Edward Snowden, hero or traitor?

[kenny]

Edward Snowden is the former employee of a US defense contractor.

He revealed the NSA is spying on Americans' phone and internet usage.

 

[athenaworth]

Isn't it speculated that he's selling information to the Chinese? How is he not a traitor?

 

[sonnyjane]

Hmm tough, because I feel like both of those terms are a bit strong. "Hero"? He wasn't exactly jumping on grenades to save others in combat, and he fled the country and is in hiding, so he didn't "heroically" face the music. "Traitor"? I think that's incredibly strong too. I see a traitor as, for example, an Afghani soldier that embeds and trains with US military forces only to turn and kill them during training. He's a whistleblower but considering the people he was reporting would normally be the people you'd report TO, he took it to the media/public instead.

I just saw Athena's post and if he is selling stuff now, I'm not familiar with that part so can't comment.

 

[lulu]

I have already changed my mind about this three times. I'll let you know when I decide.

 

[gemtastic]

I find it interesting that he fled to Hong Kong. More to the story than we will ever be privy to. Nothing is ever as it seems....or as reported by the news.

 

[Circe]

I don't see it as a binary in this case.

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,

I think he is more traitor. It has always been public that some spying has been going on and has been perfectly legal. Several yrs ago Google objected publically, but consented, within certain parameters. What Snowden exposed was how much has been going on and that places like facebook are mined for information as well. They don't give the Gov't carte blanche, but after the Fizer Court issues its orders, they isolate that information into a separate track.

Since Kenny has opened the topic, I'm sure he will say he knew it, as I do. I won't go on facebook for this very reason. If you don't think the information you leave lying around the internet is not being compiled in sort of a dossier about you, you are probably fooling yourself. I don't think Snowden should be shot, but a jail term is in order.

If this is what is necessary to keep the country safe, I do not object, if it is legal. The Fizer court meets in secret and is high security so we don't get to scrutinize it. Its a tough world we live in.


Annette

 

[Kelinas]

traitor.


no need for an explanation, I feel Smit has explain similar thoughts that I have.
I'm just going to say that I feel the same about Bradley Manning.

however, for BM, I would like to see the UCMJ take it o the fullest extent, whether they deem that extent to be the death penalty or life without parole.

 

[AGBF]

The question of whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor is really not of paramount interest to me. What his secrets revealed about the secret activities of the United States government are. I strongly suggest that all literate Americans read, "Where Did Our Inalienable Rights Go?" by Max Frankel, which appeared in today's issue of, "The New York Times". Mr. Frankel argues very convincingly that the government should not have the powers it has taken on to eavesdrop on its citizens. I believe that that unconstitutional eavesdropping, not the character of one individual, should be the focus of our concern and debate as American citizens.

Here are a few short excerpts (italics are mine):

"We have long since surrendered a record of our curiosities and fantasies to Google. We have broadcast our tastes and addictions for the convenience of one-button Amazon shopping. We have published our health and financial histories in exchange for better and faster hospital and bank services. We have bellowed our angers and frustrations for all to overhear while we walk the streets or ride a bus. Privacy is a currency that we all now routinely spend to purchase convenience.

But Google and Amazon do not indict, prosecute and jail the people they track and bug. The issue raised by the National Security Agency’s data vacuuming is how to protect our civil liberty against the anxious pursuit of civic security. Our rights must not be so casually bartered as our Facebook chatter. Remember 'inalienable'?

I envy the commentators who, after a few days of vague discussion, think they have heard enough to strike the balance between liberty and security. Many seem confident that the government is doing nothing more than relieving Verizon and AT&T and Facebook of their storage problems, so that government agents can, on occasion, sift through years of phone and Internet records if they need to find a contact with a suspicious foreigner. Many Americans accept assurances that specific conversations are only rarely exhumed and only if the oddly named Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allows it. Such sifting and warrants — in unexplained combination with more conventional intelligence efforts — are now said, by President Obama and his team, to have prevented several dozen potential terrorist attacks, with elliptical references to threats against New York City’s subways and stock exchange.

Even if true and satisfying, these assurances are now being publicized only because this huge data-gathering effort can no longer be denied. Whatever the motive for the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, they have stimulated a long-overdue public airing. Although the government’s extensive data-hauling activity was partly revealed by diligent reporters and a few disapproving government sources over the last seven years, the undeniable proof came only from Mr. Snowden’s documents. Until then, the very existence of the enterprise was 'top secret' and publicly denied, even in Congressional hearings. Even now, the project remains a secret in every important respect.

As those of us who had to defend the 1971 publication of the secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War have been arguing ever since, there can be no mature discussion of national security policies without the disclosure — authorized or not — of the government’s hoard of secrets.

HOW many thousands have access to these storage bins? Who decides to open any individual file and who then gains access to its content? Is there ever a chance to challenge the necessity of opening a file? And what happens to gleaned information that has no bearing whatsoever on terrorism?

Given the history of misused 'secrets' in Washington, such questions are by no means paranoid. J. Edgar Hoover used F.B.I. investigations and files to smear the reputations of individuals — even to the point of intimidating presidents. Throughout the government, 'security' monitors leaked personnel files to Congressional demagogues like Senator Joseph R. McCarthy to wreck the careers of officials and blacklisted citizens with claims of disloyalty. President Lyndon B. Johnson and other officials used secret files from the Internal Revenue Service to harass and intimidate political opponents. President Richard M. Nixon tried to use the C.I.A. to cover up his Watergate crimes.

Information that is gathered and managed in secret is a potent weapon — and the temptation to use it in political combat or the pursuit of crimes far removed from terrorism can be irresistible."


Deb/AGBF

 

[kenny]

Yes clearly this not about Snowden.

It's about what America is doing; Snowden is just the messenger of some embarrassing news.
Is spying on US citizens okay in order to prevent terrorism?

Some people think yes, others no.

While I like preventing terrorism as much as the next guy, my concern is who may eventually get their hands on all this data and what will they do with it.
It could be the IRS, a 11 year old hacker in a basement, a foreign government, employers, heath insurance companies, political parties, the NRA, some anti-gay group or anti abortion group.

Computer security is not perfect.

 

[mrscushion]

I think this black-and-white question ignores the grey zone and therefore I'm not able to answer.

 

[movie zombie]

with you, Deb.....
and let us not forget that these are spy on American contracts given to corporations.
what is to stop the corporation from using that info to their own advantage?
think about it.......

 

[AGBF]

with you, Deb.....
and let us not forget that these are spy on American contracts given to corporations.
what is to stop the corporation from using that info to their own advantage?
think about it.......

I think you are very astute, MZ. (This is not a new revelation to me, of course. I have thought so for years, even though we do not see eye to eye on every single political issue.)

The author of, "The New York Times" piece alluded to this very issue later in his piece, writing:

"What ought to compound our skepticism is the news that there is money to be made in the mass approach. We are learning that much of the snooping is farmed out to profit-seeking corporations that have great appetites for government contracts, secured through executives who enrich themselves by shuttling between agency jobs and the contractors’ board rooms. We have privatized what should be a most solemn government activity, guaranteeing bloat and also the inevitable and ironic employ of rebellious hackers like Mr. Snowden."

Pay heed to those words: we have privatized what should be a most solemn government activity.

I don't like free-lance hired "soldiers" (i.e. mercenaries) fighting without rules for the United States as "contractors". I don't want free-lance "police" listening to my phone calls with a warrantless wiretap! Enough with contracting out the jobs that should be done by our government and supervised by our government who should be watched over by our people.


Deb/AGBF

 

[partgypsy]

I think it's pretty clear. I am a government employee. When I am being hired as a government employee I need to sign forms agreeing to certain behavior, including that I will keep confidential and secret information that I am using for my job (I work at a medical center). It doesn't matter if he felt he had a "high purpose" for revealing that information. It was wrong for him to do so (as well as illegal).
Once he realized what he was being asked to do, and it conflicted with his ethics or morals he should have either not accepted that job, or resigned.

End of story.

Now we can all have a separate discussion of what lines the government can draw in privacy, which will become a question that will increasingly get complicated as time and technology goes on, but that is a discussion that should have, and already has been taking place before this.

 

[sonnyjane]

I think it's pretty clear. I am a government employee. When I am being hired as a government employee I need to sign forms agreeing to certain behavior, including that I will keep confidential and secret information that I am using for my job (I work at a medical center). It doesn't matter if he felt he had a "high purpose" for revealing that information. It was wrong for him to do so (as well as illegal).
Once he realized what he was being asked to do, and it conflicted with his ethics or morals he should have either not accepted that job, or resigned.

End of story.

.

I have a bit of a question. I'm not criticizing you, just quoting you because your post is the one that inspired the question -

I have worked for the government briefly, and my husband does currently. I most definitely understand that if you disagree with what the job may be asking of you, you can quit, but I do wonder what one is to do in a situation when they feel there have been ethical and legal breaches, but there is no unbiased party to take that information to? Is there no recourse? I'm not saying that what Snowden did was the proper action, but in such a situation, is there anything LEGAL that could have been done in this case to expose the truth?

 

[VRBeauty]

I don't like free-lance hired "soldiers" (i.e. mercenaries) fighting without rules for the United States as "contractors". I don't want free-lance "police" listening to my phone calls with a warrantless wiretap! Enough with contracting out the jobs that should be done by our government and supervised by our government who should be watched over by our people.


Deb/AGBF

Just to be clear, they were not listening to phone calls, they were accessing records as to phone calls that were made. Think of it as they were getting a copy of everyone's phone bill.

 

[VRBeauty]

I think it's pretty clear. I am a government employee. When I am being hired as a government employee I need to sign forms agreeing to certain behavior, including that I will keep confidential and secret information that I am using for my job (I work at a medical center). It doesn't matter if he felt he had a "high purpose" for revealing that information. It was wrong for him to do so (as well as illegal).
Once he realized what he was being asked to do, and it conflicted with his ethics or morals he should have either not accepted that job, or resigned.

End of story.

.

I have a bit of a question. I'm not criticizing you, just quoting you because your post is the one that inspired the question -

I have worked for the government briefly, and my husband does currently. I most definitely understand that if you disagree with what the job may be asking of you, you can quit, but I do wonder what one is to do in a situation when they feel there have been ethical and legal breaches, but there is no unbiased party to take that information to? Is there no recourse? I'm not saying that what Snowden did was the proper action, but in such a situation, is there anything LEGAL that could have been done in this case to expose the truth?

The state I work for has a whistle-blower program, monitored (I think) by the Office of the State Auditor. I believe the federal government has a similar program. In this case, however, the investigation would probably have concluded that the activity Snowden reported - much of it, anyway - had been sanctioned by Congress, and that would have been the end of that.

There's also a fair political practices commission that can look into behavior by individual employees that might involve a conflict of interest or improper gains from a government job, but I think that's a California-specific thing.

California also has a grand jury system that functions largely to investigate the workings of, and possible wrongdoings by, city and county governments.

 

[sonnyjane]

I think it's pretty clear. I am a government employee. When I am being hired as a government employee I need to sign forms agreeing to certain behavior, including that I will keep confidential and secret information that I am using for my job (I work at a medical center). It doesn't matter if he felt he had a "high purpose" for revealing that information. It was wrong for him to do so (as well as illegal).
Once he realized what he was being asked to do, and it conflicted with his ethics or morals he should have either not accepted that job, or resigned.

End of story.

.

I have a bit of a question. I'm not criticizing you, just quoting you because your post is the one that inspired the question -

I have worked for the government briefly, and my husband does currently. I most definitely understand that if you disagree with what the job may be asking of you, you can quit, but I do wonder what one is to do in a situation when they feel there have been ethical and legal breaches, but there is no unbiased party to take that information to? Is there no recourse? I'm not saying that what Snowden did was the proper action, but in such a situation, is there anything LEGAL that could have been done in this case to expose the truth?

The state I work for has a whistle-blower program, monitored (I think) by the Office of the State Auditor. I believe the federal government has a similar program. In this case, however, the investigation would probably have concluded that the activity Snowden reported - much of it, anyway - had been sanctioned by Congress, and that would have been the end of that.

There's also a fair political practices commission that can look into behavior by individual employees that might involve a conflict of interest or improper gains from a government job, but I think that's a California-specific thing.

California also has a grand jury system that functions largely to investigate the workings of, and possible wrongdoings by, city and county governments.

Cool thanks. I know with my job, for example, if I disagree with something and decide to quit, if it was illegal I could still report it to the authorities. I was just curious who you report it to when the "authorities" ARE the authorities.

 

[AGBF]

I have a bit of a question. I'm not criticizing you, just quoting you because your post is the one that inspired the question -

I have worked for the government briefly, and my husband does currently. I most definitely understand that if you disagree with what the job may be asking of you, you can quit, but I do wonder what one is to do in a situation when they feel there have been ethical and legal breaches, but there is no unbiased party to take that information to? Is there no recourse? I'm not saying that what Snowden did was the proper action, but in such a situation, is there anything LEGAL that could have been done in this case to expose the truth?

sonnyjane, you have a right to post about anything you want, and I can understand why, as the wife of a government employee, the issue of how an individual can handle himself when he discovers wrongdoing might matter to you.

I want to reiterate for the sake of the bigger picture, however, that it shouldn't matter whether a government employee had any legal recourse to making classified information public when we find out news about widespread government spying on the citizenry. If it is a crime to leak information, it is a crime. So be it. Let people who break official secrets acts live with the consequences. Let them hire attorneys and hope for the best. Let them turn to the court of public opinion via the news media and try to change the law. If they land in prison, however, they may end up being martyred for their belief in freedom as were many people during the American Revolution. They know the costs when they sign those documents promising to keep secrets.

Our public debate, however, shouldn't be on whether there is a way a theoretically good man can tell the truth if he finds out that there is government hanky panky. Our public debate should be on how we can keep the government from engaging in hanky panky. Let's not hand them all our rights!!! Let's not let them hire people to eavesdrop on us!

Deb/AGBF

 

[kenny]

I think it's pretty clear. I am a government employee. When I am being hired as a government employee I need to sign forms agreeing to certain behavior, including that I will keep confidential and secret information that I am using for my job (I work at a medical center). It doesn't matter if he felt he had a "high purpose" for revealing that information. It was wrong for him to do so (as well as illegal).
Once he realized what he was being asked to do, and it conflicted with his ethics or morals he should have either not accepted that job, or resigned.

End of story.

So if tomorrow morning your employer, the US government, told you to work on something like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment you'd be a good American and keep their dirty secret?

Governments can do bad things, even the American government.
Pointing them out is moral and ethical.
This reminds me of the Catholic church moving molesting priests around and trying to keep victims quiet.
ANYTHING to protect the organization no matter how corrupt it becomes.

I am a deeply patriotic American who served my country for 6 years in the US Navy with an honorable discharge.
I did not serve my country to defend its dark side and sunlight is the best disinfectant, not secrecy.

Snip from Wikipedia:
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment[1] was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.[1]

The Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the study in 1932. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama; 399 who had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201[2] without the disease. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for "bad blood", a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.

The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards; primarily because researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease they were studying. Revelation of study failures by a whistleblower led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies.

 

[partgypsy]

I work in research. I have to do hours of research related ethics courses every year just to continue doing research. I probably know a lot more about the history of development of the various rules, starting with the Nuremberg trial, to the Belmont report, than the average joe.
To answer, yes there are various chains of command to report: business fraud or even waste, ethics concerns, and information security breaches. The way it is designed there are always people independent of one's immediate supervisor to report possible wrong doing. Depending on what the whistle blowing activities are, you may have protected status (they cannot do anything to your job, even change it during the investigation).

Snowden unfortunately would not have that protected status. The government was not doing anything different from what was sanctioned by congress by the Patriot act and subsequent laws.

As someone else mentioned, what was being collected was not content, but like what someone said, what would be found on an itemized phone bill (calls to and from, length of time, etc). I believe they would need separate permissions (akin to a subpoena) to look at the content of any of those messages.

 

[partgypsy]

Kenny, you see this as akin to the Tuskgeegee, which I'm sure you would be relieved to hear, would not happen in this day and age.

What I see it similar to,
A person who works at a beef processing plant who is a vegetarian and is against the slaughter of animals.

Someone who takes a job at a Planned Parenthood, expressedly to try to stop women from getting abortions.

a pharmacist working at a pharmacy and refusing to dispense day after pills, because it conflict with their beliefs.

In all cases, they feel that their beliefs should supersede other's rights.

I am not against their right to express their beliefs, only as it interferes with other's rights.

Although this is intangible, the right for the country to protect it's citizens is a citizen's right.

We live in the US so yes the ways in which our country protects us should be more transparent than other places. Unfortunately, we are also the country with the biggest target on our back too. There will always be people who disagree, on either side of the privacy/security spectrum, what the correct action should be.

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,

Just a few more pieces of information. The mined data that gov'ts request of the social media is not limited to terrorism. It also asks for info on:

1. Missing children

2, Fugitives

3.Terrorism.

Microsoft received 6,000 requests for info. 700+ requests were not legal and were denied.

It appears that these companies are to be burdened with sorting out the legalities of the requests. The companies are releasing how much info the gov't is requesting.


Annette