N, that is my whole point. People are very much misinformed. Horribly misinformed. Ill try and dig up the link(s) but snowden had a history of grandstanding that dates back to highschool. He was not a noble whistleblower, he wanted attention.
An unsubstantiated ad-hominem attack. As long as he promises "Ill try and dig up the link(s) but" and never gets around to it, he can accuse Snowden of anything he wants to make up that fits his narrative.
If he had any proof that countered the message he's trying to divert attention away from, he'd provide links to that, instead of just promising and failing to provide links that supported his unsubstantiated attack on the messenger.
It's ironic how irishcoffee wants to divert attention away from the facts and instead towards Snowden himself, much more than Snowden himself wants the attention. It's a textbook example of "narcissism by proxy". Snowden isn't a narcissist just because irishcoffee wants him to be the center of attention.
Ill try and dig up the link(s) but I'm not full of shit so here it is:
Snowden also told the Guardian that he does not want his personal story to divert attention from the larger story revealed by his disclosures. “I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.”
“I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.” He added: “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”
You said people were misinformed, then you changed the topic to Snowden's personality and high school record. Just what misinformation are you referring to, and can you provide some non-anecdotal evidence to correct the misinformation? Are you saying that it's Snowden's personality and high school record that people are misinformed about, or the NSA?
Who was misinformed and who was spreading misinformation when Clapper directly lied under oath when he was testifying in front of congress?
How about focusing attention on the content of the leaks, and the misinformation the NSA itself is spreading, instead of Snowden's personality? I'm more interested to know how your DoD friends think about what was leaked, and what Clapper lied about, than who leaked it.
I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior. I don't think you're doing it intentionally, and I may have poorly phrased my quick response, but I feel like you took my response quite a bit out of context. Everyone was trying to figure themselves out back in high school. I'm not judging that at all.
I can't speak to Clapper, only he can. I don't think its a far stretch of the imagination to say that there are far, far bigger things at play than his testimony. Have you ever visited the NSA museum? It's open to the public. The US actually intercepted the message the night before the Pearl Harbor attack happened, but didn't have the resources to decode it in time. (https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/virtua... ctrl+f 'harbor' should be the 3rd/last result). The point being, perhaps there are bigger things at play.
I can't speak for my 'DoD friends' as you ask, mostly because they don't talk about the specifics of their work. I asked a buddy once if they monitor US citizens. He said something to the effect of: "we don't need to monitor people, they monitor themselves via facebook, twitter, and instagram. How hard do you think it is to find publicly available information?" After I was 'enlightened' to that, it made sense. People literally put what they cooked for dinner on the internet. Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered. No laws are broken, no rights are violated. If you care about your privacy, get off social media.
Also, as much as this may annoy you, NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all. That is the jurisdiction of the FBI. This is one of the things my friends find so amusing, people seem to not understand this. That being said, if a packet goes from DC to GA to CN to CA tp US, the foreign hop means: its not domestic traffic. As we have very recently seen, CN has very little issue mucking with traffic that crosses their direct sphere of influence. Perhaps its much harder to tell what kind of foreign traffic should be inspected, and maybe the initial location of origin was spoofed, and its not that easy to figure all this stuff out. Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve?
I don't think you're going to like anything I've just said, but just think about it. Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security? Do you really think the DoD has the resources to actually monitor, in real time, the general US population? Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed? The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized. How many people lie on their tax returns every year and get away with it? If the government can't effectively audit the almighty dollar, do you really think they're Big Brother?
Edit: I can't edit my parent response, this is the best I can do. I am looking for a specific article that detailed Snowden from highschool up to his current life. I really will try my best to find this article, and will update as soon as I can find it. My 1 y/o daughter just went to bed, and I will quickly be following suit. I would honesly be willing to do some sort of silly HN-style AMA if people are interested. I'm not some internet troll. I went to Chesapeake High school, which is in the same athletic district as Arundel High school, Where Snowden went. I have no desire or reason to grandstand about anything.
>I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior.
Again, this does nothing to establish why his behavior in high school is even remotely relevant to his behavior today - and even if it is, so what? He exposed the illegal behavior of the NSA because he's an attention whore? And that somehow invalidates the illegal-ness of what the NSA is doing?
The man could be a fucking sociopathic pedophile serial killer and it wouldn't matter. His personality has nothing to do with the content of the leaks. Repeat this sentence until it sinks in, please!
Why are you so hell-bent on ad-homming Snowden?
>Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered.
And those that are a little bit more careful? What about those edge cases? You know, and I know, and your bosses know, that it's not the people documenting their lives on Facebook that drives the NSA to backdoor encryption algorithms.
>NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all.
The content of the Snowden leaks proves this to be a a damn lie. Your understanding cannot compete with documents straight from the horse's mouth. Hell, you could be the director of the entire fucking department and it wouldn't matter - the facts disprove this narrative.
>Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve?
The smartest people employed by the three letter agencies are beholden to the US constitution, something they apparently need reminded of.
If you're sucking up info from US citizens, that is not a "oops, let's get an intern to fix this broken footer" like it was a bug on some random rails site, that is a "you just broke the fucking supreme law of the land, please report to the DoJ for your inquiry"
>Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security?
Everyone is a "threat to national security" until proven otherwise. Again, we have the authoritative leaks to go on, which rank about a million times higher than any apologia you can possibly offer.
And if they're not a threat to national security, then why are they in those databases? Search, seizure, and all that...
>Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed?
And yet, my shit is in their database. Why is that? What gives them the right?
>The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized.
Because, yknow, the people responsible for passing a damn budget are the same ones that are responsible for orchestrating the SIGINT programs. Cmon, you know better than that. "The Government" is not a singular entity. This disorganized entity can apparently architect and effectively run programs such as PRISM, DISHFIRE, XKEYSCORE, and that operation that intercepts general purpose hardware to install backdoors who's name I can't remember right now.
Being a mess of bureaucracy and graft has never stopped any government, anywhere, from perpetrating massive crimes against its people. With that in mind, this is absolutely not a defense, nor even a mitigation, of the crimes committed.
I apologize if these posts come off as overly hostile, but you are making fallacious arguments, and you are handwaving inconvenient facts. It would be better for all concerned if you'd stop doing that.
I realize you won't change your opinion, and I respect that. I responded to a comment below addressing some of this if you'd like to read it.
It really just confuses me that a group like HN, generally very open-minded, are so willing to assume the very worst based on very limited, curated, non-refutable evidence. Non-refutable because of security concerns. Its like someone ripped every 18th page out of a book, and from that subset, created their own version of the book. They changed the ending, and flipped the protagonist and antagonist. The story is not accurate.
That's a more complicated issue than a simple 'he lied to Congress'. What he said to in front of Congress was flat out wrong - no one's disputing that. Did he lie? That would require an intent to mislead the committee, which would be a difficult thing to do since everyone on the committee had previously been briefed on it. In fact, he corrected his testimony to Sen. Wyden's staffers several days later when he realized the mistake according to the ODNI General Counsel[1]. He couldn't correct himself publicly because the information is classified.
This calls into question why Sen. Wyden asked Clapper to begin with. It's illegal for Clapper to disclose classified information publicly, but as a sitting senator, Wyden would have immunity for anything brought to the Senate floor. If Sen. Wyden thought it was an issue that should have been brought forward publicly to the constituents that he represents (which he apparently did, since he asked the question in a public forum), he should have done it himself instead of trying to get Clapper to take the fall for him.
Again, that implies that he had intent to mislead. It's easy to prove that he was wrong - it's a lot harder to prove intent. Wyden decided to ask that question to a senior intelligence official who was not part of NSA (Clapper is Director of National Intelligence - responsible primarily for collaboration between the intelligence agencies) and he asked it out of the blue during a hearing that mostly focused on tensions in the Middle East. It's within the realm of possibility that Clapper actually misinterpreted his question, or just plain did not consider a program that we later found only had 23 people working on it (out of around a hundred thousand or so people across all of the intelligence agencies). Wyden clearly knew the answer to his question and wanted the public to know it. Did Wyden lie to his constituents through omission?
>"and he asked it out of the blue during a hearing that mostly focused on tensions in the Middle East"
Are we talking about the same question? Your claim directly contradicts Wyden's statement on the matter.
Do you believe that Wyden's statement is true? And if not, what evidence do you have, and do you believe Wyden is a liar because he intended to mislead people by saying the following? Or did you accidentally make a "too cute by half" factual error or "least untruthful statement" when you claimed he "asked it out of the blue", and it was never your intent to mislead?
>"So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance."
Yes, I would consider it out of the blue. Sen Wyden posed follow-up question to something that Gen Alexander said 8 months earlier, and he waited until the day before to pose it instead to DNI Clapper at a committee hearing that 1) was focused on developments in overseas national security threats over the past year and 2) Gen Alexander wasn't going to be present for. I don't doubt for a second that Clapper didn't see it - you don't wait until the last moment to submit a question unless you're trying to pull a political stunt. If he sent it a week or two prior, I could understand some outrage.
I have no idea what was going through Clapper's head at the time - maybe he did consider the 215 program or maybe he didn't. What he said was factually wrong and he tried to correct it but couldn't do so publicly.
This isn't trying to get the truth out - this is politics. Wyden is an elected representative - he has a duty to act in the best interests of his constituents. He was fully briefed on the program. If he felt that the information should have been public, he should have made it public - as a sitting member of the Senate he was authorized to do so. James Clapper was not. Wyden didn't correct Clapper on the spot. He didn't ask for more details. He didn't ask something like 'can you address any domestic collection programs that would fall under the Section 215 authorities?' He didn't do a damn thing publicly until the program was leaked months later, then used it as an opportunity to advance his own political career. Don't act like Clapper is some sort villain but Wyden is a hero.
I certainly am interested in talking about this intellectually, and presumably so were you when you just said "We can talk all day about politicians lying in front of congress. Would you like to?"
Yes, I would like to. Why do you think I'm not interested in talking about this intellectually? Do you not believe me when I say that? When I asked you a direct question in response to an accusation you made, and you dodged the question by trying to go meta. Did you not mean what you said when you invited me to talk about lying politicians all day?
To me, it appears that you are the one who is not interested in talking about this intellectually, so you tried to change the subject to attacks on Snowden's personality, then when that didn't work, you avoided answering a simple question by going meta, then when that didn't work, you projected your own disinterest in having an intellectual discussion onto me.
If that's the best line of argument that NSA apologists can come up with, it's no wonder they're having problems recruiting honest intelligent people.
You claimed that "They changed the ending, and flipped the protagonist and antagonist. The story is not accurate." Who do you mean, exactly? Please explain your accusations, or withdraw them if you're unwilling to support your unsubstantiated claim that the story is not accurate.
All you've offered as evidence against the story so far are your ad-hominem attacks against Snowden, right out of the US Government's playbook to demonize him and distract from the real story, just as Snowden himself predicted.
To continue having an intellectual discussion, please answer my question:
Is James Clapper a protagonist or antagonist for lying to congress?
Wow talk about ad-hominem, that's a brass-bound example right there. Just post the link without the running commentary on another contributors character, please.
I'll agree it was a bit mean, but I have sympathy for the annoyance that prompted it. irishcoffee responded to a thoughtful comment about how culture can shape attitudes, with a one-line quip about how his DoD buddies say communities like HN are clueless, following up with specific but unsourced claims about Snowden being an attention-seeker, and ultimately plays the card "I'm a single dad working full time. Time is hard to come by" as an excuse for why he didn't source them. IMO then it's not fallacious to expose that for the lacking and possibly deliberately disingenuous argumentative tactic that it is.
If he chooses to post actual evidence, we should move on to discussing that. As long as he only presents his "hominem" (in the form of secondhand claims from his friends, what he supposedly read once, and what the other demands on his personal time are) as evidence, ad-hominem is the only response he'll get and deserve.
I appreciate your candor. I would like to back up my claims, and given the time, would do so at my lunch break/free time tomorrow. I have no reason to lie and nothing to hide.
Thanks. I realize I may have sounded like I was definitively accusing you of lying or manipulating us. I'm not, but a more accurate description would be that so far your behavior looks suspicious and you haven't given very solid information. Although I tend to "side with" Snowden, I would not be surprised if there is more to him than meets the eye, so I would be interested in seeing if he has a history of grandstanding. (On the other hand, as others have pointed out, if what he has released is correct and against the will of the citizens/law/human rights, does it really matter if the disclosure fits a pattern of attention-seeking from the messenger?)
P.S. What may be irking some commenters is that HN threads are so "time-sensitive." In another hour this thread will probably slip off the front page and out of mind. So some people may be anxious to see a source before that happens. Or they downvoted so agressively, so that unsourced claims will be seen by fewer people during the small period of time the thread is active, while it could legitimately take you a few days to find a source.
I'm still looking for the specific article, but this works in a pinch. He is very open and caviler about being the moral police. He decides what is right and wrong, and flip-flops his ideals when it serves him.
His attention-seeking, which you've latched on to, was one example of his personality. The links I posted show more of what I was trying to convey. He marches to the beat of his own moral code and changed it on a whim whenever it served his needs.
I brought all that up to say, he leaked for his own benefit, or out of anger for being wronged, or something. What he leaked, whatever you've seen, is what he wanted you to see. He painted his own picture to the world, and the people he wronged can't set the record straight because of national security concerns. Its an unfair fight.
Everyone is convinced NSA is out to get them, to monitor them, invade their privacy. throwing the law out the window and carte blanche having their way with whatever data they want.
NSA I'm sure, has a huge legal team. Before they worked at NSA, the lawyers passed the bar. They took an oath to uphold the law. They wouldn't just let people break the law, if for no other reason than, they might get caught. I'm also pretty sure each DoD entity has an IG department. If someone does something wrong, and gets caught, they get in a lot of trouble.
There is a whole series of checks and balances in place. If something is wrong, its the law you have a beef with.
And again to answer your question, he leaked what he wanted, painted the picture he wanted, manipulated people to believe whatever he wants them to, knowing he couldn't be contradicted. He could literally say whatever he wants at this point and people gobble it up. People believe what they want, based on what he says, without ever pretending to consider the idea of possibly entertaining the idea of giving the DoD the benefit of the doubt.
He asked: "Why do you feel that Snowden's alleged attention-seeking behavior is more important than the content of the leaks?"
You said nothing about why his behavior is more important than the content of the leaks. What's so unimportant about the content of the leaks, that you think something so trivial as your armchair psychiatric evaluation of his personality is more important than anything he leaked?
"If someone does something wrong, and gets caught, they get in a lot of trouble." Did Clapper get in a lot of trouble for lying to congress under oath?
Though I recognize the thread is pretty much over with, I'll add on to irishcoffee's claim...
It's very important to understand what Snowden's motives in evaluating the validity of the NSA documents. None of the documents have been released in their entirety, and often times the only thing that is released is a paragraph or two, or perhaps a couple of slides. Is there enough context in the partial source material presented to back up the article's claims, or is there more to the story? There have been several times when the media released one story, only to be contradicted when they later released further portions of the same document. For example, see [1], [2] and [3].
If he's whistleblowing on these program like he claims, there's no reason to doubt the validity of the documents; if he's just a disgruntled systems administrator with an axe to grind, the documents we see may cut down to remove the context and just show us what he and Greenwald want us to see, knowing full well that the NSA generally can't provide evidence denying the claims without releasing more classified information. When you add things like claims that other writers were forbidden from criticizing or contradicting Greenwald's narrative on Snowden at the Guardian[4] and at the Intercept on other subjects[5], it adds to suspicions that we're getting a distorted view of the subject.
Regarding Snowden's grandstanding, you don't even need to go all of the way back to high school to start seeing claims that don't quite mesh with reality. He lied about his qualifications to get his initial job as an NSA contractor[6] and by his own admission took the Booz Allen job specifically to gather information to leak[7]. That doesn't strike me as whistleblowing - instead of "I saw something wrong and I'm reporting it" it's instead "I'm determined to find something wrong and report it." That alone should sound sirens in everyone's head that whatever was released had a skewed perspective to it.
He claimed to be a senior intelligence official, while the NSA claims he was a low-level systems administrator. If we look at his actual words, though, compare for example his description of PRISM in 2013[8] to his description of it in 2014 after all of the details were released[9]. They're so different that it's apparent to me that he didn't actually know any of the details on PRISM beforehand except for general information mixed with his own assumptions. Other sources have documented a whole litany of other contradictions in his statements ([10] for example).
I've seen so many people say not to focus on Snowden, focus on the documents, but you can't fully evaluate the context of the documents without knowing his motive. Is he a heroic whistleblower like he claims, or is he a disgruntled ex-employee trying to lash out at his former employer and gain notoriety in the process through misleading disclosures?
Thank you for very clearly articulating whats I've been fumbling around trying to say, and for doing the reference legwork in a much better way that I did. I feel like only one side of this story is ever represented around here.
Excellent, thanks. Even the professional reporting on PRISM seemed to evolve over time (or maybe my understanding evolved) -- I wonder if it's a similar reason that Snowden's statements changed? Anyway, I agree it's suspicious, and Greenwald is a bit slippery too.
I do have some objections off the top of my head, if somewhat superficial.
> by his own admission took the Booz Allen job specifically to gather information to leak ... instead of "I saw something wrong and I'm reporting it" it's instead "I'm determined to find something wrong and report it."
He'd already decided there was something wrong, though: "“Much of what I saw in Geneva [as a CIA spy around 2007],” he said, “really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world.”" and "Snowden has said he first contemplated leaking confidential documents around 2008." On a different altercation, "The incident convinced him, Snowden says, that trying to work through the system would lead only to reprisals." And he started stealing documents before Booz Allen Hamilton, according to the NSA: "It was that summer of 2012, Ledgett says, when Snowden made his first illegal downloads."[1]
Those claims about his formative experiences could of course be fabrication to help his credibility, or maybe semi-honest retroactive re-framing of genuine incidents to justify his current course in his own mind. I'll assume they're honest, for purposes of explaining why I don't find the Booz Allen job so damning.
So, he's made a decent case that taking the Booz Allen Hamilton job, while driven by admitted "ulterior" motive, wasn't merely "I'll have a peek at secret info and see who I can 'sell' it to later". He already had some ideas what was wrong and who he wanted to tell about it. Now, I will grant you that his perception of the documents he gathered to support his opinion was then biased, and that the collection of documents available biases what they can be used to claim. But that seems an unavoidable part of humans forming and expressing opinions. So long as his "opinion" wasn't formed based on what would "play well" in the media or something like that, I don't really see an issue here.
If I haven't beaten this to death, another way to say what I'm trying to say here: imagine he worked in the same place for 5 years, and then in the last 3 months decided to start actively gathering documents to support a thesis. Would you say that skewed his results the same way? Why or why not? Because arguably, he did work in the same environment for 5+ years, and I don't see why just switching to another defense contractor for access poisons any opinion-forming or research he does there. If it does, we have to distrust anybody who has ever acted on an opinion in order to persuade us of it, because that means anything they say is skewed and they are now trying to fit facts into their narrative instead of the other way around. (Which is probably a good way to lean toward, but not very helpful if you take it to an extreme and want to ever learn about things that happen outside of your immediate consciousness.)
> is he a disgruntled ex-employee trying to lash out at his former employer
But it only became his former employer by Snowden's own choice to leak, as far as I understand both Snowden and the government say. Are you saying he now regrets losing his cushy $122k/yr job with Booz Allen, so we can't trust him? That's a stretch IMO -- the documents were obtained before his employer became the ex-employer, so they can't inherently be tainted afterward. And at this point, it's probably mostly the journalists picking through the documents and potentially coming up with misleading excerpts and framing, but why would their reason to do so be to spite their source's ex-employer? Snowden might be a naive idealist, an attention seeker, a troll, a spy, or something else, but "disgruntled ex-employee" is not making any sense to me. Maybe I'm taking it differently than you meant.
> 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
> 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.
> it seems like the NSA & co. would be gleefully trumpeting such a thing if they knew it.
I don't think so for two reasons:
1) they don't talk much about anything unless they absolutely have to for classification and vetting reasons (this gets into topics like overclassification and whether or not things are really necessary for national security - but that's a different debate). For example, the op-ed that Michael Hayden wrote[1] in the USA Today in response to the 'NSA audit reveals thousands of violations' articles was apparently originally going to be written by the NSA itself, but the declassification and vetting process prevented a timely, point-by-point response[2]. I'm surprised that the e-mail was released so quickly. Overall, the NSA's response has been bumbling, and I think that has a lot to do with existing public relations policy that doesn't fit well with a fast-moving media.
2) There's a pending court case, and it's usually good policy to stay mum about anything regarding any pending cases until afterwards. I don't know that it's necessarily good policy now, as Snowden is probably never going to come back and face trial, but he is still indicted.
> 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.
No, it's an indication that we should treat the leaks may have a skewed perspective, and we should keep that in mind when evaluating them. The credibility issue comes into place when he gets on national television and tells the American people “I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities. And I went even further in this, to say that they could be unconstitutional, that they were sort of abrogating our model of government in a way that empowered presidents to override our statutory laws. And this was made very clear. And the response was, more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, ‘You should stop asking questions.’"[3] The e-mail he sent did in fact ask a question about legal authorities, but nothing like what he described to the public; there were no concerns raised at all. Even his description of the response was a lie: instead of 'you should stop asking questions' the guy said 'Please give me a call if you'd like to discuss further'. On top of that, the e-mail was sent months after he first contacted Greenwald and Poitras - he was almost on his way out the door to Hong Kong at that point. That's the kind of stuff that speaks to his credibility. When you know that he hates the NSA and will make bald-faced lies on television should raise some flags when evaluating the leaks.
This is getting away from the Snowden credibility issue and more to issues with the reporting, but ...
> If he just brought every document about PRISM,
... for which all of the reporting turned out to be wrong. They blew a massive intelligence source over perceived mass civil liberties violations when the truth ended up being 'We can get content on specific accounts from Google/Yahoo/etc. when we present them with a court order.'
> or just the Verizon metadata arrangement,
... I probably wouldn't have had so much of a problem if he released that one and stopped there. Even so, the details from initial story still didn't match reality. On top of that, the program has debated at length in public and in Congress since it was initially disclosed back in 2005[4].
> or just personally hacking sysadmins at telecoms,
1) I don't care that GCHQ hacked Belgacom - it does not affect me at all; 2) we still lack a lot of context behind this - Why did GCHQ break in? What information did they obtain? Where they using this access to spy on legitimate intelligence targets, or something we would object to? The story was presented simply as 'they hacked a Belgian telecommunications company - be outraged!'
> or just tapping Google's private fiber lines, or just tapping Yahoo's private fiber lines,
I'm pretty sure Google and Yahoo didn't lay their own transcontinental undersea fiber optic lines. That's the nature of the internet - at some point your communications pass over lines owned by someone else. I'm a lot more angry at Google for not bothering to encrypt their transnational data than I am at GCHQ for intercepting it - that means the intelligence services of EVERY country their traffic passed through had access to it.
> it would not be near as powerful as showing they are doing all of the above, and more!
Regarding NSA staying quiet for classification and legal reasons: I presented an instance of them releasing info when it served their ends, as a counterpoint to this, but I suppose ultimately we can't count on them announcing anything like that.
I am a bit bothered by the general response, "They would win this argument if they allowed themselves to tell you everything" that is often given in support of the spies. To outsiders, it's indistinguishable from "We know we'd be shut down if we admitted what's going on, but we feel the ends justify the means, or we like the money, etc." It feels unfair and underhanded, but I guess it is unavoidable and legitimate too.
That's a great point about the timing of that email. Also about "he hates the NSA and will make bald-faced lies" synergistically combining to discredit him (though I am not so convinced Snowden is the one lying.)
> the program has debated at length in public and in Congress since it was initially disclosed back in 2005
Yes, it wasn't really new, but if releasing new documents spurred greater public debate and nearly caused the House of Reps to vote to defund the program[1], is it not an effective activism tactic? I mean, you can call it traitorous, but you seem to be saying it was totally unnecessary, when its release caused a law to be drafted and voted on that probably wouldn't have otherwise.
> The story was presented simply as 'they hacked a Belgian telecommunications company - be outraged!'
And people wouldn't be outraged if there was no merit to it. Around here, we're all wondering if we will be personally hacked because of one user (or potential users) on a system we have authority over, and what consequences that could have on our personal life and reputation, employment, and our company's reputation. Yeah, it feels sort of silly to think NSA could bother me, but the targets of that hack would have said the same, until they learned the truth (or whatever filtered version the journalists fed them.)
Yeah, I was oversimplifying about the nature of those fiber lines, and you're right that it was irresponsible of them. Well, I guess you can thank Snowden for forcing companies like Google and Yahoo to clean up their act. If there's one legacy he'll have, it's that more engineers will think of the NSA bogeyman (justified or not, illegal or not, accurately portrayed or not) whenever they design things. Maybe Snowden's ulterior motive is to scare people into better security, by lying if he must? ;)
P.S. What do you think of William Binney? He basically supports Snowden and says some of the same things, but maybe doesn't have as bad of credibility issues.
> I am a bit bothered by the general response, "They would win this argument if they allowed themselves to tell you everything" that is often given in support of the spies.
I don't think they're winning the argument here, at least not as far as public approval. It's completely anecdotal, but I've noticed something interesting about the kinds of responses people have on the subject: people who don't follow the issue at all tend to completely disapprove of Snowden, call him a traitor, cite terrorism, etc.; people who are somewhat passionate and read all of on the subject tend to have the polar opposite opinion; and people who go into extreme depth on the subject (reading all of the leaked documents, reading the laws, watching the debates and the congressional hearings, etc.) tend have much more nuanced opinions. It's hard to have debates on the subject because of both the amount of secrecy involved and the amount of misinformation floating around. I think the NSA needs a big adjustment to how it handles interactions with the media if it's going to gain any traction with the public. At the same, the American public needs to come to grips with the fact we employ people for the purpose of spying, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
> I mean, you can call it traitorous, but you seem to be saying it was totally unnecessary, when its release caused a law to be drafted and voted on that probably wouldn't have otherwise.
Actually if Snowden had stopped at the domestic phone records collection program, I don't think many people would really have much issue with him. It's everything that came afterwards that bugs me. The 215 program was and continues to be very controversial. What doesn't help the debate is the amount of misinformation about the program. The PCLOB laid the entire program out in one of their reports[1], and several officials have summarized exactly how they are using the data and what they're allowed to use it for (see [2] for example), but it continues to draw arguments citing things like this[3] where they include several types of metadata that the NSA isn't permitted to get like location data, names, message content. I'd love to see someone to do a research paper where pull the exact types of data collected under this program from 100 or so phones and say 'this is the actual information we were able to obtain from it'. I've done it myself on a very small sample of phones (3 phones over about two months) and made some interesting conclusions, but nothing like some of the detractors have made.
I'm not saying that legitimate violations of the law shouldn't be reported, but we haven't seen that. What we have seen a lot of is 'look at this tool/program that NSA is using', then an insinuation that it could be used against anyone without actually showing who it has been used against or why. The giant revelation that Glenn Greenwald promised showing actual Americans who were targeted by the NSA ended up instead showing 5 Americans that the FBI through FISA warrants. If something bad is going on, I want to see actual wrongdoing, not potential for wrongdoing. The police have the technical capability to indiscriminately gun down every person they see, but no one is arguing that we should disarm them based on something they could do.
> Around here, we're all wondering if we will be personally hacked because of one user (or potential users) on a system we have authority over, and what consequences that could have on our personal life and reputation, employment, and our company's reputation.
I think one of the biggest problems that has arisen from the Snowden revelations is that it's completely upended people's perceptions of the threat model. Telecommunications providers shouldn't be surprised that they're a target, because they would be a prime target for hackers even if there weren't any intelligence services. They sit in a very privileged position on the internet. For the most part, I'd say the people that have to worry about being targeted by the NSA or any other intelligence service already knew ahead of time that they were potential targets. If you don't deal with anything pertaining to national security issues or provide means to gain access to national security information, your primary concern should not be the NSA (or GCHQ/Mossad/FSB/BnD/etc.)
This leads to lots of bad security practices as people try to secure themselves from the NSA but leave themselves more vulnerable to more plausible threats. Tor is a primary example - it might hide you from someone trying to target you specifically, but will make you significantly more vulnerable to someone who doesn't care who they're attacking (i.e. just about every criminal). Articles like this[4] made me cringe: battered women were seeking some means to escape from their abusive boyfriends/spouses, and the Tor Project managed to convince them that they would be safer from them by browsing the web using Tor.
With regards to William Binney, he hasn't worked in the agency for nearly 15 years, so I don't put much credence into anything he says after 2001. His description of ThinThread, which he advocates, sounds terrifying: instead of trying to filter out and discard as much domestic communication as possible, ThinThread apparently takes in all of the communications and encrypts the domestic traffic for later use if they obtain a warrant. It's hard to definitely evaluate it without a more detailed technical description, though.
Your first paragraph reeks of confirmation bias. It's a truism (and/or a pat on your own back) for you to say "and people who go into extreme depth on the subject [...] tend have much more nuanced opinions." Such thinking makes it all too easy to discard countervailing opinions. Of course my opinion is nuanced and correct! Those other people simply haven't read enough, otherwise they would come to the same conclusions that I have!
I don't have much to add to the discussion other than to say that people have spent miles of text, sweating this thread out, yet no one has budged a bit on either side of this discussion. Some generosity and good faith "shoe-switching" might go a long way in seeing the middle ground between "the government is completely in the clear to keep on trucking" and "the NSA should be abolished."
As an aside, I wish HN would give you notifications when someone responds to your comment - I didn't see this for two days and I'm not sure if you're ever going to see this, but anyway...
I wasn't trying to imply that my opinion was the correct one - of course, I am naturally a bit biased on the matter. :) I was trying to say that the whole "the NSA is 100% evil" argument is just as ignorant as the "the terrorists will win if the NSA doesn't read your e-mail" argument. Based on your 2nd paragraph, I think we're in agreement on that front.
I've watched debates like [1] where you put the NSA and ACLU in the same room and civil discussion ensues. I'd like to see more debate on those lines.
I appreciate your candor too, and I'm taking what you've said at face value, that you want to back up your claims, and have no reason to lie and nothing to hide. And that you would like to talk all day about politicians lying in front of congress.
So please answer my question:
Is James Clapper a protagonist or antagonist for lying to congress?
And my friends would be amused by your friends. I know a few DoD-type guys who operate in these informal government contractor circles. I have seen some wild stuff involving private companies, NASA and intel agencies. Lot of these CIA things are being outsourced to contractors. Similar to the private intel network of Sid Blumenthal providing info to Hillary Clinton, from an easily hacked AOL email no less.
The power and influence, along with whims of eccentric players, in these contractor groups is really getting out of hand.
And we all want attention in some way, including you for posting your comments and me for mine. It could be both a noble thing Snowden did and something he wants some recognition for doing. Basing your analysis on whatever he did in high school is quite silly. Most everybody was looking for some attention then and likely going about it the wrong way.
This kind of thing is a great example of why Snowden had to release a large trove of documents to reporters. Earlier whistleblowers were easily dismissed this way, but now the personal attacks are basically irrelevant -- we have the documents and can make our own judgments about who's horribly misinforming us.
He could generate a lot more attention for him as a person if he wanted. Instead he let the world largely focus on the material he could extract. Which is good, because this shouldn't be about him: If it was the media and government would try even harder to find irksome material about him as a person (Bullshit like "his girlfriend was a stripper, and this is why we should not trust the material").
edit: typo