In 2009, Ed Snowden said leakers “should be shot.” Then he became one | Hacker News Reader

In 2009, Ed Snowden said leakers “should be shot.” Then he became one

arstechnica.com

47 pointsLibertatea33 comments

Snowden said some unwise things in his past? Well that definitely makes it ok for the government to spy on me!

Seriously Ars? You don't feel it's a little ironic to be raking through his communications like this?

This is one of the problems with total surveillance, everyone has said or done something stupid at some point. If not during the immediate past, then during their teens.

It seems people don't even find it an issue.

I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Unbelievable.

Same here. 1. If it is really snowden, so what, you can see it as weird and try to make it a schocking story "OMG my hero Snowden used to say this?!" 2. Its logs given to ars by users.... 3. Personal attack.

Not to mention the fact that they wait until the twelfth paragraph before disclosing the fact that the entire story is based on unverified transcripts sent to them by individual users, and not their own logs.

The Ars IRC server doesn't log conversations, and there are no official transcripts of any discussions on that server. However, after learning that Snowden appeared to be an Ars user, we received chat logs from multiple longtime users who recalled IRC conversations with the user known as TheTrueHOOHA

Ars doesn't log IRC chats on their server. All this was collected from other users' chat logs.

You mean other people are watching me besides just the NSA? Holy crap, I didn't realize, I thought I was only using TLS to keep the government from finding out my credit card information!

But it wasn't the NSA's chat logs, they'd need a warrant signed by every single Supreme Court Justice for that.

I'm really happy the media is choosing to focus on what Snowden may or may not have done in his private life versus spending a bit of time on the biggest, unconstitutional domestic spying operation in world history. Yeah, I want to know more about whether he used a dvorak keyboard or a regular one, the NSA stuff is just a yawnfest.

Live by the pageview, die by the pageview.

I can't figure out why you are all so surprised. Is this really the site of A/B testing to figure out which shade of ochre maximizes your Web INF.0 conversion rates or not? The site where tax evasion is OK as long as it's legal?

Ars isn't going to see a pageview goldmine like this come again for a long time, so as long as the reporting is accurate then I see no reason why they shouldn't take advantage, especially since Greenwald and WaPo are doing the muckraking anyways. Ars doesn't have an exclusivity deal with Snowden so they're doing the smart thing by reporting on what they do have exclusivity about.

I'm not surprised at all, I'm just tired and depressed by it.

I thought "really?" when in was suggested a week ago that an all out character assassination would commence in mainstream media against Snow den. then this. Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it.

And in 2008, (candidate) Obama said there should be no warrantless wiretapping. Then he started doing it himself.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html

I'm shocked to find out that a politician actually lied..

If anything, I'd say it actually improves my respect for him. 4 years ago it seems he was an idealistic employee working for the secret services to fight the good fight.

Fast forward to today and the realities of what is actually being done in the name of "security" have turned his idealism in to alarm.

Fortunately for us, he had the self-awareness, conscience and bravery to take the blinkers off, question what is happening and try and do something about it.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - John Maynard Keynes

He espouses a lot of libertarian views, which would be consistent with leaking information on the fact that the government is poking into everyone's lives to damage said over-reaching government.

There's a bit of debate [1] about this quote on Mr. Keynes's Wikiquotes page. Still, a good and valid point regardless of who said it first.

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:John_Maynard_Keynes#.22Whe...

Ages 24 and 28 can be farther apart than the math would suggest.

I read the whole thing, the title put me off but I stood firm.

Page 3 is where the stuff about leakers is; in the context of http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=...

To me it seems 4 years ago while working for the CIA, he was an idealist. He saw it from the protecting national security angle.

To me, not entirely surprising?

Especially not surprising because working for CIA he expected to be monitored, and it's just self preservation to publicly espouse the "correct" ideologies.

Ed was of course planning already towards becoming a leaker - he wanted to stay under the radar or gain some NSA points by giving the image of being strictly against leaking.

Hey look, more hatchet job done Joe Mullin. Fuck that guy, and fuck ken fisher for defending him.

This is interesting:

these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thingthe same people who screwed us on wiretappingover and over and over againThank god they're going out of business.

Referring to the NY Times. "Screwed us on wiretapping" in the sense that they reported about it, thus tipping off terrorists and making it less useful. (Snowden's interpretation, not mine).

Interestingly, that was exactly what a former intel community official had also complained about when discussing the Snowden case, was when the news leaked of what type of phone OBL was using, that OBL switched to couriers and set back the government in their efforts to track him.

Or in other words, Snowden knew of the national security impact this leak would have and did it anyways. The gracious viewpoint is that he figured the improvement to civil liberties would outweigh the cost to national security. But that still doesn't explain divulging secrets to China, or why Snowden felt that he was unilaterally qualified to assess the risks of each.

People change in time. Their opinions too.

Not me man. I never said any dumb shit when I was younger. No way.

There is a difference between "should be shot", and "those people should be shot in the balls.".

He seems to have regarded the leaks surrounding the Iranian nuclear program as potentially leading to war. Little did he know, those leaks were intentional with the goal of preventing Israel from launching a conventional attack, and getting Russia / China on board with sanctions. It wasn't obvious to most at the time that the leaks were intentional.

Yeah this disgraces ars a bunch.

Hey look. More creepiness re: Snowden from ArsTechnica.

If this were a spy fiction plot, it'd be clear by now that Snowden is a CIA agent conducting an operation against the NSA.

Unbelievable how respectable tech blogs puts up sensationalist stories just to get some visitors over the back of a popular topic.

paradigm shift

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