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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

This is the thing that rubs me the wrong way about Snowden - had he stayed and faced the music as a true whistleblower, he would've earned my respect for sticking to principles and acting as a loyal citizen acting in the interest of the country, even in the face of persecution.

He did not do that. Instead, he's living a comfortable life in the bowels of a country that is committing vicious, daily war crimes. I don't hear him make a peep about kidnapped Ukrainian children, or the civilians that Russia tortures and kills. He's not a principled activist who's suffering for the cause of freedom at any cost, he's now just a loyal Russian citizen who opportunistically committed a massive act of espionage a long time ago.

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Was he not living a comfortable life in the bowels of a country that was committing vicious, daily war crimes when he lived in the USA? We kill/displaced over a million civilians in Iraq, not to mention the mess we left in Afghanistan. The carnage we've unleashed with drone warfare, CIA black sites, Guantanamo Bay, ect...

Yes, Russia are the bad guys, but we have done some truly heinous things as well. Snowden revealed a little of the crimes we commit and you're ready to wash him away because it hurts your position that we are somehow morally superior to other countries?

I think this is incredibly rich. Snowden is undoubtedly on the US' "really, really naughty" list -- would you, personally, sit back and be imprisoned for the rest of your life (and possibly be tortured), or live comparatively freely elsewhere?

> I don't hear him make a peep about kidnapped Ukrainian children, or the civilians that Russia tortures and kills.

Can you really not see why that would be a bad idea? He's kind of tied up here, if he doesn't want to end up dead by somebody's hands.

> opportunistically committed a massive act of espionage a long time ago

How exactly do his past actions go from heroic to a "massive opportunistic act of espionage" because of his actions in the present?

Snowden's past actions were never heroic, that is just spin manufactured by journalists with a vested interest in constructing a narrative.

He's been arrogantly self-serving from the start, and it's rather disappointing that some people still haven't grown out of their juvenile phase of blind hero worship.

> He's been arrogantly self-serving from the start

Maybe if he was as self-serving as you thought he'd continue to live a comfortable life while destroying the rule of law that we pretend to have instead of having to abandon his home and never again be able to see his country or friends again?

As a contractor he didn't qualify for whistleblower protections at the time.

He would just be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, and there's a much better chance the leak to the public would have never been completed in the first.

I see no evidence that merely being convicted of treason is enough to get you thrown in a solitary cell forever. There's a long list of plain old convicted spies[1], and they just went to regular, run of the mill prison. I would like to see the evidence that Snowden would be treated any differently.

And again, I'm not saying he would've been protected as a whistleblower, just that he had to choose one or the other: take his chances as a martyr for freedom, or escape all consequences and with them, his legacy as a respectable historical figure. He chose the latter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies

Regular, run of the mill prisons have solitary. It's not a special prison.

Manning spent most of her time in solitary, and it's not listed in your citation.

> Manning spent most of her time in solitary, and it's not listed in your citation.

Not even remotely true.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/23/politics/chelsea-manning-soli...

LMAO comment on hacker news whenever you leak the severity and amount of information like snowden and let us know how valiant you are for reaping the unjust consequences.

you'll be a loyal citizen to a nation state that spies on its people, while torturing and killing other people for no good reason.

why is going to jail for whistleblowing honorable? that makes no sense to me.

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