Edward Snowden interview

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[Professor]

[Professor]

[Professor]

[gla22]

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Point is Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat expecting to get arrested. That's civil disobedience. What Snowden did was not civil disobedience, it was vigilantism.

Parks wasn't trying to hijack control over the bus. She was violating the seating rule to make a point about equality. Snowden on the other hand just decided he had the authority to unilaterally declassify classified documents. It isn't a valid comparison on any level.

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[gla22]

[Bauce]

By the modern understanding of civil disobedience in western society, Snowden doesn't qualify. Civil disobedience is a subversive act of protest. It's not about the intrinsic value or outcome of the act. It's about creating a disruption to address an injustice. You could apply this to Snowden only in the most abstract terms, but it wasn't about that for him. He released the documents cause he thought people should see them. He didn't handcuff himself to the gates of the White House and demand that the truth be revealed. He just went ahead and abused his access to secret documents by releasing them. It's vigilantism.

I hate that I'm even saying this but eynon had the better comparison earlier in this thread with Harriet Tubman. Still severely flawed for many reasons, but she was in fact a vigilante.

[gla22]