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Comment by hota_mazi | Hacker News Reader

This chilling effect has a counterpart which would be directly amplified by pardoning Snowden.

In short, if Snowden gets pardoned, it will encourage further people to leak confidential documents and violate the Espionage act since they will be emboldened by the thought they might get pardoned down the road.

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That sounds great to me. We need more whistle blowers and more civil disobedience. We need to change, the US is a joke; a parody of itself. We have all of this freedom branding, but are afraid of that freedom. We cower behind a police state and express our fear as hatred for those who are different from us. We have exported the American Dream to the world and destroyed everything about ourselves that made this place special.

We have demolished the middle class. Our infrastructure is shit. Education is so expensive it often makes economic sense not to get educated. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on "defense" instead of investing it in fixing all of the broken shit we have going on.

Worse, our election system is so broken that we have to pick between two pieces of shit that don't represent anyone's interests. There is no nuance, it's one tantrum after another.

Who do we hate now? Who's personal life do we need to pry onto? Can we talk about how hot Kurdish freedom fighters are? Hillary is not a criminal, she's like grandma. Can you believe Tump has small hands? Look at his skin! Jobs?! You want jobs? Talk to the Mexicans who took your jobs. TPP? What TPP? NAFTA? What is? You want healthcare? Welcome to indentured servitude. National healthcare is for freedom-hating communist muslims. Public education? Too expensive. Of course, we have to spend $1.5 trillion on fighter jets, but that's basic common sense.

I am honestly disgusted by what we've become. We should change our slogan to "fuck the world, kill them all". Then, at least, we'd be honest.

> We cower behind a police state

I don't think you have any idea what a police state is.

Maybe you could enlighten me?

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_beli...

This is not true. Snowden had to fly to Russia and live there for three years before a hypothetical pardon. If that is the minimum for the possibility of a pardon, I don't think many people would find that emboldening.

That's not really true. Though i'm in favor of pardoning him on balance, it would definitely embolden other leakers. I'm quite sure that if I was someone considering leaking classified documents and I saw him get pardoned after spending 3 years in Russia, it'd embolden me.

Spending three years in exile is not great, but it's a far cry from a long prison sentence for leaking classified documents.

It should embolden other leakers. The official reporting for these things is corrupted beyond viability. But Obama won't pardon him. He's at least as conservative as Bush and in some ways far far worse (that he's a considered a constitutional scholar is laughable).

There are many axes on which you can be liberal or conservative. He is President, not a judge, and his job is to lead the country. There's not much point in acknowledging Obama's security policies without mentioning his social, fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies.

Obama may be one things, but lying on a political spectrum neatly is not one of them. In fact, it's pretty damn hard finding a president who HAS been straightforwardly liberal or progressive, much less one that played well with the constitution. I'm not sure why you expect those two things to align.

Especially if you plan ahead a bit better than Snowden did and emigrate to the country of your choice while you can still travel before leaking the documents.

There's only a handful of countries capable/willing to resist a US extradition request. Your choices are extremely limited.

Sure, you could try to go "underground" but you'd then become a top assassination target for the worlds most powerful security service. No one would ever know of your assassination either - you'd just disappear.

This is true. Still it's a lot of work and prep but I guess If someone is bent on releasing docs they're gonna hopefully plan out for the future.

The other leakers, the ones without great plans, have much weaker media followings.

Those potential leakers might be emboldened, but I doubt many would get away with it. There is also a great deal to be said for Snowden being right.

If the President pardoned him while denouncing other named leakers (Manning, et al), and highlighting that Snowden was the only one protecting the constitution. Then perhaps only the leakers strongly backed by the constitution would be emboldened.

If people are emboldened to blow the whistle on outrageous, secret, unconstitutional, anti-democratic activities of the US or state governments, then this is the best possible outcome.

However, if people emboldened to get their 5 minutes of fame for releasing some really juicy confidential or top secret info that has nothing to do with [your list here], this is the WORST possible outcome.

You act as if it is all arbitrary but I'd assert that, on balance, it's largely not. We have a system of laws and the contention is that many of these programs are extraconstitutional aka – illegal and in contradiction to the US constitution. When things are done in secret, there is no opportunity for the legal process to work, just as it largely has for many other cases over many years. It isn't perfect, but rogue actors and illegal program hiding behind governmental authority certainly cannot be argued as better.

Even the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it clear that soldiers have a duty to not obey an unlawful order. The idea is that we are all answerable to the principles in the constitution (and, if you believe, to a higher power or to the idea that some rights are considered inalienable).

So, no, I don't agree with your implicit assertion that all of this is arbitrary and depends only on the whims of the individual.

In theory, that's what impartial courts are supposed to be for. To make fair judgements on the specifics of each case.

If the public interest and the principles of freedom were served by the leak, then that should be treated very different than a purely self-serving (or dangerous) leak.

Seriously. I feel the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has just been thrown out the window. Parent comment is literally advocating "guilty even if you're innocent because someone else might potentially be convinced to commit a crime in the future"

Yes but you're being a bit naïve here. Things never really go like this.

Snowden didn't just blow the whistle on some shady activities, he dumped hundreds of confidential documents that put at risk the lives of hundreds of operatives working for your freedom and others'.

define "dumped." He tried internal channels, which unsurprisingly failed (as several legitimate whistle-blowers and even just employees have expressed) and then went to well-reputed journalists in the most professional, transparent, and safe way possible. They even leaked redacted materials slowly to emphasize this.

So: Why did you use the word "dumped" and can you explain explicitly what he did wrong?

Snowden dumped foreign operations on foreign journalists unredacted... already bad... who also aren't experts at INFOSEC or OPSEC. They then published a bunch of them with some redactions of names but not methods. Many of the methods were quite unique to the point that they helped identify Equation Group and some other stuff later. A number of others would've been blown simply because the targets would know what to look for, what components to replace, what systems were less vulnerable, and so on. I doubt anyone died but they definitely lost lots of SIGINT. It's a natural consequence of their specific mechanisms all being exposed at once to targets that read the news.

So, like Manning, he definitely leaked stuff he didn't need to leak that harmed NSA's foreign operations that Americans were OK with. The kind the NSA was created for. That's not whistleblowing like his domestic stuff that Alexander and Clapper lied about. That makes him a whistleblower on domestic leaks and traitor on most, foreign ones. I put in for pardon given benefit of the whistleblowing but he's certainly guilty of damaging leaks.

I just don't see a reason to charge him if lots of scumbags on top are still walking free despite clear potential for Contempt of Congress or perjury charges. A little unjust, yeah?

You're thinking of Manning, not Snowden.

Ah the Espionage Act. It's written by the organization that will penalize you if you speak out against them - but don't worry, they're dedicated to protect your speech even if you speak out against them.

Yeah, laws, acts, and shit suck, right? Because they weren't written by me, especially, by your tally. Maybe if you folks would stop worrying about being "put on some list" as if that'll happen because you say "Snowden should be pardoned!" What about the list for us good people that say "Snowden should be tried and jailed!" Don't you want to be on OUR list?

Good people? I believe the argument is that these "good people" would be counted as sheep compared to those that would be against the powers that be. So yes, you would be counted as "good sheeple"

Critiques can also be sincere, careful, and nuanced. Language like that permits one to dismiss an adversary without considering the critique.

My apologies. What exactly is your position here?

If doing so proves beyond a shadow of doubt that our government officers are lying both to the people of the United States and to their representatives in Congress, as Director of National Intelligence did, isn't that a good thing?

You could make the same argument about every single pardon, and yet nobody really worries about this outcome.

The solution to that is not to not sign the petition, but to lobby for proper whistleblower protection, so the whistleblowers go through the proper channels to expose the crimes without retaliation.

If the answer to that is "well, they'll never agree to that", then leaking will happen regardless of whether Snowden is pardoned or not.

Sounds like a positive outcome, to me.

And this is a problem how?

What if some whistleblower wannabe releases information about the next strike on [pick a target] just because he thinks words are better than weapons and we should "talk it out."

What about that kind of problem?

It depends. Are we talking about the constitution being violated in the process?

Depends.

Is it another strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital? How about a school or a wedding?

What about some jarheads in a chopper gunning down unarmed civilians?

Sounds awesome, let's get the ball rolling.

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