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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

guardian.co.uk

71–80 of 304 posts

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

#71

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-to-know.

The KGB would always try to recruit people that ran the copy room and mail room. Now IT is probably the biggest target.

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

#72
post #40

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

It isn't prominent, but CNN has a link to the story on their front page.

NBC just seems to not have a lot of up to the minute content there (I would be pretty surprised if they do not cover it).

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

#73
post #66

Time for the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to strengthen international diplomacy and increase cooperation between peoples.

He's not gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize. Liu Xiaobo can get the prize because pissing off China is not controversial, but the Norwegians wouldn't do the same to the US.

I'm referring to the winner from 2009.

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

#74
post #23

How likely is it he really is in HK, and not in some remote village in Thailand? I'd prefer the latter, but tell the former. If he actually is in HK, China might even offer him asylum and twist this in a huge propaganda victory.

If he is actually in HK, he might be more of an inexperienced and naive idealist than anything else. Traveling to a territory with US extradition treaty and under Chinese control seems very unwise.

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

#75
post #23

How likely is it he really is in HK, and not in some remote village in Thailand? I'd prefer the latter, but tell the former. If he actually is in HK, China might even offer him asylum and twist this in a huge propaganda victory.

If he is actually in HK, he might be more of an inexperienced and naive idealist than anything else. Traveling to a territory with US extradition treaty and under Chinese control seems very unwise.

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

#76
post #63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No reason, but PRISM as explained in #1 doesn't seem like that big of a deal, or at least, not that much more shocking then what we already knew.

As far as I can see, this debacle is entirely the fault of one journalist at The Washington Post, and the people who believed his interpretation of some aspects of some PowerPoint slides. A lot of hot air was also generated by people who had forgotten about interception facilities like Room 641A, and thought it was news.

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

#77
post #55

This isn't particularly important, but I found it curious.. > "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity." It's not self-interested in that way, really - had he chosen to be anonymous (and never been found out) then that logic could work, but with where h…

Wouldn't outing himself reduce the probability of being assassinated by those he exposed? I'd guess he's safer with the eyes of the world on him.

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

#78
I have an extreme amount of respect for this guy.

Yesterday I made a snarky comment about how nobody believes this whistleblower will lead a long and untroubled life, and while that's true it's not the point. This guy is a hero in my book for doing this, and I am very happy to see he seems like a very balanced and normal person.

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

#79
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. I don't know about you, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. As far as I'm concerned, Edward Snowden is an American hero and deserves…

As far as I'm concerned, Edward Snowden is an American hero...

He's a hero. Putting the word American in there is very, well, American. The NSA has done a lot worse by foreigners than Americans.

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