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Latest Snowden Doc Shows NSA Spied on German Intelligence

155 points by jdimov9 11y ago

NullCharacter 11y ago
A signals intelligence agency conducting intelligence operations on foreign signals? Stop the presses!
pachydermic 11y ago
Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game even if they are our allies. I don't think the NSA should be collecting massive amounts of data on ordinary citizens in a way which violates our constitutional rights, or that they should collaborate with other intelligence agencies to effectively do the same thing, but I think they should still exist and they have a real reason to exist. Not enthused about this leak.
- NullCharacter 11y ago
  So is Snowden still a whistleblower? Honest question, not trying to be snide. If you abscond with 1,000 legitimate mission-oriented documents for every 1 document you leak that pertains to something you think an agency shouldn't be doing, are you still blowing the whistle? At what point are you no longer able to use that title as a defense? 10,000 documents for every 1? 100,000? Can he be both a whistleblower and a criminal or are the two mutually exclusive? I don't have answers to these questions so I hope someone else does. Try not to downvote for simply disagreeing with the question, as though it were even possible to disagree with a question.
  - wwwwwwwwww 11y ago
    Snowden stopped being a whistleblower to me when the docs about the CIA's sigint spying gear was published. There's a lot of docs that are useful for laypeople to improve their privacy, and then there's the ones that are going to do nothing but damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies against nation-state adversaries. If his sole goal was to damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies, then he was a mole, not a whistle blower.
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      This is an unrelated issue, but I think you're working from the premise that the CIA's spying and SIGINT capabilities actually make the US safer or more strategically secure in the world. That the CIA actually improves the US's position isn't remotely proven even on the 50 year timescale, and there's a cornucopia of evidence that supports the opposite hypothesis which states the CIA's endless philandering has engendered a deep hatred of the US in many corners of the world, not to mention seeding anarchic instability.
      - caskance 11y ago
        And the idea that engendering a deep hatred of the US in many corners of the world or seeding anarchic instability does not improve the US's position is likewise not remotely proven. The whole point of representative democracy is that decisions, especially ones like these that require privileged information to really be sure about, are delegated to elected representatives.
    - pvnick 11y ago
      > There's a lot of docs that are useful for laypeople to improve their privacy, and then there's the ones that are going to do nothing but damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies against nation-state adversaries. That's a false dichotomy. Snowden didn't risk his life just to help people improve their privacy - he did it to expose wrongdoing and start a process to reform our government.
    - psykovsky 11y ago
      The US spying capability does nothing but damage to the rest of the world. Just because I live in a different country you must respect my rights, nonetheless. No, secret court orders won't fly around here.
    - rurban 11y ago
      He didn't publish any material. The german magazine Spiegel published this part you are complaining about. They explained their reasoning why they published it.
  - clarkmoody 11y ago
    Isn't every whistleblower within the intelligence community a criminal by definition due to the laws surrounding the material? (Assuming they are blowing the whistle about non human-resources issues)
    - ju-st 11y ago
      Yes. Compare with the rebellion of the 13 Colonies.. or was it a revolution?
  - pvnick 11y ago
    Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately. I for one believe that the releases have been done with impeccable professionalism, and in fact if it were up to me I would have been even more liberal with the releases (Greenwald, Poitras, et al. have actually worked with the government during this process).
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      >gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately Journalists will be tempted to publish regardless of the original intent, let's hope they are not desperate for a story.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      This. It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak everything indiscriminately).
      - cryoshon 11y ago
        There's been a lot of obfuscation to the contrary, including endless bad-faith comparisons with Chelsea Manning.
        jazzyk 11y ago
        Yup. Also comparisons with Assange.
      - irishcoffee 11y ago
        Yes he did, to journalists. Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to have done that. So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.
  - nabla9 11y ago
    As a citizen of EU country I'm grateful. If Snowden is committing crime, it's political crime. There are more important concerns and loyalties than those we have for individual countries. If he is revealing how US spies friendly nations, he is serving greater good. His document leak to journalists seem to avoid information of NSA spying Russia or China.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - mtgx 11y ago
    Of course he is. His documents have already provided huge benefit to the public. Are we really going to nitpick over every single document from the hundreds of thousands and go "Aha! this document probably shouldn't have been leaked - he's totally a traitor now"? I'm sure there were documents in the Pentagon Papers which probably shouldn't have been made public, too. Looking back, was that relevant to the larger cause of informing the public about the Vietnam war's lies?
    - caskance 11y ago
      That's what it means to be a traitor, isn't it? If someone lives an otherwise law-abiding life, and commits ONE crime, would you not call him a criminal as long as his total contribution was net positive?
  - ewindisch 11y ago
    As a thought experiment, are we certain these documents came from Snowden? He has not digitally signed these releases. He himself may not know entirely what was in the archive, so he may not be certain if all the released documents originated from his dump. Even if he was aware of documents being incorrectly attributed to him, it may do his cause more harm than good to highlight this fact. It would be a legitimate option for the NSA to intentionally "leak" documents that simply describe their mission, causing a false spectacle. It will not hurt them much, given it's well within their mission parameters, but CAN hurt Snowden through public backlash. It would raise such questions as, "is Snowden still a whistleblower?" Such releases could hurt his credibility, or even flood the news with insignificant stories such that the truly important ones are lost in the shuffle. I am not certain this is what we're seeing, but neither would I be surprised if it were true. EDIT: There have been documents leaked about how the CIA and IC use character assassination to advance their causes. There have also been articles explicitly about the character assassination of Snowden: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/06/12522/glenn-greenwald-speaks-out http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/06/12522/glenn-greenwald-sp... http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/the-character-assassination-of-edward-snowden http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/t...
    - NullCharacter 11y ago
      Using your same logic here, you could claim that those documents are forgeries to begin with, leaked to "assassinate" the "character" of the NSA. You can't have it both ways. Either you're skeptical of the documents origin/source or you aren't.
      - ewindisch 11y ago
        Absolutely. Also remember this was a thought experiment, not a conspiracy theory. FYI, not sure why you're using quotes around Character assassination. It is a fixed expression in English, it's not something I made up: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination 2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/character%20assassination http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/character%20assass...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    That's not a question with a binary answer. Some of what he's published clearly is "whistleblowing", and a lot of it clearly isn't. The notion of whether Snowden as a person is a whistleblower is a partisan rhetorical trick --- employed by both "sides" of the debate --- used to distract people from his actual actions.
    - bediger4000 11y ago
      used to distract people from his actual actions How do we determine his actual intentions? I mean, Snowden is alive and well and giving quotes: "People who think I made a mistake in picking [Hong Kong] as a location misunderstand my intentions,” Snowden clarified. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”" Sounds like Snowden considers himself to be something of a whistle blower, in the common sense, if not the technical. So, that's settled, I guess.
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    >Try not to downvote for simply disagreeing with the question You are asking the question same way Fox News asks if we should just nuke middle east. It not a question, its your opinion, as valid and proper as rape jokes(another Fox News special).
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    If you are concerned about the release of some of these documents, why aren't you focusing your attention on the crimes in government and the failure of oversight that made public disclosure necessary. Would you prefer Snowden had stayed silent and the crimes he revealed remained unknown? Everybody makes mistakes, and it is reasonable to assume that someone trying to bring documents out of a state agency so the people can see them isn't going to have the luxury of time. This attitude that a whistleblower is somehow supposed to be perfect is suspicious; attempting to seed the meme that Snowden was anything other than a whistleblower, while diverting attention yet again from the crimes of a rogue intelligence agency.
- mattkrea 11y ago
  My bigger takeaway here is that they are supposed to be working with them. I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked. Instead of coordinating with the people that they share so much other more sensitive info with they stole it. That is where I see a problem.
  - andylei 11y ago
    > I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked probably not
    - mattkrea 11y ago
      Of course I have no idea what intelligence agencies are thinking but at the time things like this were going on: http://www.rt.com/news/252501-nsa-bnd-spying-scandal/ http://www.rt.com/news/252501-nsa-bnd-spying-scandal/
  - tormeh 11y ago
    >My bigger takeaway here is that they are supposed to be working with them. I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked. How would the NSA know the Germans didn't lie? I don't think this is a big issue. If you're a spy, expect to be spied upon.
sonoffett 11y ago
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! But seriously, is this not what the NSA is paid to do?
- braythwayt 11y ago
  The "I'm shocked, shocked" meme from Casablanca is most appropriate when the speaker is themselves hypocritically complicit in the wrongdoing being described. So... I think it's up to the German Minister of Security to say they are shocked, shocked that the USA is spying on the people Germany uses to spy on the US.
  - matthewmcg 11y ago
    So maybe a more apt classic movie paraphrase would be "Hey! There's no eavesdropping in here--this is a SIGINT room!"
    - braythwayt 11y ago
      Great Strangelove reference! But I should be more clear. I'm not saying what you said isn't funny, it made me smile! I'm just trying to share that under certain circumstances, it's even truer to the original scene and thus funnier. :-)
masteryupa_ 11y ago
All information might as well be completely free and open to the public for the security the practice of counter spying provides us. Additionally, the reason this level of infringement of privacy is so damning is that it completely absolves any notion of trust the German authority might have had towards the US. Attempts to form a more cohesive alliance in international politics will not be fruitful with this strategy.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  What is Germany supposed to do, align with Russia? They really don't have any choice.
  - masteryupa_ 11y ago
    Probably not but I don't see any reason why this kind of information needs to be sourced through spying rather than through a formal declaration between intelligence services. Not that that process need be transparent, just that the act of willing participation by the German administration would likely produce a more amicable friendship.
unreal37 11y ago
Seems like a non-story. The NSA was in possession of a couple of documents created by German intelligence. There's no evidence how they got them. Perhaps there was a leaker inside of the German intelligence service who posted a copy of these memos to a pastebin? They have no idea how the Americans got it.
vinceguidry 11y ago
Isn't that their job?
- kaonashi 11y ago
  Look where this is published.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Ahh, missed that. Thanks.
ihsw 11y ago
Since they've tapped pretty much everything then isn't it physically impossible that they cannot spy on everybody?
bobowzki 11y ago
I'm not a big fan of the NSA, but isn't that kind of their job..?
rdl 11y ago
I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on foreign intelligence agencies. FFS, that, and spying on heads of government/military, is their ultimate purpose. Counterterrorism and such, which has the slippery slope to spying on private citizens, is completely secondary at best.
ccalvert 11y ago
This is legitimate activity for the NSA, but it plays badly in Europe. My guess is that Snowden and his friends are pandering to folks in Europe who naturally dislike this kind of thing, and particularly to folks in Germany. Imagine the reaction on the far right here in America to a news report that Russia, Germany or France spies on American intelligence agencies. It's natural that such things should happen, but its also certain to create discord among certain factions here in America.
Someone1234 11y ago
I agree that this is a legitimate intelligence target. All of the allies spy one one another all of the time, that's how we keep trust. I think the biggest scandal that isn't discussed often enough (in the US) is not spying on foreign government officials for legitimate security-related reasons (e.g. this), it is spying on foreign government officials to give the US an advantage in trade negotiations or worse passing on "tips" to US-based private companies so they can gain an advantage during negotiations/bidding. The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages. Even people in the US should be asking why large US corporations are given these tips/advantages/etc while small-medium US businesses are not. Let alone the immorality of helping a US company win against a foreign one due to state supplied corporate espionage. The justification "well China does it!!1!" while true, is just kind of pathetic. China does a lot of things, doesn't make it right for a country that claims it is the beacon is capitalism and democracy to do the same.
- sayhar 11y ago
  > The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages. For many of us, "capitalism" involves precisely this -- the wealthy using their wealth and power to cement their position.
  - wnevets 11y ago
    capitalism, if you're not cheating you're not trying.
    - cpursley 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism
  - Someone1234 11y ago
omouse 11y ago
well I guess we know who watches the watchers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bizkeep2 11y ago
Trust, but verify.
on_ 11y ago
Many people are saying the same thing: > Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game > This is legitimate activity for the NSA > I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on foreign intelligence agencies. Correct. This is what spy agencies do. Edward Snowden is an American Hero, and it is a shame what has happened beyond the obvious. His name is invoked for shock headlines, and at this point there is almost no reaction to these disclosures and that is worrying. If there was a way to lower the power distance between "Government Actors" and citizens, we could expend resources cooperatively instead of competitively. Until then, there will be numerous government agencies AND companies, on many continents and countries, building systems to collect and analyze your data creating a single point of failure. That sounds counter intuitive, but if we assume all of your data is essentially uniform and the Chinese/NSA/BND etc. all have essentially the same data. If even one of those places has a breach event, your data will be in the hands of bad individual actors. This leaves aside, that the data is already in the hands of questionable players. To conclude, the Snowden docs were illuminating but no longer hold the shock they once did. Not much has changed. The initial disclosure confirmed for a lot of us what we already knew, and publicized it to those who didn't. The ongoing disclosures are marginal now and really a function of leveraging Snowden's name for ad-traffic. Hopefully, going forward there will be a framework for protecting privacy that regular, everyday people can easily use. Until then, these disclosures are just a disheartening reminder of the inability to seperate gov. tyranny from legitimate activity. [0]Snowden is living in an undisclosed location in Russia, a country hostile to the US, and barred from entering America without being tried for treason. Disappointing.
cryoshon 11y ago
There's some weird activity in this thread which I think bears mentioning. Lots of people saying either "good, this is their job" and "old news"-- shill trademark phrases. I'm not making any accusations exactly, but I am concerned at the mass of simple, positive, and vapid comments in this thread.
- digler999 11y ago
  I was thinking the same thing, definitely some astro-turfing going on here...
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Glad to see I'm not the only one seeing this. I have seen such behavior on other NSA-threads, as well as a few political threads in recent memory. I think, for the most part, HN is now "on the radar".
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      To be absolutely clear re: my other reply - while I think there are a lot of frustrated people, there has absolutely been JTRIG-style astroturfing on HN, and it's not recent. It's dangerous to make specific accusations (many people are just ignorant, confused, or frustrated), but that doesn't account for the reliability, low latency, and consistency of the NSA apologizing in any of these "big" NSA stories.
      - cryoshon 11y ago
        Yeah, the low latency is a critical part. I laid eyes on this thread very soon after it was submitted, and there were already a number of identical dismissal style comments-- before anyone else had even arrived.
- sonoffett 11y ago
  What the thinker thinks the prover proves. Instead of starting some metaconversation, it might be more productive to address how this information is new news or why the NSA should not be spying on foreign intelligence?
ForHackernews 11y ago
So...spies spied on spies doing spying? I'm not seeing the problem here.
Luc 11y ago
Edward Snowden's just created a Twitter account. I've never seen the follower count go up that quickly: https://twitter.com/Snowden https://twitter.com/Snowden
- krapp 11y ago
  looks legit.
  - caskance 11y ago
    It's got the blue checkmark. Have they ever gotten that wrong?
  - acqq 11y ago
    "Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden 3h3 hours ago: Meanwhile, a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter." It surely sounds like him. And Chuck Norris can confirm. Hi Ed.
merb 11y ago
Currently the more get's leaked, the more I'm afraid. I live in Germany and I hope that there won't be any global war. But currently the policits between countries getting stranger and stranger. Mostly due to the governements. Shouldn't they suppose to work for freedom and not war? I mean I think even germany will send weapons to bad behaved countries (americans aswell), just for the money, who cares about weapon embargos?! Money is all and the fact that so many people care so much about Money and some kind of 'status' inside their culture makes things really really worse. I hope that I can live in peace until I die. Hopefully.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  Shouldn't they suppose to work for freedom and not war? Here's an interesting take on that[1][2][3]. Father: You're gonna make the world safe for democracy! Joe Age 10: What is democracy? Father: Well it's never bright clear on myself. Like any other kind government it's got something to do with young men killing each other I believe. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns
- caskance 11y ago
  The opposite of war is peace, not freedom. They're very different and usually opposed.
codecamper 11y ago
I guarantee that the only reason the NSA did this was so that some few fatsos could continue to live in Germany, drink great beer with their friends, live in a swank apartment in the old town, and collect their foreign earned income exclusion.
- trhway 11y ago
  looking at recent busts of Russian "spies" (quotes because they were so inept in their activities) in US, it is pretty much the same picture - young lazy morons from well-connected families get a good job in a good country (i.e. like a trade representative in US of a Russian state owned corporation) with only downside is a possibility of being deported/non-grata-ed if busted (again they have been so inept that US seems to happy to just get rid of them instead of keeping them in prison)

155 points by jdimov9 11y ago

A signals intelligence agency conducting intelligence operations on foreign signals? Stop the presses!

Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game even if they are our allies. I don't think the NSA should be collecting massive amounts of data on ordinary citizens in a way which violates our constitutional rights, or that they should collaborate with other intelligence agencies to effectively do the same thing, but I think they should still exist and they have a real reason to exist. Not enthused about this leak.

NullCharacter 11y ago
So is Snowden still a whistleblower? Honest question, not trying to be snide. If you abscond with 1,000 legitimate mission-oriented documents for every 1 document you leak that pertains to something you think an agency shouldn't be doing, are you still blowing the whistle? At what point are you no longer able to use that title as a defense? 10,000 documents for every 1? 100,000? Can he be both a whistleblower and a criminal or are the two mutually exclusive? I don't have answers to these questions so I hope someone else does. Try not to downvote for simply disagreeing with the question, as though it were even possible to disagree with a question.
- wwwwwwwwww 11y ago
  Snowden stopped being a whistleblower to me when the docs about the CIA's sigint spying gear was published. There's a lot of docs that are useful for laypeople to improve their privacy, and then there's the ones that are going to do nothing but damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies against nation-state adversaries. If his sole goal was to damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies, then he was a mole, not a whistle blower.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    This is an unrelated issue, but I think you're working from the premise that the CIA's spying and SIGINT capabilities actually make the US safer or more strategically secure in the world. That the CIA actually improves the US's position isn't remotely proven even on the 50 year timescale, and there's a cornucopia of evidence that supports the opposite hypothesis which states the CIA's endless philandering has engendered a deep hatred of the US in many corners of the world, not to mention seeding anarchic instability.
    - caskance 11y ago
      And the idea that engendering a deep hatred of the US in many corners of the world or seeding anarchic instability does not improve the US's position is likewise not remotely proven. The whole point of representative democracy is that decisions, especially ones like these that require privileged information to really be sure about, are delegated to elected representatives.
  - pvnick 11y ago
    > There's a lot of docs that are useful for laypeople to improve their privacy, and then there's the ones that are going to do nothing but damage the spying capability of US intelligence agencies against nation-state adversaries. That's a false dichotomy. Snowden didn't risk his life just to help people improve their privacy - he did it to expose wrongdoing and start a process to reform our government.
  - psykovsky 11y ago
    The US spying capability does nothing but damage to the rest of the world. Just because I live in a different country you must respect my rights, nonetheless. No, secret court orders won't fly around here.
  - rurban 11y ago
    He didn't publish any material. The german magazine Spiegel published this part you are complaining about. They explained their reasoning why they published it.
- clarkmoody 11y ago
  Isn't every whistleblower within the intelligence community a criminal by definition due to the laws surrounding the material? (Assuming they are blowing the whistle about non human-resources issues)
  - ju-st 11y ago
    Yes. Compare with the rebellion of the 13 Colonies.. or was it a revolution?
- pvnick 11y ago
  Snowden didn't decide which document's to publish - journalists did. He handed over a trove of information, among which was damning evidence that our government was/is doing something they shouldn't, and gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately. I for one believe that the releases have been done with impeccable professionalism, and in fact if it were up to me I would have been even more liberal with the releases (Greenwald, Poitras, et al. have actually worked with the government during this process).
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    >gave journalists the responsibility to publish relevant documents appropriately Journalists will be tempted to publish regardless of the original intent, let's hope they are not desperate for a story.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    This. It is amazing how many people don't know this (that he did not just leak everything indiscriminately).
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      There's been a lot of obfuscation to the contrary, including endless bad-faith comparisons with Chelsea Manning.
      - jazzyk 11y ago
        Yup. Also comparisons with Assange.
    - irishcoffee 11y ago
      Yes he did, to journalists. Before the downvote button is spammed: He simply did not have time go go over every single one of the 100,000+ documents he claimed to leak, and give them to journalists in an intelligent manner. There simply was not enough time between him leaving the country and the documents being revealed for him to have done that. So yes, he did very much indiscriminately leak them.
- nabla9 11y ago
  As a citizen of EU country I'm grateful. If Snowden is committing crime, it's political crime. There are more important concerns and loyalties than those we have for individual countries. If he is revealing how US spies friendly nations, he is serving greater good. His document leak to journalists seem to avoid information of NSA spying Russia or China.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- mtgx 11y ago
  Of course he is. His documents have already provided huge benefit to the public. Are we really going to nitpick over every single document from the hundreds of thousands and go "Aha! this document probably shouldn't have been leaked - he's totally a traitor now"? I'm sure there were documents in the Pentagon Papers which probably shouldn't have been made public, too. Looking back, was that relevant to the larger cause of informing the public about the Vietnam war's lies?
  - caskance 11y ago
    That's what it means to be a traitor, isn't it? If someone lives an otherwise law-abiding life, and commits ONE crime, would you not call him a criminal as long as his total contribution was net positive?
- ewindisch 11y ago
  As a thought experiment, are we certain these documents came from Snowden? He has not digitally signed these releases. He himself may not know entirely what was in the archive, so he may not be certain if all the released documents originated from his dump. Even if he was aware of documents being incorrectly attributed to him, it may do his cause more harm than good to highlight this fact. It would be a legitimate option for the NSA to intentionally "leak" documents that simply describe their mission, causing a false spectacle. It will not hurt them much, given it's well within their mission parameters, but CAN hurt Snowden through public backlash. It would raise such questions as, "is Snowden still a whistleblower?" Such releases could hurt his credibility, or even flood the news with insignificant stories such that the truly important ones are lost in the shuffle. I am not certain this is what we're seeing, but neither would I be surprised if it were true. EDIT: There have been documents leaked about how the CIA and IC use character assassination to advance their causes. There have also been articles explicitly about the character assassination of Snowden: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/06/12522/glenn-greenwald-speaks-out http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/06/12522/glenn-greenwald-sp... http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/the-character-assassination-of-edward-snowden http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/t...
  - NullCharacter 11y ago
    Using your same logic here, you could claim that those documents are forgeries to begin with, leaked to "assassinate" the "character" of the NSA. You can't have it both ways. Either you're skeptical of the documents origin/source or you aren't.
    - ewindisch 11y ago
      Absolutely. Also remember this was a thought experiment, not a conspiracy theory. FYI, not sure why you're using quotes around Character assassination. It is a fixed expression in English, it's not something I made up: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination 2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/character%20assassination http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/character%20assass...
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's not a question with a binary answer. Some of what he's published clearly is "whistleblowing", and a lot of it clearly isn't. The notion of whether Snowden as a person is a whistleblower is a partisan rhetorical trick --- employed by both "sides" of the debate --- used to distract people from his actual actions.
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    used to distract people from his actual actions How do we determine his actual intentions? I mean, Snowden is alive and well and giving quotes: "People who think I made a mistake in picking [Hong Kong] as a location misunderstand my intentions,” Snowden clarified. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”" Sounds like Snowden considers himself to be something of a whistle blower, in the common sense, if not the technical. So, that's settled, I guess.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  >Try not to downvote for simply disagreeing with the question You are asking the question same way Fox News asks if we should just nuke middle east. It not a question, its your opinion, as valid and proper as rape jokes(another Fox News special).
- pdkl95 11y ago
  If you are concerned about the release of some of these documents, why aren't you focusing your attention on the crimes in government and the failure of oversight that made public disclosure necessary. Would you prefer Snowden had stayed silent and the crimes he revealed remained unknown? Everybody makes mistakes, and it is reasonable to assume that someone trying to bring documents out of a state agency so the people can see them isn't going to have the luxury of time. This attitude that a whistleblower is somehow supposed to be perfect is suspicious; attempting to seed the meme that Snowden was anything other than a whistleblower, while diverting attention yet again from the crimes of a rogue intelligence agency.
mattkrea 11y ago
My bigger takeaway here is that they are supposed to be working with them. I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked. Instead of coordinating with the people that they share so much other more sensitive info with they stole it. That is where I see a problem.
- andylei 11y ago
  > I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked probably not
  - mattkrea 11y ago
    Of course I have no idea what intelligence agencies are thinking but at the time things like this were going on: http://www.rt.com/news/252501-nsa-bnd-spying-scandal/ http://www.rt.com/news/252501-nsa-bnd-spying-scandal/
- tormeh 11y ago
  >My bigger takeaway here is that they are supposed to be working with them. I'm quite sure that German intelligence would have offered up this information if some NSA official just asked. How would the NSA know the Germans didn't lie? I don't think this is a big issue. If you're a spy, expect to be spied upon.

sonoffett 11y ago

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! But seriously, is this not what the NSA is paid to do?

braythwayt 11y ago
The "I'm shocked, shocked" meme from Casablanca is most appropriate when the speaker is themselves hypocritically complicit in the wrongdoing being described. So... I think it's up to the German Minister of Security to say they are shocked, shocked that the USA is spying on the people Germany uses to spy on the US.
- matthewmcg 11y ago
  So maybe a more apt classic movie paraphrase would be "Hey! There's no eavesdropping in here--this is a SIGINT room!"
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    Great Strangelove reference! But I should be more clear. I'm not saying what you said isn't funny, it made me smile! I'm just trying to share that under certain circumstances, it's even truer to the original scene and thus funnier. :-)

masteryupa_ 11y ago

All information might as well be completely free and open to the public for the security the practice of counter spying provides us. Additionally, the reason this level of infringement of privacy is so damning is that it completely absolves any notion of trust the German authority might have had towards the US. Attempts to form a more cohesive alliance in international politics will not be fruitful with this strategy.

happyscrappy 11y ago
What is Germany supposed to do, align with Russia? They really don't have any choice.
- masteryupa_ 11y ago
  Probably not but I don't see any reason why this kind of information needs to be sourced through spying rather than through a formal declaration between intelligence services. Not that that process need be transparent, just that the act of willing participation by the German administration would likely produce a more amicable friendship.

unreal37 11y ago

Seems like a non-story. The NSA was in possession of a couple of documents created by German intelligence. There's no evidence how they got them. Perhaps there was a leaker inside of the German intelligence service who posted a copy of these memos to a pastebin? They have no idea how the Americans got it.

vinceguidry 11y ago

Isn't that their job?

kaonashi 11y ago
Look where this is published.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Ahh, missed that. Thanks.

ihsw 11y ago

Since they've tapped pretty much everything then isn't it physically impossible that they cannot spy on everybody?

bobowzki 11y ago

I'm not a big fan of the NSA, but isn't that kind of their job..?

rdl 11y ago

I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on foreign intelligence agencies. FFS, that, and spying on heads of government/military, is their ultimate purpose. Counterterrorism and such, which has the slippery slope to spying on private citizens, is completely secondary at best.

ccalvert 11y ago

This is legitimate activity for the NSA, but it plays badly in Europe. My guess is that Snowden and his friends are pandering to folks in Europe who naturally dislike this kind of thing, and particularly to folks in Germany. Imagine the reaction on the far right here in America to a news report that Russia, Germany or France spies on American intelligence agencies. It's natural that such things should happen, but its also certain to create discord among certain factions here in America.

Someone1234 11y ago

I agree that this is a legitimate intelligence target. All of the allies spy one one another all of the time, that's how we keep trust. I think the biggest scandal that isn't discussed often enough (in the US) is not spying on foreign government officials for legitimate security-related reasons (e.g. this), it is spying on foreign government officials to give the US an advantage in trade negotiations or worse passing on "tips" to US-based private companies so they can gain an advantage during negotiations/bidding. The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages. Even people in the US should be asking why large US corporations are given these tips/advantages/etc while small-medium US businesses are not. Let alone the immorality of helping a US company win against a foreign one due to state supplied corporate espionage. The justification "well China does it!!1!" while true, is just kind of pathetic. China does a lot of things, doesn't make it right for a country that claims it is the beacon is capitalism and democracy to do the same.

sayhar 11y ago
> The US constantly beats the capitalism drum, and that's fine. But it seem hypocritical to beat the capitalism drum with one hand, while with the other quietly subverting capitalism by giving certain favored entities tips and advantages. For many of us, "capitalism" involves precisely this -- the wealthy using their wealth and power to cement their position.
- wnevets 11y ago
  capitalism, if you're not cheating you're not trying.
  - cpursley 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism
- Someone1234 11y ago

omouse 11y ago

well I guess we know who watches the watchers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bizkeep2 11y ago

Trust, but verify.

on_ 11y ago

Many people are saying the same thing: > Spying on other spying agencies seems like 100% fair game > This is legitimate activity for the NSA > I'd be pretty angry at NSA for being incompetent if they didn't spy on foreign intelligence agencies. Correct. This is what spy agencies do. Edward Snowden is an American Hero, and it is a shame what has happened beyond the obvious. His name is invoked for shock headlines, and at this point there is almost no reaction to these disclosures and that is worrying. If there was a way to lower the power distance between "Government Actors" and citizens, we could expend resources cooperatively instead of competitively. Until then, there will be numerous government agencies AND companies, on many continents and countries, building systems to collect and analyze your data creating a single point of failure. That sounds counter intuitive, but if we assume all of your data is essentially uniform and the Chinese/NSA/BND etc. all have essentially the same data. If even one of those places has a breach event, your data will be in the hands of bad individual actors. This leaves aside, that the data is already in the hands of questionable players. To conclude, the Snowden docs were illuminating but no longer hold the shock they once did. Not much has changed. The initial disclosure confirmed for a lot of us what we already knew, and publicized it to those who didn't. The ongoing disclosures are marginal now and really a function of leveraging Snowden's name for ad-traffic. Hopefully, going forward there will be a framework for protecting privacy that regular, everyday people can easily use. Until then, these disclosures are just a disheartening reminder of the inability to seperate gov. tyranny from legitimate activity. [0]Snowden is living in an undisclosed location in Russia, a country hostile to the US, and barred from entering America without being tried for treason. Disappointing.

cryoshon 11y ago

There's some weird activity in this thread which I think bears mentioning. Lots of people saying either "good, this is their job" and "old news"-- shill trademark phrases. I'm not making any accusations exactly, but I am concerned at the mass of simple, positive, and vapid comments in this thread.

digler999 11y ago
I was thinking the same thing, definitely some astro-turfing going on here...
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Glad to see I'm not the only one seeing this. I have seen such behavior on other NSA-threads, as well as a few political threads in recent memory. I think, for the most part, HN is now "on the radar".
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    To be absolutely clear re: my other reply - while I think there are a lot of frustrated people, there has absolutely been JTRIG-style astroturfing on HN, and it's not recent. It's dangerous to make specific accusations (many people are just ignorant, confused, or frustrated), but that doesn't account for the reliability, low latency, and consistency of the NSA apologizing in any of these "big" NSA stories.
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      Yeah, the low latency is a critical part. I laid eyes on this thread very soon after it was submitted, and there were already a number of identical dismissal style comments-- before anyone else had even arrived.
sonoffett 11y ago
What the thinker thinks the prover proves. Instead of starting some metaconversation, it might be more productive to address how this information is new news or why the NSA should not be spying on foreign intelligence?

ForHackernews 11y ago

So...spies spied on spies doing spying? I'm not seeing the problem here.

Luc 11y ago

Edward Snowden's just created a Twitter account. I've never seen the follower count go up that quickly: https://twitter.com/Snowden https://twitter.com/Snowden

krapp 11y ago
looks legit.
- caskance 11y ago
  It's got the blue checkmark. Have they ever gotten that wrong?
- acqq 11y ago
  "Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden 3h3 hours ago: Meanwhile, a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter." It surely sounds like him. And Chuck Norris can confirm. Hi Ed.

merb 11y ago

Currently the more get's leaked, the more I'm afraid. I live in Germany and I hope that there won't be any global war. But currently the policits between countries getting stranger and stranger. Mostly due to the governements. Shouldn't they suppose to work for freedom and not war? I mean I think even germany will send weapons to bad behaved countries (americans aswell), just for the money, who cares about weapon embargos?! Money is all and the fact that so many people care so much about Money and some kind of 'status' inside their culture makes things really really worse. I hope that I can live in peace until I die. Hopefully.

mindcrime 11y ago
Shouldn't they suppose to work for freedom and not war? Here's an interesting take on that[1][2][3]. Father: You're gonna make the world safe for democracy! Joe Age 10: What is democracy? Father: Well it's never bright clear on myself. Like any other kind government it's got something to do with young men killing each other I believe. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuhMS-N9ns
caskance 11y ago
The opposite of war is peace, not freedom. They're very different and usually opposed.

codecamper 11y ago

I guarantee that the only reason the NSA did this was so that some few fatsos could continue to live in Germany, drink great beer with their friends, live in a swank apartment in the old town, and collect their foreign earned income exclusion.

trhway 11y ago
looking at recent busts of Russian "spies" (quotes because they were so inept in their activities) in US, it is pretty much the same picture - young lazy morons from well-connected families get a good job in a good country (i.e. like a trade representative in US of a Russian state owned corporation) with only downside is a possibility of being deported/non-grata-ed if busted (again they have been so inept that US seems to happy to just get rid of them instead of keeping them in prison)