35 ms·

On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

273 points by nceqs3 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago
I still haven't gotten my head around the valorization of Bill Binney, who does not appear to have been an opponent of dragnet surveillance, as he's so often portrayed, but rather of inefficient and poorly managed dragnet surveillance. ThinThread, the system he designed and left NSA over when they didn't pursue it, still left it up to NSA to determine which data to make available, and still presumed NSA would collect the same raw data. Maybe someone more familiar with ThinThread can make a case for how that system would be acceptable to us where Trailblazer (its competing design, in the narrative one tends to read here) wasn't.
- dhx 3y ago
  See [1] (from 1:14:43). The difference was Binney's system (ThinThread) being designed to quickly filter out most data and retain only a relatively small amount of targeted data. The result being the target had to be specified before the data could be collected. The other system (Trailblazer) was designed to capture and retain as much data as possible, and allow targeting to occur against this enormous buffer after the data had been captured. [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h264#t=4480 https://media.ccc.de/v/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h26...
  - samstave 3y ago
    This is likely the most telling premise of all Intel collection ever. One should only operate on the premise that this is defacto
    - deathlight 3y ago
      [flagged]
- bhawks 3y ago
  Whatever system there is in place doesn't seem to do much to address: + lone wolfs such as Uvalde, Las Vegas, Nashville, Waukesha... + Cross border drug operations + Transnational incidents like Nord Stream, spy balloons, COVID. + Military operations in Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan We are asked to relinquish so many freedoms and spend so much money on what, exactly? The 'we can't tell you because it'll jeopardize all those important things we can't tell you about' argument simply doesn't hold water. There are too many intelligence fumbles to assume that there is intelligence. Now if there was a mechanism in place to ensure that no one would rock the military political industrial complex... well that lines up with a lot of observable outcomes.
  - saltymug76 3y ago
    I agree with your post, but can you elaborate on the observable outcomes you mention?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gorgoiler 3y ago
    Government agencies have developed incredible powers but they aren’t heroes. It’s like they have developed incredibly abilities to turn water into wine and raise the dead and yet what do they do with these powers? All they use them for is banal things like saving money on the company picnic wine bill and skipping brake checks on the company vans knowing that if anything bad happens they just resurrect the victims.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    That's the problem with "secret" agencies: you don't know they're effective because they don't publish what they know or what they prevented. You hear about successful lone wolves, they become national news. You don't hear about the people that were taken in for questioning after posting a threatening message on the internets, which flags up in the FBI's systems right away. There's plenty of news of intercepted drug shipments. This is actually an example of the inverse, because you'll never hear about the ones that do get across. I'm sure there's a lot more that comes through compared to what is intercepted though, else they wouldn't try it. Nord Stream was known in advance; US intelligence was aware of the attack and warned Ukraine not to go through with it: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-not-to-sabotage-nord-stream-after-mivd-alert https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-n... The spy balloons were detected the second they took off from China. NORAD had eyes on them from launch. I'm not sure why Covid is in your list. Anyway, tl;dr, the very nature of this means you won't hear what's being prevented until maybe years later as things are declassified.
- samstave 3y ago
  [flagged]
hackandthink 3y ago
This reads like NSA Public Relations. Snowden was no whistleblower, NSA did some overcollection but anyway their mission is great and yeah some safeguards had to be improved. And Keith Alexander is a reliable source.
- testcaseuser 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Its the behavior of someone that doesn't want to go to prison in the US. There are literally only a handful of countries that are viable to avoiding that. Them being geopolitical opponents is exactly what they are countries that are viable to avoiding that. You are choosing to put the cart before the horse, that he went to geopolitical opponents to give secrets, and not that he was going to a handful of countries that would avoid prison in the US. and yes, I'm choosing to see it the other way, because his actions are more congruent with the other way. He was trying to go to a different country but could not reach it. The US intercepted flights they merely thought had him on it.
    - testcaseuser 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - harry8 3y ago
        He gave that data to american citizens in Hong Kong and retained no copy. Obama's people trapped him in transit in russia on his way to south america so that they could claim "russia! russia!" They openly bragged about this. It worked on both levels. He's stuck and people amazingly still claim he's in with the russians. It always surprises me how many people still come out with this totally discredited line that he gave secrets to china and russia. Are we done with the equally dishonest claim that he put lives in danger or is everyone across that being a total lie now. When I think of courage I think of Snowden speaking out against Putin while stuck in russia. When I think of cowardice I think of the lack of prosecution for all those spooks who are now paid by CNN to lie to the public. Who decided not to prosecute clapper? How? He's above the law. Why?
abhinai 3y ago
The post says 7 comments but I can only see two. What's going on?
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  You need to enable show dead in your profile. There is a comment chain with a comment that was probably highly flagged
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bandrami 3y ago
The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  People keep forgetting because of this good old two-pronged psy-op: "Wow, you must wear a tinfoil hat, you really think the government is tapping your phones?" "Wow, you didn't already know that every phone is tapped? You're so behind the times. Every cool person is already jaded about that." There's almost no will from voters to fight this, so the discourse instantly leaps from "impossible" to "acceptable".
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    This is similar to the climate change problem. First it was a problem for the people of 2050. Then 2023 happened and it was too late so why bother doing anything.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    And if it's in a 'I can't believe they would be doing it, really?' territory (black ops, black sites, torture, drone killings, ...), they make a movie about it, effectively normalizing the action for the audience.
    - floorballchamp 3y ago
      "They"? Is Hollywood now part of Pentagon/NSA/...?
      - Mo3 3y ago
        Hollywood has been influenced by the Pentagon for a long time.
        3y ago
AequitasOmnibus 3y ago
10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the domestic branch of the war on terror. And yet, what shocks me to this day is how feckless the Congressional and Administrative responses were to public outcry. The government bet on the scandal blowing over, and for the most part it was right. Snowden's whistleblowing should have led to widespread changes in the law and in agency policies - and in a healthy democratic society that would have been the result. Instead, he'll never be able to return to the US because DOJ has made him tantamount to Public Enemy No. 1.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower: “ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned." With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it. In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”
  - mikem170 3y ago
    A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good. Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition. I'm curious why you brought that up?
neilv 3y ago
What's the etymology of the term "Snowden revelations"? People seem to really like that term, and it makes sense. But someone has to have said it first. I don't recall hearing "revelations" used much before then, other than for the book of the Christian New Testament. (Is some of the appeal of the term to allude to an almost biblical impact, or saintly/savior aura around Snowden?)
- ARandomerDude 3y ago
  Maybe it’s what you read. “Revelation” is simply the noun form of the verb “reveal.” It doesn’t strike me as an exclusively Biblical reference.
- defrost 3y ago
  Depends what you read really, eg: They know that men of science throughout the world subject each other’s results to the most searching examination; and that error is mercilessly exposed and rejected as soon as discovered. And, finally, they know that still more conclusive testimony is to be found in the daily verification of scientific predictions, and in the never-ceasing triumphs of those arts which Science guides. To regard with alienation that which has such high credentials is a folly. Though in the tone which many of the scientific adopt towards them, the defenders of Religion may find some excuse for this alienation; yet the excuse is a very insufficient one. On the side of Science, as on their own side, they must admit that short-comings in the advocates do not tell essentially against that which is advocated. Science must be judged by itself: and so judged, only the most perverted intellect can fail to see that it is worthy of all reverence. ________________________________________________ Be there or be there not any other revelation, we have a veritable revelation in Science—a continuous disclosure, through the intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established order of the Universe. ________________________________________________ This disclosure it is the duty of every one to verify as far as in him lies; and having verified, to receive with all humility. FIRST PRINCIPLES by Herbert Spencer (1863) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55046/pg55046-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55046/pg55046-images.ht...
- esafak 3y ago
  Before when? It was used right from the beginning, in 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...
ChoHag 3y ago
[dead]
gonzo41 3y ago
On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations - the NSA celebrates the hard lesson they learnt about compartmenting their internal networks. No other lessons were learnt. Infect it seems like the real pivot was just to get Internet companies to pick up the ball on dragnet suverliance so they could feed of those instead of doing it themselves.
kome 3y ago
This really feels like CIA NSA propaganda. As if nothing wrong happened. What the hell. The character assassination of Snowden&co in the anglophone sphere is absurd, and probably manufactured. But this didn't quite happen in other languages. Assange trials are just mind-blowing and worrisome, and yet the simple truth is here: who told the truth is in jail, and who committed war crimes is outside.
- 0xDEF 3y ago
  >The character assassination of Snowden Well nobody forced him to repeat Russian propaganda in late 2021 and early 2022 that "Russia was totally not going to invade".
  - 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
    I think most of that happened well before 2021. And he may well have believed they were not going to invade — I totally believed that, because the alternative was just too depressing. Most of my friends, relatives and acquaintances (Russian-speaking, but not in Russia) were of a similar opinion.
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      He claimed it just a week before the invasion! https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=en https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=...
      - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
        He doesn't claim anything, he just didn't believe it at that point. He literally says "If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong." He admits that he could be wrong beforehand!
  - koerze 3y ago
    You have first hand knowledge of whether he was coerced or not?
kome 3y ago
This post tries to convey that analyzing metadata is no big deal. It is big deal: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...
- aeinbu 3y ago
  From that post: As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.”
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I urge everyone interested to read the intel report and tell me what about it is false or inaccurate. https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_highlights.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_... https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r... > “The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.” (p. 16) > “As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18) > “Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” (p. 20)
- 93po 3y ago
  I will tell you that three letter agencies in the US have a proven and undeniable track record of lying incessantly and basically nothing that comes from them can be trusted.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    This report is produced by the U.S. House of Representatives- not a 3-letter agency.
    - 93po 3y ago
      Based on information from…
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        So you are claiming that the NSA (at all levels) lied to the House Intel committee? That's a big claim, you should back it up with some evidence. Which part of the report is not accurate? Have you read the report?
ramraj07 3y ago
My knowledge of him comes primarily from news articles and the Citizen Four documentary (which I highly recommend) but my perception is that whatever his intentions were I'm amazed at how smartly he did everything. He literally fought the US government and got the best case scenario anyone can practically hope for which is that he's alive and not in Guantanamo.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jll29 3y ago
> Ledgett's answer is confirmed by a comprehensive listing of the tasks of the NSA in the Strategic Mission List from January 2007. It was published by The New York Times in November 2013, but got hardly any attention, despite the fact that it clearly contradicts the claims by Snowden and Greenwald that the NSA has just one single goal: collect all digital communications from all over the world. If you look at the document, it indeed lists more than half a dozen goals, not just one. For example, supporting industrial espionage is mentioned (expressed as preventing "surprises" in the area of technology - wonderful euphemism!), which is not terrorism-related at all. But the part that worried Snowden is actually reflected in the strategy document, even using the same wording as Snowden: MASTERING the Internet/cyberspace. That _does_ have a ring of total control and exhaustive gathering.

273 points by nceqs3 3y ago

I still haven't gotten my head around the valorization of Bill Binney, who does not appear to have been an opponent of dragnet surveillance, as he's so often portrayed, but rather of inefficient and poorly managed dragnet surveillance. ThinThread, the system he designed and left NSA over when they didn't pursue it, still left it up to NSA to determine which data to make available, and still presumed NSA would collect the same raw data. Maybe someone more familiar with ThinThread can make a case for how that system would be acceptable to us where Trailblazer (its competing design, in the narrative one tends to read here) wasn't.

dhx 3y ago
See [1] (from 1:14:43). The difference was Binney's system (ThinThread) being designed to quickly filter out most data and retain only a relatively small amount of targeted data. The result being the target had to be specified before the data could be collected. The other system (Trailblazer) was designed to capture and retain as much data as possible, and allow targeting to occur against this enormous buffer after the data had been captured. [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h264#t=4480 https://media.ccc.de/v/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h26...
- samstave 3y ago
  This is likely the most telling premise of all Intel collection ever. One should only operate on the premise that this is defacto
  - deathlight 3y ago
    [flagged]
bhawks 3y ago
Whatever system there is in place doesn't seem to do much to address: + lone wolfs such as Uvalde, Las Vegas, Nashville, Waukesha... + Cross border drug operations + Transnational incidents like Nord Stream, spy balloons, COVID. + Military operations in Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan We are asked to relinquish so many freedoms and spend so much money on what, exactly? The 'we can't tell you because it'll jeopardize all those important things we can't tell you about' argument simply doesn't hold water. There are too many intelligence fumbles to assume that there is intelligence. Now if there was a mechanism in place to ensure that no one would rock the military political industrial complex... well that lines up with a lot of observable outcomes.
- saltymug76 3y ago
  I agree with your post, but can you elaborate on the observable outcomes you mention?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gorgoiler 3y ago
  Government agencies have developed incredible powers but they aren’t heroes. It’s like they have developed incredibly abilities to turn water into wine and raise the dead and yet what do they do with these powers? All they use them for is banal things like saving money on the company picnic wine bill and skipping brake checks on the company vans knowing that if anything bad happens they just resurrect the victims.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  That's the problem with "secret" agencies: you don't know they're effective because they don't publish what they know or what they prevented. You hear about successful lone wolves, they become national news. You don't hear about the people that were taken in for questioning after posting a threatening message on the internets, which flags up in the FBI's systems right away. There's plenty of news of intercepted drug shipments. This is actually an example of the inverse, because you'll never hear about the ones that do get across. I'm sure there's a lot more that comes through compared to what is intercepted though, else they wouldn't try it. Nord Stream was known in advance; US intelligence was aware of the attack and warned Ukraine not to go through with it: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-not-to-sabotage-nord-stream-after-mivd-alert https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-n... The spy balloons were detected the second they took off from China. NORAD had eyes on them from launch. I'm not sure why Covid is in your list. Anyway, tl;dr, the very nature of this means you won't hear what's being prevented until maybe years later as things are declassified.
samstave 3y ago
[flagged]

hackandthink 3y ago

This reads like NSA Public Relations. Snowden was no whistleblower, NSA did some overcollection but anyway their mission is great and yeah some safeguards had to be improved. And Keith Alexander is a reliable source.

testcaseuser 3y ago
[flagged]
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Its the behavior of someone that doesn't want to go to prison in the US. There are literally only a handful of countries that are viable to avoiding that. Them being geopolitical opponents is exactly what they are countries that are viable to avoiding that. You are choosing to put the cart before the horse, that he went to geopolitical opponents to give secrets, and not that he was going to a handful of countries that would avoid prison in the US. and yes, I'm choosing to see it the other way, because his actions are more congruent with the other way. He was trying to go to a different country but could not reach it. The US intercepted flights they merely thought had him on it.
  - testcaseuser 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - harry8 3y ago
      He gave that data to american citizens in Hong Kong and retained no copy. Obama's people trapped him in transit in russia on his way to south america so that they could claim "russia! russia!" They openly bragged about this. It worked on both levels. He's stuck and people amazingly still claim he's in with the russians. It always surprises me how many people still come out with this totally discredited line that he gave secrets to china and russia. Are we done with the equally dishonest claim that he put lives in danger or is everyone across that being a total lie now. When I think of courage I think of Snowden speaking out against Putin while stuck in russia. When I think of cowardice I think of the lack of prosecution for all those spooks who are now paid by CNN to lie to the public. Who decided not to prosecute clapper? How? He's above the law. Why?

abhinai 3y ago

The post says 7 comments but I can only see two. What's going on?

reducesuffering 3y ago
You need to enable show dead in your profile. There is a comment chain with a comment that was probably highly flagged
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bandrami 3y ago

The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
People keep forgetting because of this good old two-pronged psy-op: "Wow, you must wear a tinfoil hat, you really think the government is tapping your phones?" "Wow, you didn't already know that every phone is tapped? You're so behind the times. Every cool person is already jaded about that." There's almost no will from voters to fight this, so the discourse instantly leaps from "impossible" to "acceptable".
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  This is similar to the climate change problem. First it was a problem for the people of 2050. Then 2023 happened and it was too late so why bother doing anything.
- myshpa 3y ago
  And if it's in a 'I can't believe they would be doing it, really?' territory (black ops, black sites, torture, drone killings, ...), they make a movie about it, effectively normalizing the action for the audience.
  - floorballchamp 3y ago
    "They"? Is Hollywood now part of Pentagon/NSA/...?
    - Mo3 3y ago
      Hollywood has been influenced by the Pentagon for a long time.
      - 3y ago

AequitasOmnibus 3y ago

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the domestic branch of the war on terror. And yet, what shocks me to this day is how feckless the Congressional and Administrative responses were to public outcry. The government bet on the scandal blowing over, and for the most part it was right. Snowden's whistleblowing should have led to widespread changes in the law and in agency policies - and in a healthy democratic society that would have been the result. Instead, he'll never be able to return to the US because DOJ has made him tantamount to Public Enemy No. 1.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
The article makes the case that Snowden was NOT a whistleblower: “ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned." With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it. In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”
- mikem170 3y ago
  A lot of people refer to him as a whistleblower because he exposed what the NSA was doing. A lot of people consider this a public good. Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition. I'm curious why you brought that up?

neilv 3y ago

What's the etymology of the term "Snowden revelations"? People seem to really like that term, and it makes sense. But someone has to have said it first. I don't recall hearing "revelations" used much before then, other than for the book of the Christian New Testament. (Is some of the appeal of the term to allude to an almost biblical impact, or saintly/savior aura around Snowden?)

ARandomerDude 3y ago
Maybe it’s what you read. “Revelation” is simply the noun form of the verb “reveal.” It doesn’t strike me as an exclusively Biblical reference.
defrost 3y ago
Depends what you read really, eg: They know that men of science throughout the world subject each other’s results to the most searching examination; and that error is mercilessly exposed and rejected as soon as discovered. And, finally, they know that still more conclusive testimony is to be found in the daily verification of scientific predictions, and in the never-ceasing triumphs of those arts which Science guides. To regard with alienation that which has such high credentials is a folly. Though in the tone which many of the scientific adopt towards them, the defenders of Religion may find some excuse for this alienation; yet the excuse is a very insufficient one. On the side of Science, as on their own side, they must admit that short-comings in the advocates do not tell essentially against that which is advocated. Science must be judged by itself: and so judged, only the most perverted intellect can fail to see that it is worthy of all reverence. ________________________________________________ Be there or be there not any other revelation, we have a veritable revelation in Science—a continuous disclosure, through the intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established order of the Universe. ________________________________________________ This disclosure it is the duty of every one to verify as far as in him lies; and having verified, to receive with all humility. FIRST PRINCIPLES by Herbert Spencer (1863) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55046/pg55046-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55046/pg55046-images.ht...
esafak 3y ago
Before when? It was used right from the beginning, in 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

ChoHag 3y ago

[dead]

gonzo41 3y ago

On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations - the NSA celebrates the hard lesson they learnt about compartmenting their internal networks. No other lessons were learnt. Infect it seems like the real pivot was just to get Internet companies to pick up the ball on dragnet suverliance so they could feed of those instead of doing it themselves.

kome 3y ago

This really feels like CIA NSA propaganda. As if nothing wrong happened. What the hell. The character assassination of Snowden&co in the anglophone sphere is absurd, and probably manufactured. But this didn't quite happen in other languages. Assange trials are just mind-blowing and worrisome, and yet the simple truth is here: who told the truth is in jail, and who committed war crimes is outside.

0xDEF 3y ago
>The character assassination of Snowden Well nobody forced him to repeat Russian propaganda in late 2021 and early 2022 that "Russia was totally not going to invade".
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  I think most of that happened well before 2021. And he may well have believed they were not going to invade — I totally believed that, because the alternative was just too depressing. Most of my friends, relatives and acquaintances (Russian-speaking, but not in Russia) were of a similar opinion.
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    He claimed it just a week before the invasion! https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=en https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=...
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      He doesn't claim anything, he just didn't believe it at that point. He literally says "If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong." He admits that he could be wrong beforehand!
- koerze 3y ago
  You have first hand knowledge of whether he was coerced or not?

kome 3y ago

This post tries to convey that analyzing metadata is no big deal. It is big deal: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...

aeinbu 3y ago
From that post: As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.”

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I urge everyone interested to read the intel report and tell me what about it is false or inaccurate. https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_highlights.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_... https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r... > “The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.” (p. 16) > “As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18) > “Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” (p. 20)

93po 3y ago
I will tell you that three letter agencies in the US have a proven and undeniable track record of lying incessantly and basically nothing that comes from them can be trusted.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  This report is produced by the U.S. House of Representatives- not a 3-letter agency.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Based on information from…
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      So you are claiming that the NSA (at all levels) lied to the House Intel committee? That's a big claim, you should back it up with some evidence. Which part of the report is not accurate? Have you read the report?

ramraj07 3y ago

My knowledge of him comes primarily from news articles and the Citizen Four documentary (which I highly recommend) but my perception is that whatever his intentions were I'm amazed at how smartly he did everything. He literally fought the US government and got the best case scenario anyone can practically hope for which is that he's alive and not in Guantanamo.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jll29 3y ago

> Ledgett's answer is confirmed by a comprehensive listing of the tasks of the NSA in the Strategic Mission List from January 2007. It was published by The New York Times in November 2013, but got hardly any attention, despite the fact that it clearly contradicts the claims by Snowden and Greenwald that the NSA has just one single goal: collect all digital communications from all over the world. If you look at the document, it indeed lists more than half a dozen goals, not just one. For example, supporting industrial espionage is mentioned (expressed as preventing "surprises" in the area of technology - wonderful euphemism!), which is not terrorism-related at all. But the part that worried Snowden is actually reflected in the strategy document, even using the same wording as Snowden: MASTERING the Internet/cyberspace. That _does_ have a ring of total control and exhaustive gathering.