Is Edward Snowden A Hero?

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by AlphaMan, Mar 10, 2014.

  1. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  2. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    The vast majority of data he took had no bearing on intelligence gathering on US citizens. His contractor worked for the DIA - that's military intelligence for the pentagon. That is what was publicly disclosed to journalists, but that is not what I am talking about when I say that Snowden's stolen data, in many cases hacked using his coworker's credentials and off their personal drives, was useful to the Russians in their later attacks on Western democracy.

    MI5 stated in 2015 that Russia and China had access to the 1.5 million documents Snowden had stolen, and had decrypted the vast majority of them. It's possible Snowden didn't give them to either nation directly (and it's possible he did), but that doesn't mean he isn't directly responsible for them having them. If he hadn't stolen the largest intelligence breach in world history, none of the rest of that chain happens.

    This wasn't necessary to whistleblow on US internal intelligence gathering. He took everything he could get his hands on, and it ended up in the hands of some of the worst actors out there.

    There were internal channels to follow that would have protect both Snowden and ensured that sources, means and methods weren't compromised.

    Even the British had to withdraw their spies and cut lose people they were dealing with due to Snowden's actions. They stated so openly.
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  3. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Snowden was there. If he felt he couldn’t trust those channels, who are you to say he should have?

    If those channels made it safe for Snowden or others to come forward, then the sources, means, and methods would not have been compromised either.
  4. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    There's no record he approached the IG for intelligence, or requested whistleblower protections. He claims he did the later, but will not provide the documentation he says he has on that score. It was requested 8 years ago.

    But Trump is going to show us his taxes any day now...

    And once again, there was absolutely no need for him to take every piece of intelligence he could get his hands on to prove his assertions about the US intelligence gathering on US citizens. The vast majority of what he took was not concerning that.

    He made that choice, he chose to flee, he chose to take those records with him. He could have returned to plead his case at trial whenever he wanted to. Hell, he could have left Russia for a non-extradition country. He instead chose to become a Russian citizen and defect.

    You seem to have no understanding of what personal integrity is at all.
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  5. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Wow. You stand here in front of God and everyone and vilify someone who exposed our government acting against the people and defend the agencies that acted against the people and have the audacity to say I have no understanding of personal integrity.

    You are laughable.

    You are an idiot.

    You keep on posting and showing us all what a fucking asshole you are.
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  6. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    LOL.

    I don't care about intentions, I care about outcomes.

    If all he did was reveal intelligence collection against the US citizenry and our allies then he'd be lionized uniformly.

    That's not all he did.

    What good he did is dwarfed by the evil he helped empower.

    And his intentions, whatever they were, matter very little next to that.

    And you are incredibly naive if you can't even consider the fact they may not have been pure as driven snow.
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  7. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Then you don’t care about personal integrity. [/discussion]
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  8. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    Why is anyone even worried about snowden anymore? Russia got one of it's top assets elected president and he has been playing show and tell with anyone who would pay him ever since.

    @Demiurge why dio you even care about snowden considering he could not be as good as Trump and company. What could snowden give that trump could not have? Why worry about a cog when you have the entire machine out there?

    The point just seems moot to me at this point.
  9. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Snowden is not a hero no matter how reality-impaired your lenses are. Unless of course you think it's a good idea for China or Russia to overtake the US as the world's leading power.

    Not that Russia has much chance of doing it . . .
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  10. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Why would it matter? How do you think your life would change if China or Russia is the superpower? Aside from you losing a cushy government job,
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  11. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    The road to hell is paved with what again? LOL.

    There's all sorts of christofascists that have good intentions. They just are too fucking stupid to know right from wrong, or understand the inevitable outcomes to those intentions.
  12. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    He remains a hero, having outed the massive nefarious spying program being conducted by the US. Having seen how they treat others in similar situations, the idea that he ought to return there for trial is ridiculous.

    Snowden is in Russia through no choice of his own. CIA-backed conspiracy theorising aside , there's no evidence that he has been giving them any information. And he applied for citizenship two years ago, having been trapped there. It's quite likely that Putin chose this moment to grant it to stick it to the US, given other events.

    As for his reluctance to openly criticise the Russian government, he has that in common with most denizens of despotic states. Any other course and both he and his family would be thrown to the wolves. So not heroic on that front, but in a difficult position.
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  13. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    The road to hell is paved with bad intentions as well. What’s your point? Integrity has EVERYTHING to do with intention.
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  14. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Welll, that’s a hell of an answer, @Lanzman. What’s the matter? Can’t verbalize an actual response? Is it because your life would change very little? You’d still have to get up every morning and go to work. You might get a bit of relief while your neighborhood is a war zone, but hey, it’s that’s what armies are for amiright?



    133A7340-02C9-42D6-A572-9F1D6CC74324.png
  15. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    My point is obvious and already stated - it's not enough to INTEND to have integrity, you actually have to act in a manner that fits within its framework.

    You think the man who has done more to empower Russian security services than any non-Russian in history is a man with integrity.

    Hell, the Russians openly admit that he directly provided them with classified information. Who says so? Frants Klintsovich, a member of their Duma, who is the deputy head of their defense and security committee.

    You guys live in a fantasy world. They aren't helping Snowden because he's a man of integrity. He's useful.

    And being useful to Putin is the opposite of integrity.
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  16. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Amazing how willing you are to believe Russian sources when it suits you. But that's not "the Russians", that's one Russian senator on one occasion, with an obvious reason to lie who also clarified that he was "speculating". :rolleyes:

    But of course, the translation got garbled - deliberately or otherwise - and it entered the US intelligence narrative. On such flimsly pretexts are their articles of faith based.
  17. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Yes, this sounds like 'no evidence.'

    A Home Office source told the newspaper that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not grant Snowden asylum for nothing.

    “His documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure and we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted,” the source said.

    A British intelligence source said Snowden had done “incalculable damage”.

    “In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to stop them being identified and killed,” the source was quoted as saying.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ck-snowden-files-report-idUSKBN0OT0XF20150614

    But hey, the guy who lives in Russia, has been granted citizenship there, and still runs a twitter account that routinely attacks Western intelligence and backs low lifes like Assange and Greenwald must be a swell guy.

    I mean, he says he didn't do it. We surely can believe such a man, right?

    LOL. Keep posting Fantasy World reactions.

    You are the expert after all. :D
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  18. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Unnamed intelligence sources! Yay!
  19. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Yes, unnamed sources. Because in intelligence, just like in journalism, if you reveal a source it stops being a source. In intel revealing a source can get people killed.
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  20. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Who else thinks that Snowden is actively cooperating with the FSB and has handed over everything he had to them? That he is a favored FSB asset living in a retirement community for FSB operatives outside of Moscow?

    Just the highest ranking KGB defector in history, the youngest KGB general in history, who ran virtually all the important Soviet operations in America for decades, Oleg Kalugin.

    He's also the man that told the west that the Russian Orthodox Church was controlled by Russian Security Services through blackmail of gay Russian priests. The ROC has publicly stated that if a Russian dies in Ukraine they will go to heaven.

    Oh, and he used to be Putin's boss.

    He also has openly called Putin a war criminal who needs to be brought before an international tribunal - he said this of the Russian invasion of Georgia over a decade ago.

    https://venturebeat.com/security/fo...den-is-cooperating-with-russian-intelligence/
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  21. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Oh, and in case you knuckleheads missed it, and clearly you did (or you don't care about integrity, LOL), Snowden is the President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation a California based non-profit that tracks Western press issues. They have reported on things as minor as specific journalists not being invited to press conferences. They've recently had a major story about Denmark trying to protect it's own national secrets.

    Funny then that the President of such a foundation has nothing to say about the incredibly repressive laws in the country he defected to. Simply being critical of the war, even calling it an invasion, is a 15 year prison sentence. Dozens of journalists have been arrested, two TV channels were forced off the air for covering the invasion.

    Indeed, one of the FPF's first actions was to create a technical avenue to bypass Western governments tamping down on donations to Wikileaks.

    You know, that nice organization that took down Hillary Clinton and helped Trump become elected, run by Assange, who has been lying about not working with Russia despite officially being on Russia Today's payroll for years, and RT is owned by the Russian government.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-did-wikileaks-become-associated-with-russia/

    The one that claimed that Panama Papers were fake, when they showed extensively how much money the Russian oligarchs and Putin himself had stolen from the Russian people and laundered in offshore bank accounts in Panama run by organized crime.
    https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1116717413901402113

    The one that turned down the largest trove of data from the Russian foreign ministry ever - including information about their activities in Ukraine.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/1...-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/

    The FPF finally wised up and cut off contact with Wikileaks in 2018. But pretty good chance it wouldn't have existed to be used by Russian Military Intelligence if these people of integrity hadn't interfered.

    Wikileaks of course also funded Assange's flight to Moscow, and had one of their representatives escort Snowden there.

    And Izvestia, a state owned paper at the time, reported that these two did not deplane at the terminal but were taken to a car run by Russian security at a separate hangar. Huh.

    https://iz.ru/news/552478
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  22. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Have you read Snowden's latest blog? It illustrates perfectly why one should not trust the utterances of the people you keep quoting.
  23. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Integrity isn't something you intend to have. You either have it or you don't. You either act with integrity or you don't.

    As I said in the very first fucking place, regardless of whether he did things correctly, legally, safely, whatever, it's that *I believe* he acted with integrity.

    Your anger may be misdirected in that you are incapable of acting with integrity so you take it out on others who do.
  24. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    And why should I trust the nice man in his FSB provided dacha in Russia? LOL. He's the very definition of someone who isn't trustworthy - a CIA officer can retire. Snowden is completely trapped. His only hope of well being is cooperating with the worst dictator in the world right now.
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  25. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    You can intend to have integrity without actually possessing it. Clearly even your addled mind can process such a basic concept.

    Hell, look at you. You *believe* in Snowden, and in so doing state that he's innocent, when that's clearly problematic. You intend to act with integrity, but you do not actually do so.

    But the consequences for telling someone else's lies aren't profound in this case. The consequences of Snowden's actions are. So his breach of integrity is magnitudes higher than yours.

    But hey, Putin says Snowden isn't a traitor to the US. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.
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  26. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    How the fuck are you going to even discuss integrity when you can't even read. Not once in all my posts did I state he was innocent. In fact, I've stated twice now that regardless of whether his actions were safe/correct/legal, I think ....

    You just want to come in here and show us all how much you are "in the know" Guess what I don't fucking care.
  27. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    No, I just am capable of basic reasoning. Everything I've stated has been open source, published in the news.

    I can understand your and Rick's POV, but in this case I think you are wrong. We are on a discussion board. The point is to discuss.

    There's a repeated refrain these days that if you are a victim you must be moral. And yes, stating you believe he has integrity, which you have done multiple times, indicates you believe he acted morally. Legally isn't in question. It was illegal.

    And while I can see a narrative that Snowden was victimized, that doesn't make what he did be moral, have integrity, whatever words that you want to use. And the narrative that what he did was illegal and put people in danger means the 'victimization' is simply consequences for his actions.

    There's another whistleblower, John Tye, who came out with information on an Executive Order that was used to authorise metadate retention strategies similar to what Snowden leaked. He reported his whistleblower status to the IG and then discussed it on national news. Tye was not prosecuted.

    He later helped cocreate Whistleblower Aid. It's specifically created to help potential whistleblowers due so in a legal and safe manner, but to NOT help them with leaking classified material, which is a felony.

    He lives in Washington DC running his non-profit. No whistleblowes are charged for their legal services.
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  28. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    ...now saw your head off, and jump in front of a bullet train.
    I'm Demiurge.
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  29. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    Morality does not equal integrity. They are entirely different concepts with different meanings.
  30. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    Indeed. Integrity means sticking by your principles. Those principles might not be moral, or legal.

    Lying to the cops to cover up a crime committed by someone you are loyal to is integrity, if your own principles say loyalty is paramount.

    Snowden, on the other hand, purported to be primarily on the side of the American people. Cosying up with Putin doesn't strike me as having much integrity in that regard.
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