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Comment by heyflyguy | Hacker News Reader

This is the first time, and maybe it's just because of the length of the interview; that I've noticed Snowden's being slightly untethered from sensibility. The first 10 minutes in particular was a little worrisome.

I imagine that being stuck in Russia, with the pressure he's under has contributed to this. I do wonder how much of this personality bubble was in place when he made the decisions he did.

Nevertheless, I do have a love hate relationship with what he did.

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could you clarify what you mean by "untethered from sensibility"? you make it sound like he's losing it, when really it sounds pretty coherent and his (Edward's) usual content/style. The first few minutes sound like cold opening, so I'd expect them to be more loose. I don't usually watch the JRE though.

Out of curiosity, what about the things he did do you "hate"?

Love - revealed to us that our constitutional rights were being absolutely trampled to death.

Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.

> Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.

He worked with journalists in order to avoid this. He gave the government a head's up before the press released anything everytime they released something new.

What more do you think he should have done?

If he really wanted to be treated as a whistleblower, he should have only leaked the specific things that he took issue with, not grab anything he could get his hands on and give it out. For example, there's no good reason for him to give documents to China that tell them which Chinese computers NSA has access to [0]. This myth that he responsibly leaked information needs to die.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-s...

You're completely misrepresenting this.

He didn't give them any documents, he didn't tell them all the computers, he only _showed_ them a sample of them. They were also only civilian computers.

I think civilians all over the world had a right to know that they were being spied on by the U.S. government. What difference does it make if a person is a U.S. citizen or a Hong Kong citizen? Human rights are human rights.

Every other government, including the Chinese, are spying on US civilians as well. And in this case, it seems like the Chinese civilians were the kinds of civilians any other country would be spying on as well. I haven't seen a convincing argument for Snowden or others as to why he took documents unrelated to domestic spying. If he had only whistleblew the domestic stuff, I bet a lot more politicians would be open to pardoning him.

If a Russian citizen published documents proving that the Russian government was extensively spying on Americans, I doubt you would condemn the leaker. I wouldn't.

If I were Russian, I probably would. As an American, I'd be indifferent to both the leaker and the spying activity.

>If he really wanted to be treated as a whistleblower...

did you just no true scotsman whistleblowing?

As if "being treated as a whistle blower" in a positive sense is even a thing.

Not release information on how we spy on other countries.

> revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.

How were those documents not still incredibly valuable and shed a lot of information on the functioning of the American Empire. US citizens should just be interested in their constitutional rights, but also in the absolute shit-show that is their foreign policy.

Sadly those insights got mostly ignored, as the US really has no actual foreign policy debate anymore.

>but also in the absolute shit-show that is their foreign policy.

And releasing this data to foreign governments (which some are also potential enemies) is the way to do it? Yeah, bravo...

6 years later and nobody has been harmed. What's your problem?

I'm pretty sure he said he was now a professional speaker and then he meandered in monotone for 20 straight minutes, seemingly oblivious. I couldn't help but cringe a little.

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