Would Snowden have said the same thing if Durov didn't escape from Russia before he was arrested? Probably not, Snowden is part of the Russian Spy and Disinformation campaign. He is basically a Russian agent.
Snowden left the United States because the Federal Government wants to imprison him. The government wants to imprison him because he revealed them to be engaged in illegal surveillance on a scale that makes the Stasi's seem modest by comparison. To stay out of prison, he had to go to a country which wouldn't extradite him, hence his presence in Russia.
Edward Snowden is a hero who has made a tremendous sacrifice for Americans and for American ideals. The fact that he has to live in Russia to enjoy peace and freedom is a damning indictment, to be sure, but not of Edward Snowden.
I wouldn't call it a "tremendous sacrifice" then. It would have been had he decided to face trial, or at least not flee to a country that is the historical enemy of the US with access to who knows how many copies of secret documents so that he could save his ass.
I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras. Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison (he broke the law after all) and be a free US citizen. After all, Assange and Manning are both free right now.
Yes, years in prison is not fun, at all (hence the "sacrifice" part), but I guess his stay in Russia is not particularly fun either. And now, he risks an even greater sentence should he go back to the US.
His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
> I wouldn't call it a "tremendous sacrifice" then.
Moving 10K miles away from you family and friends, never to return home isn't a tremendous sacrifice? Living the rest of your life in fear of being snatched up or murdered by the CIA isn't a tremendous sacrifice? Okay, dude.
> It would have been had he decided to face trial
It's only a sacrifice if you submit corrupt justice? Yikes.
> or at least not flee to a country that is the historical enemy of the US...
This is the best option to avoid extradition, as you well know.
> ...with access to who knows how many copies of secret documents so that he could save his ass.
What a damning hypothetical!
> I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras.
This is weaselspeak for "we all know he wouldn't have gotten a fair trial."
> Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison
A decade in prison. For doing his duty.
> His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
Yours is the morality of a Vichy collaborator. True heroes submit to injustice? Bullshit! True heroes fight injustice and thumb their noses at corrupt centers of power.
No. But it's reasonable to presume he's a compromised source. That doesn't mean he wants to be, nor that everything he's saying has been dictated to him. But his public communications would be, at the very least, monitored and vetted.
at this point he is at the mercy of his FSB handler, either he posts what he is told/expected to or he loses usefulness and joins Russell 'Texas' Bentley as a cautionary tale.
His continued existance in Russia antagonizes the US Intelligence Community. That itself has value to Russia. Not tremendous value, but value nevertheless.
Really? How convenient for you to just blame the USA and list France as an affiliate. If the USA wanted him (Durov), they could have arrested him a long time ago.
Why doesn't Snowden speak about the horrors of the Russian war in Ukraine where woman and children are raped and shot?
He only speaks when it is beneficial for his masters.
> love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
I thought and still think that Snowden is a brave and righteous man for airing the US government's dirty laundry.
Not him becoming a Russian citizen, but rather his silence on the bloody war of Putin, however, makes me think that I should take Snowden's words with a pinch of salt.
Do you really think Putin would hesitate to arrest him if he did that?
Snowden knows he is being watched closely. I suppose that is itself a reason to take what he says with a grain of salt, but I certainly don't take his silence on the Ukraine war as evidence of assent.
It's just not like Snowden of the past to endorse apps with bad privacy defaults and non encrypted group chats like Telegram. I'd have understood if he had said the same if the CEO of Signal was arrested, but I can't understand it for Telegram, an app that's mostly not used in an e2e encrypted way.
Telegram is also an app that is widely used by Russian troops to organize and also for dissemination of propaganda and misinformation. It's just not characteristic of Snowden to endorse apps that could potentially be honeypots/backdoored, and to equate such apps as important to free speech.
> love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
This tweet is literally plain propaganda move, as it has little to do with human rights... and Snowden has been a treasure trove of Russian sponsored propaganda lately.
To the point of me thinking that his Twitter is just some FSB agent writing posts for him.
