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Comment by sunaookami | Hacker News Reader

>Has the technical and scientific community in the US already forgotten this huge breach of trust?

Have you ever seen the comment section of a Snowden thread here? A lot of users here call for Snowden to be jailed, call him a russian asset, play down the reports etc. These are either NSA sock puppet accounts or they won't bite the hand that feeds them (employees of companies willing to breach their users trust).

Edit: see my comment here in a snowden thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237098

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What Snowden did was heroic. What was shameful was the world's underwhelming reaction. Where were all these images in the media of protest marches like against the Vietnam war?

Someone once said "Religion is opium for the people." - today, give people a mobile device and some doom-scrolling social media celebrity nonsense app, and they wouldn't noticed if their own children didn't come home from school.

Looking back I think allowing more centralized control to various forms of media to private parties did much worse overall than government surveillance on the long run.

For me the problem was not surveillance, the problem is addiction focused app building (+ the monopoly), and that never seem to be a secret. Only now there are some attempts to do something (like Australia and France banning children - which am not sure is feasible or efficient but at least is more than zero).

Remember when people and tech companies protested against SOPA and PIPA? Remember the SOPA blackout day? Today even worse laws are passed with cheers from the HN crowd such as the OSA. Embarassing.

Protests in 2025 alone have outnumbered that of those during the Vietnam War.

Protesting is a poor proxy for American political engagement.

Child neglect and missing children rates are lower than they were 50 years ago.

Are you asserting that disagrees with you is either a propaganda campaign or a cynical insider? Nobody who opposes you has a truly held belief?

So you hate waffles?

Him being (or best case becoming) a russian asset turned out to be true

Like it would matter for any of the revelations. And like he would have other choices to not go to prison. Look at how it worked out for Assange.

They both undertook something they believed in, and showed extreme courage.

And they did manage to get the word out. They are both relatively free now, but it is true, they both paid a price.

Idealism is that you follow your principles despite that price, not escaping/evading the consequences.

Assange became a Russian asset *while* in a whistleblowing-related job.

(And he is also the reason why Snowden ended up in Russia. Though it's possible that the flight plan they had was still the best one in that situation.)

So exposing corruption of Western governments is not worthwhile because it 'helps' Russia? Aha, got it.

I am increasingly wondering what there remains of the supposed superiority of the Western system if we're willing to compromise on everything to suit our political ends.

The point was supposed to be that the truth is worth having out there for the purpose of having an informed public, no matter how it was (potentially) obtained.

In the end, we may end up with everything we fear about China but worse infrastructure and still somehow think we're better.

No, exposing Western corruption is all well and good, but the problem is that at some point Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia.

> Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia

What if he simply decided that the information he obtained is worth having out there no matter the source? It seems to me that you're simply upset that he dared to do so and are trying very hard to come up with a rationalization for why he's a Bad Guy(tm) for daring to turn the tables. It's a transparent and rather lackluster attempt to shift the conversation from what to who.

No, I'm upset that he took money from the Kremlin and hosted a show on Russia Today. (At least it was before 2014 I guess...)

One can only hope that you're at least as upset at the double tapping criminals he exposed.

Obama and Biden chased him into a corner. They actually bragged about chasing him into Russia, because it was a convenient narrative to smear Snowden with after the fact.

It was Russia, or vanish into a black site, never to be seen or heard from again.

If the messenger has anything to do with Russia, even after the fact, we should dismiss the message and remember to never look up.

Truth is truth, no matter the source.

Whole Truth is truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#:~:text=citation%20needed%...

There is also the truth that you say, and the truth that you feel

In what way did it "turn out to be true"? Because he has russian citizenship and is living in a country that is not allied with his home country that is/was actively trying to kill him (and revoked his US passport)?

He could have been a Chinese asset, but CCP is a coward.

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