I agree with the sentiment, minus Snowden. We should be talking about this issue. Snowden is at this point immaterial to the larger issues unless he leaks more details. Discussing himself distracts from his purposes. His movements and people's opinions about his movements (which dominated HN this weekend) are of no consequence to PRISM and the NSA.
The honest truth is we are no closer to discovering the truth about what the government does than we were on day one of the leak while entertaining ourselves with platitudes about how "America is now a place where people seek asylum from" and Bourne movie fantasies.
I see a lot of articles about who is or isn't Snowden, what he did, where he was and where he'll go. But I don't see anything about the NSA and what's going to change with PRISM. A lot of noise about him just to hide the fact that in the end nothing will really change?
The concepts aren't mutually exclusive. The spying is the underlying problem. The fallout is indisputably the result of Snowden's heroic disclosures -- and yes, I'm a full-on fan of what Snowden did, as well as why and how.
And the media has been reporting on that, because that's what matters. It's out of Snowden's hands now, which is why front-page news stories tend to focus less on him and more on actual policy details, and the politics of a reform bill.
The media won't report on a Snowden interview, because as bad a state as U.S journalism is in, they haven't yet stooped so low to confuse celebrity-stalking with actual journalism, and they know to keep them separate.
While I agree with the general reasoning of the author, I hesitate to agree with its conclusion. Like most of us here on hacker news, I've been following the Snowden/Prism/NSA stories rather religiously and, for the most part, have been very happy with the rather overwhelming coverage here on HN.
But there have been those getting tired of the news; understandably so, the repetitive hum of media coverage these days is enough to infuriate anyone who has the capacity to remember stuff. The author of this article seems to be pretty infuriated at the the public's fascination with Snowden and wants, rather ambitiously in my opinion, the public to shift their attention to the core of the issue.
I'm not sure if the public is capable of maintaining interest in such a passive evil (I guess I probably don't think too highly of the public). I do think, however, that the public is capable of fixating on the Snowden story because it is a rather interesting story. And the longer the public stays fixated on Snowden, the weird guy living in a Russian airport, the longer the NSA's wrongdoings also stay in the public consciousness.
I say, keep the melodrama coming, if only to keep alive the story of injustice to the public. The success of Snowden's whistleblowing (i.e. in terms of tangible impact) may actually rest on it.
Honestly, the timbre of this post implies a viewpoint which is fatalistic and frustrated with the issue, from someone who perhaps doesn't think the issue is as severe as others do.
I say, don't hide your opinions in a separate complaint, just because it is easier to defend. It is easy to criticize the headlines for being superficial, even if your issue is that you don't want to talk about Snowden anymore.
Keeping the headlines up keeps awareness up. Perhaps that is precisely what you don't like. Why do you think PRISM is inevitable? Why do you think his asylum requests in Ecuador are less interesting than the latest coffee script variation?
I think it is fascinating that Hacker News is having such a political reaction to this issue. That, to me, is deeply interesting in and of itself.
And another thing is that if Snowden had been studiously careful not to overstate the situation, or allow Greenwald to overstate the situation, there would probably be a lot more uproar by the semi-interested citizenry.
PRISM was advertised as being a $20 million backdoor into people's email and social media that would allow any ol' NSA analyst who felt bored to literally watch peoples' thoughts form in their minds.
It turned out to be a $20 million program to automate an existing manual process, with at least some measure of oversight controls (including non-governmental oversight).
Google, Facebook, and other companies were forced by Snowden's or Greenwald's lie to push back hard. WaPo revised their claim slightly to adjust, which caused the media to focus on the claim being 'walked back'.
Clearing up that issue, in the process muddied up the whole issue, and at the same time Snowden's credibility was taking shots about his salary, releasing hacking details to China, etc.
Snowden has done a lot right from the P.R. aspect but by damaging his credibility right from the get-go, he's allowed it to turn into the geopolitical equivalent of a he-said/she-said... which is not something most people have the gumption to care to try to resolve on their own. Especially in politics, where we essentially expect all sides to lie anyways.
Another thing that probably didn't help was all the involvement from Russia, Hong Kong, and China, but especially WikiLeaks and Ecuador (who are only one step up from Venezuela nowadays). It is very hard to try to line yourself up as a concerned American citizen when you're sitting in a Russian airport, being coached by Assange, and trying to flee to 'Chavez's little brother'. To the extent that any change must necessarily be driven by the will of the people, that whole thing was a mistake.
This is the problem with the media today. Edward Snowden is not the story!
The story is that the governments are illegally bugging people. They are not stopping the terrorists (Woolwich/Boston). They are harassing legitimate activists. They are not serving the people they are meant to represent.
EDIT: And of course we, the general public, are not free of responsibility either for the media choosing to cover the personal interest story rather than getting their teeth into the politicians who might improve things.
Snowden is the red herring. It is more interesting for news cycles to talk about a person. What he does, what he likes. It is hard to talk about "the government". There is no one person to interview, we can't find out what food "the government" likes etc. We should be focusing on the leaks and the systems that allowed the surveillance to happen.
I'm not sure why Snowden feels vindicated due to the story not going in and out of the news cycle quickly. The average person does not care, something evident from the complete lack of constant mass protests nationwide (to give an example). On the flip side, Oliver is correct, we can't have the necessary conversations if no one really understands what happened, and the scope of it.
I've been watching the NSA story closely for years and I disagree. Snowden provided documentation. Until now all the whistle-blowers who were telling the same stories were easily dismissed because they couldn't provide solid evidence. And the administration was able to confuse and mislead Congress by assuring them that they were not doing anything more than a Grand Jury could do during an investigation. The members of Congress who knew better were either complicit or they were silenced by the rules covering classified briefings (a weak excuse in my opinion.)
Granted, Snowden is an important part of the story, and he will be remembered very favorably by history. But for people who are predisposed to buying the administration's fear mongering, he has been easily dismissed and used as a distraction in the short term.
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