View Full Version : Your opinion of Snowden?
Just wanted to see what people thought about him...
Read an article yesterday that was pretty good, and I plan on watching the movie on him soon.
I always felt he was, not a traitor, but disloyal, until I dove into the information that he revealed.
Now I am of the opinion he did what was right.
The first program to be revealed was PRISM, which allows for court-approved direct access to Americans' Google and Yahoo accounts, reported from both The Washington Post and The Guardian published one hour apart.[106][115][116] The Post's Barton Gellman was the first journalist to report on Snowden's documents.
Reports also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ.[115][118] The initial reports included details about NSA call database, Boundless Informant, and of a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans' phone records daily,[119] the surveillance of French citizens' phone and internet records, and those of "high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics."
XKeyscore, an analytical tool that allows for collection of "almost anything done on the internet," was described by The Guardian as a program that "shed light" on one of Snowden's most controversial statements: "I, sitting at my desk [could] wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email."[123]
It was revealed that the NSA was harvesting millions of email and instant messaging contact lists,[124] searching email content,[125] tracking and mapping the location of cell phones,[126] undermining attempts at encryption via Bullrun[127][128] and that the agency was using cookies to "piggyback" on the same tools used by internet advertisers "to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance."[129] The NSA was shown to be "secretly" tapping into Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from "hundreds of millions" of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program.[106][107]
[QUOTE]The NSA, the CIA and GCHQ spied on users of Second Life, Xbox Live and World of Warcraft, and attempted to recruit would-be informants from the sites, according to documents revealed in December 2013.[130][131] Leaked documents showed NSA agents also spied on their own "love interests," a practice NSA employees termed LOVEINT.[132][133] The NSA was shown to be tracking the online sexual activity of people they termed "radicalizers" in order to discredit them.[134] Following the revelation of "Black Pearl", a program targeting private networks, the NSA was accused of extending beyond its primary mission of national security. [B]The agency's intelligence-gathering operations had targeted, among others, oil giant Petrobras, Brazil's largest company.[135] The NSA and the GCHQ were also shown to be surveilling charities including UNICEF and M
Facepalm
07-06-2016, 09:09 AM
He's a traitor.
He's a traitor.
Elaborate... He's a traitor for exposing the US government of breaking federal law? If my company was doing something illegal, and I exposed them, does that make me a traitor as well?
I held the same opinion as you did until I learned the details of what he actually exposed. To me, he did the right thing in exposing government intrusion, which they weren't supposed to be doing.
Dresta
07-06-2016, 09:16 AM
He did the right thing, and now is basically an American refugee. How damning of America that this man had to go to Russia to avoid persecution for brining the illegal and unconstitutional behaviour of US Government Departments to light; i mean, how dare he!?!?!
Thorpesaurous
07-06-2016, 09:17 AM
He's Jamie Lannister.
Facepalm
07-06-2016, 09:25 AM
Elaborate... He's a traitor for exposing the US government of breaking federal law? If my company was doing something illegal, and I exposed them, does that make me a traitor as well?
I held the same opinion as you did until I learned the details of what he actually exposed. To me, he did the right thing in exposing government intrusion, which they weren't supposed to be doing.
I don't have issue with him whistleblowing on government intrusion. I have a HUGE issue with him just dumping everything he had onto the internet, exposing legitimate government secrets and compromising counter intelligence operations. To top that off he runs off to seek refuge in China and Russia, governments with much more oppressive records than the US. Who knows what other secrets he has given to them.
He is a hypocrite and traitor of the highest order. If he really believes he did nothing wrong then he needs to return and face a trial.
falc39
07-06-2016, 09:50 AM
No doubt in my mind that he did the right thing. True patriot. His revelations completely changed the trajectory of encryption and tech security for the better.
He has explained repeatedly over and over why he did certain actions yet people keep repeating the same stupid stuff. "Why didn't he go through other channels" "Why did he end up in Russia and China" "Why doesn't he come back for a fair trial" bla bla bla.
Dresta
07-06-2016, 10:18 AM
I don't have issue with him whistleblowing on government intrusion. I have a HUGE issue with him just dumping everything he had onto the internet, exposing legitimate government secrets and compromising counter intelligence operations. To top that off he runs off to seek refuge in China and Russia, governments with much more oppressive records than the US. Who knows what other secrets he has given to them.
He is a hypocrite and traitor of the highest order. If he really believes he did nothing wrong then he needs to return and face a trial.
This is some desperate apologetics for a government that is becoming out of control with power. That the Russian government is more oppressive than the American is debatable considering the American government:
1. Illegally engages in the mass surveillance of its citizens.
2. Bombs and invades countries it does not like, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
3. Helps to organise and encourage the illegal overthrow of governments it does not like.
4. Uses the slave labour of China to keep its citizens happy with cheap consumer products.
America does plenty of oppressing, though most of it is done abroad. The American government just has more frivolities to bestow on its subjects, and distract them from the sinister nature of their government. You also ignore why it had to be China or Russia: any other country would've been bullied by the US into extraditing him back.
sammichoffate
07-06-2016, 10:20 AM
He's a traitor.http://i.imgur.com/fbtys6h.jpg
highwhey
07-06-2016, 10:23 AM
He's Jamie Lannister.
Ha, nice comparison.
FillJackson
07-06-2016, 10:52 AM
Elaborate... He's a traitor for exposing the US government of breaking federal law? If my company was doing something illegal, and I exposed them, does that make me a traitor as well?
I held the same opinion as you did until I learned the details of what he actually exposed. To me, he did the right thing in exposing government intrusion, which they weren't supposed to be doing.
He didn't expose illegality, and he went waaaaaaay beyond the issue of collection of domestic metadata in what he stole and released. It's beyond a doubt he didn't fully understand the materials he stole. The legal theory behind the collection of metadata is based on the idea of a pen registry that's been legal since the 1970's and used in drug and RICO cases every day.
He's lied several times about what he did and didn't do.
He's lied about what he could and couldn't do at NSA specifically about what was legal and what was not. He said he had the authority to wiretap the president, a complete and utter lie.
He lied about the US capabilities and what the US was doing. Specifically he conflated what the US legally gathered on "non US persons" overseas with what they did domestically which was strictly limited by law and not carried out by the NSA. He lied or ignored about the minimization standards to protect privacy used by the NSA. The numbers of people actually targeted by the US both domestically and overseas is much, much smaller than initially understood.
He was not someone trained as a NSA analyst and either didn't understand the law and all the legal training they go through or completely ignored it. He exhibits a highly paranoid view quite often so maybe the law didn't matter to him. He often seems to argue there should be no intelligence activity at all.
The US government was not breaking Federal Law. There have been court cases pro and con about whether the law holds up. But the idea the NSA was a rogue agency is belied by tons of evidence of their concern for how to follow the law. Lots of the evidence of their screwups was provided by the NSA to the FISA court. The FISA court was setup as a reform and a check on US intelligence and still operates that way. The high rate of approval reflects the fact that the NSA understands FISA's requirements and works out these issues in consultation with them.
He specifically bargained with the Chinese and the Russians before he ever left Hong Kong. He stayed for a time in the Russian embassy. He gave the Chinese information on specific computers the US was monitoring.
He claimed to concerned about the US government's collection of US metadata, but he also argued against spying in and of itself, but he stole and disseminated tons of stuff that had nothing to do with that. He stole tons of stuff about foreign surveillance. For example, he exposed info about how Finland tries to spy on Russia. Why?
He lied about his efforts to reveal wrongdoing at the NSA. He claimed he had to steal this info and escape to Moscow because he was thwarted in his attempts to blow the whistle. Except he never did. He provided no evidence There is a single email where he asked a question about a slide used in a training. That's it.
The biggest specific evidence of wrongdoing turned out to be a list of people who might have been legally under surveillance in 2005-2007 and the Intercept tried to blow it into widespread surveillance of Muslims. And when folks looked into it, one of the guys with an Arab name was an atheist, one had a business with someone who was investigated for terrorism, etc. All fairly plausible reasons to be under surveillance.
He ****ed over his coworkers whose passwords he finagled out them and ****ed their careers. I suspect this part of his personality is no different than, say Aldrich Ames.
All this goes on his record even if you feel he started a good debate. I feel he and his comrades have poisoned that debate at the start. Remember folks thinking the Government was listening in on every iPhone because of something a PowerPoint slide said any of the other inane nonsense that was propounded? However, I also feel the reforms the NSA review panel recommended were reasonable. So he's probably got some good and bad and is not angel. Just like the rest of us.
falc39
07-06-2016, 11:07 AM
...
:roll:
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:roll:
:roll:
So much meltdown right here. No one is saying he is perfect and he isn't like the rest of us in any way. It's obvious that a world with snowden is a hundred times better than a world without. Sorry if it pains you that much.
StephHamann
07-06-2016, 11:18 AM
He's Jamie Lannister.
Is he ****ing his sister? :lebronamazed:
IcanzIIravor
07-06-2016, 11:33 AM
He did the right thing, and now is basically an American refugee. How damning of America that this man had to go to Russia to avoid persecution for brining the illegal and unconstitutional behaviour of US Government Departments to light; i mean, how dare he!?!?!
Incorrect. He is a traitor. If he had stopped at exposing the government spying on USA citizens without court orders then I would agree with you. Exposing our spying on non US citizens and handing over such information to foreign governments and individuals makes him the very definition of a traitor and not a heroic whistle-blower.
falc39
07-06-2016, 11:48 AM
Incorrect. He is a traitor. If he had stopped at exposing the government spying on USA citizens without court orders then I would agree with you. Exposing our spying on non US citizens and handing over such information to foreign governments and individuals makes him the very definition of a traitor and not a heroic whistle-blower.
He is a whistleblower. The reforms in government and changes in the tech community show that. You can argue he is also a traitor, but that doesn't diminish the good that was done. The good by far outweighs the bad here. If the government didn't have such a disastorous foreign policy and didn't spend a decade aggresively trying to erode civil liberties I would be more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Nanners
07-06-2016, 11:51 AM
a true patriot.
He did the right thing and got demonized for it. He's a patriot through and through in my book.
IcanzIIravor
07-06-2016, 12:01 PM
He is a whistleblower. The reforms in government and changes in the tech community show that. You can argue he is also a traitor, but that doesn't diminish the good that was done. The good by far outweighs the bad here. If the government didn't have such a disastorous foreign policy and didn't spend a decade aggresively trying to erode civil liberties I would be more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
No he is a traitor. If he had stopped at just exposing the spying of US citizens I'd be 100% with you on him being a heroic whistle blower. Blows my mind away that you think exposing out foreign intelligence gathering capabilities should be overlooked. I'm happy with the reforms within the USA, but I think you should look carefully into what else he exposed.
He specifically bargained with the Chinese and the Russians before he ever left Hong Kong. He stayed for a time in the Russian embassy. He gave the Chinese information on specific computers the US was monitoring.
He claimed to concerned about the US government's collection of US metadata, but he also argued against spying in and of itself, but he stole and disseminated tons of stuff that had nothing to do with that. He stole tons of stuff about foreign surveillance. For example, he exposed info about how Finland tries to spy on Russia. Why?
He lied about his efforts to reveal wrongdoing at the NSA. He claimed he had to steal this info and escape to Moscow because he was thwarted in his attempts to blow the whistle. Except he never did. He provided no evidence There is a single email where he asked a question about a slide used in a training. That's it.
The biggest specific evidence of wrongdoing turned out to be a list of people who might have been legally under surveillance in 2005-2007 and the Intercept tried to blow it into widespread surveillance of Muslims. And when folks looked into it, one of the guys with an Arab name was an atheist, one had a business with someone who was investigated for terrorism, etc. All fairly plausible reasons to be under surveillance.
He ****ed over his coworkers whose passwords he finagled out them and ****ed their careers. I suspect this part of his personality is no different than, say Aldrich Ames.
All this goes on his record even if you feel he started a good debate. I feel he and his comrades have poisoned that debate at the start. Remember folks thinking the Government was listening in on every iPhone because of something a PowerPoint slide said any of the other inane nonsense that was propounded? However, I also feel the reforms the NSA review panel recommended were reasonable. So he's probably got some good and bad and is not angel. Just like the rest of us.
And that's one side of it.
I read differently. They did, in fact, break the law. Spying on everyone to spy on someone is against the law.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/05/07/3656228/breaking-federal-appeals-court-rules-nsas-massive-surveillance-program-illegal/
A unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held on Thursday that the National Security Agency’s sweeping database of U.S. phone calls is not authorized by federal law.
The database, which the public learned about after Edward Snowden leaked a court order concerning the NSA’s surveillance activities in 2013, is truly breathtaking in its scope. Snowden leaked an order directing to telephone company Verizon to produce “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’’ relating to Verizon communications within the United States or between the United States and abroad,” and the federal government did not “seriously dispute” a claim that “all significant service providers in the United States are subject to similar orders.” Though the database does not include the actual content of people’s calls, the metadata held by the NSA does include “details about telephone calls, including, for example, the length of a call, the phone number from which the call was made, and the phone number called.”
According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans, and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts, that support the claim.[157]
Not only did they break the law, they lied about it.
In December 2013, upon learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the collection of U.S. phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden stated: "I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts ... today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many."[163]
In January 2014, Snowden said his "breaking point" was "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress."[49] This referred to testimony on March 12, 2013—three months after Snowden first sought to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald,[89] and nine months after the NSA says Snowden made his first illegal downloads during the summer of 2012[4]—in which Clapper denied to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA wittingly collects data on millions of Americans.
I do find it odd he was all about security then went and spilled the beans about everything the NSA was doing, but I am glad he did what he did.
Was it the proper channel? No, but at this point, it's 'he said/she said'.
Snowden said that, using "internal channels of dissent", he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns that the NSA programs were unconstitutional. An NSA spokeswoman responded, saying they had "not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's attention".[63] Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did.
"The NSA has records—they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks from me raising concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office. I did it in Fort Meade. I did it in Hawaii. And many, many of these individuals were shocked by these programs. They had never seen them themselves. And the ones who had, went, "You know, you're right. ... But if you say something about this, they're going to destroy you".[11]
Like I said, I won't agree that what he did was right, in the legal sense, but I can agree that it needed to be done. Also, while it's shitty he is/was trading secrets with China and/or Russia, since Obama more or less told him to go **** himself when he asked for a pardon, I'd probably do the same thing.
Especially if they are making my life nice and comfortable.
And safe.
falc39
07-06-2016, 12:25 PM
No he is a traitor. If he had stopped at just exposing the spying of US citizens I'd be 100% with you on him being a heroic whistle blower. Blows my mind away that you think exposing out foreign intelligence gathering capabilities should be overlooked. I'm happy with the reforms within the USA, but I think you should look carefully into what else he exposed.
Sorry, no sympathy here. I did read about what else was exposed. If the government doesn't like snowden for what he did, don't do wrong things in the first place. I'll take that trade-off every time.
Sorry, no sympathy here. I did read about what else was exposed. If the government doesn't like snowden for what he did, don't do wrong things in the first place. I'll take that trade-off every time.
That's how I feel...
You reap what you sow kinda deal.
Facepalm
07-06-2016, 12:32 PM
That's how I feel...
You reap what you sow kinda deal.
You were in the military. How do you feel about Snowden's leaks putting your brothers in arms in harm's way?
He's a traitor.
Dresta
07-06-2016, 12:35 PM
Incorrect. He is a traitor. If he had stopped at exposing the government spying on USA citizens without court orders then I would agree with you. Exposing our spying on non US citizens and handing over such information to foreign governments and individuals makes him the very definition of a traitor and not a heroic whistle-blower.
Yeah, my bad: exposing the US government's worldwide criminality is damned traitorous, of course it is--just like Stauffenberg was a traitor. The US Government has grossly betrayed its people by trying to eradicate the notion of privacy. So yes, he is a traitor in the eyes of the career criminals of Washington DC and the murky, opaque US intelligence services, which stopped serving the interests of the US people long ago. But he is a hero of the American Cause, and did a great service to the American people and the world.
Just goes to show that the US Government is on the side of barbarism and not civilisation.
Dresta
07-06-2016, 12:38 PM
You were in the military. How do you feel about Snowden's leaks putting your brothers in arms in harm's way?
He's a traitor.
That a patriotic military man is sympathetic to Snowden only goes to show what a despicable shill for power a person has to be to see Snowden solely as a "traitor"
KyrieTheFuture
07-06-2016, 02:09 PM
He's a hero and if the US wasn't so focused on planting his ass in prison, and probably death row, he wouldn't have had to run to our "enemies" even though Russia and China...aren't really our enemies. Dude isn't chilling in NK or Iran
You were in the military. How do you feel about Snowden's leaks putting your brothers in arms in harm's way?
He's a traitor.
See, I think he crossed the line with SOME of the information he divulged.
If he only released the parts detailing how the NSA has become Big Brother (literally), I'd have no reservations with my opinion of him.
I still stand by my stance that what he did was absolutely necessary.
Facepalm
07-06-2016, 02:42 PM
See, I think he crossed the line with SOME of the information he divulged.
If he only released the parts detailing how the NSA has become Big Brother (literally), I'd have no reservations with my opinion of him.
I still stand by my stance that what he did was absolutely necessary.
And that's where I stand. If the information he leaked was just the big brother stuff then fine, but he compromised national security with what he did.
And that's where I stand. If the information he leaked was just the big brother stuff then fine, but he compromised national security with what he did.
Which way do you lean then?
Facepalm
07-06-2016, 03:05 PM
Which way do you lean then?
I have no problem with him whistleblowing. In fact I would have applauded it if that's all he leaked.
I have a HUGE problem with him compromising national security to do so, compounded by the fact that he fled to Russia afterwards.
I have no problem with him whistleblowing. In fact I would have applauded it if that's all he leaked.
I have a HUGE problem with him compromising national security to do so, compounded by the fact that he fled to Russia afterwards.
I don't even have an issue with that. Where would you go? The US is not an option, or any country that has extradition agreements with the US.
Jasper
07-06-2016, 08:10 PM
I read Hayden's book , about closed doors CIA and NSA etc... in the Bush adm.
400 pages of boring reading , but the fact is , USA has to protect its citizens from anything....
Unfortunately this is our first line of defense.
Snowden to some degree was opening some peoples eye's to America , and at the same time Obama Like Snowden closed the door on protecting the people from terrorists....
As long as the government protects us, and not use the info on us to some how harm us individually ...
I am o.k. with the government , governing the people for the people.
I read Hayden's book , about closed doors CIA and NSA etc... in the Bush adm.
400 pages of boring reading , but the fact is , USA has to protect its citizens from anything....
Unfortunately this is our first line of defense.
Snowden to some degree was opening some peoples eye's to America , and at the same time Obama Like Snowden closed the door on protecting the people from terrorists....
As long as the government protects us, and not use the info on us to some how harm us individually ...
I am o.k. with the government , governing the people for the people.
I'm old with the government having nukes until they use one on me.
Obviously you're okay with being protected if there's no harm coming to you. The premise is, what happened if there COULD be harm coming to you? Because you voted for the wrong candidate? Or because you're sleeping with some guy's brother-in-law's wife? Or because you Googled something?
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