He has had “a very comfortable life” that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”
Twenty-nine. Prosperous. Successful. Living in paradise. And willing to risk it all for freedom. Willing to risk it all for an act that (dare I use the term?) is intensely patriotic.
Thank you, Edward Snowden. Thank you a million times over.
Great article at that link, too.
(Tip o’ hat to David T in comments.)
Wow.
That was magnificent. Thank you Claire and you got the perfect title. It’s stupid to quote every sentence I agree with; this is the only one I didn’t like…
“I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”
Neither do I, and it’s still the case that the privacy of instances has nothing to do with the freedom for intellectual exploration and creativity. I am not according value to any situation; I’m just saying that privacy is distinct from one’s intellectual exploration and creativity. IOW there is no relevant correrlation between having privacy and being free to explore intellectually or create.
Or I’ll put it this way—to the degree there is, there shouldn’t be. It should be an unimposable event…the exploring and creating, I mean, without regard to its privacy.
And most importantly of all anyway, the only way to directly have an effect on another, is physically. Duh. I hope this guy continues to do as he chooses and without any coercion, for a long long time.
I could not agree more this man is a national hero. There are too many people with their heads in the ground. The truth needs to get out there! Lucky for us our government bureaucracy is so inept at doing anything. They probably won’t do much with the information but make life hard for political opponents.
Jim, you’re totally off base with this line of thought:
“I’m just saying that privacy is distinct from one’s intellectual exploration and creativity. IOW there is no relevant correrlation between having privacy and being free to explore intellectually or create.”
There’s many correlations, you just come across as willfully blind to them.
I came across some counter thoughts to that the other night, can’t find em at the moment, but here’s a close approximation:
“We don’t want privacy invasions because they harm, not one’s body or one’s property necessarily, but because they harm this “I” or “Be-ing.” If these invasions are allowed generally, they harm interpersonal relations and society as a whole.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/128710.html
“…privacy is an essential personal and social good. … Privacy is more than a rights-based thing. When we speak of a right to privacy, we in fact diminish or mis-characterize the general idea. The term “right to privacy” is a kind of shorthand expression of the need for privacy, but it places privacy needlessly on legal grounds. The origin of privacy is social necessity. Social cooperation and interaction, freely given, depend on it. Speech depends on it. Not being fearful depends on it. Operating as an autonomous person depends on it. No one can operate at all well without feeling that he can take a walk or a drive or say something in privacy, unmonitored by a State agency. To be monitored in all forms of private activities is a form of imprisonment! One may roam, but one is constantly under guard and subject to State intrusions. … Privacy is a necessity. ” …
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/128147.html
Oftentimes, without privacy, creativity is smothered. And that’s a fact. I’m surprised you can’t see it.
And, you’re wrong when you write, “the only way to directly have an effect on another, is physically.” Yeesh, are you kidding me? No way! Consider these examples: a mother’s cold stare is a powerful thing, for some, more powerful than any physical act. Even the very thought of disappointing one’s parents is enough to drive many people to bizarre extremes. Haven’t you lived life and encountered such examples before? A demeaning laugh from a pretty woman is similar. Just the mere possibility of an attractive woman thinking of a person in a way they don’t want has an incredibly powerful effect on behavior. Etc…
Anyway, I just stopped by these comments to say: Next Memorial Day I’ll try to think of The Pantheon, Edward Snowden is on/in it. If it was me, I’d do it too.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/139180.html
He could hardly seem to be more honorably motivated, especially if, as he says, he checked each individual document before deciding to release it. There’s nothing in his history that we know so far that would indicate potential instability, unlike Bradley Manning. He certainly thought this through well, making sure that an American paper (the Washington Post) was not the only one to get the information. It’s telling that he considers Hong Kong, controlled by the communist Chinese, a safer place to be.
Such a soft-spoken man; not an iota of confrontational behavior, not even a leadership personality.
I admire his courage, his commitment to his values. He just destroyed his successful lifestyle in order to live his deeper values.
He faced Goliath without aggressive fortitude, without a rock, and without the training to throw it accurately.
He destroyed his lifestyle in hopes freedom would win in the long run.
Others will follow.
Shel wrote, “It’s telling that he considers Hong Kong, controlled by the communist Chinese, a safer place to be.”
How so?
If you’ve been reading some of the financial guys I have been reading, Hong Kong seems like a Very free place. Minus the gun thing, it seems much free’er than here.
The only ‘telling thing’ is, how bizarre it is that Hong Kong is considered a free’er place than the unitedstate. What’s that say about the unoitedstate?
… Or, upon further reflection, maybe I’m reading what you wrote wrongly Shel and you mean the same thing I wrote?
ok,… break time for me.
I’m not so sure about him.
He has no high school diploma, he’s been in Special Forces, NSA, CIA, and works for Booz Hamilton.
I just wonder…but I’m paranoid that way. 🙂
IAM: I do think we mean about the same thing; perhaps I just put it oddly. It is bizarre that a place controlled by the ChiComs is now freer than the U.S. I can’t think of anybody, although surely there must have been some, who left the U.S. for their own protection except types like Roman Polanski, for example.
With the first TARP act under Bush, as I understand it, Americans who renounce their citizenship will have their assets taxed as if they had been sold. It’s not an Iron Curtain, but it’s a very real restriction for appallingly similar reasons.
Elsewhere, Clair has referenced Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down. Maybe it will provide some insight. I know I need it. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_15/187-2690114-3274810?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the%20moon%20is%20down&sprefix=the+moon+is+dow%2Caps%2C221&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Athe%20moon%20is%20down
WL: He certainly doesn’t seem to have much of a long term plan and staying in an expensive hotel will bankrupt him quickly. Maybe he didn’t believe he could make it to Iceland without getting caught while changing flights. The layers of deception are so deep that it’s so hard to believe anything.
@water lily,
I agree with you. His “pedigree” makes me wonder. He is quite possibly the disgruntled, freedom loving employee he makes himself out to be. On the other hand…
Once the news hit, placing him in Hong Kong, I think he was probably in another time zone.
The thing that I do feel puts this individual into that “hero” status is his comment toward the end. So you have just made the enemy list of the world’s greatest super power and its most secretive agency and he says “the GREATEST FEAR THAT I HAVE regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is THAT NOTHING WILL CHANGE”. His concern is genuine for America, not himself. His fear is for the country’s outcome, not himself. That is not the mark of a traitor but a true patriot. He got the ball moving but it is up to us to try and change things, or live with the results if we do not.
They’re spying on us. So what? I’ve got nothing to hide. Except maybe that I’m not a tyrannical facist and don’t support politicians who are. Oh damned! I do have something to hide! The fascists might use the IRS against me! I’ve got nothing to hide there either but an audit could be very expensive.
So what to do about the spying? What are they looking for? As I understand it, the spy computers search for key words in phone conversations, text messages and e-mails. What happens when a predator is over fed? They become fat bloated, lazy and live short lives.
So what would happen if people all over used those key words regularly? What if those key words became part of the youth cultural slang? They’re already spending billions to store all the data they’ve collected.
I do have to wonder how the dude ended up making $200K/yr without figuring out long ago what his employers do for a living.
“I’m not so sure about him.”
OK, I’ll drop my vow to avoid pissing matches. Listen up, you unbelievers. Many men believe in the constitution and what it stands for and decided to devote their life to protecting it. You can criticize them for wrong thinking, but your suspicions are based on him sacrificing all for a long time because you assume he did it for the state and not the country. And when he was finally set for life he decided to do the right think, giving it all up. And he will end up imprisoned, just like Daniel Ellesberg. As an aside, it’s men like him who have opened up military combat jobs to women. Our present overlord and his minions have become all to aware that they do not have the support of the military and particularly SOC. That’s whast scares me, they feel they are going to need it. They are trying very hard to change the leadership and culture of the military. The Obamanation is all too aware that Men like Snowden are in the majority.
If this story is what it appears to be, then I’d even consider the H-word. For all the reasons everyone has mentioned here.
It annoys me, though, that there is a niggling somewhere that it’s all just a little too perfect. This is as made-to-order for freedomistas as Sandy Hook was for the Disarm Victims Now! crowd. And given the characters involved, I have to at least pause.
It annoys me because I don’t want to be that cynical. Good news is freakin’ hard to come by these days, and I know that there are people out there who are willing to do what Snowden seems to have done here. The last thing I want to do is shortchange someone who seems to have done everything right.
Actually–sigh–that’s not quite true. In a sane world, that would be precisely right. But as Marsellus Wallace said in Pulp Fiction, we’re “pretty f@ckin’ far from okay”, and in reality, the very last thing I’d want to do is to jump on a bandwagon that winds up being a poison pill, spoiling the hard work of everyone who came before it.
And please understand, that would not even require Snowden to be a false friend. He could do everything right, for all the right reasons, and still wind up being a tool.
That is: if Snowden is the real deal, as genuine as he appears to be, the nearly perfect embodiment of the conscientious monkeywrencher we all want to see more of, appearing at a critical moment of convergence of scandal and flagging public faith in the protection racket’s value-to-cost ratio…
“But sir, we could have him blackbagged before any of it gets out…”
“I said stand down. Let him do it. Let him be seen doing it.”
Would anyone be surprised at a big news week sometime really soon? One that illustrates with crystal clarity the unintended consequence of exposing the regime?
I really want Snowden to be exactly who he appears to be–enough so that it makes me pause. And at a time when I could sure as hell use any sort of good news, I hate that.
(And just to be clear: if he is the real deal, then I’ll use the H-word no matter what the professional crisis exploitationists may do.)
lelnet, I guess you didn’t read the article. About halfway through he describes how, roughly 5 years ago while with the CIA in Switzerland, he first started getting disgusted and considered exposing government secrets, but decided not to because most of what he had was about people, not systems. Clearly, he has no desire to harm people.
“I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest,” he said. “There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn’t turn over, because harming people isn’t my goal. Transparency is.”
I just saw that some organization in Iceland is working on getting him asylum there. I hope that works out.
I agree: Hero.
IAM, I love privacy. That’s never been my point, as you might understand if you listened as much as you talked. I’d also love it if freedomistas could flap their arms and fly to the moon; maybe it would be a nice spot for us. But I won’t debate that either, at least not here.
As far as your wild belief that one person can literally move another without physical engagement…well, looking at the bright side of it, you should be happy in the knowledge that I believe it requires it. And since I would only use force against another person in a wholly defensive pursuit, that gives you a modicum of safety, at least from me. This, no matter what you have to say or what you believe.
Forgive my bluntness, but what you believe is of no interest to me whatsoever, at least in the context of Claire’s blog.
The questioning has begun in earnest, from a site and an author that typically are on the side of individual freedom. http://www.aim.org/aim-column/nsa-whistleblower-an-enemy-agent/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=701b15b65e-email061013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4ddfc8d9d-701b15b65e-221579729
It seems it will take a while for the dust to settle, if ever, on this one.
The NSA file leak is especially interesting to me because I worked in information technology (IT) for 30+ years. Yesterday I replayed Glenn Greenwald’s interview with Edward Snowden several times. I read and re-read the interview transcripts. Mr. Snowden appears authentic to me.
His salary seemed high until I remembered that ten years ago, my contacts included government contractors earning income in that range.
It’s a huge myth that all IT jobs require a college degree. Many of my co-workers and supervisors never attended college. I knew men in corner offices who acquired a GED in the military after dropping out of high school and women who began their careers as keypunch operators. Another professional contact was home schooled before his first IT job at a major insurance company.
I plan to celebrate Edward Snowden’s amazing accomplishments and support him in his struggles with the empire. Based on the information I have at this moment, I see no reason to disparage his efforts.
Mari, let’s also not forget that he had a very severe education in at least two agencies which could not have been duplicated in any college in the World. In fact many IT people have been schooled (like medical professionals) in specifically not going to certain places. However, working for the state in some areas requires the kind of people who have never had stupid rigidity imposed on their brains.
“However, working for the state in some areas requires the kind of people who have never had stupid rigidity imposed on their brains.”
Ha, great point! I wonder what’ll happen if they can’t find any of those people, for those areas. Hope springs eternal.
Hey, we’ve already long seen it at the Federal Reserve.
@ENthePeasant Says: As an aside, it’s men like him who have opened up military combat jobs to women.
Which is a terrible thing to do to the military.
Jim Klein wrote, “… I love privacy.”
You don’t come across that way.
Also, it’s nice to see you address the links and approaches I presented rather than just using snide remarks. … Oh, wait.
Not interested in discussing ideas? I see. Ok. Whatever. That’ll certainly help to convince others and open their minds. Good job! I’d even call it, anti-heroic.
Believe me, I truly want to believe it about Snowden, I’m just skeptical and tend to consider the first stories that come out to be disinformation.
But if it is all true, indeed, the man has great courage and I wish him well.
So sorry, I forgot to add the link that was supposed to go with my comment above:
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/nsa-leaker-are-there-serious-cracks-in-ed-snowdens-story/
They are listening to us. Nobody likes it. It is true that the information they collect is mostly mundane and trivial but it goes against our principles.A lot of people are upset about it and rightfully so. Don’t worry this information collection can be used to our advantage.
If we all boycotted our ISP’s and Cellphone service providers it would have a major impact on them. Simply disrupting the normal activities of an organization can be effective means of protest. Flooding offices with paperwork, information requests, filling out forms incompletely so that they must be reviewed and filled out again can all help to slow down a bureaucracy. Almost every database is worth gumming up with disinformation.Entering false data,creating organizations or people that don’t exist, submitting incomplete data, are all good tactics for rendering a data base less than useful for it’s intended purposes.It takes time and resources to analyze that much information.The more disinformsation that is put into the data base the less reliable it becomes and over time it becommes useless.
from the Wiki,good place to start-“Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.
Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions. A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).
Another technique of concealing facts, or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control. When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with many easily disproved false claims.”
Then there is this-“Black propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass or misrepresent the enemy.[1] Black propaganda contrasts with grey propaganda, the source of which is not identified, and white propaganda, in which the real source is declared and usually more accurate information is given, albeit slanted, distorted and omissive. Black propaganda is covert in nature in that its aims, identity, significance, and sources are hidden.”
I will end this with a quote from one of my favorite patriots, Samuel Adams.He was one of the minds behind the Boston Tea Party and one hell of a brewer. ” It doesn’t take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men” Food for thought.
By way of WRSA, here’s an article that might be interesting and/or enjoyable for some…
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
In the case of Mr. Snowden, would it be in the realm of possibility that he is a defector/traitor that the Chinese government (or other) has decided to use as a tool to embarass the U.S. govt and cause some levels of grief and discomfort for Obama?
I buy what Snowden says, in part because he is much like other people I have known (although none of them went so far out on a limb as he).
Hell, I even personally installed a computer in CIA’s HQ in Langley, years ago. It bothered me so much I went back and told my boss I would never do another bit of work for the bastards. Fortunately he had no problem with that.
All this conspiracy theorizing about him is silly. No, he’s not a Chinese spy, sheesh.
[It’s a huge myth that all IT jobs require a college degree.]
Indeed. I was a computer hardware engineer without a degree in engineering. My boss, co-founder of the company and engineering manager, was a high school drop-out. The top software engineer had his degree in history.
I tend to be a little more in Jim’s camp on the value of privacy:
http://strike-the-root.com/privacy-conundrum
http://strike-the-root.com/cispa-should-we-care
I think the point of the attack on privacy is to make us fear. Let’s stop responding like Pavlov’s dogs, folks. As long as you have your battle rifles and the will to use them when the time for that comes, that’s what matters.
You guys come across as if you think liberty is in a vacuum or something.
“… Roger Williams, the Puritan founder of Rhode Island, was America’s first revolutionary. He created the American soul by inextricably linking individual liberty with freedom of belief. In the 1640s, Williams argued passionately for “soul liberty” – that is, an individual’s conscience should be free from outside interference and control. ” …”:
http://www.safehaven.com/article/30127/the-soul-rape-of-bradley-manning
That is, free from outside interference and control from goberment and fascist elements. A.k.a. privacy. Something that’s as old as the hills. That you don’t understand that notion,… is disturbing.
Paul Bonneau makes this bizarre statement at STR, brackets are mine: “Rozeff [a Panarchist] is still wanting to live and survive within a framework of society controlled and run by government thuggery”
Then Paul Bonneau turns around and says, “There is no panarchist utopia; humans ain’t got it in ‘em. There will always be “backsliding,” and particular polities will have to maintain a credible defensive posture. It’s something to shoot for, though. … If I may be permitted, Yay, panarchy!”
I don’t know, but so far, Jim Davies makes a bit of sense when he says in the comments, “…your actions are perfectly consistent with those of an agent provocateur.”
http://strike-the-root.com/privacy-conundrum
I just lost a lot of respect for STR. Poof!
One last thing I noticed:
“… There have been NSA whistle-blowers before of far greater credibility, only the establishment wasn’t yet ready to give them any air time.” …
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2013/06/11/trumpet-blower-snowden-plagiarizes-whistle-blower-binney/
Rabbit holes everywhere. Spin spin spin.
“I just lost a lot of respect for STR. Poof!”
Congratulations on now understanding the distinction between lack of respect and thuggery. Keep up the progress and the world will be yours.
[I don’t know, but so far, Jim Davies makes a bit of sense when he says in the comments, “…your actions are perfectly consistent with those of an agent provocateur.”]
As I told Jim, who started this campaign of innuendo, “It used to be that you could tell the government provocateur by looking for the guy who wants to blow things up. Now you can also tell by finding the guy who makes the first accusation someone else is a provocateur.” I never had much use for Davies, who tells libertarians to help end the state faster by signing up for every government bennie and welfare program they can. Yeah, that’ll work…
Rob at STR solved our dispute by getting us to agree never to comment on the other’s material. Suits me fine.
As to provocateurs, I wrote an article about that too:
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle524-20090621-06.html
You wrote an article about rats? Hmm, that interesting.
Also, the social security, medicare and welfare burden seem to be doing a pretty good job at helping to end the state faster, so I don’t see your point, Paul.
Seems to me it’s all along the same lines as that Russian in the Gulag guy, what’s his name, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, maybe you should check him out? Because, yeah, that worked.
“Provocateurs” are they the same as rats?