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Comment by kgarten | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or is the term leaker politically charged in the context. For me, Snowden is a whistle blower not a leaker. There's a reason why he revealed secretes (he also didn't just release them, but was very careful how much he revealed), the secrete programs were unconstitutional -> whistle blower not leaker.

edit: typo.

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Thank you for this.

He exposed clearly illegal activity and framing him as a leader changes the narrative.

He is a whistleblower who upheld his oath to protect the constitution of the US, in the face of severe consequences.

The problem is that he also exposed a lot of not-illegal material. Things that were entirely legal, yet classified.

I don't think there's any legal way Snowden wouldn't face a conviction if he was returned to the US, even if you exclude all the "illegal" activity he exposed from evidence against him.

I agree with you that legally Snowden was offside.

The problem was that I think that a lot of the things that leaked people either

A) THOUGHT were illegal

B) Thought that while legal, the government does not do and would not do (particularly because spokespeople have implied under sworn oauth that they do not do.

I'm talking about domestic surveillance.

If there was any justice, then the thing should have been a wakeup call for the US populace and government and new laws would have been introduced to make the things that he leaked illegal.

Alas...

I'm sure you meant to say leaker not leader, correct?

Yes, seems I didn’t catch an autocorrect. Thank you.

Snowden's method of whistleblowing was leaking documents to the press. He is both.

It's all semantics, he revealed valuable knowledge to the public about how the government was unConstitutionally surveilling them at every opportunity without remorse or apology

It's not semantics.

If you killed someone committing their own separate crime, you'd be both a killer and potentially a hero.

It is important to make clear he both committed a very serious crime and potentially blew the whistle in act of bravery.

Not if they were breaking into your house and it was self-defense. Then you're technically a killer, having killed someone, but you're more a hero, and not criminally culpable at all.

Was the Pentagon Papers a leak or whistleblowing? Seems like we have a precedent for this.

Both

Using "leaker" instead of "whisteblower" is not necessarily wrong, just politically charged.

Using "leaker" means you are ignoring that what he did was to blow whistle on illegal activities and only focusing on him.

Leaking was the method. It is a statement of fact that he was a leaker. It’s a statement of values/opinion that he was a whistleblower.

Grey comments like this are a reminder that the american tech industry has reached a point where you're only allowed to advocate for one set of ideas out loud (what a coincidence considering where SV and SF are). Nothing this person said is wrong or phrased in a hostile manner but the comment is going grey for simply acknowledging the nuance of the topic. As someone who grew up as a dem during a time when dems were the ones preaching tolerance, it's weird that we're the censorship party now.

Ditto.

Agreed

It's good manners to avoid calling somebody a word they don't call themselves, and in this case I'd personally defer to The Guardian's articles from 2013 that say "whistleblower": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hLjuVyIIrs

If I witness a robbery in progress, and I call the cops, am I a leaker?

Only if you worked for the robbers and they thought you wouldn’t tell.

they've intentionally selected the word due to it's negative context. The usage of "leaker" allows them to play to the 'orange man bad' narrative, which they value more than getting Snowden pardoned.

Are there any measurable metrics by which he is doing a good job?

Sure, the most important one. Hasn't invaded any new countries.

He's done his fair bit of missile-ing and bombing. One also wonders why his silence on the Russian contract killing is so deafening...

The key word in gp being new. Of course through Obama, the us has racked up involvement in so many countries it's been meddling in that the bar is low. He hasn't deployed troops in Iran or Venezuela. (The killing of the Iranian general was in Iraq)

We are talking about a US President here. You can only expect so much. Missiling and bombing other countries might as well be mandated by their constitution.

this narrative was being pushed when there was an effort to pull american soldiers out of the region recently, primarily by those behind the military industrial complex which wants endless war. Russian contracts, if they were real, were a failure as it had virtually no impact.

Separately, the US has been aggressive against Russia on sanctions and other moves, which the media does not cover. US moves against Russia does not advance the narrative which suggest US only does Russia's bidding. Media outlets are being very selective with coverage to push their agenda.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/money/2020/08/10/germany-bris...

Unless you count the transformation of our friendly presence in Iraq to a hostile invasion opposed by the government.

But, sure, he hasn't invaded any countries that weren't notionally friendly at the time of the invasion.

> our friendly presence in Iraq

Once again I marvel at the flexibility of our English language in describing impossible concepts, such as this one.

Sure, it was only a “friendly” presence because we installed a government there after the last invasion.

It is, nevertheless, the case that Trump changed that into an invasion again.

If that's your number one qualification for a president then we should have just appointed a pet rock instead. No new wars, and it wouldn't complain when you try to put a mask on it.

I think the implication was that pardoning whistleblowers is good, if that's what your opinion of Snowden is. But that doesn't fit the desired narrative, so they don't call him a whistleblower.

Actually having talks with North Korea and pulling troops out of other countries

He'll be one of two presidents that have reduced the US's carbon emissions between first year and last year in office.

Insofar as economic growth is considered positively correlated to carbon emissions, I head the GDP outliers referred to as "decoupling" from emissions.

On as state-by-state basis, something like 40 US states are decoupled now, for various reasons (none of which seemed to be related to politics, to me). I suspect that, nationally, GDP seems correlated to carbon emissions.

Which is all the more impressive given his indifference to carbon footprints, and hostility towards their reduction.

Well considering the other president was GWB...

Here's a few:

Criminal Justice Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Step_Act

Opportunity Zones https://opportunityzones.hud.gov/

Can buy foreign pharmaceuticals https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/12/18/trump-admin...

Quite the apt username you've got there. eye roll

Leaking is a type of whistleblowing. Not all whistleblowers are leakers, but leaking secret information is one way to be a whistleblower.

I don't think either is a superset/subset of the other -- the Venn circles overlap, but there are definitely leakers who are not whistleblowers. Like, leaking salacious celebrity gossip to a tabloid is not whistleblowing.

Yes, you are correct

This is known as Russell's conjugation in honor of Bertrand Russell's discussion of the topic on the BBC in 1948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

I've seen him refered to as a leaker before, I honestly didn't think much of it.

I don't think that term is automatically negative.

Leaking is a common political tool, frequently seen in news, and popularized on shows such as the West Wing and Yes, Minister. It is only a negative when used against you.

He was not a Government employee at the time. Contractors don't get to be whistle blowers.

EDIT: Turns out the law does protect contractors, so I guess it's circumstantial that employees get branded whistle blowers and contractors get charged as spies.

Brilliant, just hire contractors to get around good governance rules :)

I mean, it works for Google and Facebook.

A Russian plant in the white house would still be a spy, even though they're an employee. A contractor who isn't working for any intelligence service isn't a spy, even if they publish secret documents.

What? I don't follow your conclusion at all.

Interesting. Is this a generally agreed upon rule?

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