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Surely this being HN I will be down-voted terribly for this. But I am not at all convinced that Snowden's account is 100% to be trusted in this. The article in

Surely this being HN I will be down-voted terribly for this. But I am not at all convinced that Snowden's account is 100% to be trusted in this. The article in question spends an exceptionally long time examining NSA/DoJ decision making in responding to Snowden's claims that: > . "I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than 10 distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them." The article provides no evidence that this was true. Or that US Officials' rejection of this position was contrary to the facts. In fact a different reporter might argue that the lack of such evidence given the new documentation provided supports the opposite conclusion. > The NSA portrayed it as an innocuous question that elicited a direct response when it released the email in 2014. It may not be an entirely innocuous issue, but it's certainly not equivalent to raising concerns. To suggest the later requires perfect ignorance of how bueracracy works. No one is going to look for 'implicit intent' in you raising a question and escalate it to something more than that. They cc'ed relevant experts to provide an answer and that's really the best you should expect from a large organization. Unless you explicitly report a complaint, nobody is going to go around knocking on the higher ups doors for you. Another point that I would like to raise that hasn't been mentioned is Snowden's account of his career at the CIA. According to him he was quite senior. > In March 2012, Dell reassigned Snowden to Hawaii as lead technologist for the NSA's information-sharing office. [0] In this article we clearly see he signs ( when answering a question about file types) as: > Ed Snowden, System Administrator I'm not bringing these up as a proponent of NSA surveillance, but I do think it is important to be critical in this - and I'm no more convinced of Edward Snowden as a witness than before I started reading this. Particularly I think the article is disingenuously written (Clickbait Title) in following a very lengthy narrative ( to build up suspense? ) without providing much in the way of strong evidence; one expects to finally find it at the end, but curiously finds nothing. If they told me at the start "no emails which would significantly alter the known facts were disclosed" - I could have saved 30 minutes. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/ http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/

foxhedgehog 10y ago
good summary
b1daly 10y ago
I understand your point, but I think you're misreading the situation a bit. The U.S. Gov's response that Snowden should have raised his concerns through "proper channels" is pure propaganda. Unfortunately, the highest levels of the executive branch have a very large megaphone, and they rely the fact that there are still citizens who will give them the benefit of doubt, and take what they say at face value. The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have been some kind of corrective response. The only corrective response would have been to crush him like a little bug. It's hard to say what Snowden was getting at from the sketchy information we have when he had those contacts with members of the NSA OIG. But he did raise topics that were connected with his concerns. I took it as him gingerly putting out feelers to find out how the programs were perceived within the NSA, and the kind of response such inquiries might generate. One might hope, in a perfect world, that his questions would lead those innocent recipients of his concerns to investigate further, and join the fight to hold these powerful law enforcement organizations accountable to the rules of law. But we're not living in Disneyland here...
- foldr 10y ago
  > The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have been some kind of corrective response. The bottom line, though, is that you can't criticize the NSA for what you suspect it would have done. You can only criticize it for what it has actually done. You can suspect all you like (and I'll probably join you in suspecting), but if Snowden never did blow the whistle, we'll never know what would have happened if he did.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  If this kind of reporting were done on a topic HN is generally critical of, you can bet there would be lots of disparaging comments as to the quality of the journalism. The fact that the sentiment amongst those on HN is generally, to look at Snowden's disclosures as a positive thing ( I agree ) should not be used as an excuse to adopt a position that is impervious to criticism. While the culture for raising concerns in government organizations (especially ones dealing with security) may be bad, and the protections afforded to whistle-blowers lacking - to report on these without calling into doubt the claims that Snowden actually did make is dishonest. The litmus test for this is as with scientific publishing which has commercial/political purpose; what would they have published if evidence showed the opposite? Without a doubt it would be numerous media headlines with Snowden's formal complaints suppressed in government conspiracy or something along those lines. Even worse they wrote a title which actually suggests the later, even when the current evidence would point to Snowden's claims lacking foundation. > I understand your point, but I think you're misreading the situation a bit. I don't know if this argument is an example of planned deception or spontaneous, but I can give you the general logical form of the type of argument that is being made. 1) A is a True. Evidence will show that... 2) Evidence does not support A. 3) B is True. Why are we talking about A!? B is the crucial issue at hand!

foxhedgehog 10y ago

good summary

b1daly 10y ago

I understand your point, but I think you're misreading the situation a bit. The U.S. Gov's response that Snowden should have raised his concerns through "proper channels" is pure propaganda. Unfortunately, the highest levels of the executive branch have a very large megaphone, and they rely the fact that there are still citizens who will give them the benefit of doubt, and take what they say at face value. The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have been some kind of corrective response. The only corrective response would have been to crush him like a little bug. It's hard to say what Snowden was getting at from the sketchy information we have when he had those contacts with members of the NSA OIG. But he did raise topics that were connected with his concerns. I took it as him gingerly putting out feelers to find out how the programs were perceived within the NSA, and the kind of response such inquiries might generate. One might hope, in a perfect world, that his questions would lead those innocent recipients of his concerns to investigate further, and join the fight to hold these powerful law enforcement organizations accountable to the rules of law. But we're not living in Disneyland here...

foldr 10y ago
> The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have been some kind of corrective response. The bottom line, though, is that you can't criticize the NSA for what you suspect it would have done. You can only criticize it for what it has actually done. You can suspect all you like (and I'll probably join you in suspecting), but if Snowden never did blow the whistle, we'll never know what would have happened if he did.
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
If this kind of reporting were done on a topic HN is generally critical of, you can bet there would be lots of disparaging comments as to the quality of the journalism. The fact that the sentiment amongst those on HN is generally, to look at Snowden's disclosures as a positive thing ( I agree ) should not be used as an excuse to adopt a position that is impervious to criticism. While the culture for raising concerns in government organizations (especially ones dealing with security) may be bad, and the protections afforded to whistle-blowers lacking - to report on these without calling into doubt the claims that Snowden actually did make is dishonest. The litmus test for this is as with scientific publishing which has commercial/political purpose; what would they have published if evidence showed the opposite? Without a doubt it would be numerous media headlines with Snowden's formal complaints suppressed in government conspiracy or something along those lines. Even worse they wrote a title which actually suggests the later, even when the current evidence would point to Snowden's claims lacking foundation. > I understand your point, but I think you're misreading the situation a bit. I don't know if this argument is an example of planned deception or spontaneous, but I can give you the general logical form of the type of argument that is being made. 1) A is a True. Evidence will show that... 2) Evidence does not support A. 3) B is True. Why are we talking about A!? B is the crucial issue at hand!