Your response actually agrees with the author. I don't think the author would deny that leaking can be and is a necessary part of a free society.
I think you are missing a point though. Who is best placed to judge what to release? The leaker, or experienced journalists? What if you know there are more abuses but don't have time to individually search through the documents before leaking? Should you only take the ones you have already read, and lose out on revealing other abuses? It's a difficult choice.
From my outside point of view, the government (and often media) errs too much on the side of secrecy so I'm glad to see a whistleblower who is more aggressive with the amount of information they leak.
But I think a more balanced approach is necessary. The leaker should have at least some knowledge of what they are providing to journalists. This was somewhat addressed in the article because the author seemed to feel that Snowden was opening himself up to attack precisely because he was so indiscriminate. He put a target on his back from not just the US government but also foreign governments who want the information he has.
As for what's justified, there's no justification for not reporting crimes. There's no difficulty bar where you get to relax even though nothing has changed. You have a legal obligation to report illegal acts and orders even if it's uncomfortable. If the government wants to deter leakers it should start listening to their initial complaints, before these loyal Americans feel the need to go public.
> a more balanced approach is necessary.
Right, when crimes are revealed more of the administration need to go to jail. Hell, it's the military and some should probably be hung for their crimes. As long as the whistleblower is the only one suffering we can be sure the system is failing.
and the word "stealing" is also biased language. Leakers don't "steal" anything, they copy information. The original proprietor still has the original information.
I think I could see a few other cases of selective stealing making sense. Stealing the weapon(s) of a person intent on maliciously using it, such as the hundreds of pounds of ammonium nitrate from someone likely to build a bomb.
It seems you just want nice clean black and white rules, and reality does not seem so kind. Let each decide when leaking or stealing is right based on the risks they themselves assume. Let's try to build systems that encourage everyone to make good decisions here so actual secrets (say blueprints of nuclear weapons) aren't leaked and private property is generally not stolen.
I mean, when we get down to this sort of romanticized leaker's code or whatever you what to characterize this as, it seems like truth isn't seen as important, only the leaker's goal and how leaks can be managed via the press. But I would submit that this is no longer functioning very well. I mean, does anyone even believe content-free leaks any more? If you have anonymous officials saying they know things based on circumstantial evidence they won't let you see, can you really believe them knowing it's more than likely part of this gentlemanly leaker's code to plant information in the media?
I mean, just look at this for a recent example which discusses this vis a vis credibility quite extensively: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence...
The thing is, there's no reason to speculate here. We can infer how Podesta got hacked, based purely on public evidence. There's this nice DKIM-validated email, shortly before the leak ends: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34899
We know it hasn't been modified because it's signed not once but twice, by two separate DKIM keys, specifically: d=1e100.net; s=20130820; (Google) and d=hillaryclinton.com; s=google;
In it is a bit.ly link to a fake Google password phishing page on an email that claims there were hacking attempts on the account. Bit.ly stats placed that link as having been clicked on twice in the relevant time frame. Staff are in that email thread saying it's real and he has to change passwords immediately and offering to help him do so.
There were, of course, also reports that the Clinton's home email server might have been hacked. But they scrubbed that server and the only things that were ever made public were put out by the FBI, redacted from paper copies. It's not clear what was left of it to examine given that what little was turned over was turned over in printed form, preventing any real analysis thereof. I'm not aware of any actual, public leaks of this information, though it is easily conflated with either the Podesta email dump or the DNC leaks available on Wikileaks. Doubly so when you see emails like the one above which was forwarded to Podesta's Gmail account from a private Clinton domain. So it leaked via the Podesta phishing, whereas the DNC leaks were said to be an insider.
One wonders if they ever thought to question Charles Delavan, who told everyone the above phishing email was real? True, this could easily be an innocent (but very harmful) mistake. It looked rather convincing other than being at the wrong domain (I didn't check for JavaScript that might have hidden this, IIRC IE had some exploits of that sort) and the bit.ly link, neither of which is that hard to miss. But it's some wonder we don't see any investigation into bit.ly, the domain it forwards to, etc. in all these talks, but rather lots of chatter from insiders telling us there's a lot of evidence we're not permitted to see.
I'm not exactly clear on why one is great and noble but
the other is not. There's some undercurrent that I would
paraphrase as 'limiting the harm' of the leaks by being
selective.
In other words, it's all about who did the leaking, rather than what they leaked. Where Ellsberg is compared to a graduate student, Snowden is the destructive hacker.
Snowden is "lesser" for his seeming assault on the ivory towers occupied by the likes of Ellsberg.
Secondarily, Ellsberg's leaks documented past failings, not current ones. In that way, perhaps Ellsberg did "less harm", as it was all tinted by the rose glasses of history. Kissenger/Nixon are described as being "delighted" by Ellsberg's leaks, as they highlighted the mistakes of the previous administration.
Ellsberg did also hold back some data he felt was "sensitive", so he gets credit for that, where Snowden does not. (And is described as a "flooder".)
> But Snowden did not study under a Nobel Prize winner, or give career advice to the likes of Henry Kissinger. He was a community-college dropout, a member of the murky hacking counterculture. He enlisted in the Army Reserves, and washed out after twenty weeks. He worked at the C.I.A. for a few years and left under a cloud. He learned about the innermost secrets of American intelligence-gathering and policy not because he was personally involved with that intelligence-gathering or policymaking but because he was a technician who helped service the computer systems that managed these things.
Gladwell is intentionally deceptive when he refers to Snowden "washing out" of the Reserves. In fact he was discharged after breaking both legs in a training accident. You can debate whether that technically qualifies as washing out or not, but it's quite another to lump that in with the rest of the paragraph and let the reader fill in their own opinions of the events. But perhaps that's the entire point, and part of the reason Gladwell was chosen for this piece.
Eliding certain facts can leave the reader with a distinctly non-factual impression of the man.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-army-di...
The reason for his discharge isn't publicly known with high certainty. The only public source is Snowden's statement.
(Some background; the 18X, Special Forces option, allows a recruit to be contractually guaranteed a Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) slot. Beforehand, he attends a 14-week combined boot camp/infantry training, and then a 4-week course to prepare him for SFAS. Someone being discharged at the 5-month mark would have, given the fastest training schedule possible, been in SFAS at time of discharge.)
It should be hard to hide something like double broken legs from parachute training from the others who served with him and his family, friends, and colleagues would surely notice whether or not something big like that ever happened to him.
This doesn't seem like such a difficult thing to fact check if one is willing to do the legwork of talking to known associates from that time.
That's also a really severe injury, don't they have to report things like that to someone? They probably can't comment on his medical privacy, but I have to wonder if there aren't safety records of some kind from OSHA or whoever?
But hey, who needs actual falsification to doubt Snowden's story. Let's just malign him because he is uncorroborated and cannot prove his story while in exile.
(By the way, it is possible to medically determine if someone's legs were broken as they claim. Source: medical doctor)
And Barton Gellman at the WaPo confirms it was bilateral tibia stress fractures: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160916/16594835541/house...
Oh and by the way, I see no actual evidence that Snowden even "washed out" other than his own resume and history....
It resolves to this clearly-fake URL:
http://myaccount.google.com-securitysettingpage.tk/security/signinoptions/password?e=am9obi5wb2Rlc3RhQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ%3D%3D&fn=Sm9obiBQb2Rlc3Rh&n=Sm9obg%3D%3D&img=Ly9saDQuZ29vZ2xldXNlcmNvbnRlbnQuY29tLy1RZVlPbHJkVGp2WS9BQUFBQUFBQUFBSS9BQUFBQUFBQUFCTS9CQldVOVQ0bUZUWS9waG90by5qcGc%3D&id=1sutlodlwe
Then you can plug it into tools like this to actually dump the key: http://mxtoolbox.com/dkim.aspx
It's simply a TEXT record on the relevant DNS server which results in something like this:
http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dkim%3a1e100.net%...
k=rsa; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAnOv6+Txyz+SEc7mT719QQtOj6g2MjpErYUGVrRGGc7f5rmE1cRP1lhwx8PVoHOiuRzyok7IqjvAub9kk9fBoE9uXJB1QaRdMnKz7W/UhWemK5TEUgW1xT5qtBfUIpFRL34h6FbHbeysb4szi7aTgerxI15o73cP5BoPVkQj4BQKkfTQYGNH03J5Db9uMqW/NNJ8fKCLKWO5C1e+NQ1lD6uwFCjJ6PWFmAIeUu9+LfYW89Tz1NnwtSkFC96Oky1cmnlBf4dhZ/Up/FMZmB9l7TA6gLEu6JijlDrNmx1o50WADPjjN4rGELLt3VuXn09y2piBPlZPU2SIiDQC0qX0JWQIDAQAB
v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCJdAYdE2z61YpUMFqFTFJqlFomm7C4Kk97nzJmR4YZuJ8SUy9CF35UVPQzh3EMLhP+yOqEl29Ax2hA/h7vayr/f/a19x2jrFCwxVry+nACH1FVmIwV3b5FCNEkNeAIqjbY8K9PeTmpqNhWDbvXeKgFbIDwhWq0HP2PbySkOe4tTQIDAQAB
the author is a milquetoast analyst paid to be a "thought leader" on this topic...
the thrust of my response is drastically different than his: i suggest that it is time to tear down the surveillance state by any leaks necessary to accomplish that goal.
I actually had to look that up. Thanks for a new word that I can throw around. I don't think a personal attack on the author helps your argument, but that's your prerogative.
Also, thanks for clarifying your position. I disagree with you on the wholesale dismantling of intelligence agencies (they serve a purpose), but I think we can agree that oversight is needed and necessary perhaps regardless of the exact means.
I'm actually not sure I understand your point though (honestly!). Even if the surveillance state was justified by those involved along the way, they do have a legitimate purpose that they can be constrained back to and not surveill the american people generally, right? Or is that not what you were saying.
The whole confidential/secret/top secret thing, with compartments pretty much started with Manhattan Project as I understand it. That was in the 1940s, so small changes piling up over time led us to a surveillance state. Each change was justifiable, due to things like exposures of classified info, spying, 9/11, etc, and welcomed due to using classification and surveillance to fix the problems but also to cover up a multitude of sins, from budget overruns to dopey, failed designs to outright fraud. That is, once you've got a thing that you're protecting, then the surveillance state follows, complete with spy services. If semi-appropriate agencies existed before (FBI, OSS, Naval Intelligence) they get re-purposed as surveillance agencies, (OSS -> CIA) and new ones get created (NSA, DIA, NGSIA).
It looks to me like there's a sort of inescapable logic, or emergent behavior that starts with protecting the Manhattan Project, and grows incrementally until you've got a surveillance state.