[mindslight]

It seems like that is more appropriately attributed to USG's persecution of whistleblowers. I'd bet that Snowden would rather have not fled the US, but he did not have that option.

You can't build on a broken foundation - exposing domestic anticonstitutional corruption is more important than the fallout to foreign policy.

[psychedictic]

Your comment temporally corresponded with multiple simultaneous downvotes of my comment.

There's no justification at all for informing any of our adversaries of details related to spying activity on them. Intentional or not, Mr. snowden's action have hurt USA.

[boomboomsubban]

We aren't at war with China, they are not our adversaries. Any harm caused to the US was a result of harm we had done to them.

[analognoise]

The people who have 1M people in "re-education camps", claim ownership of Taiwan, have been building artificial islands to stake their "territory" in the South China Sea, and just made Xi de facto emperor for life?

Are you sure we aren't adversaries? Because we certainly don't seem to be ideologically aligned!

Don't get me wrong, we've got fucking problems, but we're not disappearing artists and sending people to live in other people's houses to spy on them directly. China has chosen a path of dictatorial horse-shit of its own accord - the US didn't push them into it.

[boomboomsubban]

>Are you sure we aren't adversaries? Because we certainly don't seem to be ideologically aligned!

None of those things pose a true threat to America, and who benefits from treating them as adversaries because of ideological differences?

>China has chosen a path of dictatorial horse-shit of its own accord - the US didn't push them into it.

Though there are strong arguments that US and other Western powers did push them into this situation, if you view this as a path they chose why would you oppose it? We tried controlling their path before, and countless millions of Chinese died as a result.

[mindslight]

> There's no justification at all for informing any of our adversaries of details related to spying activity on them.

Even under pain of imprisonment and torture? Everyone has their limits.

> Mr. snowden's action have hurt USA.

Only if you believe that "USA" is equivalent to the "US Government". If you believe that the United States means something more, like perhaps a society founded on individual rights, equal protection under the rule of law, and a government constrained by its charter, then blowing the whistle on the domestic enemies in Maryland is extremely helpful.

[psychedictic]

Nonsense.

@snowden could have chosen to not told our adversaries about any spying activity upon them. Instead, he stole classified info that was far beyond the scope of domestic surveillance, in a pre-meditated way, then shared this with our adversaries.

"domestic enemies in Maryland" is entirely your opinion. Are you an American citizen? What exactly is your justification (beyond Hollywood propaganda, news articles, etc) for such a claim? Have you reviewed in detail what @snowden (and his co-conspirators) have leaked? How much was actually related to domestic surveillance? How much was classified military intel?

[mindslight]

You can easily look through my profile and infer my nationality and effort spent commenting. Yours, not so much.

This topic has been endlessly debated on HN. The general consensus here may be different than what you're used to, as it is harder to distract technical people with baseless excuses about "security" when we can understand the details of what the NSA (et al) must have had to do to implement their panopticon. The excuse that they do not operate domestically simply no longer holds water, and a standard heuristic of criminal investigation is to dig deeper after finding probable cause. Opening up the specifics of these secretive organizations to public scrutiny is the only way forward for a democratic society.

You clearly have an opposing view, and it is true our society needs to regain tolerance of disagreement. But it's just not a very interesting view to explore when it consists of the same exact "whataboutist" talking points that are broadcast through USG's media outlets.