I'm happy for Snowden, he seems like a decent person willing to take a stand for what is right and face all the negative outcomes from exposing crimes within an organisation.
I seriously hope that the President gives Snowden a pardon even it as a dick move on his way out.<p>His releases were far less dangerous than Manning but I think his problem is no compelling story to distract from his actions and he did step on a lot of toes. Toes that deserved to be stomped.
Bless him for telling us what had been suspect for so many years.<p>There is no illusion of privacy anymore, even if a company jams ads down your throat.<p>If things need to be private, you need to be taking extreme precautions.
The Greatest Country On Earth™ has its citizens flee to the Empire Of Evil™ just so they can speak a simple truth without being imprisoned or called a traitor. The incompetent bureaucrats in charge of Snowden's prosecution made him a martyr instead. Those people are massive fuckups even at playing bad guys and you trust them to operate an Orwellian surveillance and suppression system? Good luck with that.
Happy for Snowden, but I hope that if Biden wins, he'd pardon Snowden - following Obama's footsteps in commuting Chelsea Manning. Although it might be harder since Biden to the Right of Obama, and given how hawkish, war-mongering, neo-libs have cozied up to Biden, and commuting Snowden isn't really possible since he has never been tried in court.
Is it still popular opinion that he seeked asylum in Russia?<p>I feel most people don’t realize that he was on transit to Ecuador when the Russians told him passport had apparently been expired. He never planned to stay there.
You have to wonder about the impact his revelations had on the Russian agents operating against the United States.
At minimum, permanent residency is a nice way to say "Thank you".
Due to the extent of mil intelligence docs stolen, and since the domestic programs deployed were lawful at the time, whistleblower is a disingenuious title for Mr. Snowden.<p>Putting aside domestic disclosures, it's difficult to see how the scope of stolen materials merits praise or euphemistic titles. Snowden is a fugitive. As it pertains to the majority of what was stolen, he is not a whistleblower, but a thief.<p>Had Snowden simply revealed unconstitutional domestic mass surveillance programs, perhaps he could be pigeonholed as a whistleblower.
Please make a list of all foreign investors in the NSA. Then make a list of foreign investors in American big tech companies. Consider the possibility that the traitor Snowden went rogue in Switzerland, and planned a ruse to wind up in Russia from, at least, 2012. A trained spy has the ability to fabricate a detailed, plausible cover story, and this typically comprises the majority of preparation for such an operation.<p>I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how Snowden could fancy himself as a patriot when he leaked the blueprints to our global surveillance operations. This is pure gaslighting, since nobody wants unnecessary mouth breathers. It's the ultimate leveraging of civil liberties to support internal strife and division between our institutions and the civilians served by those institutions.<p>Russia keeps Edward Snowden around primarily to support Active Measures. There'a a cognitive dissonance going on, one that particularly appeals to tech idealists, an idealism that most of us geeky civilians possess to some degree. What would Russia do if the roles were reversed, in terms of controlled propaganda, and retribution?