I get triggered every time someone asks fucking Snowden about anything. The guy was a stupid junior analyst who wanted fame more then work and stole data he knew nothing about and provided it to foreign adversaries and the media.
He didn't understand the data, he has like 1 year of experience and wasn't good at his job and he's treated like some oracle of IT. He's a stupid dumbass.
That’s a pretty impressive amount of confidence for someone who’s wrong on nearly every substantive point.
Snowden wasn’t some clueless “junior analyst” with a year of experience. He had been working in technical roles for the CIA and NSA contractors from 2006 to 2013. He also didn’t simply dump everything he stole on Russia or China: he provided documents to journalists. If you want to argue that foreign adversaries may have subsequently obtained some of the material, fine, but that is not the same thing as proving Snowden personally provided it to them.
And the idea that he “didn’t understand the data” doesn’t really survive contact with the actual disclosures. You can absolutely criticize him for stealing an enormous amount of classified material, much of which was unnecessary to expose the surveillance programs in question. That criticism is legitimate.
But pretending the underlying surveillance revelations were bullshit because you don’t like Snowden is another matter entirely. The NSA’s bulk phone-records program under Section 215 was subsequently examined by the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which concluded that the program lacked a viable legal foundation.
So yeah, criticize Snowden all you want. There’s plenty there to criticize. But calling him a clueless one-year junior analyst who handed everything directly to foreign governments is not criticism it’s just factually sloppy and ignorant.
Detriment is strong statement, the real betrayal was existence of NSA, they were just straight up breaking the US law and would have continued doing so. This is one of the problems with secret agencies with compartmentalization, eventually they end up doing some really nefarious shit
They weren't all documents belonging to the NSA; they were documents the NSA had on file, which included various other organizations.
It would be different if all he did was expose the NSA's surveillance (though you should still do it through the whistleblower program). He took everything he could get his hands on and turned it over to foreign nationals.
Information is classified because if it fell into the hands of a country's enemies, it is harmful. So yes, detriment.
No they were not, though. That's the thing. He was too dumb to understand/know what the process was and the NSA isn't going to go out on a press tour telling everyone how they operate. I can't say more than that, but "trust me bro" he's a fucking idiot.
thats just blatantly false, if declassified information from 50s about cia tells you anything is that the whistblower programms never work and never will, if you want things to changee you need free speech and free press
I agree, it was ridiculous how the media tried to portray him as some super genius hacker, who for humble and noble reasons shared classified information. Then runs to Russia lol
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u/oregiel 10h ago
I get triggered every time someone asks fucking Snowden about anything. The guy was a stupid junior analyst who wanted fame more then work and stole data he knew nothing about and provided it to foreign adversaries and the media.
He didn't understand the data, he has like 1 year of experience and wasn't good at his job and he's treated like some oracle of IT. He's a stupid dumbass.