Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

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I never understand this reasoning. That all the burden should be placed on Snowden to pour over the documents and determine what is breaking the law and what isn't. He was fairly certain a majority of it was - at that point it's most responsible of him to hand it off to people who are in a better decision to make those calls.

1) Do you expect a single person to go through 1000's of documents with their rudimentary understandings and interpretations of the law? Would you and why would you trust him if so?

2) Should he have a lawyer go through the documents with him?

3) Should he get second opinions on whether or not something is breaking the law?

4) Should he trust a team of respected journalists and their team of lawyers to go through the documents on his behalf?

The journalists he released the documents to have trust that they've established for years. That makes them hard to dismiss as looney bins. Snowden does not have that trust and would have been easy to dismiss by himself.

As per my other comment above/below - I think he's basically handled it as well as he could under the circumstances. Most of what's come out is pretty much targeting nefarious and/or potentially illegal practices. I think his actions have been - and hopefully will continue to be - a positive force for change.

But - yes, he chose to release that material. If, for instance, the journalists released something irresponsible that, say, led to deaths of people, that's still part of a chain of events that leads to him and his decision.

I'm glad he did what he did, and so far things seem to have gone ok, and I can't imagine the stress and pressure he's under.

>But - yes, he chose to release that material.

You either blow the whistle or remain silent. Choosing to not release the material would mean he's compliant, and not a whistle blower. Which - given the details that have come to light - I judge the compliance of the individuals impeding on my rights to privacy far harsher than I judge Snowden as a whistle blower.

>If, for instance, the journalists released something irresponsible that, say, led to deaths of people

Do you think Snowden or the journalist team are more or less likely to release something irresponsibly that would lead to the deaths of people? My bets are on Snowden; had he acted alone.

Simply because as an individual he is less capable of citing/knowing which laws what is breaking, what should be released and shouldn't be released (he would have to make that call himself, rather than discussing it among others), how details may be interpreted by the public, dangers of releasing certain information, etc. I believe it would be inevitable for him to fuck up had he acted alone.

Your argument boils down to "he shouldn't have blown the whistle" and I cannot agree with that. At all.

> Your argument boils down to "he shouldn't have blown the whistle" and I cannot agree with that.

You're simplifying it too much. I think he did the right thing, but took some big risks of varying kinds, too. That's part of what makes someone a 'hero' isn't it? Pressing forward in the face of uncertainty and danger.

I was just arguing with the "it's all on the journalists if something goes awry" line.

Those risks are inherent with blowing the whistle. Full stop. Cannot be removed. They come with blowing the whistle. The only way to prevent those risks entirely would be by not blowing the whistle. If you disagree, please explain to me how I am simplifying too much.

Blowing the whistle comes with inherent risk. He did everything within his power to minimize that risk and act responsibly.

E:

I see I'm arguing a statement ever-so-slightly out of your original context (read your edit). So disregard this as a tangent discussion. :) Cheers.

The risks we're talking about obviously aren't inherent in blowing the whistle. "Don't release things you haven't read". Seems straightforward enough.

If he had taken steps to minimize the leak but missed stuff, there would be a reasonable argument here. But he leaked things that pretty clearly didn't document misconduct, but was damaging to the NSA, and a casual skim of that stuff could have ruled out its publication.

That's a fair point, but it's pretty easy for us to say, chatting about it comfortably, with the benefit of hindsight.

Sometimes you leak with the situation you have, not the situation you'd want or wish to have, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.

I'm not sure I understand. Exactly what prevented him from minimizing the material he leaked?

By pretty much everyone's admission, Snowden relied on Greenwald and others to minimize the leak, and that's what they've done: only a fraction of the documents he took have been published. At first blush, that sounds admirable, but when you think about this for a second, the implication is that people like Greenwald are now in possession of a huge collection of documents that aren't in the public interest (if they were, Greenwald's obligation would be to publish them!).

Would quibble with your mention of "release" here because Snowden hasn't released that sort of information directly.

To the extent he amassed and shared with journalists the type of information you're talking about, Snowden has previously stated that he felt he needed to prove to journalists that he was an authentic source.

Your claim certainly still applies in the form of "he didn't need to do that" or "he didn't need that much material to establish bona fides" or even "he's lying" but to my knowledge, he didn't release damaging information himself.

Snowden did leak information to journalists who then decided to report on it, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that Snowden should have assumed journalists would be inclined to report on damaging information that didn't reflect misconduct. Snowden may also have made different assumptions than you do about what constitutes misconduct.

You are taking as given that he released things that he didn't read. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption. According to Greenwald the documents were meticulously organized and chosen to either expose wrongdoing or provide the necessary background information for a journalist to understand the wrongdoing.

By every account of the people who know, Snowden read and understood every single document he leaked.

The "spy mall catalogue" doesn't fit the definition you used. Implants into COTS hardware to accomplish SIGINT missions against foreign governments is neither nefarious nor illegal.

Certainly not illegal. Why would it not be nefarious?

It can't be any more nefarious than an assault rifle (there are at least purposes for spying implants that don't involve killing people). If you feel like all military hardware is nefarious, and think people should leak secret weapon plans, that's an intellectually coherent argument.

Personally, guns bother me a lot more than SIGINT implants.

I do not understand how private firearm ownership is identical to covert tampering with exports in consumer electronics.

It may not be illegal, but it has a few negative secondary effects, among them:

1) reduces the value of US hardware on the international market, as businesses want to use equipment without backdoors installed by foreign intelligence services

2) pits the intelligence community against large portions of the tech sector, who because of market pressure will be forced to consider such activity a security threat

3) obliderates any moral high ground from which to stand on to condemn foreign intelligence services for doing the exact same thing, e.g.the State department's hypocritical efforts to condemn the Chinese for various forms of espionage in which the NSA apparently routinely engages

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