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Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

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Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#221

Post by roywiggins »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #145
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

An agent? No. But friendly towards those friendly to him? Who in the world doesn't do that? After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I don't know about friendly. If you're wanted at home, and living in a foreign country at the pleasure of the local regime, there's going to be hard limits on what you're allowed to do without consequence.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#222

Post by JKCalhoun »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #145
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

An agent? No. But friendly towards those friendly to him? Who in the world doesn't do that? After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

> But friendly towards those friendly to him? Who in the world doesn't do that?

I feel you underestimate people's intelligence — assuming that everyone can be played with a simple overture of friendliness.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#223

Post by [deleted] »

bsimpson wrote: post #201
stjohnswarts wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it would have been an opportunity for Obama to shine but alas he didn't. Just the mediocre, status quo President that we elected. In retrospect, I'll take him any time over our current Mango Mussolini.

People spend so much time patting themselves on the back for electing the First Black President - who was witty, looked leader-ly on TV, and wore a (D) behind his name - that they totally let him off the hook for so many abhorrent policies, like mass surveillance, drone assassinations, and the way he mistreated the biggest whistleblower of our time. It's so disappointing how few people seem to have complex thoughts a…

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#224

Post by reallydude »

slg wrote: post #200
stjohnswarts wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't "just trying to damage the NSA", he was trying to get the truth out about surveillance, the fact that the NSA was damaged was tangential and they shouldn't have been spying on US citizens. The NSA and other gov police entities were basically breaking half the dictates and the entire spirit of the US Constitution.

What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign citizens? I was a big fan of Snowden until he started doing that. That isn't whistleblowing against Constitutional violations and seemed to indicate a shift in his objectives. It now appears that he is just against US spying at large, which is a perfectly acceptable political opinion to have, but it doesn't justify whis…

> What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign citizens?

1. Removing plausible deniability. "Well we might be deeply involved in domestic surveillance but we certainly don't do it outside the US!". The laws that enabled the NSA to do the surveillance were attributed to accessing data that traveled outside the US.

2. Demonstrating the power and reach for legitimacy/plausibility.

I'm sure I can come up with more than the first 2 minutes it took to assemble this post.

https://youtu.be/XEVlyP4_11M?t=822

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#225

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

knightofmars wrote: post #196
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the administration badly, badly mishandled [whistleblowers] Yes, but by design. Other than passing lip service towards transparency. The fact is Obama admin actively sought to silence them. I know this isn’t popular because HN won’t want to hear anything bad about Obama, but it’s a fact. In the seven years of Obama's presidency, the administration launched a record number of cases against those who revealed…

To put my views into this perspective. Am I glad that Snowden and others leaked information on government programs? Yes. That said, I think it's amusing when people need to call out "Under president 's administration..." as if it makes a point by itself and implies something directly about the president that was named. Let's not pretend here, that's exactly what you were doing. Using this same logic, I hope you blame…

>[all had difference scenarios and different times]

Yet all were charged by the Obama Admin, for something people largely agree with and in most scenarios exposed government breaking the laws they themselves set.

As to your argument it doesn’t count because Obama didn’t put the cuffs on them himself - no, it was only Holder and Lynch who did the actual work, who directly reported to and were appointed by Obama himself.

I wonder if you would apply the same “AG autonomy” to decisions Sessions or Barr have made where those don’t reflect or implicate direction from Trump?

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#226

Post by TrueDuality »

mises wrote: post #86
Saus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've bought an Alfa adapter 10+ years ago because you can use them in promiscuous mode. So you can snoop wifi traffic, listen for handshakes and doing so crack WEP/WPA (wifi) encryption. Things probably haven't changed..

They have a little. 5ghz is more common, so you won't get any thing there. WPA2 is significantly harder to crack, and I usually do it on GPU with pyrit or hashcat-ocl and a wordlist. WPA3 is out now, too, and I'm there aren't really any well-established procedures for it yet.

Just FYI WPA2 is pretty solidly and quickly broken (lookup KRACK attacks). WPA3 is unfortunately already partially broken (though currently joining the network / password breaking aren't fully broken, see Dragonblood attacks).

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#227

Post by Forbo »

qroshan wrote: post #194
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #89

We were called "paranoid lunatics" even when we started speaking about ECHELON in the '90ies. Same with the clipper chip. Same with TPM/DRM/ME. Same with Internet centralization. It's worth asking why the general public keeps trusting authorities and distrusts techies, even those among us with a career in security.

I'll trust techies the day they actually are in the job of protecting people and have to deal with real danger of bad actors continuously trying to blow up Western democracies. It's funny the tech/security/sysadmin guys complain that their work is appreciated only when things go wrong, but fail to give the same benefit of the doubt for US law and order.

You mean this "US law and order"?:

Myron W. Orfield, Jr., Deterrence, Perjury, and the Heater Factor, supra note 13, at 83:

> Respondents, including prosecutors, estimate that police commit perjury between 20% and 50% of the time they testify on Fourth Amendment issues.

It should also be noted that many of these respondents did not consider lying at a suppression hearing perjury, infra text accompanying note 47, which would have the effect of deflating these percentages.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#228

Post by giancarlostoro »

roywiggins wrote: post #215
MiroF wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, I think the fact that you think both Snowden and Assange are Russian agents demonstrates that the administrations response was actually quite effective.

Calling him an "agent" is silly, but Snowden is living in Moscow at the pleasure of the Russian regime. It's hard to believe he's entirely free, or even substantially free, to do what he wants. It's pretty clear he never wanted to end up there. The US definitely screwed up by leaving him few other options. He's not an agent of Moscow, but he's not a free man either.

This right here is what I believe. He isn't there out of choice, he is there out of a lack of options.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#229

Post by altendo »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #188
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say exactly this. It's amazing how many Americans honestly think it's clear that Snowden is a "bad guy" because he's close to the Russians. Likewise Assange was pushed into a position that made him very unlikable to the US center-left (he could have probably played his hand a bit better). So mainstream American's are distrustful of both and pretty much everyone hates Assange.

There are lots of us who aren't though. The Russians gave him safe haven and I'm guessing it was the only big country at the time that would do so and challenge US hegemony. As much as I hate them for hacking and influencing our elections I recognize Snowden's decision made logical sense. Any smaller country would have rolled over and turned him over to the US.

In fairness to Snowden, he didn't intend to stay in Russia; his fate was sealed when the US revoked his passport.[1][2] I can't imagine Snowden being much of a fan of Russia given a) what he probably knew during his time working at the NSA and b) actually living there.

EDIT: formatting

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-23318475

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-passport/u-s...

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#230

Post by chiefalchemist »

rosser wrote: post #173
chiefalchemist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Never post any facts about the BHO admin on HN or you'll be down-voted. It's amazing how many people have been sucked into the smooth and confident talk (and the complete lack then of media fueled outrage). Too many people's confirmation bais forces them to forget that actions speak louder than words. If DJT did even half of the questionable things BHO did there would be blood in the streets. Point that out? Do…

To be clear, I downvoted both your and your parent's comments, not for saying disparaging things about Obama, his record, his hawkishness (many of which criticisms I quite eagree with), or anything otherwise negative about him , but rather for saying that HN is a place where that stuff is wrongthink. Disagreement isn't persecution.

So you downvoted _my_ experience? -Time and again? On NH? Because my experience is "wrong"? Oh. I see.

I wish had a reply for that but I can't even get my head wrapped around the irony and the absurdity.

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