I once publicly stated here that I think some accounts are astroturfers, and I think some are deep state too. I am not making specific accusations.

Sorry, but is Russia or the USA the one most likely to kill Snowden? Oh, yeah, it isn't Russia, because Snowden avoids saying things that could trigger his KGB handlers to disappear him... Like denouncing a genocidal war of aggression against a neighbor, or the assassination of journalists and political opponents, or the repression of any opposition in the streets...

In the case of Assange, Australian politicians did a lot of work to get him released in the end[1], including:

* Sending a delegation representing all major political parties to the US to argue for the release of Assange. Imagine picking the Republican and Democrat politician LEAST likely to want to cooperate on anything, and those two would have been Australia's equivalent representatives in this delegation. Reports afterwards of the meeting at DOJ HQ indicated it wasn't the type of meeting where the Australians would have brought Tim Tams to share around the room.[2]

* The Australian parliament voted publicly 2:1 on a motion for Assange's release.

* Repeated petitioning through ambassadors in the UK and US, official visits of Australian politicians, etc. Not in private either, as is typically the case for diplomatic affairs.

* Australian politicians attending UK extradition hearings.

* After getting agreement to a plea deal, flying Australian ambassadors for the UK and US to the court of a one-pub-town in the middle of the Pacific Ocean no one has heard of (Northern Mariana Islands) in support of Assange, then all of them flying back to the Australian prime minister's aircraft terminal for a welcome home bevvy.

This was all at a time too where "Free Assange" posters and graffiti was _widely_ distributed across Australian cities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Plea_bargain_an...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/inside-the-us-austral...

Reality Winner got five years for showing Russian interference in elections, which seems like doing the right thing

No one was holding them up "as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists." I was holding them up as history. History will judge Snowden differently because he chose exile and didn't give himself the opportunity for pardons or plea deals like Manning and Assange.

Is Snowden... free, in Russia? Is he, really? Between his constant KGB handlers and the Ukrainian bombings?

Just like Snowden, Manning would have been treated as a whistleblower if he had only leaked illegal or possibly illegal things the government did. Instead, he dumped a full archive of secret diplomatic cables. That's not as bad as Snowden, who deliberately leaked Chinese targets to China in hopes of getting asylum in Hong Kong.

>Assange didn't commit a crime

Assange literally pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act.

And if we're going to pretend that plea deals are coercion than we better rethink how the whole criminal justice system works.

> Assange didn't commit a crime

Smearing your own faeces on the wall isnt a crime - but breach of bail is

We don’t know whether Assange committed a crime because he refused to go to Sweden to face the rape charges

He did of course commit several crimes under UK law by absconding to the Ecuadorian Embassy

For some people what Snowden did was the right thing. But settling in that particular country, makes it seem like he didn't do it from pureness of his heart. Maybe it was accidental but optics is optics.

He took the easy way out that is best for him individually, which is understandable but undermined future debate on the question

There isn’t one under the law so no.

Why wasn’t the whistleblower process followed? Why didn’t he try to contact his congressman/ senator ? He could have said I don’t want a clearance anymore and disclosed his concerns. He could have reported anonymously even.

He wanted public debate and discourse on something that the process didn’t allow

> It's ridiculous to argue otherwise.

I wholeheartedly disagree :)

If you will refer to the “survivability onion”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivability#/media/File:Surv...

                 Don't be there
     I am here → Don't be seen
                 Don't be acquired
  You are here → Don't be hit
                 Don't be penetrated
                 Don't be killed

if you visit wikipedia.org/whistleblowing, what exactly value is there from hiding content but force revealing you visited it, making sure it can't be retrieved from a cache within your organization/school network?

and doesn't pervasive tls termination mean that Cloudflare/etc sees plaintext anyway? do we really believe that palantir isn't tapping into that?

i can imagine just a few scenarios where hiding content on the web actually achieves something. mainly stuff like webmail, web chats, banking.

Doesn't encrypted DNS make a lot of that metadata moot ?

And of course the additional options available

I see what you’re saying, but true stateless people often have a different problem on their hands, because most countries won’t allow them entry at all unless they can get refugee status, and they will often be denied basic rights.

Some people actually voluntarily seek statelessness, but they’re either crazy or have enough resources to fly under the radar somewhere.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness

Snowden’s status is more of a political exile. Theoretically he could return legally and safely if there was a complete regime change where the new regime was aligned with his beliefs and actions, although the chances of this happening are approximately zero.

He wasn’t stateless. Stateless means no country recognizes you as a citizen. He just faced arrest if he returned. Same as any other fugitive. People seeking asylum still have a country and citizenship. Also he wasn’t facing treason charges. He was charged under the Espionage Act and with theft of government property. There were others in similar situations that faced up to 45 months in prison and Eric Holder was willing to make a deal in 2015.

He basically is on self imposed exile in Russia.

It's not a "false equivalence". Multiple people are trying to explain to you what "stateless" actually means and how's it's materially different than being a fugitive, but you are refusing to listen.