[egocodedinsol]

booyaa00: I think it's also funny that some people are under the delusion that sites like this and reddit, are actually controlled by the 'voters', and that everyone has the same power. They're not. They're controlled by editors who will place items where they want to. For me, the worst part of hacker news is the silent banning if you are critical of any YC funded startup. Censorship is ugly, but it happens routinely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6807033

I appreciate the courage it takes to make an unpopular comment. That said, given your interpretation of HN (however accurate) you might express a little caution in calling for the censorship of a newspaper reporting extraordinary information.

[booyaa00]

No. It's totally different.

This is not about censorship. Newspapers can say what the hell they want. Unless they obtained that information via illegal means - which The Guardian did.

They are absolutely the same as the phone hacking papers.

[grey-area]

They are absolutely the same as the phone hacking papers.

No, they are not.

Here's why:

Voicemail hacking - journalists directly hired and instructed investigators to hack voicemail of celebrities and murder victims in order to print salacious stories and earn money, they also paid off police and other public servants to obtain information. They did this to sell newspapers (and for that reason alone) - no other defence could be given for their actions.

Snowden's disclosures - journalists received a story and documents to back it up from Snowden, they did not solicit and pay for the information, and published only those stories which they felt were in the public interest. They informed the public of a major scandal, and potentially illegal actions on the part of the authorities (actions which the spies tried to have legalised retrospectively).

That's the job of the fourth estate - holding the government accountable, keeping them honest, and informing the public. That's why we have a public interest defence (at least in the UK), or a 1st amendment (in the US).

Now you might argue that Snowden broke the law, I'd absolutely agree he did, but some laws are bad laws, and sometimes to fight an unjust system you must break the law - examples from history are legion of people fighting unjust laws who in retrospect are seen as heroes - I suspect Snowden will be amongst them, but arguing over the legality of his actions is a distraction from the to me more important questions of a free press and how we can restrain a government which aspires to know everything about every one of us.

[jblow]

I would be careful with putting so much emphasis on legality. The fact is that there are so many laws, and some of them are so weird and convoluted, and nobody really understands them all; pretty much everyone does several illegal things every day without even realizing it:

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Under these kinds of conditions, if someone in an appropriate branch of government wants to nail you for any reason, they can. Especially now that widespread spying makes it much easier to identify specific transgressions.

So I am not so sure why you would take such a hard line on legality when in fact such a stance is just waiting to come back and bite you (and everyone).

... In fact, now it is the government's position that there are SECRET LAWS that you can be violating but not even know why you are violating them; they can arrest you and not tell you exactly why they arrested you, because the reason is secret. How are you supposed to engage in strictly legal behavior when you don't even know what is legal and what is illegal?

[csandreasen]

Can you provide a citation regarding any of these secret laws that I could be arrested for, or show any example of people being arrested and tried for violating secret laws? Or was all of this done in secret?

The only secret "laws" that I've seen come out of the whole Snowden affair were FISC opinions dictating how the NSA can and cannot act with regards to existing public laws.

[jblow]

Are you kidding? This is well known and the administration even admits it.

For example:

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/27-2