[Inlinked]

To pardon Snowden seems like a very popular opinion around here. Can anyone help me change my opinion on this matter?

The way I currently see it:

- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.

- The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.

- Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.

- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.

- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.

- Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.

- Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.

- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.

If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing. As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.

I have a lot of respect for whistleblowers, and also for Snowden. What he did is nothing short of heroic. But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia. What's missing for me?

[acgourley]

Here is a well produced oxford style debate between qualified debaters on the topic. I found it very enlightening and hope everyone gives it a listen. It's available as a video or podcast. http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/snowden-was-jus...

[Inlinked]

Thank you for posting this great debate video. Although it did not change my opinion on the pardon, I now have a more nuanced view on this matter. I thought all the debaters in this video had good points, but I still agree with the opposition.

[acgourley]

I'm glad it was informative - as a big fan of IQ2 I believe many internet arguments could be short circuited by links to such debates.

[metaphorm]

> What's missing for me?

facts. you mis-stated several things about the story. I don't have time to do your research for you. there's a lot about it on the internet already. begin by educating yourself about the facts and then make your judgments.

> high-school diploma Snowden.

vicious cheap shot and ad hominem. why did you say that? do you only respect people with piece of paper signed by a university dean?

[CobrastanJorji]

He did the same thing by making sure to reference Greenwald's "boyfriend". He wanted to make sure to emphasize to you, the reader, that Glenn Greenwald is gay and is therefore bad.

[Inlinked]

I thought both your "arguments" were petty and slightly offensive. To say basically: 'Just Google my rebuttal' is not worthy of a reply. You could have just skipped my sincere request for reasoning opposite to my own.

Without volunteering too much entropy: I myself have a high-school diploma and my sister is gay.

You are perfectly fine to read "partner" there, though that may not convey the fact that they were not married (which would arguably have made it slightly better).

[metaphorm]

you're responding to the wrong poster. but seriously, you need to learn to educate yourself when you want to engage with an issue with some depth. others have pointed out to you the various ways in which you are ignorant. it's not anyone else's job to inform you.

if you want to just admit that you're not well informed on the issue and move on, that's fine. but you're coming in here with a strongly held and deeply controversial opinion, which you have expressed with language that is filled to the brim with weasel words, assumptions, and ad hominem attacks. expect to be challenged when you express yourself like that.

[Inlinked]

I do not think my opinion on this matter is deeply controversial, it is just that opponents of a Snowden pardon wisely keep their mouths shut.

I also think that my request for views opposing my current view shows my flexibility on this matter. If someone can show convincing arguments against my view, I am perfectly willing to adapt and concede.

You did not. You told me to go research the "facts", while you took your "facts" the same as I did mine: By researching sources on the internet. It is weak to say that someone with an opposing view must have this view because he/she is ill-informed.

The so-called 'ad hominem attacks' are likely the result of my poor mastery of the english language, combined with an assumption of bad faith on your part.

[e12e]

> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

See Binney, eg:

"William Binney HOPE 9 KEYNOTE": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI

The "internal channels" have been broken for years, and do not work. Snowden was aware of this, and AFAIR has commented on that on several occasions.

> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.

What? Incompetent? They managed to do their job, in the face of GCHQ and the NSA. Just because they made some mistakes, that doesn't make them "incompetent". If they were, we wouldn't have heard anything at all!

> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.

So, being competent is a strike against Snowden, but being incompetent is a strike against Greenwald (who presumably doesn't have any training from GCHQ)?

> - The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.

Everyone who was paying attention knew a lot about the clearly illegal stuff that NSA have been doing, from previous leaks - that doesn't mean the leaks didn't have value.

> I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.

The first part was in my eyes a prerequisite for having a sizable useful set of documents to leak. The second part is really two parts: he fled - he didn't submit himself to capture, torture and/or assassination in the US. He did this by fleeing to Hong Kong.

Then he went to Russia, the only port within reach that offered sanctuary. I'm ashamed that Norway didn't - for example. But of course we're NATO allies, and with the not too distant history of Mossad carrying out a botched assassination (successful kill, wrong person) on Norwegian soil, and Norway being complicit in extralegal detention and torture by allowing CIA's "white planes" to transit through - it would probably have been hopelessly naive for Snowden to try to flee here, even if offered "safe passage".

[Inlinked]

> So, being competent is a strike against Snowden, but being incompetent is a strike against Greenwald (who presumably doesn't have any training from GCHQ)?

I think you laid bare my mental split on this issue and for that I thank you. I will concede the point on Snowden being competent.

I said it because it felt (and still slightly feels) wrong to me: Like a kung-fu student hitting his master with a punch he was taught by that same master. Snowden used the trade craft he picked up at the NSA and CIA against these same organizations.

But he would have been foolish to ignore his own skills and I can't expect him to forget these and put his life in danger (more than he already has).

[DigitalJack]

Snowden used journalists (really just greenwald) to vet the documents.

He did attempt to use internal channels.

His original intent was not to go to russia, it was a last resort.

[BinaryIdiot]

> Snowden used journalists (really just greenwald) to vet the documents.

It's a form of vetting, yes, but useful? Hard to say. It's also trusting a lot of information that could get people killed in someone's hands. Who's to say someone didn't pay Greenwald $10 million for a copy of all of it? You'd never be able to prove this happened unless they were really stupid about it.

> He did attempt to use internal channels.

The only thing I found regarding this was that he emailed a few "district heads" which, last time I did work in the area, don't really do anything. There is an actual, official channel to go through to reporting stuff like this (there are actually multiple; one for the NSA and one for the DoD in general). There are also more appropriate people he could have emailed.

Now I'm not saying internal channels would have worked but I haven't seen anything that showed me Snowden really tried hard to go through those channels in the first place.

> His original intent was not to go to russia, it was a last resort.

China is also not the greatest place to go. Honestly anywhere outside of a SCIF and you could get picked up by interested parties. But since he did go to China and Russia we have no way of knowing if both of those countries have a full copy of his data or not.

[MrZongle2]

"Snowden used journalists (really just greenwald) to vet the documents."

But isn't that the crux of the problem?

Let us assume the best about Snowden: that he did do this for noble reasons, that he was acting on his own initiative, that he did attempt to restrict the documents he took to those dealing with unethical or unconstitutional espionage that a fair and impartial Inspector General or similar authorized party should have reviewed.

What happened if something completely unrelated (but classified) was also in the dump (say, information about Russian nuclear forces or Pakistani cooperation with a terrorist group) that ended up being vetted not by him (in an authorized facility prior to his flight) but by Greenwald or another journalist (out in the wild)?

At that point, regardless of his intentions, he has disclosed classified information to a non-authorized party and has broken the law.

At that point, whistleblowing has nothing to do with it.

Note, I'm not arguing against a pardon for Snowden-as-whistleblower. I simply think that such a vetting argument doesn't hold water.

[empath75]

While I think it's true that he took too many documents and probably released too many documents, I think his intentions were good, and overall was an important contribution to public knowledge of the way our governments work. It was an eye opener for a lot of tech companies, to be sure.

He was essentially forced to flee to Russia-- no other country could protect him. I don't think it's where he wanted to end up.

I don't think he should be pardoned. He committed crimes, and possibly could have found a better way to get this information out there. I do think he should be offered a generous plea-bargain in return for coming home and debriefing the NSA/CIA and congress about what exactly he took, how he took it and the status of all of those secrets.

[__jal]

My goodness, this reads like Stewart Baker is sock-puppeting. If you'd like to convince someone, perhaps sticking to the truth when stating "facts" would be a start. For instance,

> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

is simply false.

> - Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.

Nice innuendo. Please state your concerns in a concrete fashion. If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. If it is that he was stranded in a regime unfriendly to the U.S. regime, what do you expect him to choose? England? Canada? It is also good to remember that U.S. actions are responsible for him being in Russia.

> - Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.

You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.

> - Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.

1) Assuming "damage" is defined as spending money and time to evaluate the breach and implement corrective measures, sure. I've yet to see anyone point to anything beyond "I can't tell you, but be very afraid". Remember how the release was going to lead to imminent terrorists attacks in Missouri?

> - Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.

Proof, please.

> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.

"Secret agent skills?" Isn't that normally spelled with a "z" on the end?

> - Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.

"High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots. I except that sort of low-rent smearing from Slashdot and gov-contractor flacks, not Hacker News. And which is it - is Snowden a mad-1337 super agent super hacker, or and uneducated outsider? Character assassination works much better when you're a bit more consistent.

Anyway, shorn of the non-sequitur schoolyard taunting, what is the complaint? Intelligence operatives, shown to have expanded surveillance far beyond the imaginations of the voters in the democracy that supposedly as a voice in what they do, had their feelings hurt when they were exposed?

This is the same argument made by police apologists: if you keep taking pictures of us illegally killing people, we'll stop doing our jobs.

> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.

So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.

> But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.

Please describe the conditions under which whistleblowing is acceptable to you. If Snowden had received the documents from someone else (thus hadn't "misuse[d] hist admin privileges"), would that make it OK for him, but not for the hypothetical other person? Of it he hadn't been stranded by the U.S. in Russia (he didn't choose to stay)?

Based on your litany above, it sounds like intelligence whistleblowing is only acceptable to you when the documents involved are officially released, the release doesn't damage any existing power structures, no intelligence operatives have their fee-fees hurt, and the leaker is better educated and collaborates with journalists you personally like more.

[BinaryIdiot]

You ask for parent to provide proof in some places but don't provide it yourself which makes me think you're more interested in arguing versus being productive (which, to be fair, some of parent's points sound like they're coming from a similar place). But just in case I have a few questions

>> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

> is simply false.

As far as I was ever able to find Snowden emailed "district heads". That was the only internal channel he went through that I could find. Considering the NSA and the DoD in general each have channels to go through along with far, far more appropriate people to email / call about it (district heads is something you basically never hear about in the intel space; they're not useful at getting anything done) I would also say he did not go through internal channels.

If you have proof outside of this I'd love to read it.

> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where.

Why does it not? He had a very, very large corpus of classified intelligence that any enemy of the United States would love to get their hands on. Granted he had little choice once he got to China but I don't understand the claim that it doesn't matter where he went considering the payload he was carrying.

> You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.

I'm not sure I would consider that vetting. Regardless a large corpus of classified and likely damaging data was taken, carried and given to multiple parties. A vetting prior to documents being indiscriminately taken would have been far more responsible though the considerable time that would have taken would have made leaking impossible in the first place.

I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.

[__jal]

> I would also say he did not go through internal channels.

I have no opinion on the "district heads" thing. I've never worked in the non-private intel world. Most of what I know on the topic is here:

https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-...

This has been spun exceptionally hard in multiple versions of their story, and as best I can tell, "proper channels" as used by NSA flacks at this point means "people who could shut him up." This is based on the FIOA'd discussions found in the above-linked documents. Snowden's account hasn't changed and has matched details the NSA story only included in later versions (apparently because there were releases they didn't expect with contrary facts after their first version). Everyone, of course, will form their own opinions about this.

But let's say that Snowden never attempted to tell anyone inside, at all. Do you think the general population of the U.S. would have learned what is being done in their name? Do you think a single program would have changed, even the cosmetic renaming and budget-shuffling that allows spokesmuppets tell highly deceptive technical-truths in congressional hearings?

>> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. >Why does it not?

You misread. I am not arguing that it doesn't matter; I'm parsing the GP's argument.

> I'm not sure I would consider that vetting.

Many people have differences of opinion. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear of a vetting scheme that would both satisfy critics and have informed the general public to the same degree.

My personal belief is that the damage done by an out-of-control intelligence regime is far greater than burning necessarily transient sources and methods. Even if it weren't, I'd grade the disclosure on a curve, because the spin coming out of any intelligence agency about this sort of thing is inherently untrustworthy, and intelligence has to be kept on a short leash. Add to that the incredible scale of the NSA/Five Eyes networks and the fact that the NSA is demonstrably harming (at least) civilian security by emphasizing offense over defense, and we have something incredibly frightening with intrusive capabilities the Stasi could only have dreamed of. You can have that, or you can have democracy, but I don't believe you can have both. And that's only looking at "official" uses; we know NSA employees also have used the data for, ah, call it personal reasons. Both anti-democratic uses are inevitable.

> I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.

You're clearly not. Oh, you're trying to politely advise me? I don't side with Snowden (or Greenwald, or Wheeler, or...) on everything (or even "a lot"), but I probably am a zealot by your definition, because I believe the "moderate" approach here is a vastly (as in arguing over orders of magnitude) scaled-back, retooled NSA/FBI/CIA.

[Inlinked]

> "High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots.

As someone with only a high-school diploma myself, I do not like others with only a high-school diploma, who blow the chances they've been given.

Should Snowden only have been glad someone took a chance on him and shut up? No. He did a brave thing.

Will it be harder in the future for someone with only a high-school diploma to get admin access at the NSA, as a result of Snowden's actions? Yes. NSA will start focussing on Ivy League students and family members of NSA employees.

> So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.

I think Greenwald is an ok journalist. I think it is grave incompetence to use your romantic interest as a document mule. Journalists may be able to handle sensitive documents. The partners of those journalists... not so much. They are basically civilians.

The bad result is that his partner was caught by customs and detained. A bad result may have been that other agencies got to his partner before the UK did. Everyone around Greenwald became a target the moment he was in possession of the cache. That he actually gave the documents to his partner, shows that he was a valid target at that.

Do you honestly think Snowden thought it was a good idea that Greenwald let his partner handle these documents?

[UlyssesSKrunk]

Most of you points are simply blatantly false tho.

>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.

That's why he gave them to a small group of well respected journalists, so they could use their professional discretion to vet them.

>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.

I highly doubt that, but even if it that were true those documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists, only the ones showing the NSA doing illegal things are.

>- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

Yes he did.

>- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.

Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent. He just copied files, fled to China and shared them with a small group of people, none of which required "secret agent skills"

>- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.

So? You can't blame Snowden for that, blame the Justice department. If Snowden could have been even remotely safe anywhere but Russia, he wouldn't be there now. You can't chase after somebody then blame them for hiding somewhere safe.

>- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.

No he didn't, he gave them to perfectly competent journalists. Greenwald is very competent and well respected as a journalists. Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain the important thing is that he did without them getting leaked earlier than he wanted.

>If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing.

He tried that and nobody took him seriously.

>As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.

Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.

[Inlinked]

> That's why he gave them to a small group of well respected journalists

You can not vet encrypted documents. These documents were unencrypted and handled by journalists who could never stand the full attention of the world's intelligence agencies.

Laura Poitras was very qualified. Greenwald... not so much. He had to receive a crash-course on computer safety. He left unidentified USB-sticks in the laptop with the documents. He gave the documents to his non-journalist partner in an attempt to smuggle them through customs. Greenwald is a professional. He just did not get the gravity or technicalities of most of the documents he saw.

> those [standard-operating-procedure] documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists

They are not being leaked to the general public (with a few exceptions). But one has to assume they made it to the competitors of the US. And it points to indiscriminate leaking -- maybe Snowden did not even fully realize what he all had, as he took everything he could get his hands on: mailing lists, internal collaborative wiki's, technical details on ongoing missions.

> Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

I do not think Snowden went through the official internal channels. He may have tried to ring the alarm bell with some people internally. If you have anything to challenge this, I'd be interested.

> Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent.

He was a former CIA operative. He took his job at BAH with the full intention of leaking everything he could get his hands on. His flight, undercover operation, and handling of the documents, was all very deliberate and possible due to his trade craft.

> [Snowden fled to Russia] So? You can't blame Snowden for that

Why not? Proponents almost make it sound he was chased to Russia, or that Wikileaks kidnapped him and released him there. He ended up in Russia. I think both destinations were chosen very deliberately, to avoid rendition, prosecution (or worse: assassination or torture).

> Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain

I think it does. From journalists we can expect them to maybe handle very sensitive documents. The partners of these journalists? Not so much... That is as close to civilian as you can get.

> He tried that and nobody took him seriously.

So he downloaded everything else, filled 4 laptops, and now we do take him seriously? Maybe I have missed something here? Did Snowden try to leak these important documents before he went to Poitras and Greenwald?

> Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.

Sure, Russia and China won't come out and say that:

- we have the documents

- Snowden was one of our own

But to think these documents are not in the possession of every competent intelligence agency in the world may be a bit naive. I'd reckon these intelligence agencies knew of these documents the moment news agencies around the world starting working on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_Ulfkotte#The_book_.22Bough...

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird