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Honest question, is anyone else completely past the point of caring until he actually shows more? (Please read to the end.) So far all we've gotten is some powe

Honest question, is anyone else completely past the point of caring until he actually shows more? (Please read to the end.) So far all we've gotten is some powerpoint slides, claims that they have other evidence, and a lot of interviews. I've seen people in various communities saying, "Why is the media focusing on Edward Snowden, instead of the breach of civil liberties", but frankly, I wouldn't know how to cover this. He hasn't presented any concrete evidence, just the same powerpoint slides we saw a month ago. He claims he has some, but we're not seeing anything. I'm not saying he's lying, or that this isn't a big deal- it is. I have a huge problem with the government ignoring the rule of law, especially in regards to treating digital content like it isn't supported by the 4th Amendment. I also don't like the idea of us treating our allies' citizens like they don't matter- legally speaking they don't, but morally speaking I'd rather we did better. But at this point, how do you continue to cover a story when the key source of the story is taking it's incredibly sweet time in giving us anything more than "No really, guys, you've gotta believe me, you should be really mad!"

beedogs 13y ago
Uh, have you been paying any attention at all, or are you just simply trolling? There's new information and solid evidence coming out on a near-daily basis.
- quaunaut 13y ago
  Where is it. Seriously, link me some stuff. I've read everything Greenwald and Snowden have put out, and so far, it's a lot of conjecture, not a lot of hard evidence. I believe him. But we literally are incapable of making more concrete progress without more. I want more than words. Give me some pictures, give me methods, give some evidence. Some of what he's said doesn't make a lick of sense, likely because it's skewed slightly to make people more cautious about their privacy(which would be great) but is light on others. Specifically, his accusations of direct access to servers- I have a seriously hard time believing these companies, with an amazing amount of capital sitting around, would risk their potential profits to provide this backdoor(in terms of users leaving) and not fight it legally.
  - jtudisco 13y ago
    They probably do fight it. They're just not allowed to tell you that.
    - quaunaut 13y ago
      But then why have your CEOs claim the complete opposite? They're not compelled to lie, they would only be compelled not to talk. Furthermore, I imagine the cost to fight something like this wouldn't be small- would it be so easy to have it lost in a company's financials?
      - harshreality 13y ago
        Why would the legal department itemize that? If there is such a program I'm sure the NSA has figured out a way to get the courts to keep everyone who knows about it gagged. How do you know what they're compelled to do? You're operating on the same principle as rsync.net with their warrant canary, as if that will actually work. I doubt it. In this case, the NSA would go to the FISA court, ask them to order Google to say that the program doesn't exist, and for good reason... not doing that could disclose the program, the existence of which is classified. The idea that you can't be compelled to lie is some Kantian ideal of a justice system. I don't see why the justice system that routinely puts people to death would be squeamish about telling people they have to lie. It might be too difficult, and too many people or resources might be involved to make it feasible to hide such a program, but that's different from saying that, as a matter of principle, you can't be ordered to lie by a court. Of course, the court order wouldn't say "you have to lie." It would say something to the effect of: "Your public statements must not mention, imply, insinuate, etc. the existence or potential existence of program X." No court is going to have trouble figuring out that failure to keep updating a warrant canary implies receipt of a secret warrant.
      - yuhong 13y ago
        AFAIK, I don't think Larry, Sergey, Eric, or Marissa (for example) have security clearances at all.
  - 13y ago
blhack 13y ago
The fact that the United States has burned as much political capital as they have chasing him, at least to me, demonstrates a couple of possibilities: 1) What he is saying is true 2) He has something extremely damaging. Otherwise why haven't they just said "lol conspiracy theorists"
- quaunaut 13y ago
  I totally agree. But at this point, we're kinda just having to take his word for it. I want something specific here. Vague claims of spying over all these services, without specifics, without explaining why it might make sense for these companies to comply and not try to fight it legally(especially when they have grounds provided directly by the US Supreme Court in regards to the NSA letters), is just wearing on me. My attention, my ability to care about this is just running out, plain and simple. I want to be active in this, but when my demands are about as vague as those of the Occupy Wall Street movement, well, not a lot can be done.
  - SimHacker 13y ago
    Glenn Greenwald said a year ago that "Relatedly, we find the prevailing sentiment that asylum is something that is only to be granted by the US and its western allies against unfriendly governments. The notion that one may need asylum from the US or the west – or that small Latin American countries unfavorable to the US can grant it rather than have it granted against them – is offensive and perverse to all good and decent western citizens, who know that political persecution is something that happens only far away from them." -Glenn Greenwald, 9 September 2012. Back then, we had to take his word on it. Now the US Government has strong-armed European countries to force the plane of the president of Bolivian down, because they thought he might give Snowden asylum. Now we have absolute incontrovertible proof, above and beyond any of the documents that Snowden leaked, in the tangible form of the US Government's illegal actions in spite of international law, that prove what Greenwald said was 100% right. What more could you ask for??? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Bradley Manning had nothing extremely damaging, yet has been treated very harshly. The spooks will prosecute you because in their mind, anything classified that is released is serious. Honestly, some of what Snowden/Greenwald claim sounds like embellishment or bluster, and saying that Snowden has a dead-man's switch is a good way to get him assassinated by enemies of the US. It would be tragic if he is harmed because of bluffing.
dlss 13y ago
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. You're asking for evidence... but are apparently not happy with first hand accounts, and classified documents. The authenticity has been confirmed -- take for example the senate hearings where the Snowden revealed programs are discussed... or the US government charging him with releasing classified documents (the ones he gave us). You "have a huge problem with the government ignoring the rule of law, especially in regards to treating digital content like it isn't supported by the 4th Amendment" but don't seem to understand how you came to know about these violations of the 4th. Are you trolling us? I'm asking because I honestly don't know. What more evidence are you waiting for? Or you just don't want to get mad until you know everything? /me is so confused right now
- ianhawes 13y ago
  No, he's not trolling. Nor is he a government plant or right-wing nutjob. He's just someone posting on HN with a legitimate viewpoint not shared by the majority of people here. Regardless, it is a valid point and shouldn't be dismissed so readily. No one is doubting the authenticity of the Prism Powerpoint, however only a handful of slides have been released. And as shocking as first hand accounts are, without any evidence to support them, it's extremely hard to verify or trust.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    No one is doubting the authenticity of the Prism Powerpoint, however only a handful of slides have been released. There are clearly more than a few powerpoint slides, one of the very first stories was a warrant for Verizon, and many different docs have been released, FISA court documents, bulk warrants, overviews of several programs from several internal presentations, not just one (what you dismiss as 'powerpoint slides'), NSA inspector general report, GCHQ docs on bugging the G20, GCHQ docs on Tempora etc. What a bizarre assertion. The first hand accounts have been backed up by ex-NSA workers including Binney, Drake and others. How much more evidence do you need before you'd like to debate the real issues instead of talking about how trustworthy Greenwald is? I'm genuinely curious which news sources you've been using, as apparently you have been completely mislead.
- 13y ago
chetanahuja 13y ago
I'm confused. Did you not read any media past the prism slides exposure ? The mode of this leak is not a pure data dump on the internet a la wikileaks but through a responsible journalist. Glenn Greenwald has been publishing detailed and specific accounts of different NSA activities almost on a daily basis... As an example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-co... How much more specific do you need it to be ?
- ianhawes 13y ago
  There is no smoking gun. These articles, without the documents/slides/files, to back them up, are little more than conjecture.
  - chetanahuja 13y ago
    These articles, without the documents/slides/files, to back them up, are little more than conjecture Well now I'm sure you're trolling. Does the following sound "little more than conjecture". (These are quotes from the article that I linked in the post you replied to) The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year. Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012." Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.
SimHacker 13y ago
Glenn Greenwald has been showing us this stuff for years, we just haven't been paying attention. Now all of a sudden he's sitting on thousands of documents that prove he was right all along, and events are unfolding just as he predicted. See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406
grey-area 13y ago
So far all we've gotten is some powerpoint slides, claims that they have other evidence, and a lot of interviews. He hasn't presented any concrete evidence, just the same powerpoint slides we saw a month ago. He claims he has some, but we're not seeing anything. This is incorrect. Have you read any of the Guardian or WP stories? Quite a few documents have been leaked, covering a broad gamut of programs in the US and abroad. Whether the information about intelligence programs was presented in powerpoint format or not is irrelevant (though not all of it was), it has shown the broad outlines of the ambitions of the NSA and other intelligence services like GCHQ, many of which are supplying information wholesale to the NSA (on Americans and citizens of other nations). Other whistleblowers like Binney have also confirmed the truth of Snowden's allegations, so it's not as if we have a lack of evidence here, just a lack of accountability. Most stories have cited a different document, so if you are genuinely interested, I suggest you start here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files+content/document http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files+content/docume... If you don't care about Snowden or find Greenwald uninteresting that's fine, but you should be demanding answers from your government and representatives, not from Greenwald. Is he responsible for a massive spying program and the ambition to collect all the data in the world in centralised, searchable repositories? Is he the only or even the best authority on these programs? I'd say the people responsible for setting them up should be the ones we ask for more information and more answers. What has been shown so far is enough in my opinion to enable us to ask hard questions of our respective governments, and of ourselves if we continue to enable them to collect this information over the long term and to realise their ambitions of total surveillance.

beedogs 13y ago

Uh, have you been paying any attention at all, or are you just simply trolling? There's new information and solid evidence coming out on a near-daily basis.

quaunaut 13y ago
Where is it. Seriously, link me some stuff. I've read everything Greenwald and Snowden have put out, and so far, it's a lot of conjecture, not a lot of hard evidence. I believe him. But we literally are incapable of making more concrete progress without more. I want more than words. Give me some pictures, give me methods, give some evidence. Some of what he's said doesn't make a lick of sense, likely because it's skewed slightly to make people more cautious about their privacy(which would be great) but is light on others. Specifically, his accusations of direct access to servers- I have a seriously hard time believing these companies, with an amazing amount of capital sitting around, would risk their potential profits to provide this backdoor(in terms of users leaving) and not fight it legally.
- jtudisco 13y ago
  They probably do fight it. They're just not allowed to tell you that.
  - quaunaut 13y ago
    But then why have your CEOs claim the complete opposite? They're not compelled to lie, they would only be compelled not to talk. Furthermore, I imagine the cost to fight something like this wouldn't be small- would it be so easy to have it lost in a company's financials?
    - harshreality 13y ago
      Why would the legal department itemize that? If there is such a program I'm sure the NSA has figured out a way to get the courts to keep everyone who knows about it gagged. How do you know what they're compelled to do? You're operating on the same principle as rsync.net with their warrant canary, as if that will actually work. I doubt it. In this case, the NSA would go to the FISA court, ask them to order Google to say that the program doesn't exist, and for good reason... not doing that could disclose the program, the existence of which is classified. The idea that you can't be compelled to lie is some Kantian ideal of a justice system. I don't see why the justice system that routinely puts people to death would be squeamish about telling people they have to lie. It might be too difficult, and too many people or resources might be involved to make it feasible to hide such a program, but that's different from saying that, as a matter of principle, you can't be ordered to lie by a court. Of course, the court order wouldn't say "you have to lie." It would say something to the effect of: "Your public statements must not mention, imply, insinuate, etc. the existence or potential existence of program X." No court is going to have trouble figuring out that failure to keep updating a warrant canary implies receipt of a secret warrant.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      AFAIK, I don't think Larry, Sergey, Eric, or Marissa (for example) have security clearances at all.
- 13y ago

blhack 13y ago

The fact that the United States has burned as much political capital as they have chasing him, at least to me, demonstrates a couple of possibilities: 1) What he is saying is true 2) He has something extremely damaging. Otherwise why haven't they just said "lol conspiracy theorists"

quaunaut 13y ago
I totally agree. But at this point, we're kinda just having to take his word for it. I want something specific here. Vague claims of spying over all these services, without specifics, without explaining why it might make sense for these companies to comply and not try to fight it legally(especially when they have grounds provided directly by the US Supreme Court in regards to the NSA letters), is just wearing on me. My attention, my ability to care about this is just running out, plain and simple. I want to be active in this, but when my demands are about as vague as those of the Occupy Wall Street movement, well, not a lot can be done.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Glenn Greenwald said a year ago that "Relatedly, we find the prevailing sentiment that asylum is something that is only to be granted by the US and its western allies against unfriendly governments. The notion that one may need asylum from the US or the west – or that small Latin American countries unfavorable to the US can grant it rather than have it granted against them – is offensive and perverse to all good and decent western citizens, who know that political persecution is something that happens only far away from them." -Glenn Greenwald, 9 September 2012. Back then, we had to take his word on it. Now the US Government has strong-armed European countries to force the plane of the president of Bolivian down, because they thought he might give Snowden asylum. Now we have absolute incontrovertible proof, above and beyond any of the documents that Snowden leaked, in the tangible form of the US Government's illegal actions in spite of international law, that prove what Greenwald said was 100% right. What more could you ask for??? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406
cromwellian 13y ago
Bradley Manning had nothing extremely damaging, yet has been treated very harshly. The spooks will prosecute you because in their mind, anything classified that is released is serious. Honestly, some of what Snowden/Greenwald claim sounds like embellishment or bluster, and saying that Snowden has a dead-man's switch is a good way to get him assassinated by enemies of the US. It would be tragic if he is harmed because of bluffing.

dlss 13y ago

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. You're asking for evidence... but are apparently not happy with first hand accounts, and classified documents. The authenticity has been confirmed -- take for example the senate hearings where the Snowden revealed programs are discussed... or the US government charging him with releasing classified documents (the ones he gave us). You "have a huge problem with the government ignoring the rule of law, especially in regards to treating digital content like it isn't supported by the 4th Amendment" but don't seem to understand how you came to know about these violations of the 4th. Are you trolling us? I'm asking because I honestly don't know. What more evidence are you waiting for? Or you just don't want to get mad until you know everything? /me is so confused right now

ianhawes 13y ago
No, he's not trolling. Nor is he a government plant or right-wing nutjob. He's just someone posting on HN with a legitimate viewpoint not shared by the majority of people here. Regardless, it is a valid point and shouldn't be dismissed so readily. No one is doubting the authenticity of the Prism Powerpoint, however only a handful of slides have been released. And as shocking as first hand accounts are, without any evidence to support them, it's extremely hard to verify or trust.
- grey-area 13y ago
  No one is doubting the authenticity of the Prism Powerpoint, however only a handful of slides have been released. There are clearly more than a few powerpoint slides, one of the very first stories was a warrant for Verizon, and many different docs have been released, FISA court documents, bulk warrants, overviews of several programs from several internal presentations, not just one (what you dismiss as 'powerpoint slides'), NSA inspector general report, GCHQ docs on bugging the G20, GCHQ docs on Tempora etc. What a bizarre assertion. The first hand accounts have been backed up by ex-NSA workers including Binney, Drake and others. How much more evidence do you need before you'd like to debate the real issues instead of talking about how trustworthy Greenwald is? I'm genuinely curious which news sources you've been using, as apparently you have been completely mislead.
13y ago

chetanahuja 13y ago

I'm confused. Did you not read any media past the prism slides exposure ? The mode of this leak is not a pure data dump on the internet a la wikileaks but through a responsible journalist. Glenn Greenwald has been publishing detailed and specific accounts of different NSA activities almost on a daily basis... As an example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-co... How much more specific do you need it to be ?

ianhawes 13y ago
There is no smoking gun. These articles, without the documents/slides/files, to back them up, are little more than conjecture.
- chetanahuja 13y ago
  These articles, without the documents/slides/files, to back them up, are little more than conjecture Well now I'm sure you're trolling. Does the following sound "little more than conjecture". (These are quotes from the article that I linked in the post you replied to) The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year. Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012." Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.

SimHacker 13y ago

Glenn Greenwald has been showing us this stuff for years, we just haven't been paying attention. Now all of a sudden he's sitting on thousands of documents that prove he was right all along, and events are unfolding just as he predicted. See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6044406

grey-area 13y ago

So far all we've gotten is some powerpoint slides, claims that they have other evidence, and a lot of interviews. He hasn't presented any concrete evidence, just the same powerpoint slides we saw a month ago. He claims he has some, but we're not seeing anything. This is incorrect. Have you read any of the Guardian or WP stories? Quite a few documents have been leaked, covering a broad gamut of programs in the US and abroad. Whether the information about intelligence programs was presented in powerpoint format or not is irrelevant (though not all of it was), it has shown the broad outlines of the ambitions of the NSA and other intelligence services like GCHQ, many of which are supplying information wholesale to the NSA (on Americans and citizens of other nations). Other whistleblowers like Binney have also confirmed the truth of Snowden's allegations, so it's not as if we have a lack of evidence here, just a lack of accountability. Most stories have cited a different document, so if you are genuinely interested, I suggest you start here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files+content/document http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files+content/docume... If you don't care about Snowden or find Greenwald uninteresting that's fine, but you should be demanding answers from your government and representatives, not from Greenwald. Is he responsible for a massive spying program and the ambition to collect all the data in the world in centralised, searchable repositories? Is he the only or even the best authority on these programs? I'd say the people responsible for setting them up should be the ones we ask for more information and more answers. What has been shown so far is enough in my opinion to enable us to ask hard questions of our respective governments, and of ourselves if we continue to enable them to collect this information over the long term and to realise their ambitions of total surveillance.