Edward Snowden Memoir To Reveal Whistleblower's Secrets (theguardian.com) 104
After multiple books and films about his decision to leak the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history, whistleblower Edward Snowden is set to tell his side of the story in a memoir, Permanent Record. From a report: Out on 17 September, the book will be published in more than 20 countries and will detail how and why the former CIA agent and NSA contractor decided to reveal the US government's plans for mass surveillance around the world and in the US -- which included monitoring phone calls, text messages and emails. UK publisher Macmillan said the book would see him "bringing the reader along as he helps to create this system of mass surveillance, and then experiences the crisis of conscience that led him to try to bring it down." Snowden's story has been already been tackled on film and in books. He was portrayed by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the Oliver Stone film Snowden, which was adapted from Guardian journalist Luke Harding's book The Snowden Files. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, the source to whom he leaked his explosive story, recounted in his memoir No Place to Hide how he went to Hong Kong in 2013 to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have evidence of government spying. Snowden was also the subject of the 2014 documentary Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras, and the 2016 play Wild, a fictionalised take on his story.
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"HRC's unelectability and unlikeability"
This is what got Trump elected. The DNC tried to force her down out throats and look what we got.
Re: Haven't We Been (Score:1)
I don't see why anybody would honestly give a shit about Trump's tax returns. I guarantee that the IRS has already had them under a microscope 50 times this year alone. What makes the Democrats think they'll be able to find anything that the IRS doesn't already know? Trump was wrong about it being a witch hunt, but after the mueller report didn't give them what they were demanding of it, then they turned it into one like fucking retards. Their entire party is going to look even dumber than Trump did after t
Snowden (Score:5, Interesting)
How do to the right thing and have everyone hate you for you it.
And people wonder why their asses are getting shot off by their own governments ha ha ha!!!
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I don't think "everyone hates him" anyway, and nobody shot at him to my knowledge... maybe stop lying, hahaha?
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Yea, I keep forgetting that asylum vacations are the perfect getaway for a relaxing time these days.
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Do you have a shooting to report, or were you lying about that?
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My momma told me it is not nice to make fun of the slow kids so... I am just gonna say, you are missing something fundamental here. Maybe it will come to you, maybe it won't. I am betting on the later... don't let me down!
Re:Snowden - Polonium 210 (Score:2)
I would suggest not drinking the tea in Russia.
Re:Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
"Doing the right thing, then running in to the arms of and becoming an asset of an illiberal criminal-syndicate state sends mixed signals."
For dumb people, it sure does.
There is a reason that stupid people do not understand intelligent people. The difference in the depth of analysis is staggering.
But let me get this right, you expect a smart person to do you you a favor and stay around long enough for you to turn on them and trample them under foot?
"The man is only alive in Russia because he's made himself useful as a propaganda piece. He'll have an accident the moment he ceases to be."
A risk he decided to take, not one that I would have taken but to each their own.
"Not a very pleasant or honorable existence I imagine."
Pleasant? No. Honorable? Yes.
Far more honorable than a loser like you who needs to apologize for their own governments human rights abuses.
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That or you are so stupid that a person of average intelligence looks like a genius compared to you.
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Do you [SirAstral] even know if you are fighting with one troll or an army of them? For simplicity, let's imagine it's the same one.
It does not matter if he's sincerely stupid, proudly ignorant, or paid to fake it. You are NOT going to convince the troll of anything and he's probably paid a bonus for each of your replies.
I think they should be assisted in discrediting themselves, but Slashdot lacks the resources to assist. Therefore the best solution is to ignore 'em. (Though sometimes I do invoke ye olde t
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Russian apologia, then complaining about US human rights abuses. Voted up to 5, Insightful. Absolute classic.
Super woke, bro.
About right for Slashdot nowadays. No wonder this place is a graveyard of losers.
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Snowden isn't as smart as you think.
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There is a reason that stupid people do not understand intelligent people. The difference in the depth of analysis is staggering.
The ability to ignore obvious, well known facts in that "analysis" is staggering as well. Basically, they can get to any final "analysis" they like and facts do not play a role. While they can hence be permanently smug about being "right", they will never actually be.
Re: Snowden (Score:2, Insightful)
He did warn the public and Congress that the government was spying on millions of non-suspect civilians. Apparently Congress had no other way of finding out what the executive branch was doing. Snowden deserves at least some credit for this.
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No... Congress in fact did know.
Don't allow them to trick you into thinking they are a bunch of inept idiots. They are not stupid, that is just a common man's ignorant insult.
Additionally, the spying was an open secret, everyone already knew, Snowden was no revelation of what was going on... just proof. And look what everyone did with the proof. Nothing. The fuckers bitching about Obama and the fuckers bitching about Trump all deserve the pain and misery they get. Both sides keep voting in the same cor
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On top of that they all buy the stupid idea that Congress is full of a bunch of morons. Those morons got you to vote for them didn't they? Who is the real moron here?
Watch more some c-span congressional hearings then. Yes there are some morons who are only capable of following orders from the party lead that put them there.
Pelosi put it best: “But those are districts that are solidly Democratic. This glass of water would win with a D next to its name in those districts.”
I feel that explains representative Cummings perfectly.
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Doing the right thing rarely gets you a lot of fans. The very need for doing the right thing is often created by a lot of people doing the wrong thing or supporting it in the first place.
Re:Just A Fake Hero!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't leave because he didn't "like" the US though, he exposed secrets and would have gone to prison. Instead he fled. He wasn't trying to personally profit from those secrets, he considered himself a whistleblower.
He didn't approve of what he saw they were doing, thought it was unlawful and should be known, and decided to do something about it. It had consequences. He knew that it would. But he didn't leave because he's anti-US.
Whatever Russia's motivation in protecting him I think he operates under his own conscience. I don't see a lot of evidence of any other motive.
He wasn't an "anti-US" dissident generally. He was anti-unConstitutional-dragnet. If you notice, the NSA (at least publicly) changed aspects of their collection since the disclosures, some by necessity, some by fiat.
You don't have to thank Snowden for that, but he certainly got a bunch of things into the public debate that weren't there before with serious implications for ongoing justice, legal and communications privacy concerns.
He likely doesn't give a rat's ass what illiterate cheesedick mouth-breathing flag waver types think, they're too stupid to understand patriotism anyway.
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Considering Russia doesn't want to waterboard him and put him in jail for decades, it is indeed better. Also note, he is not a Russian patriot or abstract human rights zealot, he is an American patriot. Whatever problems Russia may have is not his concern, direct violation of constitution of US by US government is what he was concerned about.
Huge respect for the guy. He did what he thought was right and I hope he will never regret it.
Putin thanks him for his service (Score:1)
Nuff said.
I do solemnly swear (Score:2)
"(or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter; even if it means being smeared as a traitor by the propagandized and the mockingbird press."
Ok I added that last part, but it should be the
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Snowden pointed out American hypocrisy. Yes, this makes us look bad and Russia likes it when we do this to ourselves. That's a good reason to stop being hypocrites, it's not a good reason to shoot the messenger.
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Too many epochs these days? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting coincidence that just now I'm reading a different book entitled No Place to Hide , though I read the one about Snowden a few years ago. Though O'Harrow's book is covering many of the same topics, it's a pre-Snowden book (from 2005) and the perspective is quite different, though the context is eerily similar.
It seems like every book I read these days has to be contextualized within an epoch, and the epochs are getting shorter and shorter. The big divide in O'Harrow's book is probably pre- and post-9/11, but I just read an anti-google book called Search & Destroy that seems almost hilarious in the post-Trump epoch. Actually, almost every American president of my lifetime seems to create a new epoch... But not just a local problem. Recently read The Future is History and Three Stations , books involving Russia, where the critical epoch divider is the arrival of Putin. Contrast Three Stations with Gorky Park by the same author...
Anyway, at this point my theory is that Snowden has mostly become irrelevant. He revealed some gigantic problems, but now he's just some sort of pawn. Maybe Snowden's main significance now is that he proves Putin can offer "sanctuary" to anyone he "likes", but I'm pretty sure this book will not explain why. Of course it's too soon for 'history' to assess the significance of Snowden's actions, but I sure don't see much evidence of a new dawn of respect for each individual's privacy. Per my sig, I naturally think freedom is mortally wounded, and I suspect our beloved computers were the murder weapon.
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It wasn't the computers themselves. Everything went downhill when we started to connect them together into networks.
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(There is some pertinent quote from the "Battlestar Galactica" remake about this but I couldn't find it.)
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It wasn't the computers themselves. Everything went downhill when we started to connect them together into networks.
Interesting. Is that another bug in Slashdot? Your [Narcocide's] interesting reply was not reported to me. I spotted it by accident.
I sort of agree with you, though I see it more as a kind of inevitable development triggered by the development of computers. The drive to improve the computers resulted in rapid developments of digitization, and the network communications are implicit. Or maybe it's more of an infinite loop problem? Bigger computers need more data calling for faster networks that then call for
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--
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
He means this part. Are you really not seeing that?
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my theory is that Snowden has mostly become irrelevant. He revealed some gigantic problems, but now he's just some sort of pawn
My theory is that's always been the case.
He's publicly said enough about his actions to draw some conclusions. He openly broke protocols, rules, and laws to expand his access without authorization. He went to great lengths to bypass oversight, to alert the American public about... how critical oversight is?
In the world of sensitive information, he personifies the textbook enemy. He's the guy who breaks the rules to do what he wants. He's the guy threatening American security. He's the guy who put his own op
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Interesting reply, again not reported to me. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect someone is hacking the Slashdot?
However, your [Sarten-X's] points are also interleaved in a confusing way, leading to a conclusion that I mostly reject. When it comes to such trivia as protecting our Constitutional rights, I think the EFF and the ACLU are accomplishing nothing and the best congress-critters are accomplishing even less, while the worst ones are doing excellently bad work in making the bad situation wors
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In short, I think Snowden does a great job getting attention briefly, but his history prevents him from persuading anyone who can actually change how things work. It's like if Adolf Hitler tried to improve American agricultural practices. Regardless of the merit of his ideas, their presentation is always tainted by the character of the person presenting them, and that person is so far removed from the nuance of the problem that their solutions seem naive*.
I doubt that Snowden was ever directly manipulated p
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Again, I partly agree but see large areas of disagreement. I think the most important one involves the value of paranoia to the "establishment" in terms of increasing self-censorship. Much better to shut up and isolate your opponents before they say anything. No pesky First Amendment squabbles.
Which reminds me of the ineffectiveness of the ACLU (and the EFF). Much of what hurt the ACLU's reputation were their highly principled defenses of people with bad reputations and worse principles. You dragged the Naz
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Seems wasteful.
As in, I'm pretty sure you can buy tubs of cream frosting and shit.
I've never forgiven Obama (Score:5, Interesting)
... for not pardoning Snowden.
He is a hero who is being punished for protecting us all. The fact that he is pursued as a criminal says very bad things about the U.S. government.
IMHO Snowden should be put in charge of a government agency tasked with preventing this sort of spying on citizens.
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First off, what crime was Snowden convicted of? He hasn't been found guilty in a US court of law, so he cannot be pardoned.
The only thing Obama could do is ask to stop his pursuit, but that's only a suggestion - it's up
Re:I've never forgiven Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, what crime was Snowden convicted of? He hasn't been found guilty in a US court of law, so he cannot be pardoned.
Ford pardoned Nixon.
The only thing Obama could do is ask to stop his pursuit, but that's only a suggestion - it's up to the Judicial branch to actually catch him, charge him and convict him.
The Judicial branch neither catches nor charges.
All Obama could do, and all Trump can do is offer a suggestion to the justice department.
The Justice department is part of the Executive branch, under the authority of the President.
And since Snowden is residing in a country without a extradition treaty with the US, he can't be arrested either.
He would be out of there a millisecond after being pardoned.
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Snowden is a liar, and just published data to feed his ego and try to leverage it for money.
Nothing more. He is no different then every other sucker who has been Honeypotted. Something we talked about when this first happened. You know, those of us who keep up on foreign affairs that were screaming about the Russia computer interfere for 25 years.
What he released showed a very clear thing: The US was doing exactly what is said it was with diplomats, and that we were are good actor.
smears and baseless assertions (Score:2)
“The reason I’m asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don’t really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Director of National Intelligence JAMES CLAPPER: “No, sir.”
Just goes to show what side of history you're on.
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It was a powerful lesson for me as well. It led to the conclusion that any proper oversight of these powerful intelligence agencies by congress is also a joke.
Clapper then goes on to publish a book with "hard truth" and "facts" in the title. There's no end to the amount of gaslighting that the likes of Clapper and the previous poster will attempt, just as scammers know that there will always be enough gullible people to take the bait to make the attempt worthwhile.
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for not pardoning Snowden.
You are really, really, really, really, fucking stupid.
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There is a very real psychological change that people undergo when they become leaders. Their version of "us and them" is fellow leaders vs commoners.
In their world, it is improper for commoners to make accusations of leaders, even if those accusations are true.
It doesn't matter how right Snowden was, and it doesn't matter how wrong his superiors were. Snowden is a commoner who betrayed his superiors, and that is an unforgivable sin.
So, Obama did not forgive it, neither will Trump, nor would Hilary have.
Obama has nothing to be sorry about here (Score:1)
I appreciate what Snowden has done for the freedom of the American people, but demanding that he gets pardoned before any trial, conviction, or even indictment paints him as an arrogant prick. Obama has sent every message regarding possible pardon, but stopping short of just saying I will pardon you like Trump "threatened" in case of his corrupt associates. And by now that ship has sailed away, Trump or any other non-libertarian republican certainly will not expend his political capital on pardoning Snowden
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Obama showed his true colors when he did not. Just another man of the evil establishment, after all, if better mannered and smarter than the current used-car salesman type.