[anonym29]

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.

[ChumpGPT]

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.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Snowdon is a traitor and a coward. Where is he living these days?

[wyldfire]

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.

[hollerith]

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.

[Yiin]

Where can he live anyways? Every other country will extradite his ass back to US, be real.

[anonym29]

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.

[simoncion]

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.

[anonym29]

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.

[oyashirochama]

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.

[simoncion]

> 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.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

He never attempted to use official channels.

> “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)

https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...

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.

[simoncion]

> He never attempted to use official channels.

From [0], which links to a now-paywalled Vanity Fair article:

> The N.S.A. at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the N.S.A.’s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail. I directly challenge the N.S.A. to deny that I contacted N.S.A. oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the N.S.A.].

IIRC, Federal government contractors received approximately zero real protections under whistleblower law back in 2014.

When Daniel Ellsberg is publicly saying that Snowden did things the right way, and that had Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 2014, he would have done it in much the same way Snowden did, you should strongly consider the possibility that the official channels that went disused were ignored for very good reasons.

> I used to sympathize with ...Assange...

If you're talking about Wikileaks, then the objective of Wikileaks was to spread secrets that were verified to be reasonably genuine (and generally harmless to human life if revealed) as far and wide as possible. Wikileaks' mission meant that it just wouldn't be using Federal whistleblower channels for its reporting.

[0] <https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/08/snowden-says-nsa-is-lyin...>

[booleandilemma]

Somewhere our beloved leaders can't arrest him and send him to a CIA black site for the rest of his life.