Mike Pompeo: “Edward Snowden should be given a death sentence” (2016)

washingtonexaminer.com

33 points·krn··5 comments

Old stuff here. As time went on, it became more and more clear that @snowden was actively working against American interests via military document leaks that were completely unrelated to domestic surveillance. He betrayed an oath which is critical to maintaining national security, and it's trivially simple to ascertain that, at the least, at the time that he fled, he clearly caused damage.

Thought experiment: You're the NSA, and @snowden is in HK mid-2013 going public, and you realize he took some unknown set of highly sensitive military documents. You have to assume the worst. Just from this alone, significant damage is an obvious conclusion, just from the uncertainty of what was or was not taken. That he later said something about leaving "breadcrumbs" was either insulting or ignorant of the reality of the impact of his actions.

Counter thought experiment: if you are really thinking about national security, would you ever rely on lots and lots of people making ideological promises of secrecy to keep you safe? Of course not, those people are human beings after all and are very easily compelled to break those silly promises. But then again national security has never been about security or a nation, more like keeping a nation in check.

>Old stuff here. As time went on, it became more and more clear that @snowden was actively working against American interests via military document leaks that were completely unrelated to domestic surveillance.

Define "american interests". And define "completely unrelated to domestic surveillance".

Was his oath to uphold a duty to protect the Constitution or protect the NSA?

Source?

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