I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions.
These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here.
Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.
Yes, the amount of hate for Snowden and Assange is dismaying.
These men sacrificed their lives to expose the crimes of one of - if not the most -powerful organizations on Earth. And people nitpick that they’re not criticizing the other most powerful entities too. Basically they’re criticizing them for not committing suicide in the name of a people which were impotent of unwilling to do anything with the revelations provided.
I’d be surprised to hear that these people even contradict their boss, never mind reveal any compromising information on anyone.
I love HN, but at the end of the day, it's a reddit-clone for a silicon valley VC fund. No one is here to start a revolution, and in fact, a lot of users probably make a living doing things that snowden sympathizers (I don't mean that as a slight, I am one) would claim are ruining the world.
I'm here to start a revolution, and I don't think Assange or Snowden are any use for it. They did a good thing once and then have acted very unfavorably. The revolution does not need cheerleaders, celebrities, or charlatans.
I can disapprove of Snowden in general, and also see that he has a point in this article. The article is not political. Both Republicans and Democrats are equally blamed but the photo he chose is of the sitting president, a Democrat. The only problem I have with the article is our current internal politics work against reform and he did not address this, nor did he suggest any specific reforms he would recommend. For someone with such a decent understanding of the CIA, why didn't he? Does he just like to set fires and watch them burn?
Hate, or just pointing out that these people, while I think they did the right thing (and they probably did too), certainly did not act in the best interests of the US? That is a motivation I'm sure they carry after being chased around the world for a decade or two.
Seeing as how he's stuck there with nowhere else to go except prison in the US, and owes what little freedom he has to them, I think it's fairly obvious and smart to not speak ill of your host, especially considering what they're capable of. I'm quite sure he would have a LOT to say about it were he not stuck there. Yes, we know, if it were you you'd be condemning them to their face.
> he's stuck there with nowhere else to go except prison in the US,
Meanwhile Chelsea Manning is walking the streets of the US as a free person. Why do people pretend that Snowden's only option was and is to live in Russia, a country that is diametrically opposed to everything he ostensibly stands for?
I suppose people "pretend" that because it appears to be the unfortunate truth! Where else is he supposed to go, exactly, as a fugitive with no passport?
Snowden ended up in Russia by accident. He was flying from Hong Kong to Ecuador, and his flight happened to be laid over in Moscow when the US government cancelled his passport. He spent a month and a half living in the airport before he gave up trying to leave Russia and asked for asylum.
If he could have gone anywhere else it seems likely he would have done so.
He chose to be out of the country when the story dropped. It was at least partially his decision to fly through Russia. He could have stayed in the US, faced the charges against him, argue his case in court, and tried to seek justice that way countless civil disobedients did before him.
Snowden could have argued in court that what he did was not a crime or asked for leniency due to the importance of what he did as Manning had done. This eventually worked for Manning and she is now free. However he removed any chance of leniency by leaving the country before the story dropped. Therefore Snowden seems likely to live the rest of his life in exile under an authoritarian regime. It seems like his decision was wrong from both an ethical and practical perspective in comparison to what Manning did.
So his option was to roll the dice and hope it turned out like CM? Doesn't sound like that was the wrong choice - you are assuming he would have been pardoned.
Arguably even CM didn't get leniency (from the courts) - the president overrode the court.
Manning's "crime" was much more severe than Snowden initial "crime". Snowden was more targeted and has a much better case at being a true whistleblower. Manning dumped a bunch of unrelated documents, many of them having little public value. Snowden did a better job of limiting the scope to specific issues. That suggests he would receive better treatment from politicians and the legal system. However he fled the country which eliminated any chance of leniency.
I believe Snowden fleeing was unethical because facing the consequences of breaking the law is an important part of civil disobedience. To quote MLK: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law." Snowden didn't "willingly accept the penalty" for his actions. At least part of the reason MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail was so powerful was because it was written from Birmingham Jail and not an apartment in Moscow. Snowden lost complete control of the ethical high ground because he chose exile over fighting this issue head on.
Perhaps Snowden disagrees. It's easy to say what he did wrong with no skin in the game.
Everyone also said it was obvious J Depp was going to lose his second case against Amber on the basis that American courts are harder to win in that the British court he already lost in. Look how that turned out.
> breaking the law is an important part of civil disobedience
Protesting unjust laws and whistleblowing are different things. A WB is still effective even when anonymous - this was not "civil disobedience", nor "break[ing] a law that conscience tells him is unjust" in the same sense as civil rights issues.
> To quote MLK
you could very easily quote any number of murdered civil rights leaders. Martyrdom isn't a very convincing argument.
> MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail was so powerful was because it was written from Birmingham Jail
Nice that strategy worked out. Suggesting choosing any other strategy is unethical, or going to jail is some kind of "fight", is nonsense. Do you think the same ethos applies to protesting genocide, or does protesting government with long jail sentences have some kind of honour to it?
He could have remained silent, but he used the opportunity of the run up to the war to spread Russian propaganda about US agencies and media to his 5 million twitter followers.
E.g. his tweet from not even 2 weeks before the invasion:
>There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war.
If it's wiser for him to remain silent in the face of despicable actions by his host government, why isn't it also wiser for him to speak negatively about his host government's antagonists?
You can't really have it both ways. While I admire what Snowden did to expose abuses by the NSA, I also recognize that his credibility is severely tarnished by the physical location in which he currently resides.
Personally, the only people I believe are those who are always right. For instance, Kernighan and Ritchie talk about the 'register' keyword in C. All very well, but I heard that one day Brian Kernighan said he'd brew a pot of coffee and just forgot. I'm not sure I can trust him so I never use that keyword. Too risky.
Maybe if they would annotate who did which section. I bet Ritchie would never have done this.
>It’s also unrelated to his claims about US agencies and US democracy
Definitely related, he used the run up to the war to dunk on US agencies' predictions saying they were war mongering.
Not even two weeks before the war he tweeted: "There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war."
Can you explain how US media pushed Putin to war in the run up to the war rather than just reporting very credible intel from US agencies? Which appears to be a crime in Snowden's eyes.
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
He very vocally defended Russia while they were building up to the invasion and then became completely silent after they invaded. I wouldn't be surprised if Snowden doesn't actually have the password to his Twitter account and can only post Putin approved tweets.
A lot of people, including establishment "experts" didn't think Russia was going to invade and called US estimations war-mongering. Also it's probably not a good idea to antagonize the people holding you hostage, he's one hospital trip away from falling out a window.
Snowden is clearly trying to be as effective as he can in spreading his message, given his conditions. He's already sacrificed any semblance of a normal/comfortable life, saying he's full of shit just because he doesn't effectively commit suicide strikes me as disingenuous criticism by those who already want to see him dead.
Honestly the only legitimate criticism of Snowden I've read so far is that he may have handed over intelligence as part of his asylum bargain that got operatives killed. But, probably due to the nature of said operatives/operations and the agencies they may/may not have worked for, it's impossible to know from the outside how true that is. It's not like the intelligence community has a history of honesty with the general public, or won't lie to get what it wants. CIA/NSA/Military Intelligence Services seem to step way over the line every 10-20 years or so and some new scandal gets leaked, and we have a big debate over whether the leakers were traitors or patriots. This is just another wave in the signal unless we fundamentally reform the system.
"A lot of people, including establishment "experts" didn't think Russia was going to invade and called US estimations war-mongering."
And they were all proven definitively wrong, the only war mongerer is Putin, who just escalated his invasion of Ukraine by ordering a partial mobilization. If you think that the GRU doesn't have the password for Snowden's twitter then you are very gullible.
Snowden is absolutely a hero for what he did to expose US surveillance. It is also right for people to be suspicious of anything he says at the moment given his current situation. There’s no contradiction between the two.
As I wrote elsewhere in the comments on this story, the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known. There’s nothing new here.
The beginning of Snowden’s post is a surprisingly poor take on Biden’s recent speech, reposting the same zoomed-in image with the red background, ignoring the additional context[0][1] and comparing the presentation to the Nazis. Although he does call it “unintentional”, he still chooses to amplify the same take as the American right-wing even though it’s been a while since the speech and people have mostly moved on. Snowden also does little to actually address the content of what Biden said regarding new and immediate threats to the US, choosing instead to focus on existing problems with the CIA which, while terrible, are not new and not unknown. He claims this is “consideration of [Biden’s] premises” but I think that’s a stretch to say the least.
In short, I think people are right to be critical of this essay and suspicious of Snowden’s motives in this specific case, without taking anything away from his previous actions.
The symbolism of the zoomed out context is hilariously not any less ominous or threatening. The blue coasts surrounding and squeezing the extremist red middle of America. It was bad optics all around, unless it was intended to intimidate, in which case it put the intended targets on notice. If your strengths don't include psychology, metaphor, symbolism, power politics, etc... maybe don't swim in that pool and definitely don't volunteer yourself as a lifeguard.
Do you believe that your provided image is what they were going for? Or was it the image was streamed live everywhere? This [1] is C-SPAN's coverage, which is about as impartial as one can get. And they went from the framing that was entirely expected of them once Biden began to speak.
I would urge you to consider just how completely obsessive politicians are about every single aspect of appearance: the color of one's tie, the lapel of choice of the day, how you hold your hands while speaking, even the tint of your skin. That his speech evoked the worst of imagery was, unfortunately, not just an unfortunate accident.
Not well-known enough. In my opinion, literally every mention of the CIA in writing or elsewhere in the media should come with the disclaimer (paraphrased from the article):
"...the CIA, mostly known for directing the coverage of American news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments, establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment, launching a long-running series of mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects, interfering with foreign elections, wiretapping journalists and compiling files on Americans who opposed its wars...has the following to say about <--insert latest propaganda-->"
You’re welcome, although I think it’s kinda more than this essay really deserves. When it starts off with an already-deconstructed Nazi comparison and then had nothing new to add beyond that, it’s kind of a low effort shitpost. It shouldn’t be too surprising if most of the comments are also low effort shitposts. Happy to elevate things for a moment but this really doesn’t deserve much attention at the end of the day; it’s pretty trollish, sadly.
> reposting the same zoomed-in image with the red background, ignoring the additional context
Biden's team staged it that way intentionally. They knew red would be the only color in the background when Biden was the focus. The other lighting was for plausible deniability only. No one focuses on an entire building when a single person is giving a speech. You cannot see the body language. How often does a presidential address get displayed from any side other than directly from the front? The red and military personnel were entirely intentional.
Snowden is a villan.
I too held a high security clearance, and swore an oath to protect those national secrets.
He completely violated that - undiscriminantly sent very important data to a foreign press, then ran away to Russia.
He was a low level tech guy that found an open SharePoint share on a classified network.
He is not to be upheld, he is a small, small criminal.
I'll second your opinion, the amount of BS powerpoint fud we now have to go through because of Snowden et al is fraud waste & abuse of the highest level. The fact that he & Manning are so revered for their crimes is astounding.
Or perhaps we don't need HN exceptionalism? Intelligence isn't translated universally onto all subject matters. Just because someone is good at writing code doesn't make them well-suited to understand any non-programming topics to have a well-informed or rational discussion about it. There's no reason why HN should have a higher quality discussion on these subjects than some generic subreddit or FB comment sections. Of course I wish the discussion quality could be higher, but I understand why it isn't.
It's not exceptionalism to lament the downfall of the tradition of carefully cultivated discourse. I still remember when this community used to be different, and this site was the one I went to first.
> There's no reason why HN should have a higher quality discussion than some generic subreddit or FB comment sections.
Yes, there is. HN uses to have a higher quality discussion because it was carefully moderated both by the community itself and the moderators. Sadly, it seems that all communities deteriorate eventually.
I've seen some pretty heinous opinions expressed on HN, but because they're expressed with the correct tone, the ones responding to them are the ones that get moderated.
---
It's just not a solvable problem. No matter what dang, et al, do, they're creating a place they themselves WANT, and most people conform or skirt just within the edges.
But you can always tell when you're interacting with someone not worth interacting with, because they'll skirt the tone bounardaries while still being just as much of an argumentative jackass as they would on reddit.
---
This imagined superiority of discourse is just pompous arrogance on the part of a few people who actually think what dang, et al, have set out to do is solvable. If they solve it, they've solved humans. The only thing they can do is change their view over time on what is acceptable, and that's really what you're seeing. Them changing as humans over years.
Carefully cultivated discourse is still abundant on HN, which is why I read this site regularly. They just aren't usually found under threads that touch non-strictly tech things like geopolitics, history, natural sciences, or lifestyle. Although I do agree the moderation needs to be more responsive in some of these situations, I have made peace with the fact that HN doesn't have 100% high quality discussion.
I wonder if in 100 years from now society will make fun of "carefully cultivated discourse" the way we make fun of the aristocrats who drink tea with their pinky out to show how refined they were.
Don't read political threads either. One should have come to the conclusion long ago that no platform is "enlightened enough" to shy away from the basic human instincts of "us vs them."
The culture and rule of “curious conversation” should remain high, and that at least counteracts “lol becuase I say so” comments or old rehashes. Higher forms of discussion is what makes this place better. Curious conversation also makes way for “greyscale” discussion, where there is room to critique your own views and that of another, as I find the black-and-white thinking in discussion an example of unthoughtful or unhelpful discussion.
Who had the courage to speak up about our governments vast overreach and illegal domestic surveillance program. His exceptional courage is why we might pay special attention to his opinion, even when we disagree with it or suspect it's influenced by who has granted him asylum.
Look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September. Happens to every forum. HN is well past its "hidden niche community" period and is now attracting the same crowd as Reddit, Facebook and the like.
I think I was already aware of most of the facts presented, but I'm not sure I know what argument is being made?
That the CIA has not enough oversight? This is like a standard plot element in Hollywood movies and comic books, so that seems a little obvious.
That the President of the United States shouldn't mention it if he learns someone is plotting a coup or terrorism in his country because that's hypocrisy?
Legacy of Ashes is a good book on the CIA and he has one on the FBI (which covers the two groups petty infighting as well).
The thesis seems to be that America's recent civil unrest is not exceptional, and only continues the pattern that the founding of the CIA and NSA started. The implication seems to be that making federal agencies more transparent would result in more widespread acceptance of American democracy internally, though that's never explicitly stated.
Confession: I didn't read the OP. I'm a believer in Snowden and what he has to say, but to attack Biden's address to the nation felt like whataboutism.
I've been a political observer for decades, and where we are today feels like we've gone through the mirror to upsidedown land. It borders on crazy-making in how bad and deep the divide is, and I even see plenty of it here on HN (which I think of as a meeting place for intelligent people to have intelligent conversations).
Political dialog is dead and I see no hints it will improve any time soon.
Just because something is "well known" doesn't mean we shouldn't bring it up. In fact, I'd argue we should bring it up more often when there is low progress being made. People associate importance with frequency of a topic. There's also new people being born every day, so plenty of people that are hearing about these things for the first time. Why shame them? Do you just not care?
"For nine consecutive, long years during those crucial days from
1955 through January 1, 1964, I was one of those briefing officers. I had
the unique assignment of being the "Focal Point" officer for contacts
between the CIA and the Department of Defense on matters pertaining to
the military support of the Special Operations[1] of that Agency. In that
capacity I worked with Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, several
Secretaries of Defense, and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well
as many others in key governmental places. My work took me to more
than sixty countries and to CIA offices and covert activities all over the
world--from such hot spots as Saigon and to such remote places as the
South Pole. Yes, there have been secret operations in Antarctica.
"It was my job not only to brief these men, but to brief them from the
point of view of the CIA so that I might win approval of the projects
presented and of the accompanying requests for support from the military
in terms of money, manpower, facilities, and materials. I was, during this
time, perhaps the best informed "Focal Point" officer among the few who
operated in this very special area. The role of the briefing officer is quiet,
effective, and most influential; and, in the CIA, specialized in the high art
of top level indoctrination.
...
"Henry Kissinger was a briefing officer. General John Vogt was one
of the best. Desmond Fitzgerald, Tracy Barnes, Ed Lansdale, and "Brute"
Krulak, in their own specialties, were top-flight briefing officers on
subjects that until the publication of the "Pentagon Papers," few people
had ever seen in print or had ever even contemplated.
...
I have not chosen to reveal and to expose "unreleased" classified documents; but I do believe that those that have been revealed, both in the "Pentagon Papers" and elsewhere, need to be interpreted and fully explained.
I am interested in setting forth and explaining what "secrecy" and the "cult of containment" really mean and what they have done to our way of life and to our country.
Furthermore, I want to correct any disinformation that may have been given by those who have tried to write on these subjects in other related histories."
No, the point is that it's an idea that everyone is likely to be familiar with, so it's not particularly novel. Why do you think that became a trope in the first place?
Sure, the blog post is good in that it references specific real world events, but the thesis is not really new information.
Movies often show that the sky is blue, but that doesn't mean that our expectation of a blue sky is irrational. Nevermind the fact that those movie tropes, and much of art in general, is a reflection of real world issues and events. The idea is so pervasive because we already know that it's true.
So many people comment about how Snowden can't say things like this because he is in Russia. I wonder: how does it invalidate the facts? He links to Wikipedia. Maybe you don't want to believe Snowden, him being a traitor. Don't you believe Wikipedia? I don't see how Snowdens identity is even relevant to the subject.
I've worked in defense and I've worked in intelligence collection in the service before that. We might disagree but I don't think I'm naive on this topic.
Whistleblower protections are set up in such a way as to protect the whistleblower. This means you don't hear about a majority of whistleblowers.
We can agree to disagree since we are ultimately arguing a hypothetical (what would have happened) but I think Snowden should have at least tried to go that route.
'Alarm' is not really the right word; the CIA and its lack of accountability is a problem, but it's not a new problem or a particularly recently-worsening problem. It's one of the bad things about America that needs to be fixed, but Snowden does not provide any new information here.
And honestly, while I agree with the gist of what he's saying here, I tend to view his more recent stuff with a bit of a suspicious eye; he has made a pretty big deal about the oaths he swore that he believed required him to reveal the extent of the illegal NSA spying at great personal cost. But now, he's a citizen of the Russian Federation, which is basically a rogue intelligence agency with a kleptocracy attached to it. Which means he's sworn an oath (as all naturalized citizens must) to protect and serve the interests of that nation, to uphold its laws, etc. Does he take that oath seriously? If not, why do they tolerate him?
I appreciate what he did back in 2013. But now that he's under the defacto control of the Russian FSB, I will take what he says with a grain of salt. Especially something like this, which is an opinion piece with no new information attached.
>But now that he's under the defacto control of the Russian FSB, I will take what he says with a grain of salt. Especially something like this, which is an opinion piece with no new information attached.
Unnecessary. American and Russia do not have an extradition treaty. There are Russians here that Russia would like extradited (if you weren't aware of this you need to expand your news sources) and there are Americans in Russia that America would like extradited (Snowden obviously). But they don't trade. Why? American doesn't want Snowden badly enough to give up anyone Russia wants. So the reason he's there is America is choosing to keep him there. Russia doesn't have to do anything at all and they get free criticism about America coming from a (in)famous American, again without having to lift a finger. It's win win for Russia. And win win for America, the American government can pretend Russia is evil and harboring a fugitive without having to lift a finger.
The only people losing here are predominantly Snowden, the American people, and arguably the Russian people.
> I will take what he says with a grain of salt. Especially something like this, which is an opinion piece with no new information attached.
What's the grain of salt, if all of the information he presented is already well-known?
> But now, he's a citizen of the Russian Federation
In fact he is not. Although he has applied.
> Does he take that oath seriously?
It's unknown. Do you have access to any special information on this subject?
> If not, why do they tolerate him?
Can you truly not think of any reasons Russia might tolerate his presence even if he were not to seriously and honestly swear to do whatever they say?
He is a living middle finger to the US. Russia benefits from him simply being there and staying in the public awareness. I'm sure loyalty to Putin would be nice, but I bet they'd gladly accept simply not actively working to undermine Russia while he's there.
> What's the grain of salt, if all of the information he presented is already well-known?
In this case, it's bit of suspicion about his motivations. And if he presents claims of new factual information in other communications, I would require more rigorous verification of their truth than I would if he was, say, in France taking advantage of some extradition loophole.
> In fact he is not. Although he has applied.
That appears to be correct. So I don't know if he has yet taken an oath of allegiance to the Russian Federation, though he has certainly announced his intention to.
> It's unknown. Do you have access to any special information on this subject?
Of course not; it's a rhetorical question that follows from his previous statements about his belief that the oath he took to the United States required him to do what he did, despite the personal cost.
> Can you truly not think of any reasons Russia might tolerate his presence even if he were not to seriously and honestly swear to do whatever they say?
Of course I can; there is a continuum of possibilities between "He is free to say whatever he wants but he only says bad things about Russia's adversaries for obvious practical reasons, in return for which his presence is tolerated" to "He is and has been for many years a paid FSB agent or asset and a true believer in the geopolitical agenda of the Russian Federation and everything he writes is crafted specifically by him and a FSB propaganda team to serve their goals of the moment". My personal opinion is that he lies somewhere much closer to the first than the second, but in the end we don't know. Thus, grain of salt.
As with any complicated situation, there are multiple conflicting interpretations that could be possible. Since we can't collapse the uncertainty, we must take the grain of salt.
I do generally trust Snowden, but I can't deny that Russia would likely do everything they could to leverage the information he has against the US. Has he given them NatSec secrets in return for asylum? Unlikely I think, but possible.
IMO, Russia is just keeping Snowden around as a general anti-US voice in the global conversation to air credible dirty laundry of their biggest rival. As an honest patriot, I welcome the tough criticism and aspire to fix the problems he highlights. But it's a fair concern that some of that is potentially embellished or selectively censored for Russian propoganda purposes.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting here? Snowden has definitely been pushed into a corner, which benefits multiple entities, but I'm not clear on which particular view of events you're talking about - can you elaborate?
Well I think this article does a good job of saying CIA has done some crazy stuff. But then it goes from there to -> so let's get rid of it, which to me seems like potentially a much scarier proposition.
It's not clear to me exactly how real the threat of foreign countries trying to tamper with our elections is, but if this is what the CIA does, I think it's probably naive to think no other nation would try things like hacking elections. 8-year-old girls shouldn't be assassinated, but in the scope of things, that's not a reason to get rid of an entire agency. (Also it's a shame Biden's speech about "hey we're a democracy" had bad visual optics, but again, not really relevant)
Maybe this article isn't saying to eradicate the whole intelligence apparatus, but it's not clear to me what incremental practical step it is proposing.
>8-year-old girls shouldn't be assassinated, but in the scope of things, that's not a reason to get rid of an entire agency.
Really? That seems exactly like the kind of thing that should get an agency canned, especially because its not an aberration. In fact, I'd say virtually any other agency that did so would be canned in short order. Why doesn't the CIA have to play by the same rules as everyone else? Especially when those rules are as basic as 'don't murder American children'.
Killing is one of the CIA's sanctioned duties, so it's a bit different to compare the CIA killing a child to the EPA killing a child.
But nonetheless, no, we wouldn't shut down the whole EPA, fire everybody, delete all the databases, and cancel worrying about pollution if the EPA killed a child.
I know this is an emotional topic, but imo overreacting proposals actually make less progress toward a concrete improvement than practical ideas.
> Killing is one of the CIA's sanctioned duties, so it's a bit different to compare the CIA killing a child to the EPA killing a child.
I don't think this is true. Executive Order 12333 states:
> No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
They then go on to note that it was "re-interpreted" to not apply to counterterrorism.
Under the same logic, the EPA could be extended to allow assassination of people harmful to the environment.
The problem is that the CIA is meant to operate in secrecy, which makes sense for information gathering. Having a secretive group that's also tasked with extrajudicial killings virtually guarantees ineffective oversight.
Let the CIA go back to gathering info, and let the SEALS or rangers or whoever do the killing. Some branch of government with a level of oversight.
There’s some misunderstanding here regarding US law and intel agencies. Intel agencies don’t actually do the killing. The military does. CIA as an intel agency only says where and who. That is essentially the function of an intel agency. These functions are outlined in USC Title law. So it already is as you state. CIA gathers info, military does the killing. It is the same reason there’s NSA and US Cyber Command.
So no, the EPA cannot kill anyone as the law only allows the military to engage in offensive operations. (USC Title 10)
> Intel agencies don’t actually do the killing. The military does. CIA as an intel agency only says where and who.
Nope https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-gave-cia-power-to-launch-... The CIA has the authority and hardware to launch their own drone strikes. It was classified, so we don't know when it started, but Obama removed their power to do it and Trump gave it back.
The US has two separate drone strike programs. The military runs one, and the CIA runs the other.
Fun fact, your life has a monetary value. So does an 8-year old child. So does each and every body part. This is how insurance companies work.
If your child is killed, even in the most horrifically tragic of circumstances, you might think you're morally entitled to everything the killers have and more, but under any civilized legal system in the world, you aren't.
You might get a few hundred-thousand dollars, maybe even millions. But you're not getting 50 million, or even 10 million. Blood money is a thing, it has never ceased to be a thing, and it's arguable that no system of government could function if it wasn't a thing. If every life is priceless then entitlements would rack up to impossible levels really quickly, there's a great deal of tragedy and brutality in the world that would overwhelm such a system, well beyond the tiny fraction that makes any part of the news.
This is a long winded way of saying: assassinating an 8 year old girl should lead to various corrections, and generally shouldn't happen, but the CIA as a whole is worth more than one life.
But by saying that aloud and apparently in earnest you have revealed that you are someone whose beliefs and opinions on the matter are not worth considering. You should not be allowed to run the CIA nor should anyone who thinks like you.
Are you okay? I'm simply describing the way things are, and to some degree or another always have been.
Good thing you're not in charge, your idealism would quickly turn to anarchism and despair if you saw how the sausage is made. You'd bring the whole house down on all our heads just to spite it.
I thought about not replying, but there's a slim chance that I may be able to help you out.
You're living in a hell. The gates of your hell are not locked nor guarded, you can leave whenever you want, but you have to realize that you're in hell before you can realize that there's a better place to be.
You know the previous president said this was a thing he would intentionally do out loud multiple times and got cheered for it:
> "When you get these terrorists," Trump said, "you have to take out their families."
> O’Reilly asked Trump if he meant it when he said that he would "take out" the family members of terrorists. He didn’t believe that Trump would "put out hits on women and children" if he were elected. Trump replied, "I would do pretty severe stuff." The Mesa crowd erupted in applause. "Yeah, baby!" a man near me yelled. I had never previously been to a political event at which people cheered for the murder of women and children.
And then when asked about it being illegal:
> Taking part in the Fox News GOP debate last night, the billionaire was asked about General Michael Hayden saying that the military would refuse to follow illegal orders such as the intentional killing of terrorists’ families.
> Mr Trump said: “They won’t refuse, they’re not going to refuse me — believe me.”
> The entrepreneur elaborated with claims that the wives of the 9/11 terrorists knew what was going to happen and fled to Saudi Arabia just before the attacks.
> That seems exactly like the kind of thing that should get an agency canned
But the article literally says she was killed during a commando attack ordered by Donald Trump.
I agree the CIA has done lots of awful things, and that knowingly or carelessly killing children should not be allowed. But did the CIA do this particular killing?
My reading of TFA is that the CIA cannot continue to operate without real oversight. Snowden was a part of the intelligence apparatus, every interview I've seen with him has indicated that he still sees a need for it. However he also believes that the apparatus must be accountable to the legislature, and that in a functioning democracy, representatives of the intelligence apparatus should not be allowed to lie and conceal things from the representatives of the people.
If we elect representatives who run on a platform of assassinating 8-year old US Citizens, and overthrowing leaders of foreign democracies, then that's terrible, but it's far superior to a world in which a single person can unilaterally decide to do these things and then hide it from Congress.
That's my reading. All of the comments that do not address this specific point are missing it.
Is Snowden now a Russian asset? Maybe. Doesn't matter. Why doesn't Congress have true oversight of the CIA?
It's necessary to "break a few eggs to make an omelet" and that's how "the sausage is made"? Ok, but why doesn't Congress have true oversight of the CIA?
Snowden writes too flowery? Sure, but why doesn't Congress have true oversight of the CIA?
90% of the freakouts over each President each term is because the Office of the Presidency has so much power ceded by Congress over the decades. No one would have been so deeply freaked out by Trump if the President did not have the power to wage war, to assassinate US citizens, for secret trials, to spy domestically, to put people on no-fly lists, order nuclear strikes and so on.
That's not what I'm asking at all. I'm asking if she was purposefully targeted (assassination) or if she was in a house where other's were the targets (seems to be the case).
Because it doesn't matter. Who cares if they were specifically to kill her, which is loathsome, or that they were there to kill her family and were so ruthless they didn't bother to spare her. Either situation speaks to the general immorality of the organization.
>Maybe this article isn't saying to eradicate the whole intelligence apparatus, but it's not clear to me what incremental practical step it is proposing.
Proper adversarial (a la GAO) oversight is hinted at when he points out the failure to inform Congress about multiple activities. A commission appointed by Congress to inspect CIA activities could go a long way.
I think I read it with a sense of alarm fatigue, if that makes sense. The government has been doing extrajudicial killings of leftist leaders internationally and internally for a long time, so in socialist circles you tend to hear these stories regularly.
Folks like Fred Hampton (and COINTELPRO generally), and Martin Luther King, Jr, (who the FBI wiretapped and then sent a letter demanding he commit suicide).
And international cases like Operation PB Fortune, which overthrew democracy at the behest of fruit companies.
And we can reach further back to cases like the Haymarket Affair, Blair Mountain, the internment of us citizens into concentration camps during WW2, etc.
So... Am I alarmed? Yes, but have I been alarmed for a long time? Also yes.
Already well aware our alphabet agencies are deeply problematic. But that's hardly unique to the US. We do need better accountability - something that we've lacked.
Keep in mind it's Snowden - the guy who insisted prior to Feb 24th that all that talk about Russian military build-up was just war-mongering. Turns out the NSA and CIA were right on the money.
I did, because I already knew about most of the atrocities and subversions of democracy etc. described in the article. But I've been called all sorts of things for not inherently trusting my government. Being called a conspiracy theorist doesn't bother me, but the people who call me a fascist while demanding daddy government stomp on their rights a little harder just baffle me.
I didn't. None of this is really new info, most of it's been through the media before. Nobody cared enough to do anything then, and I'm doubtful they will now.
It's not particularly shocking that the force responsible for foreign psyops is somehow really good at escaping domestic criticism.
The FBI is complicit as well, they've also got a long history of sordid affairs.
There are the ones that would read it and agree with it. The agency could do no wrong.
There are those that read it, knew about some or most of it, and really not surprised. You possibly believe in conspiracy theories. And find out a few may be true.
Then there are those who are alarmed and shocked the CIA would do such a thing.
Anyone who knows anything about the CIA is already rightly horrified and outraged. Snowden is correct about how terrible the CIA is, however there’s no new revelations to be had here. Books like “Legacy of Ashes”[0] cover the atrocities of the CIA already.
As others have pointed out, Snowden never comes back to addressing the main content of Biden’s speech, which is about a very real and very immediate threat to the US. I hate what the CIA does and represents, but there are more pressing things to worry about at the moment.
Nothing new here. In any advanced society, how the sausage is made is typically pretty gross. If this seems like it is hand waving it away, it might be.
The CIA being a nasty organization that does nasty things has been well-known for decades. What makes (most) Americans tolerate this is the same reason anyone tolerates such nasty things -- they're being done to other people. Drone strikes in particular have been discussed since the Obama administration. It's not okay, but as Snowden himself points out, it is normal.
What did alarm me was Snowden mischaracterizing Biden's Philadelphia speech[1][2] as something out of a Nazi propaganda film by using out-of-context quotes and selective photography. There are plenty of liberals/leftists for whom drone strikes are their biggest issue (often so they can claim that both major parties are basically the same), but this is a step even beyond that. Given that the collapse of American democracy would be worse even for his pet issues, I find it hard to believe that Snowden is being sincere.
Sincere question: what's the alternative to drone strikes when dealing with organizations like Al Quaeda, Taliban or ISIS? It seems that in the past less targeted weapons would have been used causing even more damage to civilians in the vicinity. Drone strikes, raids (which still ended up killing a little girl) or just giving up and withdrawing are the only real options I can see.
Yes, the alternative is largely to do nothing. To my understanding, the argument is that drone strikes are questionably effective, cause collateral damage that supports anti-American propaganda, and are wildly out of proportion to any actual threat. They're a form of security theater driven by Special Operations Command apparently holding a dominant position in DoD internal politics.
This is not an issue I pay a lot of attention to, so you should probably find other summaries as well.
As Biden gets into his speech, and for about 98% of the video - the framing is exactly as Snowden presented. Given politicians are the sort of people that obsess over the implications of the color of a tie, this visual was chosen absolutely intentionally: a flag hung vertically, blood red imposed on a dark scene, and two shadowy marines in the rear. I have no idea why they went for this visual, but it's difficult to attribute it to any motivation that is at all desirable.
Incidentally, if you originally watched the video on CNN, I'd encourage you to check out your own link, past the 40 second mark! Because that leads to a much more light hearted (though not really, if you really think about the implications of this) issue. As this video was streamed CNN distorted the colors, in real time, to try to increase the apparent lighting while also turning the crimson red into something like a fuchsia pink. [1] If you think that link might itself be fake, feel free to just look at any of CNN's coverage [2] and compare it against the source videos.
Everybody understood exactly the sort of imagery Biden's writers were looking to evoke. The only question that remains to be answered is why.
> I have no idea why they went for this visual, but it's difficult to attribute it to any motivation that is at all desirable.
I think Hanlon's Razor is a better explanation. Look at a wider picture[1][2], and the start of the CBS video I linked above. The building was well-lit, including the doorway area. When Biden starts speaking, the doorway light is turned off, plunging the background into darkness. This was probably done because the lit doorway was brighter than Biden. After a couple minutes, the light comes back up, but dimly. The background is still too dark, but it looks like they only had that one light to work with. Clearly this was being done on the fly.
CNN's color shift at ~12:40, on the other hand, probably had nothing to do with the background. Compare Biden's face before and after the shift. Before the shift, he looks yellow. After the shift, he looks much more natural. The lighting was just bad. CNN decided to adjust for it; CBS didn't.
Meanwhile, photographers love contrast, and the dynamic range of a camera is much smaller than that of a human eye. So a scene that probably looked normal in person turns into something dramatic in photographs. (And I bet Photoshop was used to enhance that drama even more.)
The conclusion I draw from this is that bad lighting produces bad images, and that politicians are not hyper-competent when it comes to such things. The content of the speech reinforces this -- far from being an eliminationist screed, Biden's speech is yet another hand extended to moderate Republicans inviting them to leave the Trump coalition and reject fascism. (Much like Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" speech, I expect this invitation to be ignored, but that's another matter.) Here are some representative quotes, none of which sound particularly fascist to me:
> Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.
> So I want to say this plain and simple: There is no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever.
> On top of that, there are public figures — today, yesterday, and the day before — predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets. This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous. It’s against the rule of law. And we, the people, must say: This is not who we are. (Applause.)
> We’re a big, complicated country. But democracy endures only if we, the people, respect the guardrails of the republic. Only if we, the people, accept the results of free and fair elections. (Applause.) Only if we, the people, see politics not as total war but mediation of our differences.
> The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God. That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect. That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence. And that democracy — democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible.
This is bog-standard Americanism. The idea that it's some sort fascist rally speech simply doesn't hold water.
Anything can be made to seem something other than what it is from some angle or another - or some quote or another. The best of intentions can be turned into the worst, and the worst into the best. The question is one of intent. So I'll ask you. This [1] is the CSPAN coverage, which as close as one to get as definitive. And it is effectively identical to all other coverage as well.
Do you genuinely believe the long zoomed out and angled images that are required to make this scene look less creepy are what the scene was intended to be streamed as? Or it was it intended to be streamed like literally every other single 'serious speech', the sort of which Biden's team, a group absolutely obsessed with visuals and apperance, have decades of experience orchestrating - front and center, zoomed on speaker?
It didn't look particularly creepy to me to begin with. I linked to the wider-angle photos to show what the overall lighting of the building was designed to look like. The close-up video of Biden speaking is pretty standard, I agree.
I looked at the C-SPAN video and saw the same crappy background lighting and the same on-the-fly attempt to fix it, along with occasional crowd shots of people in folding chairs politely applauding.
I think you are overestimating both how much thought the people who prepared this scene put into the visuals and how much control they had over the setting. In order to believe that something sinister is going on, I would have to believe that:
1. The Biden team (or whoever did the lighting) was "obsessed" with the visuals and highly competent, but changed their minds about the lighting two minutes into the speech.
2. The Biden team intended to produce fascist-style visuals for the speech, but instead of having the audience be rows of soldiers they put a bunch of ordinary-looking people in lawn chairs around a circle.
3. CNN is in the tank for Biden, but decided to suddenly ignore his "clear intent" and "fix" the visuals twelve minutes into the speech.
4. Biden decided to use Nazi imagery in a speech opposing fascism and supporting pluralistic democracy, for... some reason?
5. Anyone, anywhere, could ever see Joe Biden (of all people) as a fascist Great Leader figure.
I think you are looking for conflict and complexity where there is none. The simplest and most plausible explanation for the visuals is that someone did a crappy job on the setup.
I'll close with one final note. Try to imagine this was otherwise identical setup, and even an identical speech. The only thing we'll change is that instead of the speaker invoking 1 day of riots in an effort to demonize his political opponents, it was instead a Republican speaker invoking the years of riots prior with the same motivation.
If you genuinely believe what you're saying here, then you would hold those exact same opinions in such a scenario.
If you remember Dems claiming that the 2004 election was stolen, then you should be able to remember that the tenor, tone, and energy level was radically different than the events of 2020, and it all went away much faster. For example, I don't believe any Democrat candidates ran an '06 or '08 campaign around the idea that the '04 election was stolen, something which is happening right now in a number of states.
On the off chance you weren't aware, the story about an officer being bludgeoned to death by a rioter wielding a fire extinguisher was completely fabricated. [1]
He was uninjured during the riots, and died the following day of a stroke due to a preexisting blood clot. Kind of interesting the massive propaganda campaign following his death that was maintained for months, even though the coroner's report on his death would have been available within days of his death. And the powers that be obviously knew, whatever the cause, it had 0 to do with the lie that was told, and repeated for months by the media, to the American people.
The only people that died during the riot were unarmed rioters.
Unarmed rioters that were ignoring LEO instructions to stop trying to breach an area containing a number of politicians. There is every reason to believe that, had they breached, violence would have occurred. Acting as if their violent behavior was not the direct cause of their death just because they were unarmed is not reasonable, in my opinion.
A bit hypocritical of Snowden to criticize the USA while holed up in Russia. But maybe I'm a bit partial considering the USSR destroyed every semblance of culture and national identity in my home country, causing generations of corruption and trauma, and ultimately emboldening my family to move to the States--abandoning lifelong friends and family--where a much better life was possible.
But please, keep lecturing us on how the US is "problematic." It's highly indicative that someone hasn't lived even a remotely hard life (nor traveled extensively, at least not without a US passport) when their criticism of the US is so paper thin. We get it: US imperialism bad, CIA evil, etc. But boy am I happy (not to mention proud) to be an American.
He's holed up in Russia because the United States stranded him there.
He was in Hong Kong for the original reporting. When his identity was revealed the United States charged him under the Espionage Act, & revoked his passport. He was flying to Argentina through countries that didn't have extradition agreements with the United States. When he got off in Russia, his passport was confiscated as it was no-longer valid & he spent over a month in the Moscow airport, unable to leave or go anywhere else.
You're missing a rather interesting step in his adventures: staying at the RU Consulate for several days in Hong Kong. And then he ends up "stuck" in Moscow. Surely a coincidence.
I'm guessing he'd rather be in the USA, if it meant he weren't thrown in a prison cell and possibly executed for treason.
Anyway, what a cynical point of view. Yes, we tend to treat our own citizens here moderately well compared to a totalitarian state (real high bar there). And that's great, but when it comes to international relations, it seems foreigners or even some citizens abroad are viewed as obstacles, at best. This is not a great way to conduct foreign policy. First of all, it's morally wrong, for the same reason you don't want a country doing these things to its own citizens. But if that is unconvincing, then at least an appeal to self-interest: should we ever find ourselves not in the position as #1 superpower, our past actions will likely come back to haunt us.
In real terms, where else is the man supposed to seek refuge? Only a handful of nations can manage to resist American influence. Powerful, yet friendly nations, almost always bend to pressure from the US Government.
Edit: I’d also like to add that only a handful of nations have intelligence agencies of their own that are capable of preventing some black ops extraction or assassination. I doubt the government of Ecuador or Switzerland is up to the challenge.
Also Keep in mind that the United States did not ask for permission to raid Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, a state with nuclear weapons.
What options really there is? China? Cuba? Iran? North Korea?
Yeah, knowing how the government treats political prisoners, going back to what would clearly not be a reasonable trial is something that anyone would do in the situation.
I believe most judgements share some common edges with some fallacious logical forms, and yet retain some validity.
Your argument, for example, has some commonality with what I would call the "fallacy" fallacy, in which one finds an insignificant echo of a fallacy in another's view and dismisses the entirety of what they have to say.
This is identical to saying "Climate change doesn't exist because Al Gore flies in airplanes," or "Ralph Nader cannot be a critic of capitalism because he made a million dollars of his books."
Motivations have nothing to do with it, that is exactly what an ad hominem attack is. If you reject the argument because of the person's motivations, you are calling an argument false without evaluating the argument itself. That is broken reasoning, which is why the term "fallacy" exists.
Classic Red Herring logical fallacy. What's happening in Russia is in no way relevant to the arguments about government murder and the dissolution of the purported "rule of law" in the USA presented in the piece. This is a distractionary tactic used to prevent discussion about the real issues presented in the writing. Shame.
It _is_ hypocritical of him, of course, but despite the hypocrisy he does have lessons for us and his hypocrisy does not negate the substance of the lessons.
He's also between a rock and a hard pace. So I don't blame him too much. What I will say, is that if you choose to be a whistleblower, as honorable and moral that can be, you should be aware of and assume the consequences. That's the deal. It's not nice and the world should be a better place, but it isn't and that's the way it works.
That said, he, and Truman are right in that bureaucracy transforms and metastasizes and becomes something other than its original intent and inertia takes over and becomes what some deride as "the deep state" which has been a concern at least since Jefferson.
Maybe we should have hard sunsets on most ACTs of congress and if the function is important enough they can raise a new organization, but not one simply taking over, but one growing anew with new management, personnel and regulation.
Is it hypocritical? No. Inconsistent? (This is the difference between an act of commission and an lie of omission) Yes, but potentially only temporary. Would Snowden speak out against Russia if the US dropped charges and let him come home? Who can say?
Well, I guess he's just trapped by the practical problems created by his peculiar combination of personal morality and cowardice.
If you claim whistle-blowing is justified by the exposed crimes and then run, whoever owns wherever you end up now owns you. If they happen to be worse... eh, you made your choice, now live with it.
I think Snowden is a victim of (naive?) idealism. Idealism often has very short term focus and isn't very strategic. This led him into the trap of realpolitik where the notion of purity isn't a concern. So he saw the US engaging in bad things, in illegal activity --without taking into account how the rest of the world works and how much worse things outside can be. Sometimes whistleblowing can bring change for the good, but it's not a guarantee --in this case, "the powers that be" have too much vested in this organ and will seek to minimize this inconvenient problem he represents.
Don't put words in my mouth. I listen to everything he says, there's a lot to learn. And nowhere am I suggesting he martyr himself.
Here's a hint, if you're having difficulty: I'm mostly just describing his plight. I'm not approving of the NSA, FBI, Russia, or anyone else. I do admire him in many respects.
I'm just not terribly sympathetic. For as much time as he spent on the immediate escape, it seems like he spent none on, "...and then what?" Kind of an important detail for an aspiring man of international mystery. Instead, he's turned himself into Putin's tchotchke, sitting on a shelf unless and until he somehow becomes situationally useful.
> Don't put words in my mouth. ... nowhere am I suggesting he martyr himself.
I'm not tryin to put words in your mouth. Perhaps think more about the ideas that the words coming out of your mouth convey? You said
"If you claim whistle-blowing is justified by the exposed crimes and then run".
Sounds like you think he ought not to have run. Even though the president literally discussed applying the death penalty to him. That's why I thought you were suggesting he ought to have martyred himself.
> For as much time as he spent on the immediate escape, it seems like he spent none on, "...and then what?"
Jesus christ, you described yourself as unsympathetic, and I guess I can't disagree. But "aspiring man of international mystery"? Don't put words in his mouth. If the things he says about his motivations are true, your mischaracterization is grossly offensive.
> A bit hypocritical of Snowden to criticize the USA while holed up in Russia.
So you have no problem with the substance of the article, only with the author's place of residence?
The article itself references several instances of the CIA toppling governments and starting wars - those are not invalidated because Russia also did similar or and worse things. Plenty of people in the Middle East and Central America could justifiably feel the same about the CIA as you do about Russia.
> Plenty of people in the Middle East and Central America could justifiably feel the same about the CIA as you do about Russia.
(The USSR, not Russia.) It's pure fantasy to argue that the CIA, even given their sordid history, ever partook in anything even remotely comparable to the scale of the USSR's destructive regime[1].
The US invasion of Iraq that the CIA helped start [1] resulted in about 200k civilian deaths [2]. I don't feel like tallying the deaths from all of CIA's projects (or deciding how to split responsibility between the CIA and the USA as a whole), and I'm inclined to agree that Russia did worse, even much worse, but not incomparably worse, as subjective as that term is.
Regardless, my statement holds - there are plenty of people that justifiably hate the CIA. It wouldn't surprise me if plenty of proud Americans hated it - it has dragged their country into unnecessary wars, and subverted their democracy. Why this desire to protect a rogue agency that seems hostile even to the US itself, just because Russia is bad?
Snowden is bad because he's... in a bad country? Drivel!
That the US is better than the USSR is hardly a laurel worth resting on. The US has, from before it even existed, always been about the pursuit of better government--of a more perfect union.
After seeing the ringer that Assange has been put through in spite of not being an American citizen at all, I can only imagine what they would put Snowden through. He would not get a fair trial. Everything that was brought to light would have been buried and forgotten.
None of the Epstein co-conspirators have gone to jail, many of which we know are powerful billionaires, royalty, and celebrities. We have actual evidence of the current president taking bribes while VP (vis-a-vis the Hunter Biden laptop), but there is not even a trace of controversy in the "news" about it.
But we know Snowden would go to jail and his life made a living hell were he not in one of the few countries with true independence from the claws of the American empire. I know why Russia gave him shelter, because the revelations make the U.S. look bad. But I'll be damned if we don't deserve to look bad for this insane, egregious, abuse of human rights that is completely averse to our legal and foundational principles.
Any country that is an enemy of the US, which unfortunately does mean that when he criticizes the US (a country he has not lived in for nearly a decade) you have to take it with a grain of salt.
The article must be assumed to simply be Russian propaganda as all information put out by Russia under Putin is either lies or twists on the truth to try to achieve Putin's goals. You cannot assume Edward Snowden freely wrote this article.
it is not clear what could be done should an intelligence agency turn rogue, and become operationally independent from the government. It's basically a non-democratic power centre which - because it is not subject to elections - will always outlast any politician, and because of the nature of the work, has vast powers of direct and indirect influence.
It's worse, because intelligence agencies surveil politicians, and can manipulate both them directly and the elections that get them their jobs. It's inevitable that the government will be controlled by the person at the highest levels of surveillance (the unsurveilled one) in a world of complete surveillance. Surveillance gets you power, and more power gives you better ability to exploit and increase surveillance.
SF idea: The secrecy around your intelligence budget rises along with the size of your intelligence budget. Eventually the intelligence budget completely disappears, and people forget that there ever were intelligence agencies. But that's only because everything is now actually part of the intelligence budget, and the publicly-released budget numbers are determined by an team for the purpose of creating popular support for current initiatives, creating popular rage at troublesome trends, and designing election outcomes.
Is CIA rogue? Many of the morally upsetting acts documented here (killing an 8 year old girl, spying on the American people) seem to have been ordered by officials in the elected government.
Congress can simply cut their budget. The President can fire who he wants in the executive branch. Talk about it in the court of public opinion. Discourage "voting X no matter who" and focus on issues rather than sides.
>"Congress can simply cut their budget. The President can fire who he wants in the executive branch. Talk about it in the court of public opinion. Discourage "voting X no matter who" and focus on issues rather than sides."
Were it so easy. I feel like the same sentiment could apply to the military industrial complex, wherein congress could cut the budget at any time, the President could dismiss the most bellicose and wasteful officers, and the citizenry could focus on the issue rather than partisanship. Indeed, left and right seem to believe we spend way to much on certain military projects, yet nothing ever seems to be done about the ballooning budgets.
I believe one of the most sinister things about our intelligence apparatus is the fact that hoovering up all this data means it is easier than ever to blackmail our politicians who happen to be digital natives. I can only imagine how badly Millennial and Gen Z politicians can be made to look if their browser history were to leak.
The CIA has significant 'public/private' partnerships with thousands of companies and NGO's and non-profits. It might hurt the face of the CIA, but the people who make up the CIA, AKA it's employee's, will just distribute themselves within these external orgs and continue there operations covertly.
It's exactly what they did when they were caught using military propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens; AKA Operation Mockingbird. During the Church and Pike commissions, which were constantly attacked by CIA blackmailers, they didn't even fire anyone let alone press charges. The result was that the CIA was told not to do propaganda. To avoid this restriction, many CIA agents quit, and then privately entered the media industry, while continuing the same objectives they had while working for the CIA.
Now today, nearly 50 years later, private media is still allowed to use propaganda against us, because it isn't the government. This loop hole needs to be eliminated.
Congress/executive branch: "We're cutting your budget and firing the people in charge of this mess"
The NSA etc: "No you're not, we have all your calls and emails and every shitty thing you ever did on record and will leak it if you dare so much as look at our budget. And that's just for starters, wait until the FBI raid your house and find your computer filled with CP and you try the 'the CIA did it' defence in court. Or maybe we'll correct the results of the next election?"
Congress/executive branch: "We urgently need to increase their budget, and we will not be disclosing why"
The truth is, you cannot control or oversee these programs anymore than you can the military. And it's worse, for the military to stage a coup, they have to actually march into Washington and use guns. People know it has happened. These guys do it all in secret.
That's why there are typically multiple secret services (with different missions but similar skillsets). They are encouraged to spy on each other. None is allowed to dominate everyone else.
Remember the movie Valkyrie? It provides another vivid illustration of what can be done to reign in a secret police once the army rolls in. The very same thing happened in the USSR during the power struggles after Stalin died.
It wasn't really by choice, as I understand it he was trying to relocate to South America. And given events like grounding the plane of a head of state because they suspected Snowden was on board I can't say I'm surprised he hasn't tried to relocate to elsewhere.
There can be no long lived instution, let alone an intelligence agency, without sin.
Presenting only the bad things is not how you evaluate one, or its country. Half truths are the best lies. This IS propaganda. And this is Snowden's current position and role.
It's a shame he addresses none of the points of the speech he premises the article on. He could be an important voice right now speaking out against tyranny and fascism.
This guy only pops up when Putin needs to dust him off for some anti-American propaganda. The chances of Snowden speaking out against tyranny are zero.
> Flanked by the uniformed icons of his military and standing atop a Leni Riefenstahl stage, the leader clenched his fists to illustrate seizing the future from the forces of “fear, division, and darkness.”
I stopped reading once Godwin's Law applied. This was the first paragraph.
No — the US feeds of the speech all had the tight red framing, while international ones did not. That photo is the same framing as his speech broadcast on US networks.
Such a market split indicates the framing was intentionally authoritarian and meant to provoke/intimidate political rivals.
There absolutely are, but in his Philadelphia speech, Biden equated anyone who supports his leading opponent(s) in 2024, with being a domestic terrorist.
I'm a Pacific Green so I have no allegiance to the Ds or Rs, but from where I sit, everything the left accused Trump and the Republicans of is what the Democrats are actually doing. Fascism is the unity of corporate and government power. And Big Tech, academia, and the Democrats are all on the same side, and it's the left committing terrorist acts (Antifa harassing motorists, Shannon Brandt etc).
If anyone is pushing extremism it's the Democrats.
it's the classic "convince everyone that your opponent is doing what you're guilty of" that both sides use.
The speech following that brief crowd segment is the red with marines behind him — at a point where the light was on, rather than the one featured in the photo.
I think there’s a reason you deep linked rather than show the beginning: the start is exactly the dark red set shown in the photo.
I’d encourage people to watch from the beginning, where they dim the lights to get that effect:
Yes — the photo is a particular moment from that speech. Obviously characteristics of the photo change with a different camera.
You’re outright lying that the lighting is different: they immediately dim the lights at the start of that video to get the dark red scene.
I have some serious questions why you’re trying to get people to “ignore their lying eyes” and dismissing people who are pointing out that photo matches the scene intentionally created at the start of the video as trolls.
They prefer the optics of the Greasy Grifter gassing his own people for a photo up with upside down Bible, I wonder whose misconduct they were protesting… oh right law enforcement.
Strange that they’re now trying to make law enforcement misconduct the new “economic anxiety.”
I can't tell if the people responsible were clueless or it was purposeful. With the way information is spread and manipulated optics should be as important as any words. It's very odd...
I've heard my friends in Texas mention that the outrage against the tan suit was a metaphor. Conservatives tend not to overreact to silly things, so I'll agree with them there.
No, the red was intentional. They knew exactly what they were doing. Biden was the speaker and not the building. They put red behind him with full knowledge the broadcast would be a tight shot on him from directly in front. It was fully intentional.
Apparently it was supposed to be the white and red stripes of the US flag, and Biden just so happened to stand in front of the red part. That's probably the real explanation, but why are there marines standing behind him in frame like that? Why did he have both of his clenched fists raised? Why did his Twitter account (his office's account really, probably run by a staffer) just tweet the single word "democracy" (not even any quotes in the tweet, just one wholly lowercase word) at about the same time? With the whole "Dark Brandon" meme going around at the same time (originating from some Chinese propaganda trying to make Biden look bad, but glowing yellow eyes and a throne made from M16 rifles isn't going to make you look too bad in the US at this point), the coincidence is a bit weird.
The democracy tweet was just a trend. All the blue check accounts were posting one word about them, like the Oreos account posting cookies, or the NBA account posting just basketball.
That wasn’t just a photo — and it was intentional.
US markets had the red backdrop dictator scene, while international markets had a blue-and-red shot.
The Biden PR team intentionally broadcast a dictator speech, while broadcasting a different look internationally — an act meant to provoke and intimidate political rivals.
Edit:
I’m not sure your point?
The speech following that brief crowd segment is the red with marines behind him — at a point where the light was on, rather than the one featured in the photo.
I think there’s a reason you deep linked rather than show the beginning: the start is exactly the dark red set shown in the photo.
Did you post the wrong link or something? I clicked the video you linked, and most of the speech is Biden with red walls and marines to either side of him.
I don't want to get drawn into your flame war, but that picture from the article is exactly the same as what's in the bulk of that YouTube video, just from a slightly different angle. You're acting like Snowden deceptively cherry-picked a photo to look like Dictator Biden, but any screengrab from that YouTube video link you posted is going to look almost as malicious as the photo Snowden picked
You don't think there's anything scary or fucked up about the imagery Biden is presenting, where it's him in front of a red-and-black shadowy military force?
The stage at CPAC was literally shaped like a Nazi symbol. They banner there said something like "we are all domestic terrorists" - there were confederate flags inside the capitol building on Jan 6th.
I've never been a huge fan of his overly-evocative writing style. Not to say that what he's written is fake or wrong or misleading, but when I see this sort of emotionally charged writing my propaganda radar goes off. I can't stand reading it.
It's hard to say, because you rarely hear about the successes they have, just the failures. But the US intelligence community played a key role in the fall of the USSR, denuclearization of Iran, and I guess arguably the success of south korea given the US's required action to stop the invasion from the North. Obviously all those things could be bad depending on your political philosophy, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say most Americans approve.
And that's to say nothing of the intelligence community's key role in Ukraine and specifically the recent counterattacks.
But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
President Biden gave a speech about a specific person and what he perceives that person's threat to America to be, and Snowden omits any mention of that person, describes Biden's speech as being only about "his political opposition" and uses that as a springboard for... stuff. It's almost as if he didn't watch or read the speech, but only saw screen grabs and headlines from people who hate Biden.
I read it more as him trying to point out an incongruence between American political discourse and the realities of American realpolitik.
On the one hand you have Biden calling out Trumpism/MAGAism as a threat to democracy, on the other hand you have the media hyperfixation on the optics of his speech: 'omg he looks like a dictator!!'
Meanwhile when you look at the machinery underneath and how our system really maintains the status quo, fascism is the standard operating procedure. How can someone claim they want to restore justice and the sanctity of democracy when the extrajudicial killings of US citizens is just another Tuesday?
I don't think he really needed to criticize the substance of Biden's speech, since, given our leaders hyperfixation on optics, there was no substance to analyze in the first place. The speech was nothing but a layer of feel-good frosting concealing the violent means of control underneath.
P.S. Consider why you felt obligated to specify "illegal" war. Could the tremendously inhumane war in Ukraine be legal somehow? Would it be OK then? I hope not.
We say: Hey, the police are killing us, could you please stop that.
No, we need to be tough on crime. It's just too bad that some people die, but I need to feel secure.
We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, could you please stop that. It looks like we need to reboot the justice system.
No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want the crime rate to go up?
We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, we need to abolish the police.
No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want everyone to be murdered in their beds?
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Imagine just showing up at each of those exchanges, what would it look like without the history if you just saw a point in time.
We all live with an internal moral history - what we thought was righteous and unrighteous at any point in time.
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In my canned example at the top, I didn't talk about the actual changes that took place in policing.
There's just no way for me to write my whole viewpoint on this situation in a comment. If it's possible for you to do that, then maybe you don't want a complex society with people who want different things and have different points of view. I deeply understand this perspective. It would be so nice if everyone just agreed with me. It would be so nice if everyone had the same moral history and there was no deep division and hatred. But that's just not the world we have. People are complicated and want different things. People have histories that lead them to believe a certain way.
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Anyway, I think any police organization or system of justice should be based on reduction of harm.
It's multi-faceted. It's not just make work/life more worthwhile either because there are places with relatively high unemployment but also low crime.
It's about civics and what society sets as acceptable boundaries and enforcing those boundaries and punishing those that stray too far.
Looks at the USA's wild west. It went from rampant violent crime to acceptable social order. The impetus often was locals wanting to transform from territory to union member state. The country required certain control over crime and usually the solution was to bring in sheriffs to control crime, bring in schools to teach civics and bring civilization (law and order) to a lawless place.
For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself?
While I agree, I think more police could be part of the solution, or at least it's not an unreasonable point to bring up in the discussion.
Just hiring more people in a broken system is almost never a silver bullet, but there are times when it may be warranted as part of the solution. It's interesting to me how biased we are in application of this principle.
There was a particular discussion on HN where it seemed the prevailing opinion was "just hire more nurses to solve the healthcare problem." People were lambasted for hinting at the need to fix the systemic issues as well, because just throwing more people into a broken system rarely gets the results we want. If you ask nurses, they'll say you need to hire more nurses. If you ask police, they'll say you need to hire more police. It was hard for most to accept that idea when it comes one domain but not the other. I can't tell if it's something unique about the problem or just our biases leading the discussion.
>For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself?
Yes. Sometimes we do need more police but the police alone cannot solve the issue. You also need a working system of justice and a system where people know they will be held responsible for wrongdoing (all around) and a system to handle people who need mental care (along with laws that allow the state to assume care for those incapable of caring for themselves) but again, we'd require the state not to abuse its power...
I still think there is normally acceptable behavior and non-normally acceptable behavior. Of late, we've swung too far on, "everything is normal". You wanna shit on the street? You wanna run sit naked in a restaurant? You wanna use intravenous drugs and get high in a playgrouund? You wanna just rummage and dump things from the supermarket aisles into your bag and run out?
The issue in the US at this point in time is that as soon as something becomes a partisan issue, people filter into their groups, and nothing can get accomplished.
The right should want to reduce police spending as part of fiscal conservatism. The left should want to reduce police spending for social issues (and reallocate money towards social services, maybe).
That is a bold and aggressive claim, and I believe one unsupported by evidence. Can you prove that some of the famous, recent, dramatic examples of police misconduct were actually unpreventable and were not in any way caused by an institutionalized lax attitude towards self-policing?
> vs a tiny few hundred examples of bad behavior
Oh, just a half dozen or so in each state? That's a very white thing to say. And trivial to disprove.
However, the issue isn't that the police are imperfect- it's that they knowingly tolerate, and even defend bad behavior. THAT is a very different problem than being "imperfect", and it is not one we have to accept in order to avoid total anarchy.
I banned the other account* before I banned yours. But that doesn't and shouldn't matter; you've been badly abusing HN regardless of what anyone else has been doing. Pointing the finger at others is irrelevant.
* We don't necessarily reply when banning an account without much history on HN—it depends on a number of things, like whether they appear to be a spammer, whether we've banned them in the past, and so on.
Not replying to anyone in particular, but regarding Assange, Snowden, and Putin (and by extension his /patron/ Xi): has it ever occured to any of you that our corruption has turned into a weapon in the hands of our enemies, and that we can't deal with the situation if we never address the corruption to begin with?
Truman's letter to Washington Post, 1963, a month after JFK's assassination, in full:
-- begin quote --
The Washington Post (December 22, 1963)
"Limit CIA Role To Intelligence" by Harry S Truman
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
This just prompts more questions, he lauds Allen Dulles:
> Allen Welsh Dulles (/ˈdʌləs/, /ˈdʌlɪs/; April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco.
So, was he not aware of this stuff, did he think things got worse after him?
Or is this bit ...
> With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
... basically expressing his own opinions about Dulles and the others, but putting it in the mouths of "Communist propaganda" as a way to reframe the criticism?
There are two general critical approaches to a spook agency (thank you Elizabeth I):
One is that they are fundamentally evil prone, by very nature of the task. This is your take. It's a plebe take. (I'm a plebe so no offense intended! /g)
The other is that the power elite in a society typically reach an understanding on how things are done. And CIA basically is breaking that understanding, via undisclosed 'scope creep' lol. That is Truman's criticism. He wants the deadly tools of state under strict control of constitutional regime, not some Yale schoolboy network of ancient families.
I'm genuinely interested in what Truman's take was, because this is a public letter by an ex-president. He clearly thinks something is going down.
I just don't know if he's worried about something even worse than what we know from the history books. Given the timing you could easily read this as a public announcement that he wouldn't be going along with a CIA coup in the US.
You could also just read it ass covering or internal political scheming.
I don't think it makes any sense to read it as Truman suddenly discovering that the CIA was off the leash.
I'm honestly not sure to what extent Truman was his own man, politically speaking. He was the "senator from Pendagrast" and then some bigwigs in Dem party who hated the idea of Wallace as President pushed him for VP in 1944. So when he writes "when I conceived of CIA" I'm not picturing Harry Truman deep in thought, rather sitting on his designated chair and being schooled by someone from Yale or thereabouts. He's the lesser Wilson, as a type, in my book.
There is no question that power elites in this country clashed after WWII regarding how to operate. But I simply can't see Harry S. Truman in that company.
So another possibility is he was being naive even when he wrote that?
Note for writers: In paragraph 3, Snowden uses the word "premises" but means "premise". These are similar-looking words with very different meanings.
My inner paranoid now wonders if Snowden wrote this, because in my experience this is a mistake most commonly made by ESL writers. It would be interesting to perform stylometry on his history of work to see if there's a break.
Oh, I didn't even consider this given the seemingly-singular premise (paragraph 2 after the quote) but I think your explanation is more likely. Thank you!
We support the police, yet attacked them on Jan. 6. We don't trust the government, yet those who were on the inside telling us what is wrong are also the enemy.
Snowden has never struck me as a particularly interesting thinker. I listened to some interviews he gave a few years ago and he came off as dull-witted, frankly.
America even prior to its founding was built upon covert operations, expecting it to change is pointless; Washington was leader of a spy network [1] and my understanding is even the original federal budget for spying was unusually high.
What’s unclear to me is if it’s possible for a completely open and truthful society to exist at every level. I just find it hard to believe it is, but I have also never seen any proof that it is not either.
Supported by a foreign enemy, defending domestic interests. A Russian citizen with a warrant for his arrest. His words are true, but his honor remains conflicted at best.
We have known for many years the CIA is awful. Get rid of it. We can achieve national security goals via alternate means.
It's probably going to get me banned, but we know they interfere in foreign elections. Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
> Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
Because this goes strongly against the culture of the organization?
People are funny. They may be willing to bend any law and/or see themselves as above the law in some aspects (see i.e. the Iran/contra affair), yet will honor-bind themselves to other ways.
Because at the end of the day they want to be the heros, the good guys.
And the C.I.A. is an organization, so people within it are bound to a culture which is part of the organization. They might be perfectly willing to betray the American people (as you or I might see it), but they will not betray the C.I.A.
Part of C.I.A. is that it operates outside of US territory.
These people are A-OK with murdering American children, but you somehow believe they draw a moral line at interfering locally? Get the fuck outta here.
There's absolutely no reason to believe the CIA is above meddling domestically.
You're right, they want to be the heros. And some people would convince themselves that being a hero is to prevent a particular person from becoming president, because it would be "a danger to our democracy."
Through these programs, the CIA's Office of Security received information from US based informants regarding individuals and groups with anti-war views. [..] According to a 1977 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_United_S...
At various times, under its own initiative or in accordance with directives from the President of the United States or the National Security Council staff, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has attempted to influence public opinion both in the United States and abroad. [..] Ralph McGehee, a former CIA officer, stated that the CIA often placed news stories anonymously in news publications to spread false ideas favorable to CIA goals. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...
I can't speak for the CIA but I can offer my armchair-commander opinion. I could imagine they might support your idea so to speak. Get rid of the existing agency and all the existing bureaucracy limiting their actions would be gone. All the negative history is left to Wikipedia. A new agency and thus a new sharp end of the stick would pop up in its place and they would migrate over their trusted cohorts and undisclosed funds. I think it would be viewed as a re-organization and they could cut all the dead weight, debt, etc...
It isn't immediately clear to me that you could run a modern state without some sort of intelligence apparatus. If anything, Israel is a case study of intelligence being a great equalizer for smaller states.
That doesn't excuse abuses or allow for their overreaches, which very much need to be addressed.
For anyone who thinks that Snowden is just a puppet of Russia, or that the CIA needs to walk a gray line to defend the US interests in the name of some global greater good:
Do you think those chickens will never come home to roost? Do you think their training and equipment and tactics wont soon come to border patrol, and then your local police department?
Sure, this agency with a carte blanche now is 'only' targeting people who don't look like you or speak your language or share the same values as you. But how long do you think the US can go before its departments are weaponized by someone who has dreams of being dictator of the US? 20 years? 50? 100?
Rather than just writing Snowden off because he would rather live in the relative freedom of an authoritarian nation than rot in the cell of a 'free' one, maybe take his argument at face value and recognize the real danger of unaccountability.
Obama, at an August news conference, specifically said that “I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community — for the first time.”
Have you read the intelligence report that the NPR article references? It's good. It even says Snowden had whistleblower protection but never tried to use it. Nobody he worked with remembers him bringing it up. Etc.
Had he gone to Congress he would be considered a whistleblower.
That report is what made me do a 180 on Snowden fyi
Just finished reading through the whole thing. I am curious which part changed your opinion on him? I'll go through my thoughts:
1. I don't think whistleblower protection would have applied anyways since what the government was doing was technically legal.
2. Snowden seems like an asshole and a nightmare to work with, but I don't think that should factor in to the credibility of any arguments he makes which are backed up with sufficient evidence.
3. The biggest thing that changed his perception for me was how much he leaked. It would have been better if he had only gone after documents that pertained to privacy of US citizens.
I thought that he had no protections and only leaked what supported his claims. I learned that not only did he not pursue proper channels, he leaked a lot more than required. I have no more good faith left for him. Between this report, and working in the same industry, I no longer believe anything that he says. Whatever good might have come out of this is overshadowed by the harm that he caused.
I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions.
These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here.
Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.