It's really up to us citizens that benefited from his whistleblowing to bail him out. But of course we don't because we're not as good a society as we might be.
Could you elaborate? His revelations were that the government kinda does what it wants despite the law; what is it that is up to me (or any other individual) to right the wrongs of that same government?
Any democratic government is simply a body elected to represent the wishes of the people.
If the government isn't righting its wrongs, it's because you (not necessarily you specifically, but "the people" as a whole) have explicitly put in power the people who are doing the bad things.
This is everybody's fault. Yours included. We all enabled this to happen.
That's the beauty of a democratic system. It clarifies and cuts through to the core of our culture. Americans fear the idea of foreign terrorists more than we fear privacy encroachment, and thus, we were delivered the results of that belief.
The system worked! It represented our wishes perfectly. The problem isn't "them" (the government). It's us.
That may have been true for Americans living two hundred years ago when constituents voted for the people who birthed the two party system, but it certainly isn't today. Gerrymandering of House districts, the limit on the number of Representatives, the nature of the Senate in our bicameral legislature, and the electoral college all guarantee that some votes will count significantly more than others. That's not a democracy, it's a facade that replaced democracy a long time ago (and one could argue was never a democracy to begin with, since many people alive today gained the right to vote in living memory).
There's two options when your government isn't doing what you (read "the people") want them to do:
1) Vote them out
2) Revolution
I'm rather a firm believer that option 1 is still on the table and we don't have to resort to likely bloody methods. But in either case it is up to the people in the end. I am not convinced that there's been coalitions formed to actually do #1. I'm not actually convinced most people are upset, even though I think they should be.
Still on us though. Unless we want to see the nation invaded, there really is no one else with standing to address the growing problem.
A class level action is needed. When things reach clearly, can't miss it, can't live with it levels of unacceptable, we may see that happen.
Or, maybe we see just enough placating and theatre to trundle along for decades.
Last time we moved like that, it was the 30's.
People struck the crap out of basically everyone, handing FDR position to go and get the New Deal done. Those strikes and actions were illegal and legal. A whole class in high solidarity acting right out.
His follow on was never seriously discussed and in the decades since, we have seen many moves to prevent a similar scenario from happening again.
What we do not know is whether that history can be repeated.
They are clearly reading Federalist 10 out of context. He clearly says, among other things, there is a mean between to little representation vs to much.
> It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.
A democracy doesn't have representation. So while his definition maybe different than what we tend to understand today, neither is he arguing that "republic" is the same as what we mean by "democracy" today.
Didn't realize that it wasn't sourced to him. I still think it's a good quote either way and given my understanding of Franklin from reading his autobiography, I reckon he would agree with it in spirit. He spent much of his life pushing against the British Empire and fighting for liberty.
How many citizens outside of people who understand tech actually understand how big of a deal it was? Also, the media hardly covered it and pretty much presented him as a traitor every time they did. What percent of the U.S. population would you guess has heard of the name Edward Snowden?
I think it's worse than that. The things Snowden leaked were simply the details of what I would think most people assumed to be true anyway. Not in a conspiracy theory way, but just an accepted thing. Most people don't really know the difference and supposed limitations of each three letter agency's powers.
Whether that's due to the media's portrail of them in film and TV over the years with their omnipotent powers or just the view that the government is an all seeing entity.
So in most people's view he just leaked the governments methods, not the fact they were doing it (and abusin their power in doing so). Because of this the Government can spin this as him leaking their secret sauce rather than them being in the wrong.
A high percentage of Americans are informed by domestic "news" and that newstainment has declared Snowden to be the bad guy as you said.
Among ordinary people not into politics and or tech, few know his name. If they do, they almost always also talk about him being a traitor, threat, etc.
Snowden disclosed programs that were unsavoury to some. But that doesn’t mean they’re illegal (even if only by reason of black letter law technicality). That’s not to mention all the other unrelated classified information. It’s not surprising that he has zero defence under whistleblower laws.
To take advantage of whistleblower laws (or at least, gain public sympathy as one), the criminality you’re uncovering would need to be far, far worse.
See this for one recent decision indicating that the NSA bulk collection program was both constitutional and legal.
The unfortunate reality is that it falls into a legal grey area and has, in fact, been held by certain courts to be legal.
Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity. “Possibly illegal” PRISM just wasn’t bad enough for Snowden to get the political or legal protection of public sympathy.
Damn, that’s crazy. Thanks for sharing this article.
> Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity.
The issue here is that nothing will ever be “unambiguous and horrendous illegal” enough regarding NSA behaviors, given that the goal post is always moving.