I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the domestic branch of the war on terror. And yet, what shocks me to this day is how feckless the Congressional and Administrative responses were to public outcry. The government bet on the scandal blowing over, and for the most part it was right. Snowden's whistleblowing should have led to widespread changes in the law and in agency policies - and in a healthy democratic society that would have been the result. Instead, he'll never be able to return to the US because DOJ has made him tantamount to Public Enemy No. 1.
Makes me a bit sad to see.
“ "I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned."
With this, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently secured evidence of that, but acted the other way around, by first gathering as much information he could get and then look whether there was something incriminating in it.
In his memoir, Snowden doesn't come up with concrete misconducts or other things that could have triggered his decision to hand the files over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.”
Your definition of whisleblower seems to be closer to a government bureaucrat's definition.
I'm curious why you brought that up?
That likely isn’t “by the book” whistle blowing since governments can and do make what they do in the shadows “legal enough” to avoid scrutiny.
Guess it’s weird it’s that much of a discussion but many people care more about laws than morality.
They had to. He broke the law. He would have had the chance to go to trial and defend himself and seek whistleblower protection status. Given the politically charged nature and public opinion at the time, he might have had a pretty fair shake and could have been living comfortably in the US working for the ACLU or something.
Instead he plotted an escape to an openly hostile country (not even a quasi-neutral country or a non-extradition country) and allowed all of his stolen material to fall into the hands of a foreign intelligence service.
The fact that he's now in Russia is 100% on the US.
Also, he didn't bring any stolen information to Russia. He says he was contacted by Russian intelligence but that they pretty quickly figured out he had nothing more to give them than what he gave to the journalists.
Is this what you would've done in Snowdon's shoes?
No, he wouldn't. Google "snowden fair trial". He has always said that he is perfectly willing to come to the US and do exactly as you describe, if the government is willing to guarantee a fair trial. It isn't.
Go on, Google "snowden fair trial". Go do it. It's a key part of the story you're apparently unaware of. It'll take 5 seconds.
Sibling comment pointing out same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401553
In what universe would the US Gov't not just ship him off to some blacksite on a remote island somewhere and disappear him forever?
> My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States. And I've actually had conversations with the government, last in the Obama administration, about what that would look like, and they said, "You should come and face trial." I said, "Sure. Sign me up. Under one condition: I have to be able to tell the jury why I did what I did, and the jury has to decide: Was this justified or unjustified." This is called a public interest defense and is allowed under pretty much every crime someone can be charged for. Even murder, for example, has defenses. It can be self-defense and so on so forth, it could be manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. But in the case of telling a journalist the truth about how the government was breaking the law, the government says there can be no defense. There can be no justification for why you did it. The only thing the jury gets to consider is did you tell the journalists something you were not allowed to tell them. If yes, it doesn't matter why you did it. You go to jail. And I have said, as soon as you guys say for whistleblowers it is the jury who decides if it was right or wrong to expose the government's own lawbreaking, I'll be in court the next day.
[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/crsj-fe... [2] https://theintercept.com/2022/07/12/whistleblower-espionage-... [3] https://www.rcfp.org/espionage-act-reform/ [4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reality-winner-espionage-act-60... [5] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/761918152/exiled-nsa-contract...
"Wow, you must wear a tinfoil hat, you really think the government is tapping your phones?"
"Wow, you didn't already know that every phone is tapped? You're so behind the times. Every cool person is already jaded about that."
There's almost no will from voters to fight this, so the discourse instantly leaps from "impossible" to "acceptable".
Not sure I'd call it psy-op.
When it became feasible for the NSA to essentially tap every phone in the U.S. I think most of us just presume that they will do just that.
Historically, it's what those with power will do — exercise it.
And for all number of examples in history we are not naive enough to think that their saying they're not doing it (are no longer doing it) means nothing.
First it was a problem for the people of 2050.
Then 2023 happened and it was too late so why bother doing anything.
Seems to me this state of surveillance has just been accepted as a norm. People in the business have taken precautions like using more encryption and auditable open source, while the people outside the tech business just shrug their shoulders and shake their fists at dirty politicians.
Do you mean for their own small scale activities?
The only ECDH curves possible to use on the big tech internet were given by the head of the NSA with no explanation and are manipulatable.
And this was deliberate. Those in the know knew _of_ the program, but could do little actionable with that knowledge without Snowden’s public proof.
When the mainstream media doesn't report on something, it's forgotten within days. They dictate what most people think and talk about.
Pandora papers? Pleasure Island?
What was the name of the woman that got jailed? Do you remember her jail sentence being a joke? What about the list?
What was in the news two weeks ago? What was NOT in the news two weeks ago, despite being noteworthy?
The character assassination of Snowden&co in the anglophone sphere is absurd, and probably manufactured. But this didn't quite happen in other languages.
Assange trials are just mind-blowing and worrisome, and yet the simple truth is here: who told the truth is in jail, and who committed war crimes is outside.
Every second that we spend debating whether or not Edward Snowden is a good person is a second that we're not asking hard questions about the nature of our relationship with the state. Almost as if that's the whole point.
Well nobody forced him to repeat Russian propaganda in late 2021 and early 2022 that "Russia was totally not going to invade".
It was clear that Russia lining their tanks up on the border and stress testing the Ukrainian response to an invasion was not going to be a bluff. Why give your enemy the chance at trial run? This was the message from US and UK intelligence and they were right.
I understand why he does it though, he is in Russia and if someone takes a dislike to him he will be dead. He would also feel justifiably "wronged" by the US, and i understand why he would not want to repeat US messaging, but maybe don't keep quite about the Russian "messaging" as well.
At least he is not as crazy as Kim Dotcom, another Twitter "celebrity" with a taste for Russian propaganda who has been wronged by the US.
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_...
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r...
> “The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.” (p. 16)
> “As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18)
> “Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” (p. 20)
> The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.
By design, this sentiment omits what happened to previous individuals who worked within the given channels. Specifically it omits how official channels failed at every level and omits the consequences for the individual who continued their push to end the wrongdoing.
Whistleblowers were ignored, resisted and eventually revenged. Every administration. Every time.
Snowden showed the intelligence committee were ineffective or complicit. And the chairman called him a traitor before the investigation. Truth was not the committee's goal. And their sources were established liars.
Did you assume had contact meant initiated contact?
[1] https://tcf.org/content/commentary/house-intelligence-commit...
If a police officer leaked evidence of widespread misconduct to the press (as has happened several times), would he also be implied to be an enemy agent for not going through the totally trustworthy and effective internal complaints process instead?
Maybe someone more familiar with ThinThread can make a case for how that system would be acceptable to us where Trailblazer (its competing design, in the narrative one tends to read here) wasn't.
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h26...
One should only operate on the premise that this is defacto
+ lone wolfs such as Uvalde, Las Vegas, Nashville, Waukesha...
+ Cross border drug operations
+ Transnational incidents like Nord Stream, spy balloons, COVID.
+ Military operations in Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan
We are asked to relinquish so many freedoms and spend so much money on what, exactly?
The 'we can't tell you because it'll jeopardize all those important things we can't tell you about' argument simply doesn't hold water. There are too many intelligence fumbles to assume that there is intelligence.
Now if there was a mechanism in place to ensure that no one would rock the military political industrial complex... well that lines up with a lot of observable outcomes.
You hear about successful lone wolves, they become national news. You don't hear about the people that were taken in for questioning after posting a threatening message on the internets, which flags up in the FBI's systems right away.
There's plenty of news of intercepted drug shipments. This is actually an example of the inverse, because you'll never hear about the ones that do get across. I'm sure there's a lot more that comes through compared to what is intercepted though, else they wouldn't try it.
Nord Stream was known in advance; US intelligence was aware of the attack and warned Ukraine not to go through with it: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2478802-us-warned-ukraine-n...
The spy balloons were detected the second they took off from China. NORAD had eyes on them from launch.
I'm not sure why Covid is in your list.
Anyway, tl;dr, the very nature of this means you won't hear what's being prevented until maybe years later as things are declassified.
People seem to really like that term, and it makes sense. But someone has to have said it first. I don't recall hearing "revelations" used much before then, other than for the book of the Christian New Testament. (Is some of the appeal of the term to allude to an almost biblical impact, or saintly/savior aura around Snowden?)
They know that men of science throughout the world subject each other’s results to the most searching examination; and that error is mercilessly exposed and rejected as soon as discovered.
And, finally, they know that still more conclusive testimony is to be found in the daily verification of scientific predictions, and in the never-ceasing triumphs of those arts which Science guides.
To regard with alienation that which has such high credentials is a folly.
Though in the tone which many of the scientific adopt towards them, the defenders of Religion may find some excuse for this alienation; yet the excuse is a very insufficient one.
On the side of Science, as on their own side, they must admit that short-comings in the advocates do not tell essentially against that which is advocated.
Science must be judged by itself: and so judged, only the most perverted intellect can fail to see that it is worthy of all reverence.
Be there or be there not any other revelation, we have a veritable revelation in Science—a continuous disclosure, through the intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established order of the Universe.
This disclosure it is the duty of every one to verify as far as in him lies; and having verified, to receive with all humility.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55046/pg55046-images.ht...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...
If you look at the document, it indeed lists more than half a dozen goals, not just one. For example, supporting industrial espionage is mentioned (expressed as preventing "surprises" in the area of technology - wonderful euphemism!), which is not terrorism-related at all.
But the part that worried Snowden is actually reflected in the strategy document, even using the same wording as Snowden: MASTERING the Internet/cyberspace. That _does_ have a ring of total control and exhaustive gathering.
Snowden was no whistleblower, NSA did some overcollection but anyway their mission is great and yeah some safeguards had to be improved.
And Keith Alexander is a reliable source.