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.

I think the real answer is the Overton window shifted to accommodate what was previously scandalous,

thats the tough thing about investigative journalism / whistleblowers. You have to hope there's an audience who will care.

Plenty of people care.

Empathy is, after all, free.

Action has a price.

Overton window fragmented such that it is currently non-overlapping. Some fragments consider the behaviors that Snowden reported on abhorrent; others consider them fine; still others think it's a moot point because they are powerless and can't do anything about it anyway; and others think it's a moot point because they're going to overthrow the government and remake it in their image anyway.

We're in the phase where the factions are geographically sorting, identifying allies, and arming. Then we fight it out. Each faction thinks their particular Overton window will win and become dominant afterwards, but likely we'll just end up back in the Stone Age and there won't be much of a society left to have a mainstream.

Your comment started out well within the Overton window, but in the second paragraph it jumped out.

Can we call that Overton window defenestration?

I like that terminology.

I'll explain, though, because I know the idea that we're all gonna kill each other is currently outside of the Overton Window. There's a fairly well-known (within the field) concept in history & international relations that wars start when the balance of power is ambiguous. Each side thinks that their in-group is more numerous, more powerful, and more righteous than the other. When groups have an accurate self-assessment of their relative power, the more powerful one gets its way and the less powerful one swallows its pride and does what it's told. But when both groups believe they are the more powerful one, they press their advantage and come into conflict. Rather than backing down, they keep pushing for concessions and escalating, believing that if it comes to a fight, they'll win. Since both groups have the misapprehension that they will be the winner, it actually does come to a fight, even though fighting is not strictly rational for either one. It gets even more ambiguous when the conflict is multi-sided, since the uncertainty in power relations is greater relative to their actual power, and the groups often don't know which way potential allies will break or to what extent an adversary's attention will be taken up by others.

History is full of examples where the news articles were crowing that war was impossible right up until it broke out, usually because it would be irrational. People are not always rational, particularly when they have a false perception of the world.

The current success of red team and Trump in the US is an excellent example of this from the last decade--one can make the argument that blue team failed to recognize the actual pecking order, and pushed too far and too hard, and now have gotten their teeth kicked in as a result.

(Which is bad, because red team under Trump has no actual talent for boring, effective governance at a time when it is sorely needed. Near inarguably, they're actively bad at it.)

I was certainly think of U.S. red vs. blue politics. I think it's bidirectional though: blue team doesn't realize how unpopular some of their key policy agendas are with red-team America, which is why they keep getting their teeth kicked in during elections. But red team doesn't realize the extent to which urban America has moved on from the cultural values of the 1980s, and both how numerous and how devoted their opposition is to their ideals. In reality, the teams are fairly evenly matched in both numbers and strength of conviction. But neither team will admit that, thinking that it's just a few errant radicals that are being manipulated by shadowy forces (Bill Gates, George Soros, and the NYTimes are the bogeyman for the reds; Trump, Miller, Bannon, and Fox News are the bogeyman for the blues). It seems inconceivable to each side that tens of millions of Americans might have sincere beliefs that differ from their own.

The mismatch between perception and reality makes me quite worried for the future of the country.

There are plenty of global examples as well, eg. everybody thought Russia would absolutely steamroll Ukraine and that hasn't happened, both Iran and the US think they have the upper hand and just need to mop up in the Persian Gulf. That's why those conflicts are still going on.

[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.

I'm assuming the winking emoji was used to indicate sarcasm.

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…

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.

Their primary purpose is to prevent lethal intergroup violence and blood feuds.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By the standards of "jaw dropping things we heard" for which we now know there is no evidence. Not even any leaks of suggestive circumstantial evidence. Nothing to back the awful fantasies of things done to children. Zero.

Most, if not all of the highly compensated victims were adults when they met the turd Epstein and made decisions as adults. Their claims are untested and uncorroborated but they are massively compensated. Good for them, they're getting paid but the hysteria and panic cost us all. Note how none of the massively compensated can manage to claim anything verifiable involving crimes of sleazebags still living?

Dig up his ranch, sure, why not? Would you bet on anything resembling evidence being found? On the Island? In his NY appartments? All just a massive, highly coordinated, perfectly executed cover-up? Is the govt really that good to get perfectly right, 100% no errors? Under this kind of spotlight with so many looking out for it?

It's a great distraction and there is zero doubt that plenty in washington are taking full advantage. The corruption rages across the aisles.

Everything you think you know about Epstein's crimes, ask yourself "Where is the actual evidence for that?" When you start ignoring the podcast-claims for which there is nothing at all to back it. It starts to look more mundanely awful. Than some monumental bonfire of evil previously un-imagined. He went whoring with Bill Gates who got an STD and it's there in the files trashing Bill's reputation. That was left alone in the cover-up but their pedo ring behaviour perfectly removed without the suggestion of a trace?

People think there is this big conspiracy to conceal the evidence of a grand pedo ring but they didn't protect the moron formerly known as prince andrew from the fall, he'll be well angry if he knows things about a pedo ring so that would be hugely risky. Unbelievably so. Literally.

People want to believe all the worst fabrications. You don't need it, it's bad enough without all that. There's sleaze enough with evidence to prosecute. Prosecutions, starting with Andrew and Mandelson, should happen. And also for everyone else identified by evidence.

Not so much the completely innocent, ordinary people named by Massie and Khanna who aren't in those circles and for whom it seems vanishingly unlikely had anything much to do with Epstein at all, let alone involved in these most hideous of crimes. And who they've now gone completely quiet about having pointed squarely at them and yelled "Evil!"

It's a real shame the extent to which it has polluted rational policy discussion. There's a cost. The cost is larger than you think.

Wait what? Are you saying that everything I have seen on the Epstein files through 'public discourse' is BS? Like, all of it?

Seems Epstein was a more commonplace sleazy creep into young prostitutes getting him into age of consent trouble in some states but not others.

Age of consent is eleven in which states?

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 had to shift to alt media

Greenwald didn't "have" to do anything. His politics took a sharp turn towards the right-wing fringe and he lost his original audience.

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.

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.

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).

Or, perhaps people can see the same evidence and come to different perspectives and conclusions. All without it being some malicious conspiracy, insanity, stupidity, or however you would like to frame it. If you look at society on a holistic level, it looks pretty bad. Mental illness rates are skyrocketing, testosterone is plummeting, IQ is declining, obesity is skyrocketing, and so on and so forth. The status quo isn't doing so hot.

Why? Well it's fairly obvious that some things like the internet are having some sort of a role, but in general nobody knows for certain. And so it's, at the minimum, quite reasonable to suggest that something, or more likely - some thingS, that we believe are completely safe, are not.

In living memory we believed that lobotomy was a great idea as a cure for various mental issues, that DDT was perfectly harmless - to the point that you'd have children playing in the large DDT fog clouds from neighborhood sprays, and so on. To imagine we now aren't doing the same thing, in ways that will seem equally absurd in the future, requires quite an unreasonable degree of arrogance and/or ignorance of the past and present.

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.

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 believe vulerable women who open themselves to ridicule, mistreatment and attack for outing more-powerful men who harmed 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.

a very skeptical eye on anyone who comes out of the woodwork

It wasn't one. It was eight women who put themselves in the firing line of (mostly) men, who craft no end of reasons to not believe them.

I believe them.

Greenwald had to shift to alt media

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.

... but only after making $400K+/year for seven years, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and then CHOOSING to leave The Intercept because they wouldn't publish his extreme far-right lunatic stuff. If Greenwald isn't currently doing well, I don't think you can really say that it was because of the Snowden papers.

Very generous indeed.

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.

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.

I am still a citizen and so was he.

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.

He just faced arrest if he returned

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.

Yeah, Snowden was lucky he wasn't, by definition, stateless, otherwise Russia may not have offered him asylum. They got to piss off the US by doing so.

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.

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.

He couldn't take the trip to Ecuador because his passport was revoked.

Ecuador's offer of asylum to Assange, and the fact that Snowden was traveling with a Wikileaks representative, is the likely reason for Ecuador being the originally chosen destination.

It may be ironic (for the US) and lucky (for Snowden) that he was in Russia when the passport was revoked. Likely one of the few places the US may hesitate kidnapping him from. From a kidnap / rendition viewpoint, Ecuador is just one country on a long list of countries to which the US would probably not hesitate 'arranging a small excursion'.

I would say Snowden's legacy is the push to get HTTPS everywhere.

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.

in coordination with TLS-terminating CDNs

Not what I'm saying. No coordination is necessary. I'm talking about metadata, not encrypted contents — just the fact that you made some number of connections, at a certain time, from a certain network, to a certain network, in a certain order, with requests and responses of a certain size. It really doesn't matter what's inside.

- https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

- https://youtu.be/kV2HDM86XgI?t=1072 “First of all, David's description of what you can do with metadata […] is absolutely correct. We kill people based on metadata.” ― Former NSA and CIA director General Michael Hayden (2014)

Sure, but hiding the contents provides a lot more value than hiding some parts of metadata.

It's ridiculous to argue otherwise.

It's true that general resources could be cached in some cases, but personalized information couldn't be (and yes was served over HTTP, not just HTTPS).

It really doesn't matter what's inside

It certainly does matter what is inside, and it's trivial to think of cases where it does. Hiding that content is much much more valuable.

We kill people based on metadata.

Sure, but they also kill people based on content.

It's ridiculous to argue otherwise.

I wholeheartedly disagree :)

If you will refer to the “survivability onion”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivability#/media/File:Surv...

                 Don't be there
     I am here → Don't be seen
                 Don't be acquired
  You are here → Don't be hit
                 Don't be penetrated
                 Don't be killed

One will note that it's called ‘HTTPS’ and not ‘HTTPP’ lol

If you will refer to the “survivability onion”

I am here → Don't be seen

My point is that you aren't. For example under the old HTTP only internet they could see you were visiting HN, who you were and what you published.

Under HTTPS they see you are visting HN.

It's strictly better except in cases of visiting highly popular data which was cached in public caches. These public caches were much less wide spread than you appear to believe (for example in Australia the Internode ISP tried one for a little while but abandoned it because of the problems with it serving info one logged in person to another - cache invalidation was frequently buggy)

One will note that it's called ‘HTTPS’ and not ‘HTTPP’

Not sure who that is aimed at but I didn't write HTTPP, and yours is the only mention of it on this page.

lol

If you are going to lol you had better make sure you are correct about what you are laughing about....

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.

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.

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

What he exposed was found illegal by US courts. And the govt had to stop it. What more evidence do you want?

I don’t understand. He’s absolutely guilty of violating the US government and probably a handful of laws. I will respect him forever for doing that. But I completely agree that any trial he’d participate in is A) not going to be fair, because why would you trust the government on an issue like this, and B) not really necessary, because he didn’t do anything wrong, even if it was illegal.

The only reason to NOT flee is if the government didn’t care about whistleblowers and has amazing protections for them, even in the context of national security. Does it?

Maybe you think what he did was morally wrong. Who fucking cares, what the government was and is hiding is even more morally wrong.

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?

Assange is only free because he was not extradited to the USA, and effectively served ~10 years imprisonment anyway. Manning got a presidential pardon. I wouldn't hold either of these up as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists.

Just like Snowden, Manning would have been treated as a whistleblower if he had only leaked illegal or possibly illegal things the government did. Instead, he dumped a full archive of secret diplomatic cables. That's not as bad as Snowden, who deliberately leaked Chinese targets to China in hopes of getting asylum in Hong Kong.

No one was holding them up "as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists." I was holding them up as history. History will judge Snowden differently because he chose exile and didn't give himself the opportunity for pardons or plea deals like Manning and Assange.

My point was that "both of these people are currently free" isn't the flex it appears to be.

And again, why are we so focused on judging Snowden and not focused on judging the crimes he exposed? I would think that history will judge him very favourably considering that he was completely correct to expose those crimes.

No.

Assange didn't commit a crime, and was still forced by the Brits to confess in order to be released. Snowdens situation is completely different.

His only hope was a much wider view of the legality of the acts he'd taken to be considered, taking into account the legality and constitutionality of what he released information about, and there was and is no chance of that.

Assange didn't commit a crime

Assange literally pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act.

And if we're going to pretend that plea deals are coercion than we better rethink how the whole criminal justice system works.

Yes, that he was forced to do so by the Brits in order to be release is what I referred to, so of course it is coercion.

He is of not American and has no duty to be loyal to the US or to refrain from committing espionage against it.

If we're going to judge Snowden by the standard that he could've rectified his situation through a radical act of self sacrifice, then every US president has had the opportunity to pardon him and has failed to do so. It's an equally sensible proposition. It's plain to see that no US president would entertain the notion. Similarly, it's not reasonable to expect someone to return from exile without being offered some kind of clemency.

No radical act of self sacrifice would have been necessary had he only leaked illegal or possibly illegal programs. Instead, he went to Hong Kong and leaked a list of compromised Chinese networks and systems in hopes of getting asylum from China.

That's a very optimistic view of the US justice system's treatment of whistleblowers (surely they would contend that all of their programs were legal), but now his being granted asylum by Russia isn't evidence but a new incongruous fact we need to explain since the hypothesis is now apparently that he is a Chinese turncoat. So I don't see how this helps the case.

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.)

In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues.[56] During his first American TV interview, in May 2014, Snowden said he had protected himself from Russian leverage by destroying the material he had been holding before landing in Moscow [0]

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.

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.

This is a classic Russian perspective on the war - that Ukraine is a gang of neo-Nazis that are dead set on eliminating Russian speakers from Ukraine by force. Russians will further claim that this gang of Russophobic neo-Nazis is led by Zelenskyy, a Jewish man who speaks Russian as his mother tongue and Ukrainian as a second language.

The absurdity of this claim should be self evident.

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.

it changed absolutely nothing.

The single potentially illegal US government program in the leaks was shut down, the big email providers require SMTP over TLS, and https everywhere happened as a direct result of the leaks.

I'd be incredibly surprised if he isn't very cynical, resentful and hedonistic at this point.

The guy still doesn't understand PRISM. He's a tinfoil hat wearing high school dropout, so I wouldn't be surprised about a lot of things regarding his mental state.

"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.

I think tribalism is inherent in humans, as we our species evolved in a tribal fashion. It is also certain that billions and billions of dollars have been invested by the CIA (and their equivalent in other countries) to perfect propaganda techniques by taking advantage of the tribal instincts (among other things).

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.

Couldn't agree more. The more insular a group is, the more severe the tribalism is. The bifurcation of information sources has certainly added to this. If the people in your tribe all listen to the same networks and sources of information, and all of the people in the other tribe listen to entirely different networks and sources of information, you end up with people that have very little sense of shared reality. Any dissension from tribal dogma very quickly renders someone a heretic or an outcast. This is also what makes tribalism so powerful as a propaganda tool. The dehumanization and "othering" of a person, or a group, or a country renders them intrinsically evil and worthy of attack by the tribe. Which in my opinion is the real danger of so-called AI. We've already seen what happens when people outsource their judgement and critical thinking to media and government institutions. When the masses outsource their judgement and critical thinking to a glorified autocomplete that is programmed with "weights" by those with an agenda, the masses will believe whatever is spit out by this machine and act accordingly.

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.

My browser (FireFox) shows a warning before opening the site. Followed by a blocked message by my DNS provider because the site is malicious. I'll need to do some network changes if I want to see this.