this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Privacy
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I think what Snowden did was fundamentally good.
My only problem is that he could have chosen to violate the bad law in the way King and others have violated bad laws in an effort to shed light on their badness: break the bad law in the open where everyone can see, then get arrested, then put the bad law and the system behind it on trial.
By running away, he's given the people who are doing bad things a line of attack against him. It's bullshit, and doesn't change the fact that widespread warrantless surveillance is wrong. But some people will take the attacks against Snowden seriously. If he had turned himself in and gone to trial, that line of attack would be gone.
If being arrested and going to trial was his big concern, he would have taken that over running. We're talking about the NSA and CIA here. He was afraid of being suicided in jail before ever getting to a trial.
Honestly I'm a little surprised he's still alive. Russia wasn't his plan, but it may have been the best place for him to end up.
There was a betting pool back home on how long he was going to stay alive. First time I've seen everyone in a pool lose.
He never would have made it to trial. His house would have been raided by six dudes in ski masks and an unmarked van at 3AM. And then he would have sat in a blacksite prison for the rest of his life. Or if he had already gone public, he would have been immediately arrested and given the Epstein Special once he was behind bars.