Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

Extent and Nature of Surveillance

• Central dispute: does bulk interception of communications mean “everyone is surveilled”?
  • One side: if communications/metadata are captured, stored, and searchable, that is surveillance, regardless of whether a human ever “looks” at it; it creates chilling effects and enables retroactive targeting.
  • Other side: bulk collection is a capability; unless you become a specific “target of interest” and your records are queried/analysed, you’re not meaningfully being surveilled.
• Debate over terminology: intelligence officials have defined “intercept” as requiring human cataloguing, leaving machine-only processing outside the formal definition.
• Some argue the entire purpose of mass collection is to algorithmically decide who becomes a target.

Feasibility and Infrastructure

• Long back-and-forth about whether US intelligence agencies can realistically “collect it all.”
  • Skeptics call NSA infrastructure “toy-sized” compared to global data center capacity, arguing full capture of US-person communications is economically/physically impossible.
  • Others counter with the Utah Data Center specs, data deduplication, compression, and comparisons to the Internet Archive to claim large-scale, long-term storage of world internet traffic (at least metadata/unique traffic) is plausible.
• William Binney and programs like Stellar Wind are cited as evidence of domestic mass collection; Binney’s later public behavior leads some to question his credibility.

Snowden: Whistleblower or Traitor?

• Strong split:
  • Supporters see him as exposing illegal, “treasonous” mass surveillance; blame the government for betraying public trust.
  • Critics say he violated lawful trust, harmed national security, and should “face trial”; some depict his motives as personal grievance.
• Disagreement over his exile in Russia:
  • One view: he “chose” an adversary and became part of its information strategy.
  • Counterview: the US cancelled his passport mid-transit, effectively forcing him to accept Russian asylum.
• Concerns raised about secret courts, “secret law,” and whether he could ever get a fair public trial.

Impact on Trust, Policy, and Public Apathy

• Several commenters argue Snowden’s revelations were historically huge, yet led to little reform; surveillance has since expanded and been normalized.
• Wyden–Daines Amendment (failed by one Senate vote) is cited as proof that even modest warrant protections for web/search history couldn’t pass.
• Some worry the leaks fed general distrust in institutions and helped pave the way for later populist politics; others say economic factors (e.g., 2008 crisis) mattered more and most Americans barely remember Snowden.
• Frustration with public apathy: calls to treat privacy-violating organizations like major polluters or tobacco companies—through exposure, shaming, and legislation.

Media, Fiction, and “Conspiracy” Framing

• Films and TV (“Enemy of the State,” X-Files, Clancy novels, Stargate, etc.) seen by some as eerily prescient or even deliberate “pressure release valves” that normalize or discredit real capabilities by embedding them in fiction.
• Others argue conflating 1990s-style grand conspiracies (assassinations of US citizens, omniscient panopticons) with the Snowden docs is misguided; those leaks showed serious abuses, but not the cinematic extremes.

Meta: Missing Docs, HN Culture, and Bots

• Question why most Snowden documents remain unreleased and why journalists largely stopped publishing them.
• Some see this thread’s anti-Snowden sentiment as indicative of HN’s alignment with government/contractor interests, or as driven by bots and coordinated propaganda.
• Others note that both “Snowden as pure hero” and “Snowden as pure villain/Russian asset” narratives are oversimplifications; the situation is inherently dual: both clear whistleblowing and clear lawbreaking.