Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

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>The hypocrisy of running to possibly, the MOST historically abusive surveillance state has giving me serious reservations about Snowden’s loyalties over the years.

You should refrain from holding strong opinions on a subject that you did not bother to put even a bit of effort to understand.

Snowden did not run to Russia, he was on his way from Hong Kong to Ecuador and was in the international transit zone of Moscow's airport as part of a layover flight when the U.S. cancelled his passport leaving him stuck in the airport for over a month. During that time Snowden applied for asylum in several countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Austria, India, etc etc... the U.S. placed a great deal of diplomatic pressure on every single country he applied to to refuse his request and finally Russia gave him what was at the time intended to be temporary asylum so he could leave the airport and pursue asylum elsewhere. That temporary asylum is now a residency permit.

Snowden has stated he would be willing to return the U.S. to face trial if said trial would be open and transparent as well as present a public interest defense. The charge against him for violating the Espionage Act allows substantial portions of the trial to be conducted in secret, precludes the possibility of using a public interest defense, and places a great deal of restrictions on a defendant to properly argue their case.

Daniel Ellsberg, another whistleblower who was charged under the Espionage Act for releasing the Pentagon Papers has fully supported the actions of Edward Snowden has made it clear that he would have acted in the same manner given the circumstances.

Ellsberg was very fortunate that the prosecution acted with such brazen and open recklessness against him in the illegal gathering of evidence that it led the judge to dismiss all charges against him, otherwise Ellsberg would have faced 115 years in prison for what he did.

This requires a huge grain of salt from Snowden that he means what he says. But we know he lied a few times to journalists and withheld information.

To OP's point though, much of what Snowden took was not shared publicly, but was handed over to the Russian government. So something is not adding up when he says he is only in Russia for self-preservation when he could have had a long and successful career in the US if he had just (actually) raised his ethical complaints and just quit his job.

>was handed over to the Russian government.

You're gonna have to show some evidence of that if you don't want to look like a tool.

According to his Guardian interview, he claimed to have "full access to the rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth".

Most of this information was not given to the journalists. It could be he was bluffing about what kind of access he had (was very likely). But he claimed to have much more information than he showed the journalists in Hong Kong.

FWIW (obviously taken with a grain of salt) - the intelligence community themselves at least believed and acted as if he took a bunch of classified documents with him - despite not believing him that he actually had lists of undercover assets and stations: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33125068

We have a claim from the US government – which is clearly an unreliable source – and we have Snowden himself who says he didn't share more than he felt he had to. The GP said “he haded files to the Russians” which is a claim I still have seen no proof of.

We actually don't know how much he handed to them but he stole 1.5 million classified documents when he fled.

According to: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r...

> Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services., and in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee asserted that “Snowden did share intelligence” with his government.'

> Over the past three years, the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense (DoD) have carried out separate reviews—with differing methodologies—of the contents of all 1.5 million documents Snowden removed. It is not clear which of the documents Snowden removed are in the hands of a foreign government.

The US govt is assuming they have it all

> Out of an abundance of caution, DoD therefore reviewed all 1.5 million documents to determine the maximum extent of the possible damage.

>We actually don't know how much he handed to them

So why would anyone claim he did so unless they had something to gain or are just sharing an opinion?

> Snowden did not run to Russia

He ran. Don't blame the US for trying to detain him.

> Snowden has stated he would be willing to return the U.S. to face trial if said trial would be open and transparent as well as present a public interest defense.

Why does he deserve special treatment?

> Daniel Ellsberg[...]has fully supported the actions of Edward Snowden

Daniel Ellsberg gets to decide what the law is?

> Why does he deserve special treatment?

First, a fair trial is not "special treatment". Second, because every U.S. citizen is protected by the Bill of Rights. There was a non-zero chance that had Snowden not fled the country he'd be quietly moved to Gitmo and never heard from again.

I may be reading this wrong, but, it sounds like you're not in favor of the actions Snowden took. I couldn't disagree more. He tried to raise the illegal operation he was a part of to the higher-ups, through the chain-of-command, and he was ignored. The public deserves to know that the U.S. Government was blantly breaking the law and spying on everyone, everywhere, all the time.

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