How the US Government will Smear, Slight Whistleblower Edward Snowden
juancole.com
juancole.com
* References to his "Pole dancer girlfriend" will be used to suggest poor moral character. [1] [2]
* It will be suggested that he's gay. [3] (Interesting contrast to the previous point)
* His "inability" to finish high school will be cited as a character flaw. [4][5]
I'm sure there will be many others along the same lines.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/lindsay-mills-edwar...
[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2339980/Jonathan-Mil...
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-nsa-is-...
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/brooks-the-solitar...
[5] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/10-things-to-know-abou...
Unfortunately, most people will not see it this way. Most people will assume that everyone is using common definitions of these words.
They'll probably also claim that he was "a loner" who spent a lot of time browsing Wikileaks, or "conspiracy theory" sites.
The emphasis on the salary discrepancy will also be played up as far as possible, to suggest that other aspects of the story might be exaggerated or false.
It also might not be too hard to plant something incriminating in his hotel room after he leaves, or to merely claim that something incriminating was found.
He lied about his girlfriend. He said she was a ballerina, but she was a stripper who pole danced. (And as someone who took ballet as a young girl, I can assure you that there was no pole and we kept our clothes on.)
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/leslie-marshall/2013/06/...
Isn't this true, though? It appears that all the information from the internet companies came from court orders for specific information that were reviewed by the companies' lawyers.
The simple truth is, we don't know. And that's basically the point, as I see it. The NSA (and their sister organizations like the CIA, FBI, etc.) operate under cloak of darkness and shadow, and hide behind a veil of secrecy to an extent that makes it all but impossible to have an informed conversation about any of this. And that is, IMO, incompatible with a free, open, democratic society. Regardless of what Snowden knew, or thought he knew, or didn't know, he threw a dash of light on just enough of this secrecy to at least start the conversation and subject it to some real scrutiny.
In that regard, no matter what happens next, he has already won. That said, it will be a shame if all this debate doesn't lead to some actual long-term change.
"What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/edward...
Snowden said "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email." The initial articles from the Washington Post and Guardian implied that the NSA can browse, at will, all data about everyone on the servers of those internet companies.
The government says the information requests must be certified to fit the scope of 50 USC Chapter 36[1], then be approved by the FISA courts, then sent to the companies, where their lawyers review the court orders and then specific data is produced in response to the narrow requirements.
There's a huge gap between these two stories.
I'm not 100% sure that Snowden is wrong, but I'm leaning that way based on what I've learned in the past week.
[1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title50/html/USCODE...
P.S.: I am also not saying that what the government is doing is Constitutional or moral or even, necessarily, legal. I object in particular to the telephone metadata collection, which is separate from the so-called PRISM data collection.
It does not seem possible for a system with effective checks and balances to be reasonably described as providing "direct access" to private email correspondence. Which leads to an alarming observation: if we assume there is nothing else happening (MITM interception, access to private keys, etc.) then either the FISA system has been automated to the point it offers no reasonable check against abuses of power, or the NSA is confused about its own capabilities and is fundamentally incompetent.
Which interpretation do you prefer given the role, power and relative freedom from democratic oversight entrusted to the organization?
/s
They are essentially making him look like an amatuer, until more information is released there is no way to tell if this is true.
1. Snowden will be called a traitor. This is indeed propaganda. (Note though that nobody in the administration has called Snowden a traitor; the false implied equivalence between the random utterances of a Congressman who was elected with ~200,000 votes and an administration led by someone who got ~65,000,000 votes is also a problem, but not the problem I have here).
2. Snowden will be called a defector. Also propaganda. (Also not an administration claim).
3. Questions will be raised about Snowden’s mental balance. Also propaganda. (Also not an administration claim).
4. It will be alleged that Snowden does not understand the secret programs. NOT PROPAGANDA. It is entirely legitimate to challenge Snowden's grasp of what NSA was doing, especially in the wake of his more extravagant claims, such as his apparent belief that he was keystrokes away from the contents of anyone's email, including the President.
5. Government spokesmen will assert without evidence that his allegations are simply untrue. Also propaganda.
6. Charges Snowden did not make will be denied. Also propaganda.
7. It will be alleged that the domestic surveillance is legal. NOT PROPAGANDA. In fact, calling it propaganda does harm to the cause of civil liberties, which needs to engage the fact that a majority of Americans have elected representatives that have made it perilously easy for organizations like NSA and (more worrisome) the FBI to expand domestic surveillance.
8. A small, uncontroversial part of his charges will be admitted Also propaganda.
9. It will be alleged that Snowden has aided terrorists Also propaganda. (Also not an administration claim). Note that this is also the same thing as calling him a "traitor".
10. It will be alleged that what Snowden did was wrong. NOT PROPAGANDA. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it's acceptable for someone who swore oaths not to disclose intelligence material should have released that material wholesale to Glenn Greenwald; about whether it's reasonable for one person's judgement to usurp the judgement of an entire elected government; about whether Snowden adequately minimized the material he disclosed to advance his specific justifiable cause, especially in light of the fact that even Greenwald hasn't revealed all the material he got. There is a world of difference between deceptive propaganda and a policy debate.
See the trick here? Cole isn't just foreshadowing the tactics that might be used against Snowden, but also using the list to foreclose on legitimate questions (regarding Snowden's competence and the trustworthiness of his claims, about the actual legal status of NSA's programs, and about the legitimacy of wholesale leaking as a strategy for effecting change) by framing them alongside things that clearly are propaganda (like calling people "traitors", saying they're "aiding enemies", &c).
(Biases on the table: if I were President, there'd be a universal bacon entitlement program, I'd see Snowden prosecuted for overtly and recklessly breaking the law, but would commute his sentence. I have a much bigger problem with Glenn Greenwald, who I think is just as deceptive as the government, but can't imagine that anything he did should be illegal.)
The point of Juan Cole's original piece is clearly that Snowden himself is irrelevant to the contents of the leak. Any speech that bases its defense of Fourth Amendment violations on attacking the messenger deserves immediate scorn.
The reason they attack the messenger is because it's easier than attacking the message. The message itself raises doubts as to their standing as defenders of the law.
* The CONTENTS of the leak do not change simply because the messenger is guilty of a criminal act. *
It's entirely reasonable to state that he is a defender of our Constitution and that he is a whistleblower, but that he should be charged for using inappropriate channels. He technically should have approached his chain of command and then members of Congress first before he went to the media.
It's interesting that you'd call my comment "hopeless" and conclude your response by agreeing with part of it. Clearly, that must indicate some glimmer of hope. :)
1) The leak that the NSA has been spying on people. If you've been following along for the past few years, the fact that they could do this isn't really news. However, the potential scope of the program certainly is. This is also the least well reported part of the story because only two organizations have the full contents of the leak and are only publishing select parts. I doubt we'll ever get a complete picture of the current NSA program, since so much of it is classified. It's hard to get corroborating evidence when you have to rely on intelligence employees leaking fragments of information. And, unfortunately, Snowden is really too low level of an informant to get a complete picture with context. His leak can give some ideas of scope and capability, but very little in terms of how the data is really collected, how often are US citizens caught up in it (mistakenly or not), and how the data is used/mined.
2) There is also the story of the leaker himself, Snowden. Who is he, what are is motivations, etc... Some of this can be found out with old-fashioned journalism, but a lot of it will be pure speculation. There will be a lot of reporting on this story simply because it's easier. Anyone can speculate about his motivations, and only a limited amount of people will actually talk to him.
3) There is also the rather more interesting (in my opinion) aspect of how the NSA and government's intelligence apparatus works. For example, how did we get to the point where a contractor can have access to the types of information that Snowden claimed to have access to. Why are there so many contractors that are extremely well paid? How much of US intelligence relies on outsourced work? etc...
4) Then there is the rather dull, but probably more important for society aspect of how much privacy do we (US citizens) want to give up in the name of security. How much oversight will we demand? This will probably be the least covered part of the story. It's hard and political, so it probably won't be covered nearly as much.
5) Finally, there are the international aspects of the NSA program. In the US, if you are a citizen or physically in the US, you are protected by the 4th amendment (with a few exceptions). However, none of the constitutional protections are granted to foreign persons or data that travels or is hosted in the US. I suspect that this will be the most covered aspect of the story internationally, but will hardly make a blip in the US.
So, my point in all of this, is to agree that Snowden is largely irrelevant to the contents of the leak, but that he, himself, is very much a part of the larger story. It's important to look at each part of the story separately, since while they are intertwined, they are largely independent stories.
It's worth noting that Snowden has far greater knowledge of the score than the public does; the Guardian has many unreleased documents whose contents Snowden is obviously aware of. The fact that he's talking about things not directly backed up by what his newspaper contact has chosen to yet publish doesn't necessarily mean that he's making it about him.
Which makes those claims inconclusive regardless of Snowdens character.
The material that's actually been disclosed is, what, 3 powerpoint slides? Almost everything else is simply wild speculation.
Note that the slides have different degrees of redaction across sources. These links should together cover what's available on PRISM.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...
Google has motivation to bring clarity to their role in all of this. The NSA would rather keep everything secret. I'd believe Google more too...
So why not ignore the noise & leave it for the gossip pages while focussing on the bigger picture?
To not be vanished. Come on man.
My experience with reporters (and news producers) is that they get you to say things under one pretense, and it gets swung around with little empathy towards another to tell the story they want to tell (not necessarily out of malice, often just because they want to tell a different story than the facts do).
I'm not claiming he's some sort of saint and he's accurate (or even sure) of all that he's saying, but I'm sure reporters are eating him for lunch and pulling all sorts of shit out of him.
He had to give interviews to raise his profile enough for questions to be asked if he vanished to pre-empt those attempts.
And the questions of a personal nature seem relevant to helping judge some of the extraordinary claims that Snowden has made without documents (yet) to show as evidence - like that he had access to tap anyone, that he had access to find out every undercover asset everywhere, that they would send assassins after him, etc.
There is still a lot of this story that we don't know or can't yet understand yet and unfortunately it seems that some of this will rely on understanding the leaker and not just the leaked documents.
A fair assessment of character is almost impossible to make in such a circumstance, as anything Snowden has said or done will be cast in the harshest light. He is not the authority, the authorities are, and they'll always say he's wrong. Because of that, the only valid resolution is to demand more answers from the government and force an incontrovertible picture to emerge of what activities were and were not done.
I blogged about the disclosures yesterday and never mentioned Snowden's name. While I agree that what he did is likely illegal, that has not much bearing on mis-deeds of our government, which is the important issue. Who cares if Daniel Ellsberg’s whistle blowing was illegal?
Grown ups.
What most of us are bothered about is the way that the classification process is bandied about like a cheap rubber stamp with no justification or review, and worse how it's being used to cover up some pretty alarming (and probably illegal) things themselves.
Classification is a tool, you don't throw out the tool because it's misused sometimes (or even most of the time).
What specific illegal conduct did Ellsberg report? My understanding is that he leaked classified documents about the Vietnam War because he felt the public was being misled and had a right to know. That doesn't seem so different from the justification Snowden has given (assuming he's telling the truth on that).
How was Ellsberg "shielded"? He was put on trial, and Nixon famously sent the plumbers to dig up dirt on him.
If what you divulge is not illegal you have no protection.
What law are you referring to here?
I think that the point is that whistle blowers put themselves in harms way because they believe that it is important for the public to know specific information.
First, the article specifically says how the government WILL smear. That means he knows they haven't yet done most of the points but is saying watch out for them in the future.
"It is entirely legitimate to challenge Snowden's grasp of what NSA was doing". Obviously he doesn't understand the secret programs but neither does the general public because, guess what, those programs are kept secret.
"It will be alleged that the domestic surveillance is legal. NOT PROPAGANDA." Maybe this is not propaganda but it's irrelevant to the case at hand. If it's unconstitutional, it's not legal. But the courts have not been allowed to rule on whether it is unconstitutional or not.
"It will be alleged that what Snowden did was wrong. NOT PROPAGANDA". I think the point is the administration will want to move the focus from investigating themselves to investigating him.
He leaked something that hints to the government doing unconstitutional blanket surveillance of their citizens.
Let's investigate that and leave Snowden's life or level of understanding out of it.
Legitimate because you've seen the entire 36 page document and are basing your objections on actual evidence? Or legitimate because you are arguing from authority?
As far as I can tell, you either fail to understand the significance of the leak or are a shill. Case in point, questioning whether Snowden "understands" what the actual NSA documents say is meaningless since he did not write them and has never been alleged to have written them. So unless you are asserting that the materials are not in fact genuine, all you are doing is distracting attention from the only meaningful question: whether (1) the NSA is so grossly incompetent that it does not understand its own surveillance apparatus, or (2) the organization is in fact engaging in what most reasonable people would consider excessive and dangerous levels of data collection.
Snowden isn't just sharing materials he acquired from NSA; he's also giving interviews and making apparent sweeping statements about the capabilities and actions of NSA. His credibility is extraordinarily relevant.
Public: Is it true that an arbitrary analyst at a government contractor has the technical ability to read anyone's personal email?
NSA: No. That would be illegal.
Public: Given the scope of what has already been revealed, and your demonstrated commitment to lying to us, what assurances can you offer to us that this is NOT taking place?
Aren't we? How, again, is Snowden's credibility at issue? At all? Sure, assume he is lying. So?
I've said over & over here: I agree that his credibility isn't relevant to the contents of 3 Powerpoint slides.
I'll repeat myself now: What makes you think Snowden himself, or anyone on the pro-democratic-debate side of this, wants you to take his claims at face value?
What I'm saying is I'm willing to grant that these offhand, unsourced statements, made in context of the man explaining his own motivations, should not be treated as anything more. Further, I'll grant that regardless of Snowden's personal credibility or lack thereof-- his credibility is unimportant. Further, I expect Snowden would agree with me, since he's said that he came forward so that this would not be about him, but about the questions we should be demanding answers to from our government. Questions to which Snowden himself is completely irrelevant.
It's because of that irrelevance that accusations leveled at his personal credibility, and thus at his personal statements, absolutely are propagandistic poisoning of the well aimed at discrediting his very real evidence.
Although in fairness, many of them may be mere journalistic incompetence.
The information in those slides does not necessarily contradict what has been said by the tech companies and the government. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5858387
The rest of the slides might have more conclusive evidence that contradicts the tech companies' and government's statements. We should be asking for those slides to be authenticated and published.
In any event, this isn't about PRISM. This is about what the government should be allowed to keep secret, and who should be allowed to decide that.
I mean, respond to whatever you like. But you would have to be very shortsighted, or very partisan, to look at the heart of what's happening right now and see some PowerPoint slides or a well-produced video.
It seems like your complaint is better addressed to Juan Cole.
I think my complaint, such as it is, would not productively be addressed anywhere. As I said, there are thousands of stories, and I'm not usually one to piss in the ocean. But it pains me to see intelligent people engage with toxic arguments, and that's why I decided to reply to you specifically.
That, and to pass the time :) I do take this subject very seriously, perhaps more than I have cause to, and I hope that isn't coming off as animosity.
Snowden's claims have also been contradicted by other parties (ie, Google).
However, some people are simply treating Snowden's claims as true. This is a problem. Since Snowden's claims lack supporting evidence, and have been contradicted by other parties, then Snowden's credibility is the only thing supporting his claims. Thus, his credibility is very relevant.
Public: So, can you not give us any assurances that
these systems aren't being abused?
NSA: Sorry, you'll just have to trust us.
Public: We want to, but the problem is we think
you're lying to us. You've lied to us before.
NSA: What? Who told you that? THEY'RE lying!
Public: That is literally the least reassuring
thing you could possibly have said.I agree that it's an important conversation we should be having. However, I still don't think Snowden's unsubstantiated claims are irrelevant. We should be asking for more evidence for those unsubstantiated claims.
Specifically, I think it would help greatly if the other slides were released.
Your hypothetical conversation seems likely to devolve into a he-said she-said without more evidence.
Frankly, and not to devalue the difficulty of that problem, it's their problem. "It's hard so we gave up" simply does not fly here.
I agree with you I'd like to see more solid evidence, and I'm pretty sure we will-- Glenn Greenwald has stated that other slides contain potentially damaging intelligence and will not likely be released, but there are further newsworthy documents to come.
That is the laziest fucking thing you could have written here. You demand satisfaction, but are unwilling to specify to any useful level of detail the answers you seek -- and still intend to hold the NSA responsible for failing to satisfy your concerns. You demand NSA demonstrate a fact to your satisfaction, without elaborating your standards of evidence in any way.
Completely unbelievable. You don't appear to be stupid, so I can't imagine that this is lost on you. So I have to worry if your head hasn't exploded from the cognitive dissonance.
What? The intelligence agencies can't operate with full disclosure? Okay, I'm not a radical. They can keep some secrets from me if the actions are morally permissible and for the greater good, and the secrecy is plausibly necessary. I would even accept "trust us" at some point-- but only if they had earned my trust. They haven't. Not with decades of documentation citing immoral secrets kept for personal and political gain. The trust was gone from this relationship before I was even born.
And when you violate my trust, none of it is on me. You're the one who fucked it up. You figure out how to make it right.
I imagine people would like assurances like these:
That the NSA is not allowed to lie to its oversight committee and congress
That the Court decisions which govern NSA activities are public
That the interpretations of laws which govern NSA activities are public
That the president and administration, and the NSA itself doesn't decide what the NSA can and can't do - that should be a matter of law, publicly debated, not a matter of policy, and overseen by lawmakers who are given the facts, even about details, and certainly about the overall picture.
That the broad scope and coverage of NSA activities are revealed without revealing operational details - this is essential to prevent abuse, and follows from the above requirements.
Snowdon and Greenwald claim the other slides contain operational details that would be damaging to release, but what has been revealed is bad enough - complete collection of all phone records (this is simply astounding), a huge program of surveillance involving US data (3 billion records on the US alone over 1 MONTH), and collection of data from all top US service providers on FISA requests (which could easily be automated, perhaps contributing to the huge total above). I think he is owed the benefit of the doubt on other claims and they should be investigated by those with the authority to do so (i.e. members of congress). I'm not sure releasing all those slides on a particular program would be the best move for Snowdon (opens him up to charges that he caused damage), or for the US public (knowledge of exact details of this surveillance are not as important as the broad scope of it).
There has been no proof that Snowdon lied so far, only some ambiguities between his claims and the curiously legalistic replies of US corporate executives, who may well know far less than him if (for example) data was collected at the boundaries of the google network. It is worth noting that he has been corroborated by other NSA whistleblowers who say the NSA has been breaking the law as the public understands it (even if they claim they are not on technicalities):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/snowden-...
I certainly would prefer to know what data American agencies have been collecting, which I suspect is far more than those detailed in this particular slide deck - as a foreigner and unperson with no rights as far as the NSA is concerned, my communications are being recorded with impunity, a situation I disagree with and which makes me question using US providers, visiting the US, or doing any business in the US. It's easy to forget that US surveillance policy now affects other nations almost as much as it affects their own, and that reactions to it will affect the standing of the US in the world, already at a low ebb.
Those claims have been contradicted by Google and Obama. I'm saying that it's possible that Snowden's unsubstantiated claims might be less than trustworthy (for a variety of reasons).
Since it is unlikely that either of these are true, I'm not sure why you want to leap to the conclusion that the NSA (not Snowden) is lying about its own capabilities.
Cole's point (that you attacked) is that personalizing the debate into a discussion of Snowden's crebility involves distracting from the important matter at hand. In this he is absolutely right. Either you understand this and are a shill, or you do not understand this and are an unknowing dupe who is getting played.
I also wonder at the technical naivity of those who believe that the NSA document must be wrong because Google and Obama have issued narrow statements in support of the FISA process. Because if we had to place bets, my guess is that (1) the NSA is either archiving all of the underlying data flowing across US backbone pipes and using this to reconstruct databases such as Google email archives, or (2) it has access to private SSL keys that let it decrypt content transmitted across SSL, or (3) it has automated the process of issuing FISA requests to the point where the process offers no sensible check on the abuse of power or protection of individual privacy.
I can't believe we are even discussing his credibility, when you hear about the actions of our public officials.
While it might be reasonable to not know who the NSA is searching for, it is reasonable for the public to be informed of what kinds of information the NSA could tap, and whether the public feels that is something the NSA should be doing.
Look at what Google and Microsoft are doing; that's how we'll make progress, by having the NSA finally piss off the wrong kinds of companies (read: not telcos with enormous government-granted monopolies) who will move to force the government to allow them to say what's actually happening.
The NSA isn't about to tell us, this part of what he said was true, but this part isn't. That's the hard part for the government (and for that matter Google, Facebook, et al). They can't give a full picture of the scope or scale of the story.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/boehner-calls-...
Who needs to call him a traitor, only Obama? Is that your interpretation of Juan Cole's "governmental class"?
Ron Paul said it best when he said "Truth is treason in an empire of lies." Snowdon may have broken the law but he exposed the higher law (the 4th amendment to the US constitution) is being violated at will all day every day.
I actually just hope that Snowdon exposed the worst thing that the NSA was doing. I suspect he did not.
well, low level IT tech employed by a contractor, young, without a family ... his access would basically be only to the typical everyday stuff, nothing exceptional or really secret. He didn't actually leaked any new information. It was all de-facto known [the notion of "foreigner" in FISA magically put concerns of citizens to sleep, while even if the government wanted (big if), how could they program Big Computer to distinguish between foreigner (fair kosher game under FISA) and a citizen? By looking up into one big database of all the citizens with all their attributes, including phone numbers, hair/eyes color, DMV and property records, guns owned, etc...? There seems to be still no such database as even government real people have issues deducing immigration status (even when they really interested in it, like in AZ)]. His act is mainly of political value, than of information value.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/10/king-defecto...
Note though that nobody in the administration has called
Snowden a traitor;
It's in the title: "The US Government," not "The Obama Administration."
I find Speaker Boehner to be an all-around toxic person in general. But I am not particularly alarmed at him calling Snowden a traitor. There are people in his party in Congress who believe Barack Obama is a traitor.
Among other things, like the fact that he runs the House, that means that if Snowden were a part of some plot, say, to assassinate the President and VP, he would become President.
To be fair, that would also validate his accusations of treason.
Patrick's point, I believe, is that even with Boehner's status, he has no authority in the matter. So his words mean little.
"Authority"? Hell, this entire debate is about who has the right to authorize what. American politics surrounds a much shiftier concept of influence. Call it whatever you like, the idea that Boehner's (or the House Majority's, if you prefer) opinions don't matter where the AG's would is positively nutty.
All those things you want him to write about are for another article. The author isn't under any obligation to provide a complete analysis of this topic. And, it's pretty clear he agrees with Snowden so why not just leave it at that? It's just a blog with an opinion, not a scientific paper.
Over the last couple years, since I discovered him, I've found him to be among the most persuasive commentators in the media. He's very consistent in his positions, untainted (as far as I can tell) by political/professional affiliations, and deploys an impressive array of links when building and defending his arguments.
Why? Is it not a fair question to ask whether the guy who is the single source of all the revelations might not be playing with a full deck? The guy who said "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent" about Red China? Wouldn't it even be the most Occam-compliant assumption, unless your anti-American prior is so strong you automatically grant credibility to anyone who speaks against the US government?
"Snowden will be called a defector. Also propaganda."
Isn't that technically what he did?
defect 2 |diˈfekt| verb [ no obj. ] abandon one's country or cause in favor of an opposing one
(Biases on the table: I'm biased against people who defect from the US to communist countries.)