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Gladwell's biggest omission is the stories of Thomas Drake and William Binney. Two predecessors that Snowden was well aware of, who tried to be, as Gladwell put

by rqebmm 10y ago

Gladwell's biggest omission is the stories of Thomas Drake and William Binney. Two predecessors that Snowden was well aware of, who tried to be, as Gladwell puts it "leakers as insiders". They were systematically shut down, and Snowden learned that was no longer an option for him, so he became a "leaker as outsider". The nature and style of Snowden's whistleblowing is not because he loves the hacker-chic style. It's because the CIA and NSA proved they were perfectly capable of covering up the most damaging "insider" whistleblowers and he still thought this information was worth releasing to the public.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I've made this argument for a long time: any damage to the US from the Snowden leaks was because the government refused to clean house when they became aware of problems through internal channels. Snowden was merely a concerned employee revealing to shareholders that business executives were willfully defrauding investors and breaking fiduciary duty, to use an analogy. The reason he didn't use internal channels was executives up to the board level had previously targeted other leakers as part of their criminal conspiracy.
- samstave 10y ago
  literally the best analogy i have heard on the subject. thanks
- tptacek 10y ago
  This gets to motivations and intent but doesn't really answer the question posed by the article, which is: are insiders who leak carefully and strategically creating better public policy outcomes than the indiscriminate leaks that IT people have been generating?
  - rqebmm 10y ago
    Which raises an interesting corollary: is there such a thing as an "indiscriminate" leak? Recent events have shown that WikiLeaks' practice of leaking anything they have has instead created an opportunity for targeted leaks by selectively passing information to them.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    There's obviously a lot to both positions, but as a succinct answer: I would argue that a mixed policy likely generates the best outcomes -- by instigating a crisis to motivate public interest and movement on the topic, and then sustained, strategic leaks over the following decade(s), once there's an interested cohort (with a baseline of evidence). Ill date myself a bit here by saying that Snowden is the only major leak of my lifetime, but it seems to me that he was able to get traction on the issue when a lot of people had failed to (eg, there were rumors of NSA programs before including from NSA insiders, but little public attention), but what has kept the topic alive is a series of strategic leaks of new information to sustain public attention and keep the debate focused on it being a current issue. So in some senses, I think we need those doc drops of "They're really looking at all your dick pics, hook-up texts, and tracking every illicit meet-up", but I also think that we get a lot more usage out of quieter leaks of key details, once the conversation is happening. That was sort of the point of my analogy: quiet rumors from key staff to shareholders were ignored or suppressed by executive staff until one guy in accounting dropped the whole set of books. This obviously leaked a bunch of business secrets, but Id argue the only way to comprehend the scale of wrongdoing was to see that the entire system had become organized around that illicit activity. It was only in that context we could even start a conversation about the scope of what had gone awry.
  - cryoshon 10y ago
    >are insiders who leak carefully and strategically creating better public policy outcomes than the indiscriminate leaks that IT people have been generating? the insiders aren't effecting policy outcomes whatsoever. they're getting snuffed out and swept under the rug. throwing open the barn door is the only way the public gets enough information to clean it out.
eternalban 10y ago
I just grep'd for Prouty and nothing showed up. Even his wikipedia page [1] is a bit scrubbed and buries his important act of blowing the whistle on the shadow government [2]. Btw, Prouty discusses Ellsberg directly in his book. It is 'interesting' reading for sure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Prouty was certainly a very interesting fellow, but unfortunately his best-known "revelation" -- regarding the role of the so-called Secret Team cabal in the JFK assassination -- appears to have been basically a morass of unfounded speculation.† And of course, his later dealings with the Liberty Lobby and the IHR didn't exactly help to burnish his image much, either. † Unless one buys the Secret Team / JFK hypothesis, that is -- which I don't.
smoyer 10y ago
Plus Snowden didn't study game theory at Harvard and he wasn't schooled on the utility of leaks.
tptacek 10y ago
While I agree that Drake and Binney were "leakers as insiders", I do not agree that this impacts the narrative of the article. Snowden wasn't an NSA outsider because he didn't want to be an insider. He was an NSA outsider because he was an NSA outsider --- his attempts to be an insider failed. Moreover, there's more to the point Gladwell is making than that Snowden wasn't an insider. The core point of the piece is that Ellsberg's insider status enabled him to leak carefully, and to redact strategically. Snowden demonstrably did not do this: not only did things get published that weren't in the American public interest, but other things that were (for instance: traces of the Juniper/Netscreen backdoor, or implants in other VPN products) were never published. It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was inferior to the Pentagon Papers.
- thomasahle 10y ago
  It seems to me that the Snowden approach of leaving the decision of what should be published to journalists (such as the New York Times) is the better approach. We don't really want anybody to leak anything they personally find interesting, but we do want (good) journalists to be able to discover important stories.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    As I said elsewhere, the end result of this appears to have been demonstrably suboptimal --- again, stipulating that this is regarding the American public interest: * Some stuff got published that was important and vital (though its impact on public policy was ultimately minimal). * Some stuff got published that simply shouldn't have been leaked --- for instance, details of technical implants useful only in narrowly targeted espionage. * Some stuff didn't get published that should have been --- for instance, in light of what we later discovered about Juniper/Netscreen, had everyone to do this earlier, a list of vendors impacted by VPN implants would have been helpful, and could have been doable. * Some stuff got published that were simple false, such as the notion of a "PRISM" system that gave NSA direct access to Google's systems. A more carefully curated, competently explained process of leaking could have improved all these outcomes, and that's exactly what Gladwell is suggesting Ellsberg accomplished that Snowden didn't.
wallace_f 10y ago
Great point. By the way, this was a point I believe Clinton and the Democratic party have been egregiously lying about. Clinton: > When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled, because we have all these protections for whistleblowers." Source: https://freedom.press/news-advocacy/fact-checking-hillary-clintons-comments-about-edward-snowden-and-the-nsa/ https://freedom.press/news-advocacy/fact-checking-hillary-cl...
- eric_h 10y ago
  Thanks for linking to that article. The most amusing part of it, IMO, is the last sentence: "privacy could be a more important election issue than ever." Makes the political consciousness of 2014 seem so adorably naive.

by rqebmm 10y ago

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

I've made this argument for a long time: any damage to the US from the Snowden leaks was because the government refused to clean house when they became aware of problems through internal channels. Snowden was merely a concerned employee revealing to shareholders that business executives were willfully defrauding investors and breaking fiduciary duty, to use an analogy. The reason he didn't use internal channels was executives up to the board level had previously targeted other leakers as part of their criminal conspiracy.

samstave 10y ago
literally the best analogy i have heard on the subject. thanks
tptacek 10y ago
This gets to motivations and intent but doesn't really answer the question posed by the article, which is: are insiders who leak carefully and strategically creating better public policy outcomes than the indiscriminate leaks that IT people have been generating?
- rqebmm 10y ago
  Which raises an interesting corollary: is there such a thing as an "indiscriminate" leak? Recent events have shown that WikiLeaks' practice of leaking anything they have has instead created an opportunity for targeted leaks by selectively passing information to them.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  There's obviously a lot to both positions, but as a succinct answer: I would argue that a mixed policy likely generates the best outcomes -- by instigating a crisis to motivate public interest and movement on the topic, and then sustained, strategic leaks over the following decade(s), once there's an interested cohort (with a baseline of evidence). Ill date myself a bit here by saying that Snowden is the only major leak of my lifetime, but it seems to me that he was able to get traction on the issue when a lot of people had failed to (eg, there were rumors of NSA programs before including from NSA insiders, but little public attention), but what has kept the topic alive is a series of strategic leaks of new information to sustain public attention and keep the debate focused on it being a current issue. So in some senses, I think we need those doc drops of "They're really looking at all your dick pics, hook-up texts, and tracking every illicit meet-up", but I also think that we get a lot more usage out of quieter leaks of key details, once the conversation is happening. That was sort of the point of my analogy: quiet rumors from key staff to shareholders were ignored or suppressed by executive staff until one guy in accounting dropped the whole set of books. This obviously leaked a bunch of business secrets, but Id argue the only way to comprehend the scale of wrongdoing was to see that the entire system had become organized around that illicit activity. It was only in that context we could even start a conversation about the scope of what had gone awry.
- cryoshon 10y ago
  >are insiders who leak carefully and strategically creating better public policy outcomes than the indiscriminate leaks that IT people have been generating? the insiders aren't effecting policy outcomes whatsoever. they're getting snuffed out and swept under the rug. throwing open the barn door is the only way the public gets enough information to clean it out.

eternalban 10y ago

I just grep'd for Prouty and nothing showed up. Even his wikipedia page [1] is a bit scrubbed and buries his important act of blowing the whistle on the shadow government [2]. Btw, Prouty discusses Ellsberg directly in his book. It is 'interesting' reading for sure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team

kafkaesq 10y ago
Prouty was certainly a very interesting fellow, but unfortunately his best-known "revelation" -- regarding the role of the so-called Secret Team cabal in the JFK assassination -- appears to have been basically a morass of unfounded speculation.† And of course, his later dealings with the Liberty Lobby and the IHR didn't exactly help to burnish his image much, either. † Unless one buys the Secret Team / JFK hypothesis, that is -- which I don't.

smoyer 10y ago

Plus Snowden didn't study game theory at Harvard and he wasn't schooled on the utility of leaks.

tptacek 10y ago

While I agree that Drake and Binney were "leakers as insiders", I do not agree that this impacts the narrative of the article. Snowden wasn't an NSA outsider because he didn't want to be an insider. He was an NSA outsider because he was an NSA outsider --- his attempts to be an insider failed. Moreover, there's more to the point Gladwell is making than that Snowden wasn't an insider. The core point of the piece is that Ellsberg's insider status enabled him to leak carefully, and to redact strategically. Snowden demonstrably did not do this: not only did things get published that weren't in the American public interest, but other things that were (for instance: traces of the Juniper/Netscreen backdoor, or implants in other VPN products) were never published. It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was inferior to the Pentagon Papers.

thomasahle 10y ago
It seems to me that the Snowden approach of leaving the decision of what should be published to journalists (such as the New York Times) is the better approach. We don't really want anybody to leak anything they personally find interesting, but we do want (good) journalists to be able to discover important stories.
- tptacek 10y ago
  As I said elsewhere, the end result of this appears to have been demonstrably suboptimal --- again, stipulating that this is regarding the American public interest: * Some stuff got published that was important and vital (though its impact on public policy was ultimately minimal). * Some stuff got published that simply shouldn't have been leaked --- for instance, details of technical implants useful only in narrowly targeted espionage. * Some stuff didn't get published that should have been --- for instance, in light of what we later discovered about Juniper/Netscreen, had everyone to do this earlier, a list of vendors impacted by VPN implants would have been helpful, and could have been doable. * Some stuff got published that were simple false, such as the notion of a "PRISM" system that gave NSA direct access to Google's systems. A more carefully curated, competently explained process of leaking could have improved all these outcomes, and that's exactly what Gladwell is suggesting Ellsberg accomplished that Snowden didn't.

wallace_f 10y ago

Great point. By the way, this was a point I believe Clinton and the Democratic party have been egregiously lying about. Clinton: > When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled, because we have all these protections for whistleblowers." Source: https://freedom.press/news-advocacy/fact-checking-hillary-clintons-comments-about-edward-snowden-and-the-nsa/ https://freedom.press/news-advocacy/fact-checking-hillary-cl...

eric_h 10y ago
Thanks for linking to that article. The most amusing part of it, IMO, is the last sentence: "privacy could be a more important election issue than ever." Makes the political consciousness of 2014 seem so adorably naive.