Your opinion of Snowden?

[Nanners]

a true patriot.

[Rose]

He did the right thing and got demonized for it. He's a patriot through and through in my book.

[IcanzIIravor]

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.

[Draz]

An all time great.

[UK2K]

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/201...ogram-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]

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.

[UK2K]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[UK2K]

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]

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.

[UK2K]

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]

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.