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The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by
by uvdiv 13y ago
The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period. [...] "I don't know what specific information they were looking for on these machines, only that using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law. It's ethically dubious," Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday.
So he has no idea what foreign entity the NSA is targeting or why, yet he decides to warn them about it? This is supposed to be ethical, responsible whistleblowing?
- jkn 13y agousing technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law I'm OK with whistleblowing of illegal actions performed by secret services (enough of this sh*t!). Though I don't know whether he's right regarding the illegality of NSA's actions.
- irishcoffee 13y agoHe isn't. Most everything he has said he isn't right about. I'm calling it now, the internet blew itself out of proportion over a video and 4 power point slides. This is public knowledge but never spoken about, Snowden was looking for years [0] to find something to leak. He didn't stumble across this and have an overwhelming moral urge to do "the right thing." I'll take the very unpopular opinion: I have a very strong feeling he is almost completely wrong in what he thinks he knows. [1] [0] If you read the timeline you will see this. I'm looking for better sources, as I read it directly, but can't find at the moment. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/timeline-edward-snowdens-life/story?id=19394487#.UbtBl9hXr9x http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/timeline-edward-snowdens-life/... [1] This tone of feeling wronged and spied upon is borne of complete ignorance. http://news.yahoo.com/edward-snowden-completely-wrong-104432298.html http://news.yahoo.com/edward-snowden-completely-wrong-104432...
- jgrahamc 13y agoI'll take the very unpopular opinion: I have a very strong feeling he is almost completely wrong in what he thinks he knows. I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint and I think the entire reporting by The Guardian/Greenwald has been shit. Greenwald does not appear technically competent in the slightest and there's no mention in the reporting I've seen of anyone with any technical knowledge being involved and so we simply have no idea what is in the 'thousands' of documents that Snowden has taken. And neither does Greenwald.
- irishcoffee 13y agoI appreciate that quite a bit. I am very confused by how HN specifically reacted to this story. There are a lot of really smart people here, and most of them seem hell-bent on jumping to conclusions with almost no facts, based on terrible reporting by non-technical people. This place is usually very picky about fact-checking too.
- moheeb 13y agoYeah this story is right up there with Obama not being an American for me. Until someone has any reasonable proof I just can't seem to care.
- daywalker 13y agoYou don't deserve to live in a free country.
- jessedhillon 13y agoI'm with you. The complete lack of any standard for evidence here, so long as it confirms preconceived notions, has been stupefying. People trotting out his high pay as proof of competence, when in any other context such an argument would be considered so stupid that it's beyond need of retort. His flimsy and dubious claims about being able to expose every secret of the entire intelligence community sound so unbelievable that no competent engineer could accept them. And the slides themselves -- for fuck's sake they say, at a maximum, almost nothing actionable. Do we even know if those were created by the NSA, or by Booz contractors? A sober, rational look at his claims would have to yield the conclusion that he's confused about what he thinks he knows. He certainly sounds like it.
- btilly 13y agoI believe that this is reasonably targeted. He does know who owns those computers, and did not include any government computers on the list. I know that we Americans like to see al qaeda around every corner. But, for instance, when you target a university's system in a non-Muslim country, the odds are much better that you're conducting industrial espionage than that you're targeting al qaeda. At the least, from a public policy point of view, it shows the hypocrisy of recent articles in the USA complaining about the extent of Chinese hacking into US civilian targets.
- minimax 13y agoHe does know who owns those computers, and did not include any government computers on the list. It's completely possible that these computers (or netblocks) were used as jumping off points for attacks against the U.S. or U.S. companies. We'll probably never know, but there certainly isn't enough information in the article to determine whether or not this was legitimate counterintelligence activity or whether these computers were reasonably targeted.
- nathas 13y agoI'd put good money that this was a black flag article pushed by the USA. It seems out of character to go from "I'm not trying to get anyone hurt/in trouble, just showing the public what's wrong." to "Here's some info about China WHAT NOW USA!?"
- aneth4 13y agoThis occurred to me, but assuming he hasn't been disappeared this would be too easy for him to deny leaking.
- 23david 13y agoThis looks like Part 2. Part 1 was whistleblowing for the US audience. This is for HK/China, probably intended to help keep him from being extradited to the US for his efforts in Part 1. Interesting strategy. Kinda unexpected imo.
- untog 13y agoIf it is then he's going to lose a lot of sympathy, and face much more serious charges.
- zxcdw 13y agoOn what grounds and from whom?
- brown9-2 13y agoThe US government sees giving government secrets to foreign governments (espionage) in a different light than merely disclosing classified info to the public.
- RobotCaleb 13y agoSee http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-CIA-Burglar-Who-Went-Rogue-169800816.html?c=y&story=fullstory http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-CIA-Bu...
- rfugger 13y agoI doubt the loss of sympathy or more serious charges will make a difference in America's efforts to prosecute him. But revealing that the NSA was hacking targets in Hong Kong may make a big difference in Hong Kong's willingness to cooperate with that prosecution.
- brown9-2 13y agoIt's ethically dubious," Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday. So is the entire concept of espionage! The entire purpose of espionage is to convince people in other countries to break their oaths and tell you their secrets. If this guy doesn't like the morally gray or dark areas of intelligence, why did he spend 7 years in the industry?
- gwgarry 13y agoNationalists don't really care about the rights and freedoms of other people. They are only concerned about the rights and freedoms of their own country.
- jlgreco 13y agoI saw an interesting quote several years ago, I can't quite remember where but I think it was from a slashdot or usenet signature line. It has bounced around in my head for years, first because its obvious absurdity an non sequitur nature baffled me and offended me to my core... but recently because it has started to make more and more sense. "Patriotism is Bigotry"