Ed Snowdon Hero Or Villan

[jake-the-peg]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

The man behind blowing the whistle on the American NSA's Prism project engineering direct access into the servers belonginging to Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype Microsoft and Yahoo and who knows maybe even Answerbank.

Now hiding out in Hong Kong - is he a hero or a villan?

[bednobs]

idiot

[ichkeria]

You got in before me Jake.
My vote is not villain but fool. And self-important one at that.

[Sqad]

To me he is neither.........

A nobody who has blown the "gaff" run away to Hong Kong and is now preaching to the world about honesty and openness.

Neither..............in a nutshell.

[sandyRoe]

Is there a convenient South American Embassy in Hong Kong?

[missnemesis]

He has quite openly admitted to being the whistle blower and about being in Hong Kong - hardly 'hiding out' is he?

I wouldn't go so far as to say hero but he's certainly not the villain of this particular pieced IMO.

[Epona]

well I suppose he signed some sort of official secrets act? So broke his Contract if not the Law. lawfully he's a Villain, morally, well hero is a bit over the top.

[jno]

brave man. I'm surprised so many people would have peferred to have lived in blissful ignorance about the extent of their governmkent's spying activities. Perhaps they secretly love the surveillance society?

[FredPuli43]

Over the top and in breach of his terms of employment, begad. Not clear what he's done wrong in revealing what anyone would have guessed . Every country spies on every other and it would be very surprising if there was not a mechanism for trawling everybody's i.p. addresses for signs of unusual or significant activity. If that extends to reading every single message sent and received by everyone everywhere, or every person who some government doesn't like, there is no real harm until that government uses the evidence as evidence of some supposed and imaginary crime. That last will only be stopped by a proper justice system.

[ichkeria]

What's he actually "revealed"?
That NSA has the technology, and a system to exploit it, for being able to access material from Google, Facebook etc.
It would be amazing were it otherwise, and in fact I would be surprised if it was limited to non-Americans.
Like it or not this is necessary if law-enforcement agencies in the "free" world are to keep up with the technology of communication. In the old days the "bad guys" were easy to spy on. They'd use their own dedicated channels of communication and meanwhile the rest of us communicated with each other in relative prvacy (unless we were unlucky enough to live in a police state).
Nowadays it's different. The ether is buzzing - almost literally - with the zillions of bits of encrypted and non-encrypted data we all use - "bad" and "good" guys to keep in touch by email, messaging, voiceover IP (Skype etc) and it's all mixed up together. The only way to get a handle on it is by systems such as Prism. It doesn't mean there are folk sitting monitoring our emails and looking at what websies we visit.
And the irony that we are concerned about our "private" data being surrendered to govwernment by organisations like Facebook and Yahoo, who use it in a much more invasive and targeted way - is wonderful

[ludwig]

I admire what he's done, but it's not exactly a surprise that spies are spying on us is it? That's what they always have done and always will.

[Bazile]

Hong Kong is a long way away - Isn't there a spare fold away bed in the Ecuadorian embassy ?

[ichkeria]

I don't see that what he's done is in any way admirable. The only admirable aspect might be that arguably it is as well for the knowledge about Prism to be in the open, but all the stuff about protecting freedom etc. is just nonsense.
The reason we are - understandably - twitchy about this type of "spying" is that as I said before, the comms explosion - both in terms of technology and global usage - means we are all sharing the same space. We're all on the same "battlefield" if you like, so it looks liek an attack on "us"

Tesco meanwhile knows what I buy every week and seeks to exploit that fact. Yahoo leaks my personal details to prospective advertisers and I care not a jot. But my emails are on the same server as the next Osama bin laden and all of a sudden I'm a helpless victim of the government:-)

[jake-the-peg]

I'm not sure what the state of the law is in the US but I think it's similar to the UK.

Here if you want to intercept communications it's covererd by RIPA (Regulation of investagator Powers Act)and you need a warrant.

This system allows them total visibiliy into all communictions with these systems without any warants at all.

I think this is most likely illegal in the US - they have certainly been caught doing similar things before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping#NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

I certainly think he is brave and if he is exposing covert agencies breaking the law I think he probably deserves our admiration


Now I'm a big fan of people like MI5 I think they do more to keep safe than all the soldiers in Afghanstan put together - but I do think they need oversight and I do think they should keep within the law.

Intercepting communications without a warant is illegal

[Brenden]

I do not care what means our government obtain information, especially on terrorism, how the hell are they supposed to try and keep this country reasonably safe - a crystal ball?

[LazyGun]

I would call him a hero.The level of scrutiny and the abuse of civil rights of citizens in a democracy, using the fear of terrorism and the figleaf of national security to exercise carte blanche in monitoring its citizens.

A fair degree of the terrorism attacks have come as a consequence of our military adventures in the middle east. I would rather we exercise a more enlightened and hands off foreign policy, rather than our own governments routinely stamping all over our civil rights and flouting the rules of law.

So anyone who exposes the extent of that surveillance is a hero in my book.

[youngmafbog]

He is no hero, just a self important t**t

[ichkeria]

I am concerned that for once I am sharing a platform with youngmafbog :-)

In his interview Snowden talks of "American citizens" being targeted.
I thought they were exempted

Jake, I'm not an expert, but I do know that in the UK you do not need a warrant to intercept the communications of foreign systems. Presumably that applies in the US also. GCHQ mainly intercepts comms warrantless, but must obey UK law, and therefore when targeting British nationals a warrant must be obtained.

[jake-the-peg]

The law is complex - for example metadata on communications - (time, from where, to where etc.) can be warrented by a senior police officer whereas the messages must be warrented by the Home secretary - you get into questions about where e-mail headers fall ( the subject for example is encoded )

I don't pretent to be knowedgeable enough on US law to know whether the NSA were breaking it or not - but going on past form I suspect they have.

This is hat concerns me - there seems nobody properly concerned about whether the inteligence agencies have acted illegally.

They've got everyone like Brenden so that all they have to do is say the word 'terrorism' and they think that they can do what they like and nobody will question them.

And if it's against the law - well it's to stop terrorism isn't it?

[Khandro]

LG; I don't understand your reasoning; would "exercise[ing] a more enlightened and hands off foreign policy" reduce spying by the CIA and MI5 ?