4 ms·

>He did not fly with the intent of staying in Russia. Keep telling yourself that. The dude has been a Russian asset from the start.

lern_too_spel 6y ago
I wouldn't go that far. I think Hanlon's Razor applies to Snowden's case. He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edward-snowden-leaked-top-secret-national-security-agency-documents-showing-how-us-was-spying-its-citizens-heres-what-happened-next/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edwa... If he were really a Russian asset, he wouldn't have made a claim that he has since had to stop claiming (instead playing up phone metadata collection for reporters), or he would have admitted that he was wrong to gain credibility. Instead, he looked like a fool and just stopped talking about it out of embarrassment.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story. Why?
  - trynton 6y ago
    Maybe 'lern_too_spel' means something much worse. Like the product of such blanket surveillance being used by the spooks to blackmail our purported democratically elected leaders. A bit like the Praetorian Guard ended up effectively ruling the Roman Empire.
- site-packages1 6y ago
  "He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story." What do you mean by this? I read the article, or at least skimmed it. Is it because everyone siphons everyone's data and the fact that the gov is doing it is unremarkable?
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    It's because the government isn't siphoning everybody's information, which became obvious as soon as Greenwald released the slides he thought supported that claim. https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-... Since then, transparency reports from the companies confirmed it. To this day, you'll only ever hear Snowden and Greenwald talking about phone metadata collection because they were so ridiculed about their PRISM claims.
    - site-packages1 6y ago
      This isn't correct information. I thought you were referring to something more meta, and not a reverse-conspiracy theory that the government _isn't_ doing what we all have seen it is. Additionally: Your link doesn't support the general claim that the gov isn't siphoning data, but provides some evidence that it doesn't have a _direct_ link to data creators. It simply states that it's using mechanisms like NSLs to obtain such information, which is basically the same.
      - lern_too_spel 6y ago
        > that the government _isn't_ doing what we all have seen it is. Where have you seen that the government is siphoning Americans' data via PRISM? The slides clearly show it js a data integration project to get data from the FBI's DITU. Claiming otherwise as you have is the conspiracy theory because it is based on no documents released either by Snowden or the government, and if it is happening, there would have to be a vast conspiracy to keep it secret when even something as simple as phone metadata collection is illegal. The documents clearly state that PRISM ingests Section 702 content, not NSL metadata, so that just shows a gross misunderstanding not only of the actual primary documents but of Greenwald's initial misreporting of them as well. Edit: Response to comment below due to rate limiting. If you want to learn something and clean up the formatting of this thread, upvote my comments, so I can put this in a new comment in the correct part of the thread: No, I said very specifically that PRISM was a non-story, despite what Snowden clearly believed. NSL letters [sic] are for metadata collection. Of those, Snowden released documents about a single illegal program using NSLs, which was phone metadata collection. If he had understood the documents he was releasing, he would have pushed that story instead of PRISM.
bellyfullofbac 6y ago
If he was a Russian asset, wouldn't it be smarter to keep working within the NSA and leak the knowledge/tech to them? Now you might next claim he was probably doing that and he fled as he was about to be caught by the NSA, but if they had suspicions of espionage and was about to arrest him, they would've gone to the press, that a (suspected) Russian mole had escaped and shown their evidence...
blabitty 6y ago
Yep. If he was truly a whistleblower he would have only released information about surveillance against Americans.

lern_too_spel 6y ago

I wouldn't go that far. I think Hanlon's Razor applies to Snowden's case. He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edward-snowden-leaked-top-secret-national-security-agency-documents-showing-how-us-was-spying-its-citizens-heres-what-happened-next/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edwa... If he were really a Russian asset, he wouldn't have made a claim that he has since had to stop claiming (instead playing up phone metadata collection for reporters), or he would have admitted that he was wrong to gain credibility. Instead, he looked like a fool and just stopped talking about it out of embarrassment.

mhh__ 6y ago
> He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story. Why?
- trynton 6y ago
  Maybe 'lern_too_spel' means something much worse. Like the product of such blanket surveillance being used by the spooks to blackmail our purported democratically elected leaders. A bit like the Praetorian Guard ended up effectively ruling the Roman Empire.
site-packages1 6y ago
"He seemed absolutely convinced that PRISM was a big story, which anybody with a fifth grade reading ability could tell was a non-story." What do you mean by this? I read the article, or at least skimmed it. Is it because everyone siphons everyone's data and the fact that the gov is doing it is unremarkable?
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  It's because the government isn't siphoning everybody's information, which became obvious as soon as Greenwald released the slides he thought supported that claim. https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-... Since then, transparency reports from the companies confirmed it. To this day, you'll only ever hear Snowden and Greenwald talking about phone metadata collection because they were so ridiculed about their PRISM claims.
  - site-packages1 6y ago
    This isn't correct information. I thought you were referring to something more meta, and not a reverse-conspiracy theory that the government _isn't_ doing what we all have seen it is. Additionally: Your link doesn't support the general claim that the gov isn't siphoning data, but provides some evidence that it doesn't have a _direct_ link to data creators. It simply states that it's using mechanisms like NSLs to obtain such information, which is basically the same.
    - lern_too_spel 6y ago
      > that the government _isn't_ doing what we all have seen it is. Where have you seen that the government is siphoning Americans' data via PRISM? The slides clearly show it js a data integration project to get data from the FBI's DITU. Claiming otherwise as you have is the conspiracy theory because it is based on no documents released either by Snowden or the government, and if it is happening, there would have to be a vast conspiracy to keep it secret when even something as simple as phone metadata collection is illegal. The documents clearly state that PRISM ingests Section 702 content, not NSL metadata, so that just shows a gross misunderstanding not only of the actual primary documents but of Greenwald's initial misreporting of them as well. Edit: Response to comment below due to rate limiting. If you want to learn something and clean up the formatting of this thread, upvote my comments, so I can put this in a new comment in the correct part of the thread: No, I said very specifically that PRISM was a non-story, despite what Snowden clearly believed. NSL letters [sic] are for metadata collection. Of those, Snowden released documents about a single illegal program using NSLs, which was phone metadata collection. If he had understood the documents he was releasing, he would have pushed that story instead of PRISM.

bellyfullofbac 6y ago

If he was a Russian asset, wouldn't it be smarter to keep working within the NSA and leak the knowledge/tech to them? Now you might next claim he was probably doing that and he fled as he was about to be caught by the NSA, but if they had suspicions of espionage and was about to arrest him, they would've gone to the press, that a (suspected) Russian mole had escaped and shown their evidence...

blabitty 6y ago

Yep. If he was truly a whistleblower he would have only released information about surveillance against Americans.