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Comment by thisjustinm | Hacker News Reader

If I was in Snowden's shoes and I realized the scope of NSA spying and that I had virtually unlimited access to internal documents I likely would have downloaded everything possible too.

How would you know what was significant and what was not? Think about how many man-hours it has taken to analyze the various documents released so far.

Is Snowden responsible for all the documents he gave to the press? Sure.

Should he have carefully filtered them all one-by-one before downloading them from the NSA? No way - it's far too much and too subjective work to be done by just one person.

Should The Intercept have published these? That's open for debate but I don't for a second question Snowden's gathering of them in the first place.

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>How would you know what was significant and what was not?

Do you realize the irony in this statement? This is the exact problem with mass surveillance. Neither Snowden nor the NSA should be able to ignore the law, grab everything they have access to, and justify it by saying the good outweighs the bad. That isn't how the law is supposed to work. These restrictions apply to both good and bad guys.

The people who are defending Snowden's actions with this logic are using the exact same line of thinking that inspired these programs in the first place.

There is a clear difference between targeting all the files of an organization that you know is committing wrongs, and targeting everyone in the world.

When NSA grabbed everything they could, they did not conceive of any limits, literally everyone was a target. Snowden restricted himself to documents about NSA.

What should he have done instead?

A more circumspect whistleblower who worked within the system could have exposed wrongdoing without risking legitimate secrets, yes. But whistleblowers aren't allowed to work within the system. Snowden tried and was rebuffed. The tactic he eventually chose was less harmful than allowing the NSA to continue running wild with no effective oversight.

>What should he have done instead?

It could have been something as simple as telling the journalists "You only have the documents because I leaked them to you therefore everything you publish is my responsibility both legally and ethically. In turn, as long as I am alive I request editorial approval of everything you publish on the subject."

>The tactic he eventually chose was less harmful than allowing the NSA to continue running wild with no effective oversight.

Like mass surveillance is less harmful than potential allowing the next 9/11? Don't you see the flaw in this logic? You can't just ignore the law because you personally think the ends justify the means. This applies equally to both sides of the debate.

Snowden does not have access to anything he leaked any more. He physically turned everything over before he left Hong Kong and did not bring copies with him to Russia. Since he's undoubtedly under surveillance in Russia, there's not any safe way for him to review anything.

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