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.

It's hard to say he's a hero, but, what he did was undoubtedly heroic.

Guy gave up his life to show Americans (and the world) the truth, and we as a society just ignored him.

He told the truth about the US spying on it's citizens. I got nothing respect for him.

conservatives have a wierd obssesion of him being a"traitor" guess exposing conservative hypocrisy is traitorous.

I think about where we'd be without him, and I think about where we are.

Oddly enough, it's the same place.

I consider him a true American patriot.

Nothing is more patriotic than wanting your country to do better.

Implementing drag net surveillance was a terrible decision, and exposing it was truly heroic.

Sadly, Snowden is now in the clutches of Russia who can and does use him as their pawn.

It is easy to say that this is where the EU should have stepped up and given him sanctuary, but that would have been less than ideal for him.

1. Europe and the US have close ties with police and law enforcement, while no EU nation would hand their own citizens over to the US, they would absolutely hand over a US citizen to the US if requested.
2. During the war on terror, Europe was complicit in plenty of illegal renditions of their own citizens to the CIA, they were then sent to illegal black sites and tortured, plenty of these persons have since been proven innocent.

Given the high profile of Snowden's leak, the US still want's him back, and back then even more so, had Snowden gone to the EU, he most likely would have been extradited, kidnapped or even assassinated.

By staying in Russia that was a far lower risk to him.

Seeing how little we actually did, I often wonder if he regrets coming forward.

Yes. Unequivocally.

Damn right he is. He risked his safety and his life (and still does) to make sure we all know more about how the feds are spying on their own citizens.

He's a true hero of the American People, that one, make no mistake.

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.

I think he is a very sad man. He thought americans cared, he thought if americans knew they were getting fucked over they would do something. He thought american democracy is worth fighting for.

He was wrong.

Yes, at minimum a martyr.

Watching his disclosure real time while everyone around me ignored it was something else

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.

I think he blew up his life to reveal something the general public probably should be aware of, but ultimately didn't care about.

Idk if it was heroic, but it certainly was interesting how he released the info slowly to get catch the government in numerous lies attempting to downplay the truth of the matter. One of the Obama administration's biggest blights.

Yes. You're a bootlicker if you say otherwise

Everybody, who puts morals or ethics in front of their own, personal gain, is by default a hero in today’s context. That’s the only weapon we have against authoritarian regimes, capitalism and oligarchy. A weapon, that can only be used once per capita. But don’t be fooled—we are all.

Yes, 100 percent. The fact that he's in exile in Russia is because he cannot get a fair trial in the US. He was never a Russian asset, he's a whistleblower being unfairly persecuted

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.

Yes, but...

He was a definite hero in releasing what he discovered. He blew the whistle on things that the government was doing that it had no right to do, and that people had a right to know about. He risked his life and freedom to do it, and is paying for that by having to live in exile in Russia.

The "but" is that at times he has speculated on things that he doesn't have any direct knowledge of.

For example, what he revealed in the PRISM leaks is that the US was tapping into submarine cables owned by companies like Google and getting the data that was going between various Google datacenters unencrypted.

That showed up in the PRISM leaks as this slide:

Snowden claimed that Google was cooperating with the NSA, when that slide shows what was really happening. The NSA learned how Google's architecture worked, found a vulnerability, and exploited it without Google's knowledge. Google reacted to the PRISM revelations by putting in a huge effort to encrypt data everywhere, in transit and at rest.

Until then they had thought that the data was safe. The places inside the Google network where the data was unencrypted were protected by significant physical security. They didn't think anybody could get in, at least not get in undetected. But, their threat model didn't include the US government treating them the way they'd treat an enemy country.

Google did "cooperate" with the US government, in that when it received a legal order for someone's data they complied with that legal order. They even set up systems to make that process seamless. Things like the FISA court were a bit of a joke, so it was really easy for the government to come up with a legal order that Google release the data. But, Google still did require that the government go through the motions of getting a court to sign off on the orders. I think that's why they were so surprised that the government didn't think that was enough and had tapped into their backbone traffic.

If you look at what actual full cooperation with the government looks like, look at the revelations of Mark Klein. He was also a heroic whistleblower. What he showed was that AT&T set aside a special room in one of their facilities where AT&T would copy all the Internet traffic hitting their network so that the NSA could sift through it as they wished. There was no need for a diagram of where AT&T added or removed encryption because AT&T was just handing it to them unencrypted.

So, yeah. He is a hero for what he did. But, he was irresponsible for mixing the things he knew for a fact with his own personal speculation on them, because some of his speculations were wrong.

Yes, he’s a hero And he shouldn’t be punished for calling out the he found. Hope he’s having a great day

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.

100% I do. Him and nicholas are the biggest black spot on the obama administration and I hope the things that bring him the most shame. They are part of a small group of heroes of the millenia. Snowden being in russia because he brought to light what the governement was doing is one of the biggest indicators of our dystopia.

There are a lot of comments here saying "it's tragic because no-one cared", but that is misleading as there is now a strong privacy movement.

I think, without Snowden blowing the whistle, anti-privacy laws would not face such stiff competition.

Yes we're all fighting a rearguard retreat, but without Snowden's sacrifice there would be no rearguard and there would be abject surrender rather than retreat, and we'd all live under eastern-style surveillance states without ever knowing.

He could have been, but his actions and words since has made me feel he had ulterior motives from the start.

Finally we had a guy truthfully hollering that the sky was falling and, at the end of the day, no-one gave a shit.

Definitely.

Yes

Yes, and I wish him well. Be careful, if you're thinking of anything.

I always thought he was. I always knew too that he's never going to get a fair trial and that he had to do what was necessary to avoid being extradited.

He did a huge favor for the american masses, who were obliviously unaware as to how much of an extent that they were being spied on and how their privacy was exploited. Anybody who still calls him a traitor to this day, besides the government anyways, are those who truly cannot grasp or refuse the reality this man unveiled to them.

I do see people and people like Luigi as true patriots. They have done things, that no American has the guts to pull off. The American populace, just largely takes the constant raping of their rights by their government and fear them. It should be the other way around.

Yeah, I wish he didn't end up in Russia, but it's understandable.

Nice try, NSA

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

Without reservation, yes.

He's a hero. Doesn't matter that it ended up being largely ignored by the public. He was motivated by doing good and sacrificed himself for it. That's the definition of a hero. A former coworker said "who's Edward Snowden?" when he came up. From that moment on, I judged her a moron, and that turned out to be a correct judgement.

Yep, he is for sure. Probably the reason I care for privacy more now.

What he did was something 99,999999% would be too afraid of.

Permanent Record was the first book I ever read (apart from the ones in school and college), and I loved it. His story does inspire me.

In my eyes, he is!

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.

The embodiment of "not all heroes wear capes". Unless he did or does.

mixed but yes. the govt made an example of him and from the popular standpoint he was serving the people. he also helped GDPR so thats factored in. currently the police state is still winning.

I approve of what he did, but I don't approve of his ideals.

I think what he did was heroic. I don't know for sure that his motives were pure, like I can't see into his soul, or know what his relationship with Russia was before doing it, but all in all I think what he revealed had to be revealed. The NSA were untethered by any sort of oversight or accountability to the public, and they proved beyond any doubt just how completely and totally an agency loses it's fucking mind when no one's watching. I doubt anything changed in that regard - they've probably just strafed into a different shadowy part of the landscape and are continuing with new/improved tools - but it at least taught us all that, yes, the government really is both capable and motivated to spy on every bowel movement and armpit sniff you perform, whether or not you're a suspect in a crime. The mere affirmation that this sort of thing really goes on is worth having.

Yes

Fuck ya he is, the world needs more of him. Doing something for the greater good when greed and selfishness is not your primary motive 95% of the time makes you a hero in my book.

Without a doubt I think he was a hero. We should build a statue to him at the NSA or Dell HQ - maybe both.

Oh yes. It's a shame he didn't have the opportunity to leak the Epstein Files.

Absolutely.

He did good. Would I have preferred he leaked the names and addresses of the people doing domestic surveillance? Sure. But he tried to take it to the press and then got the hell out of there.

The fact he wasn't pardoned also is very stupid. The easiest way to kill Snowden is to pardon him at this point. Its such an easy win win for politicians.

Absolutely. And those who say otherwise are the real criminals who violate our constitution, our countrymen, and our country. They must be destroyed for the traitors they are

Yes. If there ever was one.

Selfless and morally guided actions. He’s the dictionary definition of a hero.

I got in trouble in school for putting free Kevin stuff on my binders, backpack, etc

Hero? From the stance of exposing things that should have been public knowledge, absolutely.

A hero for sure and should get a presidential pardon instead of all the pedos and rapist!

Absolutely. I might not agree with his opinions but leaks were clearly a net good for the humanity and incredibly hard thing to do.

Just stopping by to say hi to the glowies monitoring this thread. 👋

Unreservdly YES.

He is not a villain, he is not a simple human, what else could be

Not a fan of his personal views but he did do a good thing at the very least

Yes.

Anybody notice a stock "Now Playing" app has automatically downloaded on their Android without their knowledge at some point?

Because I definitely want my phone always listening just in case there's a song I don't know that can be identified by an app I'm not even aware of!

God I need a dumb phone.

He did the right thing after having mªde a career doing the wrong thing. He's not a hero by any standard that hasn't been bastardized by american culture. Just a guy wo finally did something non-harmful.

Hero isn't a title for life. His willingness to fuck his own life up to reveal NSA secrets to the world was heroic. Him staying in Russia with everything they've done more recently is decidedly less so.

We want to judge him by absolute categories like morals and convictions. And that's unfair because nobody is that pristinely moral all the time. I get that after his 007-like escape to Hong Kong, he would choose the easier way out now. If that means tacitly approving of Russia's illegal attack on their neighbor then so be it. I think his morals compelled him to release the surveillance secret to the world. And the experience has sufficiently dulled any moral urges. Combine that with a limited list of choices of where else to go. A true superhuman hero would not want to stay where he once sought asylum if that country was itself responsible for hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum elsewhere. As I said, hero isn't a title for life.

I don't know. He reminds me more of Emma Goldman -- an idealist and an anarchist.

If anything the world has become a far harsher place than it was more than a decade ago, what with dictators doubling down in trying to put down dissent, as whatever he divulged didn't seem to stop those monsters, regardless of what flag they wrap around themselves.

'Hero' is a term of social worship for those that enact change.

Do I think he did a moral act that aligned with his principles, motivated by compassion for others? Did he forsee what it would cost him and do it anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do, no matter how hard? Yes, and yes.

But he'd only be a 'hero' if anybody actually cared enough to do anything about it, making him a symbol of social change that people would be grateful for him instigating.

Instead, he falls victim to the same traps as those who self-immolate outside buildings to make their point: a spectacle of sacrifice, exchanged for confused apathy from those he claimed to stand for.

That really sucks. He was trying to make a real difference. He had to flee his home forever, because of the cost of him trying to save it.

I struggle with it. I know he needs an international ally to protect him, but running to Russia and having nothing to say about their bullshit comes across sour to me. I'm thankful, at least, for the information he provided.

He was in 2013. And that's what counts.

Anyone who cared already had a good idea about what the NSA did. Go and read The Cuckoo's Egg, a book published in 1989 goes into what the NSA does. it was public knowledge in 1989 that the NSA was monitoring all phone calls and all internet traffic back in the days of modems.

Nobody cared back then and the NSA continues to do what it does and nobody cares now. Nobody actually cares about privacy and constantly willingly share pretty much all information about themselves that's possible to be to be put onto a computer.

Snowden essentially just revealed that the NSA exists to people that were ignorant of it. But while doing so he revealed other state secrets to adversaries.

When the EU makes laws that require companies to disclose they're tracking you, people are angry at the EU because the cookie popups are annoying. It's very clear people would rather be tracked without knowledge of it than have even a popup on their screen. All of the information these companies collect is bought and sold regularly.

It's trivial for the NSA to just buy all of your purchase history and all of your activities online because all of that is tracked by marketing companies and no one gives a shit. Suddenly you're upset if the government knows what everyone else knows? It's like putting your personal information on a billboard and getting angry if someone that works for the government happens to drive by and see that billboard.

The only thing of significance that Snowden did was share specific state secrets to adversaries. He currently lives in Russia and says whatever Putin demands that he says. He's just a Putin stooge now.

People like the narrative of this guy who blew the lid on something nobody knew before, but anyone who cared to know already knew the NSA monitors communications, it's kinda their whole thing. According to the narrative, the evil governments are after because he revealed the existence of the NSA. The truth is the existence of the NSA wasn't a secret it's just the ignorant didn't know about it. The whole point of the NSA is to monitor communications, and it was widely known the degree to which they did this. The budget of the NSA is something you can see in public records.

Not long after the Snowden story went from the limelight, everyone went back to not caring about the NSA. Nobody actually cares about privacy, they just pretend to be upset about it for a short time before there's some other story to pretend to be upset about.

Basically have ceased using mobile phones since he confirmed our "paranoid" suspicions. Boggles my mind how others can carry on. It's like they've been hypnotised out of understanding their duty to poke big baron in the eye.

No. I know he meant well though.

Yes. But he did screw up by not getting to his final destination before meeting with the reporters.

I would like to see the presidential parden used for him. I think Snowden had honorable intentions but went about releasing the information (to trusted journalists) in the wrong way. I think he should have gone to the OIG, i dont think he did, and after trying that gone to journalists. However, i cant really fault him, its hard to know what to do in the moment. I probably would not have released documents in his place.

I think pretty much everywhere except tge us

hero is a useless word. it's what you call someone to avoid having to do anything concrete to thank them or help them

A hero is a concept and since people are much more than concepts, the question is invalid.

Snowden should have flown to Ecuador first and then released what he knew.

Isn't she a woman now?

He's a criminal.

He was in too deep.. learned something crazy... lacked the sociopathy too keep a secret. Conflicted and flexed on he said fuck it... then became the friend of the bully next door. or he is a phcyop that hides a bigger secret. What if the whole ass world is just one big dragnet and we all are caught inbetween capitalist cartel families and their desires. As time progresses we will all see war as the meat grinder it is and abondon the idea of escape and embrace kinetic rebellion. I don't worship idols. No gods no masters. Yet he is more intersting than me. meh 😐️ Anonymous_Leaker == SBD

What he revealed was worthwhile.

How he did it was fucked.

What he’s done since …. Hasn’t helped his image.

Sure. Pointless hero

He's a spy, obviously

Snowden is a symptom of a larger surveillance problem. the actions he took were neither good nor bad.

allying himself with Russia only helped distract the American public from his actual intentions and allowed The State to discredit him further.

his actions also allowed other organizations like Wikileaks to gain positive attention which ultimately allowed Trump and his corrupt administration a foothold into circumventing American democracy.

in short, he was an unexpected but useful pawn in the journey to destroy the American hegemony which has directly benefited organized fascism.

All the people upsetting the hive mind.

Nope, I think he's probably a Russian asset. IMO if you are willing to break the law because you believe strongly enough it's the right thing to do you should be willing to face the consequences. His message would be a lot stronger coming from a jail cell instead of an enemy state.

Every day he was in jail would drive further public outcry.

No. He's just another dude like anybody else.

He lived a life of serving capitalism, empire, etc. That's how he got into his position. It's admirable and exceptional that he repented but that doesn't make him a hero, especially versus people who have spent their lives doing good all along.

I think this, like most binary thinking commonly done on social media, would be a superficial analysis. Swipe left or right, those are your two choices., and not swiping at all equals swiping wrong. Age of Information my ass.

I'll take my downvotes. No, I don't think he is.

I think if he were, he'd have

• limited his disclosure to the programs he had an actual issue with
• at least attempted the normal whistleblower procedure through OGC
• gathered his data by social engineering staff in specific projects and not anyone he could in his office

Personally, my profile of Snowden is someone who has a large ego and lashed out because he was a small fish in a large NSA pond. The "whistleblower" story was generated by propagandists to encourage copycats by digging through the massive disclosures and finding one or two uncomfortable things to latch on to. Snowden played along because he had to; he was now at the mercy of U.S. adversaries to give him safe harbor.

I think he's a monster, in the classical sense that is.

The Latin monstrum, had a broader meaning, encompassing any kind of warning from he gods (demonstrate has the same root). Rulers then, just as now, weren't very observant of subtle hints, so back then this often took the form of godzilla wrecking shit.

Take the story of Laomedon, the Trojan king. After having some very nice city walls built for him, he neglected the small matter of actually paying his workers. Unfortunately for him said workers happened to be gods, who have slightly more bargaining power than your average worker, with the eventual industrial action including a cetus, a kind of sea monster, sent by Poseidon.

Rather annoyed at having his shit wrecked by a sea monster, Laomedon enlisted Heracles to kill it. Which, of course, being a hero, Heracles did very heroically. Now Laomedon, being a complete fucking moron, failed to learn absolutely anything from this, and decided it was a good idea stiff Heracles out of payment for this task.

In response, Heracles raised an army, besieged Troy, and killed Laomedon and his sons. This bought the matter to a close.

I should. There's just something about him. It's like he loves to hear himself talk. I just can't get past that.

It's like Julian Assange. I know there were serious accusations against Assange (that may have been fabricated) but even before those there was something that kept me from believing he was truly righteous.

Chelsea Manning though is a hero, imo.

He did good and did something heroic but the title of hero should be reserved to actual heroes that never chose once to side with scum. Before turning out as good this guy was serving in the US army

Anonymous == State Actor .... not a hero. They like super man or batman for people who don't understand tech and geopolitics. I am not worried about hackers... I am worried about billionares now trillionares, corpos and the deep state. Couple harassed with live bugs and bloody pig mask settles eBay lawsuit

Almost but not quite. If he would've stayed here and faced the music then it's an unqualified yes, but his fleeing to Russia and hiding out there makes it no cigar to me.

I understand that he still was brave and gave up a lot to expose the information, but I think it may have had more impact, and would've been more heroic had he stayed here.

I could almost see an alternative history where he surrendered and then a whole political movement was born with him as the focal point.

Edit: Downvote all you like but my opinion remains the same.

Hmm... Interesting essay question. I think for the year it happened, yes-ish. Had it been today, it would have been like whatevs, because everyone is giving away their privacy in exchange for some functionally. And so, as I think back on it, it didn't really mattered. I think this could've been debated either way.

Most of us here are more of a hero, because we had the backbone to never actually work for those fascist services to begin with.

I think he was… wrong-ish?

I think he didn’t see the forest through the trees.

He was scared of government abuse of surveillance, as he should be. He was scared of a North Korean style surveillance initially justified by fear of terrorists, basically.

But, IIRC, he didn’t fear corporate abuse enough.

He couldn’t imagine the consolidated attention trap the internet would turn into, but I think the signs were there. I guess he couldn’t imagine that all this would come out and people would choose to trade their privacy for instant convenience instead of fear of terrorists, the justification of the time..

Especially at the scale we do in corporate software today.

In other words, I think he should’ve been more worried about a post-truth corporate state than a censored, oldschool dictatorship, as the former seems to be what the US is barreling towards.

So maybe he was a hero. But, sadly, I think he grazed the mark on what to warn us about.

Kinda

Of course not. He's a criminal. What did leaking that data do to improve the lives of Americans? Now, how much more advanced did our foreign enemies become in attacking our intelligence? He was an extremist that made us more vulnerable to threats based on his own personal value system.