Except For Millennials, Most Americans Dislike Snowden

HughPickens.com writes: Newsmax reports that according to KRC Research, about 64 percent of Americans familiar with Snowden hold a negative opinion of him. However 56 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive opinion of Snowden which contrasts sharply with older age cohorts. Among those aged 35-44, some 34 percent have positive attitudes toward him. For the 45-54 age cohort, the figure is 28 percent, and it drops to 26 percent among Americans over age 55, U.S. News reported. Americans overall say by plurality that Snowden has done "more to hurt" U.S. national security (43 percent) than help it (20 percent). A similar breakdown was seen with views on whether Snowden helped or hurt efforts to combat terrorism, though the numbers flip on whether his actions will lead to greater privacy protections. "The broad support for Edward Snowden among Millennials around the world should be a message to democratic countries that change is coming," says Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "They are a generation of digital natives who don't want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls." Opinions of millennials are particularly significant in light of January 2015 findings by the U.S. Census Bureau that they are projected to surpass the baby-boom generation as the United States' largest living generation this year.

Comments

So let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

If you rule out everyone who thinks Snowden's a pretty cool guy, you still can't make it to "all Americans hate Snowden"?

Keep grasping for them straws, brownshirts.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 64 and I like Snowden.
I don't know if he's a snob, an asshat, a jerk or a nice guy and I don't care.
What he did was a great service to the population and citizenry of the USA.

I love my country, America, but I fear my Government.

These frakking polls are bovine scat.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Runaway1956]

Hey, Old Man - maybe you're a millenial, and didn't know it? I'm 59, and I fall just short of admiring Edward Snowden. If I were the sort to admire people, then I would admire the man. I just can't quite bring myself to the level of a cult fan, or groupie, that's all.

So, from one aging Millenial to another, "How are ya!"

Re:So let me get this straight

[mrchaotica]

The problem with Snowden is that he unilaterally made himself the judge of which secrets should be released and which should not.

Bullshit!

Snowden had no goddamn choice -- NONE WHATSOEVER -- because going through the quote-on-quote "proper channels" would have resulted in his whistleblowing being ignored or buried and nothing changing.

Re:So let me get this straight

[kilfarsnar]

The problem with Snowden is that he unilaterally made himself the judge of which secrets should be released and which should not.

You may dislike the current system, but it is system put in place by people we elect. If you have people arbitrarily deciding which parts of the system are invalid and which aren't then all you have is anarchy. I realize that many of you would like that. But the system is what prevents people that disagree with you from hunting you down and murdering you.

So you either work with the system or you take your chances outside the system.

No, no, and again, no. Ed Snowden released his information to certain specific news organization that he thought would be responsible in their reporting. That is, people who would expose what was happening but protect identities and not release information that would do more harm than good. So please get it straight before you get your back up about it.

You say the System is what keeps people who disagree with me from hunting me down. Maybe so, to a degree anyway. But what do I do when the person who wants to hunt me down works for the System? What happens when I join a protest, or speak out against whatever ill-advised foreign adventure our leaders decide to get into next? Hell, what happens when I end a romantic relationship with one of them? You know that protesters and activists have been spied on and interfered with by the System, and that it has been abused for personal purposes. If the System protects me, why is it interfering with me exercising my rights? Where do I go when I consider the System to be the enemy because it is treating me like one?

Re:So let me get this straight

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I have a nuanced opinion about Edward Snowden. I think he's a patriot who may or may not have compromised national security but I also don't know if that's a bad thing or not.

I do have a very low negative opinion of people who make Nazi allusions because of complex international security and policing issues.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Crashmarik]

he gave all the secrets to several newspapers and THEY became the judges.

I don't care where you stand on Snowden but that statement is pure BS.

You give documents to newspapers, You know at least one is going to publish anything even remotely provocative. Once one does it's everywhere.

If he wanted it to be judged he could have given it to a judge of competent jurisdiction.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Austerity Empowers]

I think you can have a negative opinion of him but think he did the right thing, also. I don't think he did the best possible thing, I don't think he tried very hard, I think he was angry, didn't get the response he wanted from the right people quickly enough and acted brashly. I think he could have done more to protect secrets that need to stay secrets (because lives are on the line), while also revealing how incredibly bad our government was acting. But what he did was still better than keeping quiet.

I also suspect that the older you are, the more foreign enemies scare you than domestic ones. That's not a statement that indicates the older crowd is correct in their fears either, if anything the foreign enemy threat is in fact somewhat lower, but the domestic enemy threat has grown tremendously in the past 40 years. Just look at the people funding the republican party? I cannot imagine a scarier group of people with a more frightening ideology.

Re:So let me get this straight

[JimFive]

I agree. I can believe that Snowden's revelations hurt National Security and anti-terrorism and ALSO believe that what he did was a great service to the country. Unless they specifically asked something like, "Do you support Snowden's actions?" then I don't think you get a good sense of what people think about him.
--
JimFive

Re:So let me get this straight

[spire3661]

My feeling is this, our government has compromised national security by acting in ways that are blatantly wrong. IF the government wasnt involved in incredibly dubious shit, i would be more sympathetic. The fact is our government is frantically trying to be able to tap everything, and that needed to be exposed.

Re:So let me get this straight

[tnk1]

I'm not sympathetic to the government in the sense that I like the shit that they do. However, there are some things that the government does that we effectively have asked them to do.

My problem with Snowden is that he embarrassed the country, caused National Security breaches, and he did it in the manner least likely to actually cause actual change to occur.

Sure, sound and fury and we all know what that signifies.

So we spied on allied leaders for instance. Really? No shit. They all know we're spying on them and we know that they're spying on us. The Israelis? Spying on us. The Germans? Spying on us. The UK? You get the idea.

All you do by releasing the proof is forcing those leaders to have to act as if this is some sort of outrageous affront to their country, as opposed to business-as-usual. Half the time in an alliance, you know that the other guy's a jerk, but you need him to help you against that bigger jerk. That's international relations 101.

And the government spying on US citizens? Was that actually something that no one believed was happening? And what is the effect of that? Did we blackmail any journalists into writing softball stories? Did we run people out of office with that material? Have they shut down human right's activists with that?

No? Oh, they looked at my email. Who the fuck cares? My ISP probably does that five times a day. There's more threat from some pimply faced kid stealing nudes from some celebrity than the government coming to tell me to stop reading the New Republic.

Do you know why many people over a certain age dislike him? Because we already understood that all this was happening. So we get to have our intelligence activities dragged through the mud, activities that you should know that *every* country does, and we got zero in return except hyperventilating.

Of course, I am not at all surprised that this happened, it was bound to happen eventually. The information wants to be free and all of that. I just feel like Snowden decided to let off a bomb and then let the rest of us see if we could sort it out, and it will all be somehow "okay" in the end. I may not think he's the Antichrist, but I can't think very highly of him.

Re:So let me get this straight

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I'm partially sympathetic to the Government. The Government isn't a monolithic entity where they're all marching lock step towards the same totalitarian goal.

No, it's worse than that, in that we have some parts being turned into agencies and departments that no one wants to reign in because heaven forbid someone put a check on law enforcement power, lest you be considered to be "weak on crime" or "weak on national defense." It's why we still have outdated ideas about incarceration and justice despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that this shit doesn't work. No one wants to be told prisons don't work, they just want the safety and security illusions of having a prison system. Once they're told that the whole system is broken the illusion of safety is gone.

That's harder to fight. If there was a conspiracy or a tyrant running the NSA doing awful things, it's easy to point that out and say, "Hey, get them! They're the problem." When the problem is more endemic and harder to check than just saying, "The Government is spying on it's citizens and that's bad for a whole host of obvious reasons."

We aren't in an age where the Stasi-like agents are stopping cars asking for papers, but the transition from there to here would be gradual. It's a ... not slippery? Slightly moist and lightly more lubricious than average slope to a terrifying police state no one but the most ardent control freak wants but we wound up with any way because of partisan electoral politicking.

I don't think that Park Services is tapping your phone line and I don't think that DOT and DOE are interested in your private conversations, unless you're out to burn down a forest or school or rest stop.

Even then, that's an FBI matter.

teal dear:

I do still trust the Government, but with a whole lot of caveats.

Re:So let me get this straight

[ChrisMaple]

What you said, and more. People born before 1950 should remember that there were real spies stealing real military secrets that could have, and in some cases probably did, result in American deaths. Snowden appears not to have been entirely able to distinguish that sort of secret material from safer stuff.

Government domestic spying has become egregious, and by exposing that in a manner that stays in the news, Snowden has advanced freedom. Whether the balance of the effect of his actions will be positive will probably never be known.

It is beyond question that what he did was dishonest, in violation of legally binding agreements he made with his employers, and in a narrow sense treasonous. Let's hope the net result is better government behavior, not a doubling down on domestic spying.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Last Warrior]

He did go through the proper channels. He did bring this to his supervisors.
This fact is left out a lot of the discussions.

It is only when he was ignored that he took it a step further. Maybe if more people knew that he actually did try to go through the proper channels first without success, they might have a better understanding of the situation and a better opinion of Snowden.

Doublethink

[Totenglocke]

That's because the elderly suffered much more stringent brainwashing as children that leads them to say that they "support those who fight for our freedom" while also promoting a police state worse than Orwells worst nightmare. The younger crowd grew up with much more access to information and see the police state for what it is and do not have the blind worship of government that the elderly do.

Re:Doublethink

[geekmux]

That's because the elderly suffered much more stringent brainwashing as children that leads them to say that they "support those who fight for our freedom" while also promoting a police state worse than Orwells worst nightmare. The younger crowd grew up with much more access to information and see the police state for what it is and do not have the blind worship of government that the elderly do.

I wonder how those elderly will feel as their Social Security and Medicare programs are stripped clean in order to pay for that police state they champion so much...

This isn't just about information. Cost is a huge factor too, and perhaps felt a hell of a lot more with the younger generation who is still paying the full brunt of those "terror" taxes.

Re:Doublethink

[IamTheRealMike]

I think it's more likely to be because people under 35 are the first generation that have no memory of the cold war. People born before about 1980 lived in a world where there was a very strong, clear delineation between us vs them and that divide was seen as an existential struggle between good and evil. Merely by being born into a certain country, you too could take part in an epic ideological struggle between right and wrong. It is perhaps not surprising that people who lived most of their life in such a world instinctively support a strong, authoritarian state and react badly to a "traitor who gave our national security secrets to the Russians" or whatever garbled version of the story they received via Fox News. There's definitely a clear and strong tendency in older populations to support our side regardless of what that side actually does, and things that seem to bring back old certainties strongly appeal to them. Hence the desperate need of the establishment to make "the terrorists" to new Big Evil.

Contrast to people under the age of 35 who don't remember the cold war and have never lived in a world where there were clearly defined conflicts between us/them or good/evil. Instead there has been a series of endless wars started by us against dramatically weaker foes, based on vague and uncompelling justifications, the results of which have mostly been bedlam. Older people love this because it's an attempt to bring back the old certainties they remember. It leaves young people cold because they don't care about the old certainties, as they never had them to begin with.

Combine all this with the fact that the average software developer is 30 years old and the average age of Congress is 57 ... nearly double their age .... you have set the stage for an epic showdown between the technology industry and the political establishment. Which is exactly what's happening.

Re:Doublethink

[Tim the Gecko]

I wonder how those elderly will feel as their Social Security and Medicare programs are stripped clean in order to pay for that police state they champion so much...

So the generation that votes wants to maintain Social Security and Medicare, even if it plunges future citizens into debt, and the generation that doesn't vote wants a different policy on Snowden. Which generation do you think politicians would listen to most?

Re:Doublethink

[Mashiki]

Millennials are the same group marching along trying to restrict speech on campuses. Saying that they're better informed seems to be off by a fair bit.

Re:Doublethink

[meta-monkey]

Astute observations.

And yes, the battle will be between the tech industry + users vs the political establishment.

The "young people don't vote!" thing is a red herring. Especially this generation, I absolutely believe they would vote, if there were anybody to vote for. They got burned with Obama, and do you think either the R or D candidate in 2016 is going to have "end government surveillance" as part of their platform? Absolutely not.

Re:Doublethink

[IamTheRealMike]

It's always been this way - younger people tend to care less about voting

I could equally say it's always been this way because politicians and The Establishment have always been old.

My theory is at that age you're still so engrossed with exploring your environment, that you put little thought into shaping your environment.

My theory is that political parties run by older people tend to focus on the wishes of people just like them i.e. older people. Due to the party political whipping system, young people who investigate politics quickly realise they will be forced to vote in support of social policies they disagree with, making the career unattractive. This results in a downward spiral in which politicians ignore people unlike them, those people get turned off from politics, and thus the demographic makeup of the political elite can never self correct.

Propaganda Works

[Anonymous Coward]

Propaganda Works. Smear someone for long enough, loudly enough, consistently enough, and people will eventually listen and believe. We've seen it happen to Assange, to Snowden, to dozens of other whistleblowers, in politics, in law enforcement, in finance. We've seen it happen to fucking gamers. Over time, a negative media narrative will stick.

The problem, at its core, is the media. They are not a fourth estate. They are the new First Estate.

Dubious

[unixcorn]

I am well beyond millennial status and I approve of what Snowden did so I am not sure I believe the survey results. While I do approve, I also wrestle with the fact that he broke the law and put Americans in jeopardy. That makes me wonder how the questions were asked. I mean I can certainly dislike someone but approve of what they did.

Controlling for age effects?

[fortfive]

I wonder if the study controlled for the fact that people tend to get more conservative as they age.

I bet if Snowden had done his thing in the 90's, the age distribution of approval would be similar, and I bet you'd get the same result in another 15 years, when those same millennials have kids and are facing their mortality.

Progressive ideals are risky, and it takes more courage to take risks as folks age and have more to lose.

Note this is purely an academic comment and is not meant to endorse or deny either snowden or the NSA.

digital natives

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, I hate that word. It's ok for Facebook and Google to data mine the shit out of the stuff their emails and instant messages, but when the govt does it everyone flips their shit. I'm not saying the govt is innocent, but rather, they should be boycotting these corporate entities with similar fervor.

Millenials are dumb. I do research on data mining (not for the govt).

Stazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Conventional wisdom says that the young and idealistic grow up and shed their naive ideals as they confront the real world. By that logic, as millennials age, they will recognize the need for the surveillance state to keep us safe from terrorism.

Real World? How about that terrorism isn't as big a threat as we are led to believe? We have a media that makes billions of dollars a month in scaring the shit out of us and by being bombarded by that shit, we begin to think that terrorism is right around the corner. Perception bias. I live in meth country, according to the media, I should be experiencing high crime and meth labs blowing up every day. We had one in the last five years and one before my state's legislature passed a law that made getting Sudafed harder to get than a gun - I'm in the South.

The other thing is, East Germany and the old communist states. My fellow old people forgot those abuses and are under the delusion that our government is beyond such things; when in fact, we are seeing an out of control security government bureaucracy. Are my fellow old people concerned? Nope. We are all worried about Clinton's email server, Benghazi, IS, gay marriage, and other social "issues" that some how are going to ruin our country and our freedoms.

I really don't think my fellow Americans know WTF Freedom means.

Re:Disgusting.

[monkeyzoo]

Real change and progress in politics comes only as the old people die off and are replaced by the young. It's a slow process!

Better than Congress

[zwede]

The data shows Snowden has more support than the US Congress.

Re:Please don't link Newsmax...

[CajunArson]

So you're saying that old people like Snowden and Millenials hate his guts?

Your summary dismissal of facts based on the source not being politically correct enough shows that you are very enlightened and tolerant.

During WWII, did your grandpappie tell his bosses to not trust that E=mc^2 crap because the guy who thought it up wasn't an Aryan pure blood?

Re: Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

How did he destroy the economy? Did he write backdoors?
Did he intercept hardware and compromise it?
Did he wiretap American companies datacenters?
Oooh, I get it, he told you your government was doing this for your supposed safety.
Yeah fuck that guy, for telling me things.
We should shoot that messenger.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

How is willingly losing your hot fiance, 200k/yr job, etc. "put[ting] themself first" ?

Re:Disgusting.

[NotDrWho]

I got a newsbreak for you, kid: grandpa doesn't ever die. The next generation just BECOMES grandpa. Every generation starts out more liberal and open-minded, and ends up more conservative and bitter. I can remember when my generation was against The Man too. And one day in the future the same millennials who are protesting in Ferguson and supporting Snowden now will be bitching about the leftie protestors and voting for Republicans.

Well

[MitchDev]

I'm 45 and I say give him a Medal of Honor, the man is better for the US than all of Congress and the President combined.

They don't know who Snowden is

[MobyDisk]

According to John Oliver most people think Edward Snowden is Julian Assange. Oliver did "man-on-the-street" style interviews in New York, asking people who Snowden was. Most people, if they knew the name at all, thought he was "the guy who sold government secrets to Wikileaks."

The report doesn't mention this at all, so I'm not sure what to make of the statistics. If you asked people "Which color is brighter: green or brown" but they had never heard of brown before, you wouldn't be able to draw many meaningful conclusions from it. The report itself doesn't even mention what questions they asked people. There's really just no information here at all.

FEAR

[Kludge]

Millennials know who Snowden is because they watch the Daily Show.

The real difference is that older people are more likely to be fearful of whatever boogey man du jour the government is pushing. When I was a little kid, my grandparents really were afraid of communists. When I was a teenager, I was told by older folks what horrible stuff marajuana was, and how it would definitely ruin your life. In 2002 I was having a discussion with an older co-worker, who was a really smart guy, and he told me that he was concerned and scared about Sadam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.
Today government officials tell us we are supposed to be afraid of terrorists, and that Snowden hurt their ability to fight these ubiquitous terrorists.

I do not know why, but as people age, they watch more TV, become more fearful about the state of the world, and buy the official propaganda. I'm am trying to avoid this.

Re:Name one program Snowden disclosed thats illega

[Pi1grim]

Well, I was pretty sure that lying to Congress was illegal, but I guess I missed the part "unless you are too important to be put in prison, in which case it's totally legal", or that spying on your ex was illegal, using NSA resources.

Re:Disgusting.

[akirapill]

Well better lock up the potheads and dealers and send them to the rape factories right? Surely that's better for society than decriminalization.

a substance that distorts reality, that can make you a veggie and slowly destroys your ability to have fun without it is just a way to make a whole generation less intelligent than the one before

You just described alcohol.

Re:Disgusting.

[amiga3D]

You can't legislate it away though. That's not the job of the government and it wastes resources in a futile effort. Everyone clearly saw what kind of hell Prohibition caused so I fail to understand why they continue to repeat that mistake. You get rid of Pot the same way you get rid of cigarettes. Change the culture and make it uncool and ostracize those who partake. It's something society has to do not the government and no matter what you do there will always be a fringe that wont stop no matter what. This insanity of using the power of government to do things that government really can't do has to stop.

Spot on

[dbIII]

Spot on - people have forgotten that the only person jailed over the torture scandal was the man who didn't do any torture and instead blew the whistle on the "cruel and unusual" (unconstitutional by 8th amendment) practice . That was a couple of years before Snowden's leak and he's still in jail.

Re:Spot on

[dywolf]

I get told all the time by fellow vets and Marines, who theoretically swore the same oath I did, that torture and indefinite detainment are absolutely ok and not violations of the Constitution. I get called a bleeding heart liberal for thinking those things matter.

The only upside to this thoroughly depressing situation, is I then get to say "oh, so wanting to hold to my oath, and actually follow the Constitution is what makes me a liberal? then what defines conservatism?"

the apoplectic fits that follow are always entertaining.