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.
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.
conservatives have a wierd obssesion of him being a"traitor" guess exposing conservative hypocrisy is traitorous.
He told the truth about the US spying on it’s citizens. I got nothing respect for him.
I think about where we’d be without him, and I think about where we are.
Oddly enough, it’s the same place.
Seeing how little we actually did, I often wonder if he regrets coming forward.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
while no EU nation would hand their own citizens over to the US
Europe was complicit in plenty of illegal renditions of their own citizens to the CIA
Make up your mind.
He’s at lower risk from the US, but speaking out about Russia would probably be riskier. It’s an unfortunate situation for him to be stuck in Russia and not some other safe country.
I think the Swiss should have offered him assistance in an embassy or Vietnam or somewhere other than Putin’s Russia (which we knew was bad even back then).
Really though, Obama should have pardoned him.
“The west should have protected him from the west.”
Eh, the EU makes a big deal of freedom, and has stood up to the US in the past, but here there are actual laws and regulations to follow, and if we stop extraditing US citizens to the US, the US would stop extraditing our citizens to us.
Countries in the EU are still occupying Africa. Settler shitheads.
It appears that I am out of the loop on this…
Here’s one example: https://www.pulse.ng/story/7-ways-france-still-controls-its-former-african-colonies-2024072617033075753
Don’t feel bad. Many are out of the loop. The west spends a lot of money ensuring most are clueless to what’s actually going on in the world.
That article made me vigorously expel air from my nose.
What’s the #1 way that France still controls its former African colonies?
“1. These countries must officially speak French”
Did you know England controls the United States? How? England makes the US speak English. I’m super serial! This isn’t a laughing matter, so stop laughing at this matter.
Oh, I had no idea about this…
The colonial tax seems especially evil.
Luckily it seems entirely fabricated like many other claims on that post in Pulse Nigeria’s Food and Travel section
You are answering to someone from a tankie instance, expect their views to be aligned with authoritarian left and take them with many grains of salt. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Hey, thanks for telling me, I know about tankies, as well as the instances they run, though I don’t check every user to see where they come from.
I’ll tag him accordingly.
What exactly have I said that wasn’t true?
That countries in the EU are controlling countries in Africa. What else is there you could’ve said that’s not true?
I don’t generally dwell on the libshits like yourself, some will never learn the art of thinking critically, but I would like to point out that the best way to control the population is to divide it. You’re either a fed or unknowingly lending them a hand.
The irony of calling someone a “lib-shit”, over what is, in the grande scheme of things, a minor quibble, in the literal same sentence they talk about how people are dividing the population intentionally to control them.
Lmfao, you’re the one dividing the population you unselfreflective dipshit. Grow up.
Unironically true. Wish we lived in the timeline where war crimes mattered and those war criminal bastards were rotting in prison. Now because the USA let their own war crimes slide, it’s made autonomous killing systems permissible and civilian casualty rates nearly completely ignored as the horrible precedent of today and on. I hate warfare with a passion
EU states have handed over their own citizens to the US, if these people have hurt us citizens enough. There is a nice episode of the darknet diaries that just came out
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Nothing is more patriotic than wanting your country to do better.
Is being patriotic and wanting your first world country to do better something heroic?
Well that highly depends in what you deem good. If wantig to do better is stopping the support of any goverment that suppresses its people and/or invades other countrys and you put your life in the line for that goal, i think thats very heroic.
Yes. Unequivocally.
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before the transition* or before they transitioned* (not sure which one you meant to write)
And before SHE went to prison, I see no reason to say he other than being a anti-trans shit stain. The timing of the transition doesn’t matter at all, a person who is transsexual should be called the gender they know they are independent on if someone is talking about before their public transition. A person is the gender they feel they are and should be called so for any time in their life unless they have specifically said that they want to be called their biological/sexual gender when others talk about them before their transition.
Transgender is the preferred term fyi.
Was going to write these exact words.
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.
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.
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 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.
That should make everyone sad tbh
Americans look happy.
that’s because you can’t see their bank accounts.
What do you mean? All that information is available in the next data breach
Ignorance is bliss.
Yes, at minimum a martyr.
Watching his disclosure real time while everyone around me ignored it was something else
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.
