[sholain]

One cannot just release whatever one wants, and some of the docs should not have been released.

There were huge variations in the nature of the content that he released, and this is the problem with the narrative.

He's a 'whistle blower' and 'broke the law' at the same time.

A lot of people seem to have difficulty with that.

Edit: we need better privacy laws and transparency around a lot of things, that said, some state actors are going to need to be around for a long while yet. It's a complicated world, none of this is black and white, it's why we need vigilance.

[masfuerte]

I find it very strange that so many people are more exercised by the small crime of Snowden releasing this information than by the large crime of the federal government spying on us all.

[array_key_first]

It's not strange, it's purposeful. It's the same logic as "well George Floyd had a counterfeit 20!"

It's an extremely effective propaganda technique whereby you discredit the person(s) who were affected by injustice, while simultaneously shifting the narrative away from said injustice. It preys on the human minds simple morality reasoning skills - bad people don't do good things, and good people don't do bad things.

Of course, that's not how it works, and it's both. George Floyd maybe did counterfeit a twenty, and that's illegal. But is the punishment for that public execution? What motivation do people have to bring that up? No good motivations, in my mind.

[sholain]

A complete mischaracterization.

George Floyd ingested quite a lot of fentanyl, enough to die though it was inconclusive - it's a biological and medical reality that characterized the situation in a very real way.

Snowden released a lot of information that had nothing to do with 'whistle blowing' and enormously benefited very bad actors such such as China and Russia - it was a windfall for them, and destroyed years of work by Western intelligence agencies.

This was right after China had discovered and executed a handful of CIA personnel, whereupon it was very, very clear the possible repercussions of such a release.

His actions were inconsistent with those of someone interested only in whistle-blowing and or 'showing hypocrisy' on espionage; there are any number of ways to whistle-blow in a manner that does not result in the negative outcomes. Since he's smart enough to know better, it's rational to conclude the possibility of ulterior motives.

Russia's espionage and influence campaigns are having a severely negative effect on the political situation in the US and West in general, where they have deeply penetrated many nations security and political apparatus, especially Germany.

[lern_too_spel]

Snowden's documents revealed that the federal government wasn't "spying on us all," as had been feared but was in fact paring down domestic data collection and had only one illegal program left (phone metadata collection, which wasn't used for "spying") that was pared down and then shut down soon after. They did reveal a lot of Chinese targets, which Snowden unsuccessful used to try to parlay into Hong Kong asylum.

[sunaookami]

As the other commenter said, the crimes the NSA did/still does far outweight any "crimes" Snowden did. And whistleblowing is by definition illegal since you have to release confidential files. That's why functioning countries should have laws protecting whistleblowers.

[sholain]

Whistle-blowing is not illegal (in the US) that's what the laws are there for, though obviously it's dicey and depends on media portrayal, and those laws could stand to be reinforced.

The Abu Ghraib (Iraq prison scandal) whistle-blower was protected by the system even if some people were very upset.