8 ms·

The Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce His NSA Leaks

427 points by secfirstmd 12y ago

noir_lord 12y ago
> Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second Jesus, one trillion passphrase checks a second. Well I know what I'm changing this afternoon. > My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back. No one, not even my most trusted confidant, is aware of my intentions and it would not be fair for them to fall under suspicion for my actions. Snowden has always had my respect but the more I read the more he has my admiration as a person.
- schneidmaster 12y ago
  To be fair, that might not be an exact description of the government's capabilities. If I were in Snowden's shoes, I'd provide a benchmark at least an order of magnitude or two greater than I thought was necessary, just out of an abundance of caution.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  You should still assume it's futile in the end, to be honest; the ultimate surveillance system that may be going on right now is that all encrypted communication and data right now is being stored and catalogued, waiting for technology to be able to do even more calculations. It's said that once quantum computers become usable, a lot of encryption of today is pretty much useless. Even without that, computing power will increase exponentially - what's one trillion passphrases now will be a quadrillion passphrases within the next ten years, maybe in less time given certain advancements or discovered weaknesses in encryption technologies. I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example), but if you're privacy-conscious, it's something to keep in mind.
  - bitJericho 12y ago
    A bruteforce attack is probably unworkable without some really incredible hardware. http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions.html#security-against-brute-force http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions... > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example), but if you're privacy-conscious, it's something to keep in mind. Might I recommend reading this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141006/17572528748/dea-impersonated-woman-set-up-fake-facebook-page-posted-photos-her-seized-phone-to-make-it-look-real.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141006/17572528748/dea-i...
    - rtpg 12y ago
      Your example, which is absolutely rephrensible in its own right, doesn't really have anything to do with the NSA. I could impersonate you with some pictures and knowledge about your life, and I wouldn't need a FISC court order to do it this hypothetical me would probably do a lot more research on you beforhand
      - bitJericho 12y ago
        I just meant to point out that the comment " I personally don't really care if..." is crazy. Of course he would care if anybody started using private, encrypted, documents for purposes he did not approve of.
  - cryptoz 12y ago
    > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, This isn't about you. Do you have a preference of living in a society where the people in power have nearly total thought-level-control over the population? Allowing the state into your privacy may not bother you as an individual, that's fine - but you have to understand that your attitude allows them into all of our thoughts and minds, not just yours if you extrapolate this out into the decades you're talking about. The total surveillance society is much worse when discussed at a real scale, a societal scale. Not caring about your own privacy means you don't care about others, and that's a dangerous line of thinking. We form our society and laws around privacy - we're creating new standards and new expectations of rules for the next generations, and I'd rather not create rules that set baseline population control as normal.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      > the people in power have nearly total thought-level-control over the population Thought-control? That's a bit much. Mind-reading might be a better analogy
      - cryptoz 12y ago
        I disagree that it's "a bit much". Maybe in 2014, but we're also talking about the world in 2024... and even today in 2014 I don't think it's a bit much. I think it's normal, day-to-day interactions between populations and those in power. Facebook is already experienced in controlling the emotions and moods of large populations: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-e... And that study we know about because they published it. There are many ways for this to happen without us knowing, and clearly the technology and the science is knocking on the door.
        gknoy 12y ago
        There are already things I won't post (or even take!) digital pictures of: my kids in the bathtub. Growing up, all my friends' families had photos of the kids in the bathroom, etc, but now .... I am fearful that such things would be taken out of context as part of a witch-hunt. The surveillance state, coupled with the Justice Machine (which has no empathy or accountability, it sometimes seems), makes me very fearful to post anything political. We've seen how J. Edgar Hoover persecuted people __because he could__. Imagine if the keepers of secrets were not just patriotic, but actively villainous? There's no way we would know, or be able to hold them accountable for it.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - uptown 12y ago
    > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's Would you accept this challenge? http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/13/6963621/edward-snowden-national-security-agency-nsa-glenn-greenwald-privacy http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/13/6963621/edward-snowden-...
    - lukifer 12y ago
      Whenever Bruce Schneier gets an "I have nothing to hide" from a radio/TV interviewer, he always asks them on-air "What's your salary?". No one ever answers.
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    "One thing we should all understand is that we are brutally honest with search engines. You show me your search history, and I'll find something incriminating or something embarrassing there in five minutes." -- Mikko Hyppönen
  - JustSomeNobody 12y ago
    You may not care because you feel you have nothing to hide. Fine, most of us don't. You _should_ care because the Government is overreaching their authority.
  - hooande 12y ago
    Every time someone says "I have nothing to hide" the downvotes pour in, and it's unnecessary. "I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns. A lot of people feel that way, because the a lot of people live very boring lives. They legitimately do not believe that they have any secrets that will warrant the attention of the most powerful intelligence apparatus to ever exist. 99% of Americans will never do anything in their lives that holds the attention of any federal agency of any kind. We're all unique, like snowflakes, but very few of us will ever matter at the national level. The numbers just don't work out. There's very little evidence that the intelligence community has done anything to harm the average citizen with information gained through any kind of surveillance. Some people are going to feel that they have nothing to hide until the government's actions make them feel otherwise. It's a practical and pragmatic point of view for people who aren't interested in the philosophical or the hypothetical. Commenters who use the phrase aren't saying anything about what level of privacy is right for you, but stating what they feel is right for them. There's nothing wrong or offensive about that, it's a matter of preference not a matter of fact. There are two sides to this issue, and a one sided discussion isn't going to do anyone any good.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      "I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns. No, it really isn't, because we're discussing government policy, something that impacts "we", not "I". Saying that "you have nothing to hide" is at the very least tremendously selfish, because it carries the implication that policy should be made based on that stance. We're talking about what the NSA is doing to everyone, in contravention of the supreme law of the land. What one person does or does not want is a red herring and not part of the discussion.
    - kefka 12y ago
      So, you assert that you are not and have never committed unpunished felonies and misdemeanors? And you also assert that you not break future laws with current/past data? Fuck if I know if I committed breaking laws. I don't murder or steal, or any of the common law obvious stuff. But how do I know the age of the girl in that Internet advert that was in a sexual pose: that's a felony under the letter of the law. Or I was given a laptop by a family member. Whoops it was stolen. Misdemeanor. I'm not a lawyer, and I cannot navigate what is legal or not. And I have to keep track of county, city, state, and federal laws, along with jurisdictional changes ( how dare I go on vacation...). When something as mundane as breaking a EULA turns into a federal hacking case, you DAMN straight I want my privacy.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example) When I hear that sort of argument/opinion, I like to reformulate it as follow: "I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at/record my thoughts" I have a hard time believing anybody would find this acceptable, and yet this is essentially the same as and a logical consequence of the original statement.
- jercos 12y ago
  Considering john the ripper has a plugin that can churn out 50k c/s on a gpg key with a mid-tier GPU without specific optimizations, I'd guess a dedicated team of NSA researchers could get the cost for off-the-shelf hardware down to 5000 c/s/$ (based on a $100 GPU running 50k c/s + 10x speedup from engineering effort and specific optimizations), which makes the cost of the raw GPU hardware for a 1 trillion passphrase GPU cluster a smooth $200 million for a civilian assembling in his basement. Wanna bet the NSA gets volume discounts from nVidia/AMD?
  - ck2 12y ago
    NSA has no budget limits with taxpayer dollars - they have a secret budget so the public can never review - what congressional secret hearing is going to turn down a request for more money by them? 1 trillion was TWO years ago. Assume they doubled that by now.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      This is incorrect. The entirety of the NSA's budget has to fit "within" the existing government budget. And other departments do use money. So it is not unlimited. Defense and International security assistance is $643B this year [1] not a trillion dollars, and certainly not two trillion. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258
      - aidos 12y ago
        I believe the 1 trillion is in reference to the "one trillion guesses per second."
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - ck2 12y ago
        If you think you can pinpoint secret project costs in budgets, go find the the X-37B expenditures as an example. To date the development and missions are estimated to be around $1 trillion. You think that is visible to the public anywhere? (and yes my previous 1 trillion reference was to the calculations, not cost)
- nickscoronado 12y ago
  I think it's entirely fascinating how they've been unable to successfully assault Snowden's character. It's like the second go-to move after denying everything, and they still haven't been able to paint him a villain. He's just so damn heroic. http://www.newsweek.com/most-americans-think-snowden-did-right-thing-poll-says-253163 http://www.newsweek.com/most-americans-think-snowden-did-rig...
  - eli 12y ago
    I'm a little skeptical of a survey on Snowden that was commissioned by a cloud storage company. Pew Research Center & USA Today did a study in January that paints a more nuanced picture: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-americans-say-snowden-has-served-the-public-interest/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-a... For example, he's got a lot of support among young people, but a wide majority of Americans believe he should return to the US and face trial.
    - RexRollman 12y ago
      I would too, if I thought is was going to be a fair one.
      - happyscrappy 12y ago
        Legally the case is a slam dunk. Exposing the NSA illegally spying on Americans is noble but only a Presidential pardon will see him back on US soil as a free man.
        DennisP 12y ago
        I'm not convinced that "legally a slam dunk" equates to "fair trial." For example, part of what makes it a slam dunk is that a leaker's reasons for leaking aren't allowed to be introduced as evidence for the jury to consider. It's all perfectly legal, but a lot of people don't consider it fair. The potential distinction between the legal and the fair is one reason we have juries in the first place.
- kabdib 12y ago
  > Jesus, one trillion passphrase checks a second. > Well I know what I'm changing this afternoon. Too late, they already have a guess in place.
- belorn 12y ago
  When ever people talk about password/passphrase checks per seconds, remember that this is heavily depended on what kind of encryption software that you are using and if it is using key stretching algorithms. For example, luks when creating encrypted partions, checks the cpu in order to stretch the time it takes to decrypt the master key. The faster the CPU, the stronger the key becomes against brute force attacks.
desdiv 12y ago
Does anyone know if "Citizen Four" (what Snowden signed his first email with) is a reference to anything?
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Possibly to the Fourth Estate? It would have been clear to Snowden that the clergy and commoners aren't doing enough to control our kings and princes.
  - mmanfrin 12y ago
    Fourth Estate seems very plausible. The idea of the 'Fourth Estate' is that the media (the fourth estate) keeps an eye on the government. Whether this is the intention or the 4th Amendment is the intention, the other of the two is a nice coincidence.
- nitam 12y ago
  Perhaps this: "The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause."
- josu 12y ago
  There is also a Fourth Citizen in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 I don't see the connection, though.
- csdrane 12y ago
  I wondered whether this paid homage to other notable leakers before him.
- tymekpavel 12y ago
  Ellsberg, Felt, Manning, Snowden?
- curiousgeorgio 12y ago
  When written as one word, "Citizenfour" as in the movie's title (not sure if he actually used it like that), my first thought was possibly a connection to "carrefour," which is French for a road intersection. The 4th amendment theory seems more plausible, but a crossroads provides some interesting imagery in ralation to Snowden's intentions vs the current course of mass surveillance.
ck2 12y ago
Let's also take a moment to remember James Risen who will likely be sent to prison in January for exposing what the NY Times refused to print. (and of course Manning who will be left to rot for the next 35 years by each president)
- tootie 12y ago
  It's not impossible, but I'd be very surprised if Risen actually goes to jail.
  - ck2 12y ago
    You do realize the Obama administration pursued him so hard it pushed the issue all the way to the supreme court which refused to take the case. Which is why when he refuses to give the name in January after there are no more elections or opinions to matter, he will be put in prison as an example. After all these years you really think they aren't going to do that to him? The press will cover it for a week and then something else will come up and he will never be mentioned again.
    - themartorana 12y ago
      This. Apathy is a hell of a drug.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      The press will cover it for a week and then something else will come up and he will never be mentioned again. A group of news agencies should create a scoreboard of unresolved or forgotten stories of great importance. This scoreboard should be mirrored in different places, and have competing scoreboards hosted by different groups, to prevent ninja editing of its contents. The scoreboard history could be tracked and shared in Git with signatures on every change. This way, even if the front page forgets and the headlines change, there is an ongoing reminder of everything we should still be concerned about.
    - tootie 12y ago
      "The press will cover it for a week" I think that kinda ignores the fact that the guy in question is star reporter at the NY Times. There are many media big shots who know this guy personally and aren't going to just let it go.
joelanders 12y ago
I wonder how they "confirm[ed] out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted and replaced by your surveillants." Key exchange is the hardest part.
- pointernil 12y ago
  Who doesn't ;) Any speculations? Ideas? Agreeing on an entropy source is one thing, but really exchanging keys out of NSAs sight is hard, right?
- theintern 12y ago
  That was my thought as well. Given all communication is considered compromised, I can't think of a simple way to do this that isn't a face to face.
  - DINKDINK 12y ago
    Could you explain how exchanging PGP keys over TLS would be compromised or compromisable?
    - belovedeagle 12y ago
      Simple. Analog man-in-the-middle; i.e., you're not talking to who you think you're talking to. That's the whole point of key exchange.
alimoeeny 12y ago
Chilling, very chilling.
iandanforth 12y ago
Somehow these emails were more powerful, personal, and meaningful than all the previous coverage. It's you they are watching and it's you they are watching all the time. Reading these emails I imagine they were addressed to me and there's no way to avoid feeling like you're under a microscope. Even when you snap out of it and remember the emails aren't addressed to you, you then have to remember they apply to you, they could have been addressed to you, and yes, you really are being watched.

427 points by secfirstmd 12y ago

> Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second Jesus, one trillion passphrase checks a second. Well I know what I'm changing this afternoon. > My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back. No one, not even my most trusted confidant, is aware of my intentions and it would not be fair for them to fall under suspicion for my actions. Snowden has always had my respect but the more I read the more he has my admiration as a person.

schneidmaster 12y ago
To be fair, that might not be an exact description of the government's capabilities. If I were in Snowden's shoes, I'd provide a benchmark at least an order of magnitude or two greater than I thought was necessary, just out of an abundance of caution.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
You should still assume it's futile in the end, to be honest; the ultimate surveillance system that may be going on right now is that all encrypted communication and data right now is being stored and catalogued, waiting for technology to be able to do even more calculations. It's said that once quantum computers become usable, a lot of encryption of today is pretty much useless. Even without that, computing power will increase exponentially - what's one trillion passphrases now will be a quadrillion passphrases within the next ten years, maybe in less time given certain advancements or discovered weaknesses in encryption technologies. I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example), but if you're privacy-conscious, it's something to keep in mind.
- bitJericho 12y ago
  A bruteforce attack is probably unworkable without some really incredible hardware. http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions.html#security-against-brute-force http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions... > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example), but if you're privacy-conscious, it's something to keep in mind. Might I recommend reading this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141006/17572528748/dea-impersonated-woman-set-up-fake-facebook-page-posted-photos-her-seized-phone-to-make-it-look-real.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141006/17572528748/dea-i...
  - rtpg 12y ago
    Your example, which is absolutely rephrensible in its own right, doesn't really have anything to do with the NSA. I could impersonate you with some pictures and knowledge about your life, and I wouldn't need a FISC court order to do it this hypothetical me would probably do a lot more research on you beforhand
    - bitJericho 12y ago
      I just meant to point out that the comment " I personally don't really care if..." is crazy. Of course he would care if anybody started using private, encrypted, documents for purposes he did not approve of.
- cryptoz 12y ago
  > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, This isn't about you. Do you have a preference of living in a society where the people in power have nearly total thought-level-control over the population? Allowing the state into your privacy may not bother you as an individual, that's fine - but you have to understand that your attitude allows them into all of our thoughts and minds, not just yours if you extrapolate this out into the decades you're talking about. The total surveillance society is much worse when discussed at a real scale, a societal scale. Not caring about your own privacy means you don't care about others, and that's a dangerous line of thinking. We form our society and laws around privacy - we're creating new standards and new expectations of rules for the next generations, and I'd rather not create rules that set baseline population control as normal.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    > the people in power have nearly total thought-level-control over the population Thought-control? That's a bit much. Mind-reading might be a better analogy
    - cryptoz 12y ago
      I disagree that it's "a bit much". Maybe in 2014, but we're also talking about the world in 2024... and even today in 2014 I don't think it's a bit much. I think it's normal, day-to-day interactions between populations and those in power. Facebook is already experienced in controlling the emotions and moods of large populations: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-e... And that study we know about because they published it. There are many ways for this to happen without us knowing, and clearly the technology and the science is knocking on the door.
      - gknoy 12y ago
        There are already things I won't post (or even take!) digital pictures of: my kids in the bathtub. Growing up, all my friends' families had photos of the kids in the bathroom, etc, but now .... I am fearful that such things would be taken out of context as part of a witch-hunt. The surveillance state, coupled with the Justice Machine (which has no empathy or accountability, it sometimes seems), makes me very fearful to post anything political. We've seen how J. Edgar Hoover persecuted people __because he could__. Imagine if the keepers of secrets were not just patriotic, but actively villainous? There's no way we would know, or be able to hold them accountable for it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- uptown 12y ago
  > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's Would you accept this challenge? http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/13/6963621/edward-snowden-national-security-agency-nsa-glenn-greenwald-privacy http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/13/6963621/edward-snowden-...
  - lukifer 12y ago
    Whenever Bruce Schneier gets an "I have nothing to hide" from a radio/TV interviewer, he always asks them on-air "What's your salary?". No one ever answers.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  "One thing we should all understand is that we are brutally honest with search engines. You show me your search history, and I'll find something incriminating or something embarrassing there in five minutes." -- Mikko Hyppönen
- JustSomeNobody 12y ago
  You may not care because you feel you have nothing to hide. Fine, most of us don't. You _should_ care because the Government is overreaching their authority.
- hooande 12y ago
  Every time someone says "I have nothing to hide" the downvotes pour in, and it's unnecessary. "I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns. A lot of people feel that way, because the a lot of people live very boring lives. They legitimately do not believe that they have any secrets that will warrant the attention of the most powerful intelligence apparatus to ever exist. 99% of Americans will never do anything in their lives that holds the attention of any federal agency of any kind. We're all unique, like snowflakes, but very few of us will ever matter at the national level. The numbers just don't work out. There's very little evidence that the intelligence community has done anything to harm the average citizen with information gained through any kind of surveillance. Some people are going to feel that they have nothing to hide until the government's actions make them feel otherwise. It's a practical and pragmatic point of view for people who aren't interested in the philosophical or the hypothetical. Commenters who use the phrase aren't saying anything about what level of privacy is right for you, but stating what they feel is right for them. There's nothing wrong or offensive about that, it's a matter of preference not a matter of fact. There are two sides to this issue, and a one sided discussion isn't going to do anyone any good.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    "I have nothing to hide" is a perfectly valid and reasonable response to privacy concerns. No, it really isn't, because we're discussing government policy, something that impacts "we", not "I". Saying that "you have nothing to hide" is at the very least tremendously selfish, because it carries the implication that policy should be made based on that stance. We're talking about what the NSA is doing to everyone, in contravention of the supreme law of the land. What one person does or does not want is a red herring and not part of the discussion.
  - kefka 12y ago
    So, you assert that you are not and have never committed unpunished felonies and misdemeanors? And you also assert that you not break future laws with current/past data? Fuck if I know if I committed breaking laws. I don't murder or steal, or any of the common law obvious stuff. But how do I know the age of the girl in that Internet advert that was in a sexual pose: that's a felony under the letter of the law. Or I was given a laptop by a family member. Whoops it was stolen. Misdemeanor. I'm not a lawyer, and I cannot navigate what is legal or not. And I have to keep track of county, city, state, and federal laws, along with jurisdictional changes ( how dare I go on vacation...). When something as mundane as breaking a EULA turns into a federal hacking case, you DAMN straight I want my privacy.
- gorhill 12y ago
  > I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at my private documents, communications and photo's (for example) When I hear that sort of argument/opinion, I like to reformulate it as follow: "I personally don't really care if the NSA gets to look at/record my thoughts" I have a hard time believing anybody would find this acceptable, and yet this is essentially the same as and a logical consequence of the original statement.
jercos 12y ago
Considering john the ripper has a plugin that can churn out 50k c/s on a gpg key with a mid-tier GPU without specific optimizations, I'd guess a dedicated team of NSA researchers could get the cost for off-the-shelf hardware down to 5000 c/s/$ (based on a $100 GPU running 50k c/s + 10x speedup from engineering effort and specific optimizations), which makes the cost of the raw GPU hardware for a 1 trillion passphrase GPU cluster a smooth $200 million for a civilian assembling in his basement. Wanna bet the NSA gets volume discounts from nVidia/AMD?
- ck2 12y ago
  NSA has no budget limits with taxpayer dollars - they have a secret budget so the public can never review - what congressional secret hearing is going to turn down a request for more money by them? 1 trillion was TWO years ago. Assume they doubled that by now.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    This is incorrect. The entirety of the NSA's budget has to fit "within" the existing government budget. And other departments do use money. So it is not unlimited. Defense and International security assistance is $643B this year [1] not a trillion dollars, and certainly not two trillion. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258
    - aidos 12y ago
      I believe the 1 trillion is in reference to the "one trillion guesses per second."
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - ck2 12y ago
      If you think you can pinpoint secret project costs in budgets, go find the the X-37B expenditures as an example. To date the development and missions are estimated to be around $1 trillion. You think that is visible to the public anywhere? (and yes my previous 1 trillion reference was to the calculations, not cost)
nickscoronado 12y ago
I think it's entirely fascinating how they've been unable to successfully assault Snowden's character. It's like the second go-to move after denying everything, and they still haven't been able to paint him a villain. He's just so damn heroic. http://www.newsweek.com/most-americans-think-snowden-did-right-thing-poll-says-253163 http://www.newsweek.com/most-americans-think-snowden-did-rig...
- eli 12y ago
  I'm a little skeptical of a survey on Snowden that was commissioned by a cloud storage company. Pew Research Center & USA Today did a study in January that paints a more nuanced picture: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-americans-say-snowden-has-served-the-public-interest/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-a... For example, he's got a lot of support among young people, but a wide majority of Americans believe he should return to the US and face trial.
  - RexRollman 12y ago
    I would too, if I thought is was going to be a fair one.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Legally the case is a slam dunk. Exposing the NSA illegally spying on Americans is noble but only a Presidential pardon will see him back on US soil as a free man.
      - DennisP 12y ago
        I'm not convinced that "legally a slam dunk" equates to "fair trial." For example, part of what makes it a slam dunk is that a leaker's reasons for leaking aren't allowed to be introduced as evidence for the jury to consider. It's all perfectly legal, but a lot of people don't consider it fair. The potential distinction between the legal and the fair is one reason we have juries in the first place.
kabdib 12y ago
> Jesus, one trillion passphrase checks a second. > Well I know what I'm changing this afternoon. Too late, they already have a guess in place.
belorn 12y ago
When ever people talk about password/passphrase checks per seconds, remember that this is heavily depended on what kind of encryption software that you are using and if it is using key stretching algorithms. For example, luks when creating encrypted partions, checks the cpu in order to stretch the time it takes to decrypt the master key. The faster the CPU, the stronger the key becomes against brute force attacks.

desdiv 12y ago

Does anyone know if "Citizen Four" (what Snowden signed his first email with) is a reference to anything?

jessaustin 12y ago
Possibly to the Fourth Estate? It would have been clear to Snowden that the clergy and commoners aren't doing enough to control our kings and princes.
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  Fourth Estate seems very plausible. The idea of the 'Fourth Estate' is that the media (the fourth estate) keeps an eye on the government. Whether this is the intention or the 4th Amendment is the intention, the other of the two is a nice coincidence.
nitam 12y ago
Perhaps this: "The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause."
josu 12y ago
There is also a Fourth Citizen in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 I don't see the connection, though.
csdrane 12y ago
I wondered whether this paid homage to other notable leakers before him.
tymekpavel 12y ago
Ellsberg, Felt, Manning, Snowden?
curiousgeorgio 12y ago
When written as one word, "Citizenfour" as in the movie's title (not sure if he actually used it like that), my first thought was possibly a connection to "carrefour," which is French for a road intersection. The 4th amendment theory seems more plausible, but a crossroads provides some interesting imagery in ralation to Snowden's intentions vs the current course of mass surveillance.

ck2 12y ago

Let's also take a moment to remember James Risen who will likely be sent to prison in January for exposing what the NY Times refused to print. (and of course Manning who will be left to rot for the next 35 years by each president)

tootie 12y ago
It's not impossible, but I'd be very surprised if Risen actually goes to jail.
- ck2 12y ago
  You do realize the Obama administration pursued him so hard it pushed the issue all the way to the supreme court which refused to take the case. Which is why when he refuses to give the name in January after there are no more elections or opinions to matter, he will be put in prison as an example. After all these years you really think they aren't going to do that to him? The press will cover it for a week and then something else will come up and he will never be mentioned again.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    This. Apathy is a hell of a drug.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    The press will cover it for a week and then something else will come up and he will never be mentioned again. A group of news agencies should create a scoreboard of unresolved or forgotten stories of great importance. This scoreboard should be mirrored in different places, and have competing scoreboards hosted by different groups, to prevent ninja editing of its contents. The scoreboard history could be tracked and shared in Git with signatures on every change. This way, even if the front page forgets and the headlines change, there is an ongoing reminder of everything we should still be concerned about.
  - tootie 12y ago
    "The press will cover it for a week" I think that kinda ignores the fact that the guy in question is star reporter at the NY Times. There are many media big shots who know this guy personally and aren't going to just let it go.

joelanders 12y ago

I wonder how they "confirm[ed] out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted and replaced by your surveillants." Key exchange is the hardest part.

pointernil 12y ago
Who doesn't ;) Any speculations? Ideas? Agreeing on an entropy source is one thing, but really exchanging keys out of NSAs sight is hard, right?
theintern 12y ago
That was my thought as well. Given all communication is considered compromised, I can't think of a simple way to do this that isn't a face to face.
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Could you explain how exchanging PGP keys over TLS would be compromised or compromisable?
  - belovedeagle 12y ago
    Simple. Analog man-in-the-middle; i.e., you're not talking to who you think you're talking to. That's the whole point of key exchange.

alimoeeny 12y ago

Chilling, very chilling.

iandanforth 12y ago

Somehow these emails were more powerful, personal, and meaningful than all the previous coverage. It's you they are watching and it's you they are watching all the time. Reading these emails I imagine they were addressed to me and there's no way to avoid feeling like you're under a microscope. Even when you snap out of it and remember the emails aren't addressed to you, you then have to remember they apply to you, they could have been addressed to you, and yes, you really are being watched.