I'm a leftist, not a libertarian, but I always feel compelled to bring up a specific point in Snowden's defense when he is mentioned to divisive opinions:
He did speak up correctly, using the correct channels, and the proper channels told him to shut the fuck up.
Then he again did what he did the rightest way he could, by giving the data to one of the oldest members of the fourth estate, the press, to decide proper course, ONLY AFTER the primary state failed him spectacularly.
Do you know why he had to out himself? Why didn't he give stuff to the papers and stay hidden?
This work survey is anonymous and won't be associated with any identifying information. Feel free to voice your authentic opinions.
Proceeds to login via OKTA to access survey.
"I don't feel strongly about anything" if it's required, deleted email if it's not
At work, you keep your opinions to yourself.
It doesn't matter if you are asked for your opinion by your boss, in an "anonymous" survey, or by a co-worker at a seemingly innocuous kids birthday party. There are no friends in business. Stick to business. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
I'm not a very political person. I don't have strong feelings about it sir. Taking care of business is my priority.
Stay safe out there folks.
Lol that happened when I worked at Chase many years ago... I didn't fall for it, but several of my colleagues did... As I recall, there were some legal issues that came out of it...
He revealed massive warrantless domestic surveillance. The 1700s equivalent would be if the post office made copies of every single letter everyone sent and then promised not to read them unless the sender or recipient was one day subject to a valid warrant. Whoever revealed this info would've been a hero and a patriot back then, and it should be the same today.
Snowden leaked his info about these programs more than a decade ago. If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they're doing now.
Watching us via the front camera while we poop?
If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.
It's publicly available information that almost all social media companies have all of your private posts and the ability to release them to anyone they desire. People just don't care.
I mean if they could have feasibly done that in 1700 they 100% would have and probably not even hid it in the courts like today
Read the Cuckoo's Egg from 1989. NSA were at the very least tapping all international calls in the 1980s.
The people that cared knew about this for a long time.
All Snowden did was give up sensitive intel to foreign adversaries and got NSA capabilities that anyone that cared already knew about talked about more in the media.
And nothing has really changed. There's no international law against this so there's nothing preventing Russia and China from looking at your data. There's also nothing prevent five eyes countries from spying on each other's citizens and sharing it back with the country whose citizens they spied on. Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other's citizens?
If that is what the three-letter agencies and big tech were capable of doing in secret then, just imagine the shady shit they’re doing now.
They would have all data that any company has about you that has been sold to a marketing company. It's trivial to create a shell company posing as a ad agency and legally buy all that data. And given the enshittification of everything there is data on basically everything you do. You buy groceries with a loyalty card? It's on an NSA database being analyzed by an AI for suspicious activity. You didn't read the fine print when you got that loyalty card that said they would share the data to third parties? It means the data will be shared to anyone that's willing to pay them for it, and that includes the NSA. Why do you think they were giving you that discount? Because they're nice? Nope, it's because they can sell your data.
This is happening because it's the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you've agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.
So now you understand that the NSA is likely doing these things because they can, do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?
Do you feel better that the NSA is spying on Canadians while Canadians spy on US citizens and the two countries exchange what they have on each other’s citizens?
but then,
do we need another traitor to hand over classified data to foreign adversaries to make you aware of it?
Government doing it in secret vs a citizen exposing it? I'm going to back my fellow citizen in this one.
This is happening because it’s the job of the NSA to gather data for intelligence purposes. They will sponge up any data they can legally obtain. And if you agree to data being shared with third parties, you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is.
That's some serious bootlicking there, you think they're only collecting "legally" obtained information? Let's also gloss over the anti-consumer practices that companies employ to obtain that sweet third party data on you.
"you’ve agreed that the data can be shared with the NSA. So it is." - JFC you have some weird logic going on in your head. Let's just forget what's required in today's society, the data that has to be shared to perform basic functions like employment now adays. The average citizen is not a privacy expert and no one is educated in K-12 to be consensual informed.
I just spent the entire time reading this just aghast at the audacity for you to voice an opinion like this in 2024, with rising fascism throughout the world.
How deeply under a rock must your mole-hill have been built, how jingoistic and nationalistic must one become to have such... such a collosally naive take? I am so angry with you right now.
I don't think it was feasible at the time (2013) for the average American to know and understand the concept that their government was capturing essentially all mobile cellular and internet communications for storage and analysis in giant fusion centers.
The real tragedy is that many people now know and still don't care, or have given into this bizarre cynical defeatism that we might as well just accept it. Hard disagree on those points.
Any US intelligence agency or military unit operating on US soil against US citizens is supposed to be illegal.
That is law enforcement's territory.
yup
He would have been a hero if he had just stayed in place or gone directly to a non-extradition country without a ton of secrets. Instead this dumbass ends up in China with several laptops and hard drives.
You never watched the interview, did you?
I still remember when everything came out and so much FUD was out there calling him a traitor.
I think to this day a large chunk of folks have no idea the breadth of what he told us and what he gave up to do so.
I couldn't do it, i don't think
I remember a lot of it was weird. It's was like he "only" had a high school diploma and his ex-girlfriend was a model. Like the most pointless crap you've heard of. He's a patriot, he saw a lot of bad crap going on. He tried to report it and then he gave up his freedom to let us know. I'm not sure I could do it either.
I still don't understand why he had to leave the country and can never come back,
and where is he anyway? Who is taking care of him? How does he earn money to survive? What is he doing?
Yeah that'll happen when you go on the run to China and Russia with classified laptops full of shit you downloaded from the top secret Internet.
Had he stayed or simply gone to a non extradition country without the laptops he would be a hero. Hell he'd have been out of prison by now. The longest sentence anyone's ever gotten for whistle blowing in the modern era is 5 years.
Listen. How the fuck it it possible that people understand:
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propaganda exists, and
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that it is in a government's interest to keep an unpopular project secret from its citizens
and not even think to question the narrative that comes out of the media?
Do you mean to tell me you uncritically believe the notion that there is some way Snowden could have exposed government secrets and the government would be like: "whoa kay, ya got me, its true, and go ahead and listen to what he has to say?"
or do you suppose that maybe the government would still put a bit of FUD out to minimize the damage, keep its citizenry from wanting to look too deeply? I mean, wouldn't that just be a smart decision? We aren't talking about bastions of transparency right? we're talking about the same govt that just got caught wiretapping its citizens.
Rant over, lemme boil down what i'm looking for here:
Which of the many negative things that came out about Snowden do you believe was the truth vs FUD?
What are your feelings on how the media focused on Snowden himself rather than the content of the leaks?
Who do you suppose benefitted from that choice in focus?
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Instead of arguing about the guy why don't people simply focus on what he leaked?
his persecution is the distraction from the crimes he exposed.
They tell us he endangered our operatives, yet not one example has surfaced in over a decade. You know they would be shouting that shit from every rooftop if it happened.
This is how the USA treats heroes. We persecute them for exposing our evil.
It's a contious effort to distract from the leaks. Same tactic was used for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.
This guy is the definition of a modern day hero. If you haven't read his book "permenant record", get on it
Everything he says is a rambling monotonous bag of nothing. I, for one, could not bear to read any book he wrote.
I mean he literally just doc dropped a crap ton of classified files that he didn't even need to explain lol. You could always go read those and learn how much the NSA spies on the american public.
Don't knock it till you try it. One of the few books I would give a 10/10
I have nothing but respect for Edward Snowden.
IDK what this has to do with Libertarianism, but I agree with the meme
Free speech isn't exclusive to libertarianism but it is truly a core value of that philosophy
"No, we mean stuff about the bad guys. Not us."
#FreeSnowden
“Not like that…”
For EU citizens: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32019L1937
The states shall provide a secure and anonymous channel to enabling safe whistleblowing. A software for this is globaleaks.org
A state should provide a channel to anonymously blow the whistle. Then, this information is forwarded to the correct authorities.
This sounds awesome, but what authorities exactly are the correct ones? What happens when I want to report THE authorities?
Actually, there are multiple instances one can use to whitleblow. Any company above 50 employees should host such an instance as well. Therefore you can chose where to whistleblow.
After whistleblowing you get an acknowledgement within seven days. After three months they have to report back what actions have been started about the topic.
The instances of the state have to additionally share all recieved tips to the public annually. There is another instance for the EU hosted.
The exact national law may differ within EU countries. And I am not a law expert as well.
Anyhow you therefore have a channel to report any authority.
No not like that
Luckily he was able to escape Russia safely. If he stayed in the US he would've been tortured just like Chelsea Manning and Assange.
Did Manning allege torture?
The US hasn't had Assange to be able to torture him and I'm not aware of any allegations of Manning being tortured.
A group of ex Intelligence community and State Department people destroyed my life when i refused to facilitate their ability to do war crimes.
Druged, kidnapped, raped, tortured, electrocuted, etc.
The USA has become a nation built with lies, oppression, and extra judicial deadly force.
ITT: Trump-deranged boot lickers. Anyone can be made to lick the boot, it’s all about circumstances.
Let's be honest here - Snowden helped build the surveillance state under Bush, and only developed a conscience when the wrong guy got elected.
To be fair there could be a variety of reasons why it took him some time to speak up.
- fear of what would happen to him
- being too naive to realize what he was doing
- ...
I don't think we should discount the fear here. Unless Snowden had a fortune tucked away somewhere, blowing the whistle was a sure fire way to blow up your career and make yourself homeless.
I'm also sure he didn't just walk into the bureau and get handed everything on day 1.
I'm also sure it took some time to exfil the data. Most companies have policies that can make it difficult to legitimately walk off premise with information, I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be to do that with anything government related, nevermind federal, nevermind something considered to be secret by the country...
Simply put, there's a lot of hurdles to get over, and doing so carefully enough to not get caught until you have what you want to blow the whistle on, may take a very very long time.
Not a lot of respect for him since he went to an enemy state that is far worse in the human rights field. If you feel like you need to break the law to share classified info you should be willing to go to jail for it, not run off to fucking Russia.
Disagree, that gives the corrupt establishment way more power to control the narrative, as opposed to the whistleblower being able to continue spreading the message, which Snowden has done, including publishing a book. Nobody went to jail over the crimes he exposed, the justice system has no credibility here.
Blow the whistle. But don't run away to another country with several laptops and hard drives of shit. Yeah if they figure out it was you, you're going to prison for a few years. However you will be released by a future president, if you're even still in prison by that time. That's the pattern, it's been the pattern since the late cold war.
He killed his rep with the whole Bitcoin thing he's pushing.
Pretty sure he does that because he wants to limit the governments' power to control people's finances, which from his perspective after seeing how untrustworthy these powerful institutions are, I can understand his desire for it. I don't agree with him on cryptocurrency stuff, but I do understand his perspective and how one would come to that conclusion.
I understand his view but I just can't fathom how could someone be pro Bitcoin in the context. Giving power over the financial system to criminal cartel(s) (who provenly control Bitcoin) is ludacris. Thankfully the cartel has no intent to run the future of finance whatsoever, just to extract as much USD as possible before they are shut down.
Edit: Yes, downvote me that will help your bags.
Yah, espousing interest in one thing completely invalidates anything else one says on any other subject.
Ok, buddy.
