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I Knew Snowden. And He’s Not The Story

245 points by mncolinlee 13y ago

unknownian 13y ago
Somewhat irrelevant but anyone else think Medium's URLs are really ugly? Why can't you just get a plain pretty subdomain? I'd use it if it were that.
- baby 13y ago
  Are you working for the government?
skwirl 13y ago
"The technology that the NSA now wields far exceeds Senator Church’s most excessive dreams of a surveillance state." The author apparently thinks Senator Church didn't have much of an imagination or had never heard of the Soviet Union or China.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  The Soviet Union, nor the notoriously efficient Stasi, had anything like our automation. You have to wonder if The Wall would have come down if they had our tools.
  - skwirl 13y ago
    Surveillance has kept pace with technology. I doubt Mr. Church really imagined the Internet. Do you really think that China today has nothing like our automation? And do you actually think the way China acts on this information and the way we act on this information are comparable?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      I think what this has all really indicated is that the law is not ready for the Internet. I used to think that imbalance disadvantaged the government. Now I'm not so sure. I wonder if the tech community will be ready to talk about regulation now that the NSA has shown what a nearly-unfettered government agency with a blank check can really do with TCP/IP.
      - declan 13y ago
        Regulation of the NSA, sure. Regulation of themselves in the form of the FBI's build-in-backdoors-for-surveillance demands, definitely not. The NSA loves CALEA interfaces. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites-now/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wir...
        mpyne 13y ago
        Well, built-in backdoors would be problematic for the same reason admin panel backdoors or Clipper-chip backdoors would be problematic. But if the Congress end up extending 'reasonable expectation of privacy' to cover any "common carrier" (which I think is long overdue) I'd be very surprised to see them leave out any ability to surveil, wiretap, etc., at least from the major telecoms. That doesn't need to mean backdoors or warrantless snooping though.
        declan 13y ago
        Nobody (except the ACLU, if you phrase the question carefully) will say that court-authorized Title III wiretaps violate the 4A. The questions involve the process, standards, procedures, and scope. Telcos + CALEA == a lost cause. Not so with going up the protocol stack.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      So the question is: Do we build an internet that is inherently private and secure and blinds the censors in the despotic regimes, or are we too afraid of that freedom now?
      - roywiggins 13y ago
        It's basically been done (ish). Freenet's one, there are probably more, but you give up a lot in exchange. Freenet can be pretty slow and you need to find trusted people to bootstrap yourself into the network. You can't host dynamic content, either.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        We've been able to build that Internet for years. The people didn't want it. They wanted GMail and Facebook and Flickr and Instagram and all the rest of the magic of the Cloud. We could possibly start shifting to federated models but honestly I've quite enjoyed being able to easily talk with people from outside the U.S. and I worry it would be that much more difficult in such a scheme. We'd essentially all be going isolationist at the same time, building some digital Berlin Walls. What I think would be most feasible is bilateral "Internet privacy" treaties that define what requirements are necessary to intercept traffic (which is something that every nation wants to do but none are able to easily ask for). But at the same time I don't think European countries would be happy with the idea that the NSA could even theoretically obtain their citizens' info from cloud providers, and I don't think the USA would ever completely get rid of FISA while they still have the KICK ME target painted on their backs. I wish I had a good answer for this. :-/
joshuaellinger 13y ago
Personally, I think he's playing his side of the story pretty well. It's hard to demonize the nice geek kid, a least with the tech community. The espionage charges reveal how awful Obama, really all of Washington, is on the Bill of Rights. I think this whole thing is going to backfire on them.
- alexqgb 13y ago
  It's already started. Tonight, on stage at the Verizon center in DC, Mick Jagger said "I'm not sure if President Obama is here tonight, but I'm sure he's listening in." Maybe it's just me, but this comes across as far more damaging than garden-variety mockery. It's like the authority and mystique of the office are just evaporating. And forget about "repairing relations with the rest of the world." Unlike the cock-up in Iraq, this effects everyone, everywhere, directly. Backfire squared.
  - joepub 13y ago
    Heh. In all fairness, it's arguable the UK does even more spying that the US. But your point is well taken. The US is supposed to be a model for a free society. Mass surveillance could be imagined as "un-American". But the president thinks it's an acceptable practice. Obama followers: You've been had.
    - alexqgb 13y ago
      Update: Apparently Jagger's jab drew boos. I suspect there were a lot of people in the room who are deeply invested in the politics that were being mocked from the stage.
drawkbox 13y ago
Everything in this sums up my feelings on the matter. It is impossible to get freedoms back, too easy to give them up. And if all seems well now, you have to understand that decades from now and many leaders later there is too much trust not to be abused. If there is question of unconstitutional natures for systems like this, the authority and agencies need to prove themselves beyond a reasonable doubt in the open not in secrecy well over anyone calling it into question. You don't side with authority when freedoms are at risk, those don't come back. Individuals are innocent until proven guilty, authority has to be guilty until proven innocent due to the sensitive nature of freedoms going away. It seems people have this flipped. People think that the law or the Constitution will always provide a failsafe, but that is only a piece of paper if the people have no backbone and don't push back. It can happen here and is well on the way if we don't watch out. There are lots of patriots and good people in the CIA/NSA/FBI but it is not their job to contain overreach, it is the people.
mpyne 13y ago
I was really digging the article until right near the end. If you think all the NSA could do with extra information is add more "hay" you're not thinking creatively enough. For example, if you had a system that could scour through essentially infinite amounts of hay and be able to spit out each brown needle that passed through (think keyword filters), then definitely you'd want all the hay you could find, and then even more hay. Of course, keyword filters are fairly easy to avoid if you know they're there, so perhaps we'd call that a wash or even negative overall, as all the false positives make it impossible to be selective to the actual needles. But there's another use for hay, quite brilliantly demonstrated in Iraq (or maybe it was Afghanistan, or even both, I forget). The idea was that some roads were more likely to have IEDs emplaced than others. So what the Army eventually did was to blanket the area with drones and record along those roads, trails leading to the roads from the nearby cities, etc. When an IED inevitably exploded, they would go back to the tapes, rewind them until they found the bomber. Keep rewinding (tracking on different feeds if necessary) all the way back to the staging point. Rewind further, all the way back to the cell's meeting site, and the bomber's home. Repeat this for enough IEDs and you have a picture of where the cell assembles, where they stage out of, who they visit for support, etc. And then you send teams in all at once to detain that cell, get more intel to piece together what they can of the rest of the network. The sad reality is that you cannot prevent all terrorism from ever happening, but if you can "play back" a person's interaction with foreign agents you can use that to bootstrap intelligence seeding on that foreign agents other contacts within the U.S. to root out that terror network before they strike again. Doing all of this requires a lot of hay. Obviously there is a very large risk to civil liberties in the wrong hands if that system is simply left as-is, but it is at least possible to put procedural, legal, and technical safeguards if the people decide that kind of system is worthwhile. The other part of the article I was disappointed about was the mention of how the NSA (of all agencies) failed to prevent the Boston marathon bombing. Responsibility for domestic antiterrorism would properly fall with the FBI. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a permanent resident, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a naturalized citizen. All indications that I've heard were that Tamerlan essentially self-radicalized (possibly while abroad). Unless one thinks that the NSA is able to read minds of people in Chechnya I'm not sure what the author thinks could have been done. Russia did warn the FBI (again, not the NSA), that much is true. But in our land of the rule of law, we don't arrest people just because Putin said that they are unreliables. It is unclear exactly how many people Russia have 'warned' the FBI about anyways, or what their criteria are for making those warnings. But either way, blaming the NSA for missing an attack by domestic terrorists is almost completely missing the point of why we have the NSA, CIA, and FBI all as different agencies. As far as I'm aware no one from any of those agencies has ever claimed that systems as strong as PRISM or even 641A-type arrangements would 100% prevent terrorism, just like our police don't claim to be able to 100% prevent crime. That doesn't mean that we should simply never try to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring, just as it doesn't mean it's a good idea to fire all the police. You have to evaluate the risk/reward and ROI of each program, keeping in mind that some things are hard to measure in dollars. For instance, keeping terrorism from becoming so prevalent that the people act for the police state we all want to prevent is a pretty big motivator by itself.
zenocon 13y ago
It is so disheartening to see the media bicker all day about Snowden and Greenwald. What can be done to steer the story back to the travesty at hand?
- pvnick 13y ago
  More leaks, this time something huge, which I certainly expect Greenwald and Snowden are sitting on
  - declan 13y ago
    Agreed. The Snowden leaks to date have exposed programs whose outline we* guessed at years ago -- but details matter and written confirmation matters. The Patriot Act 215 order against Verizon is arguably illegal and unconstitutional; it exceeds the statutory authority and requires prospective data be divulged instead of merely retrospective. The FAA 702 orders, well, we'll see. Remember even the provider liability immunization is not unlimited. But these are legal arguments. So far there has been no dramatic evidence that the NSA's sweeping surveillance powers have been abused in the way the IRS abused its authority -- examples would be snooping on politicians, blackmail, listening to sex chats, etc. We've learned more about abuses of this sort (politicians and sex chats, not blackmail) from scattered reports in the NYT half a decade ago then we have from Snowden so far. * We == people who have been following these topics.
marshray 13y ago
So far Snowden hasn't revealed much that wasn't already said by NSA whistleblowers Drake, Binney, et al. Yet most folks had never heard of them or much about the issues they were trying to raise. Yet Snowden is an international superstar and the substance of his disclosures are, in fact, front page news on a regular basis. If it takes paying some attention to the fact that his girlfriend was a pole dancer, I guess that's OK with me.
- saraid216 13y ago
  ...this is the first I'd heard of the detail that his girlfriend was a pole dancer. I'm profoundly amused to discover it like this.
  - marshray 13y ago
    I'm sorry!
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Not that kind of pole. As far as anyone has said publicly she was not a stripper. She was part of a dance troupe while living in Hawaii and the about page on her blog she described herself as “a world-traveling, pole-dancing super hero.” http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_probably_wasnt_a_stripper/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_p...
    - marshray 13y ago
      So more like artsy acrobatic dancing that just happened to involve the occasional pole. Got it. Glad we got this sorted out. :-)
icpmacdo 13y ago
"I have learned that people decide what they think based upon narratives. A good story always has better results than merely listing out facts. Every good narrative has both characters and a plot." I was listening to a podcast the other day where one of the people said that if people were solely interested in facts the phone book would be the most interesting book in the world.
- Qantourisc 13y ago
  Sorry, the phone book contains data (witch should also be facts), but I'd consider it more data, then facts.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    Is "fact" not in some cases a synonym of "data"? "Qantourisc; 144" might be read as data while "Qantourisc registered on HN 144 days ago" might be read as a fact.
gasull 13y ago
A hierarchical organization that centralizes so much unchecked power as the NSA will attract a good share of sociopaths. Sociopaths seek power over others. Then it's a matter of time until a sociopath manages to climb to the top, and then you have a full-blown tyranny. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization-and-sociopathology.html http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization-...
- gasull 13y ago
  https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289 https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289
gosu 13y ago
Snowden is a story too. As someone who considers him a hero, and one of the rare few who I can relate to, I'd like to know more about him views so that I can learn from him. That's not irrational, unless you think biographies are a waste. In this regard, I wonder if any potential underhanded focus on character rather than message in the media might have the ironic effect of empowering more young people. "You can do good and be brave even if you play WoW".
- hobs 13y ago
  The thing is, most of the stories are not him coming off as a a hero, but as a dropout, a weirdo, and generally someone who didnt fit in. They are not positive biographies but more subtle character assassinations.
joepub 13y ago
I agree Snowden or Greenwald or whoever has the classified stuff needs to tell a compelling story, with a chronology. Mr. Lee is absolutely spot on when he reminds us that the media and the White House are stealing the narrative. We're now totally focused on a random sysadmin trying to guess what makes him tick. Who cares? What about the criminal activity by the US government he's laid bare for all to see? I kept hearing all this talk of "free speech" and the 1st Amendment today (thanks Carney), as it is supposed to exist in other countries, even when they lack anything like a US Constitution... good luck with that, and that Snowden's choice of destination is somehow symbolic of his motives. Maybe he's just trying to stay out of jail. Is that so hard to understand? So I guess we're forgetting all about the 4th Amendment, which is the whole reason he's putting his life on the line in the first place. We need more details from those classified docs, we need a narrative and we need to bring the focus back to mass scale pen registers and warrantless searches. Snowden's case is boring. He's guilty. He committed a felony by disseminating redacted classified material to expose illegality on a much larger scale. Most Americans would be too frightened to do this. He's not the usual. Get over it. On the other hand, the case of the US government, their conduct and whether it breaks US laws or the spirit of US law, is far more interesting. Stop worrying about the rights of people in other countries and start worrying about the rights of Americans, who are extremely lucky to have an amazing Constitution, which used to be a model and the envy of the world.
nostromo 13y ago
I'm not particularly interested in the Snowden play-by-play and backstory, but I think it's probably good for his cause. The story would already be dead if he was extradited or simply disappeared quickly after the leak. Instead the US is getting daily "Where's Waldo" stories in the New York Times along with stories about the relationships between the US, China, and Russia. Having all of these angles from which to write about the story is giving it legs; and the longer it stays in the public's mind, the better.
- rtpg 13y ago
  Definitely. The best thing about these leaks is the discussion it's making. Hopefully people will become more informed from it (but the number of "ARGHHHH MY FOURTH AMMENDMENT" style comments instead of more specific comments is disheartening). This is actually so surreal. I don't think the US is ever going to try that hard to get him back to try him, but the entire spectacle / Assange-style "THEYRE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR TREASON" around this guy, along with the supposed strain on relationships this is going to make is stranger than fiction. What is happening
  - wtallis 13y ago
    > "the number of "ARGHHHH MY FOURTH AMMENDMENT" style comments instead of more specific comments is disheartening" I'm put in mind of how the Federal Circuit always manages to put a pro-patent spin on even the Supreme Court decisions that are clearly intended to overturn what the Federal Circuit has done. Arguing against the details and trying to dismantle things piecemeal just doesn't seem like it will work. They've got their own resilient web of special definitions and interpretations that allow them to justify what we try to prohibit with plain language.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Odd. I was actually somewhat relieved to see people actually caring about their fourth amendment rights in a way that they haven't in far too long. In all honesty, I think that Snowden's continued media presence is actually hurting his cause. Between the smear campaign by the current administration (and press) and the casual comments he's made that has lost people on his cause, he might be keeping the story going, but the story is shifting more to one of ad hominem, and less of one on the issue at hand. The populace at large is terribly bad at keeping issues like this in pragmatic focus. Too few realize that even if Satan himself had been the one to leak this information, that we're all better off for having known it; and I'd hope that it would give some Americans pause enough to consider the actual implications of the Constitution; whether or not the government can govern through the consent of the governed, for example, if they have secret governings, or whether or not the non-delegation clause of the Constitution should actually allow for the NSA (staffed with officials we can't vote in or out) to write laws, when the Constitution specifically enumerates that law-making power resides in Congress alone. So while ultimately, all that boils down to is ARGHHHHH MY FOURTH AMENDMENT, it's also an opportunity to have a larger discussion on what that fourth amendment actually means, and what other parts of the Constitution might come into play, and whether or not it's fair that the government has extended its power to such the degree that we can have 300 different "agencies" like the CPPABSD (Committee for Purchase From People who are Blind or Severely Disabled -- they regulate how many coke and vending machines other government agencies should purchase from strictly blind or severely disabled sources), each of which is allowed to write laws that do not pass Congress, do not pass the house, and aren't subject to the oversight of the citizenry. The FTC, FDA, EPA, NTSB, etc., have all arguably affected each of our lives in some non-trivial ways, and those officials are just there, persisting, whether we like it or not.
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jmtame 13y ago
I personally won't be happy until I see all fiber splitters installed by the NSA completely removed (such as the one at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco). Move it back to San Luis Obispo. I liked the reference to The Spy Factory (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc) in this article, and I find it interesting that the NSA had been surveilling Al Qaeda for 3 years leading up to 9/11, and had more than enough data gathered on them. They were taking photographers and following two key hijackers--that's like the upper limit of surveillance, and they hit it. The mistake was not that they needed more, it was that they intentionally did not communicate any of those details to the FBI or CIA once two key hijackers were in the U.S. Fix the communication, not the collection.
brvs 13y ago
This reads like an essay from a freshman poli-sci class. The only unique thing about this post is the lame humblebrag or whatever about the author playing videogames with Snowden. But of course it's besides the point. It's so irrelevant that it has to go in the headline and link title. A software dev speaking outside of his area of expertise to amplify the echo chamber while getting hits for his blog isn't enriching the debate.
- brvs 13y ago
  Not that my own comment here is helping anything. I'm just weirded out by the fact that people aren't being critical of these empty echo-chamber posts that keep popping up. They make this place feel like it's just reddit's politics section being paraphrased by web developers trying to self-promote.
runn1ng 13y ago
I am sorry, I know that it's not that important, but I just find Where Is Snowden Adventures so exciting to watch. It's like reading an adventure novel, only in real time, real life and with larger-than-life characters like Assange and that NSA general.
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ttflee 13y ago
I recalled the dialogue from the film The Watchmen. > The Comedian: What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're looking at it!
immigrantsheep 13y ago
I see a lot of articles about who is or isn't Snowden, what he did, where he was and where he'll go. But I don't see anything about the NSA and what's going to change with PRISM. A lot of noise about him just to hide the fact that in the end nothing will really change?
d23 13y ago
> I Knew Snowden. And He’s Not The Story And yet this article seems to add nothing new to the discussion other than some nice anecdotes about how Snowden played video games and was an everyday person like us. Not much substance here.

245 points by mncolinlee 13y ago

Somewhat irrelevant but anyone else think Medium's URLs are really ugly? Why can't you just get a plain pretty subdomain? I'd use it if it were that.

baby 13y ago
Are you working for the government?

skwirl 13y ago

"The technology that the NSA now wields far exceeds Senator Church’s most excessive dreams of a surveillance state." The author apparently thinks Senator Church didn't have much of an imagination or had never heard of the Soviet Union or China.

Zigurd 13y ago
The Soviet Union, nor the notoriously efficient Stasi, had anything like our automation. You have to wonder if The Wall would have come down if they had our tools.
- skwirl 13y ago
  Surveillance has kept pace with technology. I doubt Mr. Church really imagined the Internet. Do you really think that China today has nothing like our automation? And do you actually think the way China acts on this information and the way we act on this information are comparable?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I think what this has all really indicated is that the law is not ready for the Internet. I used to think that imbalance disadvantaged the government. Now I'm not so sure. I wonder if the tech community will be ready to talk about regulation now that the NSA has shown what a nearly-unfettered government agency with a blank check can really do with TCP/IP.
    - declan 13y ago
      Regulation of the NSA, sure. Regulation of themselves in the form of the FBI's build-in-backdoors-for-surveillance demands, definitely not. The NSA loves CALEA interfaces. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites-now/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wir...
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Well, built-in backdoors would be problematic for the same reason admin panel backdoors or Clipper-chip backdoors would be problematic. But if the Congress end up extending 'reasonable expectation of privacy' to cover any "common carrier" (which I think is long overdue) I'd be very surprised to see them leave out any ability to surveil, wiretap, etc., at least from the major telecoms. That doesn't need to mean backdoors or warrantless snooping though.
        declan 13y ago
        Nobody (except the ACLU, if you phrase the question carefully) will say that court-authorized Title III wiretaps violate the 4A. The questions involve the process, standards, procedures, and scope. Telcos + CALEA == a lost cause. Not so with going up the protocol stack.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    So the question is: Do we build an internet that is inherently private and secure and blinds the censors in the despotic regimes, or are we too afraid of that freedom now?
    - roywiggins 13y ago
      It's basically been done (ish). Freenet's one, there are probably more, but you give up a lot in exchange. Freenet can be pretty slow and you need to find trusted people to bootstrap yourself into the network. You can't host dynamic content, either.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      We've been able to build that Internet for years. The people didn't want it. They wanted GMail and Facebook and Flickr and Instagram and all the rest of the magic of the Cloud. We could possibly start shifting to federated models but honestly I've quite enjoyed being able to easily talk with people from outside the U.S. and I worry it would be that much more difficult in such a scheme. We'd essentially all be going isolationist at the same time, building some digital Berlin Walls. What I think would be most feasible is bilateral "Internet privacy" treaties that define what requirements are necessary to intercept traffic (which is something that every nation wants to do but none are able to easily ask for). But at the same time I don't think European countries would be happy with the idea that the NSA could even theoretically obtain their citizens' info from cloud providers, and I don't think the USA would ever completely get rid of FISA while they still have the KICK ME target painted on their backs. I wish I had a good answer for this. :-/

joshuaellinger 13y ago

Personally, I think he's playing his side of the story pretty well. It's hard to demonize the nice geek kid, a least with the tech community. The espionage charges reveal how awful Obama, really all of Washington, is on the Bill of Rights. I think this whole thing is going to backfire on them.

alexqgb 13y ago
It's already started. Tonight, on stage at the Verizon center in DC, Mick Jagger said "I'm not sure if President Obama is here tonight, but I'm sure he's listening in." Maybe it's just me, but this comes across as far more damaging than garden-variety mockery. It's like the authority and mystique of the office are just evaporating. And forget about "repairing relations with the rest of the world." Unlike the cock-up in Iraq, this effects everyone, everywhere, directly. Backfire squared.
- joepub 13y ago
  Heh. In all fairness, it's arguable the UK does even more spying that the US. But your point is well taken. The US is supposed to be a model for a free society. Mass surveillance could be imagined as "un-American". But the president thinks it's an acceptable practice. Obama followers: You've been had.
  - alexqgb 13y ago
    Update: Apparently Jagger's jab drew boos. I suspect there were a lot of people in the room who are deeply invested in the politics that were being mocked from the stage.

drawkbox 13y ago

Everything in this sums up my feelings on the matter. It is impossible to get freedoms back, too easy to give them up. And if all seems well now, you have to understand that decades from now and many leaders later there is too much trust not to be abused. If there is question of unconstitutional natures for systems like this, the authority and agencies need to prove themselves beyond a reasonable doubt in the open not in secrecy well over anyone calling it into question. You don't side with authority when freedoms are at risk, those don't come back. Individuals are innocent until proven guilty, authority has to be guilty until proven innocent due to the sensitive nature of freedoms going away. It seems people have this flipped. People think that the law or the Constitution will always provide a failsafe, but that is only a piece of paper if the people have no backbone and don't push back. It can happen here and is well on the way if we don't watch out. There are lots of patriots and good people in the CIA/NSA/FBI but it is not their job to contain overreach, it is the people.

mpyne 13y ago

I was really digging the article until right near the end. If you think all the NSA could do with extra information is add more "hay" you're not thinking creatively enough. For example, if you had a system that could scour through essentially infinite amounts of hay and be able to spit out each brown needle that passed through (think keyword filters), then definitely you'd want all the hay you could find, and then even more hay. Of course, keyword filters are fairly easy to avoid if you know they're there, so perhaps we'd call that a wash or even negative overall, as all the false positives make it impossible to be selective to the actual needles. But there's another use for hay, quite brilliantly demonstrated in Iraq (or maybe it was Afghanistan, or even both, I forget). The idea was that some roads were more likely to have IEDs emplaced than others. So what the Army eventually did was to blanket the area with drones and record along those roads, trails leading to the roads from the nearby cities, etc. When an IED inevitably exploded, they would go back to the tapes, rewind them until they found the bomber. Keep rewinding (tracking on different feeds if necessary) all the way back to the staging point. Rewind further, all the way back to the cell's meeting site, and the bomber's home. Repeat this for enough IEDs and you have a picture of where the cell assembles, where they stage out of, who they visit for support, etc. And then you send teams in all at once to detain that cell, get more intel to piece together what they can of the rest of the network. The sad reality is that you cannot prevent all terrorism from ever happening, but if you can "play back" a person's interaction with foreign agents you can use that to bootstrap intelligence seeding on that foreign agents other contacts within the U.S. to root out that terror network before they strike again. Doing all of this requires a lot of hay. Obviously there is a very large risk to civil liberties in the wrong hands if that system is simply left as-is, but it is at least possible to put procedural, legal, and technical safeguards if the people decide that kind of system is worthwhile. The other part of the article I was disappointed about was the mention of how the NSA (of all agencies) failed to prevent the Boston marathon bombing. Responsibility for domestic antiterrorism would properly fall with the FBI. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a permanent resident, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a naturalized citizen. All indications that I've heard were that Tamerlan essentially self-radicalized (possibly while abroad). Unless one thinks that the NSA is able to read minds of people in Chechnya I'm not sure what the author thinks could have been done. Russia did warn the FBI (again, not the NSA), that much is true. But in our land of the rule of law, we don't arrest people just because Putin said that they are unreliables. It is unclear exactly how many people Russia have 'warned' the FBI about anyways, or what their criteria are for making those warnings. But either way, blaming the NSA for missing an attack by domestic terrorists is almost completely missing the point of why we have the NSA, CIA, and FBI all as different agencies. As far as I'm aware no one from any of those agencies has ever claimed that systems as strong as PRISM or even 641A-type arrangements would 100% prevent terrorism, just like our police don't claim to be able to 100% prevent crime. That doesn't mean that we should simply never try to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring, just as it doesn't mean it's a good idea to fire all the police. You have to evaluate the risk/reward and ROI of each program, keeping in mind that some things are hard to measure in dollars. For instance, keeping terrorism from becoming so prevalent that the people act for the police state we all want to prevent is a pretty big motivator by itself.

zenocon 13y ago

It is so disheartening to see the media bicker all day about Snowden and Greenwald. What can be done to steer the story back to the travesty at hand?

pvnick 13y ago
More leaks, this time something huge, which I certainly expect Greenwald and Snowden are sitting on
- declan 13y ago
  Agreed. The Snowden leaks to date have exposed programs whose outline we* guessed at years ago -- but details matter and written confirmation matters. The Patriot Act 215 order against Verizon is arguably illegal and unconstitutional; it exceeds the statutory authority and requires prospective data be divulged instead of merely retrospective. The FAA 702 orders, well, we'll see. Remember even the provider liability immunization is not unlimited. But these are legal arguments. So far there has been no dramatic evidence that the NSA's sweeping surveillance powers have been abused in the way the IRS abused its authority -- examples would be snooping on politicians, blackmail, listening to sex chats, etc. We've learned more about abuses of this sort (politicians and sex chats, not blackmail) from scattered reports in the NYT half a decade ago then we have from Snowden so far. * We == people who have been following these topics.

marshray 13y ago

So far Snowden hasn't revealed much that wasn't already said by NSA whistleblowers Drake, Binney, et al. Yet most folks had never heard of them or much about the issues they were trying to raise. Yet Snowden is an international superstar and the substance of his disclosures are, in fact, front page news on a regular basis. If it takes paying some attention to the fact that his girlfriend was a pole dancer, I guess that's OK with me.

saraid216 13y ago
...this is the first I'd heard of the detail that his girlfriend was a pole dancer. I'm profoundly amused to discover it like this.
- marshray 13y ago
  I'm sorry!
- Amadou 13y ago
  Not that kind of pole. As far as anyone has said publicly she was not a stripper. She was part of a dance troupe while living in Hawaii and the about page on her blog she described herself as “a world-traveling, pole-dancing super hero.” http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_probably_wasnt_a_stripper/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_p...
  - marshray 13y ago
    So more like artsy acrobatic dancing that just happened to involve the occasional pole. Got it. Glad we got this sorted out. :-)

icpmacdo 13y ago

"I have learned that people decide what they think based upon narratives. A good story always has better results than merely listing out facts. Every good narrative has both characters and a plot." I was listening to a podcast the other day where one of the people said that if people were solely interested in facts the phone book would be the most interesting book in the world.

Qantourisc 13y ago
Sorry, the phone book contains data (witch should also be facts), but I'd consider it more data, then facts.
- corin_ 13y ago
  Is "fact" not in some cases a synonym of "data"? "Qantourisc; 144" might be read as data while "Qantourisc registered on HN 144 days ago" might be read as a fact.

gasull 13y ago

A hierarchical organization that centralizes so much unchecked power as the NSA will attract a good share of sociopaths. Sociopaths seek power over others. Then it's a matter of time until a sociopath manages to climb to the top, and then you have a full-blown tyranny. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization-and-sociopathology.html http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization-...

gasull 13y ago
https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289 https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289

gosu 13y ago

Snowden is a story too. As someone who considers him a hero, and one of the rare few who I can relate to, I'd like to know more about him views so that I can learn from him. That's not irrational, unless you think biographies are a waste. In this regard, I wonder if any potential underhanded focus on character rather than message in the media might have the ironic effect of empowering more young people. "You can do good and be brave even if you play WoW".

hobs 13y ago
The thing is, most of the stories are not him coming off as a a hero, but as a dropout, a weirdo, and generally someone who didnt fit in. They are not positive biographies but more subtle character assassinations.

joepub 13y ago

I agree Snowden or Greenwald or whoever has the classified stuff needs to tell a compelling story, with a chronology. Mr. Lee is absolutely spot on when he reminds us that the media and the White House are stealing the narrative. We're now totally focused on a random sysadmin trying to guess what makes him tick. Who cares? What about the criminal activity by the US government he's laid bare for all to see? I kept hearing all this talk of "free speech" and the 1st Amendment today (thanks Carney), as it is supposed to exist in other countries, even when they lack anything like a US Constitution... good luck with that, and that Snowden's choice of destination is somehow symbolic of his motives. Maybe he's just trying to stay out of jail. Is that so hard to understand? So I guess we're forgetting all about the 4th Amendment, which is the whole reason he's putting his life on the line in the first place. We need more details from those classified docs, we need a narrative and we need to bring the focus back to mass scale pen registers and warrantless searches. Snowden's case is boring. He's guilty. He committed a felony by disseminating redacted classified material to expose illegality on a much larger scale. Most Americans would be too frightened to do this. He's not the usual. Get over it. On the other hand, the case of the US government, their conduct and whether it breaks US laws or the spirit of US law, is far more interesting. Stop worrying about the rights of people in other countries and start worrying about the rights of Americans, who are extremely lucky to have an amazing Constitution, which used to be a model and the envy of the world.

nostromo 13y ago

I'm not particularly interested in the Snowden play-by-play and backstory, but I think it's probably good for his cause. The story would already be dead if he was extradited or simply disappeared quickly after the leak. Instead the US is getting daily "Where's Waldo" stories in the New York Times along with stories about the relationships between the US, China, and Russia. Having all of these angles from which to write about the story is giving it legs; and the longer it stays in the public's mind, the better.

rtpg 13y ago
Definitely. The best thing about these leaks is the discussion it's making. Hopefully people will become more informed from it (but the number of "ARGHHHH MY FOURTH AMMENDMENT" style comments instead of more specific comments is disheartening). This is actually so surreal. I don't think the US is ever going to try that hard to get him back to try him, but the entire spectacle / Assange-style "THEYRE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR TREASON" around this guy, along with the supposed strain on relationships this is going to make is stranger than fiction. What is happening
- wtallis 13y ago
  > "the number of "ARGHHHH MY FOURTH AMMENDMENT" style comments instead of more specific comments is disheartening" I'm put in mind of how the Federal Circuit always manages to put a pro-patent spin on even the Supreme Court decisions that are clearly intended to overturn what the Federal Circuit has done. Arguing against the details and trying to dismantle things piecemeal just doesn't seem like it will work. They've got their own resilient web of special definitions and interpretations that allow them to justify what we try to prohibit with plain language.
- bmelton 13y ago
  Odd. I was actually somewhat relieved to see people actually caring about their fourth amendment rights in a way that they haven't in far too long. In all honesty, I think that Snowden's continued media presence is actually hurting his cause. Between the smear campaign by the current administration (and press) and the casual comments he's made that has lost people on his cause, he might be keeping the story going, but the story is shifting more to one of ad hominem, and less of one on the issue at hand. The populace at large is terribly bad at keeping issues like this in pragmatic focus. Too few realize that even if Satan himself had been the one to leak this information, that we're all better off for having known it; and I'd hope that it would give some Americans pause enough to consider the actual implications of the Constitution; whether or not the government can govern through the consent of the governed, for example, if they have secret governings, or whether or not the non-delegation clause of the Constitution should actually allow for the NSA (staffed with officials we can't vote in or out) to write laws, when the Constitution specifically enumerates that law-making power resides in Congress alone. So while ultimately, all that boils down to is ARGHHHHH MY FOURTH AMENDMENT, it's also an opportunity to have a larger discussion on what that fourth amendment actually means, and what other parts of the Constitution might come into play, and whether or not it's fair that the government has extended its power to such the degree that we can have 300 different "agencies" like the CPPABSD (Committee for Purchase From People who are Blind or Severely Disabled -- they regulate how many coke and vending machines other government agencies should purchase from strictly blind or severely disabled sources), each of which is allowed to write laws that do not pass Congress, do not pass the house, and aren't subject to the oversight of the citizenry. The FTC, FDA, EPA, NTSB, etc., have all arguably affected each of our lives in some non-trivial ways, and those officials are just there, persisting, whether we like it or not.

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jmtame 13y ago

I personally won't be happy until I see all fiber splitters installed by the NSA completely removed (such as the one at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco). Move it back to San Luis Obispo. I liked the reference to The Spy Factory (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc) in this article, and I find it interesting that the NSA had been surveilling Al Qaeda for 3 years leading up to 9/11, and had more than enough data gathered on them. They were taking photographers and following two key hijackers--that's like the upper limit of surveillance, and they hit it. The mistake was not that they needed more, it was that they intentionally did not communicate any of those details to the FBI or CIA once two key hijackers were in the U.S. Fix the communication, not the collection.

brvs 13y ago

This reads like an essay from a freshman poli-sci class. The only unique thing about this post is the lame humblebrag or whatever about the author playing videogames with Snowden. But of course it's besides the point. It's so irrelevant that it has to go in the headline and link title. A software dev speaking outside of his area of expertise to amplify the echo chamber while getting hits for his blog isn't enriching the debate.

brvs 13y ago
Not that my own comment here is helping anything. I'm just weirded out by the fact that people aren't being critical of these empty echo-chamber posts that keep popping up. They make this place feel like it's just reddit's politics section being paraphrased by web developers trying to self-promote.

runn1ng 13y ago

I am sorry, I know that it's not that important, but I just find Where Is Snowden Adventures so exciting to watch. It's like reading an adventure novel, only in real time, real life and with larger-than-life characters like Assange and that NSA general.

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ttflee 13y ago

I recalled the dialogue from the film The Watchmen. > The Comedian: What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're looking at it!

immigrantsheep 13y ago

I see a lot of articles about who is or isn't Snowden, what he did, where he was and where he'll go. But I don't see anything about the NSA and what's going to change with PRISM. A lot of noise about him just to hide the fact that in the end nothing will really change?

d23 13y ago

> I Knew Snowden. And He’s Not The Story And yet this article seems to add nothing new to the discussion other than some nice anecdotes about how Snowden played video games and was an everyday person like us. Not much substance here.