Notably missing from this piece: An argument that valid responses to perceived abuses include massive, indiscriminate data dumps, repeatedly bypassing MIT's network access controls and/or taking laptops full of classified information to Moscow.
Snowden at al are given as recent, specific examples of people who claim that their "moral compass" requires them to take action. It is entirely possible to disagree with them (and you clearly do) but its much more difficult to argue that dissent based on moral conviction should never be permitted under any circumstances.
Then again, maybe you're just trolling and I've wasted my time.
Moscow probably knows most of it, this isn't information/news for them.
I'd like to see all the men that were killed hurt by WikiLeaks data dumps. I mean cables were fucking benign, nothing people already didn't know or heavily suspected.
People go to Moscow because there seems to be no other way to blow the whistle any more, not without ending up like Pfc Manning. Snowden said that right from the start; missing that part is either ignorance or disinformation.
That being said: The author is setting up a straw man (with an opening analogy to the Nazis to boot!). Nobody thinks Chelsea Manning would have been wrong to continue to fight against or expose a variety of military abuses. Or for Snowden to write his Congressman about NSA abuses. Or for Swartz to campaign for changes to government funded research publication.
People like David Brooks are not succumbing to the banality of evil when calling out Snowden or Manning for behaving recklessly. They're arguing that the flaws in our system are not so pernicious as to justify, say, Manning's indiscriminate data dump or Snowden's theft.
I'm pretty sure that there's plenty of people inside the system who think that they would have been wrong to do that.
But more importantly, does anyone honestly believe that they would have actually achieved anything by doing this? They've both gone as public as they can with the revalations, but I don't see either the military or congress actively trying to address the issues that these leaks have highlighted. Do you have any reason to believe they would have taken them more seriously if the information had been raised to them secretly?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110922/03520616050/senato...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120611/16214719280/wyden-...
Snowden/Manning also found themselves in a position to use more leverage, and in those cases it's a separate moral question about whether they chose wisely to take that opportunity or not. (FWIW, I've never seen anyone giving them carte blanche to do whatever they would like with the info they accessed -- that's a straw man).
You can't just bypass that discussion by saying "they're allowed to vote, that should be enough for anyone".
No, it's not a separate moral question. It's the crux of the discussion. The entire spectrum of possible actions was open to them. "Do nothing" vs. "Do something" isn't a very interesting distinction: "Something" might have been to quit their respective jobs as soon as possible, or post snarky comments about the evils of the U.S. government under a pseudonym on reddit, or flee to Hong Kong, or blow up a building where they worked...
Nobody elected Ed Snowden or Chelsea Manning. In fact, the people we did elect put trust in Snowden and Manning to preserve certain secrets. Both proceeded to release not just secrets that exposed malfeasance, but the sorts of things (NSA overseas operations, diplomatic cables) that, by and large, our (inevitably imperfect) democracy has decided are peachy keen. Criticizing that indiscretion isn't giving in to "the system", it's acknowledging that "the system" is one we have built together, and there are certain aspects of its operation that are not subject to the whims or passions of people who had previously sworn to uphold it.
The press is a hugely important part of democracy, because it's their job (in theory, anyway) to keep the populace informed of what their government is actually doing in their names, vs. what they claim to be doing.
If the government is lying about what they're doing (and doing things that are contrary to principals they're pretending to uphold), whistleblowers are necessary.
I agree that if you live in a democracy, you're going to sometimes disagree with policies the majority things are fine. If I think legal abortion is evil but politicians who explicitly support it are elected, I should not "exert more leverage" by threatening to detonate a dirty bomb if the laws are not changed in 72 hours.
Whistleblowing is different -- it's the act of revealing information that was intentionally hidden from the public. Certainly, it may be breaking laws (and the laws may in general be justified!); that doesn't mean the whistleblower's decision is automatically wrong, or that they're cheating the normal democratic process. On the contrary, in most examples they're exposing others who are cheating (by hiding pertinent information from voters, thus affecting their votes).
Your (inevitably imperfect) democracy has also decided the facts of malfeasance to be peachy keen, so that's hardly a justification.
Well, tough crap. If the gov had not threatened him, he would have returned to american soil or gone to a friendlier nation.
Now thanks to this complete and utter SNAFU it's as good as the government handling all the information to Russia.
Assuming that they threatened him with prison time (I believe he was already out of the country), is the government not allowed to try and convict people based on the established law of the land if those people are following their personal moral compass? Is "I felt it was the right thing to do" an absolute defense against prosecution?
I am also curious as to how the government is responsible for Snowden fleeing to Moscow. Is Snowden responsible for his own actions or not?
When it punished Bradley Manning the way it did.
The government doesn't need to make a direct threat, the existing cases are enough to do that.
"is the government not allowed to try and convict people based on the established law of the land"
Of course it is. But there are several cases where the government chose not to.
"I am also curious as to how the government is responsible for Snowden fleeing to Moscow"
If the only place Snowden feels safe is Moscow (because the risk of extradition there is much lower than somewhere else), that's where he is going to go! And if he has something that may be interesting to the Russian government, well, isn't it just lucky...
Snowden was subject to civilian law, so far as I am aware, so he would not be able to draw on Manning as an example.
"Safe", in your world, appears to mean "free from the long arm of the law."