Edward Snowden's New Job: Tech Support 328
Nerval's Lobster writes "Government whistleblower Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia after releasing top-secret documents about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities to the press, has a new job: tech support. Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the Associated Press that his client starts work Nov. 1 for a "major" Russian Website, which he declined to name. In June, Snowden—a former CIA employee who worked as a contractor for the NSA—began feeding an enormous pile of classified charts and documents about federal surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers. Many of those documents suggested that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans, which in turn ignited a firestorm of controversy. The Snowden revelations have continued into this week, with The Washington Post reporting that the NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers. Snowden's documents suggest that the agency has figured out how to tap the links connecting the two tech giants' datacenters to the broader Web. Google told the Post that it was "troubled" by the report. A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.""
Re:permissions (Score:4, Informative)
For the USA, the people of the United States who elected a president that made campaign promises not to do many of the things that Snowden proved they were doing. For corporations the government which they are chartered or acting.
Re:permissions (Score:5, Informative)
Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.
Morals are not universal.
Oh, the fuck they aren't.
I'm getting pretty fed up with people excusing fucked up behavior by claiming, 'waaah, but morals are hard!'
No, they fucking aren't; you want to be a morally just person? Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated. Excluding true sociopaths who are chemically unable to parse the concept, yes, morality really is that simple.
Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ?? (Score:2, Informative)
Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though. He lost a lot of sympathy when he went down that road.
Re:permissions (Score:2, Informative)
So a masochist would be allowed to hurt other people?
Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ?? (Score:2, Informative)
'Traitor' and 'whistleblower' are not contradictory concepts. Snowden committed treason to reveal illegal behavior in the NSA. I am in favor of using his information to force the NSA to follow the law, *and* in favor of putting him in jail for treason.
It's also wrong to suggest that whistleblowers should receive automatic pardons. There were ways to reveal this information without committing treason; Snowden chose not to take that route. He's a traitor *and* a hero, and ideally his actions would cause positive change in the world while he's rotting in jail.
Re:permissions (Score:2, Informative)
Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.
As a exhibitionist who's also a voyeur, I couldn't agree more. Now if you'd just open the curtains a bit more...