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.
He’s a spy, obviously
He told the truth about the US spying on it’s citizens. I got nothing respect for him.
Guy gave up his life to show Americans (and the world) the truth, and we as a society just ignored him.
We got the GDPR
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.
Definitely.
Yes, at minimum a martyr.
Watching his disclosure real time while everyone around me ignored it was something else
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
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.
This could be a coincidence, but I was randomly eating watermelon talking about how good it was and looked up and then this.
I have zero regerts going to GrapheneOS. Still, I understand wanting to go back to a dumb phone. I miss the old internet.
It was a Pixel feature that they turned into a standalone app.
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.
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.
allying himself with Russia
My brother. Russia was the literal last place to escape to on his list. No other country would grant him asylum due to direct calls from Obama and Biden (mostly Biden).
so if his goal was to inform Americans to the dangers of a surveillance state, why would he discredit himself by allying with Americas oldest enemy?
why go through all of it, just to throw it away on some frail sense of freedom from Russia?
if he was as righteous as y’all believe him to be, he would have came back and made a mockery of the administration.
No. I know he meant well though.
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.
Yes
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.
Ignorance is bliss.
that’s because you can’t see their bank accounts.
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.
I think, without Snowden blowing the whistle, anti-privacy laws would not face such stiff competition.
You think there’s much opposition to laws and decisions that erode privacy? In the US in particular privacy has been eroding at an increasing rate year after year.
That’s exactly what the comment you’re responding to is saying, with the additional observation that there would be even less resistance without the Snowden leaks.
And what I’m saying is that there isn’t any evidence that the Snowden leaks resulted in people caring about their privacy.
Where you fighting that fight because everybody who seems to care is also removing themselves from all social media. They keep saying they’re doing things locally like …
Meeting in coffee shops?
Like weirdly I’ve had this phrase said to me multiple times and it’s so silly. Hold on guys I’m going to release a new movie I spent years making. I refuse to use the space with millions of people cause I don’t like who created it. I’m going to stand around Starbucks and tell people about it. Find me 40 years to build up a cult following
The embodiment of “not all heroes wear capes”. Unless he did or does.
