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If you leak it, leak it everywhere!
IIRC he tried to find people he could trust to redact in a way that would protect US national security interests.
And yet he still gets straight up accused of being a Russian asset. It seems nuance is beyond the grasp of a surprisingly large percentage of the population.
(although of late my surprise is decreasing).
I think the real answer is the Overton window shifted to accommodate what was previously scandalous,
This is part of it. Previously governments felt the need to hide skullduggery, but the Trump admin doesn't even bother to pay lip service to this, so to the public revelationa about whatever the Obama admin was up top don't really register. And the political polarization where the mere word "Obama" gets half the population for thing at the mouth doesn't help.
All that said, it doesn't explain the total radio silence we've seen for years now.
thats the tough thing about investigative journalism / whistleblowers. You have to hope there's an audience who will care.
[flagged]
It's really never been the worst thing. From MKUltra to Operation Sea-Spray and many, many more.
Those are all conspiracy theories. ;)
What? MKUlta is absolutely not a conspiracy theory.
They are saying it tongue-in-cheek, and even added an emoji for additional emphasis of that point.
I'm assuming the winking emoji was used to indicate sarcasm.
doh!
Neither of those are theories. Both are well documented and have had public hearings and governmental disclosure.
The Palmer Raids involved mass detention and deportation without trial. These raids were significant because they happened under Federal authority. US repression certainly involved torture and mass murder previously but mostly done locally (and sure, respond, "that was 'just' done to slaves and indians").
"The individuals captured during the Palmer raids were held in abysmal conditions: at Deer Island, six hundred prisoners were placed in barracks intended to house three hundred, with no heat and dwindling food; many were marched through Boston in chains and handcuffs, showered with the spit and trash of bystanders. In Detroit, eight hundred prisoners were crammed into a windowless corridor with only one working bathroom and no beds. At Ellis Island, hundreds of men were forced to sleep on steel slabs without mattresses."
Edit: Down voted without comment after being upvoted. I seldom reply but this is an exception - cowards!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids
Two dead and few dozen ill doesn't quite sound like the worst thing. Random street cops do that to more people for no good reason in any given year.
The level of desensitisation…
Not really? It's just trying to make an honest ranking.
In 2026 these kind of articles must be a bait to receive the latest pegasus-style payload on your honeypot devices.
No matter how many internals are being leaked about five eyes, it's important to realize that there is always someone who benefits from the turmoil and the loss of faith into democratically-supervised institutions.
With technical agencies I'd guess that at least they promoted people based on technical merit and not by how much land ownership their families had 500 yrs ago.
Be afraid, folks. Don’t read about the man behind the curtain, you’re better off knowing nothing. I’m sure everything is a-ok even without public supervision. Trust the authorities.
That’s a gross misrepresentation of their point.
I read the GGP comment several times and I still have no idea what their point is.
Bait… Pegasus… honeypot? What? Decoding: is this indicating you’re ready with the honeypot to detect attempts to compromise you? Still makes little sense.
What democratically supervised institutions are being alluded to?
They are talking about tradeoffs.
It's perfectly coherent to anyone who understands a) what a state is and b) not all states are equally bad. States are by their nature, necessarily violent. Their primary purpose is to prevent lethal intergroup violence and blood feuds. One doesn't do this merely by asking nicely. This is where the violence comes in. At some level this tradeoff is baked into every human, as with most pack animals. It's why so much of violence is posturing - ie creating off-ramps to bad trades.
The bait/honeypot part should be the least controversial element to someone with your apparent sentiments. This is a rather common tactic, likely around as old as states themselves.
None of this is to excuse or endorse any action. Just because states are observed to be certain way does not create some normative statement. I'm simply pointing out the coherence of the comment you alleged had none.
[citation needed]
Historically, at least initially, their primary purpose was to allow tribes to organize themselves in a way that would support labor-intensive farming practices. Large-scale early grain farming was not possible without an organized state.
As technological complexity grew, states grew as well. I’d argue that the closest thing to a primary “purpose” for states (not that there is one, states evolved organically) is to maintain the organization of industrial supply chains that perpetuate modern life. Defense is secondary; still important, but this comes after ensuring that resources are available to sustain life.
States are currently the primary perpetuators of violence, and they are presently faltering at their job of maintaining global resource flows, thanks to all the violence. If they fail completely, we all lose.
Humorous rejoinder to complain of my own lack of citation and then responding with an ostensibly competing theory while offering no citation of your own.
Perhaps it is because you are aware that the two go hand in hand?
As to the rest of it, it sort of fails the historical test on its face. States have been around since well before Christ. Your disappointment with contemporary geopolitics ("all the violence"), economics ("industrial supply chains ") or whatever other ills you discover in your "modern life" are irrelevant to the question of state formation. Your contention of states creating more violence has also been debunked. Obviously there is more violence with more people. People are violent. On a per capita basis, states reduce violence. There is a rather well known book on this that was somewhat recently published that I strongly suspect you are aware of.
I sympathize with your disappointment. Do try to cheer up. The easiest way is to realize that despite everything, there are few eras where you would actually prefer to live instead. Certainly if you had no control over your social class, precise geographical location, or had up to give or take 100 years of variance baked into your somewhat errant time machine.
If you ran the same algorithm on the present age you would have a better shot at a pleasurable life than most humans could have ever dreamed for most of human history. If you require a citation for this we should probably just agree to disagree. Have a nice day.
Here you go: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12846917/
868 worldwide cultures studied btw. For the majority, grain farming emerges with state formation—the two are inextricably linked. And for most of the others the fledgling state quickly adopts grain farming to feed itself, which forms the basis for the organization of the state.
It’s true that the seed of the state is a group of armed people threatening the rest into paying them a tribute. But without organized farming, groups like this quickly degenerate into roving bandit gangs. It’s not the core of the system, the organizing principle.
States can dish out violence on a scale far surpassing that of individuals or small groups. Industrial militaries and nuclear weapons multiply this potential. All of the largest slaughters in history were wrought by states. Ignoring this is willful blindness.
Surely you mean oligarch-supervised institutions.
Our institutions are supervised by representatives elected on the dime of corporate and billionaire benefactors. They pull the strings.
It became a banana republic when money became speech.
I wouldn't call Five eyes very democratically supervised.. It seems there is hardly any oversight at all.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/512315/updates-foreign-a...
Eh, the outrage never really materialized into anything worth continuing the leaks. Look at the Epstein files. "They" can just wait it out.
The banality of the day after outrage.
JD Vance, VP of the USA, recently said that if Watergate happened today it wouldn't last a 24 hour news cycle. I don't know if his intent was to minimize the crime of the acting President ordering a break in of his opponent or if Vance was inadvertently admitting that the stuff Trump is doing is so much worse than Watergate.
Both.
The first part because the second part.
The difference is the epstein files have been massively overhyped and imagination has led sense.
Real content in the files has caused serious trouble to the moron formerly known as "Prince Andrew" and to Peter Mandelson. This content wasn't some massive pedo consipracy but more common or garden finance sleaze - providing govt. inside info that could be used for trading profits.
Seems Epstein was a more commonplace sleazy creep into young prostitutes getting him into age of consent trouble in some states but not others. This more than some cia/mossad front of blackmailing the powerful with horrific acts done to children.
But absolutely all of it should be dug through, read, understood and prosecuted on the basis of actual evidence of any and all crime. What's there seems less good for selling clickbait-y podcasts or using as an emotional cudgel in politics. Hysteria rarely works out in a positive way.
Epstein was primarily a money man, but you’ll notice that this gets zero coverage. I guarantee there’s a lot of serious dirt there that will never see the light of day.
It’s almost better for the people involved if the public keeps focusing on the most outrageous aspects of the story. (And it is quite outrageous, and terrible, to be fair.)
This more than some cia/mossad front of blackmailing the powerful with horrific acts done to children.
IDK, the CIA/mossad pedophile part seems significant.
I don't think ordinary people upset at young girls being exploited for the purpose of blackmailing people are being 'naive' or something. Sure, it all pales in comparison to genocide X foreign land but people getting riled by that stuff too.
Quite a large amount of people have little empathy. Someone getting blown up somewhere else is a them problem. "I've never been blown up, they must have done something wrong to deserve it (I have heard things like this come out of peoples mouths)". Now, quite often those same people with little empathy have their own children therefore have an empathetic connection to the theoretical victim allowing them to contemplate the terror those children experienced. This allows the situation to be much more viceral to them. Also, pedophila is an act that is highly stimtized in most places in the world so the social shame and disgust phenomenon also applies.
By what standards are the files "overhyped" ? Also to what hysteria do you refer? What would we experience if it was a massive pedo conspiracy of extremely rich and powerful people? Would they all just line up and turn themselves in?
"It's not in the officially released files that the government itself provided, therefore it didn't happen" is the level of 'reasoning' going on here.
FTFY. Almost one and the same here but gives more context.
That and "ordinary" prostitution and "sleeziness" aren't important plus ignoring that Epstein wasn't just a pimp, he was very much a human trafficker, in the sense that he effectively coerced women into continuing their involvement with his operation.
When the Epstein news first really broke into the mainstream in 2019/2020, there were a ton of victim testimonials that were absolutely harrowing (and pointed to much weirder and more consequential stuff than "just" sex trafficking), it's been really surreal and disheartening to see the Trump-era releases successfully trivialize and downplay it.
He had deep ties with Israel and Mossad and it's very likely the dirt they have on Trump is possibly the reason we are at war with Iran and bringing the world to the brink of WW3. It's wild to call it underhyped, if anything quite the opposite. It's heavily redacted and the worst half of it hasn't even been released.
Age of consent is eleven in which states?
I remember that being reported in newspapers in 2020 but did those allegations make it into "The Epstein Files"? (I have paid almost no attention since it's the most obvious limited hangout ever hung out.)
Worth noting that nothing that could possibly be called the "The Epstein Files" was released and this is how the situation is understood by the public.
The term "responsible disclosure" may no longer have any meaning.
"Irresponsible disclosure" for the short term may be equivalent to "responsible disclosure" for the long term.
There must be some pretty dark stuff yet to be disclosed, and/or some pretty overt threats for those relatively fearless journalists to close ranks. The "Assange example" may have done its job perfectly.
Not just Assange, basically everyone involved except maybe Poitras took a hit. Appelbaum was driven out of his work with Tor (and from public life) after a smear campaign, Greenwald had to shift to alt media, and Snowden had to flee the country. Other journalists and editors “moved on” from their work with the papers.
Snowden did ask them not to get into any direct military secrets that were in the leaks, so that could explain some of the restraint.
Greenwald didn't "have" to do anything. His politics took a sharp turn towards the right-wing fringe and he lost his original audience.
Or maybe he just realized that politics is just one big club and he ain't in it. And neither are the people.
His politics have been remarkably consistent over time. He’s always been a slightly left-leaning, anti-war civil libertarian who is deeply suspicious of government, particularly the US government. He’s been posting lately about how Trump has been starting or expanding unjust wars and cracking down on press freedom. That’s hardly a “right-wing fringe” slant.
if he is slightly left leaning than Bernie is farthest of the far right US politicians
Since 2016, he's appeared repeatedly in conservative outlets (including pushing conspiracy theories about Ukraine), gotten fired for uncritically pushing unsubstantiated claims from the Trump campaign as journalism, hosted a video podcast giving a voice to folks like RFK Jr.
Other than speaking up against the surveillance state, he's been solidly aligned with conservative viewpoints.
He endorsed Bernie through 2023 when he (accurately) noted Sanders shifting away from anti-war/anti-imperialism positions, which seems to be Greenwald’s #1 focus. He was opposed to what he saw as the Biden admin’s role in perpetuating the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Biden-era “counter-disinformation” initiatives, which he is unsurprisingly opposed to. He maintains these positions under Trump while conservatives have moved against them; they are not “conservative” positions.
I’m not opposed to people hosting interviews with political opponents, and reasonable people shouldn’t be opposed to that either.
By 2023, it's not "hosting interviews with political opponents" - it's obvious that giving a voice and publicity to people like RFK Jr. is actively harmful to society. Freedom of speech means we don't throw RFK in jail, but no one has to publicize his views.
I disagree with you. It’s important to understand the perspectives of people actively involved in politics. Even (perhaps especially) those with fringe beliefs.
I think actually discussing and debating things is precisely how you get an informed society. We only need be concerned when people 'begin by denouncing all argument, or forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments with force.' That certainly doesn't seem to be the case with RFK, to say the least.
Your comment reminds me of a joke from the Soviet Union: "This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: Was it possible to criticize Hitler? We’re answering: Sure. The same way as you criticized Stalin. You had to lock yourself in your bedroom, hide under two, or better three covers, place a pillow, or better two pillows on top of the blankets over your head, and then whisper whatever your soul wishes about the dictator, strictly adhering to a five-minute limit." [1]
The USSR had constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech: "Article 50. In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations." [2] But there are rights, and then there is ability to exercise those rights.
[1] - https://johndclare.net/Russ12_Jokes.htm
[2] - https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....
RFK was also a lifelong Democrat. Not that long ago anti-war, pro free speech, anti 'big brother', anti illegal-immigration, anti political violence, anti mega-corp (especially big pharma), and other such stuff was all part of a very typical liberal 'resume.' Now it's more or less the exact opposite on many of these points.
It's not people's views that are really changing, but those of the parties. A complete liberal from not that long ago would now be deemed a conservative by the DNC. I think that's a problem for the DNC that needs to be tackled, because it's self defeating.
2028, after this presidency, should be an overwhelmingly massive landslide the likes of Reagan-Mondale. But it's going to be a coin flip, and this sort of otherizing is precisely why.
RFK is a socialite born into centre left 'American Nobility', who, throughout his life was able to get by by being 'the face' of whatever organization, on the magazine cover of whatever.
Eventually, he touched a real nerve by speaking against vaccines, and had an instant following of very devoted crazy people.
He grifted that carefully for a while and partnered with DJT - a very similar kind of grifter of a different kind.
Neither of them are particularly principled, it's not reasonable to put them into some kind of camp.
RFK probably does have some very legit ideas about 'organic and environmentalism' I have no doubt, but they're behind layers of egoistic and geriatric incoherence. Just like DJT.
Greenwald might be just as close to RFK than he is to Snowden, who is relatively consistent. (Assange surely is).
I'm not the biggest fan of him, but him showing up on conservative outlets because the other ones wouldn't platform him (due to going against US Dept of State propaganda) does not mean he is "conservative".
Please make an actual argument; tell us what "conservative" views he holds.
Unfortunately to many, everything is a team sport, and that isn't an accident. It is a result of decades of carefully crafted propaganda by the powers-that-be. It's why otherwise intelligent people repeat idiotic tropes like "echoing propaganda", because a designated bad person says something, by definition that statement is false and making any similar statement puts you in league with that bad person and makes you bad. It's also an easy way to dismiss objectively factual statements and arguments without substantively engaging with them in any way. The same goes for appearing on outlets that are considered to be on the other team, working with someone on the other team on an issue (even if that issue isn't itself objectionable) and even talking cordially with members of the other team. It is an incredibly useful way to keep people on board with whatever team play is called by the team owners and also keep them from developing or expressing any independent thoughts whatsoever.
Lets not confuse 'anti right' with 'left'.
There's a huge component of the left which is really quite directly anti-authority, which they see in the right in classical form.
These people are all 'personalities' they all carry odd issues.
You can spot them often by their total silence on Russian (or Chinese) Imperialism (and racism), as they try to blame the CIA for all the world's problems.
So are you saying Applebaum was framed?
I am not party to all the information, but he was never charged for the alleged misconduct and Die Zeit’s investigation didn’t find it convincing. Given how the Assange allegations fell apart, I think there’s a non-zero possibility that it was a defamation campaign.
He didn’t help himself with some public conduct/comments that painted him unfavorably. So there is that aspect to consider. But the scope of the campaign against him felt excessive at the time, to me.
A longish life has taught me to believe vulerable women who open themselves to ridicule, mistreatment and attack for outing more-powerful men who harmed them.
The women who outed Jason Applebaum knowingly opened themselves to some harsh treatment. I believe them.
A longish life has taught me to cast a very skeptical eye on anyone who comes out of the woodwork to cast evidence-free allegations on people who have raised the ire of the entire "national security" establishment.
That's a pretty generous and kind way to say "became a far-right lunatic regurgitating the same talking points you see from AfD politicians". I don't know what the hell happened to that guy. But he clearly went off the deep end.
Why must there be?
This article linked back to the intercept's snowden archive articles [0], and while this article paints the Intercept in a bad light it lead me to reading a couple of these.
While I heard many of the headlines the reporting is very in depth, including a bunch of smaller details worth poking into. I'd recommend people who are interested and who haven't done so yet to just read a couple of these.
[0]: https://theintercept.com/series/snowden-archive/
Snowden got into action because he believed that the US was fundamentally good and needed to get back on track. Over the past 12 years, in the US and around the world, this belief completely vanished. Whatever remains in the archive no longer holds any valuable news.
Therefore there should be no harm in releasing it.
That doesn't equate. Something can have no value as news but incredible value as security. Your passwords, for example.
The big question is whether Snowden's original thesis - that these newsagencies would find the right balance - was correct. In some ways, I hope there is a complete leak of the archive in decades' time when the relative risk is minimised so that the public can, in turn, evaluate the press of the day as to their ability to do this assessment. It may inform future similar whistleblowers whether Snowden made the right choice.
You are correct of course.
Example being the gross irresponsibility of Wikileaks releasing unredacted documents that detailed source identities (although all I know about this is anecdata).
People became ambivalent. Snowden fled eventually to Russia. Some people viewed him less relevant over time as the archive merely trickled out. When he fled to Russia, he looked less like a martyr and more like a national security information leaker or spy like Robert
A lot of what sounded extraordinary in 2013 is now baked into everyday discussion like metadata and mass surveillance. He is also available less for interviews because he is in Russia.
Basically bigger fish to fry
He didn't flee to Russia. He had booked tickets to Ecuador going through Russia. The Obama administration revoked his passport, rendering him stateless and unable to leave Russia. Please do not regurgitate propaganda.
He actually fled the US before the leaks became public to Hong Kong but it was a calculated risk because Hong Kong has extradition treaty with the US. So he was fleeing already.
He could have returned to the US however he would have most certainly faced arrest. So he asked and was granted temporary asylum in Russia. If my passport is voided for whatever reason then I am returning to the US. I am still a citizen and so was he.
But naturally he didn’t want to be arrested so by definition became a fugitive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
I get it I didn’t leak national security information but it doesn’t change the fact that he wasn’t stateless. That’s the part I was referring to
That just feels like a slightly different false equivalence - and having said that, I may be making yet another version of it by saying this:
If a person has a 'state', but that state would immediately jail the person for treason upon their return, is that materially different to stateless?
That feels like the reason that many countries allow 'political asylum'.
He wasn’t stateless. Stateless means no country recognizes you as a citizen. He just faced arrest if he returned. Same as any other fugitive. People seeking asylum still have a country and citizenship. Also he wasn’t facing treason charges. He was charged under the Espionage Act and with theft of government property. There were others in similar situations that faced up to 45 months in prison and Eric Holder was willing to make a deal in 2015.
He basically is on self imposed exile in Russia.
You seem to continue to minimise the seriousness of the situation.
I see what you’re saying, but true stateless people often have a different problem on their hands, because most countries won’t allow them entry at all unless they can get refugee status, and they will often be denied basic rights.
Some people actually voluntarily seek statelessness, but they’re either crazy or have enough resources to fly under the radar somewhere.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
Snowden’s status is more of a political exile. Theoretically he could return legally and safely if there was a complete regime change where the new regime was aligned with his beliefs and actions, although the chances of this happening are approximately zero.
It's not a "false equivalence". Multiple people are trying to explain to you what "stateless" actually means and how's it's materially different than being a fugitive, but you are refusing to listen.
Wasn’t he departing from Hong Kong to Ecuador and was stuck in Russia because his passport was revoked in transit?
I thought that’s what I remembered hearing. I think all of his meetings with reporters were in Hong Kong.
Yes so his default option was to return to the US and face arrest so he applied for asylum (as a US citizen still)
Eeesh, the propaganda must be strong in the US if you're getting downvoted for this. You're essentially summarising documented facts.
Thinking the US government wouldn't kidnap and rendition him from Ecuador is an extremely ignorant and uninformed position on how the US exercises power in the Americas. He made a least-bad choice of all possibly horrible choices and chose to stay in Russia.
I would say Snowden's legacy is the push to get HTTPS everywhere.
That’s true
Which ironically makes the Internet more surveillable, because now every single connection has to hit some TLS-terminating origin and can't be cached at the edge of our own networks. Don't confuse security with privacy.
What???
The internet is only more concentrated because most people choose price and convenience over a foolproof level of security. The cost/effort required to surveil traffic in coordination with TLS-terminating CDNs is multiple orders of magnitude higher than the effort needed to throw some high-Tbps middlebox in an IX rack to siphon every packet passing through it.
He got stuck in Russia. He didn’t flee to Russia. Don’t twist facts.
He wasn’t stuck : his lawyers would contact the State Department and arrange a surrender. There is also the case of limited validity to return to the US. He chose to apply for asylum still and exiled himself.
I am not making the case one way or the other because https everywhere was beneficial. But he signed up for a security clearance and knew what his obligations were (eg allegiance to the US)
Between a Rock and a Hard Place is almost the literal definition of stuck.
Yes, I'm using analogies, but I know which of the two I would choose. The US has only gotten worse in it's introversion since, so his choice seems to be increasingly correct - if personal liberty is the priority.
He was faced with the possibility of arrest or hoping for full asylum in Russia. It was another calculated gamble. But I don’t agree he was stuck. It was all self created problem. No one forced him to take the circuitous route he took and no one forced him to leak as himself. Could have been private/anonymous. Could have stayed in the US.
You could literally watch the snowden movie alone and get half of facts right. Don't have to even read good journalist pieces. Just a movie. Come on.
He fled the US and got stuck in Russia instead of Ecuador.
I'm not sure that materially changes the point does it? (Unless the implication is that by saying "he fled to Russia" it somehow implies that he was on the side of Russia instead of "anywhere he can be safe from the US").
He didn't "flee" to Russia. His passport was renounced/revoked/disabled while he was on his way to the original destination. He got stuck in the Russian airport for a freaking long time in a small room while the govt made sure he can't go anywhere else. Good Lord, fled to Russia it seems.
He could have returned to the US. He chose to exile in Russia. He was already fleeing. I posted a bunch about it below
Snowden has repeatedly talked about why he wouldn't return to US cos the trial won't be fair. He wanted to be able to talk. But due to his role, the trial would be a muppet one where he can't even talk. Or am I wrong?
At the time, look at the situation of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and the many whistle blowers before Snowden? How can u blame him?
Edit: Am unable to reply to comments. HN don't let you comment 2-3 levels in or is it moderation? - Fixed.
The OP was right - avoiding a unfair trial is still fleeing.
The word "flee" is not a pejorative in any way. For example flee North Korea all the time.
No. It is pejorative in the way it is used. Context is important.
The problem is he can’t excuse the offense under the Espionage Act because it doesn’t have a public interest defense. One could argue that it should have that defense. But that doesn’t mean the resulting trial would have been a “muppet trial”
He could have had counsel, challenged the government, and had a jury decide guilt. It would have been fair. It actually looks worse to flee like he did
"doesn't have a public interest defence".
Can't be serious.
There isn’t one under the law so no.
Why wasn’t the whistleblower process followed? Why didn’t he try to contact his congressman/ senator ? He could have said I don’t want a clearance anymore and disclosed his concerns. He could have reported anonymously even.
He wanted public debate and discourse on something that the process didn’t allow
Manning and Assange are both free today. Isn't that proof that whether it was reasonable to believe Snowden was correct at the time, history has proved him wrong?
Not sure. You are talking about a Snowden in 2013 who looks around and see Chelsea and Assange NOT free. He made the decision based on that and what has happened before. I also think what Snowden exposed is far far far bigger.
With the right/same lawyer, could've potentially worked out similarly to Kiriakou, who only had a few years behind bars and later became a celebrity due to his interviews.
Besides the undisclosed portions of the Snowden archives, I was also disappointed that the Assange/Wikileaks insurance files were never decrypted.
ref: https://kagi.com/search?q=wikileaks+insurance+torrent
So where's Snowden in all this? The article talks at great length about everybody he gave copies to and how they've all gone silent, but obviously he holds copies as well and is not beholden to the US on what he does with them. (Although he is surely on a short leash with his Russian masters as well.)
Also, please refer to a reply to a similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781990
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Hong_Kong
Because I know that's what we'd all do when fleeing our home country with a couple million highly desirable classified documents, attempting to avoid prosecution.
We'd all make sure to "protect" ourselves from "leverage" by the people who might (and ultimately did) help us achieve our goals by destroying our one and only bargaining chip.
People with ordinary levels of moral weakness would never become whistleblowers in the first place. They'd keep their excellent, comfortable and stimulating government careers.
His autobiography is worth reading. Yes, he wrote it, so it can be skewed all kinds of whichways to suit his agenda, but the picture it paints is of someone born into the US establishment (government / military / intelligence) and essentially a strong belief in the outward impression the US presents to the world. Freedom and Liberty!
I may be all kinds of naive in saying this, but I think he did it for relatively purely "the US must be better than this" motivations. I can't see his motivation being of the same ilk as The Cambridge Five.
I'm pretty sure he's staying quiet as fuck because he doesn't want to come to any public attention and get deported from Russia. Which would mean he would end up on a one way trip for life to ADX Florence. I haven't seen anything out of him since 2022 on the topic of the russia/ukraine war for instance.
Edit: If I would have to guess, he has some form of Russian intelligence minders who are responsible for oversight of him and his lifestyle and public profile (the russians aren't stupid, of course they have such people), and he has specifically told them he's going to remain completely quiet on everything political and make no further public statements of any sort
I don't see why he'd need to speak out against it. He would have been living there and seeing the Ukrainian shelling of the Donbass and the killing of those ethnically Russian people for years while western media mostly ignored it (though did actually report on it, searching Google about Ukraine's neo nazi problem with a "before 2022" filter is quite a sight), so I would not think he'd feel the need to speak out against retaliation against that aggression.
I can't even tell if this is posted in earnest, or satire, or some sort of highly advanced shitpost I am failing to grasp the nature of.
It's also very clear that he took enormous risks out of the good of his heart and basically gave up his life for absolutely jack shit; it changed absolutely nothing.
I'd be incredibly surprised if he isn't very cynical, resentful and hedonistic at this point.
"When you get the message, hang up the phone" - Alan Watts
I think that everyone read the headlines, internalized it into their worldview, and moved on. Nobody was particularly interested in the sordid details of how the government backdoored everything, they just noted it as fact and moved on. And the world since then has been marked by it. Trump's claim that the DNC spied on him would have been entirely toothless if people weren't primed to believe in such things way back in 2013. In a lot of ways, I think that the Snowden revelations were part of what split the more-or-less unified liberal western world, the Barack Obama "hope & change" "hopecore" Fukuyamian thought, into opposing "leftist" and "trumpian" camps.
I'm certainly no fan of Trump (in fact I think he is far and away the worst president of all time), but in 2026 we can say without a shadow of a doubt that the government was spying on Trump and the Trump campaign in 2016, and that 2016 was also a watershed moment for the people of the United States who cleaved into different realities and have still not emerged. Many otherwise intelligent people who did (and still do for the most part) put credence in our institutions swallowed years of unhinged, evidence-free Russiagate propaganda out of their hatred and (justified, but not because of Russia) disgust for Trump. Simply asking for evidence for any assertion made by the media and our "intelligence" agencies was treated as defacto support for Trump, if not treason by members of the Russiagate cult. For people brainwashed by this nonsense, all of Trump's subsequent crimes and misdeeds justified their beliefs, when that isn't how objective reality works. Almost everyone lost their ability to think critically and never regained it. This had a substantive impact on Snowden's legacy, who was easily painted as a Russian agent by the national security establishment he embarrassed by exposing their many (ongoing) crimes.
Thought experiment:
Is war of the scale of WWI and WWII a cleansing of, and temporary innoculation against, the natural tribalist fracturing of human psychology that occurs in times of peace? ("Peace is war" and all that goes along with that).
Does the insanity just continue until some traumatic event shocks (what remains of) the world population into a relatively normalised, shared worldview? Until enough time has passed that the cracks start to reappear.
Feels to me like a pattern in nature. I see smaller versions of it in communities and groups I'm part of or adjacent to. This is just the country / global scaled up version.
The funny thing is that now we have people freaking out about Flock. These same people didn't care about Snowden files at the time. In the same vein there are many ALPR companies besides Flock but none of them are getting any heat.
Too much is happening for anyone to keep up with it all.