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On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

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Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#121

Post by midasz »

denton-scratch wrote: post #117
yreg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth almost everyone but US government predicted the Russians won't invade. Zelensky himself predicted there is no imminent invasion and complained that the west creates panic which is harmful to UA economy.

This is true; and I find it hard to understand. I mean, I can understand Zelensky talking it down; as the public face of Ukraine's government, I assume everything he says is propaganda of some kind (whether or not it's true). But back in December, the satellite photos were showing the huge build-up of troops and armour on Ukraine's border. I didn't believe it was just an "exercise", nor did I believe it was sabre-rat…

> This is true; and I find it hard to understand.

Russia actually invading Ukraine full-on was the most irrational and self-destructive thing Putin could've done. By all measures it was and still is a terrible idea. Only if you thought Putin was a madman you could've predicted it but before the invasion that wasn't his reputation at all IMO. I think he was seen as relatively pragmatic and rational (for a thug).

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#122

Post by denton-scratch »

testcaseuser wrote: post #9
Tao3300 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His behavior isn't what a whistleblower does. You need to explain this. Why should a whistleblower have to go to prison? Don't deflect with whataboutisms.

[flagged]

> A whistleblower doesn't abscond to a hostile country with troves of top secret data.

Why not?

The fact of being a whistleblower is orthogonal to whether you abscond and where to. And Russia wasn't a "hostile country" - many of the biggest companies in the US had operations in Russia.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#123

Post by reducesuffering »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #103
0xDEF wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The character assassination of Snowden Well nobody forced him to repeat Russian propaganda in late 2021 and early 2022 that "Russia was totally not going to invade".

I think most of that happened well before 2021. And he may well have believed they were not going to invade — I totally believed that, because the alternative was just too depressing. Most of my friends, relatives and acquaintances (Russian-speaking, but not in Russia) were of a similar opinion.

He claimed it just a week before the invasion!

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=...

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#124

Post by Cthulhu_ »

reducesuffering wrote: post #123
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of that happened well before 2021. And he may well have believed they were not going to invade — I totally believed that, because the alternative was just too depressing. Most of my friends, relatives and acquaintances (Russian-speaking, but not in Russia) were of a similar opinion.

He claimed it just a week before the invasion! https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=...

He doesn't claim anything, he just didn't believe it at that point. He literally says "If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong."

He admits that he could be wrong beforehand!

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#125

Post by dTal »

mike_d wrote: post #30
AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #20

10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the do…

> The fact that the government pursued Snowden They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something. Instead he plotted an escape to an openly host…

>He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status

No, he wouldn't. Google "snowden fair trial". He has always said that he is perfectly willing to come to the US and do exactly as you describe, if the government is willing to guarantee a fair trial. It isn't.

Go on, Google "snowden fair trial". Go do it. It's a key part of the story you're apparently unaware of. It'll take 5 seconds.

Sibling comment pointing out same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401553

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#126

Post by reducesuffering »

Sharlin wrote: post #114
0xDEF wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The character assassination of Snowden Well nobody forced him to repeat Russian propaganda in late 2021 and early 2022 that "Russia was totally not going to invade".

In late 2021 and early 2022 almost everybody, including most European heads of state, believed Russia was just bluffing and wasn't going to invade (because they correctly thought it would be incredibly irrational).

Then maybe you should start putting a bit more trust on the people giving you accurate information predictions, like the US State dept. and people like Dmitri Alperovitch https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1473362460673515527 , and less trust on Russian state propaganda spreaders like Snowden, https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1493646431743356931?lang=....

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#127

Post by scafellpike »

kome wrote: post #94

This really feels like CIA NSA propaganda. As if nothing wrong happened. What the hell. The character assassination of Snowden&co in the anglophone sphere is absurd, and probably manufactured. But this didn't quite happen in other languages. Assange trials are just mind-blowing and worrisome, and yet the simple truth is here: who told the truth is in jail, and who committed war crimes is outside.

Why does Snowden's character even matter? He's not the story and his personal qualities aren't relevant to the discussion. He could be a neo-Nazi and a child murderer and it still wouldn't change anything about the facts of mass surveillance.

Every second that we spend debating whether or not Edward Snowden is a good person is a second that we're not asking hard questions about the nature of our relationship with the state. Almost as if that's the whole point.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#128

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bhawks wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #2

I still haven't gotten my head around the valorization of Bill Binney, who does not appear to have been an opponent of dragnet surveillance, as he's so often portrayed, but rather of inefficient and poorly managed dragnet surveillance. ThinThread, the system he designed and left NSA over when they didn't pursue it, still left it up to NSA to determine which data to make available, and still presumed NSA would collect…

Whatever system there is in place doesn't seem to do much to address: + lone wolfs such as Uvalde, Las Vegas, Nashville, Waukesha... + Cross border drug operations + Transnational incidents like Nord Stream, spy balloons, COVID. + Military operations in Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan We are asked to relinquish so many freedoms and spend so much money on what, exactly? The 'we can't tell you because it'll jeopardize all…

That's the problem with "secret" agencies: you don't know they're effective because they don't publish what they know or what they prevented.

You hear about successful lone wolves, they become national news. You don't hear about the people that were taken in for questioning after posting a threatening message on the internets, which flags up in the FBI's systems right away.

There's plenty of news of intercepted drug shipments. This is actually an example of the inverse, because you'll never hear about the ones that do get across. I'm sure there's a lot more that comes through compared to what is intercepted though, else they wouldn't try it.

Nord Stream was known in advance; US intelligence was aware of the attack and warned Ukraine not to go through with it: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-n...

The spy balloons were detected the second they took off from China. NORAD had eyes on them from launch.

I'm not sure why Covid is in your list.

Anyway, tl;dr, the very nature of this means you won't hear what's being prevented until maybe years later as things are declassified.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#129

Post by dTal »

varjag wrote: post #82
jakobnissen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't. He went to Ecuador, but the US cancelled his passport while he was connecting in Russia. And he didn't bring any classified materials with him. So it's 100% on the US government that he ended up in Russia and not Ecuador

It's amazing how the two countries antagonistic to the USA that he was supposed to travel between cared about such a formality, isn't it.

The passport control officers care, yes. That's their job.

Once it got escalated past them, onto Putin's desk, Snowden wasn't going anywhere. Why would he let a juicy trading chip like that go?

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#130

Post by aeinbu »

kome wrote: post #102

This post tries to convey that analyzing metadata is no big deal. It is big deal: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...

From that post: As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.”
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