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Comment by alan_cx | Hacker News Reader

You kinda sounds like you agree with Snowden's message, appreciate his risk, but then want him just left to hang out to dry? Surely this bloke deserves protection? If he is forgotten while people deal with the allegations, he'll rot.

I do agree that the issues are important, but the life of one human being, especially the one who made the debate possible, has to be as important. If publishing personal stuff protects, and at the moment it seems that keeping him in in the public eye is probably helping keep him alive, then so be it.

Also, freedom is partly about how we treat individuals in the extreme. The US reaction to this says a lot.

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In the world as it exists today, whistleblowers against the US virtually forfeit their lives. He's a dead man walking, and by talking about him instead of the larger issues you give leverage to ignore the larger issues.

This is always the way it works - ad hominem, discredit the person, imprison/kill him as an example, roll cute summary stories in the press about what a deranged maniac he was, and the populace forgets all about the larger issues once the human interest drama is wrapped up.

So please, accept that he's thoroughly and truly fucked, and try to make the incredible orwellian surveillance state they've built the focus.

"He's a dead man walking" - surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot. The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

> surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot.

I can't figure out how this would actually matter to Obama, more than a few speeches' worth. Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters, who won't be voting for him again anyway. The administration's main political foes seem to recognize that there's a big issue here (after all, slightly more than half of their constituents think that the NSA actions are "hurting Americans"[1]), but don't quite know how to capitalize on it, since they were all in favor of things like this before the story broke. The outrage within the US about this is spread so evenly across the usual parties that it's not clear that there will be any actual fallout for future elections.

> The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

I would suppose that if they choose to kill him, they'll try pretty hard to do it in a way where it's not provable that the US killed him. Future-leaks-wise, though, it might seem beneficial for people to suspect that the US killed him, since presumably that would deter future leaks to some extent.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/fox-news-poll-mix...

A few thousand? The petition to pardon Snowden (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow...) has over 124 thousand signatures, and that's hardly going to represent everyone who cares about the issue.

I wasn't being dismissive of the number of people who care about this issue at least somewhat, or enough to say angry things and click on an internet petition. I was, as an aside, being dismissive of the number of (US-type) libertarians there are. Of the people signing the petition, there are people who think that their team is for a pardon, and people who actually hold an opinion personally and are for a pardon. The former group might well have a different opinion next week if they believe their team does. The latter group are mostly those who were hard-core Obama supporters, whether or not they still are. The largest remaining block of people in the latter group are libertarians, but there are probably few of them. I would guess that right-leaning people who are outraged about the NSA activities would nevertheless feel uncomfortable calling for a pardon for Snowden.

The number of "US type libertarians there are" is presumably a super-set of the number of people registered members of the US Libertarian party, which (according to wikipedia) seems to be about 330 thousand.

I will refrain from asides poking fun at my political group in an otherwise serious post in the future. Well, maybe not. :)

Poking fun is great, but don't undersell!

> Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters…

No, Obama's most fervent supporters want to hang Snowden for treason, and Greenwald along with him. They're quite happy to use the word "treason" for both of them.

Ever since the leak supporters of Obama on blogs and Twitter have been attacking Snowden and particularly Greenwald with ferocity. [1]

A derogatory term has recently been coined and is now being applied to anyone on the left who supports Snowden and Greenwald. This term, "emoprog," basically translates to "whiny progressive." The complaint is that emoprogs, instead of falling into line and unquestioningly supporting whatever Democrat is president, whine disloyally about principles said president is violating or not pursuing with enough vigor.

So no, Obama's most fervent supporters wish Snowden and the whole issue would just go away and find infuriating the disloyalty shown by Greenwald and his emoprog supporters.

[1] https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/351829186991759360 https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/349308095987593217 https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/348879008747896833

You're both right, its just one of you is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters prior to the Snowden case, and one is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters in relation to the Snowden case. These are mostly not the same groups of people, and overlap only to the extent that both include the practically policy-blind cult of personality than any major politician (or celebrity more generally) will end up attracting, but this is a fairly small slice of either group of "fervent supporters".

Where is the outrage at the treatment of other whistleblowers?

"The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia."

Not if they got the mafia to do it. Could the CIA covertly pay the Russian mafia to kill Snowden at the airport? Probably, though the real question is what the US government would gain from that. What would be the point in killing him now?

Oh I don't think they'd overtly kill him. Torture, imprison, exile, leave him marooned, break him economically, sure, any of those things, and I'm sure they have black bag people to 'accidentally' take care of him if needed.

At this point you have to remember that there are only two criteria: A) He can't ever be allowed to look like he 'won', like Ellsberg did and B) it has to be public, so that anyone else considering an ethical stand will know that their life is irrevocably ruined if they do.

...would put them on par with mafia.

A careful comparison of the two groups doesn't find much to distinguish them, in terms of what they actually do. The mafia kills people; the government kills people. The mafia regulates commerce; the government regulates commerce. The mafia provides services; the government provides services. The government limits some of the mafia's more outrageous behavior; the mafia limits some of the government's more outrageous behavior. (E.g. tariffs, taxes, and regulations on particular goods may only be effectively increased up to the point at which organized crime is providing the bulk of those goods.) The only differences are those of degree.

I'm not saying this as a criticism of either group.

Shades of good ol' Rod Kiewiet in PS 12 rear up behind my monitor screen when I read this.

You mean that he might suffer the fate of Daniel Ellsberg?

Remember Ellsberg got off because of evidence that the government was illegally wiretapping him. I don't believe that's a possibility in Snowden's case...

Nixon looks like a saint compared to people willing to shrug at the routine surveillance of everyone.

Remember that there hasn't been a president since well before Carter that went through office without personal blood on his hands - the ordering of covert missions with intent to kill has been endemic.

Could you provide me some evidence for the "personal blood" from these presidencies? It's not something I've learned about in school and would like to know more.

Obama, at the very least, personally authorized http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15121879

Bush 2 I think is clear, c.f. iraq and afghanistan, other targeted interventions

Clinton: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/clinton-orders-ai... as well as kosovo, mogadishu, and other interventions

Bush 1 and the invasion of Iraq, part one, as well as other more targeted actions

Reagan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/15/ne...

Carter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

Ford, not counting the Vietnam War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_incident

LBJ and Nixon both obviously one can count the Vietnam war.

Aren't the people most able to keep that focus future leakers and whistleblowers like Snowden? Do you want to empower the message now playing out in front of our eyes that such people had better not even think about trying?

That's very much the wrong approach, IMO. Allowing just whistleblowers to be crucified kills the future of whistleblowing, which hurts us a lot more than struggling to address the snooping because we are focused on the whistleblower's well-being.

If you throw the messenger to the lions, you get this one message, but you won't be getting any more messages.

Consider this: the whole point of his huge sacrifice was to get people to talk about the information he revealed. If we expend too much of our energy talking about him and the way he got the information to us, rather than the information itself, then doesn't that just make his sacrifice kind of a waste? People don't have infinite attention and energy for these discussions.

I certainly don't want him to be left isolated, but I disagree that speculating about him or his motives keeps him safe.

I think it becomes far easier to demonise him, spread confusion about his motives, and engage in baseless smears of his character or competence, if we allow speculative articles like this one to direct the debate.

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