Is Edward Snowden A Hero?

So was Paul Revere when he took that ride.

To be fair, he is right. Paul Revere, and many others, were traitors to the Crown. Were their goals noble? Damned straight, but that doesn't change that what they did was commit treason.

I'd still be interested in an answer to this.

Do I really need to run it down for you? It's that hard to figure out?

Classified information regarding US intelligence programs revealed to the whole world. Damage done to diplomatic relations and alliances. Exposure of sources and methods to Russia, China, Iran . . . and everyone else who'd wish us harm. Get it now?

The answer is to leak everything.
Everyone's secrets to everyone.
No one has any power.
Just ruin all of it.

Life in the fishbowl, eh? I'd actually support that. The field would be level. But you'd face the same problem as you get with universal disarmament. It works fine until the first cheater, then you're screwed.

No, not really. We're talking about a US intelligence program that hurts the people of the US. Compromising it helps the people of the US. The only advantage over Russia, China, and Iran that is lost is the advantage we don't want the US intelligence to have anyway, because they only get it by harming the people of the US.

I can sort of see that diplomatic realtions are hurt, but isn't that clearly the lesser evil? If not, does that mean that the US government can commit any crime against its people and no-one must stop it, because exposing it in order to stop it would hurt the US' image?

That's the impression I'm getting. It's like saving face on the world stage is more important than the harm being done to the citizens of this country and its allies. This is particularly appalling when you consider many of the people calling the exposure of this betrayal of trust by an overreaching government "treason" are the same people complaining about how overreaching the government is. Here we have a clear threat to the civil liberties of the people in this country, the kind of thing that's been bitched about for years by these people, myself among them, about how the government has been ignoring the Constitution more and more with each passing year, and yet I'm the odd man out when it comes to thinking Snowden did the right thing in exposing this threat to civil liberties?

I don't think he's a hero, but he has done at least something to get people riled up and inquisitive about government surveillance. I don't think that he's a whistleblower, though, for the reasons you list above. He wasn't selective about what he released, he just grabbed a bunch of stuff and said "something in here is bad stuff going on" and released it. It seems like if he had tracked down a single case of illegal surveillance and documented it well before releasing the information, both public scrutiny of the government (his goal) and his own defense (as a whistleblower) would have been much more targeted.

Of course, depending on your interpretation, what the NSA is doing is itself treasonous, as it almost definitely violates the oath of several of the officers involved.

You have a classified clearance. Suppose, in the course of your work, you found a classified document that proved that the Federal government had, for decades, been assassinating US citizens that were critical of the Federal goverment. Is it your responsibility to keep your mouth shut because you signed some piece of paper and found it in a source that was, naturally, classified? Or is it your responsibility to expose illegal, immoral, and blatantly unConstitutional activity?

First thing I would do is go to my Inspector General. If that didn't get me satisfaction, I'd go to my Congressman or Senator. Not blab it to every newspaper in the world.

Yeah, because chain of command is unreliable to worthless when investigating rapes, but spying on the American people, THAT'S the one they're going to find their moral conscience on.

Interesting. Not at all surprising, but interesting, nonetheless.

If you found out that the government had been running a program to eliminate people that were perceived as threats to the government, you'd report it to that government.

It was good to know you. Say "hi" to Vince Foster for me.

By definition, the IG is NOT in the chain of command, but an independent office.

And I'm so sure the IG would be able to do anything about it, or for you, for that matter.

Probably not, but you observe the forms before going the next step.

Even if it kills the next step? When that next step is of extreme importance to the whole country and its constituton?

This is a textbook case of bad patriotism: The kind that effectively turns men against their country.

"Providing aid and comfort"
"Traitor"

Why don't you guys just pull out a big red white and blue dildo and go fuck yourselves. Do you really think that anything Snowden has divulged was news to any of our enemies or allies? Shit, we were tapping Russia's cables back in the 70's, do you really think they're so unimaginative or idiotic to think that we weren't still doing it? At best the only aid and comfort he gave our enemies was some public ammunition to use against the United States regarding violations of privacy, and even then it's massively outweighed by the public discourse it's generated in this country about what role our intelligence gathering agencies should have and to what extent they can infringe on our liberties.

Cause going to Congress would have worked so well. You know, the same Congress where no one wants to look soft on terror. And as for the bit about him escaping to another country, I can't blame him one bit, it's not like the United States has a good track record of respecting whistle blowers (see William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Thomas Andrews Drake). Not to mention, as a contractor for the government, Snowden was not protected by our standard whistle blower laws, so no matter what he did it would have been considered a violation of the law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-internally-over-10-times-before-going-rogue/

And just to note, these men all tried going to the IG first, for all the good it did them and their country.

You're making very big assumptions about what foreign powers know, and that the only targets of NSA intelligence gathering are Russia and China.

In any case, if the only things disclosed were illegal domestic surveillance that'd be one thing. Unfortunately, Edward Snowden revealed a lot of our legitimate overseas intelligence projects, rendering us blind for some time to come and severely damaging international relations. This fact alone sets him apart from the ranks of "whistleblowers".

Guess they shouldn't have been stomping all over the Constitution while they did their "legitimate" stuff, then, huh?

Irrelevant. He's admitted his guilt in the matter and his defense doesn't preclude him from having the sensibility and duty to not reveal state secrets that he knew to be legal and proper.

Why? If that was the only way to protect the American people and their constitution, why wasn't it proper to do exactly that?

Sounds more like an excuse to cover up wrongdoing to me. So what "legitimate" state secrets did he expose to our enemies, then?

How is leaking information about spying on foreign powers a way to protect the American people?

You act as if the information was a single, indivisible block.

The fact that we were spying on them?

Oh, and here I thought you might have something with some actual substance to it. Is this about spying on our allies, because that's pretty lame and deserving of being exposed. As an added bonus, we learned a lot about the Five Eyes and how our intelligence agencies are able to get around US law by using outside intelligence agencies to do stuff for them instead and vice versa.