Traitor? Patriot?

[BigBoxaJunk]

Dang, I read the thread title and thought we were talking about Aaron Hernandez.

 

[jbombelli]

Embarassing our government by exposing the shady things they do should never be considered a crime.

 

[MisterChester]

If you watch the interview, he talks about programs that are VERY scary to think about. It is absolutely insane they have the capabilities to do such things. They are very unconstitutional IMO.

 

[gravitas73]

People who call him a traitor obviously don't give a damn about their rights, the Constitution, or the men and women who died throughout our history fighting to protect it.

Not one person has been harmed by any Snowden leaks, and if you "government can do no wrong" fanboys actually cared to know the facts about what information he took, and the criteria in which he allowed Greenwald and Poitras to release it, you would understand why.

He tried several times to go within the chain of command to bring things to light and challenge the policy from within but got nowhere. His final act of telling about it to journalists so an angry public could demand debate and reform was his only choice as a patriot that believed in the Constitution.

There is a difference between Patriotism and Nationalism.

One is a virtue. The other is a sickness that makes you as blind and one dimensional as the terrorists these programs supposedly fight.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

I'll come down on the "traitor" end of the spectrum on this issue. Here's why: There are a number of former NSA employees who've turned "whistleblower" on this same subject. They reported their issues using the proper channels and took their lumps. Eric Snowden, whatever his motives may have been initially, has used his possession of knowledge of our foreign and domestic spying as currency to gain himself distance from the consequences of his method of whistleblowing.

With Obama in the White House and Hillary Clinton/John Kerry at State, we've already had five years of foreign policy disaster, and we're building up more years of foreign policy weaknesses for the future. Snowden's exposure of foreign intelligence collection secrets has put us further into a hole that was already deep to begin with. Yes, his flashy method publicly exposed domestic spying, but it also made him vulnerable to having to trade his knowledge of our foreign operations for his freedom. That makes him a traitor in my book, and completely negates any admiration I might have had for him exposing the domestic side.

 

[poptab]

Not a traitor. No treason.

The whole Revolution turned upon, asserted, and, in theory, established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted, not as a right peculiar to themselves, or to that time, or as applicable only to the government then existing; but as a universal right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
George the Third called our ancestors traitors for what they did at that time. But they were not traitors in fact, whatever he or his laws may have called them. They were not traitors in fact, because they betrayed nobody, and broke faith with nobody. They were his equals, owing him no allegiance, obedience, nor any other duty, except such as they owed to mankind at large. Their political relations with him had been purely voluntary. They had never pledged their faith to him that they would continue these relations any longer than it should please them to do so; and therefore they broke no faith in parting with him. They simply exercised their natural right of saying to him, and to the English people, that they were under no obligation to continue their political connexion with them, and that, for reasons of their own, they chose to dissolve it.

 

[Trigger Time]

Not a traitor

 

[rambone]

I love the "just use the proper channels" responses.

Mr. Snowden should have just told his boss that spying on Americans was bad. That should have cleared the problem right up.

Maybe he could have put a note in the office suggestion box.

 

[jsgolfman]

Pick up a copy of this and then come back and state your opinion:
Amazon.com: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State eBook: Glenn Greenwald: Kindle Store

 

[jamil]

I'm glad that we know what we know now. But I'm also concerned that some countries that hate us know more than what we know now. So I'm in the neither traitor nor hero camp.

None of above. Former US spy who was about to be either gotten rid of or outed by his own people and he did the ole F you.
There are official channels to go through to be a whistleblower (patriot). He is intelligent enough to know this and made enough money to get the best lawyers.Also youd have to be one of us at one point in time to be a traitor.
Him going to China and Russia with laptops and flash drives say a lot about this guy.

Yeah, yeah. Official chanels. Yeah. Sure.

So to what depth did YOU know what the NSA was doing after those other whistleblowers came out? Yeah, not all that much. Probably because the "official channels" are pretty much the same people who want to keep spying on us.

 

[Hotdoger]

Yea I am going to complain to the head gangsters about their gangsters being gangsters!

LOL

 

[CathyInBlue]

Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers himself, was roughly where Snowden is now, and he says that there's no way for him to receive a fair trial under the Espionage Act.

Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden would not get a fair trial ? and Kerry is wrong | Comment is free | theguardian.com

I call Snowden a patriot par excellence.

As for his use of Hong Kong (not mainland China) and Russia, HK was a convenient, non-extratidory location for him to meet with his media contacts from his location in Hawaii, and Russia was never a destination. Snowden was heading to Central or South America (I forget precisely where) and Russia is just where he was when the federal government acted to cancel his passport, thus stranding him in Russia. If the feds have a problem with Snowden being in Russia, they have no one to blame but themselves.

 

[Fletch]

 

[rhino]

I think that continuing to use official channels to expose the actual crimes would have resulted in either a whole lot of nothing or some mysterious accidents.

Whether or not he exposed too much is debatable, but it's kind of silly to believe that Snowden could have had any significant success within the system.

 

[findingZzero]

I'm of both minds about this. Exposing what he did was necessary, as no one responsible for these programs did. They even lied about it. The precedent this sets though is not healthy. Imagine one person, unelected, deciding above Congress and the president what's right or wrong for the country. That would be chaos. Snowden did something valuable and I applaud his courage. He should pay a steep price though for his actions. The hero steps up to the gallows and becomes martyr. The nation of laws/rules is preserved and chastened. The rest of us become wary of taking the nation's fate in our singular hands. Cruel, but fair.

p.s. from the subject line I thought this was going to be about Bergdahl. In which case his story seems to, at least superficially, resemble the plot from 'Homeland.'

 

[rob63]

Thank you to the op for posting this, I had not seen the interview before. He came across as a very impressive young man, not at all like what I was expecting hm to be like. I am now looking forward to the next big secret that is going to be revealed as mentioned at the end of the story. I didn't know there was more to come!

It basically boils down to who do you believe? The government claims he revealed secrets that were damaging to the nation. He claims otherwise. I don't know how honest he is, but I know darn well how honest the government is.

 

[jamil]

He took millions of documents. I'm not sure there could ever not be more to come in my lifetime.

 

[rhino]

If he took millions, think how many have been destroyed since then?

Think how many have been destroyed at IRS and VA?

Hopefully some industrious blackmailers have saved copies for emergencies.

 

[jamil]

If he took millions, think how many have been destroyed since then?

Think how many have been destroyed at IRS and VA?

Hopefully some industrious blackmailers have saved copies for emergencies.

I wonder if they use their own shredders or if they contract that out?

 

[rhino]

I wonder if they use their own shredders or if they contract that out?

They probably used the standard issue Sandy Berger Model Shredderator 5000.