I personally do, he actually risked his life to release information about the government spying on people. And there are for sure more advanced ways now. Even your phone is listening.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    His demand to return to the US and give himself in was if he got a public (non military) trial.

    The government’s offer under Obama was that the only guarantee they would provide was that he wouldn’t be subject to torture.

    Even if he had negligible effect on state level surveillance, the documents he shared provided some insanely valuable perspective into the capability and power of nation states in the cybersecurity space.

    Anything the NSA is or was doing can also be applied to other major countries like China or Russia, and the capability + compute power has only grown in size since.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_disclosures

    EDIT: Also in true American foreign interest memery, the top two most heavily surveilled states are Iran and Pakistan.

    • rbos@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      The USA has stretched ‘technically not torture’ too far for that to be comforting.