[leto_ii]

> the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all

But that's a good thing, right? It's good that everybody found out that the government unlawfully collected their data etc.

Snowden was not an attacker asking for money, he was an honest guy with a conscience and a whole lot of courage.

[ALittleLight]

It's good and bad. The bad news is they're evil, but the good news is they're incompetent. That's better than competent evil, but I'd prefer competent good.

[southerntofu]

Who can be good in a position of power? Arguably, "power corrupts" as the saying goes. I believe you could take the 500 best person on Earth to try and form the perfect parliament, and you'd still have an unjust system.

Abolishing the structures of domination/exploitation is the only way to have a good outcome, because it's the only way to ensure citizens will behave as decent neighbors, and not try to control and manipulate their peers. At least, that's what we anarchists believe and practice on a daily basis.

[leto_ii]

> The bad news is they're evil

Agreed, but this is really bad news, given the amount of power three letter agencies (and the deep state in general) have.

> the good news is they're incompetent

Here I disagree. I think the NSA are about as competent as such an agency is ever likely to get. We shouldn't be happy that they still have weaknesses, rather we should be horrified at how few of them there are.

Most of the spying programs had been in place years before Snowden blew the whistle. Countless other contractors and deep state employees could have done what Snowden did had they had either the courage or the moral clarity. Quite possibly many tried and were stopped before leaking to the public.

[viro]

> the government unlawfully collected their data etc.

How did the ANT catalog leaks do that? Did you not notice Russia suddenly got more aggressive (annexing Crimea etc.) after the Snowden incedent?