The Glade 4.0

Surprised there is no topic about him on here.

Your thoughts on the situation?

Hero.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Traitor

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In time, this too shall pass.

I wouldn't fundamentally have a problem with what he did - since the NSA activity is actually a danger to liberty - and he should, theoretically have whistleblower protection, but doesn't because its a court authorizing what's going on. However he... went to Hong Kong, which is essentialyl going to China. China is definitely an enemy state when it comes to cyber issues. There is something else going on here.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Much more nuanced than a binary hero/traitor choice, but of the two, I definitely come down on the "hero" side.

I'm no political dissident by any stretch of the imagination. But my God -- someone has to call out Uncle Sam when they pull stupid **** like this.

A Hero guilty of violations of the Espionage Act.

Certainly not a Traitor, as that has pretty specific definitions.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The affair has convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I will live to see the day when criticism of the United States Federal Government not legally permitted. It is too late to change things. The Cold War is over, and as it turned out, the Communists won.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

He's going to china, Russia, Venezuela. It looks suspicious. If he had stayed in this country and faced the consequences of his actions that would be heroic.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well, rest assured that you're wrong, no matter how fashionable and cool it may seem. This is one minor threat to liberty, and its been fully exposed. That's how things are supposed to work.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As Farsky says, more nuanced than Hero/Traitor, but he's definitely not on the hero side.

Hero and Traitor are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The government has done a fantastic job of making people who do things they don't like into criminals.

Hero. Even if he tells China EVERYTHING he knows about NSA operations (which I don't believe he will - or tell them anything they don't already know) the good done by his actions far outstrips any possible harm.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

There may be specific definitions for traitorous acts to qualify for criminal prosecution, but the guy betrayed the trust he undoubtedly agreed to hold when he took the job and got the clearance. That qualifies him as a traitor as the word is commonly understood to mean.

I have no love for the governments acts Snowden blew the whistle on, but they're not going to stop because of his disclosures. I can only see the government investing in greater technical capabilities (and strong-arming ISP's and infrastructure hw/sw providers) to make up for the ground lost because of the leak.

If the government can do it (technically), it will. That's pretty much a given. The trick is to keep them from benefiting from it, and as long as it is legally constrained so it can't use the information it obtains to prosecute folks, that's about as much I'd realistically hope for.

Young folks are abandoning their dedication to their nations, and instead, dedicating themselves to the ideals of the internet. The way I see it though, the internet embodies the principles of anarchy, and I don't think these young folks understand what that really means.

Blowing the whistle in the US because of the perceived loss of freedom and heading to China and Russia for relief? What the **** is wrong with Snowden? He's an idiot.

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In time, this too shall pass.

China already knows. I doubt he'd have anything to tell them.

He felt strongly about what was happening and did something about. Very brave, but it won't make a difference. Americans don't care. IMO, we deserve whatever we get.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bingo.

So I guess my question is not whether he broke the law but whether what he did was morally (or whatever your preferred label is) right or wrong? I believe it was the right thing to do.

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That's rather tautological. The government doesn't like rapists, murderers, bank robbers, horse thieves, people that bilk old ladies out of their money, or pirates either, and does a very good job of making them into criminals as well.

People that have a responsibility to protect classified information and intentionally fail to do so should be criminals. However, that principle also should not allow the government to hide programs like this one behind a veil of secrecy, then use the law to prosecute the whistleblower. This is clearly a case of whistleblowing (ignoring, for the moment, his interest in China and Russia), but the problem is that since the program was authorized by a court, it doesn't seem to be protected under normal whistleblower protections.

The real problem here is that we have a secret court in the first place. That would appear to violate the prohibition on "public trials" which, even though it doesn't specifically refer to the matters that come before the FISA court, implies that that actions of the court ought to be visible to the public.

This guy is not a hero; he's a whistleblower, and his actions are worthy of praise in that respect, but he casts real suspicion on himself by not staying to face the music and continue to draw public attention to the issue, or at least by going to a friendly foreign country that might be inclined to grant asylum.

He's a distinct contrast to Bradly Manning who was a traitor in every way except the most technical legal sense, and simply just vomited information onto the internet wholesale out of disgruntlement, then tried to pretend to be taking a moral stand, when all he really revealed was "holy ****, people sometimes get shot up by attack helicopters when there's a war on."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I agree that going to China, Russia, etc. was stupid and wrong. That said, if instead of fleeing he had simply turned himself in for prosecution after blowing the whistle, would you still consider his actions traitorous, Taskiss? In other words, is it the post hoc involvement of Russia & China that suggests "traitor" to you, or is the fact that he leaked classified info to the press sufficient in and of itself? I ask because I've always thought the common understanding of the word "traitor" involved betraying your country to its enemies, which strikes me as fundamentally different than violating the terms of your security clearance to inform the people of your own country about government wrong-doing.

The fact that the initial whistleblowing obviously isn't traitorous doesn't mean that later actions necessarily aren't just because of their post hoc nature. Obviously they aren't traitorous legally, because neither China nor Russia is an "enemy" nation officially, they just aren't "allies" (they're "friends", but almost every nation is a "friend"; the word means practically nothing in international relations).

Hypothetically, he could be in Russia divulging all sorts of technical information that has nothing whatsoever to do with the wiretapping program in question. That isn't necessarily the case, but its suspicious that he has other motivations because he chose these countries to make his escape.

In particular, it makes me wonder if one of these countries somehow blackmailed him into making this revelation knowing it would embarass the NSA and the government in general, and then demanded that he flee there in order to get more information from him. Blackmail has always been a major page in the Russian espionage playbook.

Note - if he (hypothetically) were blackmailed, and we were somehow able to learn that, that wouldn't change the fact that its good that we learned about this wiretapping program but it certainly would change the status of Snowden, and it would also put us on notice that Russia or China was up to this sort of thing.

It also would raise the question of whether that other country wanted specific information revealed, but not other information in order to make the program appear different than it was. Again, this is speculation based on the destinations he chose, but it is the sort of ploy I would use against a nation to embarass them using their own information. You could selectively reveal certain classified information, and then make them chose between the cost of that revelation and having to reveal yet more information that they don't want to in order to inform the public of the whole story.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A betrayer of some trust or confidence is a traitor. Running away from the consequences of your acts makes you a coward. Tugging on Superman's cape makes you an idiot.

To some degree, Snowden is all of these. Now we can go round and round about to what degree he falls in these categories, but I don't think there's any question that he does fall in these categories.

Now, is he a hero? I don't think so. To be a hero, someone needs to selflessly help some folks. I don't see how his actions helped anyone in any material way whatsoever, and to be selfless you have to do something without a concern for yourself. Running away shows pretty much concern for oneself...

If he had gone to the press with his info and stood tall against the repercussions of his acts, I'd say he could fall in the category of hero, just based on his intention to do what he THOUGHT might help.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Fair enough, but to whom did he owe a duty of trust and confidence - the government or the people? When debating whether someone is a traitor to their country, the distinction is important. If the government is doing something illegal/unconstitutional, there's a very strong case to be made that not blowing the whistle to the public would be the real betrayal. By way of analogy, I'm a lawyer with duties of trust and confidentiality to both my firm and its clients. Nevertheless, if I discover that my firm is cheating a client, my ethical obligation is clearly to inform the client, not cover for the firm. My duty to the client trumps my duty to the firm. Shouldn't the same be true for government employees vis-a-vis informing the public of government wrongdoing?

No, contractors take no oath to support the constitution. They take an oath that they won't disclose any information that they might come across in the pursuit of their contractually agreed upon duties.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The American American Government has a much narrower definition of treason. While we aren't currently at War with China or Russia it is arguable that he is has given "aid and comfort" to our enemies by giving them information. When he did this, he crossed a line. It doesn't negate his heroism in coming forward, but it does diminish it.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

At the same time Dave if you ran off and violated the trust of your clients and firm to some third party, you'd be disbarred at best, right?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Um, I'd question it. And I'm sure others would. Therefore, there's a question of if he falls into those categories.

Traitor means traitor. It's a high crime. It has a specific definition. Snowden is not one.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine