Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.
People that sacrifices their safety or lives to help a good cause are the ones I respect the most. I hope he will be able to visit his country safely sometime.
p.s. Please fix the title, it is clickbaity and almost unrelated to the actual article/interview.
Edward Snowden became an international celebrity because of what he did, and traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow. Please don't speak of him in the same vein as, for example, a disappeared Chinese dissident who has actually sacrificed everything for what they believe.
A comfortable life in Moscow that was never guaranteed beforehand, and could be arbitrarily taken away with no notice. Being fortune enough to end up in a decent situation does not change what he sacrificed.
> Seems dumb.
It sure does seem dumb on Snowden's part, doesn't it? Nobody with a technical background who has read Snowden's documents and read what he thought they said has ever accused him of being smart.
Where in that article does it say anything like that? As the closest I can see is that he may have shown something to a Malaysian owned paper.
>It sure does seem dumb on Snowden's part, doesn't it?
No, why would China let him go and publicly release things? There would be so many better ways to handle him.
That newspaper is based in China, which can do with information and people within its borders as it pleases. Why do you think he gave out that information out to begin with? There is no benefit to Americans.
He leaked all of that and more just to expose one illegal US program (phone metadata collection). Anybody with a high school degree would think of a better way to handle that.
> No, why would China let him go and publicly release things? There would be so many better ways to handle him.
He did that before China knew what he was going to do. There are so many better ways for Snowden to have handled that data, yes.
It's based in Hong Kong, and the Chinese state accessing published information isn't noteworthy. He exposed numerous illegal hacks done by the NSA on Hong Kong civilians, it's beneficial for Americans to know that their government is doing such a thing.
>He leaked all of that and more just to expose one illegal US program (phone metadata collection)
Your "smoking gun" on giving data to the Chinese exposes yet another illegal US program, and if you look through the other released information you'll find many more.
>He did that before China knew what he was going to do. There are so many better ways for Snowden to have handled that data, yes
No, according to your ridiculous fantasy, he released the information after giving it to the Chinese. It wouldn't matter what he was going to do then, letting him out of Chinese custody would be a huge mistake as it becomes advantageous for him to expose that he gave China information.
These hacks are not illegal. I'm flabbergasted that you would think they were. In addition to those legal hacks on Hong Kong infrastructure, he also exposed legal hacks on mainland Chinese infrastructure. Americans already know the government is doing these things. They do not need to know the details of which systems were compromised and when, and the Chinese government especially should not know these things.
Again, there is only one illegal data collection program in the terabytes of data that Snowden leaked. That is reckless and stupid at the very least and treasonous by his leaks of Chinese target details to China at worst. Did you ever stop to think why he would choose to divulge that information first, while he was in Hong Kong?
> No, according to your ridiculous fantasy, he released the information after giving it to the Chinese.
That is your ridiculous fantasy. I never said that.
From your source. You're flabbergasted that I think the illegal programs you brought up were illegal.
Do you also believe Snowden's ridiculous description of PRISM? That bumbling illiterate was so proud of finding a data integration project between the FBI and the NSA that he asked The Washington Post to publish the description in full while ranting about "omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance" and warned the Post's reporter melodramatically that the government would kill the reporter if he didn't publish quickly.
So you think Snowden is a bumbling idiot yet he somehow faked millions of files detailing the NSA's misdeeds? I hope you're acting independently, it's far too depressing to think that you are a paid troll.
CFAA – 18 USC 1030(f) explicitly allows this. Do you want to try again?
> So you think Snowden is a bumbling idiot yet he somehow faked millions of files detailing the NSA's misdeeds?
Who said he faked the files? This is the second time you have put words into my mouth. I have always said that the files are genuine and that Snowden did not understand them because he has the reading level and the technical ability of an elementary school student.
> I hope you're acting independently, it's far too depressing to think that you are a paid troll.
I know people who implemented the systems at the dot coms that send information to the FBI in the PRISM slides. I have laughed at Snowden's ridiculous misinterpretation of those slides for the past six years. It is a source of continuing amusement that there remain some people who should know better that still believe Snowden's interpretation.
Unless yoy can produce the lawful authorization given to access these computers, that subsection does not permit their actions.
>Snowden did not understand them because he has the reading level and the technical ability of an elementary school student.
So your argument is that the documents he revealed don't detail a mass surveillance program. Would never have guessed that.
>I know people who implemented the systems at the dot coms that send information to the FBI in the PRISM slides
All the dot coms listed by PRISM deny being a part of such a program. If you're legit, you're probably burning bridges here.
The NSA is indeed authorized to break into communications systems abroad. That is half of its charter.
> So your argument is that the documents he revealed don't detail a mass surveillance program
My argument is that PRISM, which he was so excited to tell everyone about, is not a mass surveillance program as he had claimed. The closest thing to a mass surveillance program in the US that he leaked (and the only illegal NSA program in his leaks) was phone metadata collection, but the restrictions on how that data could be queried makes calling it mass surveillance a bit of a stretch.
> All the dot coms listed by PRISM deny being a part of such a program.
They aren't a part of PRISM — the slides very clearly show them to be outside of PRISM, which Snowden and Greenwald were too stupid to understand. They integrate with the FBI (and EU law enforcement, etc.) to transfer data for specific accounts under court-ordered surveillance. The slides show that PRISM is an NSA data ingestion system to get the FBI's data into the NSA's search indices. The only two organizations involved in implementing that are the NSA and the FBI.
The NSA does not have carte blanche to infiltrate any computer without question.
Wrong. I already told you that the authorization is granted to the NSA as part of its charter.
> and then does not accidentally acquire any US citizens data.
Also wrong. There is no law against accidental acquisition of Americans' data, and there is no reason to believe that merely obtaining access to computer systems magically results in acquisition of Americans'data.
> it hasn't appeared because these were all illegal,
This is the most obviously wrong of all your claims. Infiltrating Chinese computer systems was so clearly legal that nobody even bothered to file a lawsuit about it, not even Larry Klayman.
After which I said that the NSA does not have carte blanche to hack any computer and you accused me of putting words in your mouth. This is how it works. Their charter still requires authorization, which doesn't exist, making these hacks illegal.
>Also wrong. There is no law against accidental acquisition of Americans' data
There are all worts of laws that make acquiring American data without a warrant illegal. If accidentally done, I believe the data is to be immediately destroyed and some sort of record of it happening is kept, I am not an expert.
>This is the most obviously wrong of all your claims.
Obviously wrong claims can be shown wrong. Try to do so. Until then, I'll believe the paper calling it illegal and the law that calls the action illegal without proper authorization.
Do you understand that there is a difference between being able to hack domestic computer systems and foreign computer systems? The latter is fair game, as long as it allows them to collect foreign intelligence, which is part of their charter.
> If accidentally done, I believe the data is to be immediately destroyed and some sort of record of it happening is kept
Exactly. The accidental acquisition is not illegal. Keeping the data knowingly is.
> Obviously wrong claims can be shown wrong. Try to do so.
Already done. If you believe it is illegal, try to get a lawyer and sue. The lawyer will laugh you out of the office, just as I have been laughing at that illiterate Snowden.
Civilian targets are still not open game, they have rights that need yo be respected.
>Exactly. The accidental acquisition is not illegal. Keeping the data knowingly is.
The accidental acquisition is still illegal, just not heavily punished.
>If you believe it is illegal, try to get a lawyer and sue. The lawyer will laugh you out of the office
Because this is not how "crimes" work. For me to sue, I would need to have been personally damaged by the act, and to my knowledge the actual people targeted were not revealed. This doesn't make an act "legal," so you have not even attempted to show that it is obviously legal.
No, they do not. There is no legal precedent for this.
> The accidental acquisition is still illegal,
Under what law? Police accidentally collect data all the time just from their body cams.
> Because this is not how "crimes" work. For me to sue, I would need to have been personally damaged by the act, and to my knowledge the actual people targeted were not revealed.
They were. Tsinghua, Huawei, multiple telecommunications services, etc.
There are numerous Supreme Court cases showing that aliens are still guaranteed rights protected by the Constitution.
>Under what law? Police accidentally collect data all the time just from their body cams
The Fourth Amendment. Police collect data in public, or they have a warrant, or expectation of emergency, which are varieties of authorization.
>They were. Tsinghua, Huawei, multiple telecommunications services, etc.
Strange list of names for Hong Kong hacks. And that is ignoring the greater point, crimes don't need personal lawsuits to be crimes.
It really bugs me that people who defend him for ideological reasons cannot admit that he had benefited from the entire ordeal. He bemoaned the lack of respect at CIA (being the IT guy isn't high up on the totem pole) and now he can skype into a conference in Geneva with thousands of people hanging on his every word. He has a twitter account with a headshot of him doing his best impersonation of a greek philosopher with millions of followers.
To a lot of people, people that don't feel respected in the life and work, that type of celebrity is priceless. Money and a beach house is nothing compared to that.
If you don't think people like Assange and Snowden have a hero complex, and are only motivated by "truth" and "justice", you are kidding yourself.
Like I said, you want a real hero search in the political prisons of Iran or China. Or Russia, the place Snowden now calls home (under circumstances we will never know).