[pvnick]

Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately. I for one believe that the releases have been done with impeccable professionalism, and in fact if it were up to me I would have been even more liberal with the releases (Greenwald, Poitras, et al. have actually worked with the government during this process).

[krapp]

Nevertheless, journalists work for media companies which run on ad revenue. Their motivation and Edward Snowden's don't necessarily align, now that he has become (perhaps inadvertently) a cult of personality figure and a marketable brand, and attaching his name to anything guarantees readership.

[bediger4000]

media companies which run on ad revenue

Greenwald worked for The Guardian for the initial release, and works for The Intercept now. The Guardian, although somewhat ad-supported, doesn't appear to be quite as dependent as most US papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_fin.... The Intercept is definitely weirder than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept

With respect to The Intercept, I submit that you're technically correct (their motivations and Snowden's aren't identical), but that Snowden's motivations are probably closer to The Intercept's staff than they would be to any other news outlet, even NPR.

[jazzyk]

This.

It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak everything indiscriminately).

[irishcoffee]

Yes he did, to journalists.

Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to have done that.

So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.

[facetube]

The journalists working closely with him did have time. There is nothing about this situation that the word "indiscriminately" applies to, unless you're talking about the military spy organization that was allowed to indiscriminately target its own citizens.

[jazzyk]

No, from the context of the post above mine, it is obvious that by "leaking indiscriminately" I meant to the general public.

You are either lacking context comprehension skills or intentionally splitting hairs to make Snowden look bad...

[irishcoffee]

How are journalists not the general public?

Giving classified documents to _anyone_ who isn't cleared to see them is the "general public." Journalists are no exception. Not sure why you think that.

[jazzyk]

Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens.

Snowden sent the docs not to any/all journalists, but to a carefully selected group of the most reputable ones: NYT, WP, Guardian. He had followed Poitras/Greenwald for a long time before to make sure the docs end up in responsible hands.

Also, the journalists asked the US government to cooperate/redact out some national-security sensitive details, they refused. So they had to use their own judgement.

[facetube]

Are you arguing that Snowden giving all of the documents to me would have produced the same outcome as giving them to journalists to review and redact and write articles about?

[irishcoffee]

Yes.

What qualifies you, or journalists, to know umpty-squat about national security?

99% of what snowden leaked had _nothing_ to do with the privacy of U.S. citizens. Nothing.

[cryoshon]

There's been a lot of obfuscation to the contrary, including endless bad-faith comparisons with Chelsea Manning.

[jazzyk]

Yup. Also comparisons with Assange.

[pdkl95]

Well said.

I would only add that in the end, the specifics of what should be released are usually going to a subjective judgment call. Everybody is going to draw a slightly different cutoff line. In US tradition we have used journalists as a representative of the people to make that decision, and Greenwald et al have been incredibly careful in how they released pieces of the Snowden archive. Too careful, perhaps, but I can certainly understand the desire to take it slowly and carefully.

Also, as more documents are released, it's important to remember that Snowden is not the only source. ( https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/counting_the_... )

[happyscrappy]

>gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately

Journalists will be tempted to publish regardless of the original intent, let's hope they are not desperate for a story.

[NullCharacter]

I realize Snowden personally didn't leak the documents (unless you qualify handing the trove to journalists as "leaking" which some might). This is why I used the word "abscond" as well as "leak". Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection.

But I've never received a straight answer to that question and I guess this is no exception.

[bonobo]

I'm confused about what kind of straight answer you're expecting. Why isn't this considered a straight answer?

> Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately.

Had he pre-selected which documents to hand over to the journalists, how would this be any different than if he just published them by his own? Snowden knew that he was not supposed to handle this task alone by passing his judgement on these documents by himself, and that he needed someone to help him judge what to disclose and what not to disclose, so he delegated this responsibility to journalists with a reputation he could trust. IMO he was as responsible as one could be: he didn't handle this trouble all by himself, he didn't let any biases he might've had affect the decisions, and he delegated the task at hand properly to american citizens (this is important, he was dealing with national security after all) he judged to be trustworthy. It just boils down to teamwork.

Selecting only the documents he thought described wrongdoings would put too much of his perspective and his biases on the end result. Too much for a single man to decide.

[caskance]

He didn't have any right to make the decision to trust those journalists. Giving them access to all his documents was the problem.

There was enough the NSA did that was OBVIOUSLY wrong that he could have stayed well clear of the things too close to the line.

[bonobo]

He didn't have the right not to make a decision. As a responsible citizen he had the obligation take action and decide how to approach the issue, and he did the best he could as a single individual. Deciding who to trust is doable; filtering all the information on those docs by himself is not.

Yes, he could have disclosed the obvious things, but how would that work out on the long term? Would he be able to address by himself all the questions that would follow up? How much information would he be able to disclose? Too much information and he'd risk disclosing legitimate operations, too little information and he'd soon get discredited.

[caskance]

In the long term, it would have meant that people like me who think there is a legitimate reason for nation states to have intelligence agencies could support him with clear consciences.

[mzs]

He did not disclose all the documents. He made a pass through first to protect people primarily. The vast majority of what he passed on were power points and lists of devices.

[Nadya]

>Fact is he left with thousands of legitimate documents that had no business being a part of his collection.

Going through all the files by himself would be a daunting task that would take years. There are literally 1,000's of documents. Raising the alarm now rather than 8 years from now is important.

Given the circumstances, grabbing everything and handing it over to a team of respectable journalists (who have a team of lawyers) to find out what is against the Constitution/not in favor of the people (seeing as journalists represent the people to an extent) to allow them to only leak the relevant ones that were crossing boundaries seems like a best decision act.

The journalists can leak documents over the course of years and slowly investigate each one to determine if it crosses boundaries and the alarms should be rung for the public.

Snowden would have had a single release of a handful of documents and gone on a very long vacation in a place nobody has ever heard of had he released a few documents himself. It's expensive to pay for a vacation for an entire group of journalists and lawyers.

[canistr]

I disagree.

Grabbing everything because you don't have time to sift through the data and passing them to so-called "respectable journalists" doesn't make it right. In the same way that people claim dragnet surveillance is wrong to catch terrorists if it's violating the privacy of everyone else.

[Nadya]

How would you have done it? Gone through 16,000 documents that are all 100's of pages long as an individual? You'd be lucky to finish in your lifetime. Not to mention he's not a lawyer. Should he consult a lawyer to know what is going against the Constitution or just use his best guess? Is consulting a single lawyer better than a team of lawyers? Should have had consulted a team of lawyers? What makes Snowden more trustworthy than journalists?

Would he be able to find lawyers to consult while remaining in a country that wouldn't put his life at risk? Should the lawyers relocate to Snowden's location of asylum? Or should they be consult over the constantly monitored internet? Is releasing the information 10 years from now more beneficial than releasing it now?

It opens a big can of worms when you question the logistics of doing it differently. Not that I disagree with your statement - it's a lot like dragnet (catch it all to watch a few) but the logistics in this scenario, unlike a dragnet, the resources simply aren't there to do it any other way. Snowden is not a multi-billion dollar government with near unlimited resources.

[bonobo]

Are you claiming that he could handle all of this by himself? Because unless you're claiming it, you'll have to agree with me that he would have to trust someone at some point. And calling Greenwald a so-called respectable journalist doesn't make justice to the reputation he built. I'm curious to know how would you select a better fitted person to this job.

I also don't think that comparing this to privacy violation is a valid comparison. The government is not a person, you're not violating any civil rights by getting these documents.

[caskance]

If he didn't have the time to do it responsibly, he didn't have the time to do it at all.

[Nadya]

The point of whistleblowing is to blow the whistle and tell people. Not blowing it at all is the exact opposite of whistleblowing - it's being complicit with the crimes committed by the government. Your suggestion is because he does not have the resources, alone, to deal with a corrupt part of government he shouldn't even try? That's a great way to maintain the status quo and have nothing change.

As far as I'm concerned - he could not have handled his scenario in a more responsible manner given his resources and scenario.

What makes Snowden more trustworthy than Greenwald, et al? Some no-name contractor nobody had ever heard of is not more trustworthy than a team of internationally respected journalists with a team of lawyers capable of citing the laws where the government is overstepping their bounds.

I wouldn't trust Snowden to determine what should and shouldn't be leaked to the general public. I don't think many people would. I do, however, trust Greenwald, et al. They have a reputation that they've spent years building up trust with the public. Snowden lacks that trust.

[caskance]

We're not talking about asking him to sift through data on hundreds of programs. He had the resources to leak information about the one or two programs that actually went so far over the line that it made him worried rather than everything he could get his hands on. Talk to the same journalists and everything. That would have been easier, not harder. Sure, maybe less gets fixed in the one go-round, but if the NSA doesn't take that as a hint to clean up their act, more whistleblowers would follow, especially if Snowden had actually earned trust for the idea by acting responsibly.

Thinking that people wouldn't believe the data he provided because there wasn't enough of it makes no sense.

[Nadya]

>He had the resources to leak information about the one or two programs that actually went so far over the line that it made him worried rather than everything he could get his hands on.

I can agree with you to a majority extent on this. The only reason I disagree is only because of circumchance. How things happened to play out - which is more and more incriminating documents being read/discovered within the files.

>Sure, maybe less gets fixed in the one go-round, but if the NSA doesn't take that as a hint to clean up their act, more whistleblowers would follow, especially if Snowden had actually earned trust for the idea by acting responsibly.

I disagree entirely that more whistleblowers would follow - especially with how government shills and a good chunk (although seemingly a minority chunk) of people condemn Snowden as a traitor full-through rather than a whistleblower. They don't even partially agree that anything should have been leaked. Full-stop they have no understanding of what a whistleblower is or how it benefits them, nor do they care. He did something the government thinks is bad, therefore he is bad.

Those sorts of people actively discourage future whistleblowers. Receiving death threats from "hardcore patriots" chugging from the jingoism juice is the last thing potential whistleblowers would willingly opt into.

A small group of people (can I safely include you in this group?) might consider him in a better light had he only leaked the programs/files that personally bothered him. That's a really, really, really small group, from what I've read/seen online. And yes, without the circumchance I mentioned above (how things "happened to turn out") I would agree that would have been a more responsible take on it. I also personally think it would have had less of an impact, received 2 weeks of media coverage and then completely died out. More responsible? Yes. Change anything? No.

Eventually he would have to sift through more documents to renew public interest (why the articles were published every-so-often rather than all-at-once). Eventually, he would need to find help to sift through more documents. Relying on the small possibility of more whistleblowers coming forward is naïve at best or unrealistically optimistic at worst. I do not agree with the reality you imagine had he only taken what he had problems with that other whistleblowers would have stepped forward. Nothing is stopping from additional whistleblowers from stepping forward now with programs they are uncomfortable with in a "more responsible manner" than Snowden. I do not agree that had he done anything differently that more people would be more willing to step forward.

Remember that this has been going on for at least a decade. Nobody, until Snowden, had stepped forward and gotten public discourse about it through constant media exposure. There may have been whistleblowers about the NSA in the times before him. I've never heard of them. And I'm pretty sure there have been others that have now stepped forward after him, not withstanding his irresponsibility.

>Thinking that people wouldn't believe the data he provided because there wasn't enough of it makes no sense.

It happens with media on a near daily basis. Why would this be any different?