Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#81

Post by tptacek » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #71

tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scotland is the UK . Scotland's airspace is managed by the UK central government. This is like saying "flying over Maine, rather than over the more typical USA, is suggestive of subsurface politics".

Yes but it's a political subdivision of the U.K. if the plane flew over one of the Swiss cantons, we don't mention the canton, we mention the main superdivisional entity, typically. It sounds peculiar. It's not wrong, but it's non standard. Airspace is the dominion of the central government, not the political subdivisions, just like territorial waters. To add: "flying over" is descriptive, "airspace" is a geopolitica…

I think I misread you; if the "subsurface politics" you're referring to here is Scottish Independence, then, yeah, I totally see that.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#82

Post by Sharlin » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #71

tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scotland is the UK . Scotland's airspace is managed by the UK central government. This is like saying "flying over Maine, rather than over the more typical USA, is suggestive of subsurface politics".

Yes but it's a political subdivision of the U.K. if the plane flew over one of the Swiss cantons, we don't mention the canton, we mention the main superdivisional entity, typically. It sounds peculiar. It's not wrong, but it's non standard. Airspace is the dominion of the central government, not the political subdivisions, just like territorial waters. To add: "flying over" is descriptive, "airspace" is a geopolitica…

It's not really out of the ordinary for a Scottish newspaper to refer to Scotland specifically instead of the UK in general.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#83

Post by vidarh » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #58

vidarh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may very well be true. But in the absence of a publicly known flight plan, involving a plane that in the past has been used in a program that involved all kinds of human rights abuses, it seems worth assuming it is worth asking questions about.

Can you help me understand what it is about a specific piece of equipment having in the past been used for human rights abuse that makes it unsuitable for any future use? It would be one thing if the CIA had operated the flight, but this plane is known to have been transferred to the DOJ long before the flight to extradite Snowden.

Human psychology, the secrecy, the person targeted and the history of lies surrounding the rendition program.

There's nothing inherent about the plane that makes it unsuitable, but people should also be totally unsurprised that it contributes to making people ask extra questions about the flight.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#84

Post by eddieh » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

ghrifter wrote: post #23

vlunkr wrote: post #10

I really hope they pardon him eventually. I could be wrong, but don't most americans support what he did? EDIT: you are probably all correct, plenty of people don't understand/care who he is or what he stands for. I still wish the government would recognize that the NSA is acting unconstitutionally and he called them out on it.

Most "tech savvy" people support him and how he made us aware of the NSA bs, but a lot of normal people who just watch the news view him as a "traitor" to 'Murica (America). Sadly, people think "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if the government/NSA monitors my internet usage/history/etc". Personally, I think the terrorists have won in a small sense. TSA is a joke (American airport security), NSA monitors ever…

> he made us aware of the NSA bs

I'm not sure I agree with that. The use of mass electronic surveillance by alphabet soup agencies was common knowledge before Snowden. Right now I'm looking at source code from 1987 that was used create false positives against NSA keyword scanners. All Snowden did was release "secret" official documents detailing these programs.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#85

Post by tptacek » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

ghrifter wrote: post #23

vlunkr wrote: post #10

I really hope they pardon him eventually. I could be wrong, but don't most americans support what he did? EDIT: you are probably all correct, plenty of people don't understand/care who he is or what he stands for. I still wish the government would recognize that the NSA is acting unconstitutionally and he called them out on it.

Most "tech savvy" people support him and how he made us aware of the NSA bs, but a lot of normal people who just watch the news view him as a "traitor" to 'Murica (America). Sadly, people think "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if the government/NSA monitors my internet usage/history/etc". Personally, I think the terrorists have won in a small sense. TSA is a joke (American airport security), NSA monitors ever…

I don't think it's particularly charitable to caricature people who don't support Snowden as being jingoist "'muricans". In fact, the term "'murica" is pretty classist; even the word itself mocks the accents of flyover country.

There is a serious, defensible, coherent argument against what Snowden did. You don't have to be a low-information cable news consumer to agree with it, nor do you have to believe that "if you have nothing to hide surveillance is no problem".

(To put my biases on the table: I understand what he did better, I think, than most HN people, and think the ideal outcome would be a felony conviction and an immediately commuted sentence; thus far, I think he's done more good than harm, but I think it would be better if what happened in 2013 never happened in exactly that way again.)

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#86

Post by tptacek » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #83

tptacek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you help me understand what it is about a specific piece of equipment having in the past been used for human rights abuse that makes it unsuitable for any future use? It would be one thing if the CIA had operated the flight, but this plane is known to have been transferred to the DOJ long before the flight to extradite Snowden.

Human psychology, the secrecy, the person targeted and the history of lies surrounding the rendition program. There's nothing inherent about the plane that makes it unsuitable, but people should also be totally unsurprised that it contributes to making people ask extra questions about the flight.

I'm pretty sure that last sentence is also the gist of the last part of my comment upthread.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#87

Post by strictnein » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #66

strictnein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no one is sure about that. It's very unlikely that the Russians don't have copies of everything he took, unless you think he and Greenwald, et al are somehow masters of infosec that could withstand the actions of the FSB, SVR, etc.

You don't have to be an infosec master. According to Snowden, he didn't take the files with him to Russia in the first place. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/world/snowden-says-he-took...

Because Russia wouldn't dare go after the materials if they weren't physically in Russia, right?

The SVR operates outside of Russia, which is why I mentioned them. You really believe they weren't on him right away in Hong Kong, and they haven't gone after whatever materials he passed on to journalists? Come on.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#88

Post by vidarh » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #39

Shouldn't that be "British" airspace? If the Scots don't like it, they should declare independence (but that failed) and maybe build an air defense network to shoot down unidentified possible CIA rendition jets (not very feasible).

It is both British airspace and Scottish airspace. Scotland is formally a constituent country of the United Kingdom, with it's own devolved government. And while the devolved government does not have responsibility for foreign policy or defence (and several other areas), it does have a legitimate interest in asking questions of the UK government if they feel there is a possibility that what the UK government has allowed is not in the interest of Scotland.

There's very little they can do about it, unless there's an indication that a law has been broken. But there's plenty of room for political point scoring.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#89

Post by deelowe » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #28

doe88 wrote: post #5

Not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker. -- Obama 6/27/13 http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19166043-obama... He's true though, it wasn't jets.

Well, it's likely it was a jet airplane as the altitude of the flight was 45,000. I suppose in this usage it was implied to be fighter-jets.

It's amazing to witness the gift of gap that high level politicians possess. Obama says "not going to scramble jets."

What the public assumes he means:

- "Three letter agencies and the military won't be conducting clandestine operations to proactively seek out and remove Snowden from a foreign country."

What he actually means:

- Quite literally, he's saying that they won't be sending fighter jets to go blow up Snowden. Of course that would be silly and not make any sense whatsoever, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what he was referring to.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#90

Post by pakled_engineer » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

danielvf wrote: post #32

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

One thing I don't understand - why would the US care? Why expend resources on trying to capture Snowden? He's basically harmless at this point - he's passed all the information he had to few journalists (which would be a better target now) and there's no way anyone will ever let him near anything more secret than grandma's cookies recipe. Besides petty vengeance, what's the point?

Four reasons off the top of my head: 1. There's no guarantee that he acted alone and or without outside sponsorship. 2. There's no guarantee that all the information that he took was released publicly. It would be helpful to know the extent of what was taken, and who else knows it. 3. It would be helpful to know what other intelligence services have asked him/taken from him. 4 "To encourage the others"

I recall he took pretty much everything there was to take, including the active operations db, and only released a small fraction of documents to Poitras/Greenwald. Those 2 drives full of docs were hastily dumped inside the HK airport on his way to Moscow and are no doubt in the hands of Chinese spy agencies (who also were likely set up beside his hotel room in HK trying to get his passwords).