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Comment by aerovistae | Hacker News Reader

From reading the opening and skimming the rest, I infer that the author's stance amounts to "Snowden raised incredibly important questions profoundly affecting our society, but I don't care about the debate regarding his fate and therefore the fate of future whistleblowers; they don't matter and neither does the question of encouraging or discouraging them in the future."

Weak stance in my opinion.

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I read it as implicitly approving of Snowden's capital but not wanting to lose the political points for calling him a hero.

I agree, weak stance from a politician who appears to avoid that kind of thing more than others. At least that seems to one of the points he's campaigning on.

In his defense, his team posted a story written by a writer at the National Journal.

But I do not believe you can separate Snowden from the surveillance debate until his fate is determined (and is acceptable). As the man who exposed the lies, he deserves not only thanks and credit but a fair resolution to his current situation.

The piece is quite directly a statement that the focus on Snowden's is a distraction from the issues he raised, and is actively being kept as such by people who interest is in avoiding the substantive issues (and, while it doesn't say this, one might argue that the actual discussion of the issues raised by Snowden is essential to actually going anywhere with the debate about his ultimate status, which until the issues debate happens is just a noise that produces nothing.)

And it's not a stance by a politician. The HN headline was misleading (by including "Sanders" as if it were part of the title or the original source, as well as -- and this has still.not bee corrected -- by omitting the "(2013)" that should be included): Sanders' office reposted this wheb ut was current as recommended reading, but the source is Ron Fournier of the National Journal, and there is considerable distance between reposting something as writing on an important issue that people should be aware of and adopting it as Sanders own position.

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