Intel Committee Releases Declassified Snowden Report
intelligence.house.gov
intelligence.house.gov
"Snowden has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services" (with no specifics). Yes, there are probably plants among the various Russian nationals he deals with. So what? (They make it sound like he's holding regular briefings with these people in a mahogany-paneled room somewhere).
"And in June 2016, [a Russian PM] asserted that 'Snowden did share intelligence' with his government." (That's not what the Russian PM, Frantz Klintsevich said -- and it's dishonest of the IC to assert otherwise). Also, this non-revelation was already made when the initial version of this problematic report was first published over the summer.
The overall weakness of these statements suggest that even now -- 3+ years after being stranded in Moscow, as a more or less direct result of the Obama administration's yanking his passport -- they still don't have anything to nail the guy with.
That's not even claiming that the contact in question was initiated or is sustained by Snowden, rather than being a result of Russian intelligence investigating him.
If and what information was handed over to them is another thing.
Likely that they got the same package that the reporters got plus maybe some documents related specifically to Russia that weren't released.
The point is that the Committee's report (in its current version) provides precisely zero information about what happened.
as far as i know, this has not happend yet.
As many of the commentators have already stated, they should either exonerate him(not likely) or figure out a way to brand him a peadofile.
My guess is; if they were to label him outright then everybody would call the government out and they maybe put in a awkward position of vindicating him. Will be interesting to see what 2017 brings.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/ar...
->RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.
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etc etc.
To be honest I don't find your speculation particularly in line with the facts that we know. And it is definitely the least generous speculation you could make (i.e. makes Snowden look as bad as possible).
One can say that FSB/FSK hasn't got any more in debriefing than they would just from reading the newspapers. You can argue that the political value of Snowden for Putin far exceeded direct intelligence gains.
However saying that he wasn't debriefed is extremely naive. It's simply not how it works in Russia.
And then you force that guy to go to Russia and be debriefed there.
Monumentally stupid doesn't even begin to describe that strategy.
And they have now resorted to an attempt at slander with a familiar story-line. "He was a disgruntled employee... He was a loner who didn't get along with his supervisors..."
Blah, blah, blah. Just go for the hat trick, call him a pedophile, and let's all go home.
You made my day sir. Back on serious side, I find it surprising, that so few (i.e. compared to Assange) shit is being poured over Snowden. It makes me wonder if he still has something hidden in a pocket that somebody back home afraids is going to be made public.
Assange, for all his merits, is fundamentally a narcissist who loved the spotlight - he travelled a lot, attended conferences, socialized and so on. Nothing against that, I'm as guilty of self-centering as the next man, but inevitably that sort of behaviour will produce bad interactions with this or that person, which can then be used in personal attacks.
Snowden is more level-headed. He was a regular joe who took his job more seriously than anyone else around him. I know a few guys like him, they are the sort of people you can't "nail" because they just don't do anything that is not well-thought-over in advance, so they have nothing to be ashamed of, ever.
Rather than whistleblowers that didn't blow any whistles. Political Correctness gone mad i tell ya.
As for "shared it with everyone on the planet." - really, where exactly can i download the 1.5 million highly classified US documents he has shared with the FSB?
Until the government starts to take seriously the idea that it has seriously broken trust with the American people, it's hard to take seriously any talk of the damage alleged to have happened due to Snowden's leaks.
Exactly this. Our government has to own up to the wrongs it has committed and take responsibility for fixing the problems that allowed those things to happen, and quit looking to make Snowden a scapegoat. Trying to handwave around the real issue and make this about Snowden is just doubling down on the same mindset that caused this trouble in the first place.
Washington knows that it has a lot of levers that it can pull to influence public opinion and narrative (just look at the poor quality and compromised character of international reporting in the US).
Snowden as a concept is a threat to Washington's legitimacy. Not only because he exposed massive illegality and wrongdoing on their part, but because if he's considered a hero then:
1. they are the villian. That's bad for state power.
2. it could inspire more leaks of more illegal and ethically questionable behavior. Which could start a spiral.
From a purely game theoretical point of view, Wasthington has to insist that it's the good guy in this situation and it was Snowden who was behaving irresponsibly.
Given the collective approach that the US government is known to take (e.g. it gets to write the history books that children are educated with) and the opposition to this narrative track among informed and disillusioned Americans are not collectively organized over the long arc of history probably Washington can have its way.
Indeed the wrongdoing revealed has compromised the legitimacy of the state significantly in my mind. When you combine deliberate PR/propaganda with a surveillance state the result is pretty scary.
The worst part is that our president has not even addressed the issue head on and acknowledged blatant excesses and offered reassurance that something (even in secret) is being done.
I'm sure that if I worked at the NSA I'd take it for granted at some level that the work I was doing was inherently good, and thus I'd read critiques like this thread as horribly misguided.
But there is such a thing as consent in a democracy, and while we don't have a direct democracy there are certain rights which the government is not supposed to violate under any circumstances.
I know there are some ridiculous conspiracy theories out there, but is it too tinfoil to assume powerful actors had a hand in stigmatizing the concept of conspiracy and abuse of power in the U.S. government?
Luckily, I think most people on Hacker News are realistic people not easy to excite into witch hunts and victim-blaming like you suggest. I think most people on Hacker News believe that the governments of Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, China, and others including the United States, manage their appearance to the publics they represent, making appeals for and finding evidence to build the case for their own legitimacy. That's not an extraordinary claim, you can find media reporting that suggests a wide range of policies and rhetoric from around the world are motivated by public appearance and appeals to legitimacy. Much of the censorship that people experience in the world is similarly motivated.
The character attacks against Snowden have evolved over time: "he didn't understand the programs / he was just a low level employee", "his girlfriend was a stripper", "he's a Russian spy", "he didn't go through the proper channels", "he just wants to be in the news", "he was a disgruntled employee".
These slanderous rumors, spread by anonymous officials and PR contracts, belie the fact that there is no desire to discuss the abuse disclosed by the whistleblowing. What anonymous officials, press offices and paid PR coverage want to talk about are rumors and opinions about Snowden's intentions - topics that not only distract from the documents (which are conclusive evidence of highly illegal and unethical behavior) with inconclusive speculation but topics that have a specific effect on the public attitude and narrative understanding of the events that unfolded.
Those who think that there has to be some wide ranging conspiracy for officials to react in a self-defensive manner are unrealistic. Those who think the human nature of American officials deeply differs from Chinese officials, French officials, or Turkish officials (etc) are unrealistic and unconvincing.
So to the first question you posed: no. I have a higher opinion of Hacker News commentators than that. I don't think they are dumb or immature or unrealistic. At least, not to that extreme degree.
HN may be very reasonable compared to the average when it comes to Snowden and dragnet surveillance, but the existance of that surveillance has been plausible and even likely for a long time before Snowden came, and before Snowden it was considered tinfoil by most (I heard) that knew of the possibility at all.
It is now "in" or "socially acceptable" to acknowledge this possibilty now, though once you start thinking about it and try to find ways of living that reflect this knowledge (e.g. refusing to use smartphones, social media or the internet in general) you again tend to enter "considered tinfoil territory". What I'm trying to say is, I think "tinfoil" is mostly a label used to stigmatize and supress a concept or person, based on social convention or "perceived consensus" (which is manipulated by media, which are manipulated by all entities with enough power and the incentive to do so). I perceived GGP to be at risk of that and wanted to indicate that in my comment.
Kind of like how saying the Intel ME is a backdoor is viewed now (while it is literally an autonomous remote management module, that is included in almost every consumer PC and which cannot be removed or inspected).
That's why I don't trust other people's opinion on what is "tinfoil", and can be a little cynical about it.
June 2012 at NSA Hawaii: Snowden receives a quick rebuke for roping in a deputy head of NSA's technical services directorate on an email conversation regarding a workplace spat over issues updating a few servers. Snowden does not deny that this incident occurred, and the NSA has quoted directly from the resulting reprimand showing Snowden's apologetic attitude in regard to his actions after the fact.
June or July 2012 (a few weeks later) at NSA Hawaii: "Snowden began the unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks."
December 2012 at NSA Hawaii: "Snowden attempted to contact journalist Glenn Greenwald."
January 2013 at NSA Hawaii: "[Snowden] contacted filmmaker Laura Poitras."
March 2013, James Clapper's Congressional Testimony: Snowden deems this his "breaking point" in regard to the question as to "Why he did it?" Although, as the report states, he began his mass download nearly a year prior to this event, as well as contacting both a journalist and filmmaker before even taking another NSA position as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton.
Nowhere has Snowden particularly refuted this timeline. He, and those journalists who support him, have only cherry picked falsehoods from the overall report alluding to the rest as merely fruit of the poisonous tree. Yet, this timeline seem quite factual and troubling.
I am assuming he means a long time to fix the trust btwn the US govt and people? Because I am not aware of any concrete evidence that shows damages specifically caused by the disclousres.
Pretty sure most terrosits already knew that they had to be careful with their comm. as it was most likley monitored. And the bombings in europe where not coordinated by advanced encryption, but normal social media accounts as i understand.
Other agencies are in charge of counter terrorism intelligence such as the FBI, DHS and NCTC.
Disclosures about their global surveillance program had much more to do with human intelligence (mass propaganda), industrial espionage, and diplomatic intelligence than terrorism.
The media seriously misinformed the American people about the duties and prerogatives on the NSA, mostly to link the NSA and its excesses to something equally controversial, however, untrue.
Anyway walking back from that line of reasoning: yes. Insurgencies around the world have had their operational security studied for decades and they are very sanitary wrt carrying around cellphones that have their batteries in, etc.
But do you really expect a nation state to say "hey, this is exactly how were are damaged. Please exploit us." That's just the nature of the intelligence business, it's hard to provide proof of damage without causing further harm.
Yes, if they want any rebuttal to Snowden's accusations. Snowden brought proof. If the state wants anybody to believe an alternative explanation, they need to provide at least some evidence. "Just trust us!" is not a useful defense.
> it's hard to provide proof of damage without causing further harm.
That isn't always true, but potential future harm hasn't stopped the government in the past. If revealing sensitive information is politically useful, the perceived realpolitik benefit can outweigh theoretical future harm. This is especially true in today's hypernormal "narrative based" political climate.
Wait... the NSA is complaining their privacy was infringed upon because documents were searched without proper approval?
Wat?
You essentially have to give up your life like Snowden has and for those with kids and family this might be a price too high.
The media, commentators and assorted vested interests are old hands at dismissing concerns that do not fit an agenda as 'conspiracy theories' so the importance and rarity of 'the smoking gun' that Snowden produced cannot be underestimated. And as a side effect he exposed the galling hypocrisy and pretension of Europe as the enlightened refuge for dissentors and the 'orchestration' of the global media with it.
The only way to address the fallout is 'normalization'. And it seems the narrative is the world is such a dangerous place that total surveillance is essential, never mind our security forces and foreign policy is directly involved in propping up terorrist funders and groups.
And this narrative is being expaned daily. We should realise the state is supposed to represent our interests and the only endame for such unaccountable and powerful security services is eventually our supression.
Edit: Of course actually printing it at any point in that process IS insane/beyond paranoid.
So, not so insane in my opinion.
EDIT: apparently this has happened repeatedly, according to a quick google search.
No doubt some sort of knee jerk process was put in place to ensure that any digital release of redacted documents must be scans of a physically redacted source.
Sort of like an analog memory hole.
Also interesting is how well the accounts of his work behaviour match up with these posts from an HN user earlier this year, who claimed insider knowledge: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=buttcoin
In particular since there wasn't an individual document that stated "we are surveilling the American homeland in addition to the remainder of the innocent world", Snowden choose - I think history vindicated him in this regard - to grab many documents and let journalists choose what to publish.
I think the journalists who disclosed the documents did a wonderful job selecting what to publish directly, what to report on, and what to black hole. They chose to report on what was in the public interest.
The public interest included revelations about mass surveillance of allied nations, espionage to help American business prospects, memoranda for allies to spy on one another's citizens, backdooring and infiltrating American products and standards so that they could be military weapons overseas and a great many other things.
Another wonderful outcome of Snowden having provided a large collection of documents to journalists is that in reading them as a wholistic collection gave journalists the context to understand the motivations and methods of mass global surveillance - indeed it allowed journalists to effectively question American official denials about its behavior. America had been guessing what was taken and so it wasn't sure about what it could get away with lying about. Journalists were able to publish documents that contradicted the official narrative coming out of the White House when it tried to downplay the massive illegal and unethical apparatus.
In any case, it's wrong to abuse Snowden in this case. Journalists made the decision about what to publish. I don't remember anyone's privacy inside the agency getting ruined, but if that did happen the blame rests with the media.
> Snowden would later publicly claim that his "breaking point" - the final impetus for his unauthorised downloads and disclosures of troves of classified material - was March 2013 congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
> But only a few weeks after his conflict with NSA managers, on July 12, 2012 - eight months before Director Clapper's testimony - Snowden began the unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks.
Given that Snowden claimed his motivation was seeing Clapper "lie on oath", there's some irony in seeing Snowden caught in a lie about this claim, as at that point not only had he already downloaded and exfiltrated much of what he later leaked, but had already been in contact with Greenwald and Poitras for two to three months.
But that doesn't really matter, does it? I mean we now know we're being spied on either directly, or indirectly (wink wink). Data collection is spying. Metadata collection is spying. It's happening; both parties vigorously support it; and it's most likely unconstitutional. That's what matters.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238346
Compare this passage:
(U) Third, two weeks before Snowden began mass
downloads of classified documents, he was
reprimanded after engaging in a workplace
spat with NSA managers. Snowden was repeatedly
counseled by his managers regarding his behavior
at work. For example, in June 2012, Snowden became
involved in a fiery email argument with a
supervisor about how computer updates should be
managed. Snowden added an NSA senior executive
several levels above the supervisor to the email
thread, an action that earned him a swift
reprimand from his contracting officer for failing
to follow the proper protocol for raising
grievances through the chain of command. Two weeks
later, Snowden began his mass downloads of
classified information from NSA networks.
2) The engineers actually knew the risk (~1% chance
of loss per launch, not specific to the o-rings,
compared with two actual losses of the shuttle
over ~130 missions). Management used entirely
invented numbers for the risk which were not
justified.
If he didn't blow the gasket on the launchpad himself, before launch, how disasterously awful might this have really been, if he had behaved like a good little cubicle drone, followed protocol, drank the Kool-Ade, and permitted this so-called "counseling" to brainwash him?
He didn't have to release all the documents in the manner he did. He could have leaked them to Krebs on Security or something else. Krebs is very trustworthy at protecting sources and data itself. Instead he just dumped it all to the world with disregard for the damage it would cause and the innocent lives it would impact.
There's a difference between drinking coolaid and realizing there's drugs in the coolaid so you blow up the entire party coolaid is served at damn the consequences to the innocent waiters and waitresses tending the party.
Sure you're not thinking about someone else? Snowden gave his files to journalists, not WikiLeaks.
The premise that "there is no anonymous" escapes 4 out of 5 people I talk to. It takes very careful explaining, to bring people to the understanding that their are hacking teams with names, that get away with things, and the things that those named sub-groups manage pull off are perpetrated by "some unknown, anonymous group of people" until evidence demonstrates who done it.
Because of this, The Proles (people who aren't paying close attention) often confuse the premise being a simple anonymous tipster with being affiliated with the fictious premise of an organized, regimented imaginary hacking group that possesses a rightful claim to the mantle of "Anonymous" as if it were Batman.
Then media outlets exploit this cluelessness, to sell advertising, by drumming up exciting click-bait that perpetuates the false narrative that there is a movement called Anonymous, rather than the prank call it really is.
From where I stand, he released Power Point slides to journalists, outlining the broad strokes of some programs and projects.
He did so in a way that proved there were deep flaws to be found in the manner in which the NSA secured itself. Had he not proven these flaws by demonstration, those flaws would likely have persisted until, instead of merely having its pants pulled down in the middle of the street, the NSA might have been stabbed to death for its wallet.
Why listen to me though? This very document even says they still live with the hazard of another Snowden coming along and pulling another Snowden. It is, in fact, the conclusion of the document we are discussing right now.
The damage to signals intelligence capabilities, through the leaking of classified documents, was deliberately and maliciously done through the actions of Snowden himself, most likely in response to a bruised ego.
In contrast, the engineers involved in the Challenger shuttle did their very best to try to avert disaster - albeit to no avail - through their selfless adherence to professional ethics and engineering safety concerns.
The two scenarios couldn't be more different really.