this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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libertarianism
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I still remember when everything came out and so much FUD was out there calling him a traitor.
I think to this day a large chunk of folks have no idea the breadth of what he told us and what he gave up to do so.
I couldn't do it, i don't think
I remember a lot of it was weird. It's was like he "only" had a high school diploma and his ex-girlfriend was a model. Like the most pointless crap you've heard of. He's a patriot, he saw a lot of bad crap going on. He tried to report it and then he gave up his freedom to let us know. I'm not sure I could do it either.
Yeah, and any programmer knows how much important software is written by people with "only" a highschool diploma
I mean the Zuck dropped out of Harvard. That counts right? I really don't want to argue the importance of Facebook and co tho. Kindly direct your critique to > /dev/null
I still don't understand why he had to leave the country and can never come back,
and where is he anyway? Who is taking care of him? How does he earn money to survive? What is he doing?
Last I heard he's in Russia because everywhere else was going to extradite him, and Russia was stoked to have him in the country as a big FU to the USA.
I thought Russia and the USA stopped animosity with each other after the Cold War was over.
On the surface, but then you see how little actually gets done in the summits that you realize it's all for show. Or there are deals being made behind the scenes that we'll never know about.
There's a very good reason why the US was absolutely jazzed to start sending resources and weapons to Ukraine when Russia started shit. They are not friendly, and never have been.
He immediately got charged under the Espionage Act. If he didn't leave or if he came back he'd be tried, without a jury, and get either life in prison or the death penalty.
Lol no. He got charged and had his passport suspended a month after he left. He was in Hong Kong on May 20th and they charged him/suspended his passport on June 21st. After he'd been in Hong Kong with top secret documents for a month. He had plenty of time to fly to any of several non extradition countries.
Furthermore he would certainly have a jury and the federal government hasn't handed down a death sentence for anything less than murder since the Rosenbergs.
Yeah that'll happen when you go on the run to China and Russia with classified laptops full of shit you downloaded from the top secret Internet.
Had he stayed or simply gone to a non extradition country without the laptops he would be a hero. Hell he'd have been out of prison by now. The longest sentence anyone's ever gotten for whistle blowing in the modern era is 5 years.
Listen. How the fuck it it possible that people understand:
propaganda exists, and
that it is in a government's interest to keep an unpopular project secret from its citizens
and not even think to question the narrative that comes out of the media?
Do you mean to tell me you uncritically believe the notion that there is some way Snowden could have exposed government secrets and the government would be like: "whoa kay, ya got me, its true, and go ahead and listen to what he has to say?"
or do you suppose that maybe the government would still put a bit of FUD out to minimize the damage, keep its citizenry from wanting to look too deeply? I mean, wouldn't that just be a smart decision? We aren't talking about bastions of transparency right? we're talking about the same govt that just got caught wiretapping its citizens.
Rant over, lemme boil down what i'm looking for here:
Which of the many negative things that came out about Snowden do you believe was the truth vs FUD?
What are your feelings on how the media focused on Snowden himself rather than the content of the leaks?
Who do you suppose benefitted from that choice in focus?
That's funny from the crowd that routinely says he'd have been renditioned and tortured when there are multiple cases of actual whistle blowers getting a 3-5 year prison term and being treated completely normally in the system.
Why is he special?
He was in Hong Kong for a month. Why couldn't he fly to a non extradition country in the month before they stopped his passport?
You're right that the story doesn't add up but it's not the governments story.
ok you, into the bin.
Lmao.