>A plea bargain would require him admitting wrongdoing.
Even if you think he did good overall, he did so some wrong.
Much of what he leaked is unambiguously legal and exactly the sort of thing that the NSA is supposed to be doing.
Clearly legal:PPD-20, spying on China, Tempura/Upstream, Embassy spying, spying on Germany, spying on al Jeezera, various spying methods, etc. etc. etc.
Murky: internet meta data program that ended in 2011, prism, collection of US data on overseas cables
Illegal: telecom metadata, various personal abuses by employees
Snowden wasn't elected to make US policy and he doesn't get to dictate what US policy should be. The bulk of his secrets were directed at policies he disagreed with, not law breaking.
So he did something wrong (exposing 'legal' things) and did the world a favor.
The US has a brandished reputation. Snowden made it worse and could actually prove his cases.
As a German, Snowden is awesome. I wouldn't give a rat's ass about whether you consider it legal to spy on this country. You (the state) suck. We learned this once more, got proof, understand that the US of A is not friendly and cannot be considered socially compatible - the values don't line up.
Yeah - I don't think he should return to the States. I think we should fire a politician or two over here and pay him a pension for life. And _really_ limit our cooperation with that aggressive/invasive country.
What's your point? I didn't write anything about my feelings towards Germany and frankly, patriotism is a crazy/meaningless concept in my world. We can discuss Germany all day and night and I wouldn't run out of things I hate or dislike about it¹, I guess. And at no point would I feel the need to 'defend' the random place I accidentally grew up in.
I can express how disgusted I am about exhibit A and have still enough of that feeling left for B, C and DE.
①: Just like with JS there are The Good Parts as well, of course.
To catch you up on the Snowden leaks the government was collecting a lot more than metadata.
It's also true that Smith v. Maryland is highly controversial. The Third Party Doctrine essentially states that you can't expect technology to provide you technology so long as the technology is bought or served by someone else. Via CALEA and the Stored Information Act, as well as 702 in FISA and a constellation of other legislation (now Freedom Act as well) third parties are forced to keep records on behalf of national security hawks.
In praxis this means that there is no manner by which I can communicate with someone in private anywhere except for in my or their house - and then if I willingly allow a third party product that has a listening device in my house provided by a third party it is the law that I can not expect those conversations to be private either.
Smith v. Maryland was in 1979. The world is a radically different place now that software has eaten the world. It is not a good precedent and akin to citing section 215 the way that NSA did.
Do you think we have seen any serious fallout from these legal leaks? Perhaps Snowden assumed that American operations would be able to recover fully when ethical. I imagine with technological advancements and the back and forth nature of espionage that many of these leaks were not huge blows. In many cases these are plays from a war that the adversary was well aware of already.
PPD-20 is interesting. Do you think we have the right to be aware of the scope of the "cyber war"? Bruce Schneier's conclusion on PPD-20:
"Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties."[1]
Seems reasonable to me to assume Snowden's releasing of PPD-20 was to promote this effort. It's a tricky situation but perhaps his knowledge of America's advantage in that war meant that this was a safe release. I trust his judgement. He clearly has had to weigh the options between acting within a legal system and trying to improve it through illegal political action.
Is there evidence of serious fallout from a Snowden release yet? I'm honestly asking, my knowledge can be hit and miss as I primarily try to stay on top of Canada's involvement.
> Clearly legal:PPD-20, spying on China, Tempura/Upstream, Embassy spying, spying on Germany, spying on al Jeezera, various spying methods, etc. etc. etc.
Tempora is exactly one of the programs that isn't "clearly legal", and is one of the things that most needed to be exposed.
As for spying on our allies and on foreign embassies: are you really so nationalistic that you aren't aware that this isn't legal? Or do you only care about US laws?
As for spying on the press, this is also very important to have exposed and stopped. Freedom of the press is fundamental to government by informed consent, and a press that is constantly under surveillance is not free.
"Illegal" and "wrong" are not in any way related. All spy agencies conduct activities which are clearly illegal under the laws of their target countries. But are these activities always "wrong?" Conversely, spy agencies may conduct activities which are legal under their own laws, but are morally wrong -- harassment of MLK, for example.
And "unambiguously legal" is overselling the point: PPD-20 includes offensive capabilities amounting to acts of war -- which would presumably be illegal absent congressional approval. China surveillance includes illegal surveillance of US nationals and well as mass surveillance, which is arguably inappropriate policy. Tempora is a program conducted by the UK -- arguably illegal as signatory to EU treaty. Spying on Germany is likely to support economic espionage, which would be illegal under WTO treaty, etc. Al Jezeera is a journalist organization, which provides a useful Arab propaganda counterpoint to US propaganda, and is not itself a sponsor or advocate of terrorism. The various spying methods exposed are executive overviews and lack sufficient technical detail for implementation, and are thus appropriate for public policy discussion.
The US state security apparatus is also not elected -- yet it clearly does control policy through overclassification and outright misrepresentation of its activities to congressional oversight.
Were Mr. Snowden's actions illegal? Yes, clearly, but that is a question of no meaningful value in this context, as most NSA activity is illegal somewhere, and some NSA and FBI activity is clearly illegal within the US.
Were these actions wrong? That remains to be seen.
Even if they were wrong, is there a net moral benefit which could excuse the costs? That is a complicated question. Do the fruits of NSA, CIA and FBI espionage achieve their stated goals? Is US foreign policy successful? Does the US reliably achieve its military objectives?
So, rather than yet again repeating the mistakes made over the last 100 years -- with some exceptions, an otherwise disgraceful litany of paranoia and short-sighted pragmatism -- perhaps it is a good time to reexamine politically whether foreign policy as practiced by the US is appropriate and efficacious. The responsibility for this interminable chain of dismal failures must be accepted by the US government and US electorate as a whole. The status quo -- mindless subservience to nationalism, patriotism, and religion along with a generous dose of political amnesia -- is completely unjustified at this point.
This discussion cannot ever fully occur when the mechanisms informing that foreign policy are forever hidden from political debate by a veil of overclassification motivated by criminal activity.
Mr. Snowden has caused that debate to begin -- his stated intent. One could therefore reasonably conclude his actions are moral and justified as well as illegal under US law. US law is therefore the problem, not Mr. Snowden.
Even if you think he did good overall, he did so some wrong.
Much of what he leaked is unambiguously legal and exactly the sort of thing that the NSA is supposed to be doing.
Clearly legal:PPD-20, spying on China, Tempura/Upstream, Embassy spying, spying on Germany, spying on al Jeezera, various spying methods, etc. etc. etc.
Murky: internet meta data program that ended in 2011, prism, collection of US data on overseas cables
Illegal: telecom metadata, various personal abuses by employees
Snowden wasn't elected to make US policy and he doesn't get to dictate what US policy should be. The bulk of his secrets were directed at policies he disagreed with, not law breaking.