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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#81

Post by cromwellian »

Seriously, Edward Snowden, China was your first choice to hide from the NSA?

Holy shit that was a bad choice for many reasons. I can't think of a worse place to go, other than Russia or Iran with respect to the intense desire of those nations to extract as many secrets about NSA capabilities as possible. These are the most secret of the secret capabilities of US intelligence. He even boasted that he knows many more secrets that he himself took care to censor unlike Bradley Manning. I think China will be very interested in hearing those redacted snippets.

Secondly, if he ends up revealing sensitive information to these countries, any sympathy from the US population will turn into calls for frying him as a traitor. Going to China makes him into a Rosenberg.

This guy doesn't seem very smart at all. And using pillow cases and shields over screens to stop the NSA? You're telling me this guy doesn't know what TEMPEST is? Didn't he see Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State? You need a Faraday Cage.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#82

Post by brown9-2 »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #71
brown9-2 wrote: post #51

It's quite baffling that a low-level IT contractor is given this much access and also is making $200,000/year. Why is so much of government farmed out to contractors? Also, isn't there a large risk that someone at the bottom of the chain grossly misunderstands the materials he is leaking?

Interesting fact, the low-level people in an intelligence org tend to have the broadest access. It is the high-level people that are put in compartmentalized verticals and plausible deniability (one of the latter DIRNSAs used to be famous for trying to know as little operational details as possible). IT needs to have access to all systems to install patches and such, strategic decision makers just have access to need…

Also ostensibly the people on the bottom are the easiest to recruit: disaffected, least paid (at least before 200k/yr salaries), perhaps uncommitted to mission or easy to mislead.

I don't understand why a low level IT person needs so much access though beyond a need to fix systems - there's no audit control on who is accessing these systems?

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#83

Post by acqq »

mortehu wrote: post #50
lawdawg wrote: post #24

Bravo Edward, and yet very little is said about PRISM at all. When will we finally get to the bottom of what PRISM actually is? When will the public get access to the entire set of slides? How much exactly did Edward know about PRISM, or did he just stumble onto these slides and assume the worst? So many questions, so few answers. Hopefully the coming weeks sheds more light onto this.

> When will we finally get to the bottom of what PRISM actually is? Is there any particular reason why you don't believe the fact sheet from the Director of National Intelligence[1] or Marc Ambinder[2]? According to these sources (selected excerpts): > PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. > PRISM is a kick-ass GUI that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different…

...and the FISA Court makes the blanket orders allowing the security organizations to have billions of collections in the U.S, see the output of the program made by NSA:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-in...

It is all "legal" in a sense that there are court orders, but there are no real checks as the orders are blanket ones.

Moreover, to read your mail older than 180 days from any provider according to the current laws they don't need any order at all to do it legally:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-em...

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#84

Post by obstacle1 »

electic wrote: post #40

Neither NBC News or CNN is showing this on their front page. Odd.

CNN put up a 4-paragraph softball piece [1]. Edit: CNN added to its reporting.

You're right about NBC. Their current headline:

>Game of spoilers: Did Twitter kill DVRs?

Which is a piece expressing some TV viewers' outrage that tweets spoiled an episode of Game of Thrones for them.

[1] - http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/09/politics/nsa-leak-identity/ind...

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#85

Post by laumars »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #39
spodek wrote: post #9

" Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said. " Thoughtful people brave enough to blow whistles seem to be the greatest check on what looks like a secret, unaccountable, illegal centralization of power based on lies from the top of the gov…

I think it's almost certain the guy will have some problems not long in the future. One question that comes to mind is how a supposed intelligence organization allowed someone who subscribes to EFF thinking even come to know about this surveillance. Shouldn't the NSA be doing some kind of screening to make sure the people they hire don't have ideals diametrically opposed to their practices?

I'm fairly sure they will now be screening for that in the future.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#86

Post by cromwellian »

How could a CIA employee not know the blackmail techniques the CIA uses to recruit agents? All intelligence agencies leverage debt, criminal records, marital infidelity, or closeted gay behavior as leverage to "turn" a foreign agent.

This has been documented by numerous ex-CIA employees, like Bob Baer.

So his turning point was finding out a Swiss Banker was setup in a bar for a fall, and then offered a way out in exchange for information. He didn't know this before applying for CIA work?

Give me a break.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#87

Post by joanojr »

cromwellian wrote: post #81

Seriously, Edward Snowden, China was your first choice to hide from the NSA? Holy shit that was a bad choice for many reasons. I can't think of a worse place to go, other than Russia or Iran with respect to the intense desire of those nations to extract as many secrets about NSA capabilities as possible. These are the most secret of the secret capabilities of US intelligence. He even boasted that he knows many more s…

If he is in Beijing, I agree. Hong Hong is quite it's own place.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#88

Post by hannibal5 »

brown9-2 wrote: post #51

It's quite baffling that a low-level IT contractor is given this much access and also is making $200,000/year. Why is so much of government farmed out to contractors? Also, isn't there a large risk that someone at the bottom of the chain grossly misunderstands the materials he is leaking?

You can't do much sensitive stuff without systems administrators knowing the secrets, unless you want to do the actual work by yourself.

To have access to all the stuff he has, he must have top-secret classification and he might be be part of few Special access programs (SAP). Having already classification and begin part of relevant SAP's when working in CIA/NSA might make him very valuable for private companies.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#89

Post by rooshdi »

riggins wrote: post #70
spodek wrote: post #9

" Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said. " Thoughtful people brave enough to blow whistles seem to be the greatest check on what looks like a secret, unaccountable, illegal centralization of power based on lies from the top of the gov…

By the way, I don't know about anybody else, but for the first time I can think of, I'm seriously concerned about the consequences of posting support for somebody like this online. I don't know how things will play out years down the road and who will do what with this information this is exactly what's so scary. people have to think about posting on Hacker News.

We all have to die someday. Might as well die for something.

Re: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

#90

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

spodek wrote: post #9

" Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said. " Thoughtful people brave enough to blow whistles seem to be the greatest check on what looks like a secret, unaccountable, illegal centralization of power based on lies from the top of the gov…

>I'm seriously concerned about the consequences...

Well, at the very least, don't bother sending your CV to Booz Allen Hamilton, Palantir, etc. Also, fuck these assholes. Seriously, is there anything worse than this?

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