O Really wrote:But as regards to Snowden, it wasn't the simple violation of confidentiality requirements that I have trashed him over. He intentionally and willfully stole classified information and disclosed it with full knowledge and expectation that it would be publicized. That's hardly the same as being "careless."
Well, sure. But add "for the public good" - and that's certainly the case with Snowden - and you get the very definition of "whistleblower." And whistleblowers - especially in government - are necessary.
Consider
Thomas Tamm, the whistleblower regarding the NSA's 2001–07 warrantless surveillance. And
Mark Klein, who revealed the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans via room
641A at AT&T and elsewhere.
What the NSA was doing - along with the telecommunications companies ordered to assist it - was illegal. Far from prosecuting their actions, the government made them retroactively legal. The telecommunications companies were given retroactive immunity. So were those two whistleblowers wrong in their actions?
Naturally, when Snowden revealed in 2013 that the surveillance was far, far worse than even than what they had reported, there was not even a hint of prosecution. Not even a hint of rolling back the mass surveillance that would have shocked Americans a few year earlier. Heck, James Clapper was even able to outright lie to Congress about it, quickly get caught in that lie, and walk away without a hint of punishment.
As John Oliver said of the 2013 revelations, "Mr. President, no one is saying you broke any laws, we're just saying it's a little bit weird you didn't have to." In the 1980s the NSA and CIA were essentially forbidden to spy within the US. Now they have free reign, with no real legal limits.
Consider the following quote:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
- Cardinal Richelieu
Congressman Jason Chaffetz began asking the Secret Service about its string of high-profile failures. Eighteen minutes after the hearings started, Secret Service agents -- dozens of them --
began poring through his 2003 Secret Service application in hopes of finding a few skeletons in his previously-vetted closet. Fortunately they were reprimanded. But obviously - with so many doing it - it was common practice. The problem was that the congressman wasn't "one of the little people."
Imagine what the NSA can do with all their collected data.
Imagine what local police can do. The Stinger cell phone mass surveillance devices were intended for intelligence and anti-terrorism work. Now they're a hot item for local police forces. And remember "Civil Asset Forfeiture?" Where police can seize any money you're carrying on vague (highly lucrative) "suspicions", no evidence or trial involved? Now police are being equipped with "ERAD" machines - essentially God-mode ATM machines - where they can check and clean out your bank account on the side of the road, no warrant needed.
Now add
Prescription Drug Monitor Program databases:
Marlon Jones was arrested for taking legal painkillers, prescribed to him by a doctor, after a double knee replacement.
“There were three police officers pounding on the door. They said they had a warrant for my arrest and they were going to take me in,” he said. “It was the middle of the day, on my front doorstep, in front of my wife and daughter. I’m handcuffed and stuffed into a police car and they haul me to jail.” Jones was hit with 14 felony counts but all of them were later dropped.
[...]
“It has become the status quo that when a person comes under their radar they run to the prescription drug database and see what they are taking,” said Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republican—who said that police in Utah searched the PDMP database as many as 11,000 times in one year alone.
[...]
Among the instances of misconduct Weiler cited is the case of an opioid addicted police officer who was caught on video stealing pills from an elderly couple’s home after tracking their prescriptions in the state’s PDMP database.
One case even made
News of the Weird:
Until a July Florida appeals court ruling, Mark O'Hara, 45, had been in prison for two years of a 25-year mandatory-minimum for trafficking in hydrocodone, based solely on the 58 tablets found in his possession in 2004, even though his supply had been lawfully prescribed by a physician. The state attorney in Tampa had pointed out that Florida law did not mention a "prescription" defense to trafficking, and even though O'Hara had lined up a doctor and a pharmacist to testify, the jury wasn't allowed to consider the issue. After the appeals court called the case "absurd" and ordered a new trial with the prescription evidence allowed, the state attorney still refused to drop the case. [St. Petersburg Times, 8-9-07]
There are plenty of other examples. Cardinal Richelieu's point is valid, even without evil intent. Even without electronic surveillance there are endless cases of people put through hell because of
confirmation bias: Officers seizing on details that support their suspicion while ignoring those that oppose it. WITH electronic surveillance, instead of six lines they're getting six million. They'll always be able to find something with which to hang the most honest of people.
