Edward Snowden interview

[uebermann]

[Professor]

[Bauce]

[exploited]

I don't want a society where good people have to give up two decades of the only life they'll have just to help me.

That is why I want him to be pardoned.

[Professor]

[exploited]

You are confusing right and wrong. It is right that we know that five governments are spying on a simply massive chunk of humanity. It is wrong for some dude to blow himself up in a marketplace because God.

It isn't nearly as difficult to sort out as you seem to think it is.

[broken robot]

[Bauce]

It's not a matter of patriotic masculinity. We're a nation of laws. When people are openly calling for people who break laws to be exempted just because they support that persons cause, its a call to abandon being a nation of laws and instead become one of whims. Trust me, you won't find anyone on this forum more dissatisfied with our criminal justice system than me. Ethnicity, economic class and social status have as much to do with your fate in the courtroom as the facts of the case, but still, if you agree that it shouldn't be legal to leak classified documents then I don't believe there should be an exception for Snowden just because he broke the law to being attention to something important. That's not how a nation of laws works and it sets a horrible precedent in which popular opinion decides what forms of vigilantism are or are not acceptable.

[broken robot]

The law is not the be-all, end-all. Again Snowden may very well have broken a law, and whether his reasons were valid are still up for debate, but I don't think you can call him a coward for refusing to stand trial given that if he did break certain laws it was with a specific tactical purpose in mind. The argument that he's setting up a "precedent" for others to do what they think is "right" is extremely vague. Fact of the matter is this is a very unique case. If others break laws and arbitrarily reveal state secrets, they're not going to get nearly the amount of sympathy or research Snowden has for the issues he's revealed.

In situations where there is no internal mechanism for adjudicating these types of disputes, or where the likelihood of them being implemented is nil, breaking the law is the only thing you can do.

[gla22]