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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Right. Kangaroo Court. Setting aside the tiny little facts that A. Manning faced a military tribunal and B. Plead guilty to the charges
This is why I can't take this seriously: The complete lack of facts or context in the area, and the tiny fact that before Manning, did any leaker face more than 30 months in jail?
edited 6th Aug '16 12:40:49 PM by Lightysnake
I'd simply suggest that Snowden could have fled to Equador instead of making pit stops in China and Russia along the way. He managed to get from the US to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to China and China to Russia before being blocked.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt's truly astounding to me people think a flat out criminal who leaked top secret intelligence that might well have compromised operations against terrorists and human traffickers "should" have done something to evade justice and openly cheer him fleeing to a nation like Russia and becoming Putin's little sidekick.
edited 6th Aug '16 12:42:15 PM by Lightysnake
And a quick web search reveals that the DGSE—the French intelligence service—has been caught spying on the US several times, most notable when, during the seventies and eighties they planted a ring of agents inside of American tech companies and transferred stolen information to not only the French government, but to major French corporations.
Again, countries spy on one another. That's how it works. Turnabout is fair play.
My suggestion is that if he was simply interested in not getting caught then what he did makes no sense, there are questionable things about Snowden, but they far from Assange levels of questionable.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranLook, if American agents are committing assassinations on friendly territory, that's one thing. But nothing Snowden leaked suggested that they were. They were collecting information, something that all intelligence agencies do, and which is hardly some massive and unprecedented violation of another country's sovereignty.
When they start pulling stunts like this one
(done when Chile was ostensibly an American ally) then everyone can complain.
I think it's worth nothing that supposedly the opinion of intilligence officials and the Obama administration on Snowden has been softening over the years, at least insofar as admitting that what they were doing was overreaching. There's efforts in the works to convince Obama to pardon him before he leaves office and there may be a non-zero chance of it happening. Snowden has also been giving talks and working with researchers in US universities/companies via telepresence and continuing to advance the cause of digital privacy and hasn't been overly shy to criticize Russian policy.
x5
My personal take is that Snowden the person isn't actually all that important at this stage. In an ideal world I would like to see a trial at some point, but I don't have a strong opinion on what the verdict should actually be. And if Obama sees fit to pardon Snowden, then I'll be willing to accept Obama's judgement on the matter.
What matters is that in a government where power ostensibly comes from the people (as is the case in the United States of America), there's a limit to what the government can do in secret and still maintain . Or in other words, the people can't vote, even indirectly, against government policy that they don't know exists.
I believe what the NSA was doing exceeded the limit of what the government should be allowed to do in a country where the power is vested in the people. I very sincerly believe the people had a right to know, at least in very generalized terms, the scale and cost of the governments data collection operations.
Does the fact the information got out there make the country less safe? Probably. But safety isn't everything if you want to live free.
edited 6th Aug '16 1:15:56 PM by Falrinn
Officially, Russia is ambivalent to him and at the time it looked like they were willing to let him stay just for the sake of making the US squirm. Unofficially, given recent events, it's harder to say but I think a lot of the colleagues that currently work with him would be willing to vouch for him. I don't think there's evidence that he's collaborating with Russia in their infowar against us, or at least none that us mere civilians have access to, so anyone saying he is is proclaiming guilt by insinuation.
The Obama administration's insistence on carrying on with the Bush era policies of domestic surveillance and such Patriot Act shenanigans is one of the main black marks (ahem, sorry) against him in my book. If pardons for Snowden and Manning were to come from his desk, they would considerably soften my opinion of him.
edited 6th Aug '16 1:23:58 PM by Elle
People just seem to want Snowden to be pardoned and forget all the ways he actively set back important efforts because....well, apparently you can do this, evade justice for long enough and then everything's cool.
I mean, there's a huge difference between what Bush was doing in 2007 and what the NSA was doing in those documents. They were 'warrantless' wiretaps for a reason and I can think of two actual whistleblowers who exposed those programs. They weren't thrown in small holes, either.
edited 6th Aug '16 1:33:30 PM by Lightysnake
People claiming the Assange rape charges are an excuse to extradite him are forgetting that if the US wanted him extradited, they don't need to go through the Swedes to do it. Not while they have that hilariously one-sided extradition treaty with the UK.
edited 6th Aug '16 1:30:36 PM by Deadbeatloser22
"Yup. That tasted purple."Meanwhile Snowden had the decency to redact names and personal details from his stuff, and publicly called out Wiki Leaks for not doing the same with the DNC leaks.
"Yup. That tasted purple."Snowden's refuge plans: If I'm not mistaken Assange was in contact with him once he went public with the leak. He was apparently advised to seek asylum in Russia from the beginning, and not to get to Ecuador. Which does wonders for the suspicion of Assange having been turned by Russian intelligence.
I've said it before, but while I don't doubt that Snowden means/meant well, he was far too idealistic/optimistic for his own good. But he got off lightly for civilian contractors that got in over their heads.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

edited 6th Aug '16 12:38:40 PM by Cronosonic