Edward Snowden

How do you view him?

Hero?

Patriot?

Traitor?

Devil incarnate?

a reply to: duaneology

I think he is one of us...he saw something wrong and released the info...with that he did break the law. So everything worked out...we saw the truth and he is exiled from America and ally countries.

It is what we do with that info that matters..which is nothing so far...so it was in vein.

Mr Snowden is always welcome in my home...bet the conversation would be great.

originally posted by: duaneology
How do you view him?

Hero?

Patriot?

Traitor?

Devil incarnate?

He's not a Traitor, Devil Incarnate is not an issue, you could replace Hero with Brave, but here both of those items stand side by side along with Patriot..it's a no-brainer for the people.

He is a brave, true American hero. He is the definition of a patriot, fighting for our freedoms. He would have been welcome in Thomas Jefferson's, George Washington's, Sam Adam's homes for sure.

It's the Americans that want us to be like the cold war soviets that trouble me. Those peeps that thing we need the NSA for our safety. "For the motherland".

a reply to: smurfy


I think he's all of those things depending on who you are.

Personally I think he's a tool just following orders.

Proclaiming him to be a hero really sums up a couple of problems we have in society.

EVERYONE should stand against corruption!

Some will view him as a traitor, his employer has every right to do so but I hope most see him like a patriot fighting the good fight.

originally posted by: rockpaperhammock
a reply to: duaneology

I think he is one of us...he saw something wrong and released the info...with that he did break the law. So everything worked out...we saw the truth and he is exiled from America and ally countries.

It is what we do with that info that matters..which is nothing so far...so it was in vein.

Mr Snowden is always welcome in my home...bet the conversation would be great.

Same here. singlehandedly exposed the dynamics of the real evil of lack of checks and balances, in themselves uncaring.

He accomplished what the world needed to know.

Even though, if you ever truly thought about it, ya really can't put it past them for their spying techniques and how far they are willing to go.

originally posted by: duaneology
a reply to: smurfy


I think he's all of those things depending on who you are.

Uh uh! Not for me, you can think whatever you want to think. Are you trying to say that you have a niche for everybody? well think again, I don't do things by numbers and 'Devil Incarnate' is not in my portfolio since the idea is rubbish.

Incredibly brave, the kind of true patriot that would have been at the forefront of the American Revolution; stunningly intelligent and well-spoken. I have been in awe of his rational ability to not only understand what he was dealing with, but to figure out how exactly to react to it. His planning for both the release of the information but for his own safety was flawless; it's just insanity that he was forced to go to such lengths.

The traitors are the people like John Kerry who instantaneously demanded he be arrested on spy charges; THAT attitude needs to be put up against a wall and executed; I don't see Kerry working to give us back the rights and freedoms we've lost the last few years, or to put the real criminals in jail.

How has it come to this? A real patriot, perhaps the most important one the world has ever seen, is in exile? And sociopaths, psychopaths and obvious criminals are in charge of the government, the corporations and the banks?

Agreed,
Even more so since we now know that the premise of this thread is that everybody has an axe to grind blah blah.

All the people in positions of power already knew this was going on. It was interesting to watch them feign disgust and outrage at all the wiretapping and snooping. Most long time ATS users also were aware of large scale data collection programs many years before any of this came to light.

I have to wonder then, why he felt compelled to do what he did...

Q: Would I have had confirmation that the NSA was/is spying on American and god-knows which other citizens without Edward Snowden risking his life to tell the world?

A: No.

Therefore he is a champion in my eyes.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I think he was told to do this to make people more aware of the activities. By having him run to Russia it makes them look even bigger and badder. This is to create dissatisfaction among the citizens towards the system. It ramps up so they can eventually have a full-blown rebellion. They're currently creating mistrust and a complete and utter lack of confidence in the system's abilities to protect and correctly govern people.

What has he really done for anyone?

Even if the NSA wasn't snooping in our phone conversation people would still post their private lives on FB or any other social media outlet.

Snowden is a nothing in my eyes.

a reply to: thesaneone

They're still spying, the social networks are still going strong and the impact has been minimal at best. People know we're being spied on. They knew it before. To me this guy is just being used as a pawn to get people to go against TPTB.

He could be a part of some spy agency psyops game or he could have been recruited by a foreign power. All definitely possible.

But my theory is that he saw what all the nondisclosure agreements, handshakes and nose-taps were protecting and realized that the American Government and it's allies are currently engaged in the most invasive, ripe-for-abuse, DEADLY campaign of domestic spying in human history, dwarfing even the Stazi and KGB campaigns of yesteryear.

But what do I know. I say hero and patriot.

a reply to: duaneology
Traitor, who undertook a few vaguely salutary actions as cover, and possibly moral salve, for the greater harm he caused. Anyone who still buys the original Snowden narrative at this point is being willfully naive.

Releasing data, sources and methods relating to US domestic spying has merit and a legal framework. Compromising wholesale military intelligence to RU is a whole 'nother issue.