Thread: Edward Snowden and his stay in Russia

Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the NSA's Secrets | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Excellent and in-depth article about Snowden and Greenwald from Rolling Stone. Very thorough portrait of Snowden's background, his journey from hacker to NSA contractor to whistleblower and vilified spy. Very good investigative journalism and writing.

Like Bradley Manning, whose case he would later study, Snowden had an idealized view of the United States and its role in the world. He also had a gamer's sense of his own ability to beat the odds – he'd later tell Greenwald that his moral outlook had been shaped by the video games he played as a kid, in which an everyman-type battles tremendous and seemingly invulnerable forces of injustice, and prevails. Following that ethos, and deeply affected by 9/11, Snowden enlisted in the Army in 2004, hoping to join the Special Forces and fight in Iraq. "I believed in the goodness of what we were doing," he said. "I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas." But he was quickly disabused of this idea – "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said – and months into his Special Forces training course at Fort Benning, Snowden later said, he broke both his legs and was discharged.

Originally Posted by Deborski

Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the NSA's Secrets | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Excellent and in-depth article about Snowden and Greenwald from Rolling Stone. Very thorough portrait of Snowden's background, his journey from hacker to NSA contractor to whistleblower and vilified spy. Very good investigative journalism and writing.

Thanks Deborski, the article seems very good. Snowden is an extremely interesting person and who can blame him for starting out idealistic and loving his country? We all are a bit blind about our own countries. Don't blame him for working for the NSA either, everyone needs food on the table and obviously you get tempted to take the best paying or most interesting options. That job must have been a geek's paradise if you take the politics out of it. But he finally did one of the bravest things anyone's done in Intelligence for a long time.

I bet most people have stopped following the leaks, but there is a new one almost every week and it just keeps getting worse.

Imagine that they now try to sway the discussions in forums and on social networking sites! A lot of people just have a sheep mentality and will go with the heard. If they can figure out how to use bots or swamp sites with their messages at the level that would drown the real discourse, then it's the most genius form of censorship and propaganda that was EVER invented. Göbbels, eat your heart out.

Originally Posted by Hanna

But he finally did one of the bravest things anyone's done in Intelligence for a long time.

Say what you will, but the thing he did has always been called treason. In every country at every time. I disapprove even though he was betraying our opponents.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Say what you will, but the thing he did has always been called treason. In every country at every time. I disapprove even though he was betraying our opponents.

Wouldn't you want to know, if your country was doing this kind of stuff? I would!

There is a border line where morality and decency kicks in and overrides patriotism, I think.

Do you think Solzhenitsyn was a traitor for writing "The Gulag Archipelago" and "Ivan Denisovitj", and clearing off to the USA?

And another example, different, but with a parallel: That officer who tried to kill Hitler? I'd say he was a German patriot.