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Edward Snowden Q&A
- brown9-2 13y agoI imagine that today will be a very interesting day for the Guardian's operations team.
- rlwolfcastle 13y agoCan't wait for the twitter pic of him holding up a piece of paper saying: "Hi Reddit! 17th June, 2013"
- aroch 13y agoHow do we know it's Snowden? So are more documents going to drop? If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?
- panacea 13y agoHow do we know you're aroch?
- XorNot 13y agoWhy do you care unless he's making statements which depend on his authoritative experience, as Snowden is doing? The real question is why Snowden needs a secure internet connection, seeing as how everyone knows (1) who he is (2) where he is and (3) it's a public Q&A so the idea is for everyone to hear what he says. Were he really concerned about tampering, the more important issue would be distributing an authenticated public key to prove his responses weren't being quickly edited in flight. Which popping on and offline...doesn't really assure anyone about.
- panacea 13y agoI don't know, maybe because an anonymous user is casting dispersions on the authenticity of someone who has very much put themselves forward as a real identity?
- aroch 13y agoSo because we "know" Snowden leaked the documents we should automatically "know" that he's the one responding? There's no web of trust or verification that we know of; we're taking the Guardian at its word. How do we know its not just some intern who has a list of answers given to probable questions?
- panacea 13y agoThe Guardian (a newspaper cum hyperblog) is inventing and impersonating a whistleblower for it's nefarious, I mean, link bait purposes now?
- aroch 13y agoWow, that's not at all what I said. I like how you're deliberately taking things out of context. We, the public, have no way of knowing if indeed its Snowden answering. It could be any number of persons, we just know that The Guardian says it's Snowden (probably). I'm all for calling the USG out on this matter, but I'd like if we could get some public verification of who is answering.
- ealexhudson 13y agoMany papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Requiring not only a named source, but a way of verifying that statements / correspondence were provably from that source, seems an impossibly high standard to meet (eg., he could sign each comment with a PGP key. But then, "How do we know it's his PGP key?". Etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum)
- aroch 13y ago> Many papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Except this isn't the WSJ reporting on a new iPhone "rumor", this is a very public release of important information. He's already outed himself, so this isn't about protection of anonymity. It really isn't hard for the Guardian and Snowden to setup a CoT including PGP. They can verify it using a key pair they have ultimate trust in and then include that verification in their posts. It isn't asking a whole lot for them to say why or how they have trust in the responses they're getting. I trust the Guardian, what I don't trust is whether or not we're actually getting answers from Snowden that aren't being manipulated en route or otherwise not "live" and intact.
- aroch 13y agoWe don't, but we also don't care. I'm not making substantive claims which impact millions if not billions around the world.
- panacea 13y agoSubstantive claims that haven't been denied by President Obama? ...other than America has nothing to worry about waves hand retreats behind curtain
- aroch 13y agoWhat are you going on about?
- panacea 13y agoPresident Obama stated the surveillance was good for America. Just trust him, no? Kinda has 'allies' such as myself in Australia wondering about the extent and the utility of the dragnet.
- aroch 13y agoAnd this has to do with this comment thread how? When President Obama makes a statement, we know he's the one making it. It's publicly televised, he's the one saying it and we have very little reason to doubt that he is indeed saying the thing. This thread makes no claims about whether the things the person is saying are true, it's about whether we can verify who is making the claims. But, by all means, continue to ignore what I'm talking about and interject your own sputum.
- vidarh 13y agoBecause the point whether or not you believe they care about the content, or are cynical and assume it is just about their traffic, is to get maximum mileage out of it. And the way to do that is to drag it out. If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a small number of the most interesting revelations.
- aroch 13y agoYou can dump everything and then spend the next 6 months going through it with a fine-toothed comb and writing articles daily. Is the public really better served by waiting months to hear everything?
- akiselev 13y agoYes, it gives Greenwald and Snowden the ability to exercise at least a little control of the story at the expense of Washington. So far I'm unimpressed by how revelations have played out under scrutiny but I hope they have something that allows them to just wait for the US government to back itself into a corner before they release hopefully more detailed and informative documents and primary sources. Maybe they have one really big scoop that must be released at the right time and the rest of their hand is just bad PRISM powerpoints and warrants. Yay speculation
- guizzy 13y agoOther journalists would try to beat The Guardian to the scoop, with the same result. Everyone would be talking about it for two weeks, then we'd forget. By controlling the flow, they can make sure that each important revelation is allowed some time in the spotlight. The issues gets a lot more attention that way.
- jessedhillon 13y agoYou people are un-fucking-believable. You are literally lauding -- no, contorting yourselves to defend -- the hoarding of information you consider vital to the public good, and the slow, drawn out manipulation of the public's attention for private gain. This is, at a high level, directly analogous to whatever evil you think the NSA is committing. And the dumbest of all ironies, which I'm sure is lost on all of you, is that you are employing utilitarian ethics to defend it. That is exactly how a spy program is considered ethical. God. The humanities really are dead if this kind of clueless doublethinking represents the future thought leadership of our world.
- guizzy 13y agoWe don't know it's Snowden, but The Guardian is putting its reputation at risk, so I suppose their journalists have some degree of certitude about it.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago> why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it? I suspect they're laying a trap for the gov't; hoping to catch them in a big irrefutable lie.
- Kurtz79 13y ago"How do we know it's Snowden?" The same way you attribute credibility to any story you read (on the Internet or anywhere else), the reliability of its source. The Guardian says it's Snowden, confidently enough to make it public. It boils down to how much you trust them as a reliable news source. If they weren't sure, I believe they'd evaluate the possible backlash to their credibility and not run the story at all.
- alan_cx 13y ago"How do we know it's Snowden?" Because if it was found out that it wasn't, the Guardian would be finished. Faking this would be a scandal on a level with journalists "phone tapping". Literally, the news paper would be shut down. Not by some judge or government evil, it would become a laughing stock and its readers would abandon it. "If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?" You publish a small amount. Let the accused say what they want to say. As they have done, they seek to minimize everything and covering their backs. Then you hit them with more, hopefully the next set of information will contradict what they have already said. Potentially they get caught lying "directly" in public. So, simply: (Leak 1)I saw you at the pub. You deny it. (Leak 2)I offer the evidence of a witness. You claim the witness is wrong. (Leak 3)I produce CCTV footage. I prove my case (assuming in this example we accept the CCTV as "fact"), and you lied twice instead of telling the truth at the first opportunity. You are then well and truly fecked.
- clicks 13y agoHe will be online today from 11am EST/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient. Hah, nice. Reading that just made me smile. Loads of people are going to be patiently watching out for the lag, for the possible periodic disconnects/reconnects, and they will be vaguely internalizing why Snowden has to do this. And this is pretty mainstream news at this point, people are going to be on edge listening for his words. I like the cyberpunk feel of these happenings. We live in interesting times.
- e3pi 13y agoEdward, do you believe winning the Nobel Peace Prize would help get the hunter-killers off your back?
- netrus 13y agoHas some truth to it. It would compensate the horrible mistake of 2009.
- freehunter 13y agoImagine the US assassinating or imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize winner. It wasn't that long ago where we would fight regimes who did that.
- alexqgb 13y agoOr one Nobel Laureate jailing another.
- dllthomas 13y agoChile is eager to imprison a particular Nobel Peace Prize winner... and frankly, I more or less support them.
- koenigdavidmj 13y agoCan you state which one you're talking about for ease of Googling?
- dllthomas 13y agoHenry Kissinger.
- john_b 13y agoAt least he and Obama would have something in common then.
- martindale 13y agoI find it somewhat amusing that he's at least somewhat likely to use Tor, which was developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory.
- clicks 13y agoActually that would be a good question to ask him. Him intimately knowing about how NSA does stuff, what would be his suggestion of ensuring anonymity. What steps should one take, what tools should one use, etc. His answers on this would be very telling. Someone please ask him that!
- zby 13y agoThat would be also my question to him. How secure is Tor? How many Tor nodes has NSA for timing analysis?
- xmcri 13y agoMy question: How secure is I2P and why did you choose Tor over it? If not Tor or I2P, what steps would you have taken? What other measures can you publicly reveal you are using/have used in the process of securing yourself? How do you recommend those technologically able protect themselves, along with the general public?
- hoffmabc 13y agoI find it highly unlikely he will reveal what his strategy for staying free is. This would kind of be a dumb reveal even though I am curious what it is.
- abrichr 13y agoAsked: http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386192 http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386192
- xmcri 13y agomm. also, http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386031 http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386031 upvoted your link.
- aw3c2 13y agoPSA: 11am EST is when this comment turns 55 minutes old.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zby 13y agoLet's upvote here questions to him - then someone will post them at the chat.
- kore 13y agoThe mentions of his security concerns reminded me of this: http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-from-here/ http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-fr... "As a thought experiment, imagine that Osama bin Laden was still alive and that he used the Tor network to do a Reddit AMA once a month. How long do you imagine it would take for the US to find and neutralize him? I posted this question on Twitter and, while responses varied, ex-NSA Global Network Exploitation Analyst Charlie Miller guessed one to two months. I would be very surprised if it took more than three."
- rtb 13y ago"neutralize"? Say what you really mean.
- xmcri 13y agoProbably "kill". I don't think that was the point though.
- Ygg2 13y agoReminds me of the George Carlin's sketch on political correctness. Eventually "neutralize" will be replaced by "moved aside" or "inconvenienced".
- jlgreco 13y agohttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill
- PavlovsCat 13y agoalso: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY
- acomar 13y agoI think it's intended more technically than what the other posters are inferring. I.e. the gov't doesn't care if he's dead, disabled, or otherwise unable to continue. Any and all of the above are intended by neutralize, and I think it's being used precisely rather than euphemistically.
- tigerweeds 13y agoI'm curious if the US govt will DDoS The Guardian during the q&a
- mikegioia 13y agoHa, we should be so lucky. That would just fan the flames of an already kindling fire.
- MattyRad 13y agoDoubtful, but certainly a curious thought. I'm skeptical that actively censoring the media via "hacking" (because DDoS is classified as hacking to them) will bode well for their situation. Still, they could blame it on citizen traffic.
- alexqgb 13y agoWhile some say "government intelligence" is a contradiction in terms, I presume the intelligence agencies we've got are savvy enough to know about the Streisand Effect.
- clamprecht 13y agoI'd like to ask him how people can support him financially. A Bitcoin address would be cool, but he'd still have to convert it to local currency.
- pvnick 13y agoThis guy is amazing. The thing I love about him is he truly embodies the bravery that goes along with the idea that it's better to live in a free society with a modest threat of terror attacks than to live in an oppressive society where we are supposedly kept "safe" from the terrorists hiding behind every corner. It takes courage to make such an assertion. The NSA spying route is fundamentally based on cowardice.
- synctext 13y agoAmazing poetic writing skills, love it: "Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now." why did I not drop our of school and get a 200K job:-(
- jnbiche 13y agoThe money quote: "Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."
- gcv 13y agoVariants of that argument (usually related to smoking, alcohol, and backyard pools) have not persuaded anyone in debates over the Second Amendment. They seem unlikely to persuade anyone in debates over the Fourth.
- jlgreco 13y agoEven if nobody listens, it still needs to be said.
- moistgorilla 13y agoIt's a different situation. American's really like the idea of having the power to protect themselves. That's why when you throw the statistic that you will most likely never need the gun they don't care. This is because despite the odds being so low they are afraid of being that 1 or 2%. However, American's really don't like the idea of an overly powerful government watching over your shoulder. The idea that the government is supposedly using gathering this information and that it doesn't even have a legitimate use case is unappealing to most.
- tripzilch 13y agoOooh, this one from the article comments, one that tptacek will be happy about ;) (and it's a good question, to settle): > Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.
- mikeevans 13y agoUnfortunately he didn't really answer it. "More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed."
- thrownaway2424 13y agoNo, he did answer the question, with the biggest walk-back in the history of whistle-blowing. He defined it as "direct access" to internal databases of shit the NSA has already collected. Absolutely not the same as what Snowden was selling the newspaper reporters a week ago, which was "direct access" to Google servers. Also, by the way, 5% auditing is an very high rate. With a 5% audit rate, you'll catch evil-doers in no time at all.
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoOh wow: MP_Stroebele_GER 17 June 2013 3:53pm Mr Snowden, as a deputy at the Bundestag (German Parliament) who is responsible for the supervision of the intelligence apparatus, I am eager to know if you have any knowledge about information which was given to the German Government or the Bundesnachrichtendienst by the NSA within the PRISM programme. If so, do you know how much and what kind of information was given to them and if the BND knew that it was gathered by PRISM? Best regards, Hans-Christian Ströbele
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoSaving you all ddging it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele
- synctext 13y agoThe Green Party is sharpening their axe!
- phreeza 13y agoNice spotting! Glad to see my district MP taking an active interest. Here is a direct link to the comment for people who want to upvote it(apparently no registration necessary) http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386768 http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24386768
- dnautics 13y agoHe's not dumb - i doubt he is going to answer a question from an official of another government.
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoWhat matters is that the message suggests that a German MP 'responsible for the supervision of the intelligence apparatus' is not certain whether German intelligence has access to PRISM and other related programs' data.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- susi22 13y agoHis answer to the question "What direct access means": 1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.
- samcrawford 13y agoFor me, this was a really unsatisfying answer. Maybe the question should have been more specific, but I took it to relate to the PRISM programme and the specific technology that provided direct access to data at the companies involved. His reply seemed to focus on the policies (or lack thereof), with an example relating to call logs (which I already assumed would be provided by some (S)FTP feed from the carriers and bulk loaded into a database anyway).
- marshray 13y agoMaybe he doesn't know how every server is configured. Why would he be expected to? If one data feed uses a fiber tap and another uses a daily sftp transfer, does it really matter if some/most/all of Americans' communications is ending up in a database to be queried by analysts today and god-knows-who 30 years from now?
- ibejoeb 13y agoI'd like to know if geolocation data is collected as part of the "meta data" in any of these sigint databases. Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked at the FBI hearing about the implications in light of US v. Jones.
- sweetix 13y ago"2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?" Answer - 2) "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped." That last sentence must have Obama quaking. I wonder just how much more can/will come? And if/when it does - I wonder just how bad it will be?
- malandrew 13y agoI just hope that documents are leaked in response to any outright lies by the executive branch, congress or the NSA. It's clear that they have lied and continue to lie, but we don't know what is and is not a lie. Having a bunch of documents lined up to call anyone out for lying to the American people is a powerful incentive for those in charge to be honest and candid. Reminds me of War Games... "The only winning move is not to play"
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoHe's retaining a sense of humor: > Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
- aqme28 13y agoI loved this line. A lot of people don't seem to understand that our constitution explicitly denotes between rights provided to citizens and rights provided to "persons." Most of the constitution and the bill of rights is worded to apply to persons, not necessarily US citizens.
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoDon't forget the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. EDIT: I quote it because it too makes a universal claim
- polyfractal 13y ago> [...] if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now. If I didn't like this guy before...I certainly do now.
- jlgreco 13y agoI hope somebody breaks it to him gently that phoenix aren't real. ;)
- fredleblanc 13y agoOr perhaps he has some secret knowledge that has been hidden from us!
- dear 13y agoPhoenix are real! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28chicken%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28chicken%29
- krapp 13y agoHope you're happy, you just ruined Christmas.
- Tloewald 13y agoThe key point in the answers thus far is that when he refers to "direct access" he means to some database that has all the stuff in it, and not (e.g.) via a direct conduit to Google or whoever's database. So what I think is going on is that the NSA archives packets it can see in transit, but doesn't necessarily know who all the endpoints are. (It probably has a VERY good idea most of the time.) When someone becomes of particular interest they can execute a warrant on Google et al and get more detailed information on a specific target which lets them make better use of data they've already got. The key thing they're doing is, fundamentally, logging packets that they can see going past any number of bottlenecks in the internet, which should have been perfectly obvious that they would try to do from day one. This alone is enormously powerful and all the extra info from service providers is probably only icing on the cake. If you can be identified from some cleartext comms somewhere then all you other dealings have been archived, and can be correlated, and then decrypted and traced back to you posthoc.
- jread 13y agoThis is my belief as well. A few years ago I worked for a company that sold packet capture appliances to unnamed government agencies. The higher end appliances were capable of 10Gb/s packet to disk streaming. I helped write a search interface for the resulting data capable of the type of filtering and data reconstruction described. If organizations directly, indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly allowed the NSA to tap Internet links, they could theoretically provide full data access, while at the same time publicly deny direct server or backdoor access.
- chris_mahan 13y agoHow do they get past the ssl encryption? Mmmm? You don't have to answer that...
- jread 13y agoWhen I left they hadn't worked it out, only plaintext artifacts could be extracted. There was discussion of server plugins to intercept and store SSL keys and later use those to decrypt data, but this would require endpoint access and complex interaction back to the appliance. However, in the case of email, although you might utilize encrypted protocols to send/receive, a direct or indirect recipient might not, so at some point the message may cross the wire in plaintext.
- Jabbles 13y ago"NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored." So how was he allowed on the plane? Surely part of the passport/no-fly-list check would have caught that. Or did he drive to Mexico and fly from there?
- fchollet 13y agoThe drive from Hawaii to Mexico must be an interesting one.
- Jabbles 13y agoWell that's embarrassing... Still, why aren't airports checking if people specifically banned from flying are trying to fly?
- mseebach 13y agoThey are, but he wasn't (and probably isn't) specifically banned from flying.
- alexqgb 13y agoSnowden says that NSA employees (and presumably, NSA subcontractors) are expected to file notices of intent to travel 30 days prior to departure, and notes that they will be tracked while they're away. He also says he took a huge risk by traveling without notice. It sounds like he discovered a (soon to be closed) loophole in that people subject to this rule aren't placed on a no-fly list by default. I wonder if one official response will be to change that rule, so that the 30 days advance notice becomes "hand your passprot to your employer, and don't expect to get it back without making a request at least 30 days in advance."
- MartinCron 13y agopeople subject to this rule aren't placed on a no-fly list by default My understanding is that it's nearly impossible to get a name removed from a no-fly list. It seems like a very imprecise tool for this sort of problem.
- groys 13y agoMan this guy can write, "Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school"
- SCAQTony 13y agoObama, The NSA and the usual internet suspects: Google, Yahoo, Facebook are getting their asses kicked. This man is the Thomas Paine of our day: "Give me liberty or give me death."
- ianhawes 13y agoActually he's coming off as arrogant with delusions of grandeur.
- knotty66 13y agoThat's a predictable smear that's aimed at every whistleblower.
- maaku 13y agoI'd say that described Thomas Paine.
- MisterWebz 13y agoWhy?
- ianhawes 13y agoThe theatrics around this entire story make me question his true intentions. His answers today are anything but straightforward, and the majority of them don't actually deal with information he leaked, but rather his opinions on surveillance, politics, and thinly veiled threats to the government. If his intentions are truly to change the state of NSA's surveillance, then given his position, he should be publicizing raw information (such as PowerPoints, documents, and actual events).
- freyr 13y agoWhen asked for a flat-out answer whether he gave classified information to the Chinese government: "No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists." Perhaps he should rephrase that as "no direct contact." Apparently, by handing over classified information to journalists, he believes he's absolved of any responsibility where it eventually winds up, whether on the desk of Chinese officials, or in the morning paper.
- jlgreco 13y agoUsing the word "direct" again like that would probably not have the effect of improving the general quality of discussion. It would be a pretty "troll" move at this point. Maybe he should have said, "Not wittingly."
- freyr 13y ago> It would be a pretty "troll" move at this point. Maybe he should have said, "Not wittingly." He wittingly gave Greenwald classified documents to make public, so "not wittingly" is not true. Via Greenwald, he gave classified information to the Chinese government (and everybody else). I'm just saying, he should be transparent and honest about the implications of his actions. When he hands classified information over to journalists, he loses all control of that information. It could be made public, it could be handed over to government officials, it's impossible to say. He says he's sitting on a lot more information that he plans to release, and everybody here seems very comfortable with that idea. We're being extremely trusting to hand this man the sole authority to decide what information is leaked to journalists and what remains classified. At the least, we should get the sense that he's being fully transparent and intellectually honest about his actions and their ramifications.
- jlgreco 13y agoYou clearly have not subscribed to the revised definition of "wittingly".
- brent_noorda 13y agoVote Snowden for President in 2020
- shailesh 13y ago"This country is worth dying for." Hats off to him.
- grecy 13y ago"This country is worth dying for." I find that a very perplexing notion (I'm not American) How bad would things have to get before it wasn't worth dying for? Do you find it scary that the citizens of any country your country is at war with think the same way? Personally, I have no interest in dying for any country. If my country were doing something that required me dying, then I'm leaving for a country that doesn't require my death.
- alexqgb 13y agoThe point is that America's founding ideals are very much worth dying for. "How bad it gets" is totally irrelevant in this context, since the "it" refers to specific conditions, whereas the ideal remains separate, over and above them. The thing to understand is that "country" in this context, means the embodiment of an ideal, and not just a particular piece of territory, or a group of people inhabiting it. If you don't feel that there are any ideals worth dying for, then all of this will be much harder to understand.
- grecy 13y ago> The point is that America's founding ideals are very much worth dying for. In YOUR opinion. > "How bad it gets" is totally irrelevant in this context, since the "it" refers to specific conditions But those specific conditions have not existed for many, many years, and your death won't bring them back. > If you don't feel that there are any ideals worth dying for... Why die for them when I can just go somewhere else that already has them? It's amazing more American's don't realize they are the fundamentalists they are told to be afraid of.
- kbenson 13y ago> In YOUR opinion. In Snowden's opinion as well, obviously. > Why die for them when I can just go somewhere else that already has them? Because this totally ignores the reality that this other place didn't appear out of thin air. It has people there that care about these ideals, and most likely some that would be willing to die for them. In some respect, not attempting to change your country to be what you consider a better place and just migrating to a different location is leeching off the world, and those that work hard to make it what they consider a better place. We all do it to a lesser or greater degree, but to just throw your hands up and give up on your current circumstances entirely in favor of a move is beneficial to no one but yourself and those you disagree with. This is as true for neighborhoods as it is for countries.
- terhechte 13y agoSigh: "So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate?" "Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history." :(
- grecy 13y agoRemember, the mainstream media is for entertainment, not to keep you informed about significant events.
- revscat 13y agoThat, and government propaganda. Look at CNN's lede: "Washington (CNN) -- The man who admitted leaking classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs purportedly went online live on Monday to declare the truth would come out even if he is jailed or killed, and said President Barack Obama did not fulfill his promises and expanded several 'abusive' national security initiatives." This is textbook propaganda. The news media like CNN may partially be about entertainment, but it is also about propagating the government position, specifically the intelligence agencies positions. http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/politics/nsa-leaks/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/politics/nsa-leaks/index.html?...
- stellar678 13y agoCan you explain the propaganda angle there? To me, that reads like a straightforward summary of what is going on.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jeanjq 13y agoThe Guardian approach to this thing is infuriating. There's little useful information from it. eg this question and answer Question: Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption? Answer: Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it. Pfft. What size RSA keys are unbroken (2 048, 4 096, 8 192)? Is there a backdoor in the ECC NIST P256 (or similar) curve? How many TOR exit nodes does the US government manage and how good are they at in/out correlation?
- kbenson 13y agoHe may view that as beyond the scope of what he's comfortable releasing, if he knows it. Remember, he's not supposed to be bashing the NSA and releasing all secrets, but specifically blowing the top off what he believes is an illegal program. Releasing unrelated secrets from the NSA would probably have a negative effect on that.
- thaumaturgy 13y agoYou should be using I2P, not Tor. Just FYI.
- Kylekramer 13y agoSeem like more like a platform for self aggrandizing quips than anything substantial. I guess it isn't surprising that Snowden and the Guardian are remaining vague, but we are pretty much no closer to the truth than day one.
- warmblood 13y agoI don't think anyone reading your comment is sure of what you mean by vague and substantial. He has explicitly addressed every one of his harshest criticisms thus far in much clearer language than most of us are used to seeing in the media.
- Kylekramer 13y agoHe answered harsh criticisms about his personality and motives, but added very little regarding NSA spying. It is all well and good that he is willing to die for America, thinks the media has focused on the wrong elements of the story and made fun of Cheney. But in regards to the subject of NSA spying, he spoke in vague terms that didn't add to the public's awareness. And that is pretty much all I care about hearing from him, not media criticism, his suggestions for Obama or how he thinks he exposed the largest suspicionless surveillance program ever.
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- warmblood 13y agoI see. Despite already blowing the whistle and turning unconstitutional domestic surveillance into a public discussion for the first time in, well, ever, to truly be useful to society he must accept your amorphous terms of disclosure for information that is likely forthcoming anyway. Thank you for explaining yourself.
- Kylekramer 13y agoMy demands are quite morphous. As a person who is only of public interest due to leaking information about the NSA, I would perfer he clarify what exactly the NSA does. Good intentions about "public discussion" don't help if the public discussion he provoked is uninformed.
- jervisfm 13y agoHere is an interesting remark by Edward Snowden during the interview: Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it
- gfodor 13y agoI think the best part about this is he is not completely willing to say that the U.S. should or should not be doing what it is doing per se, just that it should not be doing it without the consent of the governed. He wants us to ask where the line should be drawn as a people, and his basic concern is that we are not being informed, not that the wiretapping is happening. This shows a profound respect for democracy and the country, since he seems to have faith that if all the facts are laid bare our country will do the right thing.
- temp453463343 13y agoI wish that were true, but in the context of everything he says it doesn't seem true. This part especially his belief that privacy is a universal right: More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
- schtev 13y agoAnyone else notice he doesn't flat out deny giving secrets to the Chinese when asked?
- peripitea 13y agoYes he does, further down.
- Tycho 13y agoI imagine the types of question he'll get asked are fairly predictable. Potentially he could have done extensive mock-interviews already and somebody will just post his answers online in response to any matching questions. That way he could avoid being traced.
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- stcredzero 13y agoMr. Snowden seems more informed than many of our politicians. (And many of our journalists as well.)
- freyr 13y agoMr. Snowden didn't have to spend the majority of his time being a professional fundraiser.
- bbuffone 13y agoI have a question that no one i think has asked. Do you think Facebook's "search" capability was born out of their work with the government? When it first came out everyone was talking about how this could be used to violate privacy.
- malandrew 13y agoI don't understand why people here are getting all hung up over the words "direct access" when it comes to Google and Facebook. At the end of the day, if they have access to email and phone records, especially SMS, then they essentially have direct access to any one of these services via the password reset feature, even if you have two factor authentication turned on.