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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

I imagine he did so out of fear for his life. If the government had learned who he was before he announced it publicly, he would have been disappeared before anybody heard anything. being a public figure means that whatever happens to him will also be public.

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I know people like to accuse the media of having ADHD, but do you really think that people would just forget that the leak had to come from somewhere?

Well, it had to come from somewhere. But if that leak happened to be getting waterboarded by our freedom-loving allies in Khazakstan rather than a face and a name, it'd be easier to, um, keep quiet.

That is kind of my point. We know his name, but we always knew there was a person behind it. Snowdon could be captured and sent to some undisclosed location (or killed or your favorite theory, after all it isn't like we expect to hear from him in the public), or an anonymous whistleblower could have been captured and sent to some undisclosed location (or killed or your favorite theory). Having a name out there doesn't change the equation much while distracting from the contents of the leak.

I think @notatoad meant to write "he would have been disappeared".

The implication is that being known to the media means that any retribution by the US government will be visible. Whereas, if he'd remained anonymous, he could have been assassinated or rendered without anyone knowing.

fixed, thanks.

No, but do you imagine they would have discovered his name or have been aware if a strange accident had befallen him had he not put himself in the spotlight? To not imagine most of the character assassination occurring is related directly to the NSA seems odd, that is the kit of clandestine services worldwide. I saw an article with Booze saying he only made 122k a year, so basically appearing to try and make him appear to be an exaggerator or liar in something relatively inconsequential to the whole affair. Nice move, hopefully he has hard proof contradicting that, since otherwise people start questioning what else he exaggerated/lied about, which is precisely what they are angling for with publishing such unrelated bits of trivia.

It should be easy enough to corroborate - tax returns, W-2 and/or 1099s, paystubs, even bank statements showing cash flows if not direct deposits.

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