The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind?
Frankly, I don't think any of these questions matter, and the speculation without evidence is not useful. We should be discussing the leaks, not Snowden's motivation in leaking, his background, his girlfriend, how much he understands of what he leaked etc. The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government.
What's more, Snowden apparently thought the entire set of slides should be revealed to the world. I'd like to know what changed his mind.
Snowden gave the documents to journalists so that they could fact-check, start asking questions, and release what they thought was appropriate. According to Greenwald he specifically mentioned that he didn't want to dump all this data, and I can see good reasons why he wouldn't want to - there are probably things in the documents that would be very damaging (and not just to reputations) if released, some documents have been redacted before release, and they require explanation and context - none of that comes with a simple dump of the documents.
There are also sound tactical reasons for allowing the administration to tangle itself in its own lies, and to prevent the story simply being buried so I completely understand why they do this. Of course the newspapers and journalists involved have their own opinions, but trying to reduce those opinions to left wing or libertarian or whatever other labels you care to apply does nothing to elucidate how they have affected the presentation of the information. On the contrary, it just allows people to dismiss the information without bothering to address its implications. Greenwald for example has been labelled extreme left-wing, libertarian, extreme right-wing and everything in between, but I think he's really interested in privacy and surveillance, not joining the left-wing or right-wing club and hating the other side. The Guardian has not pursued an agenda here that I can discern aside from trying to sell more newspapers or get more hits - they've printed stories from all over the political spectrum, and they are not the only newspaper releasing stories - the most important recent leak of 4 slides was from the Washington Post, which is also in possession of this material, papers in Hong Kong and Germany have also been given some information. Snowden was also interviewed in Hong Kong by veteran diplomatic reporter Ewan MacAskill[1] who seemed impressed with his credentials and honesty so he's not completely opaque. I'd recommend any who haven't to watch this interview with the Guardian editors explaining the process in a bit more detail[2].
I find the disturbing allegations of unregulated, widespread, and deep surveillance used for economic and political ends far more important than Snowden's role in all of this, and I think he'd agree with that. While it's tempting to get obsessed with Snowden, his character, his job, why he leaked etc, and create grand conspiracy theories surrounding it, it's more healthy to discuss the facts we do know and their implications for how we use the internet. More information will come to light in time, and the information we do know raises serious questions about just how far state surveillance should be allowed to go.
You kinda sounds like you agree with Snowden's message, appreciate his risk, but then want him just left to hang out to dry? Surely this bloke deserves protection? If he is forgotten while people deal with the allegations, he'll rot.
I do agree that the issues are important, but the life of one human being, especially the one who made the debate possible, has to be as important. If publishing personal stuff protects, and at the moment it seems that keeping him in in the public eye is probably helping keep him alive, then so be it.
Also, freedom is partly about how we treat individuals in the extreme. The US reaction to this says a lot.
In the world as it exists today, whistleblowers against the US virtually forfeit their lives. He's a dead man walking, and by talking about him instead of the larger issues you give leverage to ignore the larger issues.
This is always the way it works - ad hominem, discredit the person, imprison/kill him as an example, roll cute summary stories in the press about what a deranged maniac he was, and the populace forgets all about the larger issues once the human interest drama is wrapped up.
So please, accept that he's thoroughly and truly fucked, and try to make the incredible orwellian surveillance state they've built the focus.
Aren't the people most able to keep that focus future leakers and whistleblowers like Snowden? Do you want to empower the message now playing out in front of our eyes that such people had better not even think about trying?
Nixon looks like a saint compared to people willing to shrug at the routine surveillance of everyone.
Remember that there hasn't been a president since well before Carter that went through office without personal blood on his hands - the ordering of covert missions with intent to kill has been endemic.
Could you provide me some evidence for the "personal blood" from these presidencies? It's not something I've learned about in school and would like to know more.
Remember Ellsberg got off because of evidence that the government was illegally wiretapping him. I don't believe that's a possibility in Snowden's case...
That's very much the wrong approach, IMO. Allowing just whistleblowers to be crucified kills the future of whistleblowing, which hurts us a lot more than struggling to address the snooping because we are focused on the whistleblower's well-being.
If you throw the messenger to the lions, you get this one message, but you won't be getting any more messages.
"He's a dead man walking" - surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot. The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.
> surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot.
I can't figure out how this would actually matter to Obama, more than a few speeches' worth. Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters, who won't be voting for him again anyway. The administration's main political foes seem to recognize that there's a big issue here (after all, slightly more than half of their constituents think that the NSA actions are "hurting Americans"[1]), but don't quite know how to capitalize on it, since they were all in favor of things like this before the story broke. The outrage within the US about this is spread so evenly across the usual parties that it's not clear that there will be any actual fallout for future elections.
> The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.
I would suppose that if they choose to kill him, they'll try pretty hard to do it in a way where it's not provable that the US killed him. Future-leaks-wise, though, it might seem beneficial for people to suspect that the US killed him, since presumably that would deter future leaks to some extent.
> Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters…
No, Obama's most fervent supporters want to hang Snowden for treason, and Greenwald along with him. They're quite happy to use the word "treason" for both of them.
Ever since the leak supporters of Obama on blogs and Twitter have been attacking Snowden and particularly Greenwald with ferocity. [1]
A derogatory term has recently been coined and is now being applied to anyone on the left who supports Snowden and Greenwald. This term, "emoprog," basically translates to "whiny progressive." The complaint is that emoprogs, instead of falling into line and unquestioningly supporting whatever Democrat is president, whine disloyally about principles said president is violating or not pursuing with enough vigor.
So no, Obama's most fervent supporters wish Snowden and the whole issue would just go away and find infuriating the disloyalty shown by Greenwald and his emoprog supporters.
You're both right, its just one of you is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters prior to the Snowden case, and one is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters in relation to the Snowden case. These are mostly not the same groups of people, and overlap only to the extent that both include the practically policy-blind cult of personality than any major politician (or celebrity more generally) will end up attracting, but this is a fairly small slice of either group of "fervent supporters".
I wasn't being dismissive of the number of people who care about this issue at least somewhat, or enough to say angry things and click on an internet petition. I was, as an aside, being dismissive of the number of (US-type) libertarians there are. Of the people signing the petition, there are people who think that their team is for a pardon, and people who actually hold an opinion personally and are for a pardon. The former group might well have a different opinion next week if they believe their team does. The latter group are mostly those who were hard-core Obama supporters, whether or not they still are. The largest remaining block of people in the latter group are libertarians, but there are probably few of them. I would guess that right-leaning people who are outraged about the NSA activities would nevertheless feel uncomfortable calling for a pardon for Snowden.
The number of "US type libertarians there are" is presumably a super-set of the number of people registered members of the US Libertarian party, which (according to wikipedia) seems to be about 330 thousand.
Oh I don't think they'd overtly kill him. Torture, imprison, exile, leave him marooned, break him economically, sure, any of those things, and I'm sure they have black bag people to 'accidentally' take care of him if needed.
At this point you have to remember that there are only two criteria: A) He can't ever be allowed to look like he 'won', like Ellsberg did and B) it has to be public, so that anyone else considering an ethical stand will know that their life is irrevocably ruined if they do.
A careful comparison of the two groups doesn't find much to distinguish them, in terms of what they actually do. The mafia kills people; the government kills people. The mafia regulates commerce; the government regulates commerce. The mafia provides services; the government provides services. The government limits some of the mafia's more outrageous behavior; the mafia limits some of the government's more outrageous behavior. (E.g. tariffs, taxes, and regulations on particular goods may only be effectively increased up to the point at which organized crime is providing the bulk of those goods.) The only differences are those of degree.
I'm not saying this as a criticism of either group.
"The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia."
Not if they got the mafia to do it. Could the CIA covertly pay the Russian mafia to kill Snowden at the airport? Probably, though the real question is what the US government would gain from that. What would be the point in killing him now?
Consider this: the whole point of his huge sacrifice was to get people to talk about the information he revealed. If we expend too much of our energy talking about him and the way he got the information to us, rather than the information itself, then doesn't that just make his sacrifice kind of a waste? People don't have infinite attention and energy for these discussions.
I certainly don't want him to be left isolated, but I disagree that speculating about him or his motives keeps him safe.
I think it becomes far easier to demonise him, spread confusion about his motives, and engage in baseless smears of his character or competence, if we allow speculative articles like this one to direct the debate.
"The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government."
I agree with the second part, but the motivation of a source can be important to those aims. When we're dealing with an incomplete picture, sometimes a carefully filtered one can be more misleading than a randomly populated one even if the former has fewer dots. Understanding why those dots appear lets us correct somewhat for agenda (but of course, we have to be careful not to be correcting for the wrong agenda or things may only get more distorted...).
What is interesting about the article, in its barely-informed conjecture, is the "revelation" that NSA employs people who focus on attacking infrastructure, and that Mr. Snowden may have been one of these people. Instead of destroying his credibility, identifying his role as more active than "a sysadmin" would add credence.
Right now (it's even the top comment on the article) the focus is on his being a "high school dropout with no degrees or credentials," which has been established to be incorrect. "Hacker who was housebound with mono for a year and worked for the NSA as a cyber-sniper-scout," is more difficult to dismiss.
(Off topic: your first link wants me to see,"emacscankill," to which I wish to say: yes, but there's no default keybinding.)
Frankly, I don't think any of these questions matter, and the speculation without evidence is not useful. We should be discussing the leaks, not Snowden's motivation in leaking, his background, his girlfriend, how much he understands of what he leaked etc. The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government.
What's more, Snowden apparently thought the entire set of slides should be revealed to the world. I'd like to know what changed his mind.
Snowden gave the documents to journalists so that they could fact-check, start asking questions, and release what they thought was appropriate. According to Greenwald he specifically mentioned that he didn't want to dump all this data, and I can see good reasons why he wouldn't want to - there are probably things in the documents that would be very damaging (and not just to reputations) if released, some documents have been redacted before release, and they require explanation and context - none of that comes with a simple dump of the documents.
There are also sound tactical reasons for allowing the administration to tangle itself in its own lies, and to prevent the story simply being buried so I completely understand why they do this. Of course the newspapers and journalists involved have their own opinions, but trying to reduce those opinions to left wing or libertarian or whatever other labels you care to apply does nothing to elucidate how they have affected the presentation of the information. On the contrary, it just allows people to dismiss the information without bothering to address its implications. Greenwald for example has been labelled extreme left-wing, libertarian, extreme right-wing and everything in between, but I think he's really interested in privacy and surveillance, not joining the left-wing or right-wing club and hating the other side. The Guardian has not pursued an agenda here that I can discern aside from trying to sell more newspapers or get more hits - they've printed stories from all over the political spectrum, and they are not the only newspaper releasing stories - the most important recent leak of 4 slides was from the Washington Post, which is also in possession of this material, papers in Hong Kong and Germany have also been given some information. Snowden was also interviewed in Hong Kong by veteran diplomatic reporter Ewan MacAskill[1] who seemed impressed with his credentials and honesty so he's not completely opaque. I'd recommend any who haven't to watch this interview with the Guardian editors explaining the process in a bit more detail[2].
I find the disturbing allegations of unregulated, widespread, and deep surveillance used for economic and political ends far more important than Snowden's role in all of this, and I think he'd agree with that. While it's tempting to get obsessed with Snowden, his character, his job, why he leaked etc, and create grand conspiracy theories surrounding it, it's more healthy to discuss the facts we do know and their implications for how we use the internet. More information will come to light in time, and the information we do know raises serious questions about just how far state surveillance should be allowed to go.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz...