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> Are you saying he now regrets losing his cushy $122k/yr job with Booz Allen, so we can't trust him? No, I'm saying that I wouldn't be surprised if something

> Are you saying he now regrets losing his cushy $122k/yr job with Booz Allen, so we can't trust him? No, I'm saying that I wouldn't be surprised if something happened while he was in Hawaii that inspired him to leave with a bang. Apparently he left the CIA station in Geneva in 2009 because he received a derogatory performance report regarding his behavior and work ethic, and decided to leave prior to the CIA conducting a more thorough investigation.[1] He arrived in Hawaii in March 2012, so he had apparently only been there for a few months before he started stealing documents. He had spent around a year each working systems administration jobs under a contract Dell for the NSA in Japan and the CIA in Maryland prior. I also don't doubt that he had planned to leak prior to switching over to Booz, since he initially contacted Greenwald about four months prior to taking the job, in addition to the government's claims that he began downloading them all in 2012. But I doubt that it was because he saw something and insisted that it must be brought to light. If that was the case, he wouldn't have walked out with so much data. He claimed to have "carefully evaluated every single document [he] disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest"[2], but he took out somewhere between 50 thousand and 1.7 million documents, depending on whose numbers you go by. This is a collection of documents that dozens of reporters, several dedicated solely to NSA reporting, haven't managed to go through over the course of two years, but somehow he himself carefully evaluated the potential damage and public interest value of every single document in less than eight months while simultaneously still working his 9-5 job. I don't buy it. If his intent was to blow the whistle on something, he would have just grabbed the few documents he needed and gone to press with them. The fact that he didn't leads me to believe that he had some other intent. > "The incident convinced him, Snowden says, that trying to work through the system would lead only to reprisals." What you left out from the paragraph that quote was pulled from was that it wasn't some shady intelligence operation that apparently convinced him to not work through proper channels, but that he claims was reprimanded for modifying his own performance report in a stunt to prove that there was an issue with the security in one of the systems used by human resources (there's slightly more information in this article: [3]) I don't know the details, but in every place I've worked bypassing security to modify your personnel files would be grounds for losing your job, regardless of what point you were trying to make. And again, that's just his story - there's no evidence to back it up. Same thing for story about getting the banker drunk in Geneva to recruit him as a CIA asset; and distributing pornographic photos at NSA; and that the NSA took down all internet connectivity in Syria during their civil war; etc. Most importantly, that also goes for his claim that he voiced his concerns through internal channels. When NBC made a FOIA request to verify Snowden's claim that he had raised his concerns, the NSA responded that the only e-mail they could find was asking a generic question about legal authorities mentioned in a training program[4]. If Snowden wanted to maintain credibility at this point, he could have instantly produced the e-mails and said 'Look! The NSA is lying!' Instead, he just made a claim that they were lying without producing any evidence. I find it hard to believe that he walked out the door with thousands upon thousands of documents, but forgot to bring a copy of his own e-mails that would corroborate his story. I'm sorry - I just think there's way too many aspects of his story that sound a bit too fishy. I could go on about other aspects regarding the NSA reporting, and Snowden's relationship with Glenn Greenwald/Laura Poitras, and questions about why he went to China and how he ended up in Russia, etc., but that diverges a bit from the subject of his grandstanding/credibility and I think that's probably enough for now [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/cia-disputes-early-suspicions-on-snowden.html?ref=todayspaper http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/cia-disputes-early-susp... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/world/snowden-says-he-took-no-secret-files-to-russia.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/world/snowden-says-he-took... [4] http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/paper-trail-nsa-releases-email-snowden-sent-agency-officials-n117086 http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/pape...

scintill76 12y ago
> I'm saying that I wouldn't be surprised if something happened while he was in Hawaii that inspired him to leave with a bang. This is a fair point, especially in light of how his CIA stint ended. I started considering it myself, but didn't think much of it because it seems like the NSA & co. would be gleefully trumpeting such a thing if they knew it. For example, they said one of the first things he stole was a technical employment test with answers, and implied he used it to cheat (in my link from the last post.) Can you think of such an incident that the NSA wouldn't know about, or wouldn't reveal publicly? And since you are arguing that he both a) leaked because he was disgruntled about something at work, and b) committed to leak months before changing jobs, the possible scenarios get even narrower, as they would have to carry over between jobs. Does he just hate the entire current US intelligence sector in general? Well, he's not keeping that a secret, so it shouldn't really be a mark against his credibility. Now, just because I can't think of a reason he wanted to "leave with a bang" that we wouldn't know about, doesn't mean it can't be true, but it deflates that theory quite a bit IMO. > If his intent was to blow the whistle on something, he would have just grabbed the few documents he needed and gone to press with them. But his claim (or a popular simplification of it) is that the US is violating the rights of everyone, all the time, for any reason they feel like. He's not blowing the whistle on one office or something, it's a whole multi-billion dollar industry run by major branches of the US Government. If he just brought every document about PRISM, or just the Verizon metadata arrangement, or just personally hacking sysadmins at telecoms, or just tapping Google's private fiber lines, or just tapping Yahoo's private fiber lines, it would not be near as powerful as showing they are doing all of the above, and more! I don't know that he ever planned this, but there is also a practicality argument that it might be easier to "collect it all" first, flee, and sift through it for a few weeks full-time from the comfort of Hong Kong. > What you left out from the paragraph that quote was pulled from OK, and you left out where I introduced that quote with "On a different altercation, ... " Yes, I probably took too much license editing it, but it was meant as a quick allusion to his claims to have raised concerns through the "proper channels" at NSA and been ignored. In the full, more accurate context, it shows that on that occasion, he went to some lengths to work within the system to raise a concern (reading between the lines, it sounds like his boss eventually helped him to inject some Javascript tags into Snowden's personnel file, as a proof-of-concept for the vulnerability), and got nothing but trouble for trying to help in the way that was supposedly approved ("His immediate supervisor signed off on it" from your link). > getting the banker drunk in Geneva to recruit him as a CIA asset Yes, I am shocked the CIA didn't jump in and confirm or deny that this happened.</sarcasm> What proof would you expect? Granted, if it's not (dis)provable it's of little worth to us, but it's not really meant to be something we're persuaded to believe, just an anecdote about a formative experience. I don't know, is it inherently disingenuous to tell a story you can't prove, with the purpose of explaining your worldview? > I find it hard to believe that he walked out the door with thousands upon thousands of documents, but forgot to bring a copy of his own e-mails that would corroborate his story. First, that article says NBC sent a FOIA, but the single email shown was not received from FOIA. I'm not sure it matters, though. How would anyone but the NSA and Snowden know with some certainty that any emails he did produce were legitimate? Would they admit to us if they were legitimate? (Tip: commit hashes of your proof to the Bitcoin blockchain early, so you can at least prove you were thinking about something before a certain date.) Hmm, I guess this goes for all the documents' authenticity, but I can imagine it's easier to confirm those than emails. Maybe he didn't really care about corroborating his story, or wasn't planning "a story" that far in advance. It's kind of funny that this is such a point of contention. Is anyone really saying the NSA would have stopped if they knew some sysadmin named Ed Snowden didn't like it? I guess alone it's pretty small, but it's another of several doubts about his credibility, that's why it's so hotly contested. I agree that his claim about evaluating every document is suspect, and several of the other items you mentioned.

scintill76 12y ago

> I'm saying that I wouldn't be surprised if something happened while he was in Hawaii that inspired him to leave with a bang. This is a fair point, especially in light of how his CIA stint ended. I started considering it myself, but didn't think much of it because it seems like the NSA & co. would be gleefully trumpeting such a thing if they knew it. For example, they said one of the first things he stole was a technical employment test with answers, and implied he used it to cheat (in my link from the last post.) Can you think of such an incident that the NSA wouldn't know about, or wouldn't reveal publicly? And since you are arguing that he both a) leaked because he was disgruntled about something at work, and b) committed to leak months before changing jobs, the possible scenarios get even narrower, as they would have to carry over between jobs. Does he just hate the entire current US intelligence sector in general? Well, he's not keeping that a secret, so it shouldn't really be a mark against his credibility. Now, just because I can't think of a reason he wanted to "leave with a bang" that we wouldn't know about, doesn't mean it can't be true, but it deflates that theory quite a bit IMO. > If his intent was to blow the whistle on something, he would have just grabbed the few documents he needed and gone to press with them. But his claim (or a popular simplification of it) is that the US is violating the rights of everyone, all the time, for any reason they feel like. He's not blowing the whistle on one office or something, it's a whole multi-billion dollar industry run by major branches of the US Government. If he just brought every document about PRISM, or just the Verizon metadata arrangement, or just personally hacking sysadmins at telecoms, or just tapping Google's private fiber lines, or just tapping Yahoo's private fiber lines, it would not be near as powerful as showing they are doing all of the above, and more! I don't know that he ever planned this, but there is also a practicality argument that it might be easier to "collect it all" first, flee, and sift through it for a few weeks full-time from the comfort of Hong Kong. > What you left out from the paragraph that quote was pulled from OK, and you left out where I introduced that quote with "On a different altercation, ... " Yes, I probably took too much license editing it, but it was meant as a quick allusion to his claims to have raised concerns through the "proper channels" at NSA and been ignored. In the full, more accurate context, it shows that on that occasion, he went to some lengths to work within the system to raise a concern (reading between the lines, it sounds like his boss eventually helped him to inject some Javascript tags into Snowden's personnel file, as a proof-of-concept for the vulnerability), and got nothing but trouble for trying to help in the way that was supposedly approved ("His immediate supervisor signed off on it" from your link). > getting the banker drunk in Geneva to recruit him as a CIA asset Yes, I am shocked the CIA didn't jump in and confirm or deny that this happened.</sarcasm> What proof would you expect? Granted, if it's not (dis)provable it's of little worth to us, but it's not really meant to be something we're persuaded to believe, just an anecdote about a formative experience. I don't know, is it inherently disingenuous to tell a story you can't prove, with the purpose of explaining your worldview? > I find it hard to believe that he walked out the door with thousands upon thousands of documents, but forgot to bring a copy of his own e-mails that would corroborate his story. First, that article says NBC sent a FOIA, but the single email shown was not received from FOIA. I'm not sure it matters, though. How would anyone but the NSA and Snowden know with some certainty that any emails he did produce were legitimate? Would they admit to us if they were legitimate? (Tip: commit hashes of your proof to the Bitcoin blockchain early, so you can at least prove you were thinking about something before a certain date.) Hmm, I guess this goes for all the documents' authenticity, but I can imagine it's easier to confirm those than emails. Maybe he didn't really care about corroborating his story, or wasn't planning "a story" that far in advance. It's kind of funny that this is such a point of contention. Is anyone really saying the NSA would have stopped if they knew some sysadmin named Ed Snowden didn't like it? I guess alone it's pretty small, but it's another of several doubts about his credibility, that's why it's so hotly contested. I agree that his claim about evaluating every document is suspect, and several of the other items you mentioned.