Snowden eviscerates OpenAI's decision to put a former NSA director on its board
fortune.com
fortune.com
As to whether he has given up information -- we just don't know. I don't know about you, but in situations where I have no concrete indications from which to know (rather than merely speculate) that someone has done something Bad, and even when they did, it probably just doesn't matter very much -- I tend not to worry about it. And not only that, I usually just give them the benefit of the doubt.
Life is too short for holding judgements in our head about what people might have done in situations we just don't have any visibility into.
He did have a choice in the sense of go to jail or give up everything he knew for protection.
We can all very publicly see the decision he made but whatever his motives may have been for his initial leak (though I would argue it too was in no way a net positive) that clearly doesn’t extend to what happened beyond that when he applied for asylum.
I think the truth of the matter is that he didn’t have a clear step 2 in his plan, realised he was in way over his head, panicked and did something very stupid afterwards.
But from their point of view, it’s really in no way obvious that this wasn’t an operation from the very start.
The FBIs chief spy catcher was actually working as a liaison officer in Moscow when this happened and he talks about it in some detail here in this interview (will update with timestamps later if I can find it) https://www.youtube.com/live/0NSGOJs150w but in his experience this is actually EXACTLY what he would expect an operation like that to look like and there has never been any clear evidence in the years since that would put a meaningful dent in that theory.
The other point I wanted to make was that because people tend to have no real idea beyond movies as to how intelligence agencies actually function in real life they have no context for where he fit into the bigger picture.
But Snowden was never some super spy or anything like that, he has zero operational experience or context he was just a Microsoft SharePoint administrator who had a security clearance.
He demonstrated numerous times since then that he actually had no meaningful context as to what he was actually leaking for into the wider operational picture or what kinds of controls were in place around its usage. He made a unilateral decision to take as much classified information as he could possibly get his hands on and then leak it with no regards to the consequences that came with it.
There are legitimate reasons to be upset with certain actions of the US intel community I am not here to do some wholesale defence on their behalf but this image he has built for himself as some heroic whistleblower is built on incredibly flimsy evidence. There is a reason why he has essentially zero defenders inside the intelligence community and I would put it to you that it’s not simply because “they are all evil”.
The video sounds interesting, but I won't be able to give it a look for quite some time. Plus I'd like to know what your view specifically is on the matter.
Essentially that his motivations were something entirely different to his version of events.
It’s ultimately an impossible question to answer most likely.
His stated motivations make sense on the surface for sure but I think there are still some big questions around assuming it’s all true, what steps did he take along the way to minimise unnecessary damage and I can’t recall much on that front worth pointing to.
He left that for a proper class of journalists.
Articulate what (even category) of damage you feel he did, that wasn't also about .gov actions that were outright illegal, and/or being hidden from the very citizens paying the bill, and maybe you'll have a discussion here.
As we used to say on /.: "Citation needed".
Perhaps some aspects of the above have been challenged or questioned in the interim. But that's my recollection of the precautions he took, or at least said he took, according to those sources.
Having said that I think it’s also a great example of how even he had no meaningful understanding of what he was actually looking at or the context in which it existed.
Or at least that’s the most charitable interpretation of the useful idiot theory that I can think of. It’s also unfortunately a really good example of why credible people think it was an operation from the get go because those steps really only make sense to the general public.
If there were other precautions he could have reasonably taken -- that would also have been usable by regular journalists -- then you could state what they are, rather than alluding to them.
I'm still pretty convinced the whole thing was a US operation, to shut up the people who would insist everyone who knew about these things was a crackpot. Could the current push for NIST 800-171/CMMC have really happened without Snowden, or something much worse?
Didn't they lose all biometric info for all federal employees in the OPM hack? Fingerprints and retinal images (for those who had them) too?
Everyone can just keep reading until they find the parts they haven't heard about, now.
I'm not that kind of person. That said you can go on thinking that people who don't share your appetite for rank speculation are blithering idiots, as suits your fancy.
I'm fully aware of what he might have done. I just don't find it useful to pretend that I therefore know what he did.
Russia actually had a strong incentive to turn him over if he wasn’t already an asset as not only did they already have all the file he had leaked but it was put to them at the time that this would effectively destroy the intelligence relationship between the two countries and that if he was actually acting independently that they didn’t stand to benefit by protecting him by offering him asylum.
Something happened to make that cost worth it to them. Again, this is in no way a controversial statement in professional circles.
Edit: I want to tighten up my position here for clarity’s sake. Was Snowden an operation is not taken as gospel in the IC but is a credible theory without compelling evidence against it but if it wasn’t and he effectively was an independent walk in that he would be expected to act as a consultant of sorts in exchange for ongoing protection. Both of those are really shitty outcomes however you look at it.
Still, from my own brushings with folks in "professional circles" -- they tend to be pretty consistent about packaging assessments such as these with probabilistic labels (e.g. "likely", "highly likely" and so on). My main concern here is quick toggling to "known" or "near certain" status (or insinuations that "everyone in the IC believes this", which I am noting is not your intention here, but it did sound like it at first).
It's also just a general policy I like to follow with events out in the real, messy world. No matter good our "model" may sound (to our own ears) about what someone did or why, it's always entirely possible we're missing something basic -- not so much a piece of bombshell evidence, but about the broader human context; or that our analysis is simply flawed.
On top of that there's a significant tail risk that comes with putting too much stake in our models, especially when they get coupled together, and motivated reasoning inevitably starts to kick in.
On a finer-grained note (and to explain why I can't assign this narrative too high of a degree of likelihood): It's not automatically clear that the Russians could have traded Snowden in by now -- they may be asking too high of a price (since he's apparently way more valuable than anyone the US has in their trading deck), and since 2014 they may have been coupling it with their hopes that the US will decide to start being "reasonable" about the situation in Ukraine (and so his transfer would be coupled with a deal in regard to that situation), and so forth.
I also don't see how we know that "they already had all the files he had leaked", or that anything about his case has the potential to destroy the intelligence relationship (which has always found a way of surviving, despite all the bile and vitriol we see on the surface).
(This is all in regard to the "weak" version of this model, that Snowden acted independently but had to have broken once he got stuck in the Motherland and was forced to ask for asylum. The "strong" version in the sibling post -- which asserts that he must have been cooperating with his current hosts from the very start -- has just way too many plotholes, and is way too top-heavy in my view. Not to be dismissive, but I have to limit my time here, so that's all I can offer on it at the moment).
I don’t have any reason to think you have any experience whatsoever with that world or even a basic understanding of US intel history but they are major missing holes in your theory.
If the only response you can think of is to speculate about the background of the person pointing this out to you -- that's a pretty common psychological defense, and if it offers some form of comfort to you, you're more than entitled to it.
I’m saying that we are currently talking about a topic that I happen to know a lot about and you happened to start thinking about when the conversation started.
So when you say that you aren’t sure if things sound kind of plausible it doesn’t actually hold any weight to the conversation because again it’s clear you don’t have any of the required background to have an informed opinion to give here.
It’s not a personal attack or anything, but it’s also nothing to do with trying to make myself feel better.
But of course that's precisely what is. You're not providing any insight into the subject at hand here. You're simply talking up your vastly superior knowledge, and making weird projections about the person you're talking to.
What I notice about people who are genuinely knowledgeable and confident about a subject is that in general their deportment and tone are exact opposite of what's on display here.
It’s cool if you you don’t think I do or not; that’s not at all what I’m trying to convince you of. I know what I know, I’m not looking for your validation on that topic here because again you aren’t in a position to give it. Not that I don’t like you or any personal quality because I don’t know you.
If you were genuinely confident of your knowledge, you wouldn't feel the need to repeatedly respond in a purely ad hominem manner such as this.