Snowden: Why I Decided Not To Delete My Old Internet Posts
I don&#x27;t share the sympathies of him being a hero. I&#x27;d wait until seeing all the information before making a judgment:<p>There&#x27;s conflicting stories on Edward Snowden&#x27;s history. There&#x27;s accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]<p>There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That&#x27;s the most damning information against him. If that didn&#x27;t exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.<p>There&#x27;d still be <i>allegations</i> in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.<p>In his upbringing he probably had events with parent&#x2F;authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It&#x27;s progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.<p>He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.<p>The leaks themselves:<p>He didn&#x27;t suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won&#x27;t stop doing it, and they&#x27;d be happy if adversaries stopped.<p>In his videos &#x2F; posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling &#x2F; interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It&#x27;s as if he had his wish, he&#x27;d throw away the whole system.<p>It&#x27;s like he can&#x27;t discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn&#x27;t look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;republicans-intelligence.house.gov&#x2F;uploadedfiles&#x2F;hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;republicans-intelligence.house.gov&#x2F;uploadedfiles&#x2F;hps...</a>