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What he revealed is that intelligence agencies are acting in bad faith and they completely trample on the civil liberties and freedoms they are supposed to prot

What he revealed is that intelligence agencies are acting in bad faith and they completely trample on the civil liberties and freedoms they are supposed to protect. The way it's justified is all centred on this principle: > Spying on other nations is generally considered fair game Perhaps the most damning thing Snowden revealed is how this excuse is used for domestic spying. Britain's GCHQ, for example, is also not supposed to spy domestically. How did they 'sidestep' that issue? They told NSA exactly what they wanted, NSA listened to those communications for GCHQ, and handed the records over [1]. That way it's not "violating the law", it's just "intelligence sharing". And of course GCHQ returned the favor to NSA by doing the same in reverse. Saying Snowden compromised foreign spying efforts is disingenious, when those spying efforts were inseparable from foreign spying. [1] https://www.channel4.com/news/intercept-text-messages-spy-nsa-gchq-british-phone https://www.channel4.com/news/intercept-text-messages-spy-ns...

reaperman 2y ago
> Saying Snowden compromised foreign spying efforts is disingenious I’d argue this heavily depends on scope and context of discussion. For what you’re talking about, it’s a reasonable take. But for things like spying on foreign leaders and ANT Catalog and Tailored Access Operations — there’s not really much domestic angle there, so those elements wouldn’t be disingenuous to represent as “compromising foreign spying efforts”. There’s certainly a concern that TAO techniques could be turned inwards, but what we know about it suggests that its been consistently outward-focused for the past 25 years. > What he revealed is that intelligence agencies are acting in bad faith and they completely trample on the civil liberties and freedoms they are supposed to protect. I agree with this. I just also think his disclosures went beyond this and that discussions about Snowden are incomplete if we limit ourselves to acknowledging only acknowledge the disclosures which include a domestic angle. > Perhaps the most damning thing Snowden revealed is how this excuse is used for domestic spying…(etc) I agree that this type of “i spy on your citizens, you spy on mine” information-sharing became much more widely known due to Snowden but I knew about Five Eyes/ECHELON back when I was in middle school before 9/11 or the PATRIOT act. The ACLU had this from year 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000711031525/http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/faq.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000711031525/http://www.aclu.o... “Illegal” domestic spying via Five Eyes was published in books at least as early as 1998 - https://books.google.com/books/about/Live_by_the_Sword.html?id=7Q87Rrxyh9wC https://books.google.com/books/about/Live_by_the_Sword.html?... The biggest difference pre/post Snowden wasnt so much the knowledge that these illegal things were happening — but that in less than a year, people’s responses to me talking about the known realities of domestic surveillance switched from “okay Mr. crazy person” to “well yeah, duh”.

reaperman 2y ago

> Saying Snowden compromised foreign spying efforts is disingenious I’d argue this heavily depends on scope and context of discussion. For what you’re talking about, it’s a reasonable take. But for things like spying on foreign leaders and ANT Catalog and Tailored Access Operations — there’s not really much domestic angle there, so those elements wouldn’t be disingenuous to represent as “compromising foreign spying efforts”. There’s certainly a concern that TAO techniques could be turned inwards, but what we know about it suggests that its been consistently outward-focused for the past 25 years. > What he revealed is that intelligence agencies are acting in bad faith and they completely trample on the civil liberties and freedoms they are supposed to protect. I agree with this. I just also think his disclosures went beyond this and that discussions about Snowden are incomplete if we limit ourselves to acknowledging only acknowledge the disclosures which include a domestic angle. > Perhaps the most damning thing Snowden revealed is how this excuse is used for domestic spying…(etc) I agree that this type of “i spy on your citizens, you spy on mine” information-sharing became much more widely known due to Snowden but I knew about Five Eyes/ECHELON back when I was in middle school before 9/11 or the PATRIOT act. The ACLU had this from year 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000711031525/http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/faq.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000711031525/http://www.aclu.o... “Illegal” domestic spying via Five Eyes was published in books at least as early as 1998 - https://books.google.com/books/about/Live_by_the_Sword.html?id=7Q87Rrxyh9wC https://books.google.com/books/about/Live_by_the_Sword.html?... The biggest difference pre/post Snowden wasnt so much the knowledge that these illegal things were happening — but that in less than a year, people’s responses to me talking about the known realities of domestic surveillance switched from “okay Mr. crazy person” to “well yeah, duh”.