[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?

[caskance]

And now I think you've come a lot closer to the problem most privacy advocates don't seem willing to accept. That maybe, if nobody cares and nothing happens, that's because most people believe that what the NSA is doing is really not that bad. That maybe people are tired of seeing the same few articles with a few countries and codenames slightly tweaked because they stopped giving a shit 2 weeks after XKEYSCORE, just like they would have if the leaks had ended there.

We've pretty much been through this before with Binney. He did things the right way. Nobody cared. Nothing changed. Snowden probably saw that and didn't want to end up the same way. He wanted to start a fire because he thought he knew better than everyone else. Fuck General Alexander, fuck the DHS, fuck the public - privacy matters because I say so. And so he did something (a lot of things) dumb. So fuck him. That's my group. That intersect "no such thing as privacy in our digital-everything future".

[Nadya]

I'm willing to accept that that is your viewpoint, and the viewpoints of others. We'll also have to disagree with each other due to different viewpoints, obviously.

I think that people being complacent or uncaring about what is going on without them is usually (but not always, its also possible I can be wrong too :) ) due to either being ignorant, misinformed, or not understanding the implications of an act.

If you do a highly dangerous activity in a town that hasn't killed anyone yet but didn't warn or tell the town that if something goes wrong - the entire town would be blown to smithereens. Of course, nobody would care. They either don't know about the dangers (ignorance) - and the people doing the dangerous activity are actively giving misinformation about the actual dangers (misinformed), so anyone telling others about the dangers is just a "paranoid tinfoil hat" (not understanding the implications of the act).

Even if the town hasn't blown up in 5 years - should they keep testing their luck until they blow up? Ignoring that it might be a calculated risk, people will only ever care when it all comes tumbling down and blows up in their faces. History has shown this time and time again. That's an unfortunate aspect about society-at-large, but a lot of educated decisions and fail-safes can be put in place ahead of time. It merely relies on the public being educated. An ignorant public is an easily manipulated public.

As is oft-mentioned/quoted. Few people care about their online privacy... until you tell them their nudes can be seen by people other than their intended recipient. Then they suddenly care a lot [0]. Of course, that's a little bit of a stretch in most cases. But as they educate themselves more and more about how important their privacy is (and how much they actually value it, by using examples) the more agreeable they become. It's not an overnight process - it's one that has to be won through many battles. Few wars have ever ended in a single battle.

There's been larger and larger amounts of the public looking for and asking for more secure forms of communication. Or how to keep their communications private. That tells me that as more people are becoming educated, more people are giving a damn. That's a sign to keep trying - not to give up because people don't care.

People didn't care that black people were slaves or that women couldn't vote. There were even women who argued against women's suffrage. It took many years - but eventually the general public was informed enough to change their minds about the importance of these things. Should they have given up when people told them they were wrong or weren't making any public influence? I personally think it's a good thing they argued for years on end instead of stopping 5 years in because of little to no progress. If it takes 10 more years to convince people their privacy matters, so be it.

I'm sorry for the length of my replies. I like to tread carefully with my viewpoints and make sure I mention exceptions as well as my willingness to entertain other viewpoints or at least show I understanding where they are arguing from, even if it comes down to "I disagree with your reasoning".

TL;DR

I don't think that the public-at-large not caring for their privacy now means they don't care for their privacy. It means they're ignorant or don't understand the importance of their privacy. Education has shown that the public is changing and becoming more aware of the importance of their privacy. Adoption is slow, but even if it takes 10 more years to convince people privacy matters - that isn't a reason to give up now.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Udb8SYeS0

[caskance]

Obviously people can be manipulated into believing anything. Especially by charismatic media figures. It's incredibly condescending of you to believe that people only disagree with you because they don't know any better. Especially when you try to pull that shit on me.

I care about whether the food I eat contains beef, but I don't think that you or anyone else is ignorant for not caring. As if I only had to educate you about the proper Hindu way and then you'd recognize that it mattered after all. I accept that different people have different beliefs. Why can't you and all the other religious whackos have the decency to do the same? Obvious answer: you don't even see it as a religion. To you it's just truth. Well, you're not the first.

[Nadya]

>It's incredibly condescending of you to believe that people only disagree with you because they don't know any better.

Please don't skim read. I see we're done here.

>(but not always, its also possible I can be wrong too :) ) \

>I care about whether the food I eat contains beef, but I don't think that you or anyone else is ignorant for not caring. As if I only had to educate you about the proper Hindu way and then you'd recognize that it mattered after all.

I disagree. I'd be ignorant as to why I should care. What if I tried to feed you beef and didn't understand why you became angry with me? Obviously this is a problem of my ignorance - fixed by education. Ignorance is not a bad thing. People cannot be expected to know everything.

[caskance]

Why provide a TLDR section that you feel doesn't accurately represent what you said?

[Nadya]

If I wanted to repeat each word and include all the nuance the TL;DR would fail to be a TL;DR. It would be a repetition. If I thought I could fit eight paragraphs of my thoughts into a single paragraph without losing nuance, I wouldn't take eight paragraphs to express my points.

The point of a summary is to get rid of formalities for the sake of brevity. I feel I summarized my points well and accurately, and the purpose was to save time for those who do not wish to read 8 paragraphs. The trade off is that any formality and nuance is lost in the summary - and you took that lack of formality and ran with it by putting words that weren't there in the summary.