Given the historical record of various Secret Agencies, I’d dare to say that regardless what is in the leak, as long as it is true it strengthens the democracy.
The Agencies tend to fester grossly when in the darkness. Sometimes you need to shine a bright light right into them. Sometimes you get collateral damage, but it’s generally worth it.
In democracy, how can you be expected to make informed decisions at the elections without having the knowledge of what is actually happening? Are you saying we should just trust our Three Letters Supervisors? COINTELPRO, anyone?
I’ve already disabled flash. Since disabling flash hasn’t blocked this, either it’s not flash, or its a new version of flash which breaks former blocking tools such as QuickJava.
Another possibility is just blocking the sound - keep the machine muted by default. Can be done with a mechanical switch, or in case of laptops by putting a dummy connector (e.g. a headphone jack cut from a dead headset) to the headphones port to disable the internal speakers. Pull it out when you want sound.
So you would have been quite happy if a Snowden of the day spilled the beans about the then, 3 letter agencies, breaking the German and Japanese codes? That was the hacking of the day.
If we can just get the Oxbridge establishment to acknowledge that the reporter was conforming perfectly to editorial policy, the mystery of his having been hired will be solved.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor there was a formally declared state of war between the US and Japan which was followed quickly by a formally declared state of war between the US and Germany. [I suspect you’re going to say something like the “war on terrorism” – do you have a reference to the Congressional resolution like this one where a state of war against terrorism is formally declared?]
The declaration against Japan includes the following phrase:
the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United states.
See @Steve_L’s well-thought out reply above. Or, for a more pithy version with extra crudity, because trying to stop the Nazis taking over the fucking world is entirely different to acting like the Stasi getting their cyberpunk on in your own back yard. Equivalence: False. See?
I think the central flaw to your line of thought is that Snowden didn’t release anything. Therefore the claim that he didn’t read it all before he released it becomes a specious argument. Snowden carefully chose a respected investigative news outlet to be the keepers of the data and to review its contents prior to anything being made public.
In short, Snowden never released anything so saying he never read what he released is bullshit.
