a substantive fashion with the question of
whether or not these activities are moral and something we should accept in
our society, but at least the second reply doesn't actively shut down the
conversation. Whereas before they could claim that we are being paranoid and
there would be no real comeback to that, and thus our points could be safely
dismissed, at least now one can reply "No we shouldn't be surprised, and now
let's discuss whether or not it is something that should continue."

I'll add finally, that yes apparently we should be surprised because the same
closet fascists now adopting this whole grizzled "wise to how the world works"
persona have previously spent the last few decades strongly claiming that the
NSA would never flagrantly violate the constitution in this manner, that they
were stalwart defenders of America and apple pie. You can see the same sort of
evolution with torture, where the people proclaiming that it is a "necessary"
action in today's ruthless dog-eat-dog world were the exact people talking
about how not torturing was what separated our good hearted security agents
from those savages employed by "evil empires" such as Russia or China.

At the end of day, I am heartened because now at least the cards are on the
table and these activities can't just be denied as the figments of paranoid
imaginations. The conversation is moving along a bit, however slowly.

~~~
wutbrodo
> This is now the bog standard reply of the closet fascists who support the
> NSA and their rampant spying.

Yea man, those "closet fascists and their support of the NSA" and their
statements in no uncertain terms that the NSA always been despicable. So let
me get this straight: between 1) people who have always been fine with the NSA
until a couple mos ago and 2) people who have always been disgusted by them
and see this as an (unsurprising) affirmation of that disgust: the LATTER are
closet fascists? You realize that even someone like rms fits directly into
your characterization of "closet fascist", right? That should help you
understand how stupid your conclusion is.

Your core issue is that you're conflating "hey man this has happened for ages
and it's just how the world works" with "this has happened for ages, where the
fuck have you been, people who are just deciding to get mad now that it's in
fashion?". The former is definitely a bog-standard apologist tactic (though
I'd argue that it's been around for a lot longer than just Snowden; it's
basically the neo-con anthem, and neocons aren't exactly in the "closet"), but
the latter couldn't be more different from apologia.

> I'll add finally, that yes apparently we should be surprised because the
> same closet fascists now adopting this whole grizzled "wise to how the world
> works" persona have previously spent the last few decades strongly claiming
> that the NSA would never flagrantly violate the constitution in this manner,
> that they were stalwart defenders of America and apple pie. You can see the
> same sort of evolution with torture, where the people proclaiming that it is
> a "necessary" action in today's ruthless dog-eat-dog world

Again, you're mixing up two different views. "People who actually paid
attention before it was fashionable" doesn't consist only of the people
defending this bullshit, it also consists of plenty of people that were
protesting it. I know it makes you feel better about ignoring this for so long
to pretend that the only people paying attention were apologists, but that's
just flat-out, 100% wrong.

~~~
jgon
For what it's worth I entirely agree with you about people who dislike this
and are also unsurprised by it. Andreesen makes it very clear he not the
latter.

He is claiming both that we should be unsurprised by it, and that because of
this lack of surprise it isn't a big deal that we should care about. I am
emphatically not coming down on people who are now, and have always been,
against this type of surveillance.

~~~
wutbrodo
My mistake, your comment sounded like a direct rebuttal to what I was
expressing, which was that it was unsurprising and still despicable, not
unsurprising and thus defensible. It also seemed like you were just assuming
that anyone unsurprised must be condoning it. That's my mistake, I misread the
subtext of your comment.

------
Fuzzwah
Currently active discussion going on in prior submission of same link:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852246)

~~~
dang
Thank you. Burying this one as dupe. ("Burying" means lowering in rank, but
not killing the item, so conversation can continue in the thread.)

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midhem
History is written by the victors. Traitors? heroes? It is just a point of
view, depending on who win at then end. We now know on which side Marc
Andressen is seated.

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jsmcgd
I don't understand Marc's position. He says that foreign governments knew
about the spying but that Edward Snowden is a traitor for telling them what
they already knew? So what damage is ES supposed to have done exactly? It is
public record that terrorist organizations knew about intelligence services
surveillance against them, which I suspect everyone on the planet would guess
would be happening. So how has ES acted against the interests of the American
people?

It was a shock to many people including myself that the intelligence community
would explicity violating the US constitution by conducting wholesale
surveillance against all American citizens. Marc would probably say either
that it wasn't a violation or that it isn't surprising. I don't think this is
a credible position given that the actions of the NSA and others were shocking
to the people that worked at these organizations. Unless Marc has a past I'm
unaware of, to say that is ridiculous.

I'm deeply disappointed :(

~~~
mikeyouse
Knowing that someone is spying on you is worth much less than knowing that
they use Camera Model XYZ, which transmits on XYZ frequency and the camera is
located at coordinates XX, YY.

~~~
jsmcgd
As far as I am aware no information has been revealed that is specific to a
national security target only information that targets millions of innocent
civilians. I would hope and expect that the intelligence community has much
more invasive and targeted tools they deploy against genuine national security
threats than what has been revealed so far.

Edit: To clarify, I'm sure Al-Qaeda already knew not to trust any computer, or
cell phone that they used because they were probably completely compromised.
So nothing that has been revealed by ES would change their behaviour.

Edit 2: Also, it doesn't matter. The most important thing for our civilization
is not personal or national security but our democracy. A 'security state' is
never democratic. Its people are never free.

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nabla9
I'm an European and treason and espionage are political crimes. If Snowden is
a traitor, then he spied on my behalf against U.S. government. For me and many
other citizens of so called free word he is a hero. He should get a medal.

In U.S. media the discussion centers around Americans being spied and if that
is illegal. As a non-American, I see U.S. UK and other mass surveillance
countries as constantly attacking me personally. As more and more people feel
the same way, it will eventually have real consequences to U.S. interests. It
might take generation or two, but it will happen.

First world countries are very interdependent and this kind of attacking harms
us all. Even in the cynical machtpolitik world view this can be seen as
shortsighted strategy.

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napoleoncomplex
Yes, let's worry about Silicon Valley's bottom line in all of this. Brave
warriors, always on the ropes.

It's always surprising when one discovers the Ellisons and the Andreessens of
the world. Luckily their type is a rare exception in the Valley though.

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higherpurpose
I started disliking this guy since he coerced Oculus Rift into a sale to
Facebook (and I'm assuming soon Imgur, too). He's probably too worried about
his investments and what the Snowden revelations impact will be on them, and
that's why he's calling him a traitor.

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kumar303
"The fallout from the Snowden leaks have hurt U.S. technology firms' ability
to sell their products overseas"

What an idiotic, capitalistic claim. So Andreeson calls him a traitor because
"business is now harder." Huh? Nevermind invasion of privacy and injustice.

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contingencies
Ooh! _Big capitalist profiting vastly from status quo throws in lot with
conservatism!_ News at 9.

Trusting any of these filthy rich buffoons, including governments, is
imbecilic. The only way to change the system is through decentralized, bottom-
up, participation-based (ie. opt-in) change.

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seanhandley
A "textbook traitor".... and which textbook would that be?

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aerolite
moron

