Edward Snowden Poll
Many of you have asked that I share my thoughts on Edward Snowden and I have thought long and hard about it.
I have finally made a decision, and I am hesitant to do so because I believe this is a very emotional subject. When people are emotional, their ability to be logical and hence spot the truth plummets. Science has studied this and found emotions trump reasoning nearly every time. And when people are emotional and don’t agree with me, they lash out, and I’d prefer not to go there.
Thank you for understanding.
What do you think of Edward Snowden?
so, you’re not gonna tell us your decision?
I’ll give you mine….he’s lying…there are some things he believes himself but I see his actions thus far as the most telling. Cowards hide…cowards lie.
This is what Eyes is talking about in regards to emotion clouding judgement. Take a look at the risk/reward ratio of his actions. What does he risk? At best being a hunted man for the rest of his life, at worse being found guilty of treason and facing the death penalty. What is the best possible reward? A job at the russian Facebook? You can strongly agree or disagree with his actions as much as you see fit, and you can come to conclusions about how truthful he’s being, but calling him a coward doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve noticed the same kind of “coward” name calling during 9/11. It’s funny how ‘our’ guys who dropped the only atomic bombs used on people did so from the relative safety of their airplanes without seeing their victims, and as expected, flew back, alive, to a heroes welcome. Yet somehow, guys who gave up their own lives and crashed the planes into the twin towers were cowards.
I think ‘cowards’ is some kind of face saving, hurt pride, indirect anger outlet. I’ve never heard it used appropriately in situations like this.
In this case, you can say he “ran and hid”, and thus he is a coward. However, that’s not only an over simplification, but a mislabel.
95% of Snowden’s actions–doing what he did every day at work, with the fearful potential of getting caught, fully experiencing the gravity of what he was doing, and how it would affect his life, leaving his life, friends, relatives all behind, and going “on the run” to several other countries–took a lot of guts.
Great response !!
so, rather than talk about whether you believe he’s lieing you have chosen to instead dissect my statement. He’s a coward…period. He hides in a country with a miserable human rights record. Why doesn’t he come home and face the law? Because he’s a coward….and a liar. AND I formed that opinion from watching this interview.
its an emotional opinion which is the reason eyes shouldn’t post her thoughts.
Haven’t read hardly anything on him and seen only a minute or 2 of footage of him since the whole thing started forever ago and frankly I’m not interested, but just wanted to say I think its the right decision to withhold your opinion 🙂
I will know that it is the right decision if there is a diversity in the polls responses 🙂
Hi Eyes. I am very interested in your opinion, even if it’s totally opposite to mine. I suggest those who get emotional weren’t that interested in the truth to begin with.
Haven’t been following the case at all really, but I’m not sure what is meant by him telling the truth or not… Are you referring to the leaked documents — if they’re real or fake? He’s charged by the US Department of Justice with several charges relating to theft of government property, classified intelligence. I don’t see how there can be any doubt about that. Pardon my ignorance, and please enlighten if you wish
think its referring to just interviews to which he makes other claims like being trained as a spy, ect.. not to the nature of the documents themselves which obviously are not fake.
Thanks for the clarification 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-xxzOwr7I4
Latest NBC interview of Snowden
9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! oh yeah we are spying illegally on everyone and everything 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden! 9-11! Edward Snowden!
Ohhhhh. I am just now watching this interview. I can say this at this point. He is supremely arrogant! WOW! I mean a-r-r-o-g-a-n-t. …make that a capital “A.” (I need to gather information about him, too. I have the same question, who exactly IS he… for real.) I am seven minutes in and up to the first break and he has dodged, hedged, shown exasperation, shown deception, shown strain while recalculating the trajectory of the conversation (so he’s smart, but not as fast as he is smart)… I have to watch it and then watch it again.
I perceive Edward Snowden is sending out extremely mixed signals. That’s what will cause a lot of the variance in the responses.
On the one hand, the President of the United States has taken actions in response to what Snowden did with the release of the documents. On the other hand, he’s the poster child for arrogance. Anyone who has followed this blog will know what Eyes says – arrogance is a HUGE red flag of possible deception.
My sense is that he is conflicted at a very very very basic level, and that’s the first part of what is giving all the mixed signals and why there will be such a huge variation in the responses.
On our end of things (those receiving the messages) we do NOT know the absolute truth, and everyone in this discussion has an agenda. In other words, we do NOT have an independent and reliable way to measure if he’s telling the truth in many situations. So we are somewhat blind in our understanding, that makes it even more difficult to sort the truth from lies. We just can’t know for sure in many cases. That will also contribute to the huge variation in responses.
Sometimes he was absolutely correct. The US Government was spying on its own citizens, and leaders of foreign governments (among many others). Other times we just don’t know. Thus begins that most dangerous game in deception detection – filling the gaps.
My best guess is that people are going to jump to conclusions before they have all the facts straight. People are going to think Snowden said (and intended) what they (the listener) understood him to say – and that conclusion might be totally wrong. Snowden might very well intend something entirely different from what the listener believes he (Snowden) said. However, when *we* fill the gaps, it’s very likely that we’ll be wrong, and not even know it. As Eyes has shown us, it’s best to NOT fill in the gaps, let the various issues stand as they are until clarification can be accomplished. That’s the ultimate goal – the truth – not jumping to conclusions and filling in gaps when we don’t have the evidence.
Well said, Russ, “My best guess is that people are going to jump to conclusions before
they have all the facts straight. People are going to think Snowden said
(and intended) what they (the listener) understood him to say – and
that conclusion might be totally wrong. Snowden might very well intend
something entirely different from what the listener believes he
(Snowden) said. However, when *we* fill the gaps, it’s very likely that
we’ll be wrong, and not even know it. As Eyes has shown us, it’s best to
NOT fill in the gaps, let the various issues stand as they are until
clarification can be accomplished. That’s the ultimate goal – the truth –
not jumping to conclusions and filling in gaps when we don’t have the
evidence.”
I just finished watching the whole interview. His answers seemed really polished. He uses a lot of hand gestures. He makes a lot of pronounced, almost exaggerated facial expressions (if you’ve ever seen any interview of Kobe Bryant he does the same thing). And his voice, the best way I can describe it is a radio broadcaster-like. It’s a way you don’t expect people to talk like in everyday life but almost all radio host do when they’re on the air, something you would expect from the interviewer not the interviewee. I’ve known a couple people during my life that actually talk like in everyday real life, and it annoys the **** out of me. It sounds very condescending. All this points to comfort, confidence, and arrogance. His sitting posture reeks of arrogance too.
As for as deception, I don’t see any. He did laugh when he started saying he never met Putin, when asked about if he had remote access to the documents, and when asked about his life (“even though I didn’t chose to be here, even though you know [laugh], circumstances really trapped me here”). I don’t sense any deception, but I’d be interested in Eyes’ interpretation.
Wow, I just watched his first interview from a year ago (never seen it before). It’s like a totally different person. The confidence is still there, but not the comfort or arrogance. He has a subtle look of someone who is terrified through the whole thing. It’s really a stark contrast. I don’t see any deception in that interview either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yB3n9fu-rM
I think that all that is left for Snowden to say at this point is: “All animals are equal…but some animals are more equal than others.” He’s already got his feet firmly planted on this path. His arrogance is through the roof. Several times during the interview he TOLD us how to think. If he didn’t like the question, even though he agreed that no questions are off limits, he changed the focus and the aim in his non-answer. There was a LOT of stammering and restarting and stuttering. There was a lot of dead air while he formulated. There was a lot of “preface” gobbledy-gook while he came up with responses that were, again, not on target. I was surprised that the questions asked of him were so soft. I don’t think that the interviewer would have been perceived as “the bad guy” if he had gone after the guys PERSONAL motivations. I don’t buy the fact that he’s looking to protect the average American’s rights to privacy or that he is that disapproving of the actions of the government. His own actions disprove his own complaint in that regard. While I agree that there are things that need to be modified within the intelligence community, I still view Snowden as a man who is primarily desirous of power and prestige. I can see that he believes that rules do not apply to him. He demonstrates complete contempt for authority, too. I can see that he believes that he is far more intelligent than, oh, pretty much anyone else on the planet and that you should see that, too. Not only that, you should rely on him to do your thinking for you. He made that point abundantly clear. There is so much “fill” to his responses that he sets off my BS-o-meter on a continual basis. Let those are are positioned and in good standing in the intelligence agencies work together with the other branches of government to resolve these issues. I, PERSONALLY, do NOT want an “animal that is more equal” involved in that process AT ALL.
finally watched the interview. scary, he’s a lot like me.
What do you mean Chris? It might help me understand Edward Snowden. Haha
A different opinion: Snowden seems to me as an intelligent and articulate man. He seemed well reflected on most of what Brian Williams sent his way (in latest NBC interview). Although you can say that there is a lot of “fill” to his responses, after going through the interview and every question asked by Brian Williams, I think Snowden answers most questions with a direct answer. Yes, he fills with his own thoughts and reflections, but he also answers the questions directly during this process.
Many of Brian Williams’ “questions” weren’t really questions, they were statements inviting Snowden to share his thoughts on those statements. These statements (posed as questions?) were ambiguous in nature, and Snowden gave answers he saw fit.
I agree fully with Russ Conte and Eyes that we should not try to fill in the gaps — we should not jump to conclusions. “Snowden might very well intend something entirely different from what the listener believes he (Snowden) said.” Snowden might potentially try to mislead by clever wording. When you watch the interview, you might get the impression that he dodges and evades questions with his “fill”. I think that if you go through question by question, you may find that Snowden indeed answers most of them directly (in addition to his “fill”), and that there aren’t many gaps to fill.
Some questions he didn’t answer directly:
23:37:
“How long prior to leaving Hawaii did you start to say to yourself: ‘I’m gonna gather this… I’m gonna put this away… I’m going to expose this.’?”
23:55
“What is the number? What’s the closest you’ve come to estimating the number of documents?”
And maybe the most important one, at 28:48:
“To your knowledge, there is nothing in what you’ve handed over to the journalists, of materially
damaging, or threatening to the military or national security?”
After Snowden answered that last question, there was a break in the interview in which Brian Williams pointed out that “Snowden didn’t deny turning over military secrets, he asserted instead that they wouldn’t be published.” I think he did deny it with a short “no” at the start of his answer, but that is debatable.
I think Snowden tried to answer honestly throughout the interview. I don’t think he necessarily meant to give a vague answer to that last question. At the same time I have a hard time believing that the Russian government hasn’t contacted him in regard to intelligence. Snowden answered that question at 06:00 seemingly (to me) in the same manner he answered the other questions (and he answered it directly). That makes it hard to know what to think.
Regarding his arrogance:
A year ago he stated that his biggest fear was that nothing would change as a result of his actions. Now (38:53, interview) “[…] how can it be said that this harmed the country, when all three branches of the government have made reforms as a result of it”. He has overcome his biggest fear, he is hailed as a hero by no small percentage of the population, he has earned recognition and prizes etc.. He has had a year to reflect and become more sure of his actions. I can certainly understand his arrogance. I also think the perception of arrogance is subjective.
After watching Edward Snowden on TED talks and part of his recent NBC interview I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t understand him. What motivates him? I can’t say.
I understand his words and logic, and on the whole they seem reasonable although perhaps a little exaggerated.
He seems to have been stranded and accepted an offer from Russia to reside there which ironically may have been caused by the US government.
He took a path which doesn’t seem typical of whistleblowers. I don’t really understand his motivations and intentions.
I tried to match him to people I know but the match I find is more like a resemblence and so I’m uncertain about his personality. I guess I’m saying that he lacks credibility with me, which isn’t to say that he actually lacks credibility. Puzzling!