6 ms·

Snowden has said many times that he is not the one deciding which documents to publish and when. He gave them all to the reporters, who make all of those decisi

by stith 12y ago

Snowden has said many times that he is not the one deciding which documents to publish and when. He gave them all to the reporters, who make all of those decisions on their own. Replace "Snowden and his small team" with "The reporters who have the documents."

csandreasen 12y ago
... which is a cop-out. He decided which documents to give to the reporters. If they decided to release something that isn't in the public interest or is harmful to national security, nobody can say "well, Snowden wasn't the one who released it." He shouldn't have given them those documents to begin with.
- noiv 12y ago
  > He shouldn't have given them those documents to begin with. Why do you propose Snowdon should have chosen the suicide mission? It it essential to disconnect the leaker from the documents to bring life threatening action down to a minimum.
  - csandreasen 12y ago
    I'm not saying he should have released the documents himself, I'm saying he shouldn't have given anything to the reporters which weren't in the public interest. Whistleblowing is when you see something illegal and you reveal those specific instances of illegal activity. You can debate whether or not what has been revealed has been beneficial or not, but that doesn't change the definition of whistleblowing - it's not taking a job specifically to gain access to classified information you've never seen before with intention to leak it[1], downloading hundreds of thousands of documents, then handing them over to a few reporters and saying "I'm not sure what's appropriate to reveal to the public, so I'll let you decide." If those reporters reveal something that isn't in the public interest or is damaging to national security, it's a cop-out to say that he wasn't the one who revealed it - he gave it to the reporters and he's responsible for anything they choose to report. I see people saying all of the time that there's a huge difference between what Manning and Snowden did. The way I see it, the difference is that Manning gave thousands of documents to Julian Assange hoping that he'd act responsibly with them, whereas Snowden gave hundreds of thousands of documents to Greenwald, Poitras and Gellman hoping that they'd act responsibly with them. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/
    - noiv 12y ago
      > I'm not saying he should have released the documents himself, I'm saying he shouldn't have given anything to the reporters which weren't in the public interest. That's very much a contradiction in this case. Snowdon found a whole corpus of evidence of illegal action. Since you agree he was capable to evaluate what's illegal or not, the next logic step is to reach out for experts in public interests. Who do you think is more qualified than journalists for this job?
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        That's the thing - you can call it controversial, but he hasn't shown anything illegal. He'd have a lot more support if he stopped with the cell phone metadata revelation. Section 215 was controversial to begin with (remember the Section 215 library records fiasco from a few years ago? [1]). It's been debated in Congress at length since the revelation. Everything after that has been showing actual foreign intelligence collection or technical information on the NSA's capabilities, often times shown to the public with a warning that they could be used against ordinary citizens, but no evidence to show that they have. In fact, multiple independent reviews of the NSA's program all mentioned in their reports that they found no evidence of abuse[2][3][4]. If he's going to go up and make the claim that the NSA is spying on all of us, I what to see actual evidence of spying on regular people, not descriptions of how they spy with a warning that it could be used against us. That's like saying "the police have guns - they could use them to kill your children!" Instead of showing small number of revelations limited to actual abuse, he's instead given us this: [5][6]. He doesn't get to say that he has no responsibility for it or try to shift the blame over to the reporters. He dumped a huge trove of documents on them unrelated to abuse. [1] http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusapatriotact http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa... [2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1... (PDF page 78/labelled p. 76) [3] http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program-2.pdf http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Rec... (p. 16/12) [4] http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Section%20702%20Program/PCLOB-Section-702-Report.pdf http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Sec... (p. 7/2) [5] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden-disclosures/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden... [6] http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelations/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelation...

by stith 12y ago

csandreasen 12y ago

... which is a cop-out. He decided which documents to give to the reporters. If they decided to release something that isn't in the public interest or is harmful to national security, nobody can say "well, Snowden wasn't the one who released it." He shouldn't have given them those documents to begin with.

noiv 12y ago
> He shouldn't have given them those documents to begin with. Why do you propose Snowdon should have chosen the suicide mission? It it essential to disconnect the leaker from the documents to bring life threatening action down to a minimum.
- csandreasen 12y ago
  I'm not saying he should have released the documents himself, I'm saying he shouldn't have given anything to the reporters which weren't in the public interest. Whistleblowing is when you see something illegal and you reveal those specific instances of illegal activity. You can debate whether or not what has been revealed has been beneficial or not, but that doesn't change the definition of whistleblowing - it's not taking a job specifically to gain access to classified information you've never seen before with intention to leak it[1], downloading hundreds of thousands of documents, then handing them over to a few reporters and saying "I'm not sure what's appropriate to reveal to the public, so I'll let you decide." If those reporters reveal something that isn't in the public interest or is damaging to national security, it's a cop-out to say that he wasn't the one who revealed it - he gave it to the reporters and he's responsible for anything they choose to report. I see people saying all of the time that there's a huge difference between what Manning and Snowden did. The way I see it, the difference is that Manning gave thousands of documents to Julian Assange hoping that he'd act responsibly with them, whereas Snowden gave hundreds of thousands of documents to Greenwald, Poitras and Gellman hoping that they'd act responsibly with them. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/
  - noiv 12y ago
    > I'm not saying he should have released the documents himself, I'm saying he shouldn't have given anything to the reporters which weren't in the public interest. That's very much a contradiction in this case. Snowdon found a whole corpus of evidence of illegal action. Since you agree he was capable to evaluate what's illegal or not, the next logic step is to reach out for experts in public interests. Who do you think is more qualified than journalists for this job?
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      That's the thing - you can call it controversial, but he hasn't shown anything illegal. He'd have a lot more support if he stopped with the cell phone metadata revelation. Section 215 was controversial to begin with (remember the Section 215 library records fiasco from a few years ago? [1]). It's been debated in Congress at length since the revelation. Everything after that has been showing actual foreign intelligence collection or technical information on the NSA's capabilities, often times shown to the public with a warning that they could be used against ordinary citizens, but no evidence to show that they have. In fact, multiple independent reviews of the NSA's program all mentioned in their reports that they found no evidence of abuse[2][3][4]. If he's going to go up and make the claim that the NSA is spying on all of us, I what to see actual evidence of spying on regular people, not descriptions of how they spy with a warning that it could be used against us. That's like saying "the police have guns - they could use them to kill your children!" Instead of showing small number of revelations limited to actual abuse, he's instead given us this: [5][6]. He doesn't get to say that he has no responsibility for it or try to shift the blame over to the reporters. He dumped a huge trove of documents on them unrelated to abuse. [1] http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusapatriotact http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa... [2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1... (PDF page 78/labelled p. 76) [3] http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program-2.pdf http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Rec... (p. 16/12) [4] http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Section%20702%20Program/PCLOB-Section-702-Report.pdf http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Sec... (p. 7/2) [5] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden-disclosures/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden... [6] http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelations/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelation...