Snowden decries Russian surveillance bill as dangerous, urges Putin not to sign | Hacker News Reader

Snowden decries Russian surveillance bill as dangerous, urges Putin not to sign

washingtontimes.com

76 pointsj1vms31 comments

There is a man, standing for his ideals, even if it would cost him the last save harbor he had.

Now lets belittle that, so we can stop feeling small. And maybe, if all sides, put equally amounts of scrap on the scale, so it evens out, we might be able to lean back- and call the equilibrium "good".

No one is belittling his advocacy for his ideals even in Russia. I explicitly said the opposite. Him standing for his ideals, even and especially towards his hosts, does not however mean that we have to pretend that his host government shares those ideals.

Who is asking you to pretend? Clearly not Snowden - he's the one pointing out they don't!

It won't cost him anything because nobody in Russia will care much about it: those few who will hear about already made their mind about it, one way or another.

There's no good-faith HN comment that closes by asserting that anyone who disagrees with it must be doing so "to stop feeling small". If you believe strongly that Snowden's actions are heroic, you could do a better job of making the case, or, if they're self-evidently heroic, you needn't comment at all.

Its rather obvious that criticizing the government in a more archaic society, will be viewed as "biting the hand that fed" and he will get a hard time for this. Despots remember well, too well.

I think it's so weird to have so much negativity in HN comments towards Snowden. This guy should be our nerd hero. He was and he is risking his life, freedom and assets for solely calling out the US agencies on illegal activities.

This isn't too much negativity (2 or 3 top-level comments that aren't even purely negative, but just questioning his heroism) and they were downvoted into the ground.

Rest assured, HN is clearly pro-Snowden and doesn't question it.

I'm not impressed by Snowden because I've seen worse than NSA surveillance (communist Romania, my grandfather was beaten to death in jail for having an anti-government journal) and I don't think the US can fall down such a slippery slope that we need to worry about it at the cost of security and massive irony. The formula that makes oppressive countries oppressive through surveillance just doesn't exist here. Not even close. Even by modern standards, we're not even in the same league as Russia and China in terms of oppression via surveillance. We should probably stop it at some point but it's not at the top of my priority list right now, and I'm not worried we're going to fall off some metaphorical cliff anytime soon.

Anyway, to see Snowden in such a positive light requires thinking that stopping NSA surveillance is a top priority that should be done at any cost.

He was front and center in russian media when he spoke about US — but without even checking, I can guarantee you that this will not appear on a single TV channel and will be downplayed in any media that decides to run the story.

https://www.rt.com/news/348404-snowden-russia-terror-law/

RT is for external consumption; let's see what the mainstream media outlets have to say.

RT is not consumed in Russia; even it's russian edition is targeted at western russian communities, not for Russian citizens.

I'm shocked! Shocked! To see oppressive surveillance expansion in Russia!

Good on Snowden for calling Putin out, but I don't think it'll mean anything. It is reassuring to see a reminder that his warm welcome in Moscow was just a diplomatic на хуй/fuck-you to the US. Reading some comments about Snowden made me think I had unwittingly Rip Van Winkled my way into some weird future where Russia was a bastion of individual liberty and respect for human rights.

As if signing or not signing something in Russia mattered...

It does, quite a lot.

To not understand this is not understand the philosophy and ideology of the system by which Putin (and the heads of other modern hyper-autocratic states) operate.

Well, my country is affected by Putin/Russia actions an every day basis and I know that no matter what agreement they sign - they doesn't give a shit. It is something western elite can't understand.

Of course Russia routinely violates peace agreements with its neighbors. That doesn't mean these agreements don't have a significance in another, more psychological sense. In particular, that significance is:

"See? We got you to think you can feel safe in exchange for swallowing your pride and making major concessions to us. Then we attacked you again anyway. Now you're really our bitch."

It is something western elite can't understand.

Dividing the world between east and west, or thinking "westerners think in such-and-such way, they'll never understand our situation" -- is exactly the mind trap that Putin and the secessionists in eastern Ukraine would love to have everyone fall in.

> "westerners think in such-and-such way, they'll never understand our situation" -- is exactly the mind trap that Putin and the secessionists in eastern Ukraine would love to have everyone fall in.

Well, the future aside, I'm talking about it post-factum. So yes, so far the ineffectiveness of the west plays hand in hand with Putin.

So yes, so far the ineffectiveness of the west plays hand in hand with Putin.

On that we definitely agree.

Oh, Mr. Snowden.

Now you learn the nature of the bear.

Snowden, by revealing the surveillance on domestic inhabitants of the US did a service to his country, exposing overreach. However, turning over unrelated state secrets, to me was unnecessary and deplorable.

On the other hand, now he's learning Realpolitik and he's now a forgotten thorn. Moscow might be shopping him around, get him out of their craw. Who knows. But certainly meddling with internal politics of the regime will not procure favors, but from the decimated (not only as a metaphor) opposition.

Maybe he's itching to get out, or he's gone mad. This can't be a viable political move on his part.

>However, turning over unrelated state secrets, to me was unnecessary and deplorable.

Source?

He did exfiltrate more than the specific programs he had issue with and trusted Greenwald et al to differentiate between public interest or not, which I've heard as a pragmatism issue (filtering in situ exceeding risk tolerance). I have yet to see any evidence that he has turned any data over to Russia beyond what has been published for all. I'm sure Russia would prefer he did, but that doesn't mean he did (or for that matter, that he didn't).

Just pissing off the USG is sufficiently explanatory for his being allowed to stay in Moscow, so I generally weakly hold the belief that he has not made extraordinary disclosures to Russia regarding things not published for public consumption.

Your comments comes across as if this was a change in his behavior. But his criticism of Russia is not new, so "now he's learning Realpolitik" makes no sense.

For example, a headline from Sept 2015 - "Snowden criticises Russia for approach to internet and homosexuality" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/05/snowden-crit...

The very assumption that Snowden even before he fled the US was under the illusion that Russia was a bastion of freedom and has only now "learn the nature of the bear" is so nonsensical to be borderline trolling.

"...These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless."[1]

"However, Human Rights Watch appears to have just thrown Snowden under the bus. Deputy Executive Director of HRW, Carroll Bogert, wrote a piece for CNN (which was then carried on HRW’s own website) that seems to poke fun at Snowden’s praise for Russia, a state guilty of far worse crimes than the NSA. In particular, Bogert notes that Snowden has expressed interest in learning Russian. She the gives him a vocabulary list: Khuliganstvo (hooliganism), Ekstremizm (what it sounds like), Proverka (a polite word for raid), Inostrany agent (“foreign agent”)…"[2]

[1] https://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html

[2] http://www.interpretermag.com/human-rights-watch-slams-russi...

That was an unfortunate paragraph, but I stand by what I wrote. Surely you can think of others reasons why he would say that besides naivety?

"an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights" in Russia? Shocking.

But seriously, will anyone relevant hear him? This type of thing is common in Russia and has been for a while. Snowden ran to hide in the mother of all government surveillance after blowing the whistle on government surveillance.

I'm not belittling Snowden; I'm belittling the amount of attention and respect he gets relative to the action and help he provides. He just sort of says things… that are unimpressive… from hiding… in Russia.

He was bound for Cuba via a safe route. What would you have done in his situation in Hong Kong, if preventing irony is your number 1 priority.

I wouldn't have been in his situation in Hong Kong because, while I see his actions as positive overall, I do not think they're worth having to run off to a place like Russia (which does what I'm trying to fix on a much larger scale) to escape jail.

Preventing irony in this situation is important, because all the good he is doing is sending a message. If that message is ironic, it's not a very productive message—in comparison to the surveillance activity of Russia, the NSA surveillance looks like less of a big deal (and, in my opinion, is less of a big deal).

Cuba is also not very free in this regard.

bbcbasic was incomplete. He was bound for Ecuador, which had offered asylum. His planned to go through Moscow then Havana, but Cuba was not his final destination.

He was unable to carry out his plan because the US canceled his passport when he was in Moscow.

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