4 ms·

He had to take a quick dump of whatever he could and filter through it later. It's not like he could leisurely spend weeks vetting the docs.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago
  PRISM was both illegal and unconstitutional. The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple. Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - newZWhoDis 4y ago
      That’s a failure of the courts to apply standing. You can’t sue because you have no standing, because you can’t prove you were spied on, and proving it would be illegal so… checkmate. :) PRISM is a clear violation of the 4th, and if we had supremes that were worth a damn all bulk collection programs would be prohibited.
- devmor 4y ago
  Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal. That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    > Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal No, phone metadata collection was ruled illegal. Ingesting court ordered FBI wiretaps on foreigners living outside the US who are of interest to national security has never been illegal in the US or in any other country. > That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public. It isn't hidden from the American public. The documents describing the data ingested into PRISM have been declassified.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      The USG can't put cameras in my house and promise not to look at the video unless I'm a foreigner. That's what this amounts to. Why anyone would defend this is beyond me.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        It can't put cameras in your house without a warrant if you live in the US period. If you're a foreigner living outside the US, you're fair game to the US. This is true for any country, not just the US. How anybody could fail to understand this is beyond me.
- anonym29 4y ago
  Regardless of PRISM's legality, it's deeply unethical and immoral for a government to spy on their own citizens with nothing more than a permission slip stamped by a stamping body that approves 99.97% of the requests that cross their desk, which is exactly what the FISA court is.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    PRISM doesn't involve data from US citizens' accounts. Please review what PRISM is before claiming it is illegal or unethical. It is neither. If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or that of any other country in the world to wiretap a foreigner who is outside of the country requesting the data. The fact that the US requires a court order is rare, and by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed.
    - anonym29 4y ago
      How can you verify whether an account belongs to a US citizen without possessing a single bit of data about it? >if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order Correction: the company can challenge the order. In case you've been living under a rock / off the grid and haven't seen the Twitter files recently, private companies not only aren't fighting back against government spying, censorship, etc - they're openly cooperating, going so far as to set up task forces to facilitate open cooperation. Why do you think Microsoft was feeding PRISM 5 years earlier than Apple? It's not like one organization had vastly more technical capability than the other - some private organizations are just openly complicit with the government regardless of the morality. IBM produced many of the systems used by the Germans to facilitate the holocaust - something being legal and profitable doesn't inherently make it morally acceptable. >by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed. It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests. Besides, as I've argued above, immoral actions should not be tolerated simply because they are allowed by law. See also: slavery, usury, civil asset forfeiture, murder of unarmed civilian by cop ft. qualified immunity, drone bombing weddings overseas, overthrowing democratically elected leaders in other countries, plotting fake terror attacks against US citizens to justify foreign wars (operation Northwoods). Evil is evil regardless of whether or not it's been "made legal" by a corrupt government with an extensive track record of violating international sovereignty, human rights, the geneva convention, and arms control charters, not to mention the only country to ever commit genocide of civilians with an atomic weapon. The US has zero moral authority.
- stale2002 4y ago
  The fact that PRISM was legal is exactly the problem, and why leaking it was needed. It wasn't illegal, therefore going through the proper channels wouldn't have exposed it. It is only by going through alternative/leaking means that the program could have gotten exposed to the public.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    The government spies on foreigners who are suspected to be of national security interest. News at 11. This is the government's job. Why do you feel it needed to be exposed?
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > Why do you feel it needed to be exposed? Well because it is basically at scale warrantless wiretapping, of almost every major communication platform(technically its on the internet, and not the phone system, I know). You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess. But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, and thus why they are glad that it was exposed. If you don't care about at scale warrentless wiretapping, feel free to just say so. Just say "I don't care if the government has a warrant or not, before they spy on every major communication platform". Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        > You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess. How many ways do people need to tell you that it doesn't? It can send wiretap requests for specific accounts to tech companies, which needs to approve each individual request. > But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, It doesn't. > and thus why they are glad that it was exposed. Where? Which document says they have backdoor access to the tech companies. I'll give you a hint: none of them do. Snowden and Greenwald were both too stupid to read the documents they had obtained and claimed otherwise, but all the rest of the tech media, like CNET and the NYT, reported it correctly. > Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government. This is something I care deeply about. That's why I'm glad Snowden's documents and the declassified documents both agree the law is being followed.
andrewmutz 4y ago
I don't really buy this. He couldn't search through the dump for the names of the projects that he was blowing the whistle on? Can't use grep? Handling over a mountain of secrets to journalists and let them sort out the illegal from the rest of it, (and trusting them not to publish things that are newsworthy/salacious but legal) is completely irresponsible
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  That’s not how it works. Some random contractor doesn’t know all the code names to all relevant projects. You should ask yourself more often “is there a reason they did it they way they did” before offering smug suggestions.

lern_too_spel 4y ago

The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.

newZWhoDis 4y ago
PRISM was both illegal and unconstitutional. The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple. Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - newZWhoDis 4y ago
    That’s a failure of the courts to apply standing. You can’t sue because you have no standing, because you can’t prove you were spied on, and proving it would be illegal so… checkmate. :) PRISM is a clear violation of the 4th, and if we had supremes that were worth a damn all bulk collection programs would be prohibited.
devmor 4y ago
Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal. That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  > Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal No, phone metadata collection was ruled illegal. Ingesting court ordered FBI wiretaps on foreigners living outside the US who are of interest to national security has never been illegal in the US or in any other country. > That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public. It isn't hidden from the American public. The documents describing the data ingested into PRISM have been declassified.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    The USG can't put cameras in my house and promise not to look at the video unless I'm a foreigner. That's what this amounts to. Why anyone would defend this is beyond me.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      It can't put cameras in your house without a warrant if you live in the US period. If you're a foreigner living outside the US, you're fair game to the US. This is true for any country, not just the US. How anybody could fail to understand this is beyond me.
anonym29 4y ago
Regardless of PRISM's legality, it's deeply unethical and immoral for a government to spy on their own citizens with nothing more than a permission slip stamped by a stamping body that approves 99.97% of the requests that cross their desk, which is exactly what the FISA court is.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  PRISM doesn't involve data from US citizens' accounts. Please review what PRISM is before claiming it is illegal or unethical. It is neither. If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or that of any other country in the world to wiretap a foreigner who is outside of the country requesting the data. The fact that the US requires a court order is rare, and by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed.
  - anonym29 4y ago
    How can you verify whether an account belongs to a US citizen without possessing a single bit of data about it? >if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order Correction: the company can challenge the order. In case you've been living under a rock / off the grid and haven't seen the Twitter files recently, private companies not only aren't fighting back against government spying, censorship, etc - they're openly cooperating, going so far as to set up task forces to facilitate open cooperation. Why do you think Microsoft was feeding PRISM 5 years earlier than Apple? It's not like one organization had vastly more technical capability than the other - some private organizations are just openly complicit with the government regardless of the morality. IBM produced many of the systems used by the Germans to facilitate the holocaust - something being legal and profitable doesn't inherently make it morally acceptable. >by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed. It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests. Besides, as I've argued above, immoral actions should not be tolerated simply because they are allowed by law. See also: slavery, usury, civil asset forfeiture, murder of unarmed civilian by cop ft. qualified immunity, drone bombing weddings overseas, overthrowing democratically elected leaders in other countries, plotting fake terror attacks against US citizens to justify foreign wars (operation Northwoods). Evil is evil regardless of whether or not it's been "made legal" by a corrupt government with an extensive track record of violating international sovereignty, human rights, the geneva convention, and arms control charters, not to mention the only country to ever commit genocide of civilians with an atomic weapon. The US has zero moral authority.
stale2002 4y ago
The fact that PRISM was legal is exactly the problem, and why leaking it was needed. It wasn't illegal, therefore going through the proper channels wouldn't have exposed it. It is only by going through alternative/leaking means that the program could have gotten exposed to the public.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  The government spies on foreigners who are suspected to be of national security interest. News at 11. This is the government's job. Why do you feel it needed to be exposed?
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > Why do you feel it needed to be exposed? Well because it is basically at scale warrantless wiretapping, of almost every major communication platform(technically its on the internet, and not the phone system, I know). You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess. But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, and thus why they are glad that it was exposed. If you don't care about at scale warrentless wiretapping, feel free to just say so. Just say "I don't care if the government has a warrant or not, before they spy on every major communication platform". Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      > You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess. How many ways do people need to tell you that it doesn't? It can send wiretap requests for specific accounts to tech companies, which needs to approve each individual request. > But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, It doesn't. > and thus why they are glad that it was exposed. Where? Which document says they have backdoor access to the tech companies. I'll give you a hint: none of them do. Snowden and Greenwald were both too stupid to read the documents they had obtained and claimed otherwise, but all the rest of the tech media, like CNET and the NYT, reported it correctly. > Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government. This is something I care deeply about. That's why I'm glad Snowden's documents and the declassified documents both agree the law is being followed.

andrewmutz 4y ago

I don't really buy this. He couldn't search through the dump for the names of the projects that he was blowing the whistle on? Can't use grep? Handling over a mountain of secrets to journalists and let them sort out the illegal from the rest of it, (and trusting them not to publish things that are newsworthy/salacious but legal) is completely irresponsible

imwillofficial 4y ago
That’s not how it works. Some random contractor doesn’t know all the code names to all relevant projects. You should ask yourself more often “is there a reason they did it they way they did” before offering smug suggestions.