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Snowden spent quite a bit of time looking for UFO stuff since he had access to almost everything classified and never found any evidence. I’m not saying this w

Snowden spent quite a bit of time looking for UFO stuff since he had access to almost everything classified and never found any evidence. I’m not saying this whistleblower is definitely lying, but if anyone was capable and willing to bring this forward with receipts, Snowden would’ve done so.

ryanSrich 3y ago
That proves nothing though. US Government data is so siloed it’s possible Snowden would not have access to UFO info even if he had access to essentially everything the NSA had access to.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  > US Government data is so siloed The classified stuff wasn’t really that siloed. He had access to everything CIA, DIA, NSA, etc. He talked about this in his book. Searching for evidence of aliens was one of the first things he did when he got access.
  - matrix12 3y ago
    Anyone who has worked at the fort can assure you that's not how it works...
    - nvy 3y ago
      Didn't he have a special PRIVACC designation that allowed him to bypass traditional "need to know" silo boundaries, under the auspices of being a sysadmin or whatever?
      - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
        He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything.
        andrewmutz 3y ago
        If there was stuff he didn't have access to, like super secret UFO stuff, would he know about it?
        _kbh_ 3y ago
        > He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything. Whilst this is true, he leaked only one document related to Australian intelligence, so if there was a lot of sharing between the two then Snowden clearly didn't have access to a lot of it.
      - BobbyJo 3y ago
        These systems are commonly air-gapped. Unless he physically went around to the various SCIFs, where the information would be, it doesn't matter what kind of access he had.
        nvy 3y ago
        >These systems are commonly air-gapped Do you have direct experience? Because this is contradictory to my own experience. When I was in the Air Force we had access to various classified networks at levels up to and including TS. You often needed to be in a SCIF and/or have TEMPEST-rated equipment to log in, depending on the context, but the systems are networked nonetheless.
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        I worked in a SCIF for a short time for a defense contractor. It was a while ago, and I'm fuzzy about what I can and cannot say about how things worked in there, so I'd rather not say anything specific. What I can say is that it's trivial to keep things you don't want leaving a SCIF in the SCIF.
        LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
        I’m definitely not military, so I can’t speak from experience here. I just find it hard to believe that the military puts all of this information into decentralized air-gapped silos that are completely cut off from the outside world. Information isn’t useful when it can’t be searched, cross-referenced and analyzed. How does data enter a SCIF? because it obviously doesn’t originate there. Do people walk in with thumb drives and load it into a computer? That sounds like a security nightmare to me
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        When I was there, it could only be brought in via read-only disc, and only via authorized parties. Any writable media was prohibited from entering as far as I was aware/concerned. We weren't generating information though, we were generating products. Products (physical or non-physical) get "used" as opposed to "searched".
      - pengaru 3y ago
        For anything like this to stay a secret this long, it's obviously not discoverable by a keyboard jockey having root privileges across the network. You don't need to know more acronyms to infer such things.
        shadowgovt 3y ago
        Which should be considered surprising in the era of modern international communications, technology, and intel sharing. The odds of evidence of a UFO hitting the wrong comms channel and then not being seen by someone before getting scrubbed are staggeringly low. So for someone to have wide access across multiple silos and then hear nothing, one must assume either the conspiracy to hide the evidence of UFOs is supernaturally good or the conspiracy is both still using off-grid solutions to coordinate internationally and is somehow suppressing information that should be in their silo from ever landing in the wrong silo.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Reminder that we live in the same universe where China has basically entirely pwned our government networks, Russia has done a good number, and a 20 year old desk worker had the ability to post insanely high level stuff to a discord server for quite some time before anyone even noticed.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Is there significance in the parent commenter saying "UFO" and the child comment saying "aliens"? Asking because they are not necessarily the same thing and searching for one may not yield results for the other. I suspect both terms would catch the eye, so this still seems like an interesting contradiction; probably just a difference between the comments that I noticed.
  - _kbh_ 3y ago
    > The classified stuff wasn’t really that siloed. He had access to everything CIA, DIA, NSA, etc. He talked about this in his book. Searching for evidence of aliens was one of the first things he did when he got access. Not to be pedantic but this isn't entirely true. There is a set of what the NSA call "core secrets" that were never leaked, these were all classified at ECI. https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html The best we got what was a list of digraphs, codenames and vague descriptions, you can actually workout that at least one them is likely Crypto AG (HISTORY / HST).
- mhh__ 3y ago
  Given Snowden and the discord kid maybe it's not
- matrix12 3y ago
  Not unless they were using HF radio to communicate between craft.
- riversflow 3y ago
  Yup. Not military, but have significantly researched the U.S. secret keeping system because I’ve long been enthralled by espionage. As I understand it, any classified document can be SCI, secure compartmentalize information(I think this is used for spy stuff, barely anyone needs to be able to link a spy’s real ID to their assumed ID, the less people who know the better), or be part of an SAP, Special Access Program(which is more about highly secret projects, it seems, like the 6th gen fighter we’re probably building/have built), both of which have access control which is granted on a need-to-know basis. And, fyi, as I understand it, “I’m your superior”, is not a valid reason to need-to-know. Need-to-know is, as I understand it, at the discretion of the secret keepers.
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    Right, but somebody has to maintain those IT systems, and if the government is anything like other huge, data-hoarding corporations, then they deploy sysadmins who have an incredible amount of access because they have to in order to maintain the system. IT systems do not run themselves.
    - PaulRobinson 3y ago
      Why do you need IT systems for a program that has allegedly been running covertly since a decade before Bletchley Park started building Colossus? Let’s just presume that the people running this are recruited both for their competence and their ability to keep a secret. Would they immediately commission an IT team? NSA needs IT. It’s essential. These programs - if they exist - are all about avoiding recording anything or communicating anything other than face to face.
      - Spooky23 3y ago
        In the Snowden case, why would you copy those records to SharePoint.
      - LargeTomato 3y ago
        >Why do you need IT systems for a program that has allegedly been running covertly since a decade before Bletchley Park started building Colossus? I'm not sure I follow. You would almost certainly need IT. Just because the program (allegedly) dates back to 1930 doesn't mean it has no use for IT. The IRS dates back to before 1930 and it has IT.
montagg 3y ago
Trump would have done so. It would have been impossible for him to keep a secret. His need to stroke his own ego wouldn’t allow it. When Trump ended his term without once mentioning aliens, that’s when I was certain all of this was hogwash. Are there maybe very advanced aircraft out there we should be aware of? Certainly. But it’s definitely not aliens without hard af evidence.
- jdwithit 3y ago
  This is a good point. Remember the time he revealed highly classified spy satellite capabilities by posting an extremely detailed photo of an Iranian nuclear site ON TWITTER [0]? He cannot help himself if there's a chance to show off. Although, the nice thing about conspiracy theories is you can always just layer on another explanation. Obviously the Deep State didn't trust Trump with this dangerous knowledge, so they kept him in the dark. Some things not even the President is cleared to know. Duh. 0: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-image-from-a-spy-satellite-declassified-document-shows https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-i...
  - 9dev 3y ago
    I’d usually side with you and Hanlon‘s razor, but in this case… not trusting Trump with anything sharper than a children’s toy knife sounds pretty reasonable, no? Is it really so far-fetched some agencies would do everything in their power to keep a low profile and The Menace out of their business?
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Indeed. For the conspiracy to hold water, one must assume (among other things) the President is out of the loop (like in the movie Independence Day) because otherwise, one has to assume too many Presidents that leaked intel on other topics exhibited the self control to hold these secrets close.
    - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
      But why keep UFO intel away from him while letting him have highly-sensitive military intel that he could parley or leak? That’s the other part of this conspiracy that I don’t understand.
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
It's extremely unlikely that Edward Snowden had access to "almost everything classified".
- RajT88 3y ago
  And anyways - anything he has claimed since he arrived in Moscow is extremely suspect.
beaned 3y ago
Is there a place to read more about this claim that Snowden had access to "almost everything classified"?
AndyMcConachie 3y ago
I vaguely remember someone from the USAF coming forward in the 1990's and disclosing that the USAF had been planting UFO stories to provide cover for experimental aircraft development. Here is a NYT article from 1997 on the the CIA coverup. https://web.archive.org/web/20230726002122/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/us/cia-admits-government-lied-about-ufo-sightings.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230726002122/https://www.nytim... But I also seem to remember an airforce person coming forward with similar stories that were more recent. This article talks about the 1950s-60s.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dwringer 3y ago
Isn't the majority of what Snowden leaked still being privately held from the public?
- sneak 3y ago
  Yes.
- micah94 3y ago
  Snowden only released data on projects that were no longer active. He did that deliberately. I personally believe it's the reason he's still alive. A bit inconvenienced but still above-ground.
calibas 3y ago
This actually backs up what they said in the hearing. There's an extra level of security regarding UFO documents, and even people who are supposed to have access are stonewalled. The members of congress in the hearing appeared to confirm this.

ryanSrich 3y ago

That proves nothing though. US Government data is so siloed it’s possible Snowden would not have access to UFO info even if he had access to essentially everything the NSA had access to.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> US Government data is so siloed The classified stuff wasn’t really that siloed. He had access to everything CIA, DIA, NSA, etc. He talked about this in his book. Searching for evidence of aliens was one of the first things he did when he got access.
- matrix12 3y ago
  Anyone who has worked at the fort can assure you that's not how it works...
  - nvy 3y ago
    Didn't he have a special PRIVACC designation that allowed him to bypass traditional "need to know" silo boundaries, under the auspices of being a sysadmin or whatever?
    - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
      He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything.
      - andrewmutz 3y ago
        If there was stuff he didn't have access to, like super secret UFO stuff, would he know about it?
      - _kbh_ 3y ago
        > He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything. Whilst this is true, he leaked only one document related to Australian intelligence, so if there was a lot of sharing between the two then Snowden clearly didn't have access to a lot of it.
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      These systems are commonly air-gapped. Unless he physically went around to the various SCIFs, where the information would be, it doesn't matter what kind of access he had.
      - nvy 3y ago
        >These systems are commonly air-gapped Do you have direct experience? Because this is contradictory to my own experience. When I was in the Air Force we had access to various classified networks at levels up to and including TS. You often needed to be in a SCIF and/or have TEMPEST-rated equipment to log in, depending on the context, but the systems are networked nonetheless.
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        I worked in a SCIF for a short time for a defense contractor. It was a while ago, and I'm fuzzy about what I can and cannot say about how things worked in there, so I'd rather not say anything specific. What I can say is that it's trivial to keep things you don't want leaving a SCIF in the SCIF.
        LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
        I’m definitely not military, so I can’t speak from experience here. I just find it hard to believe that the military puts all of this information into decentralized air-gapped silos that are completely cut off from the outside world. Information isn’t useful when it can’t be searched, cross-referenced and analyzed. How does data enter a SCIF? because it obviously doesn’t originate there. Do people walk in with thumb drives and load it into a computer? That sounds like a security nightmare to me
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        When I was there, it could only be brought in via read-only disc, and only via authorized parties. Any writable media was prohibited from entering as far as I was aware/concerned. We weren't generating information though, we were generating products. Products (physical or non-physical) get "used" as opposed to "searched".
    - pengaru 3y ago
      For anything like this to stay a secret this long, it's obviously not discoverable by a keyboard jockey having root privileges across the network. You don't need to know more acronyms to infer such things.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        Which should be considered surprising in the era of modern international communications, technology, and intel sharing. The odds of evidence of a UFO hitting the wrong comms channel and then not being seen by someone before getting scrubbed are staggeringly low. So for someone to have wide access across multiple silos and then hear nothing, one must assume either the conspiracy to hide the evidence of UFOs is supernaturally good or the conspiracy is both still using off-grid solutions to coordinate internationally and is somehow suppressing information that should be in their silo from ever landing in the wrong silo.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Reminder that we live in the same universe where China has basically entirely pwned our government networks, Russia has done a good number, and a 20 year old desk worker had the ability to post insanely high level stuff to a discord server for quite some time before anyone even noticed.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Is there significance in the parent commenter saying "UFO" and the child comment saying "aliens"? Asking because they are not necessarily the same thing and searching for one may not yield results for the other. I suspect both terms would catch the eye, so this still seems like an interesting contradiction; probably just a difference between the comments that I noticed.
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  > The classified stuff wasn’t really that siloed. He had access to everything CIA, DIA, NSA, etc. He talked about this in his book. Searching for evidence of aliens was one of the first things he did when he got access. Not to be pedantic but this isn't entirely true. There is a set of what the NSA call "core secrets" that were never leaked, these were all classified at ECI. https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html The best we got what was a list of digraphs, codenames and vague descriptions, you can actually workout that at least one them is likely Crypto AG (HISTORY / HST).
mhh__ 3y ago
Given Snowden and the discord kid maybe it's not
matrix12 3y ago
Not unless they were using HF radio to communicate between craft.
riversflow 3y ago
Yup. Not military, but have significantly researched the U.S. secret keeping system because I’ve long been enthralled by espionage. As I understand it, any classified document can be SCI, secure compartmentalize information(I think this is used for spy stuff, barely anyone needs to be able to link a spy’s real ID to their assumed ID, the less people who know the better), or be part of an SAP, Special Access Program(which is more about highly secret projects, it seems, like the 6th gen fighter we’re probably building/have built), both of which have access control which is granted on a need-to-know basis. And, fyi, as I understand it, “I’m your superior”, is not a valid reason to need-to-know. Need-to-know is, as I understand it, at the discretion of the secret keepers.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  Right, but somebody has to maintain those IT systems, and if the government is anything like other huge, data-hoarding corporations, then they deploy sysadmins who have an incredible amount of access because they have to in order to maintain the system. IT systems do not run themselves.
  - PaulRobinson 3y ago
    Why do you need IT systems for a program that has allegedly been running covertly since a decade before Bletchley Park started building Colossus? Let’s just presume that the people running this are recruited both for their competence and their ability to keep a secret. Would they immediately commission an IT team? NSA needs IT. It’s essential. These programs - if they exist - are all about avoiding recording anything or communicating anything other than face to face.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      In the Snowden case, why would you copy those records to SharePoint.
    - LargeTomato 3y ago
      >Why do you need IT systems for a program that has allegedly been running covertly since a decade before Bletchley Park started building Colossus? I'm not sure I follow. You would almost certainly need IT. Just because the program (allegedly) dates back to 1930 doesn't mean it has no use for IT. The IRS dates back to before 1930 and it has IT.

montagg 3y ago

Trump would have done so. It would have been impossible for him to keep a secret. His need to stroke his own ego wouldn’t allow it. When Trump ended his term without once mentioning aliens, that’s when I was certain all of this was hogwash. Are there maybe very advanced aircraft out there we should be aware of? Certainly. But it’s definitely not aliens without hard af evidence.

jdwithit 3y ago
This is a good point. Remember the time he revealed highly classified spy satellite capabilities by posting an extremely detailed photo of an Iranian nuclear site ON TWITTER [0]? He cannot help himself if there's a chance to show off. Although, the nice thing about conspiracy theories is you can always just layer on another explanation. Obviously the Deep State didn't trust Trump with this dangerous knowledge, so they kept him in the dark. Some things not even the President is cleared to know. Duh. 0: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-image-from-a-spy-satellite-declassified-document-shows https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-i...
- 9dev 3y ago
  I’d usually side with you and Hanlon‘s razor, but in this case… not trusting Trump with anything sharper than a children’s toy knife sounds pretty reasonable, no? Is it really so far-fetched some agencies would do everything in their power to keep a low profile and The Menace out of their business?
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Indeed. For the conspiracy to hold water, one must assume (among other things) the President is out of the loop (like in the movie Independence Day) because otherwise, one has to assume too many Presidents that leaked intel on other topics exhibited the self control to hold these secrets close.
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    But why keep UFO intel away from him while letting him have highly-sensitive military intel that he could parley or leak? That’s the other part of this conspiracy that I don’t understand.

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

It's extremely unlikely that Edward Snowden had access to "almost everything classified".

RajT88 3y ago
And anyways - anything he has claimed since he arrived in Moscow is extremely suspect.

beaned 3y ago

Is there a place to read more about this claim that Snowden had access to "almost everything classified"?

AndyMcConachie 3y ago

I vaguely remember someone from the USAF coming forward in the 1990's and disclosing that the USAF had been planting UFO stories to provide cover for experimental aircraft development. Here is a NYT article from 1997 on the the CIA coverup. https://web.archive.org/web/20230726002122/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/us/cia-admits-government-lied-about-ufo-sightings.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230726002122/https://www.nytim... But I also seem to remember an airforce person coming forward with similar stories that were more recent. This article talks about the 1950s-60s.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dwringer 3y ago

Isn't the majority of what Snowden leaked still being privately held from the public?

sneak 3y ago
Yes.
micah94 3y ago
Snowden only released data on projects that were no longer active. He did that deliberately. I personally believe it's the reason he's still alive. A bit inconvenienced but still above-ground.

calibas 3y ago

This actually backs up what they said in the hearing. There's an extra level of security regarding UFO documents, and even people who are supposed to have access are stonewalled. The members of congress in the hearing appeared to confirm this.