Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com