You're saying that you're not arguing about semantics, but that's the entire content of your argument. The talk of "practitioners of civil disobedience" taints any arguments that follow. I could just as easily say "other practitioners of yoga feel that actions needed to be guided by energy to be considered justified", and say that Snowden's actions are unjusitifed for that reason (hearty apologies to any yogis out there).
So strip the labels entirely before applying them ruthlessly.
That said, let me talk to the heart of your argument, which is more about whether his actions are justified, rather than what they are called. I would say that Snowden's goals are twofold, in my mind. One goal is to expose a secretive and possibly illegal operation perpetrated by a government that is supposed to represent the will of its people, that was being kept secret despite the fact that publicly acknowledging it arguably does not compromise it as a means of stopping the organizations that it is purportedly targeting, and thus the secrecy was not essential to the operation, but rather was to keep people ignorant of the violation of their privacy.
The second goals is to encourage other people to come forward with information that they feel satisfies these criteria.
The third goal, which is really, in my mind, a non-goal, is to expose the government's harsh treatment of people who reveal government secrets.
Facing trial and potentially being incarcerated furthers only the third of these goals, which is not really even a goal. It hurts the second goal significantly. And it is largely irrelevant to the first goal, which is accomplished whether or not he is penalized. Successfully fleeing prosecution advances the second goal significantly, and only hurts the third goal. I don't see how the fleeing prosecution affects the first goal in either direction, which is the most important one.
So are his actions justified? I think, as do many others on this site, that the first two goals here are very important ones, and the third is not important, so in my opinion, yes, justified. I hope his conscience is clear. The other question, whether they are effective, is separate, and remains to be seen. I am not optimistic; violations of privacy cause no real substantial harm until they do, and at that point it is too late to protest. I haven't even switched away from google, and my parents don't even know who Edward Snowden is.
> You're saying that you're not arguing about semantics, but that's the entire content of your argument.
> That said, let me talk to the heart of your argument
So first, those statements are clearly in conflict.
Second, I purposefully haven't been arguing from first principles about the general question of whether his actions were justified. That's just way, way beyond the scope of this thread.
I have consistently only been discussing whether practitioners of civil disobedience would find his actions justified (modulo my one interjection that starts "Personally,..."). That doesn't make my argument about semantics, it means I am only discussing what how the arguments of those thinkers would be applied to this situation. Saying "but it's not civil disobedience" does not avoid the charge, according to those arguments, that the acts were unjustified.
Entire content of your argument referred to the means by which you were making the argument, not the ... forget it, let's not keep going into that hole.
Talking about what the practitioners of civil disobedience think is entirely irrelevant to justification. A boy helps an old woman carry her groceries across the street. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exclaims, "why would he do that! That's not civil disobedience! It is unjustified!"
People can do good things, that are justified, without it being civil disobedience. If one calls it civil disobedience, then viewed in that light, it gets complicated. But since it is not civil disobedience (I assert), why do we have to justify it against the standards applied to civil disobedience? It's also not "rule by divine right of Kings" -- is it therefore unjustified by that standard? It's not "because it helps the children", is it therefore unjustified? We can go over all the ways that it does not meet how various people justify actions, and still come no closer to looking at his actions for what they are.
Clearly, in my mind, this is a case of "whistleblowing", where someone reveals information that is hurtful to an organization but helpful to the public. A mafia informant doesn't stick around to get whacked, and nobody faults him, because receiving the punishment for violating the secrecy does not help the cause that he is trying to advance.
Suppose someone very smart argues that X is justified when condition Y holds, but X is not justified when Y doesn't hold. Furthermore, this argument is well regarded by many smart people, who find that it is applicable in many places. That doesn't make it right, but it does mean when you assert something that conflicts with the argument, you better either acknowledge that you reject the widely-regarded argument, or explain why the argument doesn't apply in this case.
Now, you assert Z is justified, which a lot of people say looks a lot like X. In fact, Z = X + delta_X. Furthermore, it is agreed by everyone that Y does not hold in this case. So some people say, "Z is effectively X, and Y doesn't hold, so Z is unjustified." You say, "but Z != X. Therefore this argument breaks down. Here's my new argument for justification". But someone replies "but delta_X is small, and I claim that it doesn't change the outcome of the original argument".
You can't respond "But Z is not the same thing as X, so we should use completely different arguments to judge justified-ness." You either need to claim that delta_X is large enough to break the original argument, or acknowledge that you disagree with that argument.
I believe you're misinterpreted me to be saying "Snowden's actions are trying to be civil disobedience, but they don't have all the qualities of justified civil disobedience, therefore it's unjustified". Hence your thinking that my argument was composed of semantics. But this is not at all what I argued, and I think you'll agree if you re-read my comments.
Okay, so let's get to my main quibble here. You say that Z = X + delta_X. I specifically disagree with this statement, assuming that Z == "Snowden's actions" and X == "Civil Disobedience". Snowden's actions no more resemble Civil Disobedience than shooting a man or robbing a bank; all of these involve breaking a law, but only one of them involves breaking a law that the perpetrator believes to be unjust, in the hopes that their defiance will inspire people to strike down the law.
I don't know what this jibber-jabber about "indirect civil disobedience" is. I agree that a lot of people say Z looks a lot like X. In fact, my entry into this thread consisted of saying "Z does not look like X at all". They are so different, in my mind that applying delta X is like saying "imagine that instead of leaking documents and fleeing the country, he had not leaked documents, but instead sat at a segregated lunch counter, and instead of fleeing the country, he calmly complied with the police and spent the night in jail".
I agree with all of your points about Civil Disobedience itself; and you beat me to quoting King's Birmingham Jail letter by the barest of fractions of hairs. If you choose to, say, not pay taxes, and when the government gets wise, you skip town to avoid paying, this is not civil disobedience; even if you chose to not pay taxes to specifically protest the tax itself. But this does not even barely resemble what Snowden has done, so I do not concede that Y is necessary or even relevant to the justification.
So strip the labels entirely before applying them ruthlessly.
That said, let me talk to the heart of your argument, which is more about whether his actions are justified, rather than what they are called. I would say that Snowden's goals are twofold, in my mind. One goal is to expose a secretive and possibly illegal operation perpetrated by a government that is supposed to represent the will of its people, that was being kept secret despite the fact that publicly acknowledging it arguably does not compromise it as a means of stopping the organizations that it is purportedly targeting, and thus the secrecy was not essential to the operation, but rather was to keep people ignorant of the violation of their privacy.
The second goals is to encourage other people to come forward with information that they feel satisfies these criteria.
The third goal, which is really, in my mind, a non-goal, is to expose the government's harsh treatment of people who reveal government secrets.
Facing trial and potentially being incarcerated furthers only the third of these goals, which is not really even a goal. It hurts the second goal significantly. And it is largely irrelevant to the first goal, which is accomplished whether or not he is penalized. Successfully fleeing prosecution advances the second goal significantly, and only hurts the third goal. I don't see how the fleeing prosecution affects the first goal in either direction, which is the most important one.
So are his actions justified? I think, as do many others on this site, that the first two goals here are very important ones, and the third is not important, so in my opinion, yes, justified. I hope his conscience is clear. The other question, whether they are effective, is separate, and remains to be seen. I am not optimistic; violations of privacy cause no real substantial harm until they do, and at that point it is too late to protest. I haven't even switched away from google, and my parents don't even know who Edward Snowden is.