I personally do, he actually risked his life to release information about the government spying on people. And there are for sure more advanced ways now. Even your phone is listening.
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- 3 days
What Snowden did was objectively good, and he did so at great personal cost, but you should be cautious about making any living person your hero. His politics seem to lean closer to libertarian nut-job than anything else, and it’s very possible he will disappoint you in the future. Case in point, Glen Greenwald broke the Snowden leaks, and I considered him one of my heros for a time,.but these days he sounds more like Tucker Carlson than anyone else. The point is, admire heroic actions, but don’t make people your heroes.
3 daysHis politics seem to lean closer to libertarian nut-job than anything else
Sure, but you could say the same of Luigi Mangione and that isn’t slowing anyone down.
Case in point, Glen Greenwald broke the Snowden leaks, and I considered him one of my heros for a time,.but these days he sounds more like Tucker Carlson than anyone else.
Glenn was always a libertarian crank. But after he got ousted from The Guardian, his economic needs superseded his politics. I might suggest that if Glenn had ended up on MSNBC rather than the gutter for FOX News washouts, he’d be denouncing Snowden today rather than praising him.
The point is, admire heroic actions, but don’t make people your heroes.
I don’t think you can criticize Snowden because the guy who interviewed him ended up becoming a crank. But I also don’t know of what became of Snowden, outside “he fled to Russia after Hong Kong wouldn’t hide him”.
I might suggest that Snowden was only able to leak what he did because he climbed up the ranks through Booze-Allen to begin with. And there you’ve got an inherent problem with whistleblowers - either coming or going, they must have done something you don’t like.
But I’d say his turn of conscious and his work ethic and professionalism in how the information was aggregated, leaked, and confirmed makes him a role model for anyone else who aspires to turn coat against a fascist regime. Whatever you think of the individuals, you still do need Role Models in order to inform how you might achieve similar results. That means studying other people - studying history at the individualist level - and asking how they did what they did. Ideally, you’re studying people you admire because you want to be more like them. Realistically, you’re going to study people and see their warts. And that might shape what you think about their motivations and whether your own motivations lead you the same way.
- 3 days
Sure, but you could say the same of Luigi Mangione and that isn’t slowing anyone down.
I mean, I would say you shouldn’t make him your hero either. Even if you think what he did was heroic, lone gunman assassins usually don’t turn out to be very stable, well adjusted people. Hell, Ted Kacynski has some good points about post-Industrial life, but that doesn’t mean he should be your hero.
I might suggest that if Glenn had ended up on MSNBC rather than the gutter for FOX News washouts, he’d be denouncing Snowden today rather than praising him.
Very possible, and nearly as disappointing. My point isn’t that he changed or became worse, just that I projected more of my ideals onto him than he actually shared.
I don’t think you can criticize Snowden because the guy who interviewed him ended up becoming a crank.
To be clear, I’m not. I’m saying that he has some views and beliefs that may lead him to disappoint you in the future. He mostly doesn’t comment much on politics outside of the surveillance state, but he has described himself as a libertarian, and said that he believes social security is a scam that needs to die. It seems clear that he is anti-authoritarian, but it’s very possible that, if he ever became more vocal about American politics, you’d learn a lot about him that would disappoint you.
- 3 days
I would say inspiring people. Not that anyone should be held to that standard, mind you; I don’t begrudge Edward for fucking off to Russia. One heroic deed is certainly more than most, and I think the world would be a better place if more people rose to the occasion. But to call him a hero? Idk. I personally wouldn’t.
- 3 days
I’d say a well known example is Greta Thunberg. She’s consistently stood up for good things at the cost of her health and safety, and while (no offense) nothing has been at the level of exposing a global surveillance apparatus, she has consistently engaged with the world, rolling each action into her public persona, only to use that persona to garner even more attention to her next action. I know Snowden clearly performed an extraordinary act at the cost of his own health and safety; truly a heroic action. And again, I mean this as no slight, dude did more than most; dude is well within his rights to go live as he wants. But, while I would say that Snowden has a consistency to his message, I wouldn’t necessarily say he has consistency to his action.
- 3 days
You think him fleeing to Russia is inconsistent? It seems to me that the organizations he’s exposed are the sort of outfits that would murder someone like him, so in order to stay alive I don’t know what other choices he would’ve had.
Agree on Greta btw, but to continue with the same example, I would say that killing a little girl is less likely, because it would create a martyr. And if she were ever in danger I wouldn’t hold it against her if she chose to disappear somewhere. She’s already done more than enough.
My point being, I don’t necessarily see the difference, and I’m a bit confused at the apparent hesitation to label Snowden a hero. Tempted to assume that the smear campaign is working even in these circles.
- 3 days
He’s not. Unless you think taking a job to protect your country is “shitty”
- 3 days
I’m not saying anything. The thread is about Snowden and you said one can do great things and still be a shitty person, so I’m trying to understand what you mean.
conservatives have a wierd obssesion of him being a"traitor" guess exposing conservative hypocrisy is traitorous.
That’s because conservatives think they’re not going to be treated like ‘the plebs’. They think if they’re loyal to the empire, they’ll be exempt from the imperial boomerang when it comes back (it’s here).
- Phantaloons@piefed.zipEnglish4 days
I think about where we’d be without him, and I think about where we are.
Oddly enough, it’s the same place.
- 3 days
It is not his fault. He raised it several times and proposed alternatives, but the flock continued to choose the same butcher.
There was a site a long time ago called behind the truth. There was an article from somewhere else that explained about the nsa backdoor files that are hard code installed on every windows pc. I knew back in 2008 that the nsa was spying on me.
When the Snowden thing came out I yelled BOUT TIME!!!
- Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.caEnglish3 days
He did a good thing. Don’t know enough about the man to pass judgement.
And after all, the guy that killed Hitler (undoubtedly a good thing) was very much an asshole.
His demand to return to the US and give himself in was if he got a public (non military) trial.
The government’s offer under Obama was that the only guarantee they would provide was that he wouldn’t be subject to torture.
Even if he had negligible effect on state level surveillance, the documents he shared provided some insanely valuable perspective into the capability and power of nation states in the cybersecurity space.
Anything the NSA is or was doing can also be applied to other major countries like China or Russia, and the capability + compute power has only grown in size since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_disclosures
EDIT: Also in true American foreign interest memery, the top two most heavily surveilled states are Iran and Pakistan.
The USA has stretched ‘technically not torture’ too far for that to be comforting.
- 4 days
Guy gave up his life to show Americans (and the world) the truth, and we as a society just ignored him.
- baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish4 days
it’s not so much we ignored him as the government ran a huge smear campaign to discredit him
- 4 days
I’m starting to think the world isn’t even worth saving, since this is how the world treats those that want to save it.
Only a few hundred billionaires. You can take a meaningful percentage of revenge if you’re just careful and get all your ideas 9f effectiveness from anime and ubisoft games.
Need to just let Dalamud fall already and embrace the next umbral era.
Man I’m too tired to deal with bahamut again. Can we just skip dalamud and go straight to having the first fall to the light entirely?
- 4 days
He told the truth about the US spying on it’s citizens. I got nothing respect for him.
No he provided evidence. There were people around the globe who knew about the nsa before Edward Snowden and told the truth. There were articles and videos back in 2008 about the nsa backdoor into windows. The only main difference is he, “proved it.” like you know how someone goes, “yeah! well prove it!!!” He did.
- 3 days
There were people around the globe who knew about the nsa before Edward Snowden and told the truth.
There was a whole fucking Will Smith movie about it in the late 90s. With Gene Hackman, and young Jack Black and Seth Green. Enemy of the State.
But yeah that wasn’t proof, either. But it was the closest to people shouting on the rooftops that this kind of thing was, in fact, happening.
Bit of a nuanced take, a trimmed down copy-paste from another comment of mine prior. Tl;Dr: he’s a product of the system that left the system.
Snowden was an individual that worked in the intelligence community in the mid-2000s. In this era, the American populace was so afraid of terrorism they signed away freedoms for national security. In this post 9/11 world, patriotism was a given, almost nationalistically, if you were American. It’s fair to say that a highly nationalistic media and culture can influence the individual to embrace those mentalities more… even if it perverts your true best interest. Snowden likely viewed service to the NSA as patriotic, and in support of his fellow Americans. While he started off supporting it, he soon saw immorality, and decided to resist against them with what I see as an effective measure. I feel that for most whistleblowers, this logic applies. I wanna say “Good job, but still shame on you for taking the job to begin with,” yet this system we’re in can cause us to support things we otherwise wouldn’t like.
Looking to modern issues: The manipulation of individuals, mass surveillance, leveraging of government by powerful. Critisizim of these was always there, but where it was pointed at and pursued sure felt a lot different after Snowden.
- 3 days
I mean I have no idea what this guy’s like, outside of what he’s broadly known for, but I definately approve of what he did in regards of informing the greater public about the level of intrusion they are actively seeking to have into everybody’s life.
He could have been, but his actions and words since has made me feel he had ulterior motives from the start.
Seeing how little we actually did, I often wonder if he regrets coming forward.
I don’t think you remember https before. Snowden’s revelations kicked off LetsEncrypt and the much broader deployment of https.
https://www.standwithsnowden.com/news/lets-encrypt-and-snowden.html
- 3 days
No, his behavior shall be average, not an exception. However we have to fight the repression that target him, like every other one that stand against repression
- 3 days
I still like the fact that he released so many documents that when the newspaper tried to open the file it broke Excel, so he had to come in and fix it.
Side note-How much percentage of the Epstein files released? Maybe he could have helped if he knew.
- 3 days
I mean he did coin/popularise the phrase “Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
I hate this phrase. I mean, it ain’t false, but this argument has the same logic as if I would say: “Saying grass is green is like saying sky is blue”.
This phrase cleaverly relates 2 unrealted things to manipulate the recipient.
- 3 days
The clever part is drawing the parallel between two unrelated things, to draw on the recipient’s emotions about one of them and entice them to compare why they feel differently about the other.
Somewhat manipulative, perhaps, but only in the way that explaining things manipulates someone into understanding.
