Over 25 per cent (at the least) of FBI employees can access secret databases on people.
'In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was unsupported, uncorroborated, or inconsistent information.” The FBI couldn’t even produce the relevant investigative files in the other four.'
We tend to believe there's an implicit checks-and-balances system in place, but the most dramatic historical time time a government official wanted to defund a secret-holder of the government was JFK.
In other words, how is this not a quiet dictatorship by another name?
Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations
If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.
If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden.
What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Imagine what the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
Because they're all doing it too. Any attempts at retaliation what have been hypocritical and met with callouts.
EDIT: Since this is news to some people who seem to think that the entirety of Europe is on a moral high horse, here's some references. There's little morality in intelligence.
Europe spies on its own citizens: https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/europe-spyware-scandal-...
Germany helped the US spy on EU allies: https://www.dw.com/en/parliamentary-report-finds-spying-by-b...
France admits they spied on the US: https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar...
Germany was found to be spying on the US: https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...
The Dutch helped the US spy on the EU: https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
You are just proving that the US is not behaving like a positive force for the world, which was entirely my point. I never said that European countries are saints. I just fear with good reason a US hegemony given their behavior.
As for being a positive force in the world, that depends what they do with the information. It’s a different concern.
How is 2/5 "almost all"?
The US hegemony is rightfully feared, but only because on their relatively unchecked power, not because of any inherent ethical superiority.
I never said that the US is or isn't a positive net on the world: I said that spying isn't evidence of your point. Because by your definition no country is positive net on the world.
Spoken like a true devil's advocate. Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine. The fervor with which you scrambled for evidence to only tangentially counter my argument suggests me otherwise, but oh well.
If all you want is evidence that the US is currently not a positive net for the world, you just need to look at the work CIA has done. You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing. It's how powerful those services are and what they are used for.
By the way you realize that other countries being bad doesn't make the US any better? If nothing you're helping me prove that NATO altogether is a band of criminals, which I might have to thank you for, afterall.
I do have a point, you just don't like it. The point is thus: Europe spies on their allies and enemies just as much as the United States does.
> You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing.
I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.
> By the way you realize that other countries being bad doesn't make the US any better?
I never said it does. I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.
"Just as much" is simply false, as the extent and scope of USA espionage is unrivaled in Europe.
> I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.
Spying per se might be not, the intent behind it clearly does tho. You might spy to exert your power over or disrupt another country, or you might spy as a precautionary measure. We all know which country has the goal to make the world unipolar.
> I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.
I obviously didn't, and I still believe Russia foreign interference isn't comparable with what the US has done.
> Because they're all doing it too. Any attempts at retaliation what have been hypocritical and met with callouts.
Source? I can tell you already there is none. We have plenty of evidence that the USA is spying Europe and other allies, none of the opposite.
.0: https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2014-01-...
.1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/germany-arrest...
geopolitics 101? why would any country not have spies and passive surveillance of both enemies and allies that could one day threaten their power/economy?
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/europe-spyware-scandal-...
As I've already answered you on another comment and as the very first line of the article you shared points out, Pegasus has been used for domestic espionage. The issue at hand is foreign espionage.
Like how Denmark helped the US spy on the EU?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/denmark-helped...
Yes, EU nations are somehow totally incapable of a thing every country is doing. That is naive.
Provide evidence please, but we both know there is none.
> Like how Denmark helped the US spy on the EU?
Yet another case of the US spying on its allies.
Edit: You keep editing your comment so it's hard to properly answer.
> Allies not OK, citizens OK?
I've already wrote you here[0] that I find both cases despicable, but we're simply talking about US foreign espionage here.
I'm not sure if you're being obtuse or just didn't bother reading.
Denmark was complicit in the US spying on Germany, Sweden and Norway.
https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
France and Germany both have admitted they have spied on the White House.
https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar...
https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...
Germany has been found to helping the US spy on EU allies:
https://www.dw.com/en/parliamentary-report-finds-spying-by-b...
This is a childish and naïve stance.
Also, I'm not American. You can stop referring to me in the second person.
Nations spying on nations (even allies) feels terrible but in practice is probably a net good for all. It reduces uncertainty, and uncertainty has historically been a major trigger for armed conflict as one side feared the other side was preparing to strike, so struck first to gain the initiative in case their fears were well-founded. History has shown that judgment to be inaccurate in some significant cases. Wars have also been avoided by good intel.
On the non-kinetic side, espionage better informs policymakers as international agreements are forged and followed. Uncertainty between nations is generally a bad thing for both nations.
We badly need to address nations spying on their own citizens, especially reciprocity arrangements to circumvent restrictions on such. But pending an unlikely utopia of humans all learning how to cooperate at scale for the first time in human history, nations spying on nations is probably a good thing for the planet.
Is there any evidence of this being true or speculation?
here is 1 such example off the top of my head: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
Getting corrupt spies to be exposed doesn't really seem to be a great datum to back your argument. He might have actually saved more lives indirectly since he stopped them from leaking secret Soviet information to the US. Anything else?
labeling the victims as "corrupt" is also weak
saying 'ok you're right but maybe it's a good thing' is weak
none of the arguments really seem great against the evidence presented. anything else?
Two corrupt spies being regularly tried and executed is definitely not "tons troughout history". That was your claim, not "someone killed as a result of an intel leak", and if all you have is other spies dying then I don't have any problem with it.
What I would have a problem with is civilian deaths resulting from leaks, but for what I see generally leaks reveal more often unauthorized civilian killings than they cause them.
but which do not actually matter here, because the example presented satisfied the condition of a person killed due to an intel leak:
- whether you agree with the killing
- whether it is 2 or 2 million
- what their profession is
- whether they are civilians
- whether you personally think they're corrupt
- what you personally have a problem with
literally none of your above views matter to the question here, because the question was whether an intel leak has ever gotten people killed (meaning >1), not "what do you, a random person on the internet, think about the fact that intel leaks have gotten people killed"
QED. anything else? Maybe the killings doesn't count because it's Tuesday, or some other new silly exclusionary criteria you made up?
I'm asking for stronger evidence because the example provided is not very good given the obvious vocational risk with being a spy. Presumably there are stronger examples available.
Also, whistleblower policy has been a subject of presidential campaigns (Obama 2008). Fixating on a false choice is going to draw the ire of many who have written books and debating this topic at great depth and length.
sorry you don't like the people in the examples (or maybe just don't like how they prove the claim right) but your opinion of them doesn't really matter, as my previous post says. The only thing that matters is that evidence was presented of >1 people being killed by an intelligence leak. QED.
any other stupid 1-upping games, to avoid the fact that the claim has been proven true?
Leaking civilian killings or military abuse in wars prevent more from happening, thus saving lives and many of them.
Sources?
Abu Grahib for one. How did that leak cause anyone to die? It has probably saved lives or prevented further abuse by causing accountability.
Assange's "US Army manual for Guantanamo prison camp" leak. Who knows how much further abuse that prevented from happening?
Assange's "Video of US helicopter fire killing civilians in Iraq"
And so on, and so on. You could actually say in this case that there are "tons of cases troughout history" and I'm presenting several to you that had a large impact. Where are your tons of cases with large impact? We're still waiting.
There's overwhelming evidence that leaks cause more good than they do harm. Prove otherwise if you can, but careful because if you attempt it you're also proving to me that you don't believe in truth.
Another question I have is, why are you more concerned by the potential deaths caused by a leak than by the deaths the leak is exposing?
maybe, maybe not, but completely irrelevant to the discussion, since we're evaluating one simple, objective, yes or no question you can find at the bottom of this post, not comparing anything
> There's overwhelming evidence that leaks cause more good than they do harm
same here as above: that's irrelevant to the below question
> the opposite claim is a much stronger and compelling one.
the opposite claim to >1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak, is <=1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak, which, again, my example proves false (and is a ridiculous claim to make)
the rest of your post repeats, for at least the third time, nothing but irrelevant, mostly emotional opinions, distracting from the topic at hand:
Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by an intelligence leak?
Yes. QED.
> the opposite claim to >1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak, is <=1 human in history being killed by an intelligence leak
No.
I'm debating if leaks are a net positive overall, so my claim is that it doesn't matter if leaks sometimes cause deaths as leaks save more lives than they take, especially the lives of innocents. And by the way my claim is 100% clear in all of my comments. If you choose to engage me then accept to debate my claim or stop wasting time.
> Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by an intelligence leak?
This is a ridiculous thing to debate on, and you know it really well. Next thing we're going to debate idiotic stuff like "Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by drinking too much water?"
If all you cared about was "winning" the debate on a technicality, congratulations! Shame that it doesn't amount to anything in the real world.
If the point was to have a constructive discussion and gain some additional insight on the topic, then this was a complete waste of time, at least as long as you refuse to listen what other people have to say and fixate on a technicality.
No.
You're arguing with the claim that intelligence leaks have killed greater than 1 humans in history.
Everything else is a distraction from that question. If you can't agree on a common set of facts, like that one, you aren't ready to graduate to the next discussion, whether it be a comparative discussion of net benefits or anything else. And by the way that claim is 100% clear in all of my comments. If you choose to engage me then accept to discuss that claim or stop wasting time.
Your inability to acknowledge the simple truth of the claim we're discussing shows you to be the one treating this as a debate, and you're the one insisting on "winning" by refusing to acknowledge even a basic set of facts.
Until you can do that, you're not ready for the next topic, which, obviously, necessarily builds upon that shared set of facts. It's like trying to discuss the circumference of earth with someone who refuses to acknowledge it's round(ish).
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by having too vigorous sex?"
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by getting into a heated discussion about a stupid topic?"
"Yes or No, have >1 people been killed by riding a bike?"
I rest my case, this is a complete waste of time and I give it up.
by failing to acknowledge the answer (again: "yes"), you fail to graduate to the next discussion, which, obviously, necessarily builds upon a shared understanding of facts
otherwise, it'd be like discussing the circumference of earth with one who fails to even acknowledge its roundness: you simply don't get to discuss the implications of the facts while you're arguing with those very facts
your own post above illustrates how bizarre it is that you're unable to acknowledge something so obviously true: should we expect you next to similarly refuse to acknowledge people have ever died from sex or bicycling or drinking too much water?
Espionage, gathering secret intelligence, is arguably a net good for the planet.
They're basically vassal states. With no meaningful armies of their own, they rely on the US for their protection, so they're in no position to challenge it.
Your argument boils down to giving up our supposedly better values in order to defeat the "evil guys".
I also refuse to accept that our future is under the hegemony of any single nation. So far the only country we have proof of going for hegemony is the USA. Russia and China are concerned with their borders and it's trivial to verify my assessment Is correct. Just compare military expenses and amount of military bases owned across the world.
Russia is invading a neighboring country, and from talking to Lithuanians, the Russia people seem rather keen on returning to the "good old days" of the Soviet Empire.
The US government is the most destructive force in history
Except very extreme fringes, every big party will bend over to do whatever USA tells them to do, regardless of what their voting base thinks.
See how they are changing the laws so that it's legal to send kurds in turkey to die.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying that the statement "my most immediate concern..." is incorrect. What's more likely: 1) demands from Swedish citizens to the USA actually stopping the USA from using Sweden in its geopolitics? Or 2) Demands from Swedish citizens to the government they empower?
If it's only the extreme fringes, then maybe most people in Sweden simply don't have much of a problem with it or don't care either way, or have more immediately pressing problems to deal with, or something else. Whatever the reason, if you don't like it then your most immediate problem is dealing with the roadblocks to getting your government to stop doing it.
EDIT: Maybe we're just talking past each other. The phrasing "most immediate concern" is something I equate to "the problem I have to deal with first". That's why I see that statement of problematics. If you were able to in some way deal with the USA first without changing Swedish politics at all then some other geopolitical power will quickly fill the power gap afterwards and play the same games.
You might write all the long comments you like, and suggest me to vote (lol, i see that's working very well in USA as well), but the fact remains.
Assange is just one example, merely an outlier. Random immigrants, perfectly productive and integrated into the country, including children, are being deported everyday for no special reason. Families are being separated, careers are being destroyed, just because they want to look "strong".
On the other hand, not a single criminal or terrorist is deported; why? Because they will make a fuss. Because there is a bunch of spoiled Swedish people who never experienced hardship with nothing better to do than to defend outdated ridiculous socialist/communist ideas, and they will kick and scream if a criminal is deported. And the coward government is afraid of having to deal with that.
Deport a working, honest immigrant, and they will not say anything. They comply, go out, and try again. If you're one of them, that is what you should be concerned with.
Uuuh??? They are the ones talking about taking away citizenship from people (with dual citizenship I hope, otherwise it's against human rights), exactly to be able to deport even swedish citizens.
At this point becoming a citizen would become completely meaningless.
And they got voted in power, so I guess they have support from the majority of people.
Stable? We had an honest-to-god raid on the capitol just a few years ago.
At the very least I’d be a little bit nervous about the prospects of democracy if the organizer of that raid gets re-elected.
Don't get me wrong; I'm center-left and democrat-aligned, but with all due respect, if you cannot see how your country has an incredible foundation, you are naive and has a shallow understanding of the world.
I also doubt European countries have the capacity to intercept private calls between top level USA govt officials.
The French: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electro... The Germans: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-arrests-foreign...
Lets not forget that most of the EU is wrapped up in the Pegasus spy scandal: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-watergate-the-pegasus-spyware-scand...
Playing holier than thou with intelligence services is a losing game. There is no holy intelligence service and there is no nation without an intelligence function.
You can search all you want but there is no evidence or proof whatsoever of EU countries spying USA top government officials.
The question here is how can you call yourself an ally in good faith when you spy on your allies?
There's plenty of evidence of the EU spying on allies. I can't tell if your implication is "Europe can't maintain smart enough computer scientists and engineers capable of spying on the US" or "Europe has the moral high ground and doesn't spy on allies".
Both are naive.
Nonsense. https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar... https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...
The second is based on some yet unreleased documents that Der Spiegel claims to have reviewed years ago.
Still no evidence to be found, only claims.
If you're willing to believe a US whistleblower -- whose evidence you can't personally verify -- you have to be open to believing the _former head of the agency_.
Familiarize yourself with this concept https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
Realpolitik are the reason why I consider the USA and NATO a bunch of hypocrites, altho the USA surely championed the practice.
They fill their mouth with good intents, justice, peace and all that is good in public but act like criminals behind the scenes.
At the very least, countries like Russia and China seem to be much more open about their practicing Realpolitik.
That's a lie so big it's visible from space.
They surely would keep that capability secret.
Like the USA itself couldn't? Strongly doubt, the amount of recent leaks we're just discussing proves me right. No nation could have such an espionage system in place without it ever leaking out in some way.
Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff.
How could Snowden have gone through that pile in a couple of days while on the run and possibly afraid for his life?
This is a real problem, but I suspect the reason is more laziness than increasing power. That's no score card on number of classified documents one has access to.
Rather, it is time consuming and risky to determine classification level. No one is going to get in trouble for mistakenly over classifying something, but theoretically risks jail and fines for under classifying a document, not to mention the real harm that could arise from such an error.
This!
I once had the opportunity to work on a project with DoD folks to help them write software to speed up the declassification process.
I was astonished by the current manual process. Imagine a decision tree 50 pages long that you have to apply by hand to each sentence of a document to determine what can be unclassified or not.
These were such nice people and overwhelmed by the work and genuinely trying to make it better so more information could be declassified, faster.
I realized it was a hopeless task. The only real solution is to move toward a world where next to nothing needs to be classified. To do more in the open. That needs to be the vision. Laws need to be adjusted so that these crazy complicated rubrics don't need to be created at all.
[The end of the story is I opted not to join that project. LLMs provide at least some hope that they can make it somewhat better, lacking the changes at the legal and organizational level that I mentioned]
That's pretty naive.
> theoretically risks jail and fines for under classifying a document
The whole system is designed to make declassification risky and expensive. And you think that has nothing to do with power?
Is it just a coincidence that criminal gangs have a similar code of life-long silence?
Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
Really? I assumed it had more to do with Constitutional protections for journalists, so whatever they did publish would stay published.
IIRC, the US had already called Assange's journo creds into question by then, so Snowden sought out established outlets.
Domestic spying is the controversial/illegal activity he was blowing the whistle on.
Dumping info on legal NSA activities (like foreign surveillance), while fascinating to read, is not whistleblowing.
Being Canadian, I see him as a whistleblower as well, since the extent of canadian surveillance was also revealed.
I'd argue it's even better that he did the jobs of multiple whistleblowers by sharing the extent of domestic spying in other countries. No need to wait years for other people to put their lives in jeopardy.
I wasn't aware that it was only one controversial activity.
And I wasn't aware that one could only blow the whistle on illegal activity.
Then he owed it to humanity and acted on it. Kudos to him.
Handling over a mountain of secrets to journalists and let them sort out the illegal from the rest of it, (and trusting them not to publish things that are newsworthy/salacious but legal) is completely irresponsible
You should ask yourself more often “is there a reason they did it they way they did” before offering smug suggestions.
If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or that of any other country in the world to wiretap a foreigner who is outside of the country requesting the data. The fact that the US requires a court order is rare, and by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed.
>if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order
Correction: the company can challenge the order. In case you've been living under a rock / off the grid and haven't seen the Twitter files recently, private companies not only aren't fighting back against government spying, censorship, etc - they're openly cooperating, going so far as to set up task forces to facilitate open cooperation. Why do you think Microsoft was feeding PRISM 5 years earlier than Apple? It's not like one organization had vastly more technical capability than the other - some private organizations are just openly complicit with the government regardless of the morality. IBM produced many of the systems used by the Germans to facilitate the holocaust - something being legal and profitable doesn't inherently make it morally acceptable.
>by all accounts, including Snowden's documents, that procedure is followed.
It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests. Besides, as I've argued above, immoral actions should not be tolerated simply because they are allowed by law. See also: slavery, usury, civil asset forfeiture, murder of unarmed civilian by cop ft. qualified immunity, drone bombing weddings overseas, overthrowing democratically elected leaders in other countries, plotting fake terror attacks against US citizens to justify foreign wars (operation Northwoods).
Evil is evil regardless of whether or not it's been "made legal" by a corrupt government with an extensive track record of violating international sovereignty, human rights, the geneva convention, and arms control charters, not to mention the only country to ever commit genocide of civilians with an atomic weapon. The US has zero moral authority.
There is so much you got wrong here, that it's hard to figure out where to begin.
1. Apple did not have any data to wiretap until people started using iCloud mail. Microsoft ran Hotmail since time immemorial. That's why they prioritized the integration of wiretap data from Microsoft first.
2. There are plenty of examples of companies challenging government orders that came from the Snowden leaks themselves. The Twitter thing is just that the government reported TOU violations to Twitter, and Twitter decided if they were violations and took action if so. The government did not have unilateral control over Twitter.
> It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests
What percent of warrants do you think are approved? You clearly have no idea how the world works. The government wouldn't waste its time asking for a court order unless it thinks the court order will be granted. If it wastes the judge's time by filing lots of requests that are illegal, the judge will punish the government for doing so.
Can you explain why there are countless stories such as this:
NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...
You keep writing they were not spying on US citizens, but clearly they were or NSA employees would not be using it to spy on friends/family would they?
Did they coin the term "LOVEINT" because this was a one-off situation?
Either way, it's clear they're not coming from a place of promoting transparency or a critical perspective of the government's actions. There's nothing wrong with being a patriot but this is a conversion about government misbehavior, not a loyalty contest.
It's probably best to just ignore them, which is what I'll be doing going forward.
> The leaked information came after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls to the NSA.
That's not what PRISM was. As Snowden's slides clearly explain, PRISM was a data integration project to ingest wiretap data from the FBI. That wiretap data came from court orders for specific accounts belonging to non-US citizens living outside the US.
"We've conducted an internal investigation proving no malfeaseance took place. We will not be releasing any data on our usage of the tool. Trust us."
It wasn't illegal, therefore going through the proper channels wouldn't have exposed it.
It is only by going through alternative/leaking means that the program could have gotten exposed to the public.
This is the government's job. Why do you feel it needed to be exposed?
Well because it is basically at scale warrantless wiretapping, of almost every major communication platform(technically its on the internet, and not the phone system, I know).
You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess.
But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
If you don't care about at scale warrentless wiretapping, feel free to just say so. Just say "I don't care if the government has a warrant or not, before they spy on every major communication platform".
Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
How many ways do people need to tell you that it doesn't? It can send wiretap requests for specific accounts to tech companies, which needs to approve each individual request.
> But a lot of people did not know that the government had this,
It doesn't.
> and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
Where? Which document says they have backdoor access to the tech companies. I'll give you a hint: none of them do. Snowden and Greenwald were both too stupid to read the documents they had obtained and claimed otherwise, but all the rest of the tech media, like CNET and the NYT, reported it correctly.
> Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
This is something I care deeply about. That's why I'm glad Snowden's documents and the declassified documents both agree the law is being followed.
> both agree the law is being followed.
Notice how I didn't say that anything was illegal. The fact that it was legal, is entirely the problem!
I think it is very important for the government to get a warrant, before making these requests.
You can feel free to not care about warrants for these types of requests, but I care about them.
Not for people who aren't US citizens who live outside the US, no. Is this really news to you? Do you know of any country in the world that requires its intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant for surveilling non-citizens outside its borders?
Ok, well a lot of people care about warrants.
You can feel free to not care! But a lot of other people care about warrants.
Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Including me.
> Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Once again, no country in the world requires its intelligence agencies to get a warrant to surveil a foreigner outside its borders who has information relevant to national security. This is both legal and something we all expect, and we already knew this before Snowden's leaks. To reveal the code names of systems that ingest this data, Snowden also leaked compromised Chinese computer systems. Is that something we should celebrate?
Even Snowden (and probably 99.9% of all people) would disagree with your position. His statements show he thought he was revealing something other than what his documents actually said.
That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
No, phone metadata collection was ruled illegal. Ingesting court ordered FBI wiretaps on foreigners living outside the US who are of interest to national security has never been illegal in the US or in any other country.
> That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.
It isn't hidden from the American public. The documents describing the data ingested into PRISM have been declassified.
The leadership of these agencies and the congressmen that enabled them on the intel committee are traitors to the republic, plain and simple.
Note to mods: I understand HN isn’t for “waging ideological debate”, but this is an inherently political topic and the discussion is on-topic
Even public information about our military is not commonly known, so we don't have a well-informed citizenry.
How many Americans are aware of this, clearly public info because Al Jazeera has it?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...
Eveybody wants warfare to be asymmetric and biased towards them- why would we want to give a potential adversary perfect information about what weaponry we have as well as its exact capabilities? Unfortunately, when you want to keep a secret, you can't tell all of your citizens and trust that they won't tell anybody...
There can be. But secrets can also be unimportant, or easily learnable through other public means. We need to analyze what we're keeping secret and optimize.
The democracy answer is omni-present. People can't really be said to support something they don't know about and if secrets encompass too much of their government it becomes, for practical purposes, illegitimate.
The cost of keeping the secret has to be weighed along with the cost of it leaking and the chance of that happening. It's not practical to keep everything a secret for reasons of censorship limiting other valid activity or just the increased bookkeeping in tracking secrets without revealing them.
And ultimately, not everything is all or nothing. You can have an undisclosed number of weapons for instance, but have a process where civilians can band together and form a special body, get some people vetted, and be granted access to otherwise secret information that they, because of their unique skills or interests, may have input on. This exists today in the form of aerospace companies, etc, who have access to many secrets to aid in the planning and construction of further tools.
To be fair and let the best win? There is just no honor anymore.
But even so, those demand him to be 100% ethical, why don't they also demand that from the NSA and the rest of the state?
He did it in a responsible way. Perhaps if there was better support for whistle-blower he could have done it even better.
If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Obviously for the rest of the world Snowden is a net positive that raised awareness about mass surveillance by US Big Tech. But I cringe whenever Americans declare him "an American hero". I am sure Snowden cringe even more at that term to be honest.
This isn't why he went to Greenwald, he did so to avoid American outlets like the New York Times, since before the leak they censored the illegal wiretapping story (Room 641A) at the request of the Bush Administration.
Snowden found himself in a situation where both the Government and the Media were in cahoots to cover up criminal behavior. At that point I don't blame him, going to Glenn and then fleeing to Russia was exactly the right thing to do. If he didn't the story would have been covered up and he'd be sitting in a dark cell right now, with none of us none the wiser.
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitr...
"You ask why I picked you. I didn't. You did. The surveillance you've experienced means you've been selected, a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern sigint system works."
I wish everyone here would watch the movie Citizen Four to learn more about the backgrounds and the actual events. He was an anti-surveillance activist. Is it because of the Ukraine conflict that people are now trying to link him to anti-US foreign policy sentiments? Why wasn't this the topic in 2012?
Being anti-US foreign policy is generally a good thing and the only reason you are going to leak to Glenn Greenwald of all people in late 2012.
Snowden also exposed that it was not Bashar al-Assad's legitimate democratically elected government that turned off the Internet in Syria in 2012. It was actually the NSA:
https://time.com/3107684/snowden-nsa-syria-cybersecurity/
No other "anti-surveillance activist" would have stood up Assad in 2012. Only Snowden dared to do that because he is a heroic world citizen opposed to US influence and control of the world.
Nothing wrong with Greenwald besides being a well-written PITA. He also saw the story though, at substantial risk to himself. A great choice to be included, even from hindsight.
I read GGs pieces on Salon about the Bush Admin in the early 00s and was impressed enough to remember his name later. At no time do I remember him being an “axis of evil” apologist.
Let’s focus on impact- Now everyone is at least aware that digital activities are under surveillance including phone call metadata. We have made that trade off for some security. Thank you Snowden.
It's certainly not indifference, it's that our media and democracy aren't really functioning properly. I can go look at any news site and regardless of the site's political bias - there's a recurring theme. You'll see lots of pro war stuff and lots stuff on topics that makes people really dislike each other. But these sort of issues where people overwhelmingly feel one way, and the political establishment feels another? Yeah, those are all strangely absent.
And come next year? These same topics will receive about as much coverage as COBOL at a hot trends in computing conference. Instead we'll get two people each telling you to vote for them because the other guy's awful. The one bright side is we can safely say that they're both right.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/11/15/key-takea...
We know the CIA has commandeered domestic media organizations for the purpose of influencing the opinions of the American public before - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
I feel that Sanders' nomination campaigns epitomized this divide: He spoke for the people. Many more people donated for him than any other candidate, his supporters were diverse and enthusiastic. He was the number one most popular politician in the entire country.
Yet media - quite openly - gave him far less coverage, were 3x more negative in the coverage they did give, studiously ignored the attacks and cheating from the political establishment, systematically smeared his supporters, and then blamed him when Hilary (number one disliked Democrat in America) lost.
And smart people, rational people with functioning memories, apparently, seemed to just... not want to talk about it.
And then it happened again, with even more obvious collusion, four years later. And we talked about it even less, just relieved that we wouldn't have another 4 years of that.
Bringing it all up now feels like you're reopening someone else's closed scab. People are auto-rewriting their own version history to help themselves feel less abused, it seems. They don't want to hear it. And this is (many of) the people who were even clued in to it all in the first place.
Only Sanders wanted Snowden to be honored for his actions. Hilary wanted him to "face the music". It could all hardly be more obvious. And yet...
As much money as they lose; they make enough returns for their owners in indirect ways to be worth the investment. Murdoch and Turner are many things, but poor isn't one of them.
Btw, did anyone else find it disturbing how "do your own research" became a trigger phrase that allows a rather large group of people to discount anything and everything you said? And at the same time, for an opposite but similar group of people, "trust the science" did the same thing?
unfortunately some politicians seek to gain power by appealing to this
And at the same time, blindly trusting institutions and their dogma has long been a turn-on for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo.
Each cheek of the political arse seeks to gain power by simplistically appealing to these groups, because it's more effective for raising funds and votes than it ought to be.
one thing is for sure, though: falsely portraying trust in expertise and science as,
"blindly trusting institutions and their dogma"
or
"for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo",
has been a trope of those same anti-science, anti-expertise politicians for even longer. As Asimov wrote:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
You seem to have jumped from me saying that some put too much stock in dogma and institutions, to believing that this was an attempt to attack expertise and science. There was nothing in my comment, even implicit, that would lead someone fair to this conclusion.
This assumptive leap typifies the 'with us or against us' thinking I'm talking about; tribal thinking which short-circuits reason, and harms genuine scientific thinking.
Even if you didn't mean to imply this, what you wrote has that effect; consider re-reading your own comment if you don't see that.
You seem to have jumped from me criticizing those who do (particularly those who are anti-science and anti-expertise), to an accusation that you personally did so. There was nothing in my comment, even implicit, that would lead someone fair to this conclusion. If you aren't doing it, the criticism doesn't apply to you.
This assumptive leap typifies the persecution complex I'm talking about: emotional thinking which short-circuits reason, and harms genuine scientific thinking. Consider re-reading your own comment if you don't see that.
Is that true, though? Or do we, in our bubble, just believe that? I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people think the news media -- at least the particular subset of the news media they choose to watch -- is more or less ok.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adult...
Ah, sweet flower child.
I could make the case that while what Snowden did was heroic, and praiseworthy in a just and educated nation, the US is ultimately neither a just nor educated nation, and too little changed as a result of his whistleblowing. Go ask 100 truly random people what they think of Snowden's revelations and you may find yourself quite disappointed. John Oliver did an episode on this and it was more than a little depressing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
We've traded away privacy, but whether that increases security remains to be seen.
It certainly increases the money we spend on alleged security. And "creates jobs" or whatever other euphemism we have for pork barrel decision-making today.
What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options.
My basic position on this is that secret holders never have the full picture, but at least they have the trust of the state they serve. A journalist is not always just a journalist.
Now, before you disregard my opinion completely please add to your consideration the following facts:
- I dated and lived with a nationally renowned journalist and editor, so I know a bit about journalists.
- I worked for CSIS and currently work for the CIA as an NOC Agent. AKA a spy.
- I have been in situations where I deeply felt the right thing to do was not to list to the people above my command. What I did in one particular situation was contact a politician I deeply trust who has high level clearance and left a vague message for that politician.
- I think some good has come out of the Snowden leaks, even though I don't think he did it the right way. It's a nuanced discussion and the public doesn't know everything. This work is tough.
> What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options?
A history of actually doing their jobs in this regard.
Bro this is Reddit tier lying.
If you worked for CSIS it is unlikely you would be posting that you worked there, same for the CIA. Did you somehow just transfer to the CIA and as a "foreign national" all the confidential material marked "NOFORN" was suddenly available to you, a foreigner?
Declaring yourself a "spy" in public.. Any chance you have yet to reach the age of majority?
Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
The filtering process by independent journalists is the only actual recourse I can think of to solve this. Exfiltrating confidential documents is usually not a process that gives you a lot of time to sort out what is worth it or not, furthermore the volume of data might very well also be a problem to handle on your own.
Consider the time it took a lot of journalists to find the pertinent documents in this specific case among about 200,000 leaked documents (of various lengths), when Snowden is thought to have exfiltrated 1.7 millions documents.
Beware, transparency is a double-edged sword!
Modern nations are not small villages, where secrets can be shared within a community AND kept out of reach from foreign ears.
So if a leak leads to revealing such crimes, the whistle-blower should not be prosecuted, unless you can prove they deliberately leaked information to harm innocent civilians.
I specifically say civilians because I consider that the military and officials who are part of the state know the responsibilities involved in their position... and if they do not generate any content worthy of leaking (crimes), they will not be exposed to this risk.
It becomes even more problematic within the Five Eyes cooperation context, because if the NSA is spying on British private citizen communications, and GCHQ is spying on American private citizen communications, and the NSA and GCHQ are exchanging data without any limits, well???
Universal standards of human behavior and the right to personal privacy are hardly limited to some arbitrary nation-state boundary line, are they?
As far as targeted spying on government authorities and military operations, well, that's justified. Indeed it's a good thing that different countries are paying attention to each other in this manner, it has a stabilizing influence and can help to avoid conflicts if everyone knows what everyone else is up to.
I don't think it's a matter of what's "ok" or not, it's a matter of winning.
If spying in general is ok, it's of course ok no matter who engages in it. But it's not about whether it's ok or not, it's about what citizens of a particular country want for their own interests. If spying on another nation's citizens makes you safer, you may feel good about that. But being spied on by other nations probably isn't great for you, so it's to be fought against.
I think spying in general is not ok, in the same vein that war is not ok. Unfortunately, neither of these things are avoidable in the world we live in, so obviously I will be more in favor of actions that protect me and mine, and against actions that might make me less safe.
(This is all without addressing the question of whether or not spying on another nation's non-government, non-military population makes anyone safer. I genuinely have no idea.)
> Universal standards of human behavior and the right to personal privacy are hardly limited to some arbitrary nation-state boundary line, are they?
That's a wonderfully idealistic view, and I absolutely agree with it. But that's not the world we live in. Some people are by default adversaries because of the accident of the location of their birth. It's dumb, but that's how it is.
if you are the Chinese government, your honest answer to this question would almost certainly be "yes, and that is why we are doing exactly that"
Because USA is good, so if they are the ones doing the spying, it's just for pretty legit reasons, while chinese people don't speak english so they clearly are up to no good /s
But duh, of course it's bad when someone else spies on you! That can only make you less safe.
It's not about "ok", it's about winning the "war".
For me, USA is the more imminent danger, so I don't understand why people aren't equally appalled.
the answer here is the difference between "me" and "people"
after all, humans have a tendency to think other people think the same way they do
There is no such thing as an “allied intelligence agency”, by their very nature all non-US intelligence agencies are hostile to American citizens.
Thus, our domestic agencies conspiring with hostile foreign entities to defraud and undermine the citizens of the United States is treason.
To characterize the UK as an enemy of the US simply isn't true, the US and the UK are not at war; the UK government is not openly hostile to America. If an American gives classified information to the UK they could be convicted of espionage, but treason specifically would not stick. Not even close. Even attempting it would be a complete farce.
Treason charges couldn't even stick during the Cold War, when America and the Soviet Union were engaged in numerous proxy wars but weren't officially at war with each other. Many Americans sold secrets to the Soviet Union, got caught, and were convicted of espionage. But not treason. The Rosenbergs, who gave American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union? Convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason. John Walker and his son, US Navy officers who helped the Soviets decrypt millions of messages? Convicted of espionage, but not treason. Jerry Whitworth, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen.. the list goes on. Convicted of espionage but not treason. The last treason convictions to ever happen in America were for acts committed during WW2.
"The existence of, and participation in, FVEY is espionage against the people of the United States."
If so, then presumably all the arguments against it are still valid, no? Assuming we can agree that "treason against the people of the United States" and "espionage against the people of the United States" are at least in the same ballpark of badness?
No, because again, these crimes have meanings defined by law which you can't simply replace with a meaning derived from the layperson understanding of the word. To argue that Five Eyes is the illegal kind of espionage, you'd have to argue that it actually violates the Espionage Act. Merely fitting it to the colloquial meaning of 'espionage' isn't sufficient.
What exactly is the objection to classifying some information as SECRET//US,UK,CAN,AUS,NZ instead of SECRET//NOFORN ?
Essentially what they’ve done is commit treason by colluding with hostile foreign powers to mutually spy on each others citizens, bypassing the pesky constitutional/charter limitations in the process.
In the right political climate we could Nuremberg trial 5 levels deep into the organizations responsible, I’m hopeful for that outcome.
Reminder: “I was just following orders/policy” wasn’t a defense then and it won’t be this time either.
If they are doing it, where's your evidence? You don't have it because otherwise, Klayman would have filed a lawsuit.
When Snowden was telling everyone we spy on our allies, that is absolutely not treason.
From the Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
This was the whole point of giving the docs to the guardian and wapo. Wapo then decided to publish the non-domestic stuff that he asked them not to, entirely their decision and it would not have been published otherwise. Then wapo decided to lobby against Snowden's pardon because non-domestic stuff was published. By them. Just wow. Likewise the Nyt who Snowden did not trust and deliberately excluded, managed to get the archive from the guardian and then went nuts, also blaming snowden for what they themselves published that he asked them not to.
So yeah if you were following along at home it was really hard not to have the reputations of the wapo and nyt take a really massive hit. I genuinely didn't think there were so craven but they are and everything is worse for them being so. It makes me entertain conspiracy theories about how many cia agents are on staff there and in senior editorial positions. Everyone will call that a conspiracy theory and treat it with contempt today and I guess that's fair, no evidence, only stench. Then if & when it comes out in the future, those same people will claim everyone always knew...
He already released the documents; it’s up to the American people to do something about it, and we (well, the government) haven’t. Whether he’s in Russia or federal prison changes nothing about the fact that he already did his “part”.
IIRC his passport was revoked, but if I'm wrong I'd enjoy some readings that say otherwise. Its been a while since I followed the story.
It’s a little suspicious eh? I thought the american people deserved to know the things he released…
But it might have been less innocent than one guy being a whistleblower. Other peer powers accommodated him in their interests.
What? He went to Hong Kong, then got a flight to Ecuador via Russia. He chose Russia as layover location because Hong Kong has a limited amount of flights and he ruled that the one least likely to arrest him en route. There was no "we're not sure."
I can understand that someone may have thought I was intentionally saying something wrong.
The truth is: I did not know/remember exactly, and thought we were having a conversation about a controversial issue. Facts are most appreciated.
Of course, ordinary citizens don't get such privileges. If they could, everyone could get out of student loan debt by setting up a Delaware shell corporation controlled by another family member or group of friends, transferring their loan debt to it, and then let the shell corporation go bankrupt. The only downside would be that nobody would be that likely to loan you more money, but you'd have no more debt to pay off.
something that is shocking, upsetting, or ridiculous because it is not what it is supposed to be
“It is a travesty and a tragedy that so many people would be denied the right to vote.”
“The investigation into the causes of the accident was a complete travesty. [=sham]”
“The trial was a travesty of justice.”
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/travesty
On to the differences between tragedy and travesty:
> A “tragedy” is of course a dreadful event or disaster that results in sadness, injury or destruction. While a “travesty” is more of a distorted or cheap imitation of something – often applied to the debasement of something held high, such as justice, rules, ideals and so on.
https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog/qa-tragedy-vs-travesty...