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Edward Snowden Echoes Richard Stallman's Warnings On Proprietary Software After User Says 'Adobe Can Not Be Trusted' (www.benzinga.com)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Sorry for letting you hang, I've been swamped.

I believe he was going to LATAM and he couldn't continue while transiting through russia.

That's what I recall, too. That he was going to Latin America from Hong Kong through Sheremetyevo. But then on the Wikipedia page it said that Russian authorities have claimed that Snowden applied for asylum before departing Hong Kong. But again, probably propaganda.

Why is his collaborating with the russians not a fair circumstance to take in account? If he is being forced to work with them, then shouldn't we disregard what he says as being suspect? Aren't there better spokespersons for the FOSS/digital privacy movement that can be promoted instead?

Disregarding any statements that originates within Russia's sphere of influence should be default. But on account of what Snowden did more than 10 years ago, he's still given a voice in tech media.

He is almost certainly trying to leverage his fame and influence to promote russian security services goals; i.e. try to sow discord in the US.

I agree that Snowden's fame is being leveraged, but I don't think that it's necessarily done on Snowden's initiative. As you said it yourself, Snowden is a tool in the Russian propaganda toolkit.

for example in europe they were involved with green organizations in order to counteract the possibility of a rise in shale gas production in Europe.

Yeah, a Russian woman, who had received 45k EUR from the SVR run Pravfond, was just arrested in Denmark. She had run a legal counseling service for Russians in Denmark and ran for municipal elections for the socialist communists. I wonder how many people Russia has planted to run these low intensity operations around the world.

I would even speculate that he has internalized a lot of their goals (he is a russian citizen after all).

He definitely could have internalized the Russian state's goals. But I don't think that him being a Russian citizen should be an indication. That's probably more of a middle finger from Putin in the direction of the US. Sorta like "Congratulations, that application for citizenship you didn't fill out, has been approved. Go say your lines little puppet"