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You're acting like this stuff isn't confirmed. Political leaders (both supporting and condemning) have come right out and said this stuff is genuine and even ro

by neilk 13y ago

You're acting like this stuff isn't confirmed. Political leaders (both supporting and condemning) have come right out and said this stuff is genuine and even routine. Your theories seem to start from the premise that Greenwald is anti-US and just wants to watch the world burn. Or is stupid enough to take the risk of forging documents that would prove the US President to be a liar about violating the constitutional rights of nearly every citizen. I find that starting point very dubious.

cromwellian 13y ago
But what exactly has been "confirmed"? There are no details. What is being alleged is broad, unrestricted access by the NSA to all user account data, not specific targeted individuals. While the Verizon metadata case is disconcerting, there is legal precedent for pen register/trap-and-trace going back decades. It's on shaky legal footing, but not obscenely illegal. On the other hand, blanket access to the email contents of every American on domestic soil, for the NSA to just go run a search on at any time, without a court order, would almost certainly be completely illegal. It is very very doubtful this is going on. Tech companies responding to FISA requests and sending a mirror of an individual target's account data, that is totally unsurprising. We know they respond to such requests, they've never denied it, and so the way the data is delivered is really just an implementation detail. What Greenwald is alleging flies in the face of 9 major tech companies full of thousands of engineers who tend to side with civil libertarians, and these companies are under threat of hack all the time and conduct extensive audits of who is accessing who's data internally. It's just unbelievable that the kind of access alleged is actually occurring with active knowledge. So, whose's to say that these slides aren't being misinterpreted as to the actual details of the program, or that the source may have obtained a copy of the PPT, but is actually not privy to the actual implementation details of the compartmentalized information. Just because someone works at the NSA means they are privy to everything. For example, analysts in WW2 often dealt with intelligence reports from Ultra, unaware of what Ultra was or how they obtained information. I want to see a slide that says "NSA box installed in Datacenter 12, with credentials for direct access to datastore" From my watching Greenwald on talk shows, he comes across to me as someone who oversteps the bounds of calm rational analysis, and ventures forth into media whorism. I'd rather just have the slides, I don't need him to trickle them out with his interpretation. Dump the slides and dump the transcripts and notes he took from his source. Let us judge and discuss.
- neilk 13y ago
  Greenwald may be out of his depth in interpreting what the documents mean. But that's not the same thing as saying the story is completely bogus. Lately it's emerging that the Guardian released their story pretty soon after Snowden contacted them. I had assumed this was the kind of story that they would slowly confirm over months, but maybe not. I agree that whatever our judgments of the character of the people involved, it would be better to have the data.

by neilk 13y ago

cromwellian 13y ago

But what exactly has been "confirmed"? There are no details. What is being alleged is broad, unrestricted access by the NSA to all user account data, not specific targeted individuals. While the Verizon metadata case is disconcerting, there is legal precedent for pen register/trap-and-trace going back decades. It's on shaky legal footing, but not obscenely illegal. On the other hand, blanket access to the email contents of every American on domestic soil, for the NSA to just go run a search on at any time, without a court order, would almost certainly be completely illegal. It is very very doubtful this is going on. Tech companies responding to FISA requests and sending a mirror of an individual target's account data, that is totally unsurprising. We know they respond to such requests, they've never denied it, and so the way the data is delivered is really just an implementation detail. What Greenwald is alleging flies in the face of 9 major tech companies full of thousands of engineers who tend to side with civil libertarians, and these companies are under threat of hack all the time and conduct extensive audits of who is accessing who's data internally. It's just unbelievable that the kind of access alleged is actually occurring with active knowledge. So, whose's to say that these slides aren't being misinterpreted as to the actual details of the program, or that the source may have obtained a copy of the PPT, but is actually not privy to the actual implementation details of the compartmentalized information. Just because someone works at the NSA means they are privy to everything. For example, analysts in WW2 often dealt with intelligence reports from Ultra, unaware of what Ultra was or how they obtained information. I want to see a slide that says "NSA box installed in Datacenter 12, with credentials for direct access to datastore" From my watching Greenwald on talk shows, he comes across to me as someone who oversteps the bounds of calm rational analysis, and ventures forth into media whorism. I'd rather just have the slides, I don't need him to trickle them out with his interpretation. Dump the slides and dump the transcripts and notes he took from his source. Let us judge and discuss.

neilk 13y ago
Greenwald may be out of his depth in interpreting what the documents mean. But that's not the same thing as saying the story is completely bogus. Lately it's emerging that the Guardian released their story pretty soon after Snowden contacted them. I had assumed this was the kind of story that they would slowly confirm over months, but maybe not. I agree that whatever our judgments of the character of the people involved, it would be better to have the data.