4 ms·

How else would you handle it?

by emilsedgh 7y ago

cm2187 7y ago
Only leak the files that are relevant.
- pepesza 7y ago
  Technically unfeasible considering how much time he had to go through those docs (likely - very little).
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    He had been collecting the documents for months even before the incident that he says prompted him to blow the whistle. He knew that detailed lists of Chinese targets were not needed to blow the whistle on phone metadata collection, but he grabbed those lists anyway and immediately showed them to the SCMP.
- emilsedgh 7y ago
  By releasing it to journalists he: * Removed the target from his back. At this point, all his value is "to be made of an example" not "a former operative with incredibly sensitive information, potentially worth neutralizing" * Recused himself from being a political player like Assange wanted to be. Also, who says he is a good judge to make the right call for each document? Journalists can do a far far better job of responsibly handling the material, with enough time, resources and expertise to investigate the material, even get in touch with the government, etc. Doing it personally would've been incredibly irresponsible and actually a power-play for personal gain not whistle-blowing for the better.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    If he is not a good judge for what document supports wrong doing, then he is not a whistle blower in the first place. And I am not suggesting he is not. I have no doubt that he knew what a compromising document looked like.
  - GVIrish 7y ago
    Thing is, that by stealing and releasing documents he did not read (by his own admission) he could not have known what collateral damage he would've done to US and allied intelligence capabilities. One might argue that any damage to intelligence interests is superceded by the public's interests in learning about abuses, but had he made a more targeted leak collateral damage might not have been an issue. Trusting journalists to do the job is a cop out. He took the action of taking the documents, then foisted responsibility on someone else. And make no mistake, intelligence services spy on journalists and have compromised journalists. Snowden had no way of knowing whether other intelligence agencies could get to what he gave the various media outlets. Even some carelessness on their part could have revealed secrets to others.
    - emilsedgh 7y ago
      I actually believe he read them all personally. It's just that he didn't make the judgement call to decide which one to release. It was Chelsea Manning who a did dump without reading them first.
      - GVIrish 7y ago
        Check out Snowden's inteview with John Oliver. Snowden outright admitted he hadn't read all the documents. He said he was 'familiar' with them.
- nullc 7y ago
  I think you miss how mind-numbingly boring all this stuff is. The evil is in the overarching character of the programs and infrastructure -- not the minutia. But without seeing the minutia you cannot see the program. Imagine that the year is 1942 and someone leaks you a stack of bookkeeping records from some german labor camp in poland. In it, the records account for gassing prisoners by the truckload, but to your eyes it's all just just the cryptic numbers and administrative filler of any complex bureaucracy. To make any sense of it, you need many layers back of the surrounding documentation-- not just to establish what you're looking at, but to establish what you're not looking at. Communication that shows that the data is real, not an exercise, that the prisoners are being killed rather than that the accounting is just covering deaths from natural causes, that it's really a big intentional program sponsored from on-high and not just a fluke where a local administrator or two went nuts. Without a wealth of supporting material it would be easy to dismiss Snowden's reports as "sure well, there was some overreach here and there. It wasn't officially sanctioned and the relevant parties have been sacked, James Clapper had no idea and did not perjure himself and we haven't been systematically lying to the public for a decade." In a world where the NSA was accountable to the public, Snowden would only have to reveal enough to force them to account and disclose and continued inquiry would unearth the rest. But we do not live in that world: The NSA's actions are not open to public inquiry. One shot is all we got for any real transparency into the mass surveillance apparatus. Consider the byzantine dismissals that Jewel v. NSA experienced. ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-nsa-mass-spying-citing-secrecy-claims https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-... ) It seemed pretty obvious to me that Snowden purposefully obfuscated what documents he took by accessing everything-- a fact you seem to have exploited in a number of posts to exaggerate the scope of the documents he took, according to our best understanding of his actions per the journalists he worked with-- in order to create a situation where the administration's ability to tell additional lies to cover up the situation would be limited by the risk that somewhere in the stash Snowden had a document which blew the latest lie apart. For another example: There is an absurd number of patents filed on most of the technical tools being used for the mass surveillance on the internet-- and their feature sets often end up leaked in product documentation and internet standards. They're not even particularly well hidden, some with co-authors who's linked in pages brag about their TS/SCI and work in intelligence... Yet, pre-snowden, people pointing to this wealth of details even combined with first hand accounts of how it was deployed, were just treated like kooks. Without the ability to open a real inquiry it isn't enough to prove that something suspicious is up, the proof must be utterly overwhelming to have a meaningful effect.

How else would you handle it?

cm2187 7y ago

Only leak the files that are relevant.

pepesza 7y ago
Technically unfeasible considering how much time he had to go through those docs (likely - very little).
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  He had been collecting the documents for months even before the incident that he says prompted him to blow the whistle. He knew that detailed lists of Chinese targets were not needed to blow the whistle on phone metadata collection, but he grabbed those lists anyway and immediately showed them to the SCMP.
emilsedgh 7y ago
By releasing it to journalists he: * Removed the target from his back. At this point, all his value is "to be made of an example" not "a former operative with incredibly sensitive information, potentially worth neutralizing" * Recused himself from being a political player like Assange wanted to be. Also, who says he is a good judge to make the right call for each document? Journalists can do a far far better job of responsibly handling the material, with enough time, resources and expertise to investigate the material, even get in touch with the government, etc. Doing it personally would've been incredibly irresponsible and actually a power-play for personal gain not whistle-blowing for the better.
- cm2187 7y ago
  If he is not a good judge for what document supports wrong doing, then he is not a whistle blower in the first place. And I am not suggesting he is not. I have no doubt that he knew what a compromising document looked like.
- GVIrish 7y ago
  Thing is, that by stealing and releasing documents he did not read (by his own admission) he could not have known what collateral damage he would've done to US and allied intelligence capabilities. One might argue that any damage to intelligence interests is superceded by the public's interests in learning about abuses, but had he made a more targeted leak collateral damage might not have been an issue. Trusting journalists to do the job is a cop out. He took the action of taking the documents, then foisted responsibility on someone else. And make no mistake, intelligence services spy on journalists and have compromised journalists. Snowden had no way of knowing whether other intelligence agencies could get to what he gave the various media outlets. Even some carelessness on their part could have revealed secrets to others.
  - emilsedgh 7y ago
    I actually believe he read them all personally. It's just that he didn't make the judgement call to decide which one to release. It was Chelsea Manning who a did dump without reading them first.
    - GVIrish 7y ago
      Check out Snowden's inteview with John Oliver. Snowden outright admitted he hadn't read all the documents. He said he was 'familiar' with them.
nullc 7y ago
I think you miss how mind-numbingly boring all this stuff is. The evil is in the overarching character of the programs and infrastructure -- not the minutia. But without seeing the minutia you cannot see the program. Imagine that the year is 1942 and someone leaks you a stack of bookkeeping records from some german labor camp in poland. In it, the records account for gassing prisoners by the truckload, but to your eyes it's all just just the cryptic numbers and administrative filler of any complex bureaucracy. To make any sense of it, you need many layers back of the surrounding documentation-- not just to establish what you're looking at, but to establish what you're not looking at. Communication that shows that the data is real, not an exercise, that the prisoners are being killed rather than that the accounting is just covering deaths from natural causes, that it's really a big intentional program sponsored from on-high and not just a fluke where a local administrator or two went nuts. Without a wealth of supporting material it would be easy to dismiss Snowden's reports as "sure well, there was some overreach here and there. It wasn't officially sanctioned and the relevant parties have been sacked, James Clapper had no idea and did not perjure himself and we haven't been systematically lying to the public for a decade." In a world where the NSA was accountable to the public, Snowden would only have to reveal enough to force them to account and disclose and continued inquiry would unearth the rest. But we do not live in that world: The NSA's actions are not open to public inquiry. One shot is all we got for any real transparency into the mass surveillance apparatus. Consider the byzantine dismissals that Jewel v. NSA experienced. ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-nsa-mass-spying-citing-secrecy-claims https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-... ) It seemed pretty obvious to me that Snowden purposefully obfuscated what documents he took by accessing everything-- a fact you seem to have exploited in a number of posts to exaggerate the scope of the documents he took, according to our best understanding of his actions per the journalists he worked with-- in order to create a situation where the administration's ability to tell additional lies to cover up the situation would be limited by the risk that somewhere in the stash Snowden had a document which blew the latest lie apart. For another example: There is an absurd number of patents filed on most of the technical tools being used for the mass surveillance on the internet-- and their feature sets often end up leaked in product documentation and internet standards. They're not even particularly well hidden, some with co-authors who's linked in pages brag about their TS/SCI and work in intelligence... Yet, pre-snowden, people pointing to this wealth of details even combined with first hand accounts of how it was deployed, were just treated like kooks. Without the ability to open a real inquiry it isn't enough to prove that something suspicious is up, the proof must be utterly overwhelming to have a meaningful effect.