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Comment by r34yll2k | Hacker News Reader

I want to puke. He agreed, like all security professionals, to uphold an agreement. He is a thief and a liar.

I'd rather he uphold the constitution rather than some implicit "security professional agreement".

All government workers must swear an oath to uphold the constitution. Snowden is an inspiration in that he did just that.

Splitter hairs, but wasn't he a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, and not a civil servant? I don't think support service contractors swear an oath.

"Upholding" the Constitution is not his job. Leave that to the courts.

Like the founders left it to the English courts

So what should he have done considering the organization(s) he worked for failed to uphold their agreements?

He could have gone to the IG: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/nsa-inspector-general-...

You mean the IG that is facing termination for retaliating against other whistleblowers?

http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/12/intelligence-community-land...

Are you supposing that Edward Snowden knew that these allegations would come out three years after his initial leaks and decided to completely bypass even trying official channels for whistleblowing before jumping immediately to exfiltration of classified information?

The statement says Ellard had "previously retaliated" against a whistleblower - but no timeframe is given. Unless other information is given out[1], who's to say that that activity didn't happen before Snowden's actions, and that Snowden could look at that retaliation and decide not to report anything to Ellard?

Even if not, Thomas Drake is a prime example of what happened to whistleblowers at the NSA - and Drake was an employee, who (theoretically) had access to greater whistleblower protections than Snowden would have had as a contractor[2].

So yes, I'm saying that it's very easy to believe that Snowden took a look at what happened to NSA whistleblowers and took a different path.

[1]: from the POGO story: "POGO has been told that mention of the finding will appear in a semiannual report (SAR) of the Intelligence Community IG (ICIG) that should be released in the near future. It makes brief mention of the case without citing Ellard by name." So we may get some more information about timeframes at some point.

[2]: From TechDirt (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161215/16354636293/snowd...) today: "The new directive created better protections but would have done nothing to aid Snowden in taking his complaints to the proper channels because he was only a government contractor, not an actual government employee."

Also Snowden was certainly aware of the fates of previous intelligence leakers like Thomas Drake[0] and William Binney[1] and others who tried to blow the whistle through the proper channels, only for nothing to happen.

[0]http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/leaks-and-the-law-the-...

[1]http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Interview-the-original...

That's your moral compass? A dumb piece of paper over the interests of the public against corrupt and tyrannically clandestine pockets of govt? I don't care if the Constitution itself allowed genocide and rape and merciless tortures. Would you ignorantly carry out such acts on its behalf? Is your psychological hangup so bad that you can't even see 10 feet in front of your face enough to stand on your own two feet and think for yourself?

He only agreed to it for the good of the country and constitution. Anyone can see that the NSA and other clandestine "intelligence" organization were flagrantly attacking the constitution and abusing powers granted by the country.

stealing classified information is different from whistleblowing

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