The SF86 form offers no leeway for moral objections. So in such a scenario, it would be better to not submit the SF86 form in the first place.
The only people I'm aware of that can publish classified information without punishment are journalists.
The issue is that people -- not sure whether it was OP, or you -- conflate what is moral with what is legal.
One person starts off with a moral premise: people should have free speech, or people should have the right to say what the government is doing.
Someone else responds with what is legal: the law applies to government curtailment of free speech, or there was a contract in place.
Laws should reflect values, not vice-versa. What is legal should not be confused with what is right.
Note: I am not taking a moral position myself here. I just wish the legal position would not short-circuit the debate about what the correct moral position ought to be.
We're not dealing with an authoritarian state. Laws by democratic governments are supposed to be mutable.
It's possible say, that the laws haven't caught up to what we (as americans) consider moral. Or it's possible the laws themselves were driven by immoral actors. Or it's possible the law's were passed with good intentions but had side effects that were unforeseeable. Or it's just one big gray area -- which seems to be the case here.
People argue that Snowden's act was moral in the most absolute sense to inform the nation and expose the Government's secrets.
James Comey, someone I think to be of high moral standards, knew about the program [1] yet didn't release the information to the public. He refused to reauthorize the post 9/11 surveillance program -- going to extraordinary lengths to do so.
So what are we to do? Is it more moral to work within the system to change the laws, or to break them entirely?
[1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-comey-ash...
Edited for clarity and succinctness.
The United States would not even exist without the latter. Imagine if the founding fathers had tried to "worked within the system" of British rule instead of carrying out what the latter would have considered an extraordinary act of treason.
Previous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney tried to work within the system, and that didn't exactly go very well. Snowden learnt from their experiences that the only way to achieve any meaningful outcome was to break the law. I imagine if there had been a viable means for him to bring the issues to public attention legally he might have done so.
Technically they couldn't since the colonies were without representation in the British Parliament, so they really couldn't, could they?
> Previous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney tried to work within the system...
Sure but the Obama administration still looks bad for their handling of those whistleblowers. Binney and Drake still look like heros. No one said that whistleblowing was for the faint of heart. Nor were there any guarantees about your livelihood if you report on your employer or customers.
The only whistleblower statute I've known to be effective has been around medicare fraud -- first because medicare fraud is in the tens of billions, and second the reportee get's a cut of any future settlement or judgement.
It's unclear what Snowden's legacy will be. Sure, he informed us that the government might have been doing illegal things under the cloak of secrecy. But he released a lot of information and he didn't even try to go through the legal whistleblower channels first.
If he had gone through whistleblower channels I think it would have been harder for the US to use the word "traitor" to describe him.
That is to say that we all expect, whether it is justified or not from a philosophical perspective, that ought both exists and that it should be related to legality.
Not that I'm arguing one way or another how that applies in this situation, though.
These are as illegal as civil disobedience (refusing to work with cops might be more legal in some countries). As to if they are more or less moral... what moral framework are we using to judge?
I'm pretty sure the Declaration of Independence (1776) was also unlawful as well...
Some do. See: secessionists or separatists. For historical examples, the English religious separatists who moved to Holland. Or the Confederates in the American Civil War.
To be clear, I'm not defending their position or arguing whether or not this is better than civil disobedience, but clearly there is a separatist/secessionist school of moral thought.
The way I see it, we acknowledge that sometimes a government can act outside of it's own boundaries in a repressive manner. That is why we help those who are fleeing persecution based on political activity.
Saying you can't push for change and run away when repression comes would mean that a lot of people I admire, including the Dalai Lama, are bad people. I disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_...
The parent comment is a textbook example of stage 4, "law and order". The moral framework behind civil disobedience is stage 5, "social contract".
There may exist a moral argument, but it's pretty easy to disprove that argument: In Nazi Germany, this principle would leave one to just leave Nazi Germany, otherwise cooperating with the Nazis.
The principle you're proposing would have led to the demise of many more Jews during WW2.
That maybe has some implicit assumptions. If the entire populace of German adopted what you call the "principle", Germany would have fallen much faster and with less bloodshed.
Regardless...moral choices are usually pitted against other moral choices and that's part of what shapes our moral "fiber", for lack of better vocabulary. To do something or do nothing, both have risk analysis. Mostly, we do our best with what we have learned...which also greatly influences what we imagine for the future.
I suppose you're right, but I don't think the assumption that there won't be a mass exodus is a very unreasonable assumption. Many reasonable ethical principles would have prevented the Nazis from even coming into power if everyone in the country applied it. I think if you were in Nazi Germany and as the Third Reich came to power it would be unreasonable to choose an ethical strategy that only works if everyone applies it, since in the moment, everyone was clearly not applying an ethical strategy.
We do have the benefit of hindsight here, though.
> To do something or do nothing, both have risk analysis. Mostly, we do our best with what we have learned...which also greatly influences what we imagine for the future.
Agreed, ethics is very situational, which is why trying to find widely-applicable rules is often a wild goose chase.
And in the end it did not matter much. But one thing is for sure: they kept their conscience clean and that counts for something as well.
I'd have to disagree with you there.
I spent time in Israel and in Brooklyn, and I've personally met at least 3 Jews who were alive when I met them because of good Germans/Austrians who broke Nazi law to help them escape.
I think HN often concerns itself with whole populations because a lot of what we're talking about is public policy, and policies at large corporations, which do affect large populations. But the fact is that for most people, the ethical choices we get to make only touch a few people at a time.
There is no legal definition of "journalist" in this context.
The only people I am aware of which published this were journalists, since day 0.
E: I see this is particularly in the context of his publishing his memoirs now after reading the filing. My apologies
Anyone that has not entered into a contractual agreement with the US to protect classified materials can publish classified materials. It's just that the professional journalists, already established with the large news organizations, are the only ones with the visibility and reputation to not get jailed, vanished, or discredited afterwards.
If you think the US won't break its own laws to protect its dirty secrets, you haven't seen enough leaks of its dirty secrets.
If you take your camera out, and point it at something happening in the street adjoining your home, and plan to post the story to YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, your own web page, send to your local television station, insert into a blog or print book, or have any other form of intent to publish, then for the purposes of exercising your rights, you are in that moment a journalist.
There are no special rights that Clark Kent enjoys as a staff reporter that Peter Parker cannot invoke as an independent freelance photographer.
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I believe that specifically, the NDAs in question have a clause requiring personnel who intend to publish books to allow the agency to perform a pre-print review, to ensure no accidental spillage of classified materials through publication. Due to the nature of the contracts, the sole arbiter of whether information is classified is the classifying authority, so even if something has been published internationally in a globally-recognized newspaper, and is now common knowledge to hundreds of thousands of people, the information is still classified until the authority declassifies it. Those subject to the NDAs are technically not even allowed to read that article in the newspaper, or that chapter of the book, unless they then immediately take steps to control the classified in it and report it to their security contact. Which is to say that you are supposed to wrap the newspaper or book up in an opaque cover and drop it off at your security office.
The actual security apparatus has evolved, but the legal framework is still very much from the 1950-1980 Cold War era, so if you do not do the patently ridiculous thing, you can be sued or prosecuted.
Snowden didn't give CIA, NSA, DIA, or whomever else he may have had NDAs with, the opportunity to edit his book before going to print, for obvious reasons, so he's in violation of the contracts. It is unlikely there is anything in there that has not already been published in newspapers. It seems like they're refusing to declassify information that can no longer seriously be considered secret, with the potential to cause harm to national interests, solely because as long as it remains classified, they can use the contracts to silence, suppress, or retaliate against the whistleblower.
POTUS can also do it.
Everyone has the right to publish classified information, unless they've signed an agreement not to. There's no Constitutional difference between journalists and non-journalists.
Which is why we have a rule of law and a justice system, and not simply contracts.
The US Government took away citizens constitutional rights, and Snowden told everyone about it.
I like to think that even if Snowden is convicted of that, then that forces the US government to be convicted of wrong-doing also. i.e. you can't be convicted of telling secrets that aren't true.