Monday, April 6, 2015

Glenn Greenwald: Here’s the truth about Edward Snowden





“The debate about his motives has always confounded me,” Grennwald said. “Put yourself in Edward Snowden’s place, where you decided you would take tens of found of top secret documents from one of the most secretive agencies of world’s most powerful government because you think there’s serious wrongdoing hidden from your fellow citizens.”

“You could sell it in secret to pretty much any intelligence agency on the planet and enrich yourself for the rest of your life without anyone knowing. If you were intending to harm your country or government, you could pass it secretly to adversaries of your government without anyone knowing about it,” Greenwald said.

“He could have just taken it all and put it up on the Internet, if his goal were to have this indiscriminate publication and harm the country,” Greenwald said.

“Instead, he did what you would want a whistle-blower in that circumstance to do; to meet with journalists who work with some of the largest news outlets in the West and say I am giving you this material, but based on promise that you will be extremely meticulous about going through every word of it and not publishing anything that can harm people, but instead only things necessary to inform the public debate,” Greenwald said.

“So you can have different views on surveillance policy, the extent to which government should be spying on us, but I think it is hard to call into question his motives were anything what he says they were and patriotic, and he genuinely believed if the government is going to spy on us indiscriminately, without any evidence of wrongdoing, we ought to at least know about that,” Greenwald said.

...he already proved to you, given the choice between a comfortable life and sanding up for what he believes is right, he will choose stand up for what he believes is right and give up a comfortable life. He already had a comfortable life he gave up,” Greenwald said.
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