No Stupid Questions

I think he blew up his life to reveal something the general public probably should be aware of, but ultimately didn't care about.

Idk if it was heroic, but it certainly was interesting how he released the info slowly to get catch the government in numerous lies attempting to downplay the truth of the matter. One of the Obama administration's biggest blights.

mixed but yes. the govt made an example of him and from the popular standpoint he was serving the people. he also helped GDPR so thats factored in. currently the police state is still winning.

What he revealed was worthwhile.

How he did it was fucked.

What he’s done since …. Hasn’t helped his image.

I think he was… wrong-ish?

I think he didn’t see the forest through the trees.

He was scared of government abuse of surveillance, as he should be. He was scared of a North Korean style surveillance initially justified by fear of terrorists, basically.

But, IIRC, he didn’t fear corporate abuse enough.

He couldn’t imagine the consolidated attention trap the internet would turn into, but I think the signs were there. I guess he couldn’t imagine that all this would come out and people would choose to trade their privacy for instant convenience instead of fear of terrorists, the justification of the time..

Especially at the scale we do in corporate software today.

In other words, I think he should’ve been more worried about a post-truth corporate state than a censored, oldschool dictatorship, as the former seems to be what the US is barreling towards.

So maybe he was a hero. But, sadly, I think he grazed the mark on what to warn us about.

Selfless and morally guided actions. He’s the dictionary definition of a hero.

I think what he did was heroic. I don't know for sure that his motives were pure, like I can't see into his soul, or know what his relationship with Russia was before doing it, but all in all I think what he revealed had to be revealed. The NSA were untethered by any sort of oversight or accountability to the public, and they proved beyond any doubt just how completely and totally an agency loses it's fucking mind when no one's watching. I doubt anything changed in that regard - they've probably just strafed into a different shadowy part of the landscape and are continuing with new/improved tools - but it at least taught us all that, yes, the government really is both capable and motivated to spy on every bowel movement and armpit sniff you perform, whether or not you're a suspect in a crime. The mere affirmation that this sort of thing really goes on is worth having.

Without reservation, yes.

Yes, and I wish him well. Be careful, if you're thinking of anything.

Damn right he is. He risked his safety and his life (and still does) to make sure we all know more about how the feds are spying on their own citizens.

He's a true hero of the American People, that one, make no mistake.

Permanent Record was the first book I ever read (apart from the ones in school and college), and I loved it. His story does inspire me.

In my eyes, he is!

Hero isn't a title for life. His willingness to fuck his own life up to reveal NSA secrets to the world was heroic. Him staying in Russia with everything they've done more recently is decidedly less so.

We want to judge him by absolute categories like morals and convictions. And that's unfair because nobody is that pristinely moral all the time. I get that after his 007-like escape to Hong Kong, he would choose the easier way out now. If that means tacitly approving of Russia's illegal attack on their neighbor then so be it. I think his morals compelled him to release the surveillance secret to the world. And the experience has sufficiently dulled any moral urges. Combine that with a limited list of choices of where else to go. A true superhuman hero would not want to stay where he once sought asylum if that country was itself responsible for hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum elsewhere. As I said, hero isn't a title for life.

Yes. Unequivocally.

'Hero' is a term of social worship for those that enact change.

Do I think he did a moral act that aligned with his principles, motivated by compassion for others? Did he forsee what it would cost him and do it anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do, no matter how hard? Yes, and yes.

But he'd only be a 'hero' if anybody actually cared enough to do anything about it, making him a symbol of social change that people would be grateful for him instigating.

Instead, he falls victim to the same traps as those who self-immolate outside buildings to make their point: a spectacle of sacrifice, exchanged for confused apathy from those he claimed to stand for.

That really sucks. He was trying to make a real difference. He had to flee his home forever, because of the cost of him trying to save it.

Most of us here are more of a hero, because we had the backbone to never actually work for those fascist services to begin with.

Kinda