Where did the meme come from that civil disobedience requires you to sit in jail afterwards?

[ljm2002]

157. You suggest that we "Think about black men in the south"...

..."during the civil rights era".

Yes black people were heroic during the Civil Rights era (they weren't all men BTW), and yes they did use the classic methods of civil disobedience to achieve their ends. They deserve every bit of praise and admiration we can give them. Of course, there were a huge number of them, and of other supporters who were willing to act en masse, which was part of the reason they succeeded.

Today we are dealing with a different civil rights issue. This civil rights issue does not have to do with the overt mistreatment of, and inequality under the law of one group of people. This civil rights issue has to do with the massive surveillance of the citizenry, and it has nothing to do with one group vs. another. Or if it does, we would have no way of knowing that, since it is all done in secret.

Furthermore, and this is the important part: There is no huge number of people in a position to know what Snowden knew. And of the people who did share his knowledge, most were in agreement with what was being done. Even if they might have had concerns, very few people are willing to rock that boat: good job, good pay, working for one of the most secretive organizations of the most powerful government in the world.

I'm not seeing that Snowden had a lot of options if he really wanted to get the information out there. Using channels would have been risky, both as to his own legal status (others have suffered charges and incarceration due to their whistle blowing in this area) and also as to getting the message out (yes others have talked about this stuff, but they were unable to spark the broad discussion that is happening now).

I do not think we can invoke the Civil Rights Movement as a parallel here. Yes both are civil rights issues but the particulars are very different and there is a very different dynamic involved.