Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 114 posts

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#21

Post by ohazi »

staunch wrote: post #13
mtgx wrote: post #4

So which is it? Is he "welcoming a debate over spying on Americans" or is he prosecuting the whistleblowers (again) and requesting state privileges to protect themselves against further scrutiny? I don't think the two can really co-exist. And if all of this was "already known" what's there to prosecute then? The amount of double-speak from the Obama administration astonishes me.

I have trouble deciding whether people intentional misunderstand him, simple can't, or just prefer to be outraged. The program is classified. Its more effective if it remains so. Since it is now public, though he wishes it wasn't, he's happy and willing to publicly debate the issue of privacy vs security. He's made it quite clear that he struggles with the issue himself. Leaking classified information is illegal, thu…

We're in the midst of several legal cases that are trying to argue that the NSA spying program is criminal conduct.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#22

Post by paul »

If the government hasn't done anything wrong, then they shouldn't have anything to hide from us :)

More seriously, some amount of surveillance is probably necessary, but they need to be a lot more open and transparent about it. Secret laws and secret courts are not the stuff a free society is made of.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#23

Post by martythemaniak »

Out of curiosity, has anyone's opinion of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange or Wikileaks changed over the last few days?

From the previous times the topic has come up, my impression is that this community is more or less whether they're doing good work or not.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#24

Post by grey-area »

mpyne wrote: post #2

I didn't know the WaPo story had been authored by someone working with Assange to make a documentary on WikiLeaks. That would at least explain why "data directly from" was misinterpreted to mean "backdoor direct access" since I doubt she had the training to disambiguate the terms used. Not that it matters too much anyways, I'm assuming it wasn't an OpEd and therefore she'd still have received the normal editing and s…

There are many reporters working on this, not just Greenwald or Poitras. The most recently released slide directly contradicts the statements by Google and Facebook:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...

Given that they used the same phrases in their denials, it would seem they have been fed talking points, and are are using a novel interpretation of direct access. For example if Google or FB interpret a real-time mirror as 'not direct access', their statements are technically true, while at the same time being misleading. Doubtless the truth will come to light eventually, but for now we'll have to wait for more information and denials.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#25

Post by mtgx »

paul wrote: post #22

If the government hasn't done anything wrong, then they shouldn't have anything to hide from us :) More seriously, some amount of surveillance is probably necessary, but they need to be a lot more open and transparent about it. Secret laws and secret courts are not the stuff a free society is made of.

Apparently, they do. FISA spying has been found unconstitutional since 2011, but they are keeping it a secret:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...

This is happening in the "beacon of democracy" of the world.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#26

Post by mpyne »

eli wrote: post #12
mpyne wrote: post #2

I didn't know the WaPo story had been authored by someone working with Assange to make a documentary on WikiLeaks. That would at least explain why "data directly from" was misinterpreted to mean "backdoor direct access" since I doubt she had the training to disambiguate the terms used. Not that it matters too much anyways, I'm assuming it wasn't an OpEd and therefore she'd still have received the normal editing and s…

It's not yet clear that anything in the original piece is actually wrong, despite some carefully worded denials. I think it's unfair to judge him as misinterpreting something (yet).

As best as I can tell Greenwald was claiming that the NSA managed to backdoor most major Internet PIM service providers for the unbelievably low cost of $20 million.

You couldn't really do that for $20 million just on labor cost alone, so it was clear there was more to the story, it was just a question of what.

To be clear the story is important enough that I don't think it should be required to overstate or mislead either. Transparency of data collection and intelligence services is a conversation that America should at least have, whether it's backdoors or not.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#27

Post by mpyne »

grey-area wrote: post #24
mpyne wrote: post #2

I didn't know the WaPo story had been authored by someone working with Assange to make a documentary on WikiLeaks. That would at least explain why "data directly from" was misinterpreted to mean "backdoor direct access" since I doubt she had the training to disambiguate the terms used. Not that it matters too much anyways, I'm assuming it wasn't an OpEd and therefore she'd still have received the normal editing and s…

There are many reporters working on this, not just Greenwald or Poitras. The most recently released slide directly contradicts the statements by Google and Facebook: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server... Given that they used the same phrases in their denials, it would seem they have been fed talking points, and are are using a novel interpretation of direct access. For example if Google or F…

It's not really a "novel interpretation" of direct access if all access to a company's servers have to go through the company. That's a subpoena-on-steroids and not much more, and this additional slide which the Guardian was so kind as to decide to provide to the masses doesn't really dispute that interpretation.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#28

Post by _bfhp »

mtgx wrote: post #4

So which is it? Is he "welcoming a debate over spying on Americans" or is he prosecuting the whistleblowers (again) and requesting state privileges to protect themselves against further scrutiny? I don't think the two can really co-exist. And if all of this was "already known" what's there to prosecute then? The amount of double-speak from the Obama administration astonishes me.

That this doublespeak surprises anyone shows the tragedy of the small size of Glenn Greenwald's readership. He has been writing on Obama's abuses and misdirection since Obama admin has been in power; and before that, he's written about Bush's (published three books about Bush, in fact)

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#29

Post by mpyne »

ohazi wrote: post #21
staunch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble deciding whether people intentional misunderstand him, simple can't, or just prefer to be outraged. The program is classified. Its more effective if it remains so. Since it is now public, though he wishes it wasn't, he's happy and willing to publicly debate the issue of privacy vs security. He's made it quite clear that he struggles with the issue himself. Leaking classified information is illegal, thu…

We're in the midst of several legal cases that are trying to argue that the NSA spying program is criminal conduct.

Well that the flip side of "innocent until proven guilty" is that merely having an open case is not enough.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#30

Post by doktrin »

mtgx wrote: post #16
mayneack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original…

So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Whistleblowers are needed for a healthy democracy, unless we have a pretend-democracy at this point, too. How do you uncover dirt on the government if every single act of whistleblowing and investigative journalism on the government is being prosecuted? Not only does that create a very chilling effect, but it also takes out everyone who did it, "before they cause too…

> So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"?

Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing.

Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to argue that we didn't have a functioning democracy in its absence.

Your central point is well received, but you rebutted a partial straw man.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act

Post reply on HN