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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

> He is a Russian citizen now, swore allegiance to the country and everything.

And what would you do? You can't just keep applying residency permits forever, and desperately hoping that you'll get another 3 years. If you don't get approved for another 3 years (during that nerve-racking waiting period), you're screwed. Becoming a citizen is the best guarantee of stability after his actions, and it's not like the US or their allies are going to welcome him with open arms anytime soon.

He also is married and has two children. You aren't going to raise children on a residency permit.

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His path brought him to choice between becoming a martyr or a traitor. The path that he embarked on willingly.

I think Hollywood has an unhealthy impacts on people's views of heroism.

Nowhere I called him a hero.

This is the actual problem, because he is.

There is certainly a worldview in which a guy who supported Iraq war and fled to Russia is a hero. Just not a universally accepted one.

Where did he support the war? He also never fled to Russia but wanted to change a flight there.

Yes, who among us haven't missed their connecting flight in Sheremetyevo while fleeing from the FBI with NSA secrets.

Feeling a duty to fight in the Iraq War,[10] Snowden enlisted in the United States Army on May 7, 2004

Snowden is free to do what he wants. But don't take the moral high ground when you're accepting being a propaganda pawn by a country like Russia. The fact that he continues to openly mock the US on twitter, while claiming he can't comment on anything Ukraine/Russia because he's not an 'expert' on the matter shows you exactly where his priorities are.

> shows you exactly where his priorities are.

Staying alive and out of prison? That's just a basic survival instinct.

I can totally understand why he made the decisions he made and I might have made the same decisions if I were in his situation. That doesn't change that the decisions were hypocritical and morally compromised.

Of course it does, it changes everything.

What does it change?

This seems to be a perfect example of a moral compromise. Snowden had a stated moral that freedom from government surveillance is incredibly important. Now he swears allegiance to a country that is even oppressive when it comes to surveillance and other authoritarian practices. That is a moral compromise.

The motivation can make that compromise understandable, but it doesn't stop being a compromise. It is irrelevant whether he made it for his personal safety, the safety of his family, or just to avoid the "constant headache" other people in this thread have stated, it is still a compromise.

And right now Russia is likely the best option given those criteria.

And it doesn't make him a hypocrite either. To focus on that is ridiculous given the context.

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