[eeeuo]

Leaking secrets is not a freedom of speech issue.

I would agree with you if Snowden narrowly leaked the details of the PRISM program. I think if he did that he would have been a genuine hero. But he didn't. He downloaded as much secret information as he could, and gave them to organizations that were openly hostile to American interests.

Consider the level of detail of methods and sources in the information leaked by Snowden. I think one would have to be extremely naive to believe that Russia and China did not get their hands on the Snowden leaks very quickly(and that's the most charitable interpretation). Therefore, the leaks weakened the US's geopolitical position and improved the position of their rivals.

For a command-in-chief to reward a person who did that with a Medal of Freedom would be a truly baffling choice.

[Buge]

Did Snowden give is data to organizations that were hostile to the US? I thought he gave it to journalists, and let them censor as they saw fit.

[na85]

>organizations that were openly hostile to American interests.

Exactly which organizations are you referring to?

[bitofhope]

Yea I'd like to have this elaborated on. As is the GP makes The Guardian sound like Daesh.

[eeeuo]

Wikileaks.

[dmix]

Isn't it also naive to think China and Russia weren't fully aware of the NSA's capabilities? If anything the only effect it had on intelligence agencies is it accelerated the smaller countries towards this type of mass surveillance, they learned thoroughly what was possible - beyond what you can buy at miltech trade shows. And now we see many awful countries mimicking this type of stuff now, like in Ethiopia.

But otherwise for 99% of it the only one it was new and valuable to was the public.

As good as the FBI/IC is at counter-intelligence if Snowden can do this stuff I'm sure a highly trained spy recruited by any top tier agency could get similar access.

Also notably Snowden did not leak the really sensitive TAO stuff, which was well compartmentalized. He mostly leaked spreadsheets for the 'middle management' in NSA. I'm sure he only revealed a small portion of their top-teir capabilities. And the stuff he did leak was almost always very vague, often just a few bullet points in a spreadsheet was all we had to work with...

[eeeuo]

> Isn't it also naive to think China and Russia weren't fully aware of the NSA's capabilities?

The latest Mueller indictment suggests no.

I believe that the NSA's domestic surveillance programs were an egregious mistake. However, I do not think that "awful countries" implemented domestic surveillance programs because they read the PRISM documents. Nor does it explain why Snowden leaked details of activities that were not illegal and fully within the mandate of the NSA.

[bachbach]

You may correct me if you know better, but I have not seen any information that was leaked that I didn't imagine Russia or China already being very aware of.

Was this information revealed to only Russia/China and kept from journalists? If so how do you know about it?

[remarkEon]

"They probably already know about it" seems like a weird standard to use for answering the question of if making a particular state secret public harms the National interest.