Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden: Heroes or Traitors

[Pointedstick]

Our republic requires a moral people, not a people who blindly follow orders, no matter how monstrous or sinister they may be. These men both followed their consciences and exposed terrible acts they witnessed or were asked to perpetuate, in violation of their own oaths to defend and protect the Constitution of the Unites States. Their oaths were taken not to their superiors, but to the Republic itself; its protection is a higher, more noble goal than following the orders of a superior without question.

To that effect, they revealed themselves to be more courageous and principled than those who felt similar reservations but kept their heads down, or those who ordered the terrible acts from comfortable chairs in safe armored rooms. For putting themselves at grave personal risk to assuage their consciences and expose terrible abuses by those in power, I believe they deserve to be viewed as heroes.

[Kriegsspiel]

Our republic requires a moral people, not a people who blindly follow orders, no matter how monstrous or sinister they may be. These men both followed their consciences and exposed terrible acts they witnessed or were asked to perpetuate, in violation of their own oaths to defend and protect the Constitution of the Unites States. Their oaths were taken not to their superiors, but to the Republic itself; its protection is a higher, more noble goal than following the orders of a superior without question.

To that effect, they revealed themselves to be more courageous and principled than those who felt similar reservations but kept their heads down, or those who ordered the terrible acts from comfortable chairs in safe armored rooms. For putting themselves at grave personal risk to assuage their consciences and expose terrible abuses by those in power, I believe they deserve to be viewed as heroes.

I think this might apply to Snowden, but not Manning.  He allegedly revealed a shit ton of information, not all of it "evil." I admit that I don't have super detailed knowledge of the leaked info, does anyone know for certain that some of it led to the deaths of local nationals who helped the US? 

Personally, I think that Snowden, who only disclosed classified information on a specific operation the NSA was running (because that's all he had access to?  I don't know), and didn't reveal everything they're doing, was more conciencious about what he was doing. From what people who knew Manning personally told me back when I was on active duty, he was an angry dude in general, which just gives me that 'he just wants to see the world burn' vibe from Alfred the butler in The Dark Knight.

[Tyler]

I'll need more info on Snowden before passing judgment.  Sometimes even a traitor can accomplish a public good, and the final chapter hasn't been written yet.  The fact that a former CIA agent sought refuge in China doesn't exactly reassure me that this will ultimately end with the US stronger than it was before.

Honestly, I have no sympathy for Manning.  He / Assange both strike me as anarchist egomaniacs looking to tear down government institutions more than anything else. 

[MediumTex]

i voted hero/hero...
but with some reservations, manning was very close to the line if not over it in the way he released info and the lack of selectivity in what was dumped, if it did harm (that i don't know about or know about yet) i could easily accept his being prosecuted as a traitor..
Snowden seems more clear cut and much harder to say harm was done.

i tend to prefer to wait and see before deciding what side i should take on these type of whistle-blowing cased, they tend to be complex and information about the details seldom comes to light quickly..

I'm with the others about the Manning case being murky as far as whether he was a good guy or just someone who wanted attention.

With Snowden, though, I really don't understand how what the NSA was doing was legal in the first place, so wouldn't this just be a whistleblower type of case where the person who exposes the illegality has certain protections?

We're talking about a spy agency using its intelligence gathering infrastructure to potentially spy on every single American citizen with an internet connection or cell phone.  Surely such behavior doesn't stop being illegal simply by labeling it "classified", right?

My thought is that if a judge signed a warrant to let the NSA do this sort of thing indiscriminately that judge may have committed a number of felonies and should probably be arrested along with the other NSA officials who went along with this dumb scheme.

Like so many of these idiotic government actions, what really surprises me is not that they did it (because governments are doing this sort of thing all of the time), but how stupid they were in the way that they did it.  What kind of a moron (or group of morons) puts a domestic spying program of this magnitude together (I assume that this is the biggest one ever--I don't know how it could be any bigger), and then outsources the implementation to the point that a contract employee at the outsourced service provider who has been on the job less than three months is put in a position to compromise the whole thing?  That's really incredible.

[Pointedstick]

My thought is that if a judge signed a warrant to let the NSA do this sort of thing indiscriminately that judge may have committed a number of felonies and should probably be arrested along with the other NSA officials who went along with this dumb scheme.

Ahh, but who's going to preside fairly on such a case? Another judge who probably signed the same kinds of warrants?

Furthermore, how do we know any of this was actually illegal? All they have to do is pass a law to make it legal, and my sense is that they've done exactly this over the course of the last decade, starting with PATRIOT act, and going up to FISA and others.

Now, I would say that these laws are unconstitutional, but the Judiciary rarely seems to really be interested in reigning in executive or legislative power.

[MediumTex]

Furthermore, how do we know any of this was actually illegal? All they have to do is pass a law to make it legal, and my sense is that they've done exactly this over the course of the last decade, starting with PATRIOT act, and going up to FISA and others.

Now, I would say that these laws are unconstitutional, but the Judiciary rarely seems to really be interested in reigning in executive or legislative power.

Yeah, you're probably right.  Although it seems clearly unconstitutional unless we are going to decide that there is no right to privacy or protection from unreasonable searches in the Constitution, it probably wouldn't be considered illegal under the surveillance-oriented legal structure that has been slowly put into place since 2001.

I wonder what it means to be patriotic in a surveillance society?  I guess it means smiling for the camera as often as you can.

[craigr]

IMO. He just outed basically what ever other technologically advanced government (and even not so advanced) is likely doing already. Perhaps it's on a larger scale with the NSA, but I would be surprised if most countries that had the capability weren't doing something pretty similar already. This isn't an endorsement of the activity, just that the NSA has been monitoring the communications at least inbound/outbound of the U.S. for decades. Same for other countries like the U.K., Canada, China, etc. The fact that the NSA can surveil domestically is not surprising either as the infrastructure is likely shared. Data is data and it's just a matter of which wire it's routed on when it gets to the big hubs.

As for the traitor part. Well there isn't enough information yet. It is strange he went to Hong Kong of all places within arms reach of the PLA. We'll have to see if he shows up in mainland China or not to determine his motivations. I doubt the PLA interrogators will be any better than the ones from the CIA if they think he has something useful to tell them.

Personally, I have thought for years that the NSA would be giving out free cell phones to every person on the planet if they thought they could do it without raising any suspicion. I mean you have a device that:

1) Is easily intercepted without needing to compromise the infrastructure (you can run your own listening stations/satellites and the phone companies wouldn't be in on it).

2) Can provide pin point accuracy of the user at any moment.

3) Can provide bread crumbs of where the person went, who else was there when they met (by the others's cell phone signals clumping in the area), and how long they were in contact with each person.

4) Can store lots of personal information on the device that can be remotely compromised and downloaded for additional intelligence purposes.

5) The user acts as an on the ground intelligence gatherer as they send texts, photos and voice calls in near real-time.

6) The cellphone could even be activated remotely to eavesdrop on the person without them knowing about it.

Basically, cell phones are a godsend for the intelligence agencies of the world.

[RuralEngineer]

There was a lot of collateral damage with what Manning did.  He didn't just say "hey, there's this program or shady business that the government is doing that you people need to know about!"  He literally took a data dump of as much classified information as he could get his hands on, regardless of topic, and released it to the entire world.  There was so much of it that there's no way he had any idea what was in there.  He could have been releasing the identities of undercover agents for all he knew and gotten people executed.  For all we know, people have died as a result of the Wikileaks business (probably not).

No, Bradley Manning may have had good intentions but he went about it in a very bad way and did not think things through the way that Edward Snowden did.  They are not the same.

[Reub]

I'm now hearing that the reporter from the Guardian was dealing with Snowden BEFORE he got his job at the NSA. If this is true then it changes everything.

[MediumTex]

I'm now hearing that the reporter from the Guardian was dealing with Snowden BEFORE he got his job at the NSA. If this is true then it changes everything.

How does it change things?

[Bean]

What the NSA was doing, was well outside of the original warrant's intention.

What Snowden did was going back on his word to the government.

Personally, I want the truth. Snowden is a traitor to the government, but a hero to me.

[MediumTex]

What the NSA was doing, was well outside of the original warrant's intention.

What Snowden did was going back on his word to the government.

Personally, I want the truth. Snowden is a traitor to the government, but a hero to me.

The proper punishment for Snowden is probably to be fired from his job.

It would be nice, however, to see Snowden receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his courageous act.  Here is a little more about the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors". The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform.

I would say that Snowden has made an especially meritorious contribution to the national interests of the United States by helping to expose behavior of our government that is deeply at odds with our values as a nation and the image we have of ourselves as being better than other nations whose governments treat their citizens like a rancher treats his cattle.

I would love to hear Obama's speech at the award ceremony.

Ladies and gentleman, Ed Snowden is a remarkable man.  He's the kind of patriot that I only thought we read about in books.  In fact, you might have only read about him in a book if the media hadn't pushed us to give him this award rather than make him simply disappear after finding him in some Hong Kong shithole. 

So we stand here today to honor Ed Snowden for his courage and sacrifice, and when I say sacrifice I mean career sacrifice because something tells me he's going to have a hard time finding another job in the intelligence community [laughter followed by applause].

Ed, you're a great American.  I say that because I really have no choice after the media turned on me because we were spying on them.  By the way, you didn't spend any time working at the FBI earlier this year, did you?  [more laughter from the crowd].

Ladies and gentlemen, in an only slightly different configuration of the American political-media-bullshit complex, Ed Snowden might have simply been one more undesirable who woke up one morning to find a Hellfire cap in his ass, but that was not to be.  Instead, we stand here today to honor this fine fellow (and I might add luckiest motherfucker this side of Daniel Ellsberg) and celebrate his accomplishment in exposing the true nature of our current government.  If Thomas Jefferson were here today, I'm pretty sure that he would be pleased with Ed Snowden's vision of America as a land where the free can live without having to worry about the government listening in on their phone calls and monitoring their internet usage--that is, once someone explained to him what a telephone and internet were [more laughter from the crowd followed by long applause as Obama places the award around Snowden's neck].