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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#161

Post by qiqing »

slg wrote: post #111
scrollaway wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This school playground logic of "it's ok because they started it" sickens me. OK. I get it; espionage is a reality and only espionage can deal with it. But for god sake there's people in here commenting that Snowden is a traitor because he leaked information that didn't directly concern the american people. Really, now. Compare those two situations: "A group of hackers have targeted Syrian ISPs and, in an attempt to…

No one is saying that it is ok because they started it. We are saying that we believe international espionage is a requirement for a country like the US and this operation seemed to be a standard and worthwhile one that happened to be a spectacular failure. You are free to disagree, but I don't think any serious politician in the US would. Revealing something like this doesn't seem to advance Snowden's initial goals…

It has positive value if you believe that non-American lives are as valuable as American lives, something a lot of people outside of the U.S. happen to believe.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#162

Post by prostoalex »

frandroid wrote: post #136
nostrademons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese spies are in China. They install malware onto the computers of American engineers in Silicon Valley, which then takes on the task of copying the source code needed for critical software systems. This is the 21st century. There's no need to put yourself in physical danger by entering the country you wish to spy upon. Everything is done electronically.

I wish people backed their claims with evidence.

Anecdotal evidence of an attack that didn't go as planned http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/thieves-spie...

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#163

Post by prostoalex »

Rapzid wrote: post #35

Well.. I knew our(US) government downplaying Snowden's credentials was just propaganda(lies)... But wow, were they ever downplaying his credentials. And our media was mostly content to just spread the propaganda with a smile :|

Not a month goes by without an article (usually in the op-ed section of a major newspaper) calling him a defector to Russia.

People conveniently forget that Russia was his transit country after he left Hong Kong and planned to arrive in another country (presumably Cuba or Venezuela), but it was the United States government that didn't cancel his passport when he was in Hong Kong, didn't cancel his passport when he arrived at his destination country, but cancelled his passport right at the point when he arrived in Russian airport transit zone but before his transfer flight departed.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#164

Post by qiqing »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #157
tomp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not discussing espionage here. We're discussing the bricking of routers - destruction, or at least disruption, of core national infrastructure. It's like the difference between spying at a power station, and taking it offline for 5 hours.

We're discussing espionage. They screwed up and bricked the routers accidentally. If they had been successful, the routers would have appeared to function normally.

And if they took down a power station accidentally, that would make it better somehow?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#165

Post by dllthomas »

prostoalex wrote: post #163
Rapzid wrote: post #35

Well.. I knew our(US) government downplaying Snowden's credentials was just propaganda(lies)... But wow, were they ever downplaying his credentials. And our media was mostly content to just spread the propaganda with a smile :|

Not a month goes by without an article (usually in the op-ed section of a major newspaper) calling him a defector to Russia. People conveniently forget that Russia was his transit country after he left Hong Kong and planned to arrive in another country (presumably Cuba or Venezuela), but it was the United States government that didn't cancel his passport when he was in Hong Kong, didn't cancel his passport when he ar…

Didn't just cancel his passport, either - they made it clear they would force down any plane they thought he might be on.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#166

Post by csandreasen »

If the last straw to leak this information was when Snowden learned about this MonsterMind program, why are we learning about it more than a year later without any prior mention whatsoever? (and without documents to back up the claims) Also, if he learned about it after taking up his job with Booz Allen Hamilton in 2013, why was he contacting Glenn Greenwald in December of 2012?[1] Ditto with the excuse that Clapper's testimony in March 2013 factored into his decision to leak...

I'm honestly curious why so many people are willing to take Snowden's claims at face value. The NSA rightly got a lot of flack for the softball interviews on Dateline a few months back, but it feels like the general consensus is that the softball interviews with Snowden are beyond questioning.

[1] http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9781627790734

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#167

Post by csandreasen »

prostoalex wrote: post #163
Rapzid wrote: post #35

Well.. I knew our(US) government downplaying Snowden's credentials was just propaganda(lies)... But wow, were they ever downplaying his credentials. And our media was mostly content to just spread the propaganda with a smile :|

Not a month goes by without an article (usually in the op-ed section of a major newspaper) calling him a defector to Russia. People conveniently forget that Russia was his transit country after he left Hong Kong and planned to arrive in another country (presumably Cuba or Venezuela), but it was the United States government that didn't cancel his passport when he was in Hong Kong, didn't cancel his passport when he ar…

They didn't revoke his passport when he was in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in).

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-...

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#168

Post by baddox »

adventured wrote: post #156
baddox wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We nuked Japan. Should they nuke us?

They would have nuked us, if they had been able to. It was total-war. In a war for survival - which is what most of WW2 was - there are very few things off-limits. How does that situation have anything to do with today?

I asked "should" not "would."

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#169

Post by scintill76 »

foxhedgehog wrote: post #122
slg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in revealing things like this that make me question Snowden. While both points are interesting and maybe a little troubling, they are certainly not whistleblowing in the name of protecting the rights of American citizens. He has moved from simply exposing the breadth of the domestic spying apparatus to exposing the tactics the United States uses in legitimate espionage operations. Isn't trying to compromise the…

The vast majority of the documents that Snowden took are related not to NSA snooping, but to military order of battle ( http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/dia-di... ). The only entities that would have an interest in that kind of information would be foreign governments. I'm not sure what positive value would result from that kind of leak.

Why do you trust the DIA? I know that objectively, we can't really take Snowden's word either, but isn't it going to be in the government's interest to say things like this to paint him as a traitor?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#170

Post by belorn »

chatmasta wrote: post #90
TuringTest wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US didn't declare war on Syria. > I have no problem with the NSA spying on foreign communications or disrupting them. Should the rest of countries just assume that the US is a permanent military enemy? You don't seem to have a problem with treating them as such.

Countries should assume that other countries are spying on them, military enemy or not. This is how the world has worked for the past 70 years, and it's not going to change.

Spying yes, comitting sabotage and other things that get called "acts of war"... No.

Imagine this hypothetical scenario. Germany want to put a backdoor into the US phone system. During 9/11, this attempt causes a breakdown and the phone system to crash an hour after the plane hits the tower. News papers goes out with "sabotage of the phone system, Germany suspected of participating in terrorism!".

Would you just shrug and say that "Countries should assume that other countries are spying on them"? People who lost family members to the chaos of no telephone service should just accept it as normal behavior, nothing to complain about?

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