[TedDoesntTalk]

The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower:

“ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned."

With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it.

In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”

[mikem170]

A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good.

Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition.

I'm curious why you brought that up?

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

I think the parent is claiming that whistleblower protections don't apply to Snowden. A vigilante's actions can be both morally right and blatantly illegal. There are people that are glad he did what he did, but also believe in the rule of law, and feel his actions might have carried more weight if he turned himself in and accepted the legal repercussions.

Personally, if I were the judge I'd give him a light slap on the wrist because of how hard he worked to bring the information to light in a responsible manner so nobody got hurt. It's hard for me to imagine him not getting absolutely fucked in a real court of law however, and I'm certainly not going to judge him and say, "You should have been willing to throw your whole life away over this, or not done it at all."

[datavirtue]

He would have been executed.

[TedDoesntTalk]

What peacetime charge carries the death penalty for espionage or related?

[boomboomsubban]

Do any of the relevant laws specify needing to be at war? Both the treason clause of the Constitution and the Espionage Act specify helping "enemies," but I'm not sure they specify needing to be at war.

The Rosenberg's were executed despite the US never officially declaring war on the USSR or even North Korea.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> I'm curious why you brought that up?

It’s a direct quote from the article.

[mikem170]

Right. I just didn't see the significance of his fitting a specific definition of whistleblower.

Most of the article was discussing the illegal secret data collection he exposed and the worldwide response to those revelations in the ten years since.

I wasn't sure what difference it made that the official government whistleblower processes didn't work for him. Someone else mentioned he therefore lost legal whistleblower protections. I don't think that the public worried about big brother, the tech companies like Google who promptly encrypted all their traffic, or allies like Angela Merkel that were spied on, cared that Snowden stepped outside the government's whistleblower process when it didn't work.

I didn't know if this is what you meant, or if you thought that what he did (double cross the government) was worse than what the NSA did (double cross the public), or if he should have kept his mouth shut when the official process wasn't working, or something else.

[marricks]

He argued the American people had a right to know what was occurring and make a decision as to whether it should be done.

That likely isn’t “by the book” whistle blowing since governments can and do make what they do in the shadows “legal enough” to avoid scrutiny.

Guess it’s weird it’s that much of a discussion but many people care more about laws than morality.

[pseudalopex]

Did you think to ask what suspicions Snowden had in 2009 in Tokyo? Or why he had them? He stated he read an unclassified report with evidence of illegal activities and significant abuses. The classified version confirmed his suspicions.

[BlueTemplar]

Indeed, this struck me as weird, and so I went and re-read the Japan chapter. In which he also explains why metadata is more important than data, which this article later also completely ignores.

Since this website otherwise seems to be well-done, has been repeatedly popping up on HN, and related HN discussions seem to have an influx of pro-NSA new accounts :

https://i.imgur.com/2aVZBIj.jpeg

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570407

I'm afraid that I must entertain the possibility that the website itself is owned by the NSA, and the best thing to do is to ignore information on it, however well it might be presented. (I do not think that I'm smart enough to prevent a NSA team from tricking me.)

[DANmode]

That seems to be the only way to subvert the very compartmentalization that normally keeps people from seeing such patterns or systemic abuses that he exposed - no?

[hooande]

In all these years I'd never seen this. Ironic, but not surprising, that according to this account Snowden did exactly what he accused the US government of doing: mass collecting data with no authorization or purpose and then using it to accuse someone he disagreed with of crimes.

[DharmaPolice]

I think we should be holding governments to a higher standard than some random dude.

[lern_too_spel]

And we do. The difference is that Snowden did the crimes he is accused of. The US government, on the other hand, did not commit the crimes Snowden accused it of.