7 ms·

Cryptome’s critique of Snowden Inc.

63 points by cmsefton 11y ago

bantunes 11y ago
Down at the moment, here's the Google cached copy https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N8pEP72U8h0J:timshorrock.com/%3Fp%3D2354&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N8pEP7...
- acqq 11y ago
  And the interview, around 21st minute is the claim by John that the tax reports of Tor clearly show who finances it. Do listen: https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016-02-06 https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016...
cmsefton 11y ago
The interview audio linked to from the article since the site appears to be down: https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016-02-06 https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016...
timwaagh 11y ago
in some obviously 'deeply cynical' meta criticism: that, or they are just jealous of their competition.
vosper 11y ago
Genuine question: Do people take Cryptome seriously? I tried reading one of their publications [1] and found the writing absurd. Phrases like "few observers were aware that the re-territorialization of detainees would be undergirded by the courthouse’s archeology of evocative discursive foundations" or "recisions may condemn immigrant sites as exilic borderlands of unlitigatable extraterritoriality, a condition of spatial quarantine that transforms them into the new lazarettos of the metropolitan system". I don't want to come off as anti-intellectual, and maybe that all makes perfect sense to other people, but for me whatever point they were trying to make was lost in the verbiage. [1] https://cryptome.org/cartome/Natsios-Voir-Dire.pdf https://cryptome.org/cartome/Natsios-Voir-Dire.pdf
- acqq 11y ago
  John and Deborah exaggerate sometimes and do sound like "conspiracy theorists" but before Snowden, how much of what he documented would be considered such? So their claims should be taken with a reasonable grain of salt, but the facts they mention are apparently facts and deserve to be discussed, like, who finances Tor is apparently clearly visible in the tax reports? Or what are the intersts of Omidyar. And if they claim something that's not true, it should be provable that they are wrong.
  - smcl 11y ago
    That is not what the GP post is taking issue with. They are saying that it looks like someone got a new Thesaurus for their birthday and went wild trying to sound smarter than they were. FWIW I agree with the GP- there's no reason for anyone to talk this way.
    - acqq 11y ago
      > That is not what the GP post is taking issue with Well, "that" is the answer to GP's: > Do people take Cryptome seriously? And I consider it much more important than which specific words were used. Don't shoot the messenger, let's talk about the substance or the truthness of the message.
      - smcl 11y ago
        Fair point
  - belorn 11y ago
    The claim is that "massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state." The first part is based on the fact that University of Minnesota, Georgia Tech and Princeton University, and Georgetown are funding the tor project. The argument is that all of them are receiving their money from the U.S. Government, and even if they claim that they are independent organization they are just fronts used by the government when it comes to funding the tor project. One could also get the impression that the U.S. Government are the only source of funding for those universities, and that the universities gets no research funding elsewhere, demand no tuition from students, and so on. The Pentagon claim is likely derived from statements that SRI international is a sponsor of the tor project, and they receive funds from US Department of Defense. Again, one must assume that SRI international only gets fund from a single source. I can only guess that the national security state is a reference to either the U.S. (ie, the above), or the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, or US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The cited Guardian source is based on 2013 financial report, and the list of sponsor today is naturally quite different, but I guess thats not an issue.
RodericDay 11y ago
> Young: Snowden says he gave them to the public; no, he didn’t. He gave them to a bunch of self-interested journalists who decided to run a certain story with it, i.e., to explain it to people. And their fucking explainers really have a problem. > Natsios: It’s a serious conflict of interest. They’ve written themselves into the story as heroes, co-heroes of the story. It’s a conflict of interest. They’re not at a distance from their source. They’ve embedded themselves in the narrative, and therefore all decisions are highly suspect because they benefit from the outcome of the narrative in every sense. As far as I'm concerned, "We the People" need heroes. The fact is that the vast majority of the public grows up looking up to them, whether via History class or movies. But The Left keeps tearing its own heroes up (usually for righteous reasons- they're dangerous etc), while The Right is much more likely to prop theirs up. So, without going into the rest of the piece, I do kinda like styling people like Snowden and Manning as heroes. I'm okay with some self-promotion and so on.
- existencebox 11y ago
  To myself, and I imagine many others with the same views of self sacrifice and patriotic comittment, there was no need for the reporters to make Snowden out to be a hero. Simply the act of putting oneself in such a dangerous situation, risking ones entire life and livelihood and ability to be with the ones they love to try and make their nation a better place, is one key part of what it means to be heroic (As long as the actions themselves do not cross certain lines.) And as per my initial paragraph, this is speaking as someone who sees this disclosure as very fair, those lines were not crossed, he truly is a hero on his own merit to a level of which we have had very few since the founding of this country.
kodablah 11y ago
There is a stark difference between contextless, abject whistleblowing and marketed whistleblowing. The latter, which they argue against, is unfortunately required to reach the masses. They mention that Snowden should not have gone to a [semi] major media outlet but instead to others who have exposed similar issues. Doesn't the fact that most don't know who those others are refute their exact point? More importantly, does the benefit of mass consumption of the narrative outweigh the cost of not releasing everything and financially incentivizing the releasers? I say yes.
- uxp 11y ago
  Whenever I hear of Cryptome complaining, semi-regularly, about the cache of Snowden documents being trickled into public existence, all I can think of is how they published a ripped copy of Citizenfour because of the stupid lawsuit a former naval officer brought against Snowden which put the DVD in evidence, of which they thought that it was now "public" material. I'm fine with Cryptome wanting the full cache, but I'm not fine with anyone wanting to blindly publish the entire archive without vetting any of it. Cryptome doesn't seem to have the history of wanting to vet and possibly redact information, which will do nothing except provide fodder for those who argue against the idea of the leaked documents without providing critique against the contents of the documents.
- 2close4comfort 11y ago
  " financially incentivizing the releasers " I like that plus given the evidence so far it does show what their motivation really is...
  - EdHominem 11y ago
    All the government anti-whistleblower types are financially incentivized to hold their opinions.
    - 2close4comfort 11y ago
      I think the government counts on this to dissuade most from whistle-blowing. That is why it takes someone who is willing to take that risk.
agd 11y ago
Snowden was clear in his instructions that he didn't want a data dump as some of the info was legitimately secret. Cryptome don't seem to accept this position. The question is do we say to whistleblowers 'it's all or nothing'. Would that really encourage more people to leak? Or do we work within these parameters? Of course there are conflicts of interest and mistakes when only a few can access the material, but I'd much rather have a partial leak than no leak.
- 2close4comfort 11y ago
  It is hardly a leak of Glenn/Intercept keep them forever. That would go directly against what Cryptome has always believed. I would like to know how Snowden was connected to the people he eventually gave that information to, that in itself might prove interesting. It was not for their technical ability which does lead to the question how are they able to judge the suitability of what they release.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > I would like to know how Snowden was connected to the people he eventually gave that information to Snowden selected Greenwald and Poitras and reached out to them via email: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Contact_with_Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Contact_with_E...
    - 2close4comfort 11y ago
      Do you think these were his 1st choices?
      - gherkin0 11y ago
        I have no idea, but the question was about "how he was connected" to the people he released the info to. The answer was: he wasn't until he made contact himself. He must've made a list of journalists he knew of who he thought would be sympathetic to the message he wanted to send. Maybe Greenwald/Poitras weren't at the top of the list, but some quick Googling doesn't reveal anything about anyone else he may have tried to contact before them.
nabla9 11y ago
Greenwald got the scoop and he should not benefit from it? Those documents are released slowly so that journalists who have them can write stories and put the released information into context. It also serves the purpose of keeping the government surveillance in the mind of public longer. Putting them all just out there would make news for few months but then it would be all forgotten. People care surprisingly little. Greenwad & Co. control the media exposure and maximize the impact. Just like Snowden wanted. > Let me name some names. ACLU, one of the most corrupt organizations in New York City and around the world. Okay.
- EdHominem 11y ago
  Also, this way lets the journalists react to the government's story and make it clear that they keep lying. If the leak happened all at once the government would get its story straight.
DyslexicAtheist 11y ago
the IMO only strong case that cryptome makes is that sites like the Intercept get the success and are able to ride the wave as long as possible and hence it is therefore in their interest to keep the leaks trickling in rather than releasing the cache like a flash-flood. While I understand that this creates a conflict of interest consider the benefits: if all would have been leaked all cards would be on the table. And Snowden would have been out of the news by autumn 2013. This selective publishing (in the name of keeping innocent people out of harms way) ensures the discussion is ongoing. I can live with that as long as what gets published doesn't get published out of context. Also Cryptome confuses the Intercept with Wikileaks / Assange when they say that the Intercept receives massive salaries yet those who do the work go to jail (I believe this was a jib at how Assange handled the Manning leaks).
cagey_vet 11y ago
the aforementioned lingo/patois was the de facto verbiage of the early days of the movement, and some don't graduate away from it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

63 points by cmsefton 11y ago

Down at the moment, here's the Google cached copy https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N8pEP72U8h0J:timshorrock.com/%3Fp%3D2354&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N8pEP7...

acqq 11y ago
And the interview, around 21st minute is the claim by John that the tax reports of Tor clearly show who finances it. Do listen: https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016-02-06 https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016...

cmsefton 11y ago

The interview audio linked to from the article since the site appears to be down: https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016-02-06 https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/interview-with-cryptome-2016...

timwaagh 11y ago

in some obviously 'deeply cynical' meta criticism: that, or they are just jealous of their competition.

vosper 11y ago

Genuine question: Do people take Cryptome seriously? I tried reading one of their publications [1] and found the writing absurd. Phrases like "few observers were aware that the re-territorialization of detainees would be undergirded by the courthouse’s archeology of evocative discursive foundations" or "recisions may condemn immigrant sites as exilic borderlands of unlitigatable extraterritoriality, a condition of spatial quarantine that transforms them into the new lazarettos of the metropolitan system". I don't want to come off as anti-intellectual, and maybe that all makes perfect sense to other people, but for me whatever point they were trying to make was lost in the verbiage. [1] https://cryptome.org/cartome/Natsios-Voir-Dire.pdf https://cryptome.org/cartome/Natsios-Voir-Dire.pdf

acqq 11y ago
John and Deborah exaggerate sometimes and do sound like "conspiracy theorists" but before Snowden, how much of what he documented would be considered such? So their claims should be taken with a reasonable grain of salt, but the facts they mention are apparently facts and deserve to be discussed, like, who finances Tor is apparently clearly visible in the tax reports? Or what are the intersts of Omidyar. And if they claim something that's not true, it should be provable that they are wrong.
- smcl 11y ago
  That is not what the GP post is taking issue with. They are saying that it looks like someone got a new Thesaurus for their birthday and went wild trying to sound smarter than they were. FWIW I agree with the GP- there's no reason for anyone to talk this way.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > That is not what the GP post is taking issue with Well, "that" is the answer to GP's: > Do people take Cryptome seriously? And I consider it much more important than which specific words were used. Don't shoot the messenger, let's talk about the substance or the truthness of the message.
    - smcl 11y ago
      Fair point
- belorn 11y ago
  The claim is that "massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state." The first part is based on the fact that University of Minnesota, Georgia Tech and Princeton University, and Georgetown are funding the tor project. The argument is that all of them are receiving their money from the U.S. Government, and even if they claim that they are independent organization they are just fronts used by the government when it comes to funding the tor project. One could also get the impression that the U.S. Government are the only source of funding for those universities, and that the universities gets no research funding elsewhere, demand no tuition from students, and so on. The Pentagon claim is likely derived from statements that SRI international is a sponsor of the tor project, and they receive funds from US Department of Defense. Again, one must assume that SRI international only gets fund from a single source. I can only guess that the national security state is a reference to either the U.S. (ie, the above), or the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, or US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The cited Guardian source is based on 2013 financial report, and the list of sponsor today is naturally quite different, but I guess thats not an issue.

RodericDay 11y ago

> Young: Snowden says he gave them to the public; no, he didn’t. He gave them to a bunch of self-interested journalists who decided to run a certain story with it, i.e., to explain it to people. And their fucking explainers really have a problem. > Natsios: It’s a serious conflict of interest. They’ve written themselves into the story as heroes, co-heroes of the story. It’s a conflict of interest. They’re not at a distance from their source. They’ve embedded themselves in the narrative, and therefore all decisions are highly suspect because they benefit from the outcome of the narrative in every sense. As far as I'm concerned, "We the People" need heroes. The fact is that the vast majority of the public grows up looking up to them, whether via History class or movies. But The Left keeps tearing its own heroes up (usually for righteous reasons- they're dangerous etc), while The Right is much more likely to prop theirs up. So, without going into the rest of the piece, I do kinda like styling people like Snowden and Manning as heroes. I'm okay with some self-promotion and so on.

existencebox 11y ago
To myself, and I imagine many others with the same views of self sacrifice and patriotic comittment, there was no need for the reporters to make Snowden out to be a hero. Simply the act of putting oneself in such a dangerous situation, risking ones entire life and livelihood and ability to be with the ones they love to try and make their nation a better place, is one key part of what it means to be heroic (As long as the actions themselves do not cross certain lines.) And as per my initial paragraph, this is speaking as someone who sees this disclosure as very fair, those lines were not crossed, he truly is a hero on his own merit to a level of which we have had very few since the founding of this country.

kodablah 11y ago

There is a stark difference between contextless, abject whistleblowing and marketed whistleblowing. The latter, which they argue against, is unfortunately required to reach the masses. They mention that Snowden should not have gone to a [semi] major media outlet but instead to others who have exposed similar issues. Doesn't the fact that most don't know who those others are refute their exact point? More importantly, does the benefit of mass consumption of the narrative outweigh the cost of not releasing everything and financially incentivizing the releasers? I say yes.

uxp 11y ago
Whenever I hear of Cryptome complaining, semi-regularly, about the cache of Snowden documents being trickled into public existence, all I can think of is how they published a ripped copy of Citizenfour because of the stupid lawsuit a former naval officer brought against Snowden which put the DVD in evidence, of which they thought that it was now "public" material. I'm fine with Cryptome wanting the full cache, but I'm not fine with anyone wanting to blindly publish the entire archive without vetting any of it. Cryptome doesn't seem to have the history of wanting to vet and possibly redact information, which will do nothing except provide fodder for those who argue against the idea of the leaked documents without providing critique against the contents of the documents.
2close4comfort 11y ago
" financially incentivizing the releasers " I like that plus given the evidence so far it does show what their motivation really is...
- EdHominem 11y ago
  All the government anti-whistleblower types are financially incentivized to hold their opinions.
  - 2close4comfort 11y ago
    I think the government counts on this to dissuade most from whistle-blowing. That is why it takes someone who is willing to take that risk.

agd 11y ago

Snowden was clear in his instructions that he didn't want a data dump as some of the info was legitimately secret. Cryptome don't seem to accept this position. The question is do we say to whistleblowers 'it's all or nothing'. Would that really encourage more people to leak? Or do we work within these parameters? Of course there are conflicts of interest and mistakes when only a few can access the material, but I'd much rather have a partial leak than no leak.

2close4comfort 11y ago
It is hardly a leak of Glenn/Intercept keep them forever. That would go directly against what Cryptome has always believed. I would like to know how Snowden was connected to the people he eventually gave that information to, that in itself might prove interesting. It was not for their technical ability which does lead to the question how are they able to judge the suitability of what they release.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > I would like to know how Snowden was connected to the people he eventually gave that information to Snowden selected Greenwald and Poitras and reached out to them via email: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Contact_with_Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Contact_with_E...
  - 2close4comfort 11y ago
    Do you think these were his 1st choices?
    - gherkin0 11y ago
      I have no idea, but the question was about "how he was connected" to the people he released the info to. The answer was: he wasn't until he made contact himself. He must've made a list of journalists he knew of who he thought would be sympathetic to the message he wanted to send. Maybe Greenwald/Poitras weren't at the top of the list, but some quick Googling doesn't reveal anything about anyone else he may have tried to contact before them.

nabla9 11y ago

Greenwald got the scoop and he should not benefit from it? Those documents are released slowly so that journalists who have them can write stories and put the released information into context. It also serves the purpose of keeping the government surveillance in the mind of public longer. Putting them all just out there would make news for few months but then it would be all forgotten. People care surprisingly little. Greenwad & Co. control the media exposure and maximize the impact. Just like Snowden wanted. > Let me name some names. ACLU, one of the most corrupt organizations in New York City and around the world. Okay.

EdHominem 11y ago
Also, this way lets the journalists react to the government's story and make it clear that they keep lying. If the leak happened all at once the government would get its story straight.

DyslexicAtheist 11y ago

the IMO only strong case that cryptome makes is that sites like the Intercept get the success and are able to ride the wave as long as possible and hence it is therefore in their interest to keep the leaks trickling in rather than releasing the cache like a flash-flood. While I understand that this creates a conflict of interest consider the benefits: if all would have been leaked all cards would be on the table. And Snowden would have been out of the news by autumn 2013. This selective publishing (in the name of keeping innocent people out of harms way) ensures the discussion is ongoing. I can live with that as long as what gets published doesn't get published out of context. Also Cryptome confuses the Intercept with Wikileaks / Assange when they say that the Intercept receives massive salaries yet those who do the work go to jail (I believe this was a jib at how Assange handled the Manning leaks).

cagey_vet 11y ago

the aforementioned lingo/patois was the de facto verbiage of the early days of the movement, and some don't graduate away from it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]