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New CIA director thinks Snowden should be killed
- AlexCoventry 10y agoTrump doesn't seem to treat what he says in tweets as firm commitments, but he did say this back in June: "All I can say is that if I were President, Snowden would have already been returned to the U.S. (by their fastest jet) and with an apology!" https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/346998236776640513 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/34699823677664051...
- peeters 10y ago> back in June* *of 2013
- AlexCoventry 10y agoOops. Thanks for catching that.
- 557833 10y agoAnd, just to be clear, the apology he's talking about is from Russia to the US government.
- chippy 10y agoThe article and in case you didn't read it, title of the article as shown above is about the new CIA Director. That's Not Trump. This is Rep. Mike Pompeo. So whilst your point is that "oh Trump says stuff and doesn't mean it" that does not mean that everyone Trump hires also has the same get out of jail card.
- vuanotino 10y ago>"Having put friends of mine, friends of yours who serve in the military today an enormous risk because of the information he stole and then released to foreign powers," Pompeo added. I would like to see a good rebuttal to this which is not "the end justifies the means".
- timthelion 10y agoWell, he doesn't specify exactly which information was released that puts people at risk.
- jwtadvice 10y agoIt's not a good argument because none of the Snowden Documents put individuals at risk. What he did do was disclose massive illegal and illegitimate activity, promulgating awareness of a giant surveillance network with built in parallel construction for the purposes of diplomatic and industrial espionage and mass propaganda. That put our "military in danger" the same way setting innocent victims of military torture free: yeah, now there are people who are pissed off with legitimate gripes.
- helthanatos 10y agoWhat information did he release that risked any danger to the public? He released information to the public that made them realize the government has been abusing their freedoms. Any US secret spying programs that were compromised should have been compromised. You're saying peoples' arguments for Snowden say the ends justify the means but that logic is the only reason the programs exist in the first place. Is that an adequate rebuttal?
- knz 10y agoIt's not a rebuttal but if they want to start holding people to that standard perhaps a discussion about the issue of WMD's in a certain middle eastern country circa 2003 would be worth having? Wikipedia says 4,809 coalition service members have died and 30,000+ have been wounded in that conflict so far.
- abysmallyideal 10y agoIf you look up Pompeo on wikipedia, he has zero credibility in the Intelligence community having no experience whatsoever. His political credentials are: He's a tea party member, and he's a republican. That's it. He's just saying this to compensate his lack of any experience in the leadership role he's about to fill. Edit: I'm just interested in seeing now how many people Trump begins to annoy when he appoints Thiel from the pond/swamp.
- kafkaesq 10y agoMeaning, for Snowden, that his best bet, clearly, is to stay in Russia (or whatever country will take him)† for at least the duration of the coming shitstorm that will be the next administration.† Instead of coming back to the U.S. to face the consequences of his actions (which nearly every reasonable-minded person -- including Snowden himself -- strongly prefers). Kind of sucks for Snowden, but more to the point, an incredibly stupid position for the U.S. to take. † EDIT: Given that while his chances in Russia may not be best, for much longer -- his prospects for asylum in many other countries, especially in Europe, will rise quite substantially if he is explicitly threatened with a death sentence.
- toyg 10y agoObama should still pardon him so he can have his passport back.
- arm 10y agoAs Overtonwindow mentioned (in this very thread)¹, it’s probably not in his best interests to do that: “[That] would likely create a tremendously huge backlash from the intelligence community, and turn them against the Democratic party for a very long time. You think Wikileaks and Hillary's emails were bad? Piss off the intel community and have them turning their mighty tools of deception and surveillance on the entire DNC…” ―――――― ¹ — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12989859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12989859
- jonathankoren 10y agoMeh. Obama is done Jan 20 regardless.
- iamatworknow 10y agoSo...he should burn every bridge he's built over the past decade because it soon won't be his problem anymore?
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoIANAL but if Obama gave Snowden a last minute pardon before he left office, wouldn't that legally shield him from the Trump Administration?
- Overtonwindow 10y agoYes, but would likely create a tremendously yuge backlash from the intelligence community, and turn them against the Democratic party for a very long time. You think Wikileaks and Hillary's emails were bad? Piss off the intel community and have them turning their mighty tools of deception and surveillance on the entire DNC...
- GavinMcG 10y agoDo you have any reason to actually believe this, or is just something that sounds good to your gut?
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoHmm, I hadn't thought of that. While I think your latter point is a bit ridiculous (but not implausible), I agree that there would be a lot to lose from a pardon and very little to gain. After all, Snowden gave up his right to autonomy in 2013. His life now is entirely within the hands of history.
- toyg 10y agoThe lightness with which you can say that a branch of the State could just "turn on internal enemies" is something straight out of Soviet Russia and other unsavoury regimes. Is this what the almighty US are now, a bunch of mafia organizations fighting for power with all the dirty tricks they can muster? Obama should do The Right Thing and screw the intelligence community - what have they done for him in 8 years anyway? Started bad wars and lied under oath.
- mwfunk 10y agoThere are lots of people in the intelligence community that are appalled by domestic surveillance efforts as well. Besides, if your accusation is correct (that they are so mindless and stupid as a group that their reaction to a controversial presidential pardon would be to go after the political party associated with that president), then the US should just fire every single last one of them and start from scratch. Seriously. If that's where things are at, then they're all negative contributors anyway. But I don't think it's that bad, I've got more faith in humanity than you do apparently (for the time being at least :( ).
- Overtonwindow 10y agoI don't think Snowden should be killed, but I do agree he should be prosecuted and jailed for life. He committed treason. The reason is moot. I know many will disagree, but he should answer for his actions. Let a court - non-military that is - decide.
- nickbauman 10y agoFor it to be treason evidence would have to show that Snowden acted on behalf of a foreign power. Espionage requires that Snowden acted as a spy and gave or sold secrets to another party (presumably not a foreign power or adversary). Snowden gave his vetted information to an American journalist and a British journalist. You would have a hard time making either charge actually stick. But I'm certain the US government would ruin his life thoroughly regardless.
- logfromblammo 10y agoIf he is to be prosecuted for illegal disclosures of classified documents, let him have temporary immunity, until after the trials of all the people implicated in criminal activities by those documents. After all, those folks committed their crimes first. He shouldn't get to jump the get-into-prison queue just because he's infamous now.
- metaphorm 10y agoprecision matters. you should learn the correct definition of the term "traitor".
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- mason240 10y ago.
- orik 10y agoHas been officially announced. https://www.greatagain.gov/news/president-elect-donald-j-trump-selects-us-senator-jeff-sessions-attorney-general-lt-gen-michael.html https://www.greatagain.gov/news/president-elect-donald-j-tru...
- glenndebacker 10y agoI find this strange for a group of people that may also have benefited from certain leaks to get in power. I would expect that they would put whistleblowers on a pedestal. I must say that I don't envy my American friends with this future administration. They seem to change a lot of tunes and there seem to be a lot of contradictions.
- jwtadvice 10y agoThe same kinds of leaks that were problematic for the last administration are problematic for the new administration. There's a small reset of credibility with the new administration - but not much. The strategy is highly likely to be: magnify the idea that the last administration was corrupt, and suppress the idea that the new administration is corrupt (by suppressing whistleblowing, etc).
- Senji 10y agoYou don't enshrine traitors who've helped you to take over. You execute them because they have proven they are ready to betray their masters and they'll do it to you when opportune.
- vkou 10y agoIs that why the founding fathers and their pawns are so revered?
- ItsDeathball 10y agoThe founding fathers yes, their pawns not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
- SixSigma 10y agoIf Trump knows the source then it could be in the GOPs benefit to keep leaks plugged, not opening more.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pashabitz 10y ago"Due Process" - I don't think that word means what you think it means
- Johnny555 10y agoWhy is there absolutely zero focus on the lack of basic security measures that would prevent a large scale breach like this? The government still doesn't know exactly what data he walked off with. And while you'd think they'd have stepped up security since then, now Harold T. Martin has again walked off with terabytes of secret data. In both cases, these secrets were stolen by contractors, not even full employees. I have full admin rights to every server at work, but I can't gain access to customer data without tripping access alarms that notify our security team. How is it possible that the NSA has no similar controls? I realize that such controls can be expensive (in direct costs and ongoing operations), but "with great data comes great responsibility", and if there's any database in the country that needs exceptional controls, it's the NSA's database that is much more valuable than any other corporate database. How many foreign powers have walked off with even more data undetected because they aren't going to publicize it -- they are likely siphoning off data right now, and the NSA has no idea.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoIn part, I think you're overestimating how difficult it would be for you to gain access to customer data covertly, given root access to all the servers at your company.
- beachstartup 10y agoi agree. to some people root still means root which means you can do anything local undetected if you're smart enough (most people aren't). apparently these days it means something else. who knew.
- SixSigma 10y ago"full admin rights"
- Johnny555 10y agoWhen audit logs go to an audit server, you can't do anything undetected, even as root - the initial login, sudo to root and subsequent activity are logged, so even if I log in and kill the audit daemon, that will be detected and tied back to me. If I even log on to one of the audit servers without prior approval, it will page the security team. And if they can't validate why I've logged in there, they'll lock out my account.
- TYPE_FASTER 10y ago> "I can assure you, that information was a lot more secure in the hands of the secure system that the government has spent hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars setting up, rather than on a private server in the home of Hillary Clinton," he said. "It's not a close call. There's a reason we have it set up that way." Well...apparently not, right? I mean, wouldn't that be the lesson here? We gave BAH "hundreds of millions of dollars" to setup a server, and the information on that server still was made public. By multiple people. Without hacking required.
- baccheion 10y agoFirstly, the government's systems are wide open, and are hacked/breached all the time. They just cover it up so no one knows. This is mainly as a result of fear of competence and a deference to the lowest bidder (out of habit, stupidity, or legal mandate). That is, the lowest bidder usually builds crap, half-assed products, and there's a lot of that floating around in the almighty Gov't. Secondly: hey idiot CIA director, did you not notice what was revealed by Snowden's leaks? Isn't there some law or unspoken rule about sitting idly by while the system becomes more corrupted? If it had been accidentally revealed this mass surveillance was happening and the media grabbed onto it, then wouldn't anyone near it occurring, whether innocent or not, be left ass out to take the blame? Wouldn't the idiots at large be saying something like, "and you knew, and sat by doing nothing; you're just as guilty."
- flycaliguy 10y agoI guess this is a conspiracy theory... But I've actually come around to the belief that Snowden has always worked for the CIA. This was a turf war job by the CIA against the NSA that had the bonus effect of striking fear into the world's internet users. Ed worked for the CIA before NSA and there are some interesting ties between Glen Greenwald and US's sponsored propaganda services. If you are interested in diving into this pool of mystery, Dave Emory's radio program, this episode for example, is a good start. http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-924-technocratic-fascism-the-high-profile-hacks-and-the-obverse-oswald-update-on-the-adventures-of-eddie-the-friendly-spook/ http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-924-technocratic-...
- dogma1138 10y agoSo in your mind the CIA would implant a mole that would literally steal the NSA's playbook and 100,000's of documents, set of to China, then find and asylum in Russia and keep the most damning documents under a kill switch? The NSA is already bigger than the CIA, it kinda always was, regardless of what the CIA thinks about it they would not cause irreversible damage to US national security and potentially hand Russia enough material to push their SIGINT and Cyber capabilities forward by at least a decade. By all accounts Snowden has a considerably higher chance of being a Russian mole than a CIA agent.
- flycaliguy 10y agoThanks for the reply. I'm new to spy stuff and I'm perhaps to open to kooky theories. I guess my thinking is that the CIA has generations of international manipulation under it's belt and the NSA has become a rising star in the internet era. It seems to me that the NSA would start stumbling into some pretty shady CIA business, stuff that the CIA would rather keep to itself.
- dogma1138 10y agoIntelligence agencies might be "shady" but they still tend to work for the interests of the country. Regardless on what ego trip you think they are on they aren't going to jeopardise US national security to settle a score with an organization which is 10-20 times their size just because the cold war is over. It's like saying that the CIA doesn't like the fact that most VISINT is now run by the NRO so they'll blow up satellite launches this is pretty absurd. The funny part is that the CIA has a cyber program also, and it's pretty advanced by all accounts the kinetic payload for Stuxnet and a few other cyber attacks in which the US took part off or lead on it's own came from the CIA not the NSA.