Latin_For_King t1_iujc37u wrote on October 31, 2022 at 7:34 PM

Reply to comment by johnnyjfrank in eli5 What came of Edward Snowden leaking all of that classified intel? by tpb772000

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.

unkilbeeg t1_iujj3de wrote on October 31, 2022 at 8:21 PM

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.

johnnyjfrank t1_iuk2p28 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 10:45 PM

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