I say this without intending to denigrate Snowden at all: Klein's situation was less messy. Snowden had a top secret clearance and vowed to safeguard all the secrets he came across. Klein was just a regular guy doing regular work for a regular company when he saw something strange. That doesn't mean I think Snowden was wrong, just that there's a ton of room for people to say "I agree with him but he shouldn't have done that because he swore not to". Klein didn't have those obligations.
Snowden explained it well. There were four other whistleblowers besides Snowden and Klein.
(1) Russ Tice: USAF intelligence analyst
(2) William Binney: NSA Technical Director.
(3) Thomas Tamm: DOJ lawyer
(4) Thomas A. Drake: senior executive at NSA
Each of them was a senior position relative to Snowden and Klein and all these cases were shut down. What change Snowden had to do traditionally by the book whistleblow or tiny traditional leak. He made the conscious decision to take the information so that they could not shut him down, and make a scene from outside the US (Hong Kong) so that there would be time to talk to the press.
Snowden made a political crime that was morally justified. It was not self serving. It turns out that Americans don't care but at least he made a splash.
Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to congress.
Thank goodness he took his oath more seriously than the "I was just following orders" crowd. We know from WW2 that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse to help facilitate grave atrocities, like all of those other NSA employees did every single day, in violation of their own oaths that they each swore.
You won't get any argument from me. I agree. And even in agreement, I still say that there's a much larger grey area in Snowden's case. We can and should discuss whether his actions were justified. I think they are. But I can at least appreciate that people who disagree have legitimate reasons to see it otherwise.
Klein's case didn't come with all that other baggage.
The moment which struck me the most from all the recent confirmation hearings was the parade of senator after senator asking Tulsi Gabbard if Edward Snowden was a traitor. It was like the #1 priority for them that people believe that, and they would skip any relevant questions about the job only to pursue that one topic over and over.
No argument from me with what you wrote, either, I just wanted to make sure I was doing my interpretation justice by sharing it - there's certainly no shortage of posters parroting the other side's talking points.
It's interesting that Klein's tell-all didn't get as much attention despite being less legally fraught. It makes me wonder how much of the Snowden media frenzy was organic in the first place, and if not much, who was pulling the strings to draw attention to practices that our own government had an obvious interest in repressing and concealing discussion of.
Could be that Snowden took it to The Guardian, a foreign and international news outlet. The story how British intelligence folks showed up at the Guardian HQ and symbolically destroyed a hard drive, and the way Guardian management used their New York offices to work around restrictions in UK law to publish the story, that's quite a story itself, and of course journalists know how to get coverage and reach.
Mark targeted the EFF, not a news outlet, in contrast. The EFF probably first and foremost had the legal pursuit in mind, not making a story big.
The most shocking things of all for me was how ignorant ordinary people were and still are about both whistle blowers' disclosures and the subsequent pretend fixes by lawmakers. (Cynically, I'm inclined to add there might be more riots and demonstrations if you take Heinz ketchup away from people than theirlegitimate rights to privacy.)
> Mark targeted the EFF, not a news outlet, in contrast.
"Mark not only saw how it works, he had the documents to prove it.
He brought us over a hundred pages of authenticated AT&T schematic diagrams and tables.
Mark also shared this information with major media outlets, numerous Congressional staffers, and at least two senators personally."
I don't recall agreeing to any oath like that when I applied for a US clearance. I just recall the NDA.
I may have pledged allegiance to the US flag when I was a kid, but that wasn't the same as taking an oath of elected office to uphold the constitution.
It wasn't simply tapping phones, it is the warrantless collection of close to all global electronic communications.
And the immorality doesn't stop there, that's where it starts.
"We kill people based on metadata."
- General Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and former Director of the CIA.
This includes innocent people. Women, children, civilians. Deliberately. "Acceptable collateral damage" is the euphemism used to mask the moral evil of deliberately murdering women and children.
If you're in a war of attrition (like the the US was in Afghanistan), and the other side already has agreed it's okay to kill innocents (9/11), then you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means.
I'm not going to defend the CIA/NSA for actions taken inside the country. On the other hand, I'm not going to second guess decisions happening on the ground in an active war zone.
It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe.
If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.
The long term result of justifying the mean is always the subordination of the individuals, you migrate from a democratic society to totalitarian state.
I feel it's safe to say that no society prefer dictatorship to democracy.
So you won (maybe), your life is worst, you have no freedom anymore.
Beside you say in some case war is inevitable because there is too much hate. I don't agree, people (individuals) can be so hateful that war is inevitable but populations always aspire to peace.
Even totalitarian state always have to justify the war by pretending they're the one merely defending, being attacked because this desire for peace is so powerful.
> ...you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means.
By not fighting ethically abroad and by permitting our authoritarians largely free-rein both abroad and domestically, we gave the folks who planned and caused the destruction of the WTC towers nearly everything they were hoping for.
Overreacting and letting Bush II run his military campaigns in the Middle East was one of the greatest gifts we could have given Al Qaeda and those like them. Encouraging our populace to permit themselves to be (and continue to be) terrorized is a lesser but still significant gift to those same organizations.
Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. Neither did Syria, or Iraq.
Vietnam wasn't self-defense. Korean war wasn't self-defense. CIA-instigated Color revolutions and Euromaidan weren't self-defense. Kosovo wasn't self-defense. Launching a cruise missile (a precision weapon that requires the operator to enter precise geographic coordinates prior to launch) at the Chinese embassy in Belgrade wasn't self-defense.
A vast and overwhelming majority of the military operations the post-WW2 USA conducts overseas are not acts of self-defense, they are acts of imperialism.
"I want to grow the imperial empire's influence and footprint" is not justification for murdering unarmed civilians. Never has been, never will be.
And now he's nice and cozy in a country that is busy invading its neighbor... But one that the US President has himself cozied up to the leadership of as of late.
It's an odd world that makes odd bedfellows. One wonders depending on how the next four years go if Snowden could even catch a pardon.
... or if he did, the Russians would even let him leave.
In a parallel universe there must be a world where those choices of his serve as a reminder that the world, and the people within it, are not nearly as simple and convenient as narratives and principles would suggest.
Let's think it through. Say you're pretty passionately pissed off about what you directly observe (in this case spying), so you go full hero and do what he did. Then consequences come and the only lifeline you're given is... Russian.
You tasted the reality for a bit there, that was rough, but luckily you're safe and out. But wait, now you're being compelled into becoming an asset. And no lifelines are around anymore. Suddenly you realize that the reality of the stronger dog fucking never disappeared, and that choice you made was much more grave than you thought, and there's no real going back.
And it doesn't matter if this is what actually happened to Snowden, what matters is that this is a very reasonable possibility. People are not fairy tales, and especially not perfectly consistent in their thoughts and beliefs. Not spatially, not temporally. He may have at some point thought that doing the noble thing was his choice, but wouldn't now. He may have been swayed in other ways since, and now takes both stances at the same time, regardless how contradictory they are.
The real lie here is treating people larger than life. One can appreciate a result without subscribing to everything the person ever did or does, or labelling them one way or another.
He would have had a fair trial which would ultimately result in the dismantling of the entire US surveillance apparatus and would usher in the birth of the internet the forefathers intended.
He did not support the invasion of Ukraine. He just doesn’t comment on it. Which has somehow turned into an anti-Snowden talking point, despite the very obvious reasons why he doesn’t talk about it.
> Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US?
Honestly, yes. He was extremely visible and it was the Obama administration. I think it was well-understood how much damage it could have done to Democratic party interests if they nailed him to a wall for exposing behavior that was extremely unpopular among their constituents. Manning did far worse with far less duty-of-care and received a pardon after seven years.
For all its flaws, the US is actually a place where fair trials happen most of the time (especially when someone's in the media's eye). Snowden, much like Assange or Manning, wasn't in a position where he could just be disappeared. I think he traded, at most, a decade of discomfort for a lifetime of exile.
But it's his call. It's not like the US is the only good place to be; maybe a lifetime of exile is fine.
Democrats are always sabotaging their own party interests to support the supreme power of the state. They'd have no problem putting Snowden in Guantanamo.
I'm not thinking of a Hollywood movie; I'm thinking of Chelsea Manning, a person who dumped more state secrets into the international eye than the Rosenbergs were even accused of smuggling to Russia and is not only still breathing, but currently walking free.
> Thank goodness he [was more willing to betray his position for moral reasons] than the "I was just following orders" crowd. We know from WW2 that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse to help facilitate grave atrocities,
Which dilutes to this when challenged:
> he didn't oppose [the invation of Ukraine] for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it.
Those perspectives both can't be correct! If he was willing to face jail and expulsion for opposing US crimes, and to be celebrated for that, surely the same logic should hold for Russian crimes, no?
Snowden is complicated for sure. I think it's not unreasonable to ask why these decisions were different and to at least ask what differences he might have in loyalties and personal aims might lead to them.
He has never expressed himself to be anything other than a patriotic American. Why would he be putting his life on the line for a country that he does not identify with?
People who do that ti support just cause like Ukraine have my respect. But I wouldn’t expect if of anyone.
Uh, sure they can: he saw an opportunity where he could make a difference and bring a program to light where the NSA was otherwise blatantly lying to Congress and the American people, and he took it.
There is nothing he can or could do to stop the invasion of Ukraine.
Which is to say, he didn't merely oppose US crimes. He brought them to light. Everyone already knows about Ukraine.
Exactly this. His original revelations were shocking to his audience; the Ukrainian invasion is already almost-universally condemned among the same. His “speaking out” against it would be pure virtue signalling, not a single mind would be changed or informed by it.
So surely it's more important and not less that notable Russians like Snowden use their influence to drive policy and change, right?
Basically, you're just saying "It's OK not to challenge Putin if you're afraid". Which is fine. But I argue it needs to then inform the way we treat his other decisionmaking. The facts on the ground are at least as compatible with "Edward Snowden is a Putinist Partisan" as they are "Edward Snowden is a Patriotic American".
Yeah, maybe, but it's too easy for me to sit here in a comfy chair, safe in the US, and talk about what an exiled protester in Russia should do. I lack the moral authority to USplain to Snowden that the Russians are just sheltering him for his propaganda value, even though that's obviously what they are doing.
He owes us nothing. Through no fault of his own, he does owe Russia, though. If we didn't want Putin to make a useful puppet out of him, we (a) should not have placed him in a position to make the decisions he did, ideally by following our own laws to avoid inciting his actions in the first place; and (b) we should have been able to assure him of a fair trial without inciting snickers and guffaws.
You hear HRC saying (of Assange) "Can't we just drone him?" And you think Snowden has no cause for concern?! Naive.
Probably because the US empire had deteriorated enough by that point that revoking passports for exposing the blatant lies and crimes of our government was on the table by then.
Of course, it's different these days. These days they'd just kill Snowden. And Mark Klein, for that matter.
