Edward Snowden TV interview from 2014-01-26

Akka said:
Seems you're the one who can't seem to grasp that whistleblowing is the very OPPOSITE of treason.
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Seems -you- are the one who cannot grasp that I am not saying he betrayed his country due to the whistleblowing, but in fact said that was HUGE and had he stopped there I would be on the Snowden bandwagon cheering him on. But he didn't stop there, now did he? He continued on to foreign governments and told them what we did regarding them and their people as well. Betrayal.

And for the record, I am not saying -treason- which is a specific thing in the Constitution. I am saying he is a traitor who betrayed his country. Those two words, traitor and betrayal, are not hard linked to treason.

You don't want to feel the same? Fine and dandy. I grasp that just fine and you're free to feel how you like about it. I also am free to feel how I like about it, regardless of whether you ever grasp what I am saying or not.
 
bhsup said:
Seems -you- are the one who cannot grasp that I am not saying he betrayed his country due to the whistleblowing, but in fact said that was HUGE and had he stopped there I would be on the Snowden bandwagon cheering him on. But he didn't stop there, now did he? He continued on to foreign governments and told them what we did regarding them and their people as well. Betrayal.
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How is it a betrayal ?

If your brother steal something from someone else, are you a "traitor" to denounce him because he's your family ? Or are you actually doing the right thing ?
Is the responsability of the crime on the one who commit it or the one who speak about it (and yes I would hope that it's a purely academic question, but it seems it doesn't strike everyone as such...) ?

Are crimes only crimes if they affect someone in your family ?
 
peter grimes said:
Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I did get to the 7 minute mark. I found it really important that he decided to go public after seeing the guy in charge of his agency lie to congress under oath.

That, I think, should be a reminder to all people in positions of power: The people that work for you have brains, too. And they know how to use them.

I really wonder how all this would have gone down if Alexander and Clapper hadn't lied to Congress - if they had not tried to reply with "the least untrue answer". I wonder if most of this would still be a secret.
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If he only leaked stuff about the government surveillance, then fine, but the problem is that he released a whole lot more than that and has done a lot of damage as a result.
 
classical_hero said:
If he only leaked stuff about the government surveillance, then fine, but the problem is that he released a whole lot more than that and has done a lot of damage as a result.
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Umm, as far as I know he's only leaked stuff about NSA surveillance programs. Did I miss something?

And what's the damage? I don't know of any concrete 'harm' beyond the fact that people are being made aware of the existence of sneaky or illegal snooping. That's not harm in my book.

Imagine if a car company hid the data that shows their faulty seat belts failed in most crashes. Exposing this data decreases their sales, but I would call the exposure 'harm'.
 
Akka said:
Does not compute.

How is it a betrayal to simply not condone crime ? This makes no sense.
How can it be a betrayal if it's the right thing ? This doesn't make sense either.
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/betray

If a rapist confesses to you and you turn him into the police, that's a betrayal. Right or wrong is irrelevant to whether an act is betrayal.
 
You'd think a country founded by George Washington would have a little more respect for traitors.
 
The one thing that makes revolution legitimate is victory. -Shogun

Well, that plus that whole treaty thing that validated it. ;)
 
Treaties signed by agents of the Hanoverian pretenders hardly count. What's value is a deal between one set of traitors and another?

If you see what I'm getting at. ;)
 
Traitorfish said:
Treaties signed by agents of the Hanoverian pretenders hardly count. What's a deal between one set of traitor and another?
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:lol: Jacobites of the world, UNITE!

Akka said:
How is it a betrayal ?
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If you cannot see (or just don't agree with the idea) that purposely giving classified information to foreign powers as regards your own country's actions towards that foreign country is a betrayal of your own country, we really just don't have any common ground here.
 
bhsup said:
If you cannot see (or just don't agree with the idea) that purposely giving classified information to foreign powers as regards your own country's actions towards that foreign country is a betrayal of your own country, we really just don't have any common ground here.
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The weakest point of this argument. There's nothing special about "classified" information, it's just "information the administration doesn't want the public to know."
 
Sure bro, but enemies are both foreign and domestic. Domestic ones take higher priority.
 
Zelig said:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/betray

If a rapist confesses to you and you turn him into the police, that's a betrayal. Right or wrong is irrelevant to whether an act is betrayal.
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Actually, there is absolutely no betrayal if I turn some criminal to the police just because he's confessed to me. The reasoning itself is downright stupid.
Betrayal is about breaking duty-bound trustiness. I have no duty (nor made promise) to shut up if a criminal comes to me and start to boast about his crimes.

So maybe you consider that Snowden was duty-bound to be trusted with and keep silent about criminal activities, but that's quite a leap. And even if (and that's a big "if") he was technically supposed to know and not talk about criminal activities, is that even an ethically acceptable contract that could legitimate an expectation of keeping silent ?

And yes, betrayal has a strong undertone of ethics, it's all about breaking your duty and your promises. But then, this can only happen IF THE OTHER SIDE DIDN'T BREAK THE TRUST FIRST. If you're sworn secrecy for the good of the nation, but then the actions happening are the ones harming the nation... then your oath actually compels you to speak.
bhsup said:
If you cannot see (or just don't agree with the idea) that purposely giving classified information to foreign powers as regards your own country's actions towards that foreign country is a betrayal of your own country, we really just don't have any common ground here.
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It's betrayal of my country if it's in order to do her harm. If it's the institutions of my country which have betrayed her, then I would be a traitor to keep it silent, not a traitor to expose the rot.

You're confusing being faithful to your country with being blindly and unethically obedient to people above you in your chain of command.
 
I am not confusing anything. You're just purposely ignoring how I've repeatedly said his exposure of the domestic programs were great. He just didn't stop there. He had to go and betray his country after that.
 
Akka said:
Actually, there is absolutely no betrayal if I turn some criminal to the police just because he's confessed to me. The reasoning itself is downright stupid.
Betrayal is about breaking duty-bound trustiness. I have no duty (nor made promise) to shut up if a criminal comes to me and start to boast about his crimes.
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4. to reveal or disclose in violation of confidence: to betray a secret.
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Nope, I don't see anything about about duty.

If someone tells you something with an expectation that you won't tell anyone else, it's a betrayal if you do.

The problem is that people associate "betrayal" with not being a good thing, when it's actually a neutral term.
 
bhsup said:
If you cannot see (or just don't agree with the idea) that purposely giving classified information to foreign powers as regards your own country's actions towards that foreign country is a betrayal of your own country, we really just don't have any common ground here.
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According to Snowden (and no one has yet proven otherwise) he leaked his information to the press ... and not foreign powers. He then let the journalists he trusted with his information to decide what needs to be published to the benefit of the american public. He repeats that point in this interview and refuses several times to answer specific questions concerning the NSA, citing the press not having released anything about these topics.

That is not a betrayal on your country.

But commiting crimes against your people and building a secret cabal with no accountability to law or government ... THAT is a betrayal on your country!


And as an added bonus: Snowden was just one employee of a private company contracted by the NSA. One of hundreds of companies with tens of thousands of employees with access to sensible data and the knowledge about who is interested in that data, many of them less principled or selfless than Snowden.
You already have hundreds of traitors who sold information to foreign governments or private corporations. You just don't know them.

That's what happens if you outsource sensitive government work to companies where the bottom line is God.
 
bhsup, I think I've seen you making this distinction before, but I really don't understand it.

Scenario 1: Snowden releases all his documentation of NSA surveillance of domestic and foreign targets to the New York Times. NYT publishes it.

Scenario 2: Snowden releases all his documentation of NSA surveillance of domestic and foreign targets to Der Speigel. Der Speigel publishes it.

Scenario 3: Snowden releases all his documentation of NSA surveillance of domestic and foreign targets to Reddit. Reddit self implodes in a massive circlejerk.

In your view, which of the above is not traitorous? Or do you think that all of them are?

In my view, as long as the documents are revealed to the public, the is nothing traitorous. If he only talked to foreign governments that would be a different thing. In fact, that would be spying, or espionage, or something... I'm not a lawyer, but a humble carptenter ;)

But he didn't do that. He went straight to an American journalist with a constitutional law background, someone who has specialized in civil liberties and the excesses of the ruling elite. In this day and age it doesn't matter at all that the journalist happens to reside in Brazil and work primarily for a UK publication - in case you were going to bring that up as a caveat.
 
bhsup said:
I am not confusing anything. You're just purposely ignoring how I've repeatedly said his exposure of the domestic programs were great. He just didn't stop there. He had to go and betray his country after that.
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I'm not ignoring anything, I just don't see where your arbitrary and unsupported differenciation about how it's totally fine to denounce crimes directed at US citizen, but it's a betrayal to denounce crimes directed at anyone else.

If anything, it's a credit to Snowden and a strong argument about his integrity - he was disgusted by unethical acts, and despite what you appear to support, ethics doesn't apply only to US citizen.
Zelig said:
Nope, I don't see anything about about duty.

If someone tells you something with an expectation that you won't tell anyone else, it's a betrayal if you do.

The problem is that people associate "betrayal" with not being a good thing, when it's actually a neutral term.
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You're twice wrong.

First, it's not about the guy's expectations I won't tell, as my example amply demonstrated. It's about a much broader and larger set of expectations, and often with quite a lot of layers of the spirit before the letter.

Second, it's absurd to say that "betrayal" is neutral. It's not at all. It's about being untrustworthy and disgraceful. Your semantics interpretations are frankly downright weird.
 
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