I certainly was interested to learn what the NSA was doing, and very unhappy about the fouth amendment implications. But forget all that.
What specific publicly available info indicates he had nefarious intentions or was an agent of a hostile power?
A related follow-up question is: could his knowledge of our systems and processes somehow have helped Russians do the hacking prior to 2016 US elections? Not that they couldn't have done it without him but did he help in an indirect way?
The only country that has demonstrated the ability to resist pressure to extradite people wanted by the US? Yes.
> ...could his knowledge of our systems and processes somehow have helped Russians do the hacking prior to 2016 US elections?
bwahaha, so now he is involved in muh Russian collusion? The answer is yes, which is what makes your insinuation really funny - they did all the things he would have advised them not to do. So you could interpret that as evidence that he didn't provide them that information, and is therefore not a Russian spy.
If you've got evidence, or even a coherent rationale, that would cast doubt on his motives - I'd love to hear it. No, fleeing to the only country that would be out of the reach of a president who prosecuted more whistleblowers (and reporters) than every prior administration combined... that isn't evidence of Snowden being a Russian spy. That would be like insisting that a prisoner who accepts food from his captor is also expressing approval for his captivity.
BTW, looking back at all the articles about Obama's legacy in regard to whistleblowers, written after the election - darkly predicting that Trump will start jailing reporters because Obama had established the precedent... lol.
Secondly, what in the releases in the intercept public releases specifically compels you to want to see more classified info?
I might suggest a military path if you want a strong chance to be in the intelligence community, then you can be privy to sensitive info that is need to know.
If you believe info should be free I respect your right to believe in that and the service members of our military also fight for your right to do so as well, while keeping classified info private.
Combat vet reporting in: you have my permission to view the rest of the Snowden documents. While secrecy does have a role in operational security - taken too far it does much more harm than good. I'll never forget the news rolling in about the leak, and how vindicated many security folks (including myself) felt in regard to how insane the surveillance apparatus had become. It was hilarious watching them drip feed the leak, see the predictable government lie, then see the next leak proving that the government just lied.
My take on the follow up leaks is that they were chosen to give the impression of a trail to something much more insidious, but were actually picked in some attempt to obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States.
Also, why would you want classified info that’s not related to domestic surveillance shenanigans leaked to the public? Everything that has been released since the initial revelations seems to be related to military operations. Maybe I’m missing something.
> ...obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States.
That only worked because the government repeatedly lied in an attempt to minimize the last leak, only to be proven a liar with the next leak. That wasn't the ultimate goal though, just a hilarious side effect. The ultimate goal was to dominate as many news cycles as possible, because the public has a limited attention span.
> Maybe I’m missing something.
You are. The NSA is so incredibly tilted toward offensive operations that it is ridiculous. They've so inundated themselves with surveillance data that they've got analysis paralysis and can't effectively use the data for its stated objective. It makes no sense for the US to dominate in offensive cyber operations, because we have no technological peer... unless the NSA is cool with industrial espionage. [0]
That effort should instead be redirected to defense, which is supposedly a mission of the NSA, because of the asymmetrical relationship between the difficulties in exploitation and hardening. Any banana republic can gather a team of hackers and electrical engineers, but it takes some serious resources to harden code and infrastructure. This is the reason why we stopped pursuing biological weapon development and shifted to an unmatched defensive posture.
[0] https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...
Also, I read the document just now that Snowden leaked related to the corporate espionage. What our IC was doing is nothing compared to the broad theft other cultures engage in without any moral concern as a matter of course in that culture. I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. The intercept’s analysis of some “subversion of society” is totally overblown. Such an underworld of spies is bound to be dirty and the general public doesn’t know enough of the reality to understand that. I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well, but agree about fortifying (and reinventing) our defenses. Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel.
As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around. Good to get your info here.
Given the fact that their sources and methods had just been burned, and they had no hope of discrediting the leaks, the most logical path would have been to declassify operation success - this was actually the only time that they'd have realistically been able to do something like that. This would have immediately villainized Snowden, preemptively defused all future leaks, shielded politicians, and changed the narrative. They didn't do this, and the list of potential reasons why is very short - at the top of the list: they had no operation successes (or a comically small quantity) that the US public would recognize as such.
I've also worked as an analyst in Corporate America (specifically related fraud and low probability/high cost events), so I'm intimately familiar with the utility of an untargeted survey of massive and rapidly expanding datasets (in both datapoints and dimensionality).
> What our IC was doing is nothing compared...
The whataboutism isn't a long term winning strategy. Even if one were to reduce all geopolitical activity to the concept of amoral power struggle, that does not factor in how we are engaged not in a singular contest - but a series of games on an unknown timescale.
> I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American.
Obviously I disagree. Here is the moral of the story, and what many of us felt vindicated in its undeniable revelation: given the capability and disposition - the US Government will do whatever it wants. The larger body of leaks demonstrated capability, the link you just read demonstrated a single example of disposition... interestingly enough, the Department of state uses a similar metric for the designation of terrorist organizations.
> I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well...
I'm fine with that, but it should be reduced by an order of magnitude or two. It isn't presently doing us any good, and it represents a very realistic potential threat for abuse.
> Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel.
Both programs have the same asymmetry for offense and defense. They also share the same risk that your own advancement in offense will be used against your own interests by a much less capable adversary. Had the CIA paid attention to this, they'd not have lost control of their 0-day rootkits that got used by criminals (and potentially by adversarial states) against US interests.
> As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around.
Ask about the NRO and the FBI, they're the only ones I can think of that actually provided a benefit. The CIA was a net negative. The NSA did nothing, any capability they could have brought was already organic to the deployed element (and has been since WWII).
But everything you have said in this thread has been the opposite, you encourage espionage without moral concern that's not Liberty. You see America as a cult not a country or culture, questioning its actions are not seen as trying to establish Justice but are instead hand waved as anti-american.
Earlier you talked about the leaks being embarrassing, maybe you should encourage your country to stop doing things which embarrass you and your country, instead you blame other people for talking about your embarrassing actions.
I guess if the documents aren't related to domestic surveillance, I'd really wonder what else he took and why.