Just because they are Chinese means they don't deserve basic human liberties? Just because you live in a different country doesn't mean you lose these rights, they may not be recognized but you are still entitled to them.
Furthermore, there's an extremely large cognitive dissonance here. China owns trillions of US national debt... this is debt that the leaders of our country have given willingly, and gladly pocketed the resulting cash. How is that any less treason than alerting our lenders that their systems have been broken into?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
Chinese, American, British, Pakistani, Russian, French, it doesn't matter. The targeting of innocents by drones is wrong no matter where you are from, why does the right to privacy and property (or happiness, depending on your school of philosophy) not follow that same logic?
Perhaps we should be more concerned that we are continuing to pick petty fights with our fellow man over ideologies, rather than the fact that one man is perceived to have violated our specific ideology. But I guess my idealist is showing.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you can exaggerate your point. China doesn't "own trillions of US national debt" like you suggest. Plus that debt is "given willingly, and gladly" to them because they purchase it. We are after all a capitalist system. If China is willing to pay more for US debt than Japan (who holds somewhere between 80% and 90% of the amount that China holds last time I check), than they should have the right to purchase it. Just because they are Chinese doesn't mean they don't deserve the same basic free market opportunities.
Perhaps we should be more concerned with the issue at hand instead of tangentially mentioning an issue we don't know a whole lot about in the hopes that no one will point out our mistakes.
Let's also not forget why China owns so much U.S. debt. This is the result of many years of amassing U.S. dollars in order to peg the Chinese yuan, in violation of International law. Since spending those dollars on real goods or services would allow their currency to float freely relative to the dollar, they used them to buy treasuries. I would highly recommend watching https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-b... for a good explanation of what is going on.
The point of this currency manipulation was to artificially keep Chinese goods cheap for export. This is why we have a perpetual trade imbalance with China. This has hurt U.S. manufacturers and cost untold numbers of American jobs.
It's silly to think that we owe China any favors for manipulating their currency for their own advantage and our detriment, and bringing it into this debate to try to make China seem like some poor victim is really, really reaching.
According to the US treasury China held 1.265 trillions of dollars of securities [1]. I't not many trillions, but it is quite a large number and if you follow the link, you'll see that it is also the largest holder.
"China owns trillions of US national debt... this is debt that the leaders of our country have given willingly, and gladly pocketed the resulting cash. How is that any less treason than alerting our lenders that their systems have been broken into?"
A passage like this perpetuates the misconception that China owns a dangerous portion of US debt. It is stretching the facts of the case so it better supports your argument. They own 1.25 trillion, which is not "trillions". It is also less than either the Federal Reserve or Social Security trust hold and right around the last numbers I saw for private US holders. The phrasing you use to explain the transaction makes it seem like the US government shouldn't sell this type of debt to China. In your post you are claiming that the Chinese should have the same level of human rights as us but that we shouldn't provide them the same level of economic rights? Finally it is also disingenuous to say that our leaders "gladly pocketed the resulting cash". That implies some sort of embezzlement, which is just furthered by your comparison to treason.
Selling debt is a critical part of the economic equation for almost all world governments (yes, even China). It annoys me when people state that selling debt to China is somehow destroying this country or causing long term damage.
The NSA committing warrantless wiretapping against US citizens at a large scale is a completely different beast from the NSA hacking Chinese computers. Especially given how China more or less publicly hacks away at the rest of the world, it would be very surprising if the opposite wasn't also true.
Also, there exists no human rights against having your computer hacked by a foreign government. It might be illegal in 10 different ways (actually, I don't even think it is, given the relative novelty of the crime and the slowness of international law), but it's not a human rights issue.
Except these are civilian targets in HK. Collecting arbitrary data on US citizens is no different from collecting arbitrary data on HK and Chinese citizens. Innocent people's privacy is still being violated on a large scale.
Of course the Chinese government also hacks US civilian targets, primarily American tech companies, but two wrongs don't make a right.
I meant from a moral/ethical standpoint, not a legal one. Obviously people who are not US citizens or residents have no legal protection under US law.
What I'm saying is that the effect of either action is more or less the same. The NSA is secretly obtaining the personal information of a lot of people who are in no way a threat to the US. Whether those people are American or Chinese doesn't matter one way or the other to me.
So glad the US is engaged in a worldwide effort to spread the good news of democracy! Look at how her leaders behave! What a vast improvement over those other non-democratic nations! </sarcasm>
Isn't there is a difference between whistle-blowing what you believe to be misdeeds by your government against its citizens, and disclosing what are essentially military secrets to foreign governments? I haven't been following the story as closely as many, but it seems that he has crossed into more turbulent waters.
This is generally how most people I know (both liberal and conservative) feel about it.
They were completely behind him when he revealed the NSA was doing a lot of spying. Now that he's basically given our enemies our playbook, they all think he's a traitor and should be treated as such. This crossing into releasing documents also gives credence to some of the conspiracy people saying he was a Chinese plant from the get go.
Someone brought up an interesting point which is the incredible hypocrisy on both isles. Republicans were ok when Bush got nailed with warrant-less wiretaps and the Democrats lost their minds. Now, it's the Republicans losing their minds and the Democrats seem to be ok with it.
Also, just an FYI, the FISA court has been around since 1978, it wasn't until after 9/11 did people finally know about it. It's also important to note they've never rejected a warrant which was brought before the court:
Everything that an espionage/intelligence agency does against foreign governments breaks the foreign laws of that country, it's the entire point of espionage.
Exactly. This is no different from espionage of the past, except it takes place electronically now. If electronic espionage is wrong, where is the outrage against spies and informants?
What specifically is he claiming that the US did against foreign governments, and what law did this activity breach? At this point, all I can gleam is that the US spies on other countries, as do many others.
He has revealed criminal hacking of civilian infrastructure in Hong Kong.
"Snowden said secret and illegal attacks on Hong Kong computers by the US National Security Agency, which he said had been taking place since 2009, had recorded a success rate of more than 75 per cent. One of the targets he identified was the Chinese University of Hong Kong, home to the Hong Kong Internet Exchange - a central hub of servers that most web traffic in the city passes through."
"Political pressure is mounting on the government to demand answers from the United States over how and to what extent Hong Kong has been targeted by Washington's top-secret cyberspying programme, exposed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden."
"During an official visit to London, Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing became one of the city's first top political figures to comment on the hacking allegations.
"Hong Kong people will feel worried if the allegations are found to be backed by facts," Tsang told the BBC's Chinese Service, adding: "The Hong Kong government should launch an investigation."
"What will the government do to ensure it will not happen again? Will it take action against the US government or demand remedies?"
Do you honestly not see a difference between public debt owned by foreign countries (the US sells debt on a market and China/Chinese happen to buy it, the Treasury does not seek out China) and handing over government/military secrets to another government?
Unfortunately discussions about God in the general tech community are virtually impossible. Prov 29:9 talks about this too.
I agree with you that the Chinese deserve the same dignity and respect that Americans and every other person in the world. That Schaeffer series is really dated, a bit corny, and difficult to get past the production values. But the content is still bang on.
I don't need to believe in gods in order to demand that my government treat people as I expect they should be treated. Nobody does, though if some do, that is fine as well. Arguing that there are no unalienable rights because there is no gods is missing the point, unalienable rights are whatever we demand them to be. As sure as any hypothetical god could demand there be unalienable rights, so can we.
This means that we will never all agree on an unalienable set of rights, but so what? With apologies to Sir Charles Napier, let us all act according to our own sense of morality.
The point that the Christian makes is unalienable rights are given by God Himself, and that no human authority can take them away. You and I are valuable because we are made in the image of God.
Without God, all morality and ethics are completely voluntary.
> If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights.
The concept of certain rights being inalienable is a moral proposition that does not require a Creator -- certainly, the existence of a Creator who is also a moral lawgiver and who has defined certain rights as inalienable is a popular explanation for inalienable rights, but its certainly not a necessary condition for such rights.
"If there is no Creator, there are no unalienable rights.
Unfortunately discussions about God in the general tech community are virtually impossible. "
You consider that the creator has to be God. Why?
Imagine that an intelligent, very advanced extraterrestrial form of life created DNA, and life itself in planet earth.
It always amazes me how intelligent people could believe in evolution on earth totally isolated of the trillions of billions of galaxies out there. If you believe in evolution on earth(that just chaos and chance could create life), the probability that life itself was created outside earth is way higher.
Discussions of hard believes(sex, politics and religion) are very hard in any public heterogenous group. I remember when Reddit was occupied by atheist they believed they were free there, but that was only if you were atheist.
Panspermia is an interesting hypothesis (and I would be delighted if we could find traces of life, living or fossilized, on Mars that we could discover shares a common ancestor with us), but I think the reason most people don't generally take it to be a serious hypothesis is because space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...
Panspermia also has a parsimony problem, it ends up falling to Occam's Razor.
In a sense, I think that, in the absence of evidence that particularly demands panspermia over more local theories of the emergence of life, this is a bigger problem than the "space is big" problem.
Well, to be fully accurate, panspermia doesn't even cover the origin or emergence of life anyway. It still had to start somewhere, panspermia just pushes that somewhere off of Earth (and perhaps to Mars, or perhaps off Mars and onto Earth). Panspermia is a distribution thing, and only an "origin" thing if you limit your focus to a particular planet.
So basically even if you go with "aliens made us", you've still got to have abiogenesis for those aliens, or the aliens that created those aliens, or the aliens that created....
Running to panspermia to avoid the hypothesis of life beginning on earth out of natural processes is just silly. Silly because Occams Razor slices it off, and silly because it doesn't even get you away from life being a natural phenomenon.
The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period. [...] "I don't know what specific information they were looking for on these machines, only that using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law. It's ethically dubious," Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday.
So he has no idea what foreign entity the NSA is targeting or why, yet he decides to warn them about it? This is supposed to be ethical, responsible whistleblowing?
I believe that this is reasonably targeted. He does know who owns those computers, and did not include any government computers on the list.
I know that we Americans like to see al qaeda around every corner. But, for instance, when you target a university's system in a non-Muslim country, the odds are much better that you're conducting industrial espionage than that you're targeting al qaeda.
At the least, from a public policy point of view, it shows the hypocrisy of recent articles in the USA complaining about the extent of Chinese hacking into US civilian targets.
He does know who owns those computers, and did not include any government computers on the list.
It's completely possible that these computers (or netblocks) were used as jumping off points for attacks against the U.S. or U.S. companies. We'll probably never know, but there certainly isn't enough information in the article to determine whether or not this was legitimate counterintelligence activity or whether these computers were reasonably targeted.
This looks like Part 2. Part 1 was whistleblowing for the US audience. This is for HK/China, probably intended to help keep him from being extradited to the US for his efforts in Part 1. Interesting strategy. Kinda unexpected imo.
I doubt the loss of sympathy or more serious charges will make a difference in America's efforts to prosecute him. But revealing that the NSA was hacking targets in Hong Kong may make a big difference in Hong Kong's willingness to cooperate with that prosecution.
The US government sees giving government secrets to foreign governments (espionage) in a different light than merely disclosing classified info to the public.
Nationalists don't really care about the rights and freedoms of other people. They are only concerned about the rights and freedoms of their own country.
I saw an interesting quote several years ago, I can't quite remember where but I think it was from a slashdot or usenet signature line. It has bounced around in my head for years, first because its obvious absurdity an non sequitur nature baffled me and offended me to my core... but recently because it has started to make more and more sense.
using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law
I'm OK with whistleblowing of illegal actions performed by secret services (enough of this sh*t!). Though I don't know whether he's right regarding the illegality of NSA's actions.
He isn't. Most everything he has said he isn't right about. I'm calling it now, the internet blew itself out of proportion over a video and 4 power point slides.
This is public knowledge but never spoken about, Snowden was looking for years [0] to find something to leak. He didn't stumble across this and have an overwhelming moral urge to do "the right thing."
I'll take the very unpopular opinion: I have a very strong feeling he is almost completely wrong in what he thinks he knows. [1]
I'll take the very unpopular opinion: I have a very strong feeling he is almost completely wrong in what he thinks he knows.
I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint and I think the entire reporting by The Guardian/Greenwald has been shit. Greenwald does not appear technically competent in the slightest and there's no mention in the reporting I've seen of anyone with any technical knowledge being involved and so we simply have no idea what is in the 'thousands' of documents that Snowden has taken. And neither does Greenwald.
I appreciate that quite a bit. I am very confused by how HN specifically reacted to this story. There are a lot of really smart people here, and most of them seem hell-bent on jumping to conclusions with almost no facts, based on terrible reporting by non-technical people. This place is usually very picky about fact-checking too.
The complete lack of any standard for evidence here, so long as it confirms preconceived notions, has been stupefying. People trotting out his high pay as proof of competence, when in any other context such an argument would be considered so stupid that it's beyond need of retort. His flimsy and dubious claims about being able to expose every secret of the entire intelligence community sound so unbelievable that no competent engineer could accept them. And the slides themselves -- for fuck's sake they say, at a maximum, almost nothing actionable. Do we even know if those were created by the NSA, or by Booz contractors?
A sober, rational look at his claims would have to yield the conclusion that he's confused about what he thinks he knows. He certainly sounds like it.
Or this may be a black op/psyop, with the leaked documents being fake, obsolete or irrelevant. Snowden himself may be a willing operative, or an unknowing patsy.
This is intelligence, where misdirection and outright deception are ways of life. Why should we take anything he--or what anyone involved in this--says at face value?
> Baker says the government built in as many controls and oversights as it could think of. “Two different presidents from two different parties with very different perspectives. Two different Intelligence committees led by two different parties. A dozen judges chosen from among the life-appointed judiciary. None of them thought this was legally problematic,” Baker says. “And one guy says, ‘Yeah, I disagree, so I’m going to blow it up.’ If the insistence is, ‘It only satisfies me if it’s out in public,’ then we’re not talking about intelligence-gathering. We’re not even talking about law enforcement. We’re talking about research. And I’m not sure you can run a large country in a dangerous world just by doing open-source research.”
> Other advocates of the NSA operation say the sheer vastness of the program is what helps shield citizens. “Individuals are protected by the anonymity granted by the quantity of information,” says Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor. “It’s just too difficult to spy on such a vast number of people in a way that’s meaningful.”
I'd put good money that this was a black flag article pushed by the USA.
It seems out of character to go from "I'm not trying to get anyone hurt/in trouble, just showing the public what's wrong." to "Here's some info about China WHAT NOW USA!?"
I don't get the sense Snowden is pro-China, or that his goal is to defect to China. Definitely however, these new classified disclosures raise temperatures across many fronts, including his own boiling pot.
The status of his four computers (whether in his possession, or hidden elsewhere in HK) is significant because China could overrule HK and get its hands on all of Snowden's data if he's arrested.
I personally trust Snowden's actions, and believe his personal motives are ethical, albeit controversial.
From the NYT article: "The data, if independently verified, could help Chinese officials figure out which computers have been hacked, patch security holes, itemize compromised data, analyze the quality of computer security defenses and develop techniques for hardening other Chinese computers against future surveillance by the N.S.A."
So he is offering aid to the Chinese government in the form of top secret US data. I understand the need to have whistle blowers and respect that some things need light shined on them. However, I draw the line at specifically assisting foreign governments who are often hostile to democracy and the West. If the reverse happened and a Chinese security contractor fled to the U.S. with state secrets I would be less worried but I do think that person would be a traitor to China.
I've been listening to the book Spycraft, and if there's one theme that keeps recurring, it's that things never end well for the agent informing against his country.
The handlers often turn the guy over once he's outlived his usefulness to his homeland, or eventually he gets gotten.
Snowden's play here seems to be that he assumes the U.S. is going to lock him up for life or worse, so he's throwing his lot in with China and showing up with, "Hey, here you go! Loads of free stuff!"
But he apparently doesn't know much about the Chinese, or the history of turncoats and how these things usually play out.
Nobody trusts a traitor, not even if he showed up with plentiful offerings. It's like having a gal cheat on her husband with you, then tell you she wants to divorce him and marry you. No chance of her doing the same thing to you now, right?
Isn't that sidestepping the morality of hacking foreign civilian infrastructure? I appreciate that national security is important, but should a nation state be permitted to break into whatever it wants without consequence?
He's going to lose American support with this kind of thing.
This is more or less what the NSA is supposed to be doing, and many Americans are going to openly support these activities. It will make many much more sympathetic to accusations of espionage against Snowden.
Undermines the privacy concerns raised earlier, unfortunately.
It's illegal to break into computers in all civilized countries. The director of the NSA should be extradited to China to face justice for his crimes (after being punished in the US for his crimes here, of course).
This, of course, is no justification however. Criminal acts don't cancel each other out. I punch you, you punching me i return doesn't make my violation any less significant, instead both violations should be considered equal and treated with equal justice.
Why is it okay that US government institution is above the law in this regard? How can people feel okay with governmental institutions breaking the law?
Not in all cases, but criminal acts are capable of cancelling each other out. Self defense is the archetypical example.
I suspect most Americans are comfortable with government operating outside the laws of other countries that are viewed as having an adversarial relationship with the US. Individuals may differ on this, but Snowden's credibility will be lost in the court of public opinion if he starts handing over information to China.
> Not in all cases, but criminal acts are capable of cancelling each other out. Self defense is the archetypical example.
Of course the law states an exception for such cases, and usually includes(at least as far as nordic countries are concerned, which of course has no relation to the law in US, but it's something I am more familiar with) a statement which requires/encourages "least required force" too. So you can't just beat someone up in the name of "self defense".
The public opinion itself, as far as it seems to be, is that whatever is good as long as it's in the interest of US, be it morally justified or not. For example violating the privacy of foreign internet users is all good and somehow justified because "it keeps US citizens safe". Yeah right.
In the U.S. self-defense requires a reasonable belief that one's safety is at risk. Parodoxically, this operates the opposite way that Nordic countries apparently do: here, you are less likely to get in trouble for using extreme force (eg. shooting someone in the head) than trying to use less extreme force (eg. breaking their wrist and disarming them), because the extreme reaction shows that you were under a clear and present danger and had to act quickly, while a more measured response indicates that you had time to think and consider your actions, and if you had time to think you probably had time to do things within the existing legal framework like escape or call the police. (All this, of course, is subject to other circumstances: if you break into someone's house and shoot them in the head, it's significantly different from if they break into your house and you shoot them in the head.)
The interesting thing is that the U.S. system seems to function from within the head of the accused: given the situation as you perceived it, did you believe you had no other options other than deadly force on your attacker? While your description of the Nordic system indicates that it functions from a more dispassionate, third-party observer's perspective.
You're thinking of a different concept I think, i.e. when is it allowable to use deadly force at all.
If you fear for your life or are in danger of serious bodily harm you normally have the right to use deadly force (sometimes you must also have no way to escape, but let's just assume you're clear to use deadly force). Once you're in that situation it's advantageous to actually use that force. You wouldn't try to shoot someone in a hard-to-hit area like their knee or shoulder because as you say, if you had the time or perceived the danger to be low enough to line up for a shot like that, you were probably not in a situation so extreme that would warrant use of deadly force. It would be legally more defensible to go all Mozambique drill on somebody on put two in the chest and one in the head.
However, given that you are in the situation where you must defend yourself, but where deadly force would not be allowed, proportional response is usually still the operative concept.
If someone comes at you with a bat and you manage to disarm them that doesn't give you carte blanche in the U.S. to beat the attacker to within an inch of their life.
And what should happen with the Chinese higher ups who authorized hacking teams to infiltrate the U.S. and other Western targets?
Further, who gets to decide what should happen and why, exactly, that's what should happen?
No country is going to deport the people running its defense programs to countries those defense programs are being run against, unless it's surrendering unconditionally and that's one of the demands it must yield to.
Are yo trying to imply that because the matter is not straightforward, it shouldn't be dealt with?
The whole act of "gathering foreign intelligence" seems very immoral to me. Saying that everybody does it is no justification, neither is saying that it is a requirement for national security, because national security threats, as I see it, in the US, are a consequence of US the invasive and offensive foreign politics and military presence. While I understand that there's an inherent need for national security, I fail to see how that justifies breaching the privacy of foreign/domestic targets if the same issue can be dealt with by changing the stance on foreign nations through foreign and military politics.
Just as it is immoral for me to probe around my neighbours house to see if he has plans to break into mine, it is immoral to breach foreign security measures even if they are digital. Things like this should not be just shrugged at, be the perpetrator US, Chinese, Russian or Middle-Eastern.
Oh you can fuck right off with that. It wasn't illegal to have a linking site in the UK yet that poor bastard was extradited for breaking US law, not having been there. If the US wants to do that kind of shit, then hell yes if they break laws of other countries they should get extradited there to face charges. I'm so sick of American exceptionalism.
I suppose we should extradite people to Iran for breaking Shariah too. This isn't American exceptionalism. Do you think China will extradite their military leaders for hacking US computers? Fat chance. If agents are caught in country breaking the law, they are fair game. That's the risk. Suggesting the US should extradite our leaders to China is armchair idiocy.
It is not ethical either, especially considering that the law itself is the exact same in the US(although NSA seems to be above it, which makes the whole issue even more contrversial IMO). Committing a crime abroad over the internet is no loophole to escape this fact, not even on moral grounds.
Everything a military does when it is in a foreign country (meaning, in a war) breaks the law of those countries as well. Should America ship off the troops it asked to go fight in Country X to face justice for the war America started in Country X?
This is a very immature view of how countries interact with each other.
>It's illegal to break into computers in all civilized countries. The director of the NSA should be extradited to China to face justice for his crimes (after being punished in the US for his crimes here, of course).
What if those computers are breaking into computers in your country? While I wouldn't be surprised if we are involved in things like this more broadly, we have no way of knowing, from the information presented, if this was the result of counter-espionage attempts.
At no point in time did I ever see a concrete effort of the administrative or judicial to protect Snowden and not do anything but seek the harshest punishment against him. In fact, most rhetoric supported the NSA's actions and demanded justice in what they saw as a criminal act.
Perhaps, the court of popular opinion might have swayed the forces that be into thinking different. Looking at other whistleblowers like Manning would only lead a foolish person to believe that likely.
As a result, I firmly believe Snowden used this as his get out of jail card to gain sympathy from Hong Kong residents. The US and its citizens already failed him, why would he place his life in their hands? He very clearly stated he was going to place his life in the hands of Hong Kong and its rule of law, not the US.
I would say it depends what is behind these IP, let's say it is Siemens, or Samsung offices in HK, it would look bad, I assume even in the eye of the American public, and far worse in the rest of the world.
He is a smart kid. He has to position himself as a bargain chip, that`s one reason he picked HK.
You can number the countries in this world who would be powerful enough to withstand US pressure.
Never forget he is only 29 without an escape plan you dont make this kind of journey. If he has to live his remaining life in China/HK he is probably fine with that.
And please step out of your box it does not matter where someone is from.
Now everyone is screaming "traitor traitor" and you all forget what he uncovered and brought to main media attention.
But soon he will be forgotten marked as a traitor and everything will move back to square one.
And secret courts will grant agencies powers nobody knows about :).
Definitely. When you have a life sentence coming your way (like in Manning's case) anything goes. If this is a way for him to protect himself, then it is a decision we should respect, because this is the price to be paid for his other revelations.
Snowden, a US citizen, chose to leak the documents to Guardian and not New York Times, meant to be published while he is in Hong Kong, which is under Chinese rule in the matters of foreign policy.
I'm genuinely trying to understand as to why he didn't trust a single person from his country? With the claims of the access he made, it should have been far easier to find one, without going to a non-US newspaper* and boarding a plane to a nation that is not on exactly the friendliest terms to US.
(* Nothing against Guardian, it's just that the visible pieces of the puzzle do not seem to fit together.)
It is very hard to believe that he had sweeping access levels. For one, NSA has its own chip manufacturing facilities, teams of mathematicians and security experts. Even if we don't know how NSA works, we can deduce from its contributions to open source: selinux, Apache Accumulo. Surely, they are expected to have tighter systems.
Besides, he was an employee of a contractor. Even less reason to provide elevated access to him. So, if he has material in his hands, than his security clearance would allow, then it is way more surprising.
Snowden's statements ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
Edited: grammar.
Update: thanks to zecho and brown9-2 for their comments; Snowden leaked it to an American.
> I'm genuinely trying to understand as to why he didn't trust a single person from his country?
This is untrue. Snowden contacted The Washington Post first, according to their account, but when they did not move as quickly as he would like, he approached The Guardian.
However, the accounts from the Washington Post and The Guardian conflict with one another, so it's possible he worked with both in tandem while trying not to tip his hand to either.
For what it's worth, the Guardian has a growing US contingent and office in NY staffed by many Americans. He leaked it to an American. We should view his leak target as Glenn Greenwald, not "The Guardian" - I think he would have leaked to Greenwalk no matter where he worked.
As much as I'm glad NSA snooping came to light, I'm very uncomfortable with a rogue 20-something singlehandedly deciding issues of national defense. It is not enough simply that something be illegal. IMO, something must be highly unethical and capable of causing severe lasting harm in order to justify turning over classified information. Snowden is not a justice, an elected representative, or someone in general who we want deciding what we should and shouldn't know.
> Snowden is not a justice, an elected representative, or someone in general who we want deciding what we should and shouldn't know
You're going to trust the people in power to make the judgement calls over their own power....? "Hey guys we can blackmail anyone. Let's make sure that the proper checks and balances are placed on that, I hate unlimited knowledge and power."
I certainly don't think every foot soldier should be deciding what needs to be secret or not.
The definition of power is making these decisions. Those in power legitimately deserve some latitude to excercise that power. "Those in power" is now Snowden because he took that power illegitimately. There is a time and a place for that, and some of these leaks may be that. Some of this is definitely borderline.
He's done a heroic thing, and I think he deserves some latitude in defending himself from the unjust prosecution of those he's exposed. They brought it on themselves.
It just goes to show how much is wrong with the current system, that he could have such a serious impact. It shows how fundamentally misguided the foundations of this system are -- the very philosophy on which they act is wrong.
I really don't understand this outrage about the NSA (allegedly I know, but let's be serious) hacking Chinese targets. That's their job. The Chinese, through hacking, have obtained highly classified information about our most advanced weapons systems. They've stolen critical information about the F-35, AEGIS radar, not to mention hacking US companies to steal their intellectual property.
The internet open, free, etc but the world is still defined by borders and national interest. Nations have always needed to collect intel to inform their decision making and they've employed spies to do it. It just so happens the medium that the NSA operates in is the digital one, with their spies sitting in a big black building in Virginia instead of being some James Bond style agent.
Do you have any evidence to back up your first paragraph? Anything that has stood up in a court of law? Or are you just regurgitating talking points you've heard from the mainstream press?
While it's interesting to have confirmation that we are also engaging in cyberwarfare internationally, I think this most recent disclosure is evidence that he is in way over his head. This seems to be a desperate attempt to use this information to win safe haven over there. The problem is that the fact that we hack them and they hack us is not news, and no one is going to risk trade relations with the US in order to provide safe haven to him because he told them something they already knew. Also, he no longer has access to top secret information. Therefore he has zero value to them as an intelligence asset, and his mere presence is an enormous liability.
While I am grateful for what he has done, and he's welcome to hide at my place anytime, the moment a warrant is issued, he is toast. He has overplayed his hand, and unfortunately he is about to feel the wrath of a very vindictive US Government. He will be locked up, likely for the rest of his life.
I will not agree with you that he has overplayed his hand. Obama was just meeting with Chinese leadership not but a week ago with pleas for the government to stop their cyber attacks on US targets. This is exposing that hypocrisy. Additionally he could be an asset to the Chinese government because he likely has MUCH more information than is being made public. However, I think because of his strict ideals to do no harm I think he will be unlikely to cooperate with them on divulging anything that would be of substance to the Chinese government. All that said I think he may still have information he wants to make light of and so, simply because he still does not have access to this information, does not mean he does not having something explosive waiting to be revealed. I think he is a liability to the HK and Chinese governments but they are not easy to kowtow to the US demands simply on the grounds that he has violated laws which HK does not recognize themselves. Grab some popcorn, this will develop much more interestingly than I think you think it will.
I can't quite understand what Snowdon is trying to do here. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems the most likely outcome from this revelation is to alienate his existing supporters in the USA and to possibly seed a cold war with China.
There is already a hot cyber war going on with China, it isn't even really 'classified', I am sure the full extent is classified, but its well known that china's cyber force have been relentlessly attacking US government and commercial assets on a large scale for years. That the US is doing the same thing, while not publicly stated, i would think is a pretty reasonable assumption.
He is literally committing espionage, I am glad the privacy related items came out, and frankly I hope the bulk of what he stockpiled eventually becomes public knowledge.
But he is without doubt releasing US government secrets to a 'friendemy' foreign nation with the express intent of personal benefit. thats spying, text book, thats not whistle blowing.
It's pretty clear this was his plan from the get-go.
Now we know why the U.S. was looking for him so hard. Revealing that the country is tracking its citizens is one thing. Revealing covert cyber espionage secrets to a country the U.S. has a lot of tension with is something else.
It appears the delay in releasing this information was to let him build up a good guy and hero image in the Western press first. "Hero selflessly outs nefarious government plot for the common good!"
Then he goes and tells China about the U.S. infiltrating its systems, so that China will protect him.
So much for the whole hero thing.
The NSA didn't even have to roll out a tar-and-feather campaign. Snowden took care of it all by himself.
So is this his strategy for why he chose hong kong over iceland for the initial leaks, he believes he can get china on his side to offer him protection?
My Pet conspiracy theory is Snowden's is a US operative, and the whole goal of this operation is to get the US populous to accept this whole surveillance state, and to get congress to fully legitimize these surveillance operations...
> get the US populous to accept this whole surveillance state, and to get congress to fully legitimize these surveillance operations...
that does, frankly, seem the most likely outcome of all this, specific orchestrations aside.
no one really has the stomach to roll back the security state, so after a good catharsis, these programs will get legitimized, we'll accept pervasive surveillance as the new normal, and adjust our lives accordingly.
I am not betting on any side of his actual position, even though I would like it to be someone who does it for his principles. In any case, though, what you say is how this thing will play out. Covert operations control a dissenting minority. Control of a majority requires publicity of the operations so that the majority is then self-controlled.
Just speculation, but any thoughts on the possibility of this being coordinated FUD put out there to discredit Snowden (although this would require some degree of USG collaboration with South China Morning Post)?
If this were the case it's already worked reasonably well in muddying the opinion / perception here on HN, and would obviously give significant ammunition to the mainstream media.
I think its a good thing to bring light on this. I hope this will get both sides to draw up some boundaries for cyber war - at least we might get a relatively peaceful standoff so we can trade with each other.
A standoff is better than all out escalation with increasingly dramatic incursions and dialog where each side loses face, raising political tensions.
We should realize the beneficiaries of cyberwar escalation are the contractor companies coupled tightly to the NSA. I don't think that many hackers are getting rich, comfortable maybe, but not the big bucks.
I have to say, it would renew my faith in the competency of government if this was all some elaborate scheme to get an agent close to other countries to plant targeted, specific misinformation, and Snowden is actually some super-spy.
Alas, there are easier ways to accomplish that, an operation this big would never remain secret, and acting in the open like this has to have a hundred other downsides.
Sounds like Snowden is warning the NSA that there are far more secrets that could be revealed, potentially very damaging to the US. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn of a dead man's switch.
It's one way to make sure the US doesn't insist too much for the right to extradite.
Just because they are Chinese means they don't deserve basic human liberties? Just because you live in a different country doesn't mean you lose these rights, they may not be recognized but you are still entitled to them.
Furthermore, there's an extremely large cognitive dissonance here. China owns trillions of US national debt... this is debt that the leaders of our country have given willingly, and gladly pocketed the resulting cash. How is that any less treason than alerting our lenders that their systems have been broken into?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
Chinese, American, British, Pakistani, Russian, French, it doesn't matter. The targeting of innocents by drones is wrong no matter where you are from, why does the right to privacy and property (or happiness, depending on your school of philosophy) not follow that same logic?
Perhaps we should be more concerned that we are continuing to pick petty fights with our fellow man over ideologies, rather than the fact that one man is perceived to have violated our specific ideology. But I guess my idealist is showing.
My 2 cents.