Does ACAB include Edward Snowden?

If anything he is more of a proof why ACAB, if you try to do the right thing they will get you, therefore good cops cannot exist

It applied when he was a cop, yes.

he's one of those fabled good apples in the bunch -- one of the cops who report the other cops -- and the rotten ones in the bunch (aka the 99.99%) are trying to arrest him.

Seeing as he is one of the most famous whistleblowers out there, no.

He's not a cop anymore is he?

He blew the whistle because the surveillance apparatus was surveilling Americans; everyone else was fair game. The complete rejection he suffered from the Americans might've morphed into "mass surveillance is generically bad", which now catches non-Americans too, but he's an American dog who got a fright when he saw the reality outside propaganda reels. The system continues unabated. ACAB.

Thats a brilliant question. I might be in the minority here, but one thing I've always wrestled with is whether ACAB is best understood as a critique of an institution or as a judgment of every individual within that group.

Personally for me, the strongest argument has always been the institutional one. I have deep criticisms or even hatred of how police power is (ab)used, of the historical role in protecting existing power structures, and of the ways in which accountability regularly fails.

At the same time, I'm less convinced that every individual who wears a badge is equally malicious or equally committed to those structures. Some actively reinforce them, some passively uphold them, and some try, with varying degrees of success, to mitigate harm from within. My best friends father is serving as a police officer here in Germany, and he is as left as it gets. He became a cop bc "that's where the change needs to happen". He's openly anti-racist, supports refugees, is active in labor and union issues, has privately attended demonstrations against far-right groups, and has never been shy about criticizing police misconduct, especially if it's about his very own colleagues.

That's why the Edward Snowden question is interesting. If someone works within a coercive state institution, but then exposes wrongdoing at enormous personal cost, what does that tell us about the institution? What about the individual?

So I'd say: the police is one of the biggest problems of our societies. Comes right after the fight against climate change and the fight against capitalism. But IMO it's wrong to say ACAB, because the problem is too complex for such a simple solution. Philosophy says it's every individuals own action that should decide over their fate. Feel free to argue with me, since I'm open to changing my mind.

Edit: typo

Was he ever a cop? I thought he was a software engineer....

Imagine a good cop, if you can.

They will have to exist in a system which I think we can all agree is corrupt to the point that it cannot be repaired.

They have a choice, they can silently watch as justice is applied unevenly. Allowing their coworkers to steal and murder with next to no oversight. This would (I feel) mean that ACAB applies to them just as much as anyone else.

Or they can try to do something about it, try to fight the system through direct action or documenting/exposing the bad cops for the media. Almost always the result of trying to reform the police system from within is expulsion (one way or another) from the police. If the police excise any good cops from their own ranks, then you are again left with ACAB being satisfied.

Edward Snowden is an example of the police identifying and elimination any good cops from their own ranks to ensure that ACAB still stands.

Scab doesn't mean every individual is bad. It means there are systemic issues preventing good people from making sufficient leadership roles to change the corrupt system in any meaningful way.

When the whole of the system is bad, just being part of it means you're bad, even if you're a good person.

And by systemic issues, this is what I mean:

Racial bias and disproportionate harm to Black and other marginalized communities, including stops, force, and killings. Low accountability, with critics arguing that misconduct is often not punished effectively and that “bad apple” explanations miss broader patterns. Overuse of police for problems they are not best suited to handle, such as mental health crises, homelessness, school discipline, and traffic situations. A culture that can normalize aggression, silence internal dissent, or reproduce wider social biases inside departments. Erosion of public trust when people experience policing as unfair, which can make communities less likely to cooperate with law enforcement.

he is a anonymous_leaker....... in country that makes you dirty and turns you into a stinker. Yet if he was silent it would of been deadly.

I was just about to answer thinking you meant Robert Pattinson in Twilight

Tl;Dr: He was a product of the system that broke away from the system.

I have a belief in the goodness of people. I feel humans, if given a vacuum of environmental conditions, are attracted to do good, and that the systems we establish around ourselves are often what perverts the individual into acting outside our true best interest.

Looking at Snowden, he was an individual that worked in the intelligence community, and achieved that through a private contractor job from the mid 2000s. The only reason I find this important is because of a distinction. In the early 2000s to early-2010s, the American populace felt convinced of the threat of terroristic activity so much that they signed away freedoms and rights in the name of national security. In the post 9/11 world, it was unquestioned that if you were an American, you had to be patriotic, and I find this almost nationalistic. While that's not something appealing to me, it's fair to say that a highly nationalistic media and culture can influence the individual to embrace those mentalities more... even if it perverts your true best interest. I find it fair to say, Snowden likely viewed service to the NSA as patriotic, and in support of his fellow Americans.

What happened between then and now for things to change? We no longer feel unquestioning fealty to the American institution as a people, so much so that if you asked anyone from the street how things can be fixed, you'd likely hear a lot of people saying "Burn it all down." That's a massive shift, yet if you asked me where things all started turning around, I would reference Edward Snowden's whistleblowing as the crux point where people stopped blindly trusting institution to support the people. While he started off supporting it, he soon realized the immorality of the actions he was being tasked with, and decided to resist against them with what I see was one of the most effective measures he could've taken. It is through his actions that I feel most critisizim of the modern system can be traced back to: The manipulation of individuals, mass surveillance, leveraging of government against people by companies, many of Israel's critiques due to eyes opening to the middle east, etc.

Truth be told, I feel that for most whistleblowers, this logic applies. I wanna say "Good job, but still shame on you for taking the job to begin with," yet I also know that we are subject to influences that're inorganic, and we may find ourselves drifting to favor these institutions through manipulative endeavors that are part of the institution, be it socially or politically or financially.

Edit: forgot a few sentences right after posting, and tldr.

yes

A cop AND a snitch...