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This comment is HOPELESS. The point of Juan Cole's original piece is clearly that Snowden himself is irrelevant to the contents of the leak. Any speech that ba

This comment is HOPELESS. The point of Juan Cole's original piece is clearly that Snowden himself is irrelevant to the contents of the leak. Any speech that bases its defense of Fourth Amendment violations on attacking the messenger deserves immediate scorn. The reason they attack the messenger is because it's easier than attacking the message. The message itself raises doubts as to their standing as defenders of the law. * The CONTENTS of the leak do not change simply because the messenger is guilty of a criminal act. * It's entirely reasonable to state that he is a defender of our Constitution and that he is a whistleblower, but that he should be charged for using inappropriate channels. He technically should have approached his chain of command and then members of Congress first before he went to the media.

tptacek 13y ago
I agree with you that Snowden is himself irrelevant to the contents of the leak. But the raw contents of that leak are not the only thing being reported; Snowden is also making himself a part of the story, and making claims that are not directly backed up by the material that has been released thus far. It's interesting that you'd call my comment "hopeless" and conclude your response by agreeing with part of it. Clearly, that must indicate some glimmer of hope. :)
- subsystem 13y ago
  "making claims that are not directly backed up by the material" Which makes those claims inconclusive regardless of Snowdens character.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I guess if you're going to stipulate that nobody believes anything Snowden says and that we're all sticking to the leaked Powerpoint slides, sure.
    - mbreese 13y ago
      Which in and of itself is tricky because a slidedeck without the presentation itself is hard to interpret. I don't know how much of the slidedeck is historical vs aspirational. And who made the slides in the first place - did they have a better picture of the program than Snowden?
      - tptacek 13y ago
        If I'm being asked who I believe more, the person who authored a slide deck selling some kind of surveillance tool to the NSA, or Google's chief architect, their general counsel, and Larry Page, I'm going to go with the Googlers.
        mbreese 13y ago
        Exactly. Google at least has some room for transparency in all of this. Not to mention an economic incentive to get an accurate picture of this out in the public. Google has motivation to bring clarity to their role in all of this. The NSA would rather keep everything secret. I'd believe Google more too...
        subsystem 13y ago
        "PRISM Collection Manager", "April 2013", "ORCON", "You should use both" and the classification date in relation to the date slide doesn't suggest sales material to me. Note that the slides have different degrees of redaction across sources. These links should together cover what's available on PRISM. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...
        tptacek 13y ago
        You know what: stipulate that this is an internal presentation by a manager at NSA. My opinion is unchanged about who's more credible.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    Except where - particularly around Hacker News - people have been taking everything Snowden has said and just running with it as though it's obviously true, regardless of technical or legal possibility. The material that's actually been disclosed is, what, 3 powerpoint slides? Almost everything else is simply wild speculation.
    - subsystem 13y ago
      As far as I know it's 5 slides on PRISM, 4 slides and screenshots on BOUNDLESSINFORMANT and a Verizon court order from FISC.
- jcc80 13y ago
  "Snowden is also making himself a part of the story, and making claims that are not directly backed up by the material that has been released thus far." So why not ignore the noise & leave it for the gossip pages while focussing on the bigger picture?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Because the noise is being reported as if it was fact?
- mbreese 13y ago
  I think that it's worthwhile to point out that there are multiple stories here. It isn't just about the NSA, and all of the aspects are news-worthy in their own right. 1) The leak that the NSA has been spying on people. If you've been following along for the past few years, the fact that they could do this isn't really news. However, the potential scope of the program certainly is. This is also the least well reported part of the story because only two organizations have the full contents of the leak and are only publishing select parts. I doubt we'll ever get a complete picture of the current NSA program, since so much of it is classified. It's hard to get corroborating evidence when you have to rely on intelligence employees leaking fragments of information. And, unfortunately, Snowden is really too low level of an informant to get a complete picture with context. His leak can give some ideas of scope and capability, but very little in terms of how the data is really collected, how often are US citizens caught up in it (mistakenly or not), and how the data is used/mined. 2) There is also the story of the leaker himself, Snowden. Who is he, what are is motivations, etc... Some of this can be found out with old-fashioned journalism, but a lot of it will be pure speculation. There will be a lot of reporting on this story simply because it's easier. Anyone can speculate about his motivations, and only a limited amount of people will actually talk to him. 3) There is also the rather more interesting (in my opinion) aspect of how the NSA and government's intelligence apparatus works. For example, how did we get to the point where a contractor can have access to the types of information that Snowden claimed to have access to. Why are there so many contractors that are extremely well paid? How much of US intelligence relies on outsourced work? etc... 4) Then there is the rather dull, but probably more important for society aspect of how much privacy do we (US citizens) want to give up in the name of security. How much oversight will we demand? This will probably be the least covered part of the story. It's hard and political, so it probably won't be covered nearly as much. 5) Finally, there are the international aspects of the NSA program. In the US, if you are a citizen or physically in the US, you are protected by the 4th amendment (with a few exceptions). However, none of the constitutional protections are granted to foreign persons or data that travels or is hosted in the US. I suspect that this will be the most covered aspect of the story internationally, but will hardly make a blip in the US. So, my point in all of this, is to agree that Snowden is largely irrelevant to the contents of the leak, but that he, himself, is very much a part of the larger story. It's important to look at each part of the story separately, since while they are intertwined, they are largely independent stories.
- cheald 13y ago
  I think that Snowden making himself a part of the story was a defensive tactic. If you expect your government to not play fair - and he clearly doesn't - then getting your side of the story out into the open as soon as possible is wise. Otherwise, you run the risk of the propaganda machine spinning up and destroying the issue by destroying the man behind it. Being in the public eye also afford him some measure of protection against covert retaliation. It's worth noting that Snowden has far greater knowledge of the score than the public does; the Guardian has many unreleased documents whose contents Snowden is obviously aware of. The fact that he's talking about things not directly backed up by what his newspaper contact has chosen to yet publish doesn't necessarily mean that he's making it about him.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    You think it's going to turn out to be likely that Snowden could have read Obama's emails?
    - cheald 13y ago
      As stated, absolutely. He qualified it with a "personal email address". Saying "Oh yeah, I could read the president's personal email" is just playing up the impact of the program by throwing a high-value name behind the assertion. The information there is that they can read personal email; the president's personal email isn't more technologically protected than anyone else's given the same provider.
- gte910h 13y ago
  > Snowden is also making himself a part of the story To not be vanished. Come on man.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    What does telling the Washington Post that he had access to President Obama's email have to do with being vanished?
    - gte910h 13y ago
      Do you know he said that? My experience with reporters (and news producers) is that they get you to say things under one pretense, and it gets swung around with little empathy towards another to tell the story they want to tell (not necessarily out of malice, often just because they want to tell a different story than the facts do). I'm not claiming he's some sort of saint and he's accurate (or even sure) of all that he's saying, but I'm sure reporters are eating him for lunch and pulling all sorts of shit out of him. He had to give interviews to raise his profile enough for questions to be asked if he vanished to pre-empt those attempts.
brown9-2 13y ago
This would seem to assume that the contents of the leak are 100% true and 0% ambiguous. It doesn't seem that way to me. And the questions of a personal nature seem relevant to helping judge some of the extraordinary claims that Snowden has made without documents (yet) to show as evidence - like that he had access to tap anyone, that he had access to find out every undercover asset everywhere, that they would send assassins after him, etc. There is still a lot of this story that we don't know or can't yet understand yet and unfortunately it seems that some of this will rely on understanding the leaker and not just the leaked documents.
- chipsy 13y ago
  Character questioning is valid; however, although all parties here (Snowden, NSA, Booze-Allen, Internet cos.) could be dishonest, compared with the others, Snowden's motivation to lie is smaller, his risks for doing so are higher, and his ability to broadcast his message is weaker. A fair assessment of character is almost impossible to make in such a circumstance, as anything Snowden has said or done will be cast in the harshest light. He is not the authority, the authorities are, and they'll always say he's wrong. Because of that, the only valid resolution is to demand more answers from the government and force an incontrovertible picture to emerge of what activities were and were not done.
mark_l_watson 13y ago
+1, right on! "The point of Juan Cole's original piece is clearly that Snowden himself is irrelevant to the contents of the leak." I blogged about the disclosures yesterday and never mentioned Snowden's name. While I agree that what he did is likely illegal, that has not much bearing on mis-deeds of our government, which is the important issue. Who cares if Daniel Ellsberg’s whistle blowing was illegal?
- youngerdryas 13y ago
  >Who cares if Daniel Ellsberg’s whistle blowing was illegal? Grown ups.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Mmm, no. I think there is a real and legitimate purpose for a government to be able to tell its employees that certain information shouldn't be shared. What most of us are bothered about is the way that the classification process is bandied about like a cheap rubber stamp with no justification or review, and worse how it's being used to cover up some pretty alarming (and probably illegal) things themselves. Classification is a tool, you don't throw out the tool because it's misused sometimes (or even most of the time).
    - youngerdryas 13y ago
      Ellsberg was shielded because he was reporting illegal activity by a government official. If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection.
      - gruseom 13y ago
        Ellsberg was shielded because he was reporting illegal activity by a government official. What specific illegal conduct did Ellsberg report? My understanding is that he leaked classified documents about the Vietnam War because he felt the public was being misled and had a right to know. That doesn't seem so different from the justification Snowden has given (assuming he's telling the truth on that). How was Ellsberg "shielded"? He was put on trial, and Nixon famously sent the plumbers to dig up dirt on him. If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection. What law are you referring to here?

tptacek 13y ago

I agree with you that Snowden is himself irrelevant to the contents of the leak. But the raw contents of that leak are not the only thing being reported; Snowden is also making himself a part of the story, and making claims that are not directly backed up by the material that has been released thus far. It's interesting that you'd call my comment "hopeless" and conclude your response by agreeing with part of it. Clearly, that must indicate some glimmer of hope. :)

subsystem 13y ago
"making claims that are not directly backed up by the material" Which makes those claims inconclusive regardless of Snowdens character.
- tptacek 13y ago
  I guess if you're going to stipulate that nobody believes anything Snowden says and that we're all sticking to the leaked Powerpoint slides, sure.
  - mbreese 13y ago
    Which in and of itself is tricky because a slidedeck without the presentation itself is hard to interpret. I don't know how much of the slidedeck is historical vs aspirational. And who made the slides in the first place - did they have a better picture of the program than Snowden?
    - tptacek 13y ago
      If I'm being asked who I believe more, the person who authored a slide deck selling some kind of surveillance tool to the NSA, or Google's chief architect, their general counsel, and Larry Page, I'm going to go with the Googlers.
      - mbreese 13y ago
        Exactly. Google at least has some room for transparency in all of this. Not to mention an economic incentive to get an accurate picture of this out in the public. Google has motivation to bring clarity to their role in all of this. The NSA would rather keep everything secret. I'd believe Google more too...
      - subsystem 13y ago
        "PRISM Collection Manager", "April 2013", "ORCON", "You should use both" and the classification date in relation to the date slide doesn't suggest sales material to me. Note that the slides have different degrees of redaction across sources. These links should together cover what's available on PRISM. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...
        tptacek 13y ago
        You know what: stipulate that this is an internal presentation by a manager at NSA. My opinion is unchanged about who's more credible.
- XorNot 13y ago
  Except where - particularly around Hacker News - people have been taking everything Snowden has said and just running with it as though it's obviously true, regardless of technical or legal possibility. The material that's actually been disclosed is, what, 3 powerpoint slides? Almost everything else is simply wild speculation.
  - subsystem 13y ago
    As far as I know it's 5 slides on PRISM, 4 slides and screenshots on BOUNDLESSINFORMANT and a Verizon court order from FISC.
jcc80 13y ago
"Snowden is also making himself a part of the story, and making claims that are not directly backed up by the material that has been released thus far." So why not ignore the noise & leave it for the gossip pages while focussing on the bigger picture?
- tptacek 13y ago
  Because the noise is being reported as if it was fact?
mbreese 13y ago
I think that it's worthwhile to point out that there are multiple stories here. It isn't just about the NSA, and all of the aspects are news-worthy in their own right. 1) The leak that the NSA has been spying on people. If you've been following along for the past few years, the fact that they could do this isn't really news. However, the potential scope of the program certainly is. This is also the least well reported part of the story because only two organizations have the full contents of the leak and are only publishing select parts. I doubt we'll ever get a complete picture of the current NSA program, since so much of it is classified. It's hard to get corroborating evidence when you have to rely on intelligence employees leaking fragments of information. And, unfortunately, Snowden is really too low level of an informant to get a complete picture with context. His leak can give some ideas of scope and capability, but very little in terms of how the data is really collected, how often are US citizens caught up in it (mistakenly or not), and how the data is used/mined. 2) There is also the story of the leaker himself, Snowden. Who is he, what are is motivations, etc... Some of this can be found out with old-fashioned journalism, but a lot of it will be pure speculation. There will be a lot of reporting on this story simply because it's easier. Anyone can speculate about his motivations, and only a limited amount of people will actually talk to him. 3) There is also the rather more interesting (in my opinion) aspect of how the NSA and government's intelligence apparatus works. For example, how did we get to the point where a contractor can have access to the types of information that Snowden claimed to have access to. Why are there so many contractors that are extremely well paid? How much of US intelligence relies on outsourced work? etc... 4) Then there is the rather dull, but probably more important for society aspect of how much privacy do we (US citizens) want to give up in the name of security. How much oversight will we demand? This will probably be the least covered part of the story. It's hard and political, so it probably won't be covered nearly as much. 5) Finally, there are the international aspects of the NSA program. In the US, if you are a citizen or physically in the US, you are protected by the 4th amendment (with a few exceptions). However, none of the constitutional protections are granted to foreign persons or data that travels or is hosted in the US. I suspect that this will be the most covered aspect of the story internationally, but will hardly make a blip in the US. So, my point in all of this, is to agree that Snowden is largely irrelevant to the contents of the leak, but that he, himself, is very much a part of the larger story. It's important to look at each part of the story separately, since while they are intertwined, they are largely independent stories.
cheald 13y ago
I think that Snowden making himself a part of the story was a defensive tactic. If you expect your government to not play fair - and he clearly doesn't - then getting your side of the story out into the open as soon as possible is wise. Otherwise, you run the risk of the propaganda machine spinning up and destroying the issue by destroying the man behind it. Being in the public eye also afford him some measure of protection against covert retaliation. It's worth noting that Snowden has far greater knowledge of the score than the public does; the Guardian has many unreleased documents whose contents Snowden is obviously aware of. The fact that he's talking about things not directly backed up by what his newspaper contact has chosen to yet publish doesn't necessarily mean that he's making it about him.
- tptacek 13y ago
  You think it's going to turn out to be likely that Snowden could have read Obama's emails?
  - cheald 13y ago
    As stated, absolutely. He qualified it with a "personal email address". Saying "Oh yeah, I could read the president's personal email" is just playing up the impact of the program by throwing a high-value name behind the assertion. The information there is that they can read personal email; the president's personal email isn't more technologically protected than anyone else's given the same provider.
gte910h 13y ago
> Snowden is also making himself a part of the story To not be vanished. Come on man.
- tptacek 13y ago
  What does telling the Washington Post that he had access to President Obama's email have to do with being vanished?
  - gte910h 13y ago
    Do you know he said that? My experience with reporters (and news producers) is that they get you to say things under one pretense, and it gets swung around with little empathy towards another to tell the story they want to tell (not necessarily out of malice, often just because they want to tell a different story than the facts do). I'm not claiming he's some sort of saint and he's accurate (or even sure) of all that he's saying, but I'm sure reporters are eating him for lunch and pulling all sorts of shit out of him. He had to give interviews to raise his profile enough for questions to be asked if he vanished to pre-empt those attempts.

brown9-2 13y ago

This would seem to assume that the contents of the leak are 100% true and 0% ambiguous. It doesn't seem that way to me. And the questions of a personal nature seem relevant to helping judge some of the extraordinary claims that Snowden has made without documents (yet) to show as evidence - like that he had access to tap anyone, that he had access to find out every undercover asset everywhere, that they would send assassins after him, etc. There is still a lot of this story that we don't know or can't yet understand yet and unfortunately it seems that some of this will rely on understanding the leaker and not just the leaked documents.

chipsy 13y ago
Character questioning is valid; however, although all parties here (Snowden, NSA, Booze-Allen, Internet cos.) could be dishonest, compared with the others, Snowden's motivation to lie is smaller, his risks for doing so are higher, and his ability to broadcast his message is weaker. A fair assessment of character is almost impossible to make in such a circumstance, as anything Snowden has said or done will be cast in the harshest light. He is not the authority, the authorities are, and they'll always say he's wrong. Because of that, the only valid resolution is to demand more answers from the government and force an incontrovertible picture to emerge of what activities were and were not done.

mark_l_watson 13y ago

+1, right on! "The point of Juan Cole's original piece is clearly that Snowden himself is irrelevant to the contents of the leak." I blogged about the disclosures yesterday and never mentioned Snowden's name. While I agree that what he did is likely illegal, that has not much bearing on mis-deeds of our government, which is the important issue. Who cares if Daniel Ellsberg’s whistle blowing was illegal?

youngerdryas 13y ago
>Who cares if Daniel Ellsberg’s whistle blowing was illegal? Grown ups.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Mmm, no. I think there is a real and legitimate purpose for a government to be able to tell its employees that certain information shouldn't be shared. What most of us are bothered about is the way that the classification process is bandied about like a cheap rubber stamp with no justification or review, and worse how it's being used to cover up some pretty alarming (and probably illegal) things themselves. Classification is a tool, you don't throw out the tool because it's misused sometimes (or even most of the time).
  - youngerdryas 13y ago
    Ellsberg was shielded because he was reporting illegal activity by a government official. If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection.
    - gruseom 13y ago
      Ellsberg was shielded because he was reporting illegal activity by a government official. What specific illegal conduct did Ellsberg report? My understanding is that he leaked classified documents about the Vietnam War because he felt the public was being misled and had a right to know. That doesn't seem so different from the justification Snowden has given (assuming he's telling the truth on that). How was Ellsberg "shielded"? He was put on trial, and Nixon famously sent the plumbers to dig up dirt on him. If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection. What law are you referring to here?