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Charles Cooper reports that venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has called former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for leaking national secrets about US surveillance practices and says that foreign nations may use the disclosures as an excuse to promote their domestic technology suppliers over American rivals. "Obviously he's a traitor," says Andreessen. "Like if you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor,' there's a picture of Ed Snowden. Like he's a textbook traitor. They don't get much more traitor than that. I will say that I'm in the distinct minority out here. Most people in Silicon Valley would pick the other designation."
Andreessen added that NSA leaks may well wind up getting used as a cudgel by foreign governments against American companies that depend on overseas sales. "There's a big open question right now how successful our companies will be when they go sell products overseas," says Andreessen. "I think there are a lot of foreign companies that are very envious of Silicon Valley and America's domination of tech and wish that they could implement protection policies. And they are going to use this whole affair as a reason to do that ... as an excuse."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SlimmPickens on Saturday June 07 2014, @10:02PM
He is legally, morally and ethically required to expose illegal acts by his own government, especially after the result he got from repeatedly raising his concerns through the official channels. That prevents him from being a traitor, especially with the lengths he took to minimise "aiding the enemy". Blame for the damage lies 100% with the intelligence community and the executive branch.
You can not have the USA actively compromising information infrastructure and in the process exposing everyone to governments and criminals alike to facilitate their own offensive cyber warfare. Can you not see how fucked that is? I dearly hope you're just a trolly-wolly.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 09 2014, @03:03PM
especially with the lengths he took to minimise "aiding the enemy"
No he didn't. He provided this information to the American People. The American people are the enemy of the government.
He is legally, morally and ethically required to expose illegal acts by his own government,
The government doesn't care about morality or ethics, and "legal" is whatever the people in power say it is.
I dearly hope you're just a trolly-wolly.
I'm just representing the government's viewpoint here.