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Snowden made a mistake in not dumping the whole archive to Wikileaks as was done with the US State Department cables and the CIA's Vault 7 files. I think there

Snowden made a mistake in not dumping the whole archive to Wikileaks as was done with the US State Department cables and the CIA's Vault 7 files. I think there's probably a lot more in those files that's of great embarrassment not just to the NSA and the US government in general (such as proof that it was conducting an illegal warrantless mass surveillance program in violation of US law) - but also to their collaborators in the private tech sector who seem to have been quite active participants in the program. For example, one of the most revealing revelations was that NSA spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras - which is very hard to justify on national security grounds, and instead points to industrial espionage of the kind the NSA claims it doesn't engage in (as compared to China, etc.). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idINBRE98817N20130909 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr...

schoen 3y ago
> which is very hard to justify on national security grounds I think the people doing this have a completely different notion of national security than the general public, one that includes a supposed right to know about surprises in general and big events in general, not just about bad guys plotting to attack you. For example, they might believe that details of economic activity, prices, religious movements, relationships among foreign politicians, epidemics, boycott and antiboycott campaigns, etc., are matters of national security in the sense that they could eventually develop into things that would affect a society negatively, or that could tend to increase or decrease the power of a state. In maintaining the idea of privacy, we have to also maintain that others have to accept surprises and uncertainty. I don't know my neighbors' religious views, I don't know what oatmilk will cost next week at the supermarket, I didn't know when my former coworkers started trying to organize a union, I don't know if anyone has a crush on me. But all that information exists somewhere in computer systems. I accept that I have no right to it, but it seems incredibly hard to get governments to think the same way. When Glenn Greenwald first talked about how spying on Petrobras wasn't a matter of U.S. national security, I thought that was obviously right. Petrobras isn't going to attack the U.S., it doesn't have any means of attacking the U.S., and it doesn't have any obligation to sell or not sell oil to the U.S. or any other country at any particular price. But now I think that it's not just like "the NSA must plan to help the Texas oil industry" or "the NSA must plan to help the Saudi oil industry" or something; it's more like "they don't accept that they should have to contend with surprises and uncertainty". To be clear, I think that spying on Petrobras is wrong and I wish that Petrobras had a remedy for it. And I think disclosing that it happens is right, but it doesn't seem to have led to the kind of discussion or debate that Greenwald seemed to hope for. Edit: The comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 had a more concise take on this point. > If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted. (But in this context we're not just talking about risks of violent attacks, but really risks of anything disruptive.) Edit 2: The U.S. in particular is powerful enough to enforce economic sanctions which are themselves justified on national security grounds, so then there's also the sanctions enforcement part like figuring out whether Petrobras is working with the Iranian oil industry or whatever. Most countries probably wouldn't even expect to be able to do anything about that, although they might want to exert diplomatic pressure like "please stop trading with our enemy, from whom we concretely fear a physical attack".
- riversflow 3y ago
  Huh. I completely agree with this justification for spying, to the point I would be upset if they weren’t spying in this way. To me spy craft is where personal ethics become less important than realpolitik. The most powerful country in the world should have an inside track on whats going on in important markets, by hook or by crook. That’s the governments job. On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG?
  - schoen 3y ago
    Huh, I have a radically different intuition from you. :-) I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world. The people who do things are moral agents. > On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG? Among other things, their confidentiality is protected by Brazilian law. If hackers break that law, Petrobras should be entitled to a remedy against them, just like Americans should be entitled to a remedy against Russian hackers, whether they intend to steal money or private information. As far as I know, all governments harbor criminals in this sense, but I think they should be incentivized to do so much less, including by pointing out that the espionage is a crime and not glamorizing it (or being upset with governments for not doing it!).
    - riversflow 3y ago
      This just seems incredibly idealistic to me. Brazilian law isn't US law, if Brazil wants to it can try and arrest spies I guess. That's all there is to it. > I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world. I think that spies have the moral agency to gather and report information in order to better promote the welfare of their countrymen. > I think they should be incentivized to do so much less How? That's an impossible task in my book, and the main reason I think that spies are ethically just is because it's the nature of the beast. If you figure out a good way to do this, might I suggest focusing your efforts on de-militarization instead of de-espionage? The people with bombs and tanks are the one's who do the most damage.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
mbakke 3y ago
They were also tapping the private network links of the Norwegian oil company Equinor (formerly Statoil) according to the original leaks. It's kind of odd that neither of these oil giants have put pressure on the U.S. government as a result. They are about the only "victims" big enough to pursue the case legally. I suspect a Supreme Court case is just about the only thing that can bring some of the remaining documents to light. Anyone with access today is almost certainly under some gag order.
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
That the NSA engages in industrial espionage on behalf of US industry has been known since the European Parliament’s ECHELON report in 2000. There it was a matter of spying on Airbus, the major competitor of Boeing. But considering that that report made few waves outside of the nerd community (cypherpunks, readers of John Young’s Cryptome site and Slashdot, etc.), and was soon forgotten, I don’t think dumping the whole Snowden archive would trigger the large-scale controversy that you might hope for.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Why is it a mistake to protect sources and military capabilities?

schoen 3y ago

> which is very hard to justify on national security grounds I think the people doing this have a completely different notion of national security than the general public, one that includes a supposed right to know about surprises in general and big events in general, not just about bad guys plotting to attack you. For example, they might believe that details of economic activity, prices, religious movements, relationships among foreign politicians, epidemics, boycott and antiboycott campaigns, etc., are matters of national security in the sense that they could eventually develop into things that would affect a society negatively, or that could tend to increase or decrease the power of a state. In maintaining the idea of privacy, we have to also maintain that others have to accept surprises and uncertainty. I don't know my neighbors' religious views, I don't know what oatmilk will cost next week at the supermarket, I didn't know when my former coworkers started trying to organize a union, I don't know if anyone has a crush on me. But all that information exists somewhere in computer systems. I accept that I have no right to it, but it seems incredibly hard to get governments to think the same way. When Glenn Greenwald first talked about how spying on Petrobras wasn't a matter of U.S. national security, I thought that was obviously right. Petrobras isn't going to attack the U.S., it doesn't have any means of attacking the U.S., and it doesn't have any obligation to sell or not sell oil to the U.S. or any other country at any particular price. But now I think that it's not just like "the NSA must plan to help the Texas oil industry" or "the NSA must plan to help the Saudi oil industry" or something; it's more like "they don't accept that they should have to contend with surprises and uncertainty". To be clear, I think that spying on Petrobras is wrong and I wish that Petrobras had a remedy for it. And I think disclosing that it happens is right, but it doesn't seem to have led to the kind of discussion or debate that Greenwald seemed to hope for. Edit: The comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 had a more concise take on this point. > If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted. (But in this context we're not just talking about risks of violent attacks, but really risks of anything disruptive.) Edit 2: The U.S. in particular is powerful enough to enforce economic sanctions which are themselves justified on national security grounds, so then there's also the sanctions enforcement part like figuring out whether Petrobras is working with the Iranian oil industry or whatever. Most countries probably wouldn't even expect to be able to do anything about that, although they might want to exert diplomatic pressure like "please stop trading with our enemy, from whom we concretely fear a physical attack".

riversflow 3y ago
Huh. I completely agree with this justification for spying, to the point I would be upset if they weren’t spying in this way. To me spy craft is where personal ethics become less important than realpolitik. The most powerful country in the world should have an inside track on whats going on in important markets, by hook or by crook. That’s the governments job. On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG?
- schoen 3y ago
  Huh, I have a radically different intuition from you. :-) I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world. The people who do things are moral agents. > On what grounds does Petrobras have any right to privacy from the USG? Among other things, their confidentiality is protected by Brazilian law. If hackers break that law, Petrobras should be entitled to a remedy against them, just like Americans should be entitled to a remedy against Russian hackers, whether they intend to steal money or private information. As far as I know, all governments harbor criminals in this sense, but I think they should be incentivized to do so much less, including by pointing out that the espionage is a crime and not glamorizing it (or being upset with governments for not doing it!).
  - riversflow 3y ago
    This just seems incredibly idealistic to me. Brazilian law isn't US law, if Brazil wants to it can try and arrest spies I guess. That's all there is to it. > I think "personal ethics" applies to everything and everyone in the world. I think that spies have the moral agency to gather and report information in order to better promote the welfare of their countrymen. > I think they should be incentivized to do so much less How? That's an impossible task in my book, and the main reason I think that spies are ethically just is because it's the nature of the beast. If you figure out a good way to do this, might I suggest focusing your efforts on de-militarization instead of de-espionage? The people with bombs and tanks are the one's who do the most damage.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago

mbakke 3y ago

They were also tapping the private network links of the Norwegian oil company Equinor (formerly Statoil) according to the original leaks. It's kind of odd that neither of these oil giants have put pressure on the U.S. government as a result. They are about the only "victims" big enough to pursue the case legally. I suspect a Supreme Court case is just about the only thing that can bring some of the remaining documents to light. Anyone with access today is almost certainly under some gag order.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

That the NSA engages in industrial espionage on behalf of US industry has been known since the European Parliament’s ECHELON report in 2000. There it was a matter of spying on Airbus, the major competitor of Boeing. But considering that that report made few waves outside of the nerd community (cypherpunks, readers of John Young’s Cryptome site and Slashdot, etc.), and was soon forgotten, I don’t think dumping the whole Snowden archive would trigger the large-scale controversy that you might hope for.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Why is it a mistake to protect sources and military capabilities?