Greenwald: Snowden Has Provided ‘Thousands’ Of Docs, ‘Dozens’ Are Newsworthy | Hacker News Reader

Greenwald: Snowden Has Provided ‘Thousands’ Of Docs, ‘Dozens’ Are Newsworthy

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I feel really jaded for daring to think it, but I really hope he has the releases set up on a deadman's switch.

It'd be naive to not think about it.

Such things can backfire:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry...

EDIT: Didn't see the Twitter update at the bottom, my apologies.

update: In a tweet, the @wikileaks says: "WikiLeaks 'insurance' files have not been decrypted. All press are currently misreporting. There is an issue, but not that issue."

Well he did allude to all of the insane things he supposedly had access to like operative names, safe houses, etc. even saying something to the extend of bring the NSA down in an afternoon. If I was going to have deadman's switch, it would be all that stuff. He doesn't seem like the type to do it outright, he doesn't seem to want to cause that level of chaos and damage (if indeed he does have the power), but who knows what will happen if he shows dead somewhere.

I missed that; can you provide a link?

It's in the video interview.

I'm really excited! I like the incremental release, I think it builds momentum in the way that a full dump could not. Just as one story has been thoroughly explored, the next one comes out.

Great point. I'd like to see David Brooks and the rest of the useful idiots try and struggle to keep up with the releases. I'd like to imagine folks as smart as Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald have approached the releases of these documents strategically, considering the inevitable responses from the status quo and its servants.

I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to predict their responses to each type of revelation.

They try to downplay the scope of the snooping? Retort with documents showing the number of collaborating service providers and types of materials gathered.

They try to downplay the impact of this on innocent Americans? Release documents showing specific abuses.

etc. and ad nauseaum until the hypocrites, phonies, and apologists are exposed for exactly what they are.

I suppose only time will tell, but I know a lot of people that are getting more and more interested in this.

> I'd like to see David Brooks and the rest of the useful idiots try and struggle to keep up with the releases.

Its not like Brook's facile drivel takes all that much effort; its not like its designed to stand up to scrutiny by anyone thinking deeply, its just to give people an excuse not to think deeply.

I don't think they'll highlight specific abuses, as greenwald already commented on the difficulty of that. If you point out some innocent being surveilled, you've just exposed them to the world. If you point out someone guilty being surveilled (though guilt would be impossible to determine a priori and from their perch), you've just tipped them off. I'm very curious to see the content of the next releases, and like the one of the commenters above, I do hope there's a deadman switch, though killing greenwald now would be an epic mistake on the govt's part. THAT would set off a firestorm. More than likely, they've already hacked his computer and have read the docs and are preparing how to respond to the upcoming revelations.

Well, you know. If he has any sense, his computer is offline. And powered off.

Also, the incremental release strategy makes it easier to catch the government and companies involved telling lies and contradictions. Never show all your cards at once.

Basic PR. Dump bad news (at a time when reporters are unlikely to pick it up), trickle out good news, and it gives you a more positive image. They are doing the opposite - trying to get maximum outrage over the stuff they leak.

That's why companies often need PR consultants. Because they are tempted to try to keep stuff under wraps, even when it's slowly trickling out. They need an adult to tell them "people will find out anyway, so just dump the whole thing in a press release on a Friday, so you get it all out in one headline". Plus, reporters will be reporting your spin on it, and you look like you've made an honest mistake and are coming clean.

The NSA should probably figure out what's getting leaked, then spoil the PR attack by coming clean. Somehow, I can't see them doing it.

I think this is a pretty sophisticated PR strategy, actually, especially with regards the timing of the disclosure of Snowden's identity. It's not as formulaic as you describe...

They release some tantalizing tidbits (they are tidbits, aren't they? we already had heard about the metadata in 2006, didn't we?), and at the peak of interest (where did this come from?!?) release Snowden's identity in a carefully crafted video. They maximize control over his story before the government even has any idea who he is, before they can even think how to paint a picture of him in a negative light. Once the media has spent its powder covering Snowden (letting him speak for himself in a gorgeous HD video), there is little the government can do to add to the story; Snowden's identity is largely frozen in the picture that Greenwald et al have painted, while the government PR machine is struggling to come up with a cohesive strategy, let alone a response.

Then, after the Snowden story has run its course (at the point where talking about Snowden any more will mean losing viewers), they drop the big disclosures. At least that's my prediction. So what might the next disclosures be? This is pure paranoid speculation, but I think Snowden hinted at it in the video: the government is recording all telephone conversations, but storing it according to a legal theory that says that as long as no one actually listens to the recordings, they don't need a warrant. They obtain a warrant that is individual-specific, but instead of using that warrant to capture evidence of current actions, they use that warrant to retrieve all of the target's past activities.

It doesn't hurt that he presents very well on camera, either.

It's amazing how calmly he talks. Alex Jones could learn a thing or two.

I think Alex Jones just acts like that because he's trying to rile up the rubes as part of his act. Or cause he's crazy, but I tend to think his shtick is a moneymaking act.

He definitely plays it up for entertainment value, but he's been a true-blue believer for a long time. I even agree with most of his principles and small portion of his facts (I don't like to use the word "crazy", which can equally apply to all of us or none of us), but he's missing proper barometers when it comes to skepticism, empathy and tact.

99.99% of Americans will not see that video.

99.99% of Americans will see their local TV news slamming the guy on any character assassination angles they can come up with.

I think you underestimate the number of Americans who get their news from the Internet. That video was everywhere. I saw and heard a number of mainstream reports that sampled from it directly as well.

Sure, a majority of Americans won't have seen it, but a majority don't give a crap about this kind of thing at all. I would say that for most people who were paying attention, the video had an impact.

The vast majority get their news from local news broadcasts.

http://www.mpopost.com/most-americans-rely-on-television-for...

They can't, that's the beauty of it. They can't talk about anything unless they know it's going to be released, because it's top secret, and they have no idea what's going to be released.

Scary that Greenwald has to be quite so specific about Snowden's state of mind. Between the lines, he's not about to jump off a bridge. It suggests that they're genuinely worried about what someone might do to Snowden.

It's bordering on conspiracy theory territory, but "threat to the government commits 'suicide'" is so expected, it's cliche.

I agree, but it is the fact that Greenwald (rather than just the average conspiracy theorist) clearly has this on his mind that I found interesting.

And as such I wish Snowden had a verified Twitter account.

I hope I wasn't misunderstood. I'd want the Twitter account so he could verify to the public that he was still alive.

I don't think it would be terribly difficult for the NSA to gain access to a Twitter account if they wanted to.

I was going to say something about PGP signature but obviously not going to fit in 140 characters. G+ Though.

That or dies[1] in a plane/car crash (jfk jr, paul wellstone, michael connell, just to name a few)

[1] that the person died and the vehicle crashed are well-reported facts. Most people don't question causality after this - and enough entropy can be introduced to prevent questions also.

I really dislike the way Wikileaks and this journalist get huge dumps of information then trickle feed it out, and ultimately don't end up releasing most of it. It's almost like they are deliberately giving the USG enough time to shut them down. Infuriating would be an understatement.

On the other hand, trickling it out keeps the entire issue at the fore-front of the public's attention rather than burning out in a week and being done with it. Also, as some have said, it allows those involved to come out with statements which may later be contradicted by further releases of evidence (i.e. giving the government a chance to hang themselves).

There was an NPR interview a few years ago with someone at Wikileaks (must have been Assange, do they have another public face?). They used to release information in dumps, nobody paid attention. Teasing it out was the only way to get the media to bite. It's not a very appealing strategy to those who just want the information, but a response to the current state of affairs, I guess.

Well...provide the dump to as many other journalists as you can first, then trickle it out. It just doesn't seem like a valid reason to sit on the whole lot yourself, surely providing a guarantee that the information will get out eventually is more important than the media management aspect.

And besides, based on this theory, the stream of information being released should speed up, as once you have the worlds attention, they will pay attention to more. But we tend to see an initial release of explosive information, followed by a gradually diminishing stream of information - I am thinking back to Cablegate in particular - until it basically switches off and you never hear anything again.

Less talk and more publishing. The longer they discuss just how great the additional documents are going to be, the more time the NSA/USA has time to try convince the guardian not to publish...

From a strategic role, what Greenwald's doing is a smart move. If they were to dump everything out in the public in quick succession, the news cycle (and, by extent, the public) would absorb the information and move on. Timed releases would continually stoke the fire and prevent people from forgetting about it.

If the Guardian didn't publish him, @ggreenwald still has some 171k followers on Twitter.

If anyone reading this doesn't have strong allegiance to either political party, you might enjoy his twitter as much as I do https://twitter.com/ggreenwald

I'm almost disappointed by this leak because of how it might affect the diversity of mr greenwald's tweets.

For a while. Don't worry, Greenwald will always have plenty of slimy things to report on.

It is disappointing how news organizations seek to gravitate towards making themselves the center of whatever story they're telling.

Isn't the role of narrator an incredibly important enough part of every tale?

I am not sure if there is a more effective method of spreading the knowledge however. If it was all dumped at once very few people would be able to absorb it and understand it in a timely fashion and many would probably give up and move on. Yes they benefit by drawing it out, but the same technique seems to elicit deeper impact on the public.

If you were reporting on these leaks like Greenwald, wouldn't you have a dead man's switch? What does it say about a reporter's job that they would have to fear for their very lives?

Reporters are now protagonists since states spy on them and use dirty tactics to prevent them from doing their jobs. I don't think many of them wanted that role when they started.

It seems like many have missed some things about the slides that were leaked. Only five pages of the 41 page presentation has been released so far[0]. The fifth page was released after the initial release and contains the phrase "directly from the servers"[1]. The rest of the presentation allegedly also contain more technical details[2].

[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...

[2] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343410562245480449

Is Greenwald technical enough to understand the content? Or is it just going to be buzzwords that have no real technical meaning?

The slice deck already looks like someone was presenting to non-technical management - why would they have put highly technical details in there too?

That the slide deck isn't technical doesn't mean Snowden didn't have access to the technical stuff too.

Greenwald presumably has plenty of access to technical advisors at the Guardian and elsewhere who can help sift through.

Haven't you got the memo yet? According to the media we can't trust Snowden because he didn't graduate high school.

I suspect that Greenwald is not nearly technical enough to understand the content - not that he's not a bright guy, but the level of technical nuance here might be significant.

So then it's all about the quality of the advisors they have access to, but given the nature of the materials, I suspect few people have been able to see them.

We just won't know till the whole thing gets released, if ever.

And to the second point, obviously I couldn't know for sure, not having seen it, but it's very very common with these types of presentations within government agencies and defense contractors to have 5-10 overview slides, the conclusion, and then behind that 20 reference slides that are more of an information dump. The idea is that the first set of slides is enough for most people, but if you want to dig deeper, there's additional detail.

Well Greenwald has already screwed up what NSA jargon for "directly from the servers" means and about tripled-down on it, so for future news releases I'm definitely going to have to look at the source itself and not Greenwald's spin on it.

You simply can't build the system that does what Greenwald claims for $20 million. You can build a drop box + FISA API for that amount though, but that would mean Greenwald is incorrect (or lying, take your pick) and the companies + NSA were telling the truth about that aspect.

Maybe PRISM is just the front-end to the government service. After all, we know they are running multiple services. Greenwald is really sticking to his guns on direct access, and from what he's told us he has a lot more information.

If Greenwald would so much as acknowledge that other theories can explain the details he's leaked to this point I'd give him more credit.

But he doesn't, either because he is obstinate or because he doesn't understand the technical nuances.

Is there any sense of the law which would allow US authorities to seize or otherwise prohibit these additional documents from being published?

I'm sure Peter King would say yes. He, or some others, would probably try to spin it to fall under the Espionage Act[1] or something.

Whether or not that would stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny is, I think, an open question.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917

Peter King makes my teeth hurt. I'm really shocked that guy says what he does without any irony for his obvious authoritarian overtones.

Also the fact that he is a supporter of the IRA, both in his statements for the past 40 or so years, and also materially (back during the Troubles). How the hell does a guy like that end up as Committee Chairman for Homeland Security?

The US Government sought an injunction preventing the New York Times from publishing parts of the Pentagon Papers. The case quickly got to the Supreme Court, which threw out the injunction 6-3. It was one of those rare decisions in which nine justices generated ten different opinions. One was a basic, unsigned opinion of the court throwing out the injunction with barely any reasoning because the majority could only agree on the result, not the process to get there.

Suffice it to say, this is a very complicated question. I'm inclined to believe that any attempts to prevent journalists from publishing additional documents like the ones now in question will be quashed. But it's not a sure thing.

Maybe this time around they'll ask for comment or whatever from the concerned sources so that they can avoid publishing so much incorrect info this time around.

I found it really hard to get angry at the PRISM stuff considering that pretty much every major article went through major revisions over the following 48 hours. Also, the "direct access to servers" meme that was categorically false doesn't help to take it seriously.

When the people behind the scandal can spend the entire news cycle raising legitimate criticisms and contradictions to the published articles, it's hard to get mad.

>Also, the "direct access to servers" meme that was categorically false doesn't help to take it seriously

I don't think this was ever determined. The documents specifically stated that access to the servers is "direct," and Glenn Greenwald seems to be sticking to his guns on that point.

Please describe (in a sketched terms) a technical method by which anyone could get "direct access" to the user-data servers of Facebook, AOL, Google, etc.

Remember that each company has its own homegrown user-data data storage format, homegrown distributed data storage system, homegrown datacenters(!), and firewalls. These companies aren't running MySQL or Oracle, and these systems are constantly being updated with new features and data model migrations.

Does that seem plausible? Contrast against what has been freely admitted since NSLs started appearing:

Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand.

I am a "big data" engineer, and I have no idea how they could do something like this. However my inability to theorize a potential method of collecting this data is not evidence for/against its existence. Remember the NSA employs some of the most brilliant software engineers and mathematicians on the planet whose job it is over the course of years to figure this sort of stuff out. I'm sure they've got a few tricks up their sleeve. Time will tell of course, and more revelations are reportedly "imminent"

This. To paraphrase a favorite Daniel Dennett quote: don't mistake lack of imagination for insight into feasibility.

> Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand.

But when it's been shown that a single subpoena can be "all phone data for three months for every customer", then describing that as "direct access" doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me.

It's clear that there are crucial and important technical details missing. But it's also clear that the NSA has much more fluid access than one-user-per-approved-subpoena-at-one-point-in-time. Depending upon the target audience of the leaked PRISM slides, the description "direct access" may be quite prudent.

The phone data stuff wasn't part of PRISM.

In general the stuff coming out of PRISM seemed to me to just be the general name for how the NSA hands out the NSLs(which are awful in their own right) to all these comapnies. A good side-effect of all this hype is people are looking at those. But PRISM doesn't seem to bring anything "new" to the table. Correct me if I'm wrong

I know the phone data isn't part of PRISM, but everything that has come out seems deeply connected by section 215 of the Patriot act. Which is supposedly what's "justifying" all this data gathering.

Or each company sets up a continuous mirror. NSA has direct access to the data without (legalistically) direct access to the servers. Everybody's happy except democracy.

Not that I think this is the case - I suspect your scenario is what at least Google is doing. But if it's set up as an API (they submit a search query, Google approves it or even rubber stamps it in many cases, the query is run, the results sent to the dropbox), then the PRISM description is pretty accurate.

> Everybody's happy except democracy.

I could just up-vote you anonymously but I would rather say in person that this quotation tickles me pink and that I am going to steal it.

I like the explanation that it's basically a REST api with a required has_fisa_approval field[1]. In practice this gives unrestricted access because FISA only requires a hearing to be held after more than a week of surveillance against a single target.

The existence of the has_fisa_approval checkbox allows the companies to (dubiously) claim "no direct access" even though it is all but equivalent in practice.

1: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-m...

I don't know about Google etc., but I used to work at Yahoo, and while there were substantial security measures in place, it would take a couple of engineers with sufficient access a couple of days to put together a solution to be able to pull out a stream of user data and e-mail data somewhere. In fact, all of this data was stored in systems prepared for easy replication anyway.

Somehow I doubt it'd be all that much more technically challenging elsewhere.

It's not a hard problem if there's people complicit at the right levels in these organisations. If there are no people complicit, then it would be difficult, yes. But we don't have enough information to determine whether "direct access" would involve a handful of people for a few days or weeks to get a feed or API set up, or if it would require covert interception of data and people sneaking around at night.

This is a good point. People asking for specifics on how PRISM works are just doing useless CNN-style modern "journalism": i.e. a bunch of time wasting speculation. The fact is, there are a million ways they could provide "direct" access to the data. Every company that has data has to have a way to replicate that data (e.g. to offsite locations in case the main site goes down, etc.). Replicating to the government would just take one person who knows how to turn on that replication and point it somewhere.

Don't all of those companies have published APIs for getting that data?

You have to understand that in the intelligence world they worry about the provenance (source) of the data.

In this case the data comes directly from the company holding the data. There is no wiretap, no cypher breaking, no MITM attack, no bugs planted on suspect computers, no TEMPEST intercepts, no HUMINT concerns, none of that.

The data gets delivered by a secure channel over a point-to-point connection straight to an NSA server, where PRISM goes and makes magic happen from there.

But! Although the data's provenance is direct, there is still the intermediary that delivers it (or not): the company itself, which gets to determine whether or not they will make that SFTP (or equivalent) transfer occur. So the companies can all claim that NSA is not tromping around in their datacenters because the NSA is not. The NSA is asking the company to do the tromping for them.

I realize that sounds disingenuous, but that's the time-honored technique that's also used in OOP: Wrap access to data members around a getter function as part of a defined interface, to allow for modifying the getter later.

NSA may still be able to ask for information on anyone if a FISA warrant is only required after 7 days, and it's not as if many FISA warrants have been disapproved, so that's not to say that there are inherent limits to PRISM's ability to capture data on someone.

But at the same time it's also not like NSA has the ability to do rsync facebook.com:/users nsa.gov:/"$(date)", which is essentially what Greenwald has been claiming this whole time, and what Greenwald refuses to acknowledge even the possibility he might be wrong on.

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