You've made a few false statements, so lets go through them to keep the record clean.
> He leaked top secret information
True, however it was detailing criminal behaviour and projects that were designed with criminal intent. The Government was not allowed to be running those programs as dragnet surveillance is against the constitution.
> fled to america's worst enemy Russia
False, there is ample evidence to support the fact that he was travelling somewhere else and was unable to continue passed Russia. Where he has decided to settle.
> His revelations are not as shocking to the public as they are to tech people.
True, Which is unfortunate, the tech industry taking notice has had positive impacts, like the taps that were placed on google datacenters being less effective due to TLS being deployed between all services inside google. A very serious undertaking. It also pushed us to create new TLS suites (TLS 1.3) with this in mind and was at least partially responsible for LetsEncrypts existence. So, despite the public taking less care than they should have; it has been for their benefit.
> The journalists he went to were not american.
Laura Poitras is not American? Glenn Greenwald is not American?
> If he indeed exhausted legal options to report his findings he should have made his case in a US court.
How did that go for William Binney? I'm fairly certain you never heard of him or his revelations.
I think the point you've missed is that NSA is above oversight. It's "Enemy of the State" but.. actually, it's exactly like that.
> but defecting to Russia makes him an enemy, not a hero
This is so extremely childish that I am at a loss at how to argue this.
He is in Russia, by the US's own doing, there is a lot of evidence to support that he preferred to be elsewhere. If the only thing you have to smear him on is the fact that he's in an enemy country then sir: you've missed the point. He was always going to end up in an enemy country if he was going to be safe from the US's agents.
Assange was in an embassy in London and there was still discussion in the intelligence community (up to the president) on whether they should assassinate him. In an allied country, in a fucking embassy.
Indefensible.
----
You're also making a cardinal sin, (as am I by responding to you).
If a crackhead gives you a video tape of your child being raped by the local priest, you don't say that the crackhead is a crackhead and thus ignore the video tape.
You fucking use the videotape to go to the police.
This is not about how much integrity Snowden has, that's completely irrelevant. He shows that the NSA broke the law and knowingly lied to congress. This is absolutely not open for debate, it's a plain and simple fact, and yet we sit and bicker about how Snowden just "isn't american enough" and how "it's nice for our enemies". -- No. It's nice for our enemies because our governments are doing things they shouldn't be. Not holding them to account is not going to make our governments any better.
> True, however it was detailing criminal behaviour and projects that were designed with criminal intent. The Government was not allowed to be running those programs as dragnet surveillance is against the constitution
The patriot act is also unconstitutional yet it nearly unanimously gets reauthorized. One could argue the NSA spying was merely a tool in support if that. The government gets authority from the people, the people authorized this. And if it is criminal behavior, what crime was violated? The DoJ signed off on NSA spying telling them it is not a crime. Proper legal authorization was obtained from both legislative and executive branches of the government and there was popular support for it.
> False, there is ample evidence to support the fact that he was travelling somewhere else and was unable to continue passed Russia. Where he has decided to settle.
I did not speak about his initial intention but his eventual decision. He knew the implications of settling for moscow. Working in intel, he knew better than most people exactly why Russia welcomed him, it was to cause harm to the US and he became complicit.
> Laura Poitras is not American? Glenn Greenwald is not American?
Fair enough. But I meant theguardian and der spiegel FWIW.
> How did that go for William Binney? I'm fairly certain you never heard of him or his revelations.
> I think the point you've missed is that NSA is above oversight. It's "Enemy of the State" but.. actually, it's exactly like that.
I think you missed the fact that the US is a democracy. The NSA has plenty of oversight. DoJ authorization is oversight, the whitehouse being aware is oversight, the intel oversight committee being aware is literally oversight. They are not above oversight, oversight just meant sacrificing liberty for little security. That is where oversight led to. Did Snowden not know about binney? The thing both you and him wrongly presume is that the NSA or congress were contradicting the american people, that is not the case.
> This is so extremely childish that I am at a loss at how to argue this.
> He is in Russia, by the US's own doing, there is a lot of evidence to support that he preferred to be elsewhere. If the only thing you have to smear him on is the fact that he's in an enemy country then sir: you've missed the point. He was always going to end up in an enemy country if he was going to be safe from the US's agents.
> Assange was in an embassy in London and there was still discussion in the intelligence community (up to the president) on whether they should assassinate him. In an allied country, in a fucking embassy.
> Indefensible.
It doesn't matter what he preferred, he went to the enemy in the end willingly. The US did not force him to settle in Russia, nor was he forced to leak any information. Fleeing a country to avoid criminal penalty is called being a fugitive. Working for a spy agency and settling in the enemy's capital being used as a propaganda piece by them is called defecting! "If he was going to be safe from the US agents" give me a break, his name was globally infamous, do you think he will be assasinated? Do you think the CIA cannot assasinate him in Moscow? He was fearing being arrested and facing legal consequence in the US, the laws of the people of the US!he fled because he knew what he did was illegal not because spies will kill him anywhere else. He saw it fir that benefiting a US enemy is worth letting the american people know something they already authorized when they tolerated the patriot act and have been doing so for two different administrations at that point!
I would like citations on the government discussing assasinating assange, but even then assange is not American. If snowden flies back to DC today, do you actually believe he will get assainated? To what end? Wouldn't it be better to just lock him up?
Had he stayed, his fate would have been similar to reality winner: 5-10years in prison. He fled to avoid that, if he really did everything lawfully he had nothing to fear.
> If a crackhead gives you a video tape of your child being raped by the local priest, you don't say that the crackhead is a crackhead and thus ignore the video tape.
> You fucking use the videotape to go to the police.
I agree with your analogy. What you keep missing is that the government is the crackhead in this situation and snowden is the other thing (i won't use something horrible like that even in an analogy). His betrayal, and decision to avoid legal consequence made him a fugitive defector. For the american people, he betrayed them and the government did what was authorized by them to stop terrorists or whatever boogeyman.
In a democracy, nothing trumps the will of the people. If reality was such that the american people did not expect their government to do whatever it took, including sacrificing civil liberties and privacy of americans to stop the next 9/11(despite success/failure of their attempt), and/or if Snowden's revelations were things congress oversight, the DoJ or the whitehouse were not aware if then it would indeed have risen to a very serious level of "rogue agency breaking laws" scandal, but that wasn't the case. Even from snowden's perspective, he raised his concerns to the NSA ombudsman and every other internal means of raising the alarm. He presumed the NSA was acting on its own volition or that congress was not aware (he could have notified the whitehouse or members of congress instead of the press).
> You fucking use the videotape to go to the police.
Yeah, not the press and if the police were compicit you make your case in court and tell the press
> This is not about how much integrity Snowden has, that's completely irrelevant.
I agree. But he did know how moscow will benefit from his presence there. He chose to aid a foreign enemy to expose a domestic one (turns out the domestic enemy was just the gov doing what people wanted).
If a law was broken, it was the entire executive branch, not just the NSA, spanning 3 (now 5) administrations that have been arguably breaking the law. EO12333 and the patriot act were known to the people. The DoJ authorized that mere collection is fine, so long as when a human looks at the information a foreign entiry was associated with the communication.
> This is absolutely not open for debate
Who was prosecuted for breaking the law then?
> it's a plain and simple fact
Absolutley nothing argued as a matter of breaking the law is a plain and simple fact. Just about any law, including murder can be violated in the name of self-defense or national security. Everything leaked by snowden was approved by everyone in the executive branch that should have had to approve it. So bush and obama broke the law in your opinion but whether not their national security defense was lawful, that is what FISA court is for as is the supreme court who are ok with FISA court.
> It's nice for our enemies because our governments are doing things they shouldn't be. Not holding them to account is not going to make our governments any better
If you get anything from this, get this one thing: it doesn't matter how shitty our government gets, the american people will never be ok with aiding a foreign enemy to acheive that goal. Even if the US were to turn into a totalitarian fascist regime, I would rather have that than aid terrorists or Russians in their efforts against us. We live in a time where a major political party is cozying up to Russians who we are fighting a proxy war against, so this is even more true today than ever before. You overestimate how serious if a thing it is in the minds of americans when the government spies on them compared to a foreign enemy that is working hard to destroy their country and way of life.
A foreign enemy is an entity against whom we send our sons and daughters to die just to make small gains at defeating that enemy. Use that perspective when evaluating snowden's presence there as a voice of propaganda against the US. Also consider that lawful or not, the NSA's surveillance was intended on catching foreign enemies and their actions were largley in accordance with the expectation of most americans.
Had he gone to any other country like ecuador as he originally supposedly intended or had the american public not already made a collective decision to sacrifice privacy and liberties for security then I would be agreeing with you on most things. But that just isn't reality.
> The government gets authority from the people, the people authorized this.
But it doesn't actually work that way. People don't specifically vote for the politicians that are currently in the office over this particular issue - they vote on their entire platform, and if we we're being honest, they mostly vote on the few "wedge issues" that are particularly prominent in mass media at the time the election happens. In the past two decades, it's also increasingly "voting against" the other guys as opposed to voting for someone.
The end result is that, while those elected certainly claim to have a popular mandate on the basis that they won the election, it's very misleading in practice in most cases.
I think the major difference is that I believe that allowing a branch of government to break laws and lie to our democratically elected leaders is anti-democratic and totalitarian, thus anti-American.
I agree that I don't like it but can anything with the support of the plurality if americans by definition be anti-american? Maybe anti-democratic since the proper way is a constitutional amendment, but even that is a stretch since by 2012 three election cycles tolerated compromising liberty for security and justified violating the constitution because of national security, and snowden's leak on an election year wasn't used by republicans in their effort to retake congress or by trump when he ran against hillary. It can be argued that as unfortunate as it is, the apathy if the american people and their disproportional fear of terrorism that resulted in the NSA's surveillance was very much democratic and american.
Keep in mind that this same democracy and sentiment had led to japanese internment camps in WW2 and even worse in other situations.
I have a feeling history will rule in favor of snowden but I just wish he moved to a country not hostile to the US. Especially these days when Russians themselves are fleeing Russia, it's hard to defend Snowden. His Moscow relationship undermined whatever intention he had to bring change to the NSA.
The bigger problem is that he was trying to change a symptom, while ignoring the disease, that is the sentiment of the american people. I fear it would take the abuse of the NSA's powers against the american people at scale by some tyrant to fix the root cause.
> He leaked top secret information
True, however it was detailing criminal behaviour and projects that were designed with criminal intent. The Government was not allowed to be running those programs as dragnet surveillance is against the constitution.
> fled to america's worst enemy Russia
False, there is ample evidence to support the fact that he was travelling somewhere else and was unable to continue passed Russia. Where he has decided to settle.
> His revelations are not as shocking to the public as they are to tech people.
True, Which is unfortunate, the tech industry taking notice has had positive impacts, like the taps that were placed on google datacenters being less effective due to TLS being deployed between all services inside google. A very serious undertaking. It also pushed us to create new TLS suites (TLS 1.3) with this in mind and was at least partially responsible for LetsEncrypts existence. So, despite the public taking less care than they should have; it has been for their benefit.
> The journalists he went to were not american.
Laura Poitras is not American? Glenn Greenwald is not American?
> If he indeed exhausted legal options to report his findings he should have made his case in a US court.
How did that go for William Binney? I'm fairly certain you never heard of him or his revelations.
I think the point you've missed is that NSA is above oversight. It's "Enemy of the State" but.. actually, it's exactly like that.
> but defecting to Russia makes him an enemy, not a hero
This is so extremely childish that I am at a loss at how to argue this.
He is in Russia, by the US's own doing, there is a lot of evidence to support that he preferred to be elsewhere. If the only thing you have to smear him on is the fact that he's in an enemy country then sir: you've missed the point. He was always going to end up in an enemy country if he was going to be safe from the US's agents.
Assange was in an embassy in London and there was still discussion in the intelligence community (up to the president) on whether they should assassinate him. In an allied country, in a fucking embassy.
Indefensible.
----
You're also making a cardinal sin, (as am I by responding to you).
If a crackhead gives you a video tape of your child being raped by the local priest, you don't say that the crackhead is a crackhead and thus ignore the video tape.
You fucking use the videotape to go to the police.
This is not about how much integrity Snowden has, that's completely irrelevant. He shows that the NSA broke the law and knowingly lied to congress. This is absolutely not open for debate, it's a plain and simple fact, and yet we sit and bicker about how Snowden just "isn't american enough" and how "it's nice for our enemies". -- No. It's nice for our enemies because our governments are doing things they shouldn't be. Not holding them to account is not going to make our governments any better.