[RodericDay]

How come proven collateral damage such as innocent deaths caused by US military interventionism is widely considered reasonable and acceptable. So, tenuous upside/blatant downside = no outrage.

But the unproven collateral damage of Snowden's leaks, which had the giant upside of revealing democracy-chilling surveillance techniques, leads to mass reaction from the government. So, undeniable upside/debatable downside = Enemy of the State, threats to nations that offer him asylum.

How does this arithmetic work out for anyone?

[saynsedit]

Yeah, Americans sleep when they hear 90% of drone attack deaths are civilians: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...

But they are wide awake and outraged when Snowden's ostensible act of espionage has caused an enormous amount of public good and technological innovation.

It's not really the American's fault. We hear few of their real voices. It's the media that speaks the loudest.

[fixermark]

Don't sell Americans short on their ability to withold empathy for non-Americans though. They know that the men who stole control of four planes on 9/11 were civilians too, and they still generally trust that their government is ID'ing threats to national security correctly.

Whether the government is actually doing that (and whether---even if it were---that's sufficient for completely extrajudicial killing that would be called "waging warfare" in any other context) may not be things an average American is asking before going to sleep at night.

[Practicality]

Who are these generic Americans that think that Snowden should be condemned? Everyone American I know is very grateful for what he did. And I know quite a few.

I've only ever heard official policy statements condemning him. I am not even really sure those stating such policy agree with what they are saying (at a personal level).

[Jtsummers]

I live near a military base, views against him are quite common here. The defense culture, in general, and those who view "security" [0] as the primary role of our government also condemn him.

[0] This is a non-partisan view. I hear it from Democrats, Republicans, and some Libertarians (who hold more to the fiscal sense of modern libertarianism than the civil liberties sense, which is a shame). There's a large group of people in the US who seem to believe that security for-its-own-sake cannot be evil, in an ends-justify-the-means version of morality.

[Practicality]

Thanks for explaining. As jacalata pointed out I don't have much interaction with people with that point of view, hence why I have such a strong aversion to comments saying Americans feel that way.

[jacalata]

This reminds me of my friend who was convinced John Kerry would win the election because "I don't know anybody who will vote for Bush!" In other words, I suspect you have a strong selection bias informing your view of Americans.

[Practicality]

True. But Kerry did get 48% of the vote. That's a LOT of people. It's not like the 50% who voted for Bush are the only Americans that exist.

[jacalata]

Of course not. I understood your comment to be questioning whether there exist any individual Americans who condemn Snowden and proposing as evidence for their non-existence "Everyone American I know". If you were just saying that you don't think the majority of Americans condemn Snowden then I have no disagreement.

[Practicality]

I was disagreeing with the premise that all Americans think exactly the same thing by presenting any example of Americans who disagree. Since I know quite a few, it's at least enough that you can't say "Americans think X," which is what the post I replied to said.

[wutbrodo]

> Everyone American I know is very grateful for what he did. And I know quite a few.

This is an enormously basic fallacy. I was born and raised in the US and have spent a quarter century of life here, so I think it's fair to say "I know quite a few" Americans. But I would think it beyond insane to claim that my sample is useful for statements like "I know a lot of Americans and none feel this way. Who are they?". I also don't know any Trump supporters, any single parents, any heroin addicts, any cardiosurgeons, any farmers...is it really that difficult to believe that your sample of Americans isn't typical (despite its impressive size of "quite a few")?

[Practicality]

That was precisely my point. Thanks. :)

(The comment I was replying to said that Americans are ok with one thing but not ok with another. It was implying that all Americans think the same way and I disagree)

[rhino369]

He leaked classified information beyond what he needed to expose illegal programs. Most of his purpose was to expose programs he had an ideological problem with. I don't believe that is a good enough reason to leak classified information.

Edward Snowden isn't an elected official. It wasn't his job to decide which US policies he agrees with. Government can't function if low level employees take it upon themselves to rule.

[saynsedit]

Snowden did not expose the documents, the journalists did... It was their journalistic duty to reveal a minimal yet sufficient amount of evidence to inform the public, not his.

[Practicality]

Are you replying to the right comment? Or are trying to give yourself as a datapoint of an American against Snowden?

[saynsedit]

I roughly agree with you in that I think the "Snowden is in the wrong" perspective is overrepresented in the media. That's what I meant by "it's not their fault." I'd bet the public on average is less extreme in judging Snowden.

[Grishnakh]

You're obviously hanging around only certain groups of people, and not reading message boards filled with pro-authoritarian people. Go to any message board with right-wingers and you'll see him denounced as a traitor. HN is simply not the place where you're going to see this.

[Practicality]

Fair enough, but pro-authoritarian boards do not represent all Americans. I was replying to a post that said "Americans think..." implying that all or most Americans think the same thing, so I was presenting a counter-point that not all or even most Americans think like that.

[Grishnakh]

HN denizens and tech-heads do not represent all Americans either.

Seriously, there are very few traits that I can think of which really represent all Americans; we're much too diverse for that, and we're growing farther and farther apart. The lifestyles and attitudes in rural areas are extremely different from those in urban centers, and it's becoming more and more divergent (for instance, Millennials are abandoning car ownership).

So any time you see someone say something like "Americans think..." you have to take it with a grain of salt, and at best realize that they're talking about some sizeable demographic, which probably is not an absolute majority, but is large enough to make it a valid statement, unless you want to quibble about what qualifies such a statement, as if you demand that it apply to a clear majority (say, over 60%), then no such statement will probably ever be true of Americans, except things that are also true of people in many other places (for instance: "Americans like smartphones" -- not at all unique to Americans).

Pro-authoritarian boards do indeed represent a sizeable swath of Americans, like it or not. Just look at how popular the alt-right is these days.

[rhino369]

>Yeah, Americans sleep when they hear 90% of drone attack deaths are civilians:

No, 90% of the drone deaths weren't known indented targets. If you bomb a Taliban camp to kill a known Taliban leader, you are going to kill a lot of people, but they aren't going to be mostly civilians.

Sure some of them are civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that's legal under international law and essentially unavoidable in war.

You could argue that maybe America is aiming at targets without any regard for who surrounds them, but that you can't use that 90% figure to do it. And I also believe that you'd be wrong.

[saynsedit]

Great justification for extrajudicial state-sponsored murder. Non-congress authorized war makes it okay. Gotcha.

[nikdaheratik]

I don't think it's acceptable, but at least "collateral damage" has the virtue of having been approved by elected officials and is something considered before we go to war or order attacks somewhere. Snowden's leaks weren't approved of by anyone but Snowden, and if they had managed to get people killed even if that wasn't Snowden's intention they would still be enough to consider as Treason.

In counter point, if we start allowing anyone who feels like they can leak this stuff on their own authority, and it starts costing lives of Americans, how many would you consider "worth it"? At what point does it move from whistle-blowing so it's okay to treason?