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Comment by vuanotino | Hacker News Reader

>"Having put friends of mine, friends of yours who serve in the military today an enormous risk because of the information he stole and then released to foreign powers," Pompeo added.

I would like to see a good rebuttal to this which is not "the end justifies the means".

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It's not a good argument because none of the Snowden Documents put individuals at risk. What he did do was disclose massive illegal and illegitimate activity, promulgating awareness of a giant surveillance network with built in parallel construction for the purposes of diplomatic and industrial espionage and mass propaganda.

That put our "military in danger" the same way setting innocent victims of military torture free: yeah, now there are people who are pissed off with legitimate gripes.

What information did he release that risked any danger to the public? He released information to the public that made them realize the government has been abusing their freedoms. Any US secret spying programs that were compromised should have been compromised. You're saying peoples' arguments for Snowden say the ends justify the means but that logic is the only reason the programs exist in the first place. Is that an adequate rebuttal?

It's not a rebuttal but if they want to start holding people to that standard perhaps a discussion about the issue of WMD's in a certain middle eastern country circa 2003 would be worth having?

Wikipedia says 4,809 coalition service members have died and 30,000+ have been wounded in that conflict so far.

To turn the pro surveillance statist phrase around, "if they are doing nothing wrong they have nothing to fear."

The US government was/is doing things that are illegal immoral and unconstitutional. Tattling is the right thing to do.

Pompeo's friends wouldn't be at risk if they weren't willing participants in the crimes done by the government that Snowden revealed

I still don't understand why Obama isn't held accountable for this? Certainly this started under the Bush administration, but I find it hard to believe he was not complacent in the continuance of spy programs that spied on Americans without warrants.

Because very few Americans actually care.

They tortured prisoners of war during Bush's administration and no one was held accountable for that.

A bonus to post truth politics is that you get to execute people for things they didn't do.

And given the cozy relationship between the president elect and Putin, I would say Snowden's Russian residence is on shaky ground.

So who exactly was put at enormous risk? Which specific document put that person/those people at risk? They keep touting this out, but never actually manage to tell us which piece of information caused this to happen. NOTHING I've read so far would actually do what he's claiming has happened.

As long as we're going to talk about the death penalty for people outing spies, I assume he's going to personally see Dick Cheney held accountable for outing Valerie Plame, right?

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

If you look up Pompeo on wikipedia, he has zero credibility in the Intelligence community having no experience whatsoever.

His political credentials are: He's a tea party member, and he's a republican. That's it.

He's just saying this to compensate his lack of any experience in the leadership role he's about to fill.

Edit: I'm just interested in seeing now how many people Trump begins to annoy when he appoints Thiel from the pond/swamp.

House Intelligence Oversight Committee, West Point Graduate, Army Veteran.

It could be better, but it could be worse.

Well, he doesn't specify exactly which information was released that puts people at risk.

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