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Why isnt Snowden viewed as a hero
- Thread starter fireflame
- Start date
Snowden is a hero, no doubt. He's not exactly perfect, but frankly I don't blame him for what he did, considering how terribly the US treats whistleblowers.
The amount of bullshit and misinformation being peddled by haters in this thread is eye-rolling.
The amount of bullshit and misinformation being peddled by haters in this thread is eye-rolling.
His actions were for the greater good they exposed mass, illegal surveillance. He has not personally benefited from his actions and I wouldn't want to be put in prison til the end of my days either.
If you're someone who puts the two in the same sentence with the thinking their actions and motivations were similar you're probably a fucking idiot.
It wasn't on GAF neither. It is a complicated subject, but I don't believe Snowden is simply some American hero.
Criminal: He broke the law.
Traitor: He gave out classified US Intelligence information
Coward: He ran to Russia to hide.
And for what? He didn't actually blow a whistle on anything.
if ur a real martyr you would spend the rest of your life in ADX florence for exposing injustice in the US government with full knowledge that the people responsible would never be held accountable
You seem to have missed a claim there. Traitor is rather interesting as well. I guess he betrayed the state in showing its own betrayal of the people. I know what side I'd prefer.
This site is a broad tent, but the majority are centre right and thus the conversation will tend to be split on lots of issues.
It honestly isn't complicated though unless your main way to evaluate the issue is merely to play tribalism with states. That or you think people should accept unjust punishment which is absurd.
Of course it does haha.
i understand what you're stabbing at, but that's really not true. there is a big difference between speculating that something is happening and knowing for certain that it is happening, and to what extent. do you really believe that sane, down to earth americans believed that the government was recording all their phone calls, that they could activate the camera in your cell phone at any time and observe your actions, that they compiled and collected all this information with no justification? i certainly did not believe that, and before snowden that was some X-Files level paranoia. but it was FUCKING TRUE.
That is not what was happening. The NSA was not transcribing the actual phone calls and conversations of everyone. Nor were they activating cameras in phones. That is just not true.
Recording calls does not mean listening to the actual conversation, but logging the fact that a call was made.
Recording calls does not mean listening to the actual conversation, but logging the fact that a call was made.
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People make mistakes. And it's not that far off from the Truth. Hillary would have been a good president, but she would be very much influenced by large banks. Compared to Trump that's fantastic.
As time goes on, this is more and more becoming my feeling. Nothing has changed. I can't help but feel that part of that is due to the sheer amount of noise (much of it intentional, I'm sure) in politics at the moment that distracts from real issues.
One is interpretation of facts. It's about how you judge something that happened. The other is baseless assumption about what happened.
So no, it doesn't really fit better.
Well because he is in Russia and defected. He is giving them information. Which is pretty bad.
Also his lawyer in Russia is Anatoly Kucherena, who also represented the Viktor Yanukovych. Who was the ex president of the Ukraine and had close ties to Putin.
So for some reason, during his tenure at the NSA or CIA or being a contractor, he was socially manipulated and became stupid.
Also his lawyer in Russia is Anatoly Kucherena, who also represented the Viktor Yanukovych. Who was the ex president of the Ukraine and had close ties to Putin.
So for some reason, during his tenure at the NSA or CIA or being a contractor, he was socially manipulated and became stupid.
If you truly believe any of this then at the very, very least you should withdraw every cent you have from your bank, since essentially your finances are online whether you have online banking or not.
My guess is you haven't done this.
Snowden is a nutcase.
You don't think every other country isn't doing the same shit to their citizens.
This this this. Everyone needs to read all of this. Snowden's a huge nra, alt right moron that now puppets for Putin. Fuck him. Y'all being duped by Snowden and Putin, just like WikiLeaks, in thinking he was anything noble or heroic.
Just setting aside the obvious fact some countries simply don't have the capacity to spy on their citizens in a similar manner, no. Even in countries with the technical skill to pull it off they won't bother even considering it because their geopolitics doesn't make them seriously consider having internal surveillance like this. The exception to this are countries without big ambitions but are under constant threat of a country that wants regional or global control like Taiwan.
IDK how people are jumping thru mental hoops over this. It's that simple. Jesus.
Thats not what the article says lol. It says he was hoping Obama would actually change things.
"He should have stayed and let himself get imprisoned for the rest of his life, that's what a true hero would have done!"
Also, think of what he did what you want, but these "He's a russian spy!!!"-posts are basicaly 1:1 copies of everything every single Republican screamed in every microphone for years now, without evidence. The reason he lives in Russia now is because he can't live anywhere else. The reason Russia accepted him was to embarass the US on the world stage.
The fact that he made an actual difference is also undeniable, even source inside US' intelligence agree with that:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/04/edward-snowden-people-still-powerless-but-aware
And as a European I especially am thankful for him exposing the way any Non-American was basically free game for the US, leading to the german government openly going to bat with the US for spying so aggressively and without any control mechanisms in this country.
I agree with this, even though I strongly dislike and wouldn't use the "hero" moniker. Throwing Snowden and Assange in the same bucked is completely silly.
Also, think of what he did what you want, but these "He's a russian spy!!!"-posts are basicaly 1:1 copies of everything every single Republican screamed in every microphone for years now, without evidence. The reason he lives in Russia now is because he can't live anywhere else. The reason Russia accepted him was to embarass the US on the world stage.
The fact that he made an actual difference is also undeniable, even source inside US' intelligence agree with that:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/04/edward-snowden-people-still-powerless-but-aware
And as a European I especially am thankful for him exposing the way any Non-American was basically free game for the US, leading to the german government openly going to bat with the US for spying so aggressively and without any control mechanisms in this country.
I agree with this, even though I strongly dislike and wouldn't use the "hero" moniker. Throwing Snowden and Assange in the same bucked is completely silly.
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Reading about Snowden's early internet postings on this thread, I can't say I agree with his world view but that doesn't mean his revelations were driven by an ulterior motive to destabilize Obama or the US. They are an essential piece of truth which the public needed to know about. It's one thing to frivolously assume you're being spied on all the time but completely different to have hard evidence that it's true. What's been disappointing is the lack of interest by the general public about government surveillance or digital privacy in general. Even with private companies handling of data like Facebook and Google, people's continued laissez faire attitudes and lack of self regulation of usage habits meant governments had to step in (GDPR), which to be fair I think they should be doing and should have done a while ago. But when the government itself is also compromised how does once trust them to be honest in their oversight? We're in a weird position where private companies are both the champions of privacy (end to end encryption) and biggest abusers of personal data (FB and Cambridge Analytica). We're in a bit of a quandary here because users have little alternatives to effectively combat such behaviour when competitors are almost non-existent. The internet is no longer what it was first envisioned to be, an open democratic distributed platform to share information. Now most information and usage is consolidated and stems from a few CDNs and content/service providers. With this comes aggregation of information on users, something which was previously distributed across different providers and difficult to correlate together. There are some pros to this but the realisation of the cons can have dire consequences.
Coming back to if Snowden is a hero. All I can say is I do think there was value in his findings and leaks. And I don't begrudge him for fleeing the US.
Coming back to if Snowden is a hero. All I can say is I do think there was value in his findings and leaks. And I don't begrudge him for fleeing the US.
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He exposed a lot of nasty shit that the USA is doing to its citizens. Regardless of what he did later, that was a heroic move.
He took a job in the intelligence community under false pretenses to steal classified documents and endanger the lives of his fellow citizens. A better question is why isn't he in jail on trial for treason. Oh right, because he's also a coward who fled to a foreign adversary instead of answering for his crimes.
Snowden did a good thing in revealing clandestine spying on Americans but the unfortunate side effect was to massively increase people's distrust of American intelligence agencies. In a sense that may be a good thing up to a point but it's made way easier to convince people of a "deep state" conspiracy. And weakening people's faith in institutions is how you get people to accept other forms of government. Hard to say if this was a planned consequence or not.
I think Snowden now is just a sock puppet. Him sitting in Russia wanting to protect journalist freedoms is just laughable. He wants to protect journalists but he has a sit down with Putin who kills journalists is a total propaganda piece. He's either oblivious to this or he simply he has no choice and either one is a no no in my book.
To me it's between what he did and what he's doing now, where I can't call him a hero.
Sownden is definitely a hero. As for him running... LOL. Have you guys seen what Obama does to people?
Also no to this post. He calls himself a patriot. Thats false. You cant claim you are a patriot of America and flee to a foreign adversary because you afraid you would end up in jail. Saying that "It was his only option" is giving him a pass. He would not have been subject to torture like Manning and probably would have been pardoned. Now however a pardon wont every be on the table as he is probably feeding information to Putin and his cronies at the FSB. He is probably doing more harm than good behind the scenes.
If he was really brave, he would have stayed in the USA and face the consequences like a whistleblower should. Thats not what happened. It was a coward move.
It's a good thing to distrust American intelligence agencies, do you see what they do to their own people?
People keep saying stuff like this but don't actually argue for it. It's just telling people sit down and take whatever the state gives you, because that's correct for some reason.
It's also ignoring the extremely long history of people doing stuff like this. You're conflaiting the state with people ruled by the state, as ever that's nonsense.
Americans and Russians aren't enemies, the American state and Russian state are.
I'd say that's stupid not brave. This kind of thinking is just small c conservatism.
I doubt he released anything other spy agencies didn't already know. Probably a bit reckless and Greenwalkd apparently isn't the nicest or trust worthy person he could have shared with. Perhaps he made criminals and what not a bit more savvy which makes the authorities jobs harder. I think overall he showed what many people already suspected, not just tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.
I really don't know enough about it.
I really don't know enough about it.
But when you have a compromised president committed crimes you are more likely to believe there's a deep state conspiracy against him, kind of like believing they fucked up thinking Saddam had WMDs.
You see where this is going?
Not like he had any valid option then to flee to China or Russia. If I would leak those kind of documents I would also flee to China or Russia given US influence Is minimal in those countries.