If you're responding to this part of my response, please don't quote me out of context. This response contains a complete idea, and is particularly susceptible to looking at only parts of it, but that would be argumentatively lazy on your part, and I won't respond to anyone who does this.
"The ends justify the means" is a perfectly legitimate argument, by itself: we should be choosing our actions based on the results we expect from those actions.
The problem with "The ends justify the means" is that it is almost never correctly applied; people rarely look at the complete ends of the action they are trying to justify.
An example of this is eugenics: if you kill people with genetic disorders, yes, the ends are that you have fewer genetic disorders. However, that's only part of the ends: the complete ends includes a huge amount of suffering, death, and grief. The ends can only justify the means if the ends are desirable, and in the case of eugenics the ends aren't desirable, they're horrific.
In the case of Snowden, the complete ends are a public that's much more aware of our government spying on us, and so far I've come across no compelling evidence of any significant downside. So looking at the complete ends, I don't see much problem with saying that the ends did justify the means in this case.
Note that this is a valid ethical argument, but it's not a legal argument at all. Of course, "the ends cannot justify the means" isn't a legal argument, either, so there's really not a legal discussion occurring here.
> 2. He fabricated auth keys to gain access to confidential material he didn't have access to.
Given the entire problem Snowden was trying to address was that access restrictions were being improperly used to hide information from the American people, this is exactly the point of why he did what he did.
> 3. He shared the information so-gained as soon as he could.
a) This isn't true, he took steps to make sure that it was released by reputable, trustworthy journalists. b) I'm unsure how this makes him a traitor.
> 4. He shared it with geopolitical foes of the United States.
a) This is a necessary side effect of sharing with the American public, and I'll point out that you're very much treating the American public as a geopolitical foe if you don't acknowledge that fact. b) Any serious threat to the US is sophisticated enough to get around surveillance with simple, freely-available tools. Pervasive surveillance mostly affects the innocent.
> 5. Many reasonable people recognize Wikileaks' objectives are well-aligned with Russia's and feel strongly they are collaborators.
ALL reasonable people recognize that Snowden did not leak to Wikileaks. This isn't even an honest point, and you should be ashamed that you repeated it.
> 6. My knowledge is limited here, but does Snowden claim he used any of the actual, legal whistleblower processes before escaping to Julian Assange? My understanding is that he did not.
What on earth are you talking about? Snowden did not "escap[e] to Julian Assange". This is just a lie.
There were a number of people who tried to point out some of the same problems as Snowden through proper channels[1]. The results of this were that they were silenced, without producing any change. History shows us that the legal channels are a tool for surveillance organizations to identify whistleblowers and silence them before they can do any good, rather than a legitimate way to identify illegal activity by surveillance organizations.
> and I'll point out that you're very much treating the American public as a geopolitical foe if you don't acknowledge that fact.
This does not follow, as the logical conclusion of your statement is that the American public either has a right to all state secrets, or is a foe of its own country. The value of secrets is in their secrecy, and when that value is lost, harm is done.
> Any serious threat to the US is sophisticated enough to get around surveillance with simple, freely-available tools.
That is a big claim, can you give an example of a serious threat to the US which is possible with simple & freely available tools? It sounds like you know an easy way to defeat the US in information warfare.
> Snowden did not "escap[e] to Julian Assange". This is just a lie.
What I know is that Snowden escaped to China with data he stole in less than 3 months on the job, and less 1 month afterward was on a flight with Wikileaks editor and Assange's closest advisor Sarah Harrison, seeking political asylum in the bastion of political freedom, Russia.
> There were a number of people...
My question was about Snowden's efforts, as the topic is valid reasons why some may consider him a traitor. I'll interpret your response as, like me, you also don't know the answer to my question.
> you should be ashamed that you repeated it... What on earth are you talking about?... This is just a lie.
I find this rather unnecessary. People who disagree with you aren't enemies to be shamed and insulted.
> This does not follow, as the logical conclusion of your statement is that the American public either has a right to all state secrets, or is a foe of its own country. The value of secrets is in their secrecy, and when that value is lost, harm is done.
Could you provide some evidence of harm here?
> That is a big claim, can you give an example of a serious threat to the US which is possible with simple & freely available tools?
No, because that's not the claim I made. The claim I made was "Any serious threat to the US is sophisticated enough to get around surveillance with simple, freely-available tools."
GPG has been around for a long time, and I haven't come across any convincing evidence of a surveillance organization able to decrypt GPG-encrypted messages.
> What I know is that Snowden escaped to China with data he stole in less than 3 months on the job, and less 1 month afterward was on a flight with Wikileaks editor and Assange's closest advisor Sarah Harrison, seeking political asylum in the bastion of political freedom, Russia.
...which is not "Escaping to Julian Assange." What you said above is true, but saying he "Escaped to Julian Assange" is a lie.
> My question was about Snowden's efforts, as the topic is valid reasons why some may consider him a traitor. I'll interpret your response as, like me, you also don't know the answer to my question.
The answer to your question is in the part of my post which you didn't quote, so I'm just going to quote myself:
"There were a number of people who tried to point out some of the same problems as Snowden through proper channels[1]. The results of this were that they were silenced, without producing any change. History shows us that the legal channels are a tool for surveillance organizations to identify whistleblowers and silence them before they can do any good, rather than a legitimate way to identify illegal activity by surveillance organizations."
> I find this rather unnecessary. People who disagree with you aren't enemies to be shamed and insulted.
If all you had done was disagree with me, I wouldn't have called what you said a lie, and you'll note that most of your post where you were just disagreeing with me, I didn't call what you were saying lies. I only call what you said a lie when it is a lie, and it has to be very clearly a lie for me to do that.
Anyone can verify that Snowded did not "escape to Julian Assange." The locations of both people at that time are widely-known public information. So when you said that Snowden escaped to Julian Assange, what you said was not just a disagreement with me, it was unambiguously a lie.
I'm not insulting you. I'll grant you the same respect that I would grant any human being, but that respect does not include treating lies as legitimate points, nor does it include mincing words when you decide to lie to everyone reading your post. If you write something untrue and post it here and I call you out on it, that's not me shaming you, that's you behaving in a shameful way.
You don't get to lie and then accuse me of being impolite when I point out your lie. Politeness includes telling the truth.
I define lost value as harm, in the same way that if a person steals $1 from your pocket as you sleep, your body is unharmed, but you have lost $1 of value, and your trust has been violated, both harmful to you. I'm not privy to the specifics of how this loss has directly impacted the US, but it should go without saying that the loss of value is harmful to the secret holder.
> GPG has been around for a long time
GPG wouldn't have saved anyone from PRISM, though.
> The answer to your question is in the part of my post which you didn't quote, so I'm just going to quote myself: "There were a number of people who tried... the results of this were that they were silenced..."
This does not answer my question, "Did Snowden try any of these official channels?"
Please note: I am not a Snowden detractor. I recognize the multi-faceted nature of his story. My comment states the view against Snowden because I am able to express it, having engaged in good faith with some of his detractors. And I think there are some valid points there.
This, though, I think is not a good faith discussion. You seem to want a whipping boy to argue Snowden's heroism against.
I admit, strictly speaking, Snowden didn't flee directly to Assange, but to his trusted advisors & lawyers. Seems pedantic to me to require that kind of specificity, but perhaps that's what you needed to hear.
I am no liar. A lie requires intent to deceive. Late in my first comment begins an admission of ignorance and a question: "My knowledge is limited here, but..." Your response calls me a liar multiple times, dodges the question twice, literally calls shame onto my post, then shrinks from the charge that you're behaving disrespectfully. Your insults have been received and recognized as such. Have a nice day.
> I define lost value as harm, in the same way that if a person steals $1 from your pocket as you sleep, your body is unharmed, but you have lost $1 of value, and your trust has been violated, both harmful to you. I'm not privy to the specifics of how this loss has directly impacted the US, but it should go without saying that the loss of value is harmful to the secret holder.
Let me be more clear. I don't care if the NSA is harmed while the NSA is committing a crime against the citizens of the United States. I care if the citizens of the United States are harmed.
Obviously the NSA was harmed by Snowden's revelations, but that's not something I care about, nor do I think it's something that anyone else should care about. The entire point of the NSA is to protect US citizens, so if they are harmed while they are harming US citizens, good, they deserve it. They certainly haven't been harmed enough that it could be considered paying for their crimes.
> GPG wouldn't have saved anyone from PRISM, though.
Yes it would have. If someone wanted their communications to be private, and decided to communicate by sending GPG-encrypted messages over OnionIRC, how would PRISM have decrypted those messages?
> This does not answer my question, "Did Snowden try any of these official channels?"
Okay. That's a yes or no question, and the answer is "no"--I thought that was clear from what I posted, but you're right that it wasn't. What I posted is why he didn't try any of these official channels.
> I admit, strictly speaking, Snowden didn't flee directly to Assange, but to his trusted advisors & lawyers. Seems pedantic to me to require that kind of specificity, but perhaps that's what you needed to hear.
I'm not going to accept this backpedal. Saying that he "escaped to Assange" indicates a much stronger association between Assange and Snowden than there is actual evidence for. This isn't being pedantic, it's demanding that what you say be representative of the actual facts.
You continue to speak significantly more conclusively than is evident. So far you've only presented evidence that he took a plane ride with one advisor of Assange's, and no lawyers, and left out the very notable fact that the advisor is also a journalist. It should be utterly unsurprising that journalists who work with the head of a leak organization would also attempt to talk with the source of a major leak--this is pretty weak evidence of any collaboration between Assange and Snowden.
> I am no liar.
I didn't call you a liar. A liar is someone who lies consistently, and you've only lied once that I know of.
> A lie requires intent to deceive.
I don't think that adults need to make the distinction between "You knew this was false and said it anyway" and "You didn't know whether this was true and you said it anyway". You should say things that you know are true.
Your argument is purely semantic anyway. If you really want to argue that you couldn't be arsed to research before you made that claim, then I'd say that isn't better than lying no matter what you call it.
> Late in my first comment begins an admission of ignorance and a question: "My knowledge is limited here, but..."
Please quote yourself in context. You said, "My knowledge is limited here, but does Snowden claim he used any of the actual, legal whistleblower processes before escaping to Julian Assange?" It's clear that what you're admitting ignorance of is whether Snowden followed legal process, not whether he escaped to Julian Assange.
> Your response calls me a liar multiple times, dodges the question twice, literally calls shame onto my post, then shrinks from the charge that you're behaving disrespectfully. Your insults have been received and recognized as such.
I'm not sure which question you're claiming I'm dodging. If you can enlighten me, I'll be happy to answer.
As for the rest of this complaint: if accurately describing your behavior casts you in such a bad light that you consider it an insult, maybe behave better?
If you're responding to this part of my response, please don't quote me out of context. This response contains a complete idea, and is particularly susceptible to looking at only parts of it, but that would be argumentatively lazy on your part, and I won't respond to anyone who does this.
"The ends justify the means" is a perfectly legitimate argument, by itself: we should be choosing our actions based on the results we expect from those actions.
The problem with "The ends justify the means" is that it is almost never correctly applied; people rarely look at the complete ends of the action they are trying to justify.
An example of this is eugenics: if you kill people with genetic disorders, yes, the ends are that you have fewer genetic disorders. However, that's only part of the ends: the complete ends includes a huge amount of suffering, death, and grief. The ends can only justify the means if the ends are desirable, and in the case of eugenics the ends aren't desirable, they're horrific.
In the case of Snowden, the complete ends are a public that's much more aware of our government spying on us, and so far I've come across no compelling evidence of any significant downside. So looking at the complete ends, I don't see much problem with saying that the ends did justify the means in this case.
Note that this is a valid ethical argument, but it's not a legal argument at all. Of course, "the ends cannot justify the means" isn't a legal argument, either, so there's really not a legal discussion occurring here.
> 2. He fabricated auth keys to gain access to confidential material he didn't have access to.
Given the entire problem Snowden was trying to address was that access restrictions were being improperly used to hide information from the American people, this is exactly the point of why he did what he did.
> 3. He shared the information so-gained as soon as he could.
a) This isn't true, he took steps to make sure that it was released by reputable, trustworthy journalists. b) I'm unsure how this makes him a traitor.
> 4. He shared it with geopolitical foes of the United States.
a) This is a necessary side effect of sharing with the American public, and I'll point out that you're very much treating the American public as a geopolitical foe if you don't acknowledge that fact. b) Any serious threat to the US is sophisticated enough to get around surveillance with simple, freely-available tools. Pervasive surveillance mostly affects the innocent.
> 5. Many reasonable people recognize Wikileaks' objectives are well-aligned with Russia's and feel strongly they are collaborators.
ALL reasonable people recognize that Snowden did not leak to Wikileaks. This isn't even an honest point, and you should be ashamed that you repeated it.
> 6. My knowledge is limited here, but does Snowden claim he used any of the actual, legal whistleblower processes before escaping to Julian Assange? My understanding is that he did not.
What on earth are you talking about? Snowden did not "escap[e] to Julian Assange". This is just a lie.
There were a number of people who tried to point out some of the same problems as Snowden through proper channels[1]. The results of this were that they were silenced, without producing any change. History shows us that the legal channels are a tool for surveillance organizations to identify whistleblowers and silence them before they can do any good, rather than a legitimate way to identify illegal activity by surveillance organizations.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-...
EDIT: I accidentally a word.