Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

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> This may not have been an act of altruism like Snowden

I'm still really surprised no one questions the Snowden narrative. A man who earned $200k a year, worked remotely in Hawaii with his smoking hot wife, suddenly decided he has a conscience, either collected data slowly over time or did a massive data dump and released all this information to Greenwald and Der Sepgiel. Then he flees to Russia where he openly tweets against Russian policy.

Unlike many other stories, there were no where near the level of government denial. Media outlets ate it up without looking into any of it.

I really feel like Snowden was an intentional leak, either to show the NSA could proclaim their spying abilities and no one would be able to stop them, or they wanted to profess they had capabilities they don't actually have.

In either case, the US government is still spying relentlessly, creating war zones and expanding military powers. People say I'm a "tin foil hat conspiracy theorist" when I say that the CIA most likely created ISIS to destabilize Syria.

It's not crazy, it's what the CIA has been doing for decades. The 1973 Coupe in Chile, Bay of Pigs, School of the Americas, Iranian Contras .. the list is as long as you want to make it.

You should question each "leak."

If Snowden was fake, and someone can make the NSA and government's response to his leaks look as genuine as they did, this is going to be someone so powerful, well-connected, and invisible, that's it's likely it's not even human. Every time you come up with a complex conspiracy theory, ask yourself how easy it would be to orchestrate that and just handle all of the logistics of it with zero leaks and 100% undying loyalty without getting stabbed in the back yourself.

People did question it -- he was getting spy accusations as soon as Russia let him in, but then they looked at the actual documents and realized that Snowden is irrelevant as far as the content is concerned. You don't need Snowden's motivations to interpret any of that.

What benefit does it serve you to suddenly get all of your enemies and frenemies to suddenly change all of their communication methods to avoid the NSA? You're spying on them without them knowing about it -- that's exactly what you want!

Maybe AI is already in charge. :)

Simple: I have compromised your communications, using one of many methods. I publicly release some of my obsolete methods (unofficially of course). You scramble frantically and at great expense to plug all your leaks, and I watch you through a channel whose existence I haven't revealed.

I wouldn't say it's crazy to question it, but neither of the potential motivations you cite for faking the leak really holds up to me. The NSA didn't need to leak on itself just to flex its muscles, people are plenty scared of it as is. Not to mention many of the capabilities confirmed by Snowed were already widely speculated to exist - Wired wrote an article shortly before Snowden that touched on them[0]. Nor can I imagine they would try to claim capabilities they don't have: what would be the point? Seems pretty expensive for a psy-op without a discernible target.

Also Snowden ending up in Russia has never seemed suspicious to me - where else could he go that would protect him from both legal and clandestine extradition?

[0]https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

Snowden was living in Hawaii with his girlfriend, not his wife.

Facts are important if you want to promote your theories/wild fantasies.

I agree that they could've done it, and they've done stuff like this in the past. The pros outweigh the cons. The reasons you've listed don't seem 'worth it' to me.

Maybe there's some alternative motive we're missing - but I doubt it was to prove they couldn't be stopped even after exposal.

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