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> it changed absolutely nothing. The single potentially illegal US government program in the leaks was shut down, the big email providers require SMTP over TLS

> it changed absolutely nothing. The single potentially illegal US government program in the leaks was shut down, the big email providers require SMTP over TLS, and https everywhere happened as a direct result of the leaks. > I'd be incredibly surprised if he isn't very cynical, resentful and hedonistic at this point. The guy still doesn't understand PRISM. He's a tinfoil hat wearing high school dropout, so I wouldn't be surprised about a lot of things regarding his mental state.

winter_blue 5d ago
Could you explain PRISM? I don’t understand PRISM either.
- lern_too_spel 5d ago
  The FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit integrates with email and other Internet communication providers to implement wiretaps for accounts they have a court order for. They present the company with a court order, and the company forwards the account's data to the FBI (often via FTP, according to a New York Times article at the time). PRISM is simply a data integration project between the NSA and the FBI for ingesting data for accounts under a Section 702 order (for specific accounts belonging to non-citizens outside the US whose communications are of national security interest). It's right there on the leaked slide: https://imgur.com/setOJIm https://imgur.com/setOJIm
  - drugstorecowboy 5d ago
    Ok, but nothing in that leaked slide says anything about a court order or disproves much of anything about PRISM. I'm not saying you are wrong, in fact I sincerely hope you are 100% correct, but all that slide says to me is that the "FBI DITU" got the data somehow, and forwarded it to CIA, NSA, and the rest of the FBI. Additionally, lets be honest, a single image of a slide posted on imgur is a lot more "trust me bro" than it is proof.
    - lern_too_spel 5d ago
      Snowden and Greenwald interpreted DITU as being a box in these companies' networks with access to everything because they were too stupid to look up what it meant. That slide was the basis of their entire claim. If Snowden's claim isn't "trust me bro," nothing is. Instead, the companies said they didn't do any integration with the NSA (they hadn't, only with the FBI), and they didn't give access to every account's data (they didn't, only with a court order or Section 702 order for a specific account's data). The NYT got the story right on day one because unlike The Guardian, their editorial standards require asking someone who knows something about what was going on. In this case, they asked workers at the companies. Subsequently, every single mainstream news agency got the reporting correct except for Greenwald, who continued to argue against tech industry workers correcting him on Twitter. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/no-evidence-of-nsas-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mini... https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-did-mainstream-media-get-the-nsa-prism-story-so-hopelessly-wrong/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-did-mainstream-media-get-t... https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-not-get-entirely-blown-off-if-youre-an-activist-e2a79d2cd2ad https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-... https://medium.com/prism-truth/the-prism-details-matter-82a1791c94d3 https://medium.com/prism-truth/the-prism-details-matter-82a1...
      - drugstorecowboy 5d ago
        So, I read those links and it seems to me your basis for calling Snowden a "tinfoil hat wearing high school dropout" with "high school dropout reading skills", is that he misunderstood that slide to mean that the US gov had direct access to servers at those companies, when in fact it was just a government program that forced those companies to query their own data at the government's request. Am I correct in saying that your argument then, is that all of this is completely overblown and noone should be concerned at all with this because it is all the product of a barely literate government contractor and an unscrupulous journalist?
        5d ago
dinfinity 5d ago
I should have said "nothing fundamentally". I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS.. The reality is that the public moved on more or less unperturbed and that the US intelligence agencies did the same. Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do. The US being a surveillance state is closer than ever.
- lern_too_spel 5d ago
  > I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS. He gave up his life because he thought PRISM was a massive violation of the 4th Amendment, and a government that could so easily ignore the 4th Amendment could just as easily ignore the 8th. Now we know that he was completely wrong about PRISM. > Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do. The US intelligence agencies were limited by the 4th Amendment before the leaks and continued to be limited by the 4th Amendment after the leaks. The only problem is that the hysteria caused by people uncritically believing Snowden without looking at his documents helped lead to Trump taking over every branch of the US government. An absolute monarch is not limited by a construction, and we'll see how close Trump gets to that.
  - dinfinity 5d ago
    > He gave up his life because he thought PRISM was a massive violation of the 4th Amendment, and a government that could so easily ignore the 4th Amendment could just as easily ignore the 8th. Now we know that he was wrong about PRISM. The truth is that neither you or I know why he did so exactly, but it stands to reason that he cared about mass government surveillance in general and hoped that his leaking would prevent that through public outrage; that makes more sense than that he only cared about PRISM. > The only problem is that the hysteria caused by people uncritically believing Snowden without looking at his documents helped lead to Trump taking over every branch of the US government. Nonsense. Trump's demagoguery and subsequent rise had nothing to do with Snowden. Given the dystopian path that the USA and the world are on with regard to mass government surveillance, I would say that the real problem was the lack of hysteria after his leaks. You also seem to be downplaying matters here.

winter_blue 5d ago

Could you explain PRISM? I don’t understand PRISM either.

lern_too_spel 5d ago
The FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit integrates with email and other Internet communication providers to implement wiretaps for accounts they have a court order for. They present the company with a court order, and the company forwards the account's data to the FBI (often via FTP, according to a New York Times article at the time). PRISM is simply a data integration project between the NSA and the FBI for ingesting data for accounts under a Section 702 order (for specific accounts belonging to non-citizens outside the US whose communications are of national security interest). It's right there on the leaked slide: https://imgur.com/setOJIm https://imgur.com/setOJIm
- drugstorecowboy 5d ago
  Ok, but nothing in that leaked slide says anything about a court order or disproves much of anything about PRISM. I'm not saying you are wrong, in fact I sincerely hope you are 100% correct, but all that slide says to me is that the "FBI DITU" got the data somehow, and forwarded it to CIA, NSA, and the rest of the FBI. Additionally, lets be honest, a single image of a slide posted on imgur is a lot more "trust me bro" than it is proof.
  - lern_too_spel 5d ago
    Snowden and Greenwald interpreted DITU as being a box in these companies' networks with access to everything because they were too stupid to look up what it meant. That slide was the basis of their entire claim. If Snowden's claim isn't "trust me bro," nothing is. Instead, the companies said they didn't do any integration with the NSA (they hadn't, only with the FBI), and they didn't give access to every account's data (they didn't, only with a court order or Section 702 order for a specific account's data). The NYT got the story right on day one because unlike The Guardian, their editorial standards require asking someone who knows something about what was going on. In this case, they asked workers at the companies. Subsequently, every single mainstream news agency got the reporting correct except for Greenwald, who continued to argue against tech industry workers correcting him on Twitter. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/no-evidence-of-nsas-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mini... https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-did-mainstream-media-get-the-nsa-prism-story-so-hopelessly-wrong/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-did-mainstream-media-get-t... https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-not-get-entirely-blown-off-if-youre-an-activist-e2a79d2cd2ad https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-... https://medium.com/prism-truth/the-prism-details-matter-82a1791c94d3 https://medium.com/prism-truth/the-prism-details-matter-82a1...
    - drugstorecowboy 5d ago
      So, I read those links and it seems to me your basis for calling Snowden a "tinfoil hat wearing high school dropout" with "high school dropout reading skills", is that he misunderstood that slide to mean that the US gov had direct access to servers at those companies, when in fact it was just a government program that forced those companies to query their own data at the government's request. Am I correct in saying that your argument then, is that all of this is completely overblown and noone should be concerned at all with this because it is all the product of a barely literate government contractor and an unscrupulous journalist?
      - 5d ago

dinfinity 5d ago

I should have said "nothing fundamentally". I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS.. The reality is that the public moved on more or less unperturbed and that the US intelligence agencies did the same. Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do. The US being a surveillance state is closer than ever.

lern_too_spel 5d ago
> I'm sure he didn't give up his life for HTTPS everywhere and SMTP over TLS. He gave up his life because he thought PRISM was a massive violation of the 4th Amendment, and a government that could so easily ignore the 4th Amendment could just as easily ignore the 8th. Now we know that he was completely wrong about PRISM. > Sure, it was a bump in the road, but they aren't massively limited in what they can do. The US intelligence agencies were limited by the 4th Amendment before the leaks and continued to be limited by the 4th Amendment after the leaks. The only problem is that the hysteria caused by people uncritically believing Snowden without looking at his documents helped lead to Trump taking over every branch of the US government. An absolute monarch is not limited by a construction, and we'll see how close Trump gets to that.
- dinfinity 5d ago
  > He gave up his life because he thought PRISM was a massive violation of the 4th Amendment, and a government that could so easily ignore the 4th Amendment could just as easily ignore the 8th. Now we know that he was wrong about PRISM. The truth is that neither you or I know why he did so exactly, but it stands to reason that he cared about mass government surveillance in general and hoped that his leaking would prevent that through public outrage; that makes more sense than that he only cared about PRISM. > The only problem is that the hysteria caused by people uncritically believing Snowden without looking at his documents helped lead to Trump taking over every branch of the US government. Nonsense. Trump's demagoguery and subsequent rise had nothing to do with Snowden. Given the dystopian path that the USA and the world are on with regard to mass government surveillance, I would say that the real problem was the lack of hysteria after his leaks. You also seem to be downplaying matters here.