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Comment by ScottBurson | Hacker News Reader

> What's most maddening to me is the narrative [...] that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability

I don't know where you're getting that. It's certainly not what Greenwald is saying. He's saying (and I agree) that Snowden acted responsibly by leaving to journalists the decision of what, of all the leaked material, to publish. He didn't just throw the whole pile on Wikileaks. Does that not make a difference to you? Does the Post bear no responsibility whatsoever for the decisions of their own news editors?

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The fact that Snowden didn't do the worst possible thing and just dump everything onto BitTorrent does not for me suggest that Snowden's actions are unimpeachable.

But I also have grave problems with the manner in which the Snowden cache was handled. I don't think the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the Guardian have the OPSEC chops to protect the data. But more than that, I don't think The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald, The New York Times, and The Guardian can generate the right set of expertise to evaluate all these documents. I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to review the cache.

The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.

So I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that, despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.

> I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that, despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.

I have no problem with that either, as long as we don't forget the accountability of the other people involved. That would include those who initiated and furthered the unconstitutional NSA programs; those who kept them hidden even from Congress; those to whom Snowden gave the documents; and, to some extent, all the rest of us looking on, at whatever distance, and commenting (or not).

> The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.

Any more than, say, the American Revolution?

I suspect the creation of history is always a bit messy when it involves human beings.

It is just not the case that the state is obligated to withhold prosecution until everyone who could possibly be culpable is also charged. This is logic that is deployed constantly on HN --- most commonly in the form of "none of the banksters went to prison so why are we prosecuting XXX" --- and it's just not valid. No state works that way.

I would be really happy to see NSA employees charged for (provable) abuse of laws governing their operations. I totally believe that a lot of what NSA has done has been abusive. I mean that in the sense of: I would feel better about our country if that happened.

But the fact that it hasn't happened or even that it won't happen doesn't change my feelings about whether Snowden should be accountable for his actions.

What would be a reasonable punishment for him, by your standards? And what would be a reasonable punishment for the Post staff, by your standards?

Based solely on what I personally know, which is terribly incomplete, I wouldn't be alarmed by a felony conviction but no custodial sentence.

> It is just not the case that the state is obligated to withhold prosecution until everyone who could possibly be culpable is also charged.

That's true, but it's not a license to scapegoat one person and let everyone else off scot-free. A legitimate attempt must be made to bring the other involved people to justice.

You know as well as I do that no one besides Snowden will ever be prosecuted in this connection. Everybody already knows that James Clapper perjured himself before Congress, and he hasn't even been fired.

The state is obligated to cease withholding prosecution of those who are 100% in their jurisdiction to prosecute right now.

You'd love it if the powerful were brought to justice for breaking the law but you're largely unfussed by it brazenly being stifled. This has no influence on your belief of the necessity of going after the one who exposed them? This will result in it being less likely that we're going to find out about criminality by these people abusing their power. This gives the optics of the prosecutor's office being in support of the rampant, flagrant, totally illegal abuse of power.

There is this idea about the rule of law and equality before it. Baying for the prosecution of the whistle blower while not tying it to the prosecution of all those utter crooks he exposed. It's straight up support of corruption. It's the same prosecutors' office deciding whether to prosecute both of these things it found out about simultaneously from the same source, isn't it?

The rule of law and equality before it is a thing. Some find it worthwhile and have fought, died and killed for it. Supporting it in both theory and practice seems admirable to me. I have trouble in seeing a similarly admirable quality in what you've written here.

They briefly allowed some industry people to look at a few of the documents, like Bruce Schneier who said he wished he could have had more time instead of being placed in front of a live OS with a few dozen pdfs the Guardian wanted him to review. As for OPSEC there was the time the Guardian leaked the password to the first Wikileaks large Manning dump (the Assange hotel napkin PGP password incident), then they actually wrote Op-Ed attack pieces on Assange for "releasing unredacted classified information".

The fact that it was people like Bruce Schneier who got access to the document, and not, say, Bruce Leidl, is a big part of my problem with the process used to evaluate the documents.

What is wrong with Bruce Schneier?

Nothing is wrong with Bruce Schneier.

Schneier is a well-regarded expert on cryptography, but outside of that domain, he appears to have very little relevant experience.

I'm just thinking there are people with a lot more time to dedicate to the project than he has.

> I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to review the cache.

So you're claiming that he should be prosecuted and convicted for the leaks, but simultaneously that he should have allowed more people to have access to the leaks? This position doesn't seem very consistent.

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