Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

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Just a reminder: After fleeing the United States, supposed freedom-fighter Snowden took protection from a 'president' who just gave himself the option to remain president until 2036, and who appears to have just poisoned his chief political adversary by spiking his tea, Alexei Navalny (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/alexei-navalny...). Snowden is still under the 'protection' of this dictator today.

Another reminder: Julian Assange's skullduggery influenced the 2016 election in favor of Trump, in which he lied about receiving materials from Russia that were the product of an illegal hack into the DNC, and appears to have been taking cues from the Trump campaign, and in particular Roger Stone, to drop these materials at an opportune time to influence a presidential election.

I'm willing to get modded down infinitely to push back against the bonkers hero-worship of these three here on HN. Assange in particular bears direct responsibility for bringing the United States into the sorry state it is in today.

> Snowden is still under the 'protection' of this dictator today.

Honest question, what do you think would have been a better choice, besides "be a hero and go to Gitmo for your service"?

Obviously, all European states are out of the question, as they wouldn't have granted Snowden political asylum, and went so far to deny Bolivia's president safe travel through their airspace on the suspicion he might have Snowden on board and then went on to search the plane after they forced them to land. That whole affair really opened my eyes to the American empire and its European provinces.

Should he have stayed in Hong-Kong, or gone to Beijing? North Korea?

Why is "be a hero and go to a US prison" not an option? Civil disobedience always has a greater impact when you accept the consequences of your actions, or as Congressman John Lewis would call it, "good trouble."

The fact that we can only cite as governments possibly willing to grant asylum to Snowden non-democratic autocracies who have terrible records on surveillance, human rights and civil liberties should be a hint as to what their motives would be for giving him protection to begin with.

> Why is "be a hero and go to a US prison" not an option?

It is, but who wants that? When someone from a drug cartel becomes a witness, we don't say "okay, thanks, now go back there to get tortured & murdered, show that you accept the consequences of your actions", we say "thanks, now we make you disappear and get you a new identity so you can live a normal life".

The motives of Russia aren't my concern. My concern is that the governments who call themselves liberal democracies are not willing to stand up for somebody blowing the whistle on war crimes, dystopian hyper-authoritarian surveillance state programs etc.

"Snowden should have accepted being sent to Gitmo and be tortured for revealing that the US government routinely shits on the US constitution" is, to me, an infantile response. To keep at the line of "he shouldn't have gone to Russia", the question becomes: what's the alternative?

Why don't you just admit that you don't like what he did and want to see him punished for it? Pretending that you want him imprisoned to make his actions against the US government more effective/meaningful isn't fooling anybody.

Because he'd be prosecuted/remanded by the military, unless something VERY lucky occurs.

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