Snowden

Some people consider him a traitor, others a patriot.



Obama wanted him jailed, labeled him a hacker. Hillary agreed, labeled him a thief. Trump stated that Snowden should be executed.



Bernie Sanders praised him as a whistle-blower.



Just wondering what y'all think.

He's a traitor. He was a spurned, petty employee who wanted to do things his way and resented people in supervisory roles above him.



Sanders is wrong. He is NOT a whistle-blower because he didn't go about things like a whistle-blower.



He is a liar and a fraud.



Here is an executive summary that was unanimously approved by the bi-partisan House committee investigating Snowden.

http://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_-_unclass_summary_-_final.pdf



Here is a letter the committee sent to the President:

http://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_members_letter_to_potus_re_snowden-15_sep_16.pdf



And here is a very good article on all of it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440113/edward-snowden-report-house-intelligence-committee-not-pardon



One final point, the fact that it is Oliver Stone, an anti-American director who opposes the founding principles of this nation, is the one "telling" his story is enough to discredit what Snowden did.

I tend to believe Snowden. I believe that he damaged his own life in order to inform the American public of citizen-spying that Edward found to be immoral and unethical. His releases were to news media for public enlightenment, not to private sources for financial gain. I simply don't see any other major motivations at play.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden



The Department of Defense alleges that he copied 1.9 million documents. He only made 10,000 of those public.



Snowden quotes before the publication of information: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end."

"All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong."

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things [surveillance on its citizens]... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded... My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."



And after:

"For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed."

"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."

"There's no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realization that no one else was going to do this. The public had a right to know about these programs."

-In February 2014, for reporting based on Snowden's leaks, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill were honored as co-recipients of the 2013 George Polk Award (for excellence in Journalism), which they dedicated to Snowden.



-The NSA reporting by these journalists also earned The Guardian and The Washington Post the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing the "widespread surveillance" and for helping to spark a "huge public debate about the extent of the government's spying". The Guardian's chief editor, Alan Rusbridger, credited Snowden.



-Snowden was named Time's Person of the Year runner-up in 2013, behind Pope Francis. Time was criticized for not placing him in the top spot.



-Edward Snowden was awarded the biennial German "whistleblower prize" in August 2013. Established in 1999, the award is sponsored by the German branch of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and by the Association of German Scientists. Organizers said the prize was to acknowledge his "bold efforts to expose the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies."



-In October 2013, the Sam Adams Award was presented to Snowden in Moscow by a group of four visiting American former intelligence officers and whistleblowers. Snowden made his first public appearance to accept the award, a candlestick holder meant to symbolize "bringing light to dark corners." One of the presenters, FBI whistleblower Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, told The Nation, "We believe that Snowden exemplifies Sam Adams's courage, persistence and devotion to truth- no matter what the consequences. We wanted Snowden to know that, as opposed to the daily vitriol from the U.S. government and mainstream media, 60 percent of the United States supports him, including thousands in the national security and intelligence agencies where we used to work."



-In April 2014 Snowden, together with Laura Poitras, was awarded the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, given by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation for transparency and whistleblowing. Snowden gave a speech and took questions from members of the audience, who according to The Nation greeted him with "numerous standing ovations". During his speech, he questioned why James Clapper had not been reprimanded for his "famous lie," whereas charges were filed against Snowden soon after going public as the source of the NSA leaks. He said, "When I began this, I never expected to receive the level of support that I did from the public. Having seen what happened to the people that came before, specifically Thomas Drake, it was an intimidating thing."

our current federal government is too big, too powerful and too oppressive. Neither Clinton nor Trump want to do anything other than make it even bigger, more powerful and more oppressive.

My take--much like the left has their useful idiots, Snowden has been a useful traitor. While I in no way condone his actions, government and citizens alike needed a slap in the face.



I vehemently disagree with those calling for him to receive a pardon. Even if the information he leaked led to positive reform etc., you can't set the precedent of pardoning the underlying action. Let future would-be-leakers weigh the same penalties before acting. Otherwise, you'll encourage further leakers who hope for hero-status and pardons. He knew what he was doing, he should pay the price.

snoscythe wrote:
My take--much like the left has their useful idiots, Snowden has been a useful traitor. While I in no way condone his actions, government and citizens alike needed a slap in the face.



I vehemently disagree with those calling for him to receive a pardon. Even if the information he leaked led to positive reform etc., you can't set the precedent of pardoning the underlying action. Let future would-be-leakers weigh the same penalties before acting. Otherwise, you'll encourage further leakers who hope for hero-status and pardons. He knew what he was doing, he should pay the price.

Pardon, no.



Free and open trial as guaranteed in the Constitution? Yes. I just don't believe the government would allow for that under the excuse of "national security." They'd just try to ship him off to Guantanamo without a trial.



And what happened did lead at least to some reform. The fact is he did bring to light information that showed the government was breaking the law. Maybe his methods weren't totally right, but he's already paying for that by having to live in Russia, which is a totalitarian regime. That makes it arguably already the same thing as jail -- Trump's admiration for Putin notwithstanding.

He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

KingCoug wrote:
He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

To be accurate, he needs to hanged. People are hanged, pictures are hung.



But yes he is a traitor. If he wanted to accomplish what he wanted to, there were better ways to accomplish it. The fact that he failed NSA training on the agency protects civil and constitutional rights, shows that he really wasn't acting in good faith and conscious.

SpiffCoug wrote:

He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

To be accurate, he needs to hanged. People are hanged, pictures are hung.

Maybe you are not hung....



What kind of pictures do you have at your place?

SpiffCoug wrote:

He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

T If he wanted to accomplish what he wanted to, there were better ways to accomplish it. T

I want to believe this is true but I don't think it is. I just don't believe the government running a secret program that has since been shown to have been legally overstepping its bounds would have reformed itself without the public knowing anything. No motivation for government to let go of power in that situation.

But he could have reported it to the IG, written his congressman, etc. There are proper channels.

Cougarfan87 wrote:
But he could have reported it to the IG, written his congressman, etc. There are proper channels.

He wasn't the first one to have questions and problems with what was going on and who did try to use those channels. Nothing happened. It wasn't until after Snowden that Congress knew anything and grilled the NSA about it in their hearings. And the response from the NSA I think was pretty embarrassing as they were later proven not to have been truthful in their answers to Congress. Secret power usually corrupts even if the original intent may not have been so bad.

BlueK wrote:

KingCoug wrote:
He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

T If he wanted to accomplish what he wanted to, there were better ways to accomplish it. T

I want to believe this is true but I don't think it is. I just don't believe the government running a secret program that has since been shown to have been legally overstepping its bounds would have reformed itself without the public knowing anything. No motivation for government to let go of power in that situation.

I understand that sentiment. Having done some work with the NSA back in the day, I just couldn't see my supervisors and leadership refusing to listen to me if I had the concerns he did. Granted, I didn't work on the projects or programs he did, but from my experience, my leadership took protecting the rights of Americans seriously. I think they 1) would have listened to me, 2) tried to assuage my concerns, 3) gone with me to the next higher level with my concerns if I didn't feel it was resolved.

Cougarfan87 wrote:
But he could have reported it to the IG, written his congressman, etc. There are proper channels.

Agreed. There are proper ways he could have gone about it. And guess what, going to the IG or Congress would probably have a better chance of fixing those programs than going to the Russians. Just my guess, but I don't think Putin can affect NSA policy that much.

SpiffCoug wrote:

SpiffCoug wrote:

He's a traitor who needs to be hung from the neck until dead.

T If he wanted to accomplish what he wanted to, there were better ways to accomplish it. T

I want to believe this is true but I don't think it is. I just don't believe the government running a secret program that has since been shown to have been legally overstepping its bounds would have reformed itself without the public knowing anything. No motivation for government to let go of power in that situation.

I understand that sentiment. Having done some work with the NSA back in the day, I just couldn't see my supervisors and leadership refusing to listen to me if I had the concerns he did. Granted, I didn't work on the projects or programs he did, but from my experience, my leadership took protecting the rights of Americans seriously. I think they 1) would have listened to me, 2) tried to assuage my concerns, 3) gone with me to the next higher level with my concerns if I didn't feel it was resolved.

And then 4) nothing would have changed.



The change needed to happen. Snowden picked a way that would lead to that change.



Truth is treason in our society.