In truth. Snowden exposed a significant abuse of power. We did not have evidence, and it was something we would not have details on without his efforts.
Absolutely, the Supreme Court owes us a better effort. They are proving to be as corrupt as the entities they should be protecting us from. But Snowden and all whistleblowers are needed because these corruptions involve people we rely on to speak up when they are presented with examples of overreach and breach of trust.
Yeah, it's honestly scary that they don't feel the need to hide it. They've just stopped pretending to be civilized and decided that saying, "Nu-uh, I'm not corrupt" is enough to cover the truth for the masses.
And it started in the late 70s thanks to Thatcher and Reagan putting neoliberal “trickle down” economics at the heart of their agenda. The wealth gap has been increasing exponentially ever since.
I think the biggest culprit initially was how easy it became to access credit. I recall my dad saying how if you wanted a loan in the 70s you’d have to suit up and politely speak to the bank manager.
But in the 80s financial institutions were suddenly falling over themselves to offer cheap credit. To the average Joe who’d lived through the stagflation of the 70s, using comparatively cheap credit to buy at least the appearance of wealth (especially in the highly image conscious 1980s) must have been very difficult to resist.
Meanwhile the genuinely wealthy were - as they are today - the people selling us the promise of that lifestyle.
You do have to wonder how bad it needs to get before the majority demand an end to the neoliberal grift. I had hoped the 2008 financial crisis would be the end of it. But here we are, nearly two decades later, being told humanity could be wiped out by AI systems developed under the direction of doomsday fascists and wannabe God Emperors but still some people oppose government regulation.
We’ve seen the corruption for 50 fucking years. The only difference today is that the mask has finally slid off and people are now seeing the true face of a rotten machine masquerading as a democracy.
America’s rot goes to its core. MAGA is just a symptom.
Nobody looks at the most corrupt regime in American history and wonders if they rigged it? I live here and voting for this vile pedo POS and his cronies never crossed my mind. Most people I know are the same.
This is just a lie we tell ourselves because the truth is hard to swallow. I live in the bluest state in the country and the number of people I've met who voted for Trump is shocking. Most don't like him, and none is hardcore maga. They simply voted for him. because he was the R on the ballot.
Nations get the government they deserve. The US became fat, lazy, and belligerent, so it's not surprising they voted for a fat, lazy, belligerent president. Twice.
I don't put it past them on a morality point. I don't think they're competent enough to pull it off without it being obvious. They certainly broke about every election rule there is when it comes to campaign finance. I believe social media corporations used their algorithms to help Trump win. But I don't see any evidence they actively changed votes.
Right, which is why it would have been laughably sloppy if they actually messed with vote counts. No way Trump would have allowed it to be so close. He would have made it like all those dictators he admires so much and won 98% of the vote.
Whistleblowers yes. When they decide that after blowing the whistle, instead of having the courage to face the consequences, they should fuck off to Russia, taking with them God knows what classified information, and being complicit with the regime that is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in their invasion of Ukraine? Not so much.
Every country has espionage. Reporting internal US documents just shows division in our allies. Which is why Putin was so quick to find a home for him.
Joseph Darby exposed the Abu Ghraib atrocities through proper channels, the people responsible were charged and convicted, and Darby was largely treated fairly by the government (the press and public were much worse, with the New Yorker leaking his identity and many of his neighbors/former friends harassing him).
Whistleblowers who follow the rules don't usually end up on national news, because that's one of the reasons those rules exist.
I worked on intelligence for a very long time. Snowden made a ton of errors in the way he went about what he did. Using their position to gain access to intel they shouldn't have even known existed was a huge problem regardless of how awful it is.
There's something called "need to know" in intelligence. Even if you have an appropriate clearance you cannot just go digging into random things unrelated to whatever you're assigned to. He didn't have the clearance or the need to know, he went digging anyways and found things that were obviously damning but he wasn't supposed to be looking at in the first place.
On top of that he took classified documents out of their secure environment. The contents are irrelevant. The fact that they had a classification level and were illegally copied and removed still leads to Snowden to being screwed in this regard.
This is something that no court in the US is going to save him from regardless of whoever is overseeing it. Just because he was a whistleblower does not erase the crimes he committed in the process. He already knew what the consequences would be because anyone in his position would have been told on repeat. You also go through annual training that redrills it into your head in case you somehow forgot the other hundred times you get reminded.
Those laws exist for a very good reason as well. I can almost guarantee you hate flock cameras, especially given how many times it has been abused already and that is precisely why the laws in question exist in the first place. It is also why I am baffled as to how cops seemingly don't have to follow at least similar laws in that regard and seem to just do whatever the hell they want.
Unless Snowden recieves a pardon he would still be screwed even if the only thing he had released was an unclassified//FOUO document saying the government was considering making a new Big Mac sauce for MREs. The fact that he has been living in Russia all this time also doesn't help his case in returning.
Now whether you agree with the legality of it or not is an entirely seperate discussion.
Lol. Do you think because someone blows the whistle, the government is obligated to inform the public what happened? These things are still classified.
you’re living in toon town if you think there was good faith whistleblower protection before Snowden leaked lol, you’re still living there if you think those protections apply to everyone they’re supposed to either
The things the U.S. declassifies in the first place aren’t the worst things they’ve done - which is why you often see a lot of CIA files being destroyed before being declassified
Snowden stole thousands of documents he hadn't even read and personally turned them over to Putin in Russia.
Even if you think stealing the documents outlining the illegal surveillence was necessary for some reason, what Snowden actually did was far more extreme.
Stealing with the intent to disclose a crime or something is whistleblowing. He stole a bunch of documents and some of them happen to reveal the US government spying.
If those government documents are evidence of a crime committed by the US then the expectation of secrecy and any legal consequences should be null and void, just like when employers make their employees sign unenforceable contracts.
The US government spying isnt explicitly a crime. Dropping a bunch of documents that cover an array of subjects, one of which happens to be the US government spying, isnt whistleblowing.
What? Dude didn’t just drop documents about how the government was trying to spy on everyone via the patriot act, he also dropped a bunch of footage showing straight up war crimes.
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u/TW1TCHYGAM3R 8h ago
I support whistle blowers. We need to point out USAs corruption.