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tmahfan117 t1_iuj5l3z wrote

That’s the neat part, there wasn’t.

The main outcome was the Snowden got branded as a treasonous traitor and fled the country to avoid arrest and is now living in Russia.

There was some public discourse, but hardly anyone truly cared and there wasn’t much political will to change anything.

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tpb772000 OP t1_iuj5ugc wrote

So nothing changed. And they are still doing this?

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tmahfan117 t1_iuj6uve wrote

Nothing drastic changed, no, is the CIA and/or NSA still harvesting American’s data? Almost certainly.

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limpingdba t1_iujdp6t wrote

They basically just imposed a load of legislation to make it actually legal, provided it was done under certain circumstances, and also by essentially spying on other allied country's people and sharing the information as part of the "Five Eyes". UK passed the "snoopers charter" and the US passed the "patriots act" and all of a sudden its now legal and they don't have to tell you anything about it.

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GroinShotz t1_iuj9bel wrote

Oh... Things changed... Just tighter lockdowns on what could be leaked... Probably some more clearance levels and shit...

But yea... They are still spying on you... Probably even more than what Snowden leaked.

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tpb772000 OP t1_iuja0ob wrote

Sounds great, my FBI agent sure will be disappointed in me for all my searches over the years.

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yuuxy t1_iuj6eir wrote

Yup. Maybe also the national security courts have more not-yet-public rulings to make it legal-er.

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tpb772000 OP t1_iuj6mv6 wrote

BRO WHAT?

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Longjumping_Youth281 t1_iuje72m wrote

I think for some of the spying they needed to get a warrant from a judge but since it was a secret it was like a sort of secret Court. Those warrants were basically always rubber stamps and the judge said yes something like 99% of the time. I think he's saying that like from now on they will only do it 95% of the time. Maybe.

At least that's my understanding. Too lazy to look it up so I'll wait for somebody to correct me

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HunterIV4 t1_iujfjt2 wrote

Basically, the FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) has a classified ruling that spying on American citizens by the NSA was totally legit because...reasons. That you are not allowed to know. That where (and still are) probably not constitutional, but they're going to do it anyway.

Don't think too hard about the fact that your government is spying on you, that nobody has seen the inside of a jail after mass theft of American assets in 2008, that we are engaged is massive spending to foreign governments while US citizens struggle to buy food and gas, etc.

Instead, be very afraid of Jan 6/BLM/Trump/Antifa/whatever. Those are the issues that really matter. /s

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johnnyjfrank t1_iuj6p70 wrote

Im definitely glad that Snowden exposed what he did, and we have seen some tiny data regulation reforms, like GDPR, which aren't nearly enough yet, but I honestly think Snowden is a bit of a traitor.

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His story is that he had to go to Russia because he was trying to fly to South America and the US canceled his passport, but since he was the one leaking the information and knew it would be published ahead of time, he could have been anywhere in the world when the story broke, and he just happened to be in China and then Russia. Idk pretty split on the guy

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Latin_For_King t1_iujc37u wrote

He did out our government agencies for spying on Americans, so that could be seen as traitorous, but he outed spying on Americans, so that was patriotic?

I am on the side that the government should have no right to any of my data without due process (warrants in advance), so I would consider his actions more patriotic than anything, but I totally get why he fears for his safety.

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unkilbeeg t1_iujj3de wrote

His oath was to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The NSA was (and is) violating the Constitution, and what he released exposed that. That makes the NSA an enemy of the Constitution, and this means that Snowden was fulfilling his oath.

Is he a criminal? Possibly. He broke the law, and violated the regulations of his employment.

Is he a traitor? No. He was fulfilling the conditions of his oath.

Daniel Ellsberg was in exactly the same position. History has vindicated what he did when he released the Pentagon Papers, but at the time the same charges were leveled against him. I saw him in a talk not long after the Snowden revelations, and these are the points that Ellsberg made.

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johnnyjfrank t1_iuk2p28 wrote

I agree it was the right thing to do to expose the leaks, I just don’t buy that he didn’t want to go to Russia or China in the first place. Also at this point he’s basically helping the kremlin, tweeting all day about how evil the US is while not saying a peep about what’s going on over there.

Obviously he’s probably not free to say what he thinks, but still I don’t buy his story that he just HAD to go to Russia and nowhere else. A lot of places don’t have extradition to the US and aren’t autocratic mafia states with no civil rights

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HunterIV4 t1_iujfu3w wrote

> Im definitely glad that Snowden exposed what he did, and we have seen some tiny data regulation reforms, like GDPR, which aren't nearly enough yet, but I honestly think Snowden is a bit of a traitor.

Uh, the GDPR is an EU law, and doesn't apply to the US. So at best Europe had data reforms but the US is still doing the same thing as before.

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johnnyjfrank t1_iuk2tpm wrote

True but imo the main problem is we haven’t figured out proper legal structures for data rights, and I think GDPR is positive step. Plus it inspired the California law which I also consider a positive, albeit tiny, step forward

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