826
Congratulations on making insignificance an aspiration, I guess? We're all very happy for you.
827
The reasoning behind the old "I have nothing to hide" defense of surveillance abuses is humiliating, if you think it through.
Essentially:
1) Only those who stand out are targeted
2) I do not stand out
3) I cannot stand out
4) Phew, I'm safe
weird flex but ok
828
Shamefully, it took me a very long time, peering down from my technocratic perch at the CIA and later the NSA, to apprehend the nature of my work: transforming the internet—a liberating, democratizing tool—into an architecture of oppression.
edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
829
before you complain about me not citing your random coin with a market cap of $37 that is developed by forest animals in romania, remember that bitcoin is essentially shorthand for cryptocurrency and also your time is better spent making little outfits for the animals to wear
830
Bitcoin fixes this. twitter.com/business/statu…
831
Princeton Computer Scientists: @Apple is "gambling with security, privacy and free speech worldwide."
The core design of Apple's new "child safety" system—comparing your photos against a secret blacklist—is "dangerous" and "easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship." twitter.com/evacide/status…
832
At the beginning of this year, every press freedom and human rights group in the world that matters called for Biden to drop the charges against Assange. Instead, his Justice Department just doubled down on persecuting him.
Now you know why: twitter.com/wikileaks/stat…
833
An excerpt from my thoughts on the tragic conclusion to our invasion of Afghanistan—a hell of our own making.
If you're not yet on the mailing list, you can access the full article using this link: edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul )
834
I felt like picking Afghanistan up by its ankles and shaking it until all the terrorists fell out, like scorpions from a boot. Most Americans felt that way, in the autumn of 2001, and I was no different. I was 18 years old, and almost competitively wrong. edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
835
Today, the country this describes is Afghanistan. Tomorrow, the country this describes might be my own.
edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
836
Some will say, "They didn't fight! They get what they deserve!" To which I say, "And what do we deserve?"
edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
837
Just hours before I sat down to draft this, the President of the United States gave a speech in which he tried to defend the honor of this war—a defense that is frankly offensive, and that I think most offends the families of the injured and the dead.
edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
838
If there are any lessons to be learned from this tragic sequel to Saigon, you can be assured, we will not learn them.
edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
839
On Oct. 11, 2001, a few days after the United States started bombing the Taliban, a reporter asked Bush: “Can you avoid being drawn into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?”
“All together now — quagmire!” Rumsfeld joked at a news conference on Nov. 27, 2001. twitter.com/Snowden/status…
840
"Even as President Biden said publicly a rapid collapse was unlikely to happen... the drumbeat of warnings over the summer raise questions about why they seemed ill-prepared." nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/…
841
“The history of military conflict in Afghanistan [has] been one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.”
— George W. Bush
April 17th, 2002 twitter.com/Snowden/status…
843
"The question we're facing today is should we leave Afghanistan? Of course we should. As soon as we can," he said. "If we don't, we'll be there for another decade would be my prediction." newsweek.com/ron-paul-was-r…
845
Normally I would suspect an article like this of blame-shifting, but once you see that picture of the military successfully cramming 600+ refugees on a single plane, you realize if they had started even one week earlier, it would have made the difference. usnews.com/news/world/art…
846
People clowning on The @guardian for doing news explainers on Tik Tok about 9/11 and the Taliban should bear in mind that about one in four Americans today were not even *born* until after 9/11.
They weren't even children when it happened.
We're just that old. twitter.com/tadejstrok/sta…
847
*Returning* to vacation while the news plays side-by-side footage of people falling to their deaths trying to cling to escaping aircraft is truly difficult to understand. At this point his advisers should be charged with political malpractice. twitter.com/JakeSherman/st…
848
The most frustrating part of the Biden's Afghanistan messaging is that everyone already agrees that leaving is the right choice.
Instead he fearfully argues against positions no one holds while refusing to contend with the actual evacuation.
He could have reached people. twitter.com/Snowden/status…
You can find me on #nostr @ pubkey: #npub1sn0wdenkukak0d9dfczzeacvhkrgz92ak56egt7vdgzn8pv2wfqqhrjdv9. (use Damus on iOS, Amethyst on Android, or snort.social)