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Newly disclosed papers give rules for NSA surveillance without a warrant
- btipling 13y agoIt seems like Snowden is purposefully leaking documents a little at a time in order to keep the story in the press. He may be trying to combat the short term memory of popular stories. It may be a viable strategy for getting enough attention to achieve real progress. I wonder if news will simply stop covering it as front page material as audiences get bored with it. Maybe leaking the least interesting stuff earlier, and ratcheting up interest by saving the best for last may aid such an effort.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tokenizer 13y agoWell, hopefully this works, but people theorized the same thing about Wikileaks. Its story died without any major change.
- loceng 13y agoI'm guessing Snowden would have been less likely to come forward if Wikileaks and related events hadn't occurred first.
- ryusage 13y agoThat's a great point. Whether that's his intent or not, it seems to be how it's progressing. An alternative explanation: he's obviously been following the news about the whole thing very closely, and so he knows what questions the media and/or general public are asking. He can just release whichever documents answer those questions as the questions arise, and thus avoid leaking any more info than he feels is necessary (since that seems to be a goal of his). Maybe it's a bit of both.
- alexqgb 13y agoIn his notorious guide to ruling, Machiavelli advised Princes with bad news to deliver it all at once, noting that no matter how bad it is, people will adjust and move on if they feel that's the end of it. Good news, on the other hand, should be judiciously doled out, in small amounts, to maximize the value it brings the person delivering it. Conversely, if a Prince has good news, and delivers it all at once but with no follow up, people will stop being grateful for what they've gotten, and will start demanding more, which can bankrupt any ruler who tries to comply. Likewise, if there's a steady drip of bad news, minds race ahead, anticipating worse to come and making advance preparations which undermine the stability of the Prince. This basic psychology works the other way as well. If you have bad news about your adversary, and drop it all at once, they can take the hit and move on. But if you can supply a steady drip of negative stories it becomes impossible to get past the growing sense of distrust, especially when people start imagine the worst, and demand to see proof that their darkest fears are unfounded. This may mean having to prove a negative, which is the epitome of an impossible situation. Reaching this point only accelerates the downward spiral. Of course, following this strategy means being able to place yourself beyond the reach of retaliatory efforts. It's what Sun Tzu would refer to as selecting the field of battle to play to your strengths while offsetting your weaknesses. If your chosen position also has the inverse effect on your opponent, neutralizing their strengths while amplifying their weaknesses, then it's a double win. So far, Snowden's strategy has been textbook-perfect.
- leoc 13y agoDoesn't Greenwald have Snowden's entire document cache? I assume that it's (primarily, at least) Greenwald who's choosing what to report and when.
- zecho 13y agoThis is my understanding. Greenwald has also been letting politicians say one thing for just long enough before he publishes documents to the contrary. Or, in the case of the most recent leak, confirming what politicians have said about storing data for 5 years, but including more information about how analysts choose targets, which has not been officially disclosed.
- declan 13y agoAgreed. So far, it's working quite well, and is quite clever. I think I would have probably published the documents in this order as well. It's telling that yesterday's document showing Eric Holder signing off on warrantless surveillance came days after Barack Obama reassured us it wasn't happening.
- e3pi 13y agoDoes not this D-notice gag order also apply to Guardian/Greenwald? What's up with that?
- stordoff 13y agoA DA-notice is only advice, so Greenwald can choose to ignore it if he wishes. IIRC, it falls somewhere between "We'd rather you didn't publish this, as we feel it may harm national interests" and "this story may be illegal under the Official Secrets Act (or similar)", rather than being a straight block on publication.
- smackfu 13y agoA few of the recently leaked items, including a new one today, are UK centric. I'm sure that is aimed at trying to get the story to blow up again on the other side of the ocean. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-...
- zecho 13y agoWhile the president is overseas.
- revelation 13y agoThey are UK centric only on outside appearance. Notice how we have given intelligence agencies unlimited powers under the very simple condition that they can not spy domestically? It works the same way in the UK. So the way this works is that the NSA will spy on Britons, the GCHQ spies on Americans, and everyone comes together to exchange notes.
- smackfu 13y agoI mean UK centric in that they will get picked up by the other British papers and will make some noise in London.
- loceng 13y agoIt's usually how much money they can make from something, which means viewership staying on channel. They don't put news on the front page because it's important -- it just happens a lot of news people want to see is important - lots is just entertainment though.
- LoganCale 13y agoIt also helps catch the government in their misleading statements if they release a document, wait for them to make statements and hold hearings, then release another document that shows those statements and hearings were full of lies.
- mtgx 13y agoThat, too, but the best part is that it gives the government the opportunity to stumble on its own lies. "We don't collect data without (general) 'warrants'". One week later, after another leak - "Oh, we were just being the most truthful, or "least untruthful" as we could when we said that." It completely destroys the credibility of the government, and it should, because they're lying about it at every turn, or at the very least twisting words to appear that they say one thing, but they mean another. People who are trusting the government without declassified proof that they aren't lying, are being really naive at this point. I wouldn't trust anything the government says now without showing the declassified documents.
- dfc 13y agoThe simpler version is "People who are trusting X without proof that they aren't lying, are being really naive." In God We Trust, All Others We Monitor
- dhimes 13y agoEven God has a documented history of turning on us...
- VladRussian2 13y agoGod at least followed due process.
- jlgreco 13y agoPerhaps in a Judge Dredd "I am the law!" sort of way. ;)
- malandrew 13y agoWhat I'm shocked about is that newspapers haven't outright printed in the front page headline "such and such a person lies to congress and the american people about NSA wiretapping". Every time a public servant lies to the citizens they are supposed to serve, it should be the headline on the front page.
- moskie 13y agoMy impression is that he revealed the most inflammatory documents first: the ones that implicated companies and services we use every day as complicit in a mass spying program. It made for great headlines that the average joe could digest. That might have created false implications, or at least an incomplete picture, but it also might lead to people paying attention to revelations that are actually in fact more damaging.
- unreal37 13y agoLets say there are 10 really earth shattering revelations in these leaks. Which is better? All 10 released at once, and 8 of them getting lost in the discussion, or releasing 1 bombshell at a time and people like us get to discuss the implications of each? I think they're doing it right so far.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ngcazz 13y agoI don't get it. If they're doing it all from a "para-legal" angle, why would they even bother to document that they're doing it that way? Isn't it more of a organizational culture thing?
- dyno12345 13y ago"due process" just means "follow a process that's written down", not necessarily warrants/judicial review
- iblaine 13y agoah, "due process" vs "do process"
- ajross 13y agoI suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing. NSA spooks aren't evil trolls out to crush the free world under their boots. They're regular people, with typical moral compasses. And they have a difficult job. Unfettered access to information pretty clearly makes their job easier, so it's something they push for. But they likewise understand that this kind of thing is controversial, and so (either out of an attempt to limit the impact or deflect blame) they want to make sure that everyone internally knows what they're doing and that it's not quite kosher. Lots of folks here are programmers: occasionally you need to commit some horrible design affront in the name of expedience, right? Do you hide it or do you call it out in comments and commit messages with a big "HACK HERE" message? I know I do. It's the same impulse.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>I suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing. no. It is to cover their asses. Like in the case of torture - if they just go and torture it would be one thing, instead they have been doing it according to the rules reviewed and approved by government lawyers, who declared the torture is legal. Thus people have been tortured, yet nobody can be punished for performing it. Nor people who only wrote the [illegal] rules, nor people who only followed the [illegal] rules. Using such responsibility deflection schema government can do anything as long as it follows "the rules" [which it wrote itself] and even the people with moral compass can look in the mirror easy because they only doing their job and follow the rules. (another example - recent public outcry about drone killing of Americans was easily put down by switching attention to the alleged fact of existence of the "strict designation and targeting rules" the government follows without even publishing the rules, just a mere statement of their existence)
- guelo 13y agoThey lied, they listen to our phone calls and read our emails. In the Guardian story[0] it explained it like this: "Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;" How can they know if it contains usable intelligence, criminal activity, etc. if they aren't examining the contents of the communication? I think the most outrageous in that list is "make use of ... information on criminal activity". Do NSA spooks get to singlehandedly determine that you're committing a crime? Do they have AI algorithms that sift through millions of records flagging potential criminal activity? If someone is heard saying, for example, that they smoked weed are they added to a federal database of weed smokers? Why is a military program supposedly concerned with terrorism interested in domestic criminal activity? [0] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-w...
- dhimes 13y agoAnd encrypting information makes it suspicious. I am nauseated.
- codex 13y agoIt's not that encrypted information is itself suspicious. If a communication is encrypted, the NSA simply can't tell if it's a legitimate foreign target intercept or some inadvertently picked up communication until the NSA is finally able to decrypt it. Were it not so, foreign targets could evade the NSA by encrypting their traffic and making it appear that it might be domestic material (for example, routing it though domestic email accounts), forcing the NSA to discard it. Just as security researchers look for every possible loophole when creating attack scenarios, so the authors of NSA regulations seek to close any possible loophole a target could use to evade intercept. The NSA has to assume that its internal rules will eventually be leaked (as has just occurred) and used against it by a foreign enemy.
- MereInterest 13y ago
- cdooh 13y agoEver leak invalidates the information the NSA tells the public. Now I have to ask do they even know what documents Snowden left with? Each new revelation seems to be catching them flat footed
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI think you answered your own question.
- dyselon 13y agoThe most interesting part to me was that they said the NSA did internal audits of analyst queries. I hope someone leaks the results of those. The rest of it seemed in line with the initial PRISM release, and also (kinda) what they've been saying all along: they nab everything, but only read it if they "reasonably" think you're foreign, and if they're wrong, they keep any "interesting" bits anyway.
- giardini 13y agoThe fact that someone can do an internal audit indicates that someone can bypass auditing. Who's watching the watchers who watch those who watch us.
- BadCookie 13y agoAm I crazy, or have (many) American news sources stopped reporting on this altogether? Nobody is talking about it on my Facebook either. There's a whole lot of silence about this, and that's the scariest thing of all.
- D9u 13y ago"...the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless." Snowden, 2013.