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Edward Snowden is asking the US president to pardon him based on the morality of his action.
Well, here is a completely opposite view from the other side, so to speak:
http://observer.com/2016/09/were-losing-the-war-against-terrorism/
"Since 9/11, NSA has been the backbone of the Western intelligence alliance against terrorism. Its signals intelligence is responsible for the strong majority of successful counterterrorism operations in the West. More than three-quarters of the time, NSA or one of its close partner Anglosphere spy partners like Britain's GCHQ, develops a lead on a terror cell which is passed to the FBI and others for action which crushes that cell before it kills. If NSA loses the ability to do this, innocent people in many countries will die.
Unfortunately, there's mounting evidence that NSA's edge over the terrorists is waning. It's impossible not to notice that jihadist emphasis on communications security and encryption, which is now gaining ground, began in 2013. That, of course, is when Edward Snowden, an NSA IT contractor, stole something like 1.7 million classified documents from his employer, shared them with outsiders, then defected to Moscow."
"However, our precious edge in the SpyWar is waning fast. We are no longer winning. We're about to hear a great deal of unwarranted praise of Ed Snowden thanks to the hagiographic movie about him by Oliver Stone that's to be released this week. Don't be fooled. Snowden is no hero. In truth, he and his journalist helpers have aided terrorists in important ways. Snowden and his co-conspirators have blood on their hands—and perhaps much more blood soon thanks to their aid to the genocidal maniacs of ISIS."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:38PM
> How does legal surveillance hurt me?
The fallacy of your question is that because something may be legal it is therefore good.
How does the perfectly legal torture of non citizens, not on US soil, with the wrong color of skin hurt me?
Why was NSA spying on a foreign leader's phone? Or on Parliament?
But rather than continue with the fallacy of the question, here is a direct answer to that question.
It hurts you, sooner or later, when your own government is building a detailed personal profile on every single person in the US, or maybe even on the entire planet. It may not hurt you today. But sooner or later, different people come into power. And they will not hesitate to use this 'innocently' gathered database to do real harm. To you, or to your descendants.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Monday September 19 2016, @05:54PM
My claim wasn't "it was legal, therefore good" It was "the things that happen to be legal, are good"
Torture is morally horrible, makes the world worse, and is again and rightly, illegal.
That's their job. So that the President et al can make better decision.
See, that's where "legal" comes in. I agree about databases of US citizens. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't spy on anyone. Anything Angela Merkel (or Barrack Obama) says into an unencrypted cellphone (or landline) should be assumed to be known to every country's government (or at least, all major countries).