The hero who revealed to the American public that their own government was secretly treating them like hostile foreigners and lying about it to our faces? And that everyone who collaborated to build the collection infrastructure violated the oath they swore to uphold the constitution, given that the mere collection itself was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge?
That's not going rogue, that was the most heroic and patriotic thing anyone in his shoes could possibly do.
I could have told you everything Snowden told you back in 2001. It was no secret that every phone call and every txt along with all your mail was being scanned and archived.
Everything he revealed was already revealed years earlier, it's just no one really cared or was paying attention in 2000-2001.
I don't think he's a traitor, especially if you consider the intent of his disclosures and the care he took to make sure that only the info that needed to be disclosed was. I suppose we can agree to disagree on that topic.
But "cowardice" - that claim is just mind-boggling. What he did, even if you disagree with his motivations, required self sacrifice and bravery. Fleeing (what he believes to be) unjust laws that would punish him for his work is not at all cowardly.
I agree. Snowden's most traitorous act IMHO seems to have been mistakenly assuming that Beijing and the government of Hong Kong could afford to antagonize the national-security establishment in Washington to the extent of letting him reside in Hong Kong.
In the country he was transiting through en-route to his final destination in South America, before POTUS deliberately and specifically revoked his passport after ensuring Snowden had landed at his layover airport, in order to construct and disseminate the false narrative you're currently regurgitating.
In hindsight, given what happened to Julian Assange, it turns out to have been a very lucky thing for Snowden that the US State Department revoked his passport before he was able to actually arrive in Ecuador.
While the State Department stranding him in Russia means that chronically uniformed folks will forever call the guy names like "Russian plant", at least he's very unlikely to ever be extradited.
Fair point. The US Federal Government certainly hasn't had any moral qualms with shadowy assassination plots, to say nothing of blatantly covering up illegal, geneva-convention-violating murders conducted by US Federal Government employees in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
He did break the law and all, means to an end isn't a good path unfortnately when you have no power. There were options to take to whistle blow the surveillance of citizens and it's illegal under NSA's own policy that they ignored illegally, and there's a technically independent section/organization for leaking these issues to OCA. Though I'm not sure if it was around in Snowden's time, it could literally have been made due to his concerns ironically.
> There were options to take to whistle blow the surveillance of citizens...
You should read Snowden's statements on the official channels he attempted to use, and those he disregarded. You should also go read up on what Daniel Ellsberg thought of Snowden's chances for getting a fair trial after publicly blowing the whistle on the long-running violation of federal domestic spying law. [0]
[0] In the mid-1970's, FedGov treated whistleblowers who released classified information very, very poorly. These days (and back in the mid 2000's), FedGov fucking crucifies such people behind closed doors.
> “As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18)
You should give these docs a skim, I'd be curious what your thoughts are. I used to sympathize with Snowden (and Assange) until I read into what actually went down.
Maybe I read this story wrong, but I wouldn't put Snowden in the same crowd as this person. Much more of a criminal in this case versus a whistleblower.
That's not going rogue, that was the most heroic and patriotic thing anyone in his shoes could possibly do.