Snowden differs from many of the whistleblower ilk in that there is nothing to dislike about his character (yet). The media have not dished any dirt, none of his friends/family/ex-lovers have came forward with anything untoward about him and he hasn't shown any signs of being deluded.
Even if you try your hardest to 'believe', a lot of whistleblowers have been deluded one way or another. They can be overly indoctrinated in their 'mission', so, whilst bringing to light useful information they have also been a bit keen to believe the propaganda that goes with The War Against Terror, e.g. Coleen Rowley. They can also be deluded in their importance, to be less than convincing, e.g. Sibel Edmonds. They can also fully jump the shark, e.g. David Shayler. Then there is Assange, 'deluded' in my opinion for thinking leaks could be monetized.
Unless I am missing something, Edward Snowden has taken a stand for truth and not allowed his character to be compromised in any way whatsoever. He has not made any mistakes, there is nothing where you could think he could have done better. Am I being deluded in thinking this?!?
The idea that the character of the whistleblowers themselves has anything to do with the quality or impact of the information they leak is a propaganda trick enforced by the media-- a leak with a face can be discredited if the face can be discredited, and in the 21st century, everyone has skeletons in the closet. Additionally, if your aim is to obscure, it's far easier to focus on the flaws of the person behind the leaks than the leak itself.
A discussion of the leaker is a discussion that is not entirely focused on the meaning of what they leaked.
There is legitimacy if you assume the leaker is the only source of the information. In such cases it logically follows that trust in the contents of the leak is reliant on trust in the leaker, until other ways to authenticate the contents of the leak become available.
Once separately verified the discrediting game is utter nonsense though.
Propaganda tricks work, though. It follows that in order to be an effective leaker, one must be more or less impervious to muck-raking. Which is neither fair nor sane, but strikes me as plausible.
Character matters tremendously for quality or impact of information they leak. It affects the degree to which you might suspect that there is even more information being hidden, who stands to benefit or suffer from leaks, and who the power players are. This calculus doesn't change whether you're a cyber-libertarian, damage control for the govt, foreign govts, whatever. You want to ascertain the degree to which this is going to continue to be a problem for different parties.
Furthermore to assume that studying someone's character as part of investigation (both public and NSA-internal) is just mere propaganda and media smoke and mirrors seems to dismiss more mundane notions as a) curiosity about the leaker and the story, b) routine counter-intel procedure, and c) journalists having stuff to write about.
In short, you are giving far too much credit to the idea that the public is stupid and easily distracted. Come on, we all know the score here.
That's the ad hominem fallacy - shoot the messenger, discredit the message by discrediting the messenger even though the two have no logical relation. It's a testament to our educational system that so many people fall for it. Though part of it, I'm sure, is that it simply gives many people a rationale for believing what they already want to believe.
The problem, though, is exactly what fidotron describes: without independent validation, we must trust the credibility of the source of a leak, for that leaked information to be considered valid.
If Snowden were a character if ill-repute or questionable morality (outside the question of the morality of leaking intelligence secrets to foreign countries), it requires that you question whether any of the leaked information may have been tampered with.
Once the relevant leaked-upon agency admits to the validity of information, then definitely the messenger's credibility becomes decoupled from the truthiness of the message.
Even if the information can be verified, there can still be questions of things like lies by omission, so knowing if the leaker has an undisclosed agenda can still be valuable.
Shooting the messenger is standard operating procedure by the PR/Propaganda wing of the powerful. There were attempts to malign snowden, I think some one went on Dianne Rhem Show on NPR dissing snowden for not have passed out of High school or for not getting a college degree. That I found was the lowest of the low hit at him. He is not a hero - but he sure is not a traitor - he decided to do what he did with good intentions and in alignment of his conscious.
I think the fact that he leaked a lot of details about NSA surveillance of foreign governments diminishes his moral high ground. That is the stated mission of the NSA and while the details are highly classified, everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy. Embedding himself in the NSA specifically to find the details regarding these activities and release them looks more like espionage than it does whistleblowing.
I'm all for whistleblowing on how the NSA is abusing its powers to spy on US citizens, and I think it's extremely important that he did so. I really wish he'd constrained himself to that. Releasing everything he did hurts his credibility in everyone's eyes and prevents any part of the government from acknowledging him as a legitimate whistleblower, which would have been the best outcome to this whole scenario.
I'm all for whistleblowing on how the NSA is abusing its powers to spy on US citizens, and I think it's extremely important that he did so. I really wish he'd constrained himself to that.
I can't believe you're saying this. Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy? Let me explain the consequences of what you are suggesting here, apart from the obvious loss of goodwill across the world. Countries will feel free to barricade "their internet" and control communications. There will be lesser transparency, more firewalls and more detentions. Oppressive regimes will love this, and your allies will be left confused.
In times of peace, your allegiance should be towards ideals. Like democracy, privacy and free speech.
(edit: take an upvote anyway, you are entitled to your view.)
Those are my ideals - I am a pacifist, I'd much prefer that we wound down this (and most other) military activity. I was simply pointing out how Snowden's actions reflect on his character.
Whistleblowing: Revealing that an entity is doing things it should not be doing so the correct oversight can be put in place.
Sabatoge: Deliberately destroying the capabilities of an organization by means of deception and rule-breaking.
I am 100% for the former. I am against the latter, even when I agree with the philosophy behind the actions.
> I am a pacifist, I'd much prefer that we wound down this (and most other) military activity
How are we to wind it down, or even know that we want to wind it down, if we don't know what it does? The reaction to all of this over-the-top foreign spying stuff is as loud as it is precisely because most people were not aware of its extent, regardless of the stated mission of the NSA. The NSA grew so large and powerful because its projects were secret and thus largely shielded from public review. In that light, the secrecy is a lot more than an operational detail; it's a deception directed at the American people in order to pursue unpopular security policy. Note, for example, that even the NSA's budget is classified. They've built something very big, and they were only allowed to do it by keeping it in the dark.
To put that another way, if it really is merely the NSA's stated mission and revealing its secrets is mere sabotage, why is it scandalous that they tapped Angela Merkel's phone? Why is it outrageous that they're spying on Google's intra-datacenter communications? Why is tracking the world's cell phone locations an embarrassing thing to have done? Because if we'd been asked, we wouldn't have let them do it. But we weren't asked, because secrets.
Thus, I think that revealing the extent of NSA spying, including all of the foreign stuff, falls in this bucket:
> Revealing that an entity is doing things it should not be doing so the correct oversight can be put in place.
In my view, our government doesn't have a fundamental right to secrecy. We provisionally granted it the privilege of keeping some things secret from us (remember, we're The People) because we felt it was in a good position to make the tradeoffs required there. It has systematically abused that privilege and now it's lost its claim to it.
I see your point, but I think you may be making too coarse a distinction. There is a difference between gathering intelligence on certain high-value foreign targets and en-mass foreign surveillance of the nominally innocent.
Further, I am not convinced that the agency has made a proportional contribution to counter-terrorism in proportion to its budget. Stopping a few questionable donations cannot ever justify building such a dangerous infrastructure -- which will inevitably be abused for political purposes.
Even if he was doing sabotage. It would be morally acceptable in his case. Systematic surveillance in this scale changes power balance between government and citizens very fundamental way.
I'm curious as to what you think was sabotage though? It seems to me he didn't reveal any technical details -- only a high-level overview of what he saw as systematic abuse.
But there will always be overlap between the two. If you disclose secrets of an organization you act against its rules and harm its capabilities. It's merely a difference in what interests you will acknowledge as you act.
Sabotage and civil disobedience don't really overlap.
Sabotage: I will secretly undermine your operations and try not to get caught. My sabotage is operational- it is most effective when undiscovered.
Civil disobedience: I will publicly defy your rules with every intention of being apprehended. My defiance is political- it achieves nothing by itself, and must be public.
Yes, both involve breaking rules, but that is where the similarities end.
Because it's civil disobedience. If you fight back, resist arrest, evade the police, etc it is just disobedience. :)
The point behind civil disobedience is to publicly demonstrate the unjustness of the law, not fight it head-on. Remember when those nonviolent University students a little while ago got pepper-sprayed? Much, much better press for them and their cause than "students start brawl with police".
Some people believe civil disobedience doesn't have to be nonviolent, but most people agree on nonviolence and all the famous examples of civil disobedience were nonviolent (Rosa Parks, Thoreau, Gandhi, etc)
Both Snowden and Assange are avoiding apprehension while being non-violent.
I said nothing about violence - in fact, your comment is the first on this page to mention violence - so I don't really understand where you're coming from.
Ok, what's a better word? I mention violence because it is most common dividing line, but I think what I mean could be called "resistance". Whether we call it violence or resistance doesn't change my previous comment; as I clearly described, civil disobedience is typically considered to be passively accepting the consequences as part of a public display.
> Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy?
It's not a matter of patriotism, it's a matter of self-preservation. We acknowledge that other people in our own society have rights because we also understand that they have reciprocal obligations. If there is conflict, we can resort to legal process to mediate the conflict and preserve everyone's rights. This is possible because we are all party to the same social contract.
But people outside our society do not have any obligation to us. They are not party to our social contract. We in America cannot legislate how say the Chinese go about their business, even when those activities might have an impact on us (e.g. air pollution in California). That is why we don't acknowledge that they have rights identical with those of people in our own society.
The human social contract goes beyond political borders and is exactly why the powers of the government were delineated in the Constitution. What part of the Constitution says US citizens have a free press, freedom of association and freedom of speech?
Short Answer: None.
So if the Constitution doesn't grant those things to citizens, how can we remove them from non-citizens?
Some people believe that there is a "human social contract" or "natural rights" or some variation thereof, but it's incorrect to say that the Constitution enshrines that concept. What the Constitution says is that the rights the colonists already possessed, by virtue of long-standing practice and their status as Englishmen, were not prejudiced by the new Constitution.
It's blatant historical revisionism to assert that a group of people who didn't believe that black people in America had any rights somehow believed in a concept of universal natural rights that we should apply to people in Yemen or Afghanistan.
The Constitution is fundamentally a product of "social contract" thinking. The preamble says:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
When you see uses of "the people" in say the First Amendment, it's a clear reference to "the people of the United States" not "people everywhere." It's not necessarily limited to U.S. Citizens, but it is limited to people who have some nexus to the U.S., either through citizenship or presence on American soil.
Yes, "the people" formed the United States. This isn't disputed. The entire body of the Constitution deals with limiting and delineating federal power.
Right. But if you read the Constitution in light of the Federalist papers, it is clear that those limitations on federal power apply domestically. Otherwise, it is clear that the framers intended to create a fully sovereign entity on the international stage, with the sovereign right to do all the things sovereigns have the right to do, which is pretty much everything. Indeed, that was one of the purposes of the Constitution: to create a strong central government that could act in international matters the same as the European sovereigns. The idea of the Constitution recognizing rights of foreigners that limit the power of the federal government internationally runs wholly counter to all that.
I don't understand what you mean by "all the things sovereigns have the right do do, which is pretty much everything." ?
Clearly there are laws, and the US government is bound to those laws. Are you saying that the US government can have people killed? Torture? And as long as the US legal system isn't there to intervene it is legal?
Well they're one of the world's major industrial powers and just a couple of generations ago they threatened to take over all of Europe.
So much of the outrage over NSA spying (abroad) is predicated on this foolish idea that we live in a time outside of history, that while the West may have spent the better part of the last millennium embroiled in warfare with each other, that our generation is the first to be so enlightened as to make that unthinkable.
I'm not naive enough to think that there are no threats in the world, nor that we can trust our allies to always have our interests in mind (ignoring the fact that "our interests" is a debatable subject).
They have a mountain of data already -- if they can't get a sense of what's going on from that then maybe they're not up to the task.
<snark>
Slightly tangential anecdata: the FBI was warned about the suspicious flight school students yet they bungled the job of stopping the 9/11 attack. So what good is this comprehensive intelligence gathering if the government can't even use it properly?
</snark>
You should be very careful with that snark, because it is widely believed by experts and, more importantly, stakeholders that what kept the USG from utilizing its intelligence to stop 9/11 was inter-agency siloing; ie, NSA and CIA not sharing information with FBI.
<snark-doubledown>
The CIA likely helped create Al Qaeda, so perhaps they were protecting their own. Or maybe they were too busy running drugs and plotting the overthrow of other governments to get the memo out.
</snark-doubledown>
</extra-snark>
> "...it is widely believed by experts and, more importantly, stakeholders..."
What sources would you recommend reading to learn more about that? The 9/11 Commission Report? I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't done much reading on inter-agency relations pre-9/11.
(I hope this comment doesn't read as snark, I'm genuinely interested in learning more.)
Check out Ali Soufan's book (http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Banners-Against-al-Qaeda/dp/...). I'll loan you my copy if you're in the Boston area. He has had quite an interesting career. According to the book and the New Yorker, it turns out that Soufan probably would have stopped 9/11 had the proper information been shared with him. Again according to his book, he was also a major voice against the use of enhanced interrogation techniques and had the chops to back it up. The book states that he was one of the most effective interrogators of captured Al Qaeda suspects and his method essentially boiled down to serving them tea and debating the Quran with them in Arabic.
For a general idea of what the book goes into, you can see Soufan's profile in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/10/060710fa_fact_wr.... In the (Pulitzer Prize-winning) reporter's own words: "Soufan became America’s best chance to stop the attacks of September 11th.".
Five years before Germany invaded Polland, Allied leaders held Hitler and Mussolini in very high regard and publicly praised their gentlemanly natures and leadership abilities.
I'm not saying is a good thing, but that's a policy decision on what the NSA's mission should be. "whistleblowing" that it's happening doesn't really change anything.
How can you say it changes nothing, when Snowden's actions clearly are changing things?
You may argue that we already knew what the NSA was doing, but specifics matter. If I have a key to your house (for emergencies), you know that in theory, I could be there every minute of the day when you aren't. But you assume that I'm not doing this. The specific knowledge that I was there, and ate the last piece of chocolate cake, changes everything.
While these agencies are nominally accountable to Congress, and thus their mission is "approved", in practice, it seems they are not. Snowden's whistleblowing is a step in the direction of accountability.
Also, don't think like a hacker, think like a politician. Having the information isn't a simple boolean state. There's a difference between "the information is available" and "everybody knows, and it's top of mind". Or "people have vague worries that X and Y might happen" and "X and Y is happening and it's on a grander scale than you could have conceived".
What are you talking about? The fact of American agencies spying on the world has been well-known since at least World War II, and is the stuff of major motion pictures, etc.
There's spying in the abstract, which is known just from the existence of intelligence organizations, and there's spying on specific targets (or everybody), which hasn't been subject to public scrutiny or debate until now.
It's one thing to "know" from movies that someone is being spied on. It's another thing entirely to know from NSA documents that you and people you know are being spied on.
I'd like to suggest that! We wouldn't have done 90% of the evil, pointless, counterproductive bullshit we've done since WWII, if all aspects of that bullshit had been public. And, not a single genuinely good thing we've done would have been prevented.
Details of military battles could be kept secret during the battles and for a couple of years afterward, and sure we should keep demographic data about private people restricted to only those agencies that legitimately need that data, but those are the only exceptions that come to mind.
I'm appalled that so many Americans who are outraged about their government's mass surveillance of Americans simultaneously seem to think it's acceptable for the US government to conduct mass surveillance on the citizens of other countries.
The US doesn't govern non-citizens. Most people don't see why people who do not pay taxes, obey US laws, etc have to be treated with all the perks of US citizens. Recall a feudal model, where a lord governs his people and protects them, but is not generally obligated to extend his protection to non-subjects.
It's not a belief that foreigners have no rights, but more like foreigners have their own government to watch out for them.
I don't really know which I personally believe, just sharing information.
Not infringing on freedom isn't a perk, it is a natural born right. We don't live in feudal states, with live in the United States. "The People" formed the Union and wrote the exact rules that the government could operate under. You aren't granted rights by the Constitution. They are removed from federal government, the Constitution takes rights away from the federal government. A very important distinction.
I'm not a constitutional scholar, but as I discussed in my other reply in this little alcove of the discussion- the Constitution appears to operate on US citizens (The People), not humanity:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...
The constitution makes a distinction between "person" and "citizen" and is careful to grant rights to "people" and not just "citizens". This is why freedom of speech applies to illegal immigrants and visitors and not just US citizens.
This is why freedom of speech applies to illegal immigrants and visitors
Not if we read the text:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Extracting the relevant bit:
Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech
Illegal immigrants and visitors "have" free speech because no laws may be enacted against it, period.
You're missing the forest for the trees, but if it will make you happy, "congress shall make no law...abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble".
Illegal immigrants and visitors have the right to assembly because no laws may be enacted against people assembling, not just citizens assembling.
And perhaps more significantly, let's look at the 14th amendment (which I really should have started with in the first place):
>All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Here there is a clear distinction between citizen and person
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Snowden has not published anything really critical about NSA surveillance on China, Russia, Iran, etc.
His risk/reward calculation seems to be on line with mine. Of course his leaks do some damage to U.S. foreign policy, but that's acceptable collateral damage. His leaks help to shape the power balance between government and citizens in liberal democracies.
Most of what Snowden revealed did not relate to domestic spying overreach. Hell, he wasn't even in China for a week before he revealed NSA programs that spy on the Chinese. Snowden has done more damage to his cause than the government ever could, and it's not for lack of trying.
His credibility as a whistleblower has been fatally harmed by choosing to leave the country: not only did he leave, but he went to China and then to Russia, taking an encrypted hardrive with him! You'd have to be really stupid to think the Chinese and Russians have not copied every single piece of information he had, even the information that The Guardian has decided not publish yet because of the damage it could cause.
At this point, he is a spy from every angle you look at it. Between revealing foreign collection activities, giving China and Russia loads of classified information, and fleeing from the U.S. to China and then Russia, there's no case to be made for him being a whistleblower.
He blew the whistle on a few domestic programs and that's a very good thing. But that is such a small part of everything that Snowden did. Still, in total disregard of the facts, some will consider him a whistleblower and a hero.
He is every bit as much of a hero as Edward Lee Howard and I have little doubt he will meet the same fate.
If you click on the timeline link provided, it pulls up links to the original publications that broke the story. If you were interested in facts, you could read them yourself.
Also, if he is not a spy and is not being charged as one, then he should return to the US. The fact that he can't and won't speaks volumes about his character and his intentions.
For reference, the Pentagon Papers revealed a systematic effort by multiple Administrations to lie to Congress and the public about the reasons for initiation of the Vietnam war, and the covert expansion of the same.
I think that speaks more about the naivety and agendas of the journalists he leaked to than about himself. Given the apparent quantity of documents it seems unlikely he'd have had the chance to prefilter them.
Anyone remotely surprised the NSA were spying on foreign governments (including allies) is basically an idiot.
So allied governments are basically idiots for not thinking the USA would spy on them?
That would mean they should have put into place institutions protecting them from said spying. Which would be taking (defensive) military action because of the actions of an allied government. Now what kind of alliance is that?!
No, if it's anything like the Cold War, everybody is spying on everybody else, and everybody knows they are being spied on. They just kick up a fuss in the news when they happen upon a piece of proof, to use in the PR battle.
I think you may have missed the entire point. "Everyone knows" is also not a very tactful or impressive way to argue your point - since, as included with "everyone", I fully disagree with your point. Bulk collection of metadata across "everyone" in the United States (and other unfortunate countries through collateral damage) is not OK in any way shape or form lest the constitution has recently been changed. The fact that this idea has direct ties to surveillance of foreign governments only exemplifies the point in it's weight and severity.
Your assertion that his credibility is somehow diminished based on his actions doesn't leave much room for your version of the correct way a whistleblower should go about his business properly. I'm not sure you fully grapple what this man has laid out on the line for everyone else here and has signed himself up for a life that will always be in question. Arm-chair NSA antics don't seem to justly appreciate the level at which someone has gone to great lengths to do the job fully and, IMHO, correctly.
> That is the stated mission of the NSA and while the details are highly classified, everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy.
I don't think everyone considers NSA legitimate. NSA is a bunch of people with lots of information and an agenda that is most probably not in the best interest of all Americans, just those richest and most influential 1% or 0.01%. Their track record speaks for itself.
I don't agree that it should be done as a matter of policy. I think that the NSA should be disbanded immediately. Poster above you should speak for himself.
And much of what the NSA and the CIA is benign and could be done in public. Like reading, understanding and communicating political events in other countries. Understanding world economies. Close it down and redistribute the funds to the Peace Corps, I know lots of out hipster kids I would like to send to Sudan.
Everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy
First, many didn't know that they were doing it. Second, as an American citizen I surely don't agree that it should be doing it as a matter of policy. This is another situation where the government does things in my name that I disapprove of. Third, nice American Exceptionalism, bro!
The details are important. That's why intelligence agencies are so secretive to begin with - unveiling an asset, be it an actual agent or an electronic access point usually has the effect of denying future access to that asset, thereby damaging the US's capability.
Again, you could legitimately argue that that's a good thing in the global scheme of things. You could also argue that sabotaging the US air force is a good thing, on pacifist grounds. Unfortunately, this is where Snowden looks most like a traitor and least like a patriot, because US military officials tend to view the two situations as pretty much the same.
> ...unveiling an asset, be it an actual agent or an electronic access point...
Sure, but haven't the caretakers of the document cache gone to great lengths to only reveal the coarse-grained details of what a program does, and generally how it does it, but not the particulars?
everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy.
Not everyone, and especially not when you're talking about "friendly" governments (aka, our allies). And even more so when the spying is being done for industrial espionage / economic advantage purposes, and not national defense.
I'm interested to know what you think he could have released that would have allowed him, as you imply, to stay in the "good graces" of the NSA/USA yet provided enough information to the US public that would not have been written off as a crazy person?
The stuff about tapping major ISPs, the ubiquitous metadata collection, etc. That's the true whistleblower material, the stuff that will get people angry and clamoring for change, and I think releasing the rest of it actually hurts that goal.
Part of what he may be trying to get at is that the US population has no idea of just what the stated mission of the NSA is. Do we as a population think that spying on our allies is OK? This is a discussion that needs to happen publicly and not under a classified umbrella.
I understand your point, but the NSA's mission is confined to cross-border communication. Eavesdropping within foreign governments should not be allowed.
> I think the fact that he leaked a lot of details about NSA surveillance of foreign governments diminishes his moral high ground. That is the stated mission of the NSA and while the details are highly classified, everyone knows that they're doing it and agrees it should be done as a matter of policy.
Er, no actually. Most people actually believe the NSA should keep their dirty fingers and prying eyes to themselves.
The only ones arguing differently are Americans somehow under the delusion that they are alone on this planet. Thankfully, taken on the whole they are a minority.
But go ahead, asserting that my private information should be free to be vacuumed up and abused for whatever purposes your shady intelligence organisations need.
For some reason you think there's an imaginary line to be drawn between US citizens and other human beings. You have a right to privacy, and the rest does not. Superiority much? Kind of a stupid thing to say, on an international forum, IMHO, showing your true colours, US vs "Them", etc. This is the 21st century, wouldn't you like to be able to look each other in the eye?
Joke's on you, however. Because don't for a moment believe that this shadowy government organisation "of yours" shares your ideas about how US citizens somehow have more rights to privacy than other human beings. "Stated mission" or not, they're in it for the power and money, and have done and will do anything they can get away with.
And if you'd have been paying attention instead of sitting back convincing yourself "hey at least they're fighting on my side", you might have noticed that this "moral high ground" is there for a reason. It's also sometimes called a "moral compass" for a reason, because you can use it to make right decisions when you can't know who to trust.
Snowden couldn't have leaked just one without the other either. Not to the same great effect. That's a hint right there. Because the imaginary line doesn't really exist, leaking just the "spying on US citizens" bit and not the rest, would have been so incredibly disingenuous--it's the whole Internet, silly!!--it could only have been done by someone with much less of a moral backbone than Snowden has. And then it wouldn't have gotten the exposure needed, coverage by the Guardian/Greenwald, a leftist UK paper, speaking ill of the US? Ridicule and ignore. No, it had to be the whole picture.
The rest of the world's outrage is actually helping you, you understand?
The NSA, they're not actually working for you, you understand that too? If there is any Us vs Them, we are in fact on the same side.
> Snowden differs from many of the whistleblower ilk in that there is nothing to dislike about his character (yet).
... and because the leaks related to issues that outraged most people. It's easy to understand the concerns regarding spying, and most people have a visceral negative reaction. It's much more difficult to elicit that type of response to, say, human rights violations that don't directly affect most Americans.
In this case, I think that the media is siding with the people (more viewers / ad revenue). If this were any other type of leak, without the same populism, the media most likely wouldn't be as "friendly". There is dirt, but it hasn't been brought to light because it wouldn't sell well (who wants to bash the guy who told us that the NSA is spying on us?)
I'm not sure which media you are referring to as "friendly", but unless its the Guardian or some independent journalist, basically the entirely of establishment journalism is incredibly hostile towards Snowden and is siding completely with the USG. If they had dirt, they would release it immediately (notice how they parrot all the unsubstantiated claims of unnamed USG officals, for example).
I agree 100%. It's very nice to have Snowden as a champion as compared to Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange; he's well-spoken, has no known mental health issues, and isn't wanted for anything other than leaking secrets. It's much easier to get a message across when the only story is the message and not the messenger's transgenderism, depression, megalomania, or sexual assault charges.
I don't have a problem with Assange's approach, really. The point was for him to personally be the lightening rod so that Wikileaks could go about its business in peace, which is a reasonable gambit. And if monetization and theatricality are the easiest way to get people to pay attention to what you have to say, so be it. He just didn't execute well enough in separating the two when it came to absorbing attacks, and WL didn't have enough interesting things to say to stay relevant.
I've never found anything to dislike about the actual NSA whistleblowers (Binney, Drake, Wiebe). I guess the only problem I have with Drake is that he hasn't prioritized personal and family income/wealth enough -- he lost his pension, and is now working at an Apple Store; he could have gotten a much more lucrative job.
Arstechnica figured out that Snowden had been a commenter there (or maybe on their chat system) and had published the threads, but nothing very scandalous besides writing some swears and defending the NSA.
If there is one thing that we should all be taking away from the Snowden episode, it is the fact that all human activities are utterly arbitrary. We decide to live in a free society, and then we do the things necessary to live in that society as we have defined it should be.
The definition keeps changing. One minute, its just not a free society unless you can keep slaves, the next minute its not a free society unless women vote, the next .. well, you get the point. Society is only as good as it declares its intentions and then carries them out; nowhere, alas, in the entire miasma of American law, is there the requirement that one has to always try their best to do well, and to operate on the principle of the greater good - in face of all opposition.
This too, is arbitrary, and the point where it becomes reality instead, is when an individual voice in the crowd stands up and says "this is how things should be!", gaining a little more volume than everyone else, and getting a bit more agreement, in the face of all the worlds cannibalism, that it might be good to cook things slightly differently.
Snowden, and others out there working in their own, utterly non-arbitrary ways, are always going to be necessary to remind us that just when you think you are safe, because status quo, the new safe realm is the as-yet completely unexplored ..
This is true but you have to admit over time the means of oppression have become more nuanced and complicated.
Few people realize that most companies are little more than intellectual property, a network to collaborate on expand said IP and the corp's ability to secure information.
Large corps and govt's not only understand this, they are defined by it, thus the need for whistle blowers more now than ever as the foot on your throat is not as apparent.
Education always will be, and currently is, the tip of the spear. If you can deem to educate someone, you can deem to educate another. Once you gain a mass, education becomes lesser than the whole. This is why: we humans constantly need new means by which we can enlighten ourselves. Within a generation, todays enlightenment becomes de rigeur, de jour, de jure. This is the nature of the trap we find ourselves; escaping it requires one abandon the dialectic of our masters, and embrace the constant new.
Education has that potential, but it also has the potential to indoctrinate and pacify. I agree that innovations in education are exciting and valuable.
I like how they say he "cheated" on the entrance exam to the NSA by stealing the questions and answers from their servers, as if that doesn't just make him more qualified for the job..
Which also impairs effectiveness at doing anything that is legitimate role of any component of the US government, which necessary includes adhering to rather than subverting the Constitution of the United States.
All rigid systems of checks and balances impair effectiveness if your definition of "effectiveness" ignores the problems the checks and balances are designed to prevent, as checks and balances almost always involve checking and balancing.
For example, think how much the president could get done if we got rid of congress, the senate, the supreme court and the constitution and we just had an all-powerful dictator. None of this mucking about with government shutdowns and filibusters and pork and vetos and negotiating. No excuses for "I just couldn't get it done due to washington politics". It would be so agile. Probably save a lot of money as well.
As I do not work for the NSA, I hope you will understand my lack of real-life NSA examples. But surely you have experienced the ways bureaucracy can drag down a good project.
You are familiar with the story of Kirk (Star Trek), and his exam at his academy? He cheats on the exam to beat an unwinnable simulation. This (well, Kirk in general) is portrayed as an example of the cowboy attitude at its best.
I know it's fiction, but you want examples and those are some of the first that come to mind.
No, I don't want fictional examples of something posited as a loose analogy. I want an explanation of how rigid ethics would impair the effectiveness of the United States National Security Agency in fulfilling its duties under the laws and Constitution of the United States.
Despite the American Black Chamber's initial success, however, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
The NSA's core goal is the global monitoring, collection, decoding, translation and analysis of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Achieving these things runs afoul of at least some people's ethical systems. For example, how does someone with an unshakeable belief in the sanctity of life work to bring in a double-agent (traitor) to his country (who will be executed) without facing some ethical dilemmas?
If you can't put the veracity of the revelations of Snowden on trial I guess you attack his character and/or means.
The NSA is in a lose, lose situation. They are painting Snowden to be an idiot...an idiot they were dumb enough to hire and allow to revamp major system. Oh but he cheated on their test to get hired! If the NSA cannot secure a test what can they secure? Oh but a comp sci guy was quirky and eccentric! Ya well maybe tell ole' Keith not to recruit at DefCon what kind of people are you trying to hire?
The idea that there is mass data store somewhere and it will not be utilized for say insider trading or blackmail is naive to say the least. If Snowden had access so do many, many others and I am sure they tell themselves they are good people but human nature is what it is... What weapon, and mass info is indeed a weapon, has ever been created and never used especially a stealthy tool which can always be denied being used hidden behind secrecy and patriotism?
The fact that the NSA needed help to setup Sharepoint fills me with confidence that they have no idea what they're doing. I'm guessing the password to the call log metadata is on a post-it note somewhere.
The government's workforce is made of of a very large percentage of contractors 50%+. The article makes it seem like he was a unicorn but that probably wasn't the case. Contractor employees often get paid more than a government counter part doing the same job[0]. If I had to venture a guess as to why this is I'd say it is because those contractors turn around and make political donations where as many government employees are limited in their political activity, especially in the defense sector.
I think its more because their contract has an expiration date. They get paid more because there is a "risk" that they could be unemployed for some time before they find a new contract (not likely for programming jobs, but speaking about contractors in general...) whereas a gov't employee has a huge amount of job security. Its a choice of Money vs. Job security.
Government hires contractors for the same reason private companies do. They can easily ramp up headcount then ramp it back down. It's doubly valuable when your full-time workforce are protected by numerous legal and union regulations. When a project needs 100 technical resources asap, recruiting that many people is very difficult and expensive. Even for a private company without regulations on pay and hours. There are only a handful of IT services companies out there capable of staffing that many people at once, so bidding is less than competitive. If funding is cut for that project, just fire the contractor and you're free and clear.
I have to laugh at the "genius among geniuses" quote. How come all of the NSA geniuses were so dependent on a contractor to keep everything running? Why did none of those geniuses see the danger in employing a person with an anti-NSA hoodie who was constantly questioning the legality of spying?
Nothing in that piece to suggest Snowden was a "A Genius Among Geniuses"...on what basis does his genius rest? AFAIK there is no record of Snowden doing any kind of work out there that'll suggest he knew anything about computing security.
It seems people have forgotten that there are a ton of freely available computer security tools out there that any body can take and do a lot of damage with.
The basis for his genius appears to be the opinion of his colleague, which you're free to accept or reject. If his colleague's claims are to be believed, his activities and accolades within the NSA would be sufficient record of his computing security experience.
Not everyone has to publish a white paper or open a GitHub account in order to be taken seriously.
I would say being a self-taught computer expert who out-smarted the most technically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world at their own game would lend itself to being a body of work. He also outmaneuvered the State Department and as a lone actor has been able to thumb his nose at the most powerful people in the world while his data has been front page news in dozens of countries around the world for months. It's all quite surreal and I would not underestimate the man.
> ...out-smarted the most technically advanced intelligence agency in the history of the world at their own game...
The lifting of sensitive NSA documents smells to me of gross incompetence. It troubles me that this hasn't gotten more discussion.
Snowden was working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. While working for this government contractor, he managed to copy a great many secrets that were probably supposed to be very inaccessible to him.
1) Why does the NSA outsource IT work (and, more critically, the storage of extremely sensitive information) to a third party? (Or do I misunderstand BAH's role in the matter?)
2) One of the NSA's missions is to provide computer security to USGov and the nation as a whole. How good at that job could they possibly be if they can't keep their secrets from insiders who wish to obtain them?
3) Snowden has not been outed as black, white, or grey-hat hacker. It has been claimed that Snowden asked other co-workers with greater access for their credentials and used those to copy sensitive data. Either that claim is true, or BAH seriously fucked up their SELinux permissions and gave sysadmins read access to everything. Either way, the documents were likely not obtained through technical wizardry, but were likely acquired through exploitation of human incompetence. Snowden may be a very skilled individual, but it seems very likely that his skills had nothing to do with the acquisition of that document cache.
Exploiting human weakness is totally fair game. I am not an NSA policy setter. I have never directly worked for any government agency, but I have worked as a computer security auditor. If you don't account for human weakness in the threat models for your high value assets, you've already lost.
While there are no silver bullets, there are auditing policies [0] and technological mechanisms [1] that attempt to prevent improper use of credentials or improper access of information, and can detect instances of the same after the fact.
Yes, this sort of thing requires a lot of thought to set up, personnel to maintain, political capital to keep going, and regular objective and honest reevaluations to ensure continued effectiveness. However, I don't see any other way to do this if you've data that you need to protect from your enemies.
If protecting the NSA's highly sensitive information isn't worth all that trouble, is it actually worth protecting?
[0] Such as daily inspection of badge-in, badge-out, log-in, log-out, and document/resource access logs to verify physical presence and ensure that one isn't reading things that one's not supposed to have access to.
[1] Such as proper use of SELinux for fine-grained access control, WORM logging devices for tamper-resistant logging, account lockouts on detection of data access or log-in irregularities to minimize damage from account "spoofing" [You're at lunch, but you logged in to another computer? You badged-out for the day, but pulled some document from backup at the office? Instant lockout, termination of all of your processes across all systems, and message to facility security.], etc. etc..
Exactly. Exploiting the human elements of a system is often the best way into any system that is trying to be secure. It's been that way since forever. There's even an entire book on the subject by Kevin Mitnick that is very well known, "The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security"
Aye. Would one think that the computer security guys at the NSA are unaware of the vast body of literature on social engineering? ;) (I don't think that you do, it's a rhetorical question.)
I suspect that it's very likely that the NSA fucked up, big-time when they designed their internal security and auditing system. With the system in the state that it must have been, would they even know if an agent from $ENEMY_COUNTRY_OF_THE_MONTH had siphoned off sensitive data, shipped it back home, and vanished into the night?
I mean, the only way we became aware of this leak was the Guardian's announcement of it. It kinda feels like the NSA became aware of the situation at about the same time that we did.
I think we're on the same page here; sorry for misunderstanding before. b^)
If NSA have failed as hard in securing their systems as they seem to have, it makes me think that in the past they've relied on the vetting process to screen out decent Americans like Snowden. I don't think that's enough to keep out determined nations with cosmopolitan citizens, so it's a good bet that Snowden was preceded, and will be followed, by spies of all stripes. If we don't really need an NSA capable of keeping secrets, we probably don't need an NSA at all.
(Moved to another post, as editing posts after an hour seems kinda tacky.)
The media has been banging the "Snowden was the SMARTEST HACKER! NOONE ELSE COULD EVER HAVE DONE THIS BECAUSE HE WAS SO SMART AND STRANGE!!" drum really, really hard. I'm mentioning the human factors because human and internal policy fuck-ups are simply a far more likely explanation.
The Government would love for everyone to believe that this was a one-off event by an exceedingly clever adversary. "We were outsmarted by a super-smart guy who hates America" sounds so much better than "We failed to properly plan for an internal threat, and have failed to do so for years".
I really wonder how many times this sort of thing has been pulled off, undetected, by hostile actors. Just how much of the NSA's massive trove of data has been siphoned off by state-level actors?
Independent evidence is clearly going to be thin on the ground if he was doing work for the NSA. As mentioned before, it's the opinion of his co-worker. Now that co-worker may have been an incompetent and saw everything that Snowden did as 'genius'. Or, it may be the case that he really was one. Who knows, but at least it's a slightly different viewpoint on the thing.
He could configure sharepoint AND backup systems. May not seem like much but in a federal government department that's like being Jesus and, I don't know, Buddha at the same time.
It doesn't mention anything about security. There's a backup system, and a web front-end. Whatever his work was, it was impressive enough to get him an invite to the Tailored Access Operations. Not all work at the NSA was cutting-edge encryption.
How did you miss that? the whole article speaks to his supposed security prowess:
* Snowden had been brought to Hawaii as a cybersecurity expert working for Dell’s services division but due to a problem with the contract was reassigned to become an administrator for the Microsoft intranet management system known as Sharepoint.
And the next sentence starts Impressed with his technical abilities, Snowden’s managers decided that he was the most qualified candidate to build a new web front-end So whatever he did that was impressive, it wasn't security-related.
How can you tell from that statement that his impressive act was 100% not security related.... All you can really say is that it wasn't necessarily security related.
Anyone building a web front-end needs to have a lot of security-related knowledge (implement https correctly, cross site scripting and other js vulnerabilities, sql injection, buffer overflows in your apps, etc.)
It's a character reference from a co-worker, not a declaration of objective fact.
>It seems people have forgotten that there are a ton of freely available computer security tools out there that any body can take and do a lot of damage with.
I used to think that sort of thing would be noticed pretty quickly at the NSA. Nowadays, I am not so sure.
That quote is apparently the opinion of one of the NSA staffers that worked with him. Apparently he was more talented than most of the other employees and contractors.
Indeed; a statement like that is either reflective of Snowden's skill level, or the average skill level of his co-workers. I haven't personally seen anything out of the ordinary yet for a generic sysadmin/developer/hacker/internet freedom fighter character.
No. (Ideally) a patriot does what is good for his country, whatever the government does, good or bad. That can include helping the government do what is right for the country and its citizen.
Hm, national patriotism seems shortsighted in the post-modern age. Can we please be global patriots in the age of Internet and global communication and commerce?
I find it particularly sad since I have a copy sitting on my desk at this moment. It's an interesting read, I would suggest it to anyone that hasn't yet.
It also has the Declaration of Independence at the end as well. Doubly eccentric?
With great power comes great responsibility. I'm glad Snowden saw it that way, too. Same goes for William Binney who was a higher-up in NSA, and also in charge of creating some of its most important/dangerous surveillance software, before he decided to become a whistleblower.
> “I won’t call him a hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”
No hero? What does it take for you then?
Actually, he's not a hero, he's more like Jesus of our times, giving away his (perfect) life for us (who - of course - don't even appreciate his sacrifice, let alone act).
You should paint a new rendition of the Last Supper with Snowden as your Jesus, and you can have Assange, Manning, ..., (choose 10 more of those types) as his disciples. Have fun.
I suppose they're trying to persuade us that Snowden is a superhuman, and only his superpowers allowed him to get access to all the information. It has nothing to do with incompetence of his coworkers and bosses, nobody could have prevented that and it's nobody's fault.
Something tells me that due to Snowden's leaks - nothing will ever get accomplished at the NSA. Not anymore. Imagine of all the additional security and authorization measures that they will add. Imagine how this would be a hurdle in both day-to-day and new projects.
Even if you try your hardest to 'believe', a lot of whistleblowers have been deluded one way or another. They can be overly indoctrinated in their 'mission', so, whilst bringing to light useful information they have also been a bit keen to believe the propaganda that goes with The War Against Terror, e.g. Coleen Rowley. They can also be deluded in their importance, to be less than convincing, e.g. Sibel Edmonds. They can also fully jump the shark, e.g. David Shayler. Then there is Assange, 'deluded' in my opinion for thinking leaks could be monetized.
Unless I am missing something, Edward Snowden has taken a stand for truth and not allowed his character to be compromised in any way whatsoever. He has not made any mistakes, there is nothing where you could think he could have done better. Am I being deluded in thinking this?!?