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Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

I highly recommend watching this interview, in which Snowden clearly explains his motives for doing what he did and describes the scope of the data collection carried out by the NSA and its allied foreign intelligence agencies. While I've followed this story quite extensively, this is first time I've actually watched an interview with Snowden, and I was very impressed with his intelligence, thoughtfulness, depth of knowledge and eloquence. (The interview is 30 minutes long.)

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I was really disappointed at the interview. I feel like the interviewer really just spent their time throwing softballs for Snowden, instead of asking him at least some real questions (why leak things that were obviously within the domain of par-for-the-course intelligence collection? Comments on the faux outrage by Brazil, Germany, and company? Why not hit harder at intelligence services of other countries, despite the fact that he's shown that he has the knowledge?).

At the very least it would give him a platform to defend himself from the criticisms he receives (instead of preaching to the choir) and if he were to flub on a question TV stations could at least replay that all the time (no more complaining about a "blackout" due to lack of anything interesting).

I'm sorry but an interview that is basically rehashing everything said before, without even attempting to take a critical view, is not interesting

It's quite clear from the interview that he doesn't want to put himself into the position of revealing information himself, rather to funnel it all through journalistic sources.

Furthermore it would compromise his position that his main motivation was to inform his own citizenry if he starts commenting explicitly on foreign intelligence agencies.

I might be wrong, but didn't he say that he did do filtering of some of the info before handing it to journalists? In that case the information revealed is already partly a statement on his part, because he chose not to filter it. He can't have his cake and eat it on this one.

> I might be wrong, but didn't he say that he did do filtering of some of the info before handing it to journalists?

He did say that.

He even went further and compared his actions to Manning's, making clear that he [Snowden] had been careful to be very selective in what he copied out of NSA.

Whether stuff is being filtered further by journalists is irrelevant, if we're seeing it on the news it's because Snowden claimed that it is important enough for the American public to see as to outweigh his oath and the possibility of damage to the U.S.

That's exactly what I thought after watching the interview and that's why it is so sad that most of the American public will never see it..

The article was fantastic and the depth of his history to serve the USA and to help the country just shows that he truly believes that what he did was for the best of the public interest.

I also liked the bit about Obama challenging him to come back to court, and his smart rebuttal.

> I highly recommend watching this interview

How?

Edit: I found a transcript. http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277_page-1.html

Was this the interview where Snowden said that "not all spying is bad" and that "intelligence agencies do have a role to play"? That targeted spying programs should suffice for the needs of national intel agencies while mass surveillance is bad?

Because somehow that story didn't seem to gain as much traction. Of course, nor did it stop Snowden from leaking details on targeted spying programs too.

Nah, the time has passed for stuff like that. It's time to wait for a reset. The intelligent people tried to warn the rest of us long ago, no one cared then, fuck the rest of you now that it's too late. I'll only do anything to speed up the reset... and I doubt the rest of 'you' will be ready for that until things have once again gotten so bad that something else will needed for success.

#edit hellban request denied then, I guess. Thanks idiots, it's your site afterall.

God, someone can post 'Seriously?' and get a hellban and I cannot? Look in the mirror you sad fucks. I still have 312 "points" from you idiots. Try harder.

Eh, you know, if every opposing viewpoint were banned, we'd end up with (even more) groupthink.

Better to just make them feel 'naturally' unwelcome in this sick ecosphere of over-socialized nerds? Systems of re-enforcement like this are akin to the worst kind of intellectual inter-breeding.

I think we should build a sick ecosphere of over-socialized nerds. In space. We can use it for testing, umm, things.

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