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I tried to do an AMA yesterday[1] about my time in the NSA and the CIA that fell flat as far as generating any interest. My main goal was to bring some reality

I tried to do an AMA yesterday[1] about my time in the NSA and the CIA that fell flat as far as generating any interest. My main goal was to bring some reality to the security conversation, since the government's voice mostly remains absent and I have a pro-government lean on the security issue. I was a mission manager for the LENA (Levant/North Africa) division for the NSA, so I'm speaking from a very informed opinion on this particular release. As you can expect, my opinion on information like this being released is: Why? How can this be considered journalism. Militaries keeping track of militaries is exactly what we want happening with taxpayer dollars. From a purely defense perspective, this is a good use of resources as others in this comment section have mentioned. But, releasing documents that actually detail sources/methods of collection are purely harmful -- I see absolutely nothing that can be misconstrued as noble by publishing an article like this. There is another half to this. These documents that are being released have to stop being cited as if they're the canonical truth. Snowden did the equivalent of scraping a bunch of google pages pulling all documents down willy-nilly, and there are tons of absolute crap documents in there. You can tell that some of these powerpoints were made by E-3's giving briefs to some equally clueless group from the quality of the presentations themselves. I'm definitely thankful for the people that came out and asked questions, as I tried to give extremely straight-forward, un-political answers. If you have any questions, feel free to reply to the reddit thread and I'll still answer them, so at least there can be a record of it. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4346rc/im_justin_mealey_a_former_arabic_linguist_at_nsa/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4346rc/im_justin_meal... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10989800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10989800

jonnybgood 11y ago
> You can tell that some of these powerpoints were made by E-3's giving briefs to some equally clueless group from the quality of the presentations themselves. Indeed. Many are viewing these presentations as if they're official documents like an SOP and what not. The presentations are under the discretion of the creator which can be anybody and say anything. But because it has 'Top Secret' on it many will treat it, as you say, canonical truth. I stopped trying to explain this on the internet. I only explain it personally now.
- bazillion 11y ago
  Absolutely. That classification markings are there because the subject matter has an overall classification, but doesn't actually confer any legitimacy to the content.
dtornabene 11y ago
I disagree with your comment that the govt side isn't represented, you can look to Ben Wittes and people like him to get that. But I thank you for posting this, I've yet to see the point about the veracity of the snowden docs as a sibling comment also noted. The AMA looks interesting!

jonnybgood 11y ago

> You can tell that some of these powerpoints were made by E-3's giving briefs to some equally clueless group from the quality of the presentations themselves. Indeed. Many are viewing these presentations as if they're official documents like an SOP and what not. The presentations are under the discretion of the creator which can be anybody and say anything. But because it has 'Top Secret' on it many will treat it, as you say, canonical truth. I stopped trying to explain this on the internet. I only explain it personally now.

bazillion 11y ago
Absolutely. That classification markings are there because the subject matter has an overall classification, but doesn't actually confer any legitimacy to the content.

dtornabene 11y ago

I disagree with your comment that the govt side isn't represented, you can look to Ben Wittes and people like him to get that. But I thank you for posting this, I've yet to see the point about the veracity of the snowden docs as a sibling comment also noted. The AMA looks interesting!