Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the United States National Security Agency accused of espionage after leaking categorised data, had a busy day on the X social media app on May 2 when he appeared to have a modicum of vitriol for everybody from the present governor of South Dakota to the world’s richest person.
Snowden, an outspoken whistleblower who lived in asylum in Russia till 2022, when he was granted full citizenship within the nation, has risen to media prominence within the wake of his whistleblower incident. Currently, he holds superstar standing, particularly amongst some technology-based communities and is well-known for talking out on subjects he considers associated to freedom and privateness.
Elon Musk
Another superstar technologist who’s identified for talking out on points associated to freedom, Elon Musk, was amongst those that drew the ire of Snowden throughout his May 2nd tirade. After Musk posted a ballot asking whether or not somebody who “tears down the American flag and puts up another flag in its place” must be deported to the nation whose flag they raised, Snowden chastised the billionaire with a lesson on freedom of expression.
“First of all,” Snowden started in a publish on Musk’s X social media platform, “Americans’ freedom of expression, which includes all manner of flag-trampling and other unlikable acts, is constitutionally-protected for a very good reason.” He then requested what would occur if somebody changed the U.S. flag with a flag bearing the McDonald’s brand.
In an extra publish, Snowden continued:
“Because no law—even one described, like the Constitution, as the “supreme law of the land”—possesses a force of its own; the ink cannot leap from the page to fight for your rights. A law can only defend the people when the people defend the law. Its power derives from our own.”
To the very best of our data, Musk hasn’t responded.
Related: Musk to charge new X users to post, but some say it won’t stop the bots
Bitcoin
On the topic of Bitcoin, Snowden posted what he referred to as his last warning:
“I’ve been warning Bitcoin developers for ten years that privacy needs to be provided for at the protocol level,” he wrote, earlier than including “This is the final warning. The clock is ticking.”
The warning was evidently prompted by information that Wasabi Wallet developer zkSNACKs was shutting down.
It’s unclear precisely what Snowden was warning in opposition to, however the whistleblower has lengthy been related to cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, as a proponent and advocate.
Kristi Noem
After opining on the state of free speech on X and Bitcoin’s future, Snowden turned his barbed commentary on South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
The embattled republican just lately grew to become the goal of large social and conventional media backlash after excerpts from an upcoming e-book she authored have been discovered to include the story of her capturing a 14-month-old puppy within the head.
Noem has since gone on to defend her actions as allowable underneath the legislation and, in subsequent commentary, even gone as far as to say the puppy was untrainable and harmful.
It was these feedback, apparently, that set Snowden off and prompted him to attract a comparability between extreme drive within the subject of legislation enforcement and Noem’s farm animal insurance policies.
Snowden’s publish referred to Noem as a “puppy-killer” including “OK lady, sure. Soon the police union will tell us that the pup was coming right for her; sudden movement, feared for her life.”
