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How so? I'm sure you can make your case better than that.
He sought political asylum in Russia and is currently living under FSB protection, which isn't free. It has a cost. Honest question, what more needs to be said?
The part where he is actively working to Russia's benefit.
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The existing evidence seems to suggest that Snowden was not actively trying to flee to Russia, but ended up stuck there due to reasons outside of his control.
That is his narrative, yes. Meanwhile, there's no evidence he was trying to get to South America as he claimed. What we know is he went to China, then Russia.
Also, it's not clear why he would have wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice. If he had prior contact with Russian authorities, they presumably wouldn't have made him stay at Sheremetyevo for over a month.
Also it's worth noting that in 2013 Russia had much friendlier relations with the US. This was pre-Crimea. It’s not surprising that it took Russia so long to decide what to do with Snowden. Eventually, they concluded that letting him stay wouldn’t significantly harm their relationship with the US while also gaining goodwill elsewhere.
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> Curiously, the US Government has never made that allegation. Why would they? It was a deeply embarrassing event for them.
It was deeply embarassing for them either way, not figuring out where the leak originated from is much more embarrassing though. At the very least blaming Russian intelligence would have tied right in with all the other election related hacking allegations. Also, I think you may overestimate just how embarrassing this is relatively. USG regularly announces that they got owned, is the NSA getting owned worse than OPR…
That's not how it works. There is no coordinated messaging campaign across agencies against adversarial nations.
It might seem that way based on media reports, but there isn't.
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He sought political asylum in Russia and is currently living under FSB protection, which isn't free. It has a cost. Honest question, what more needs to be said?
>Honest question, what more needs to be said? The part where he is actively working to Russia's benefit.
With every interview he gives, he's the gift that keeps on giving.
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That is his narrative, yes. Meanwhile, there's no evidence he was trying to get to South America as he claimed. What we know is he went to China, then Russia.
Well, we know at the very least that he obviously had no control over when his passport was going to be added to the SLTD database. Also, it's not clear why he would have wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice. If he had prior contact with Russian authorities, they presumably wouldn't have made him stay at Sheremetyevo for over a month. Also it's worth noting that in 2013 Russia had much friendlier relations wit…
> wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice
None of this has to do with his decision to seek protection from the Russian government, which is a formal arrangement with their security services, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
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You've made really good points, I get what you're saying now. They can't do simple keyword searches over unencrypted traffic anymore. But even in 2010 lots of important traffic was over https, and anyone worth their salt used https for important things. I don't think even back then they were hoping for incidental intercept of unencrypted traffic. That was just icing on the cake, the main purpose as I understood was m…
> But even in 2010 lots of important traffic was over https, and anyone worth their salt used https for important things. In 2010 almost all messaging traffic on the internet was plaintext (or using badly broken encryption). Telephony? Hah. These days nobody even uses regular phone calls or SMS, except US-based android users. > That was just icing on the cake, the main purpose as I understood was metadata mining, and…
> "they want to know who's downloading tails, who's using signal, who the source of some journalist is"
They don't care about random people doing those things, but if someone with a known terrorist cell association is in the US talking over signal. Or if someone is visiting extremist sites using tails, they'd want to know (and they can using metadata available today). They're not interested in home-grown terrorism or law enforcement, but all other matters of national security don't neatly fall into "foreign vs domestic" buckets. Even if it is all happening outside of the US, the servers Signal uses might be in the US for example.
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It was deeply embarassing for them either way, not figuring out where the leak originated from is much more embarrassing though. At the very least blaming Russian intelligence would have tied right in with all the other election related hacking allegations. Also, I think you may overestimate just how embarrassing this is relatively. USG regularly announces that they got owned, is the NSA getting owned worse than OPR…
> would have tied right in with all the other election related hacking allegations. That's not how it works. There is no coordinated messaging campaign across agencies against adversarial nations. It might seem that way based on media reports, but there isn't.
If the FBI believed that TSB was Russian intelligence, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that it's not mentioned in the Mueller report.
We also still don't know how Hal Martin was related to TSB, the timing of the messages sent from his twitter account to Kaspersky (who apparently reported him to the NSA!) does pretty directly tie him to the TSB.
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>Honest question, what more needs to be said? The part where he is actively working to Russia's benefit.
You don't think exposing American intelligence operations and providing fodder for bad faith influence operations is not in Russia's benefit? With every interview he gives, he's the gift that keeps on giving.
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> But even in 2010 lots of important traffic was over https, and anyone worth their salt used https for important things. In 2010 almost all messaging traffic on the internet was plaintext (or using badly broken encryption). Telephony? Hah. These days nobody even uses regular phone calls or SMS, except US-based android users. > That was just icing on the cake, the main purpose as I understood was metadata mining, and…
Alright, well in the interest of a conclusion, I'll say that you made really good points, I've changed my opinion on some but not all of the topics. > "they want to know who's downloading tails, who's using signal, who the source of some journalist is" They don't care about random people doing those things, but if someone with a known terrorist cell association is in the US talking over signal. Or if someone is visit…
I think we broadly agree on the details, and whatever differences remain are probably mostly attributable to us looking at the topic from slightly different angles. There's probably not much more we could usefully address on this topic via HN comments, so it is probably a good time to conclude :)
If the story behind the shadow brokers leaks is of interest to you, I dumped some details in a reply to a now-flagged thread. It's quite the rabbit hole if you want to dig into it, especially with the whole Hal Martin situation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46186975
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Well, we know at the very least that he obviously had no control over when his passport was going to be added to the SLTD database. Also, it's not clear why he would have wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice. If he had prior contact with Russian authorities, they presumably wouldn't have made him stay at Sheremetyevo for over a month. Also it's worth noting that in 2013 Russia had much friendlier relations wit…
> no control over when his passport > wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice None of this has to do with his decision to seek protection from the Russian government, which is a formal arrangement with their security services, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
His options at that point were pretty much limited to prison in the US or seeking protection from the Russian government. If you wouldn't have made the same choice as him in that situation, you can reasonably criticize his choice, you'll just have a hard time convincing anyone that you would've chosen prison in that situation.
There's also no evidence that his arrangement involves any work on behalf of the Russian government.