The idea that Snowden, Ellsberg, or whoever should accept the consequences is Silly

[cthulu2016]

Sometimes protesters make a point of facing the criminal penalty for their protest.

Doing so is a form of martyrdom that is part of the protest. You don't get much publicity for civil disobedience if you aren't arrested for it.

King and Ghandi were preaching from the pulpit of their own persecution and that of their followers. It was a public relations stance, and an effective one.

But consider this—if one is so impressed with the majesty of a law against sitting in the front of the bus that they feel it right to be sanctioned for sitting in the front of the bus then respect for the system would best be shown by not sitting in the front of the bus in the first place. This whole idea that it is virtuous to break the law as long as you then turn yourself in gets sillier the longer you think about it.

Civil disobedience is a public relations challenge to the system. The British will eventually become disgusted with their own futile and cruel actions against the Indian people.

On the other hand, a leaker's primary goal is not to awaken the public to the plight of leakers and shame the oppressor by clogging the system with sympathetic leakers.

A leaker's goal is that datum X be known rather than unknown.

Just think how differently the Pentagon Papers would have played if Ellsberg had fled the country. It would have... oh, it would have made no difference whatsoever. The Pentagon Papers were a set of papers published by the NYT showing that the USA had deceived the populace about the nature of the Vietnam war.

If Ellsberg had sprouted wings or robbed a liquor store or become a Scientologist it would not have mattered much. The event was a series of NYT articles, not anything about Ellsberg himself. (Versus Scott Ritter. Ritter's credibility was of interest because he offered, among other things, analytic conclusions, and thus he was worth delegitimizing. But if Ritter had simply dumped a stack of secret UN documents on the NYT then his subsequent conduct wouldn't have mattered much. The docuents would be authentic or not and speak for themselves or not.)

A lot of times activists want to stand trial because a trial allows them a public forum to get their message out. Any classified leaker trial today would be held in a sound-proofed box somewhere, so that's not much use.

Again, Snowden (narcissistic naive asshole... stipulated here as such) did not take some documents at random as part of a civil disobedience protest against classification protocols. He took some documents because, for whatever reason and however wrongheaded it might have been, so that their contents would be known to the world.

Giving a set of documents to the Washington Post not civil disobedience to try to win the vote or better wages for people who mishandle classified information.

It was not civil disobedience at all. It was publication.

Similarly, Ellberg's intent was to inform the nation about what the Pentagon had really thought about Vietnam.

The USA is right to charge Snowden with crimes. If he is not a criminal then our entire system of classified information means nothing.

And Snowden is neither right nor wrong to evade prosecution for those crimes. He is, however, sensible to do so.

Spending life in solitary would do nothing whatsoever to advance public awareness of NSA programs. Somewhat the opposite, really... it wouldn't encourage more leakers. It would not enhance his public platform. It would not accomplish anything from his perspective.


I do not know whether Snowden has any principles. I don't care, either. The man means nothing to me.

But whatever principles he *ought to* have, volunteering to be in prison would not be true to those principles nor would it advance those principles.