Naomi Wolf: My Creeping Concern That The NSA Leaker Is Not Who He Purports To Be
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Disregarding the obviously silly idea that he is a fraud because he is organized and well spoken, her basic point seems to be that since he doesn't have a lawyer present during media interviews, then Snowden is an actor basically playing a role in a news story created by the NSA whose purpose is to scare people from becoming whistle blowers.
Give me a break.
Which would contrast highly with most whistleblowers who believe that doing the right thing will result in their objective happening.
In an ideal world, he could release the information and each individual would engage with it, analyze it, make determinations about it, and judge whether or not it is important.
In our world, if he had followed the path of previous whistleblowers and given the information to a newspaper and returned to his house in Hawaii, he likely would have been immediately arrested, and the newspaper would have published very limited yet broad information in a single article in a way that would be easy for the rest of the media to dismiss. Then the character attacks would have overwhelmed the story.
Like it or not, presentation is important. Snowden has claimed his objective is making sure people know about these programs so they can decide about them. That objective, and his path thus far, seems perfectly in line with American idealism.
Thats this world, minus the people that keep "choreographing" things so they have the "right" impact.
Assuming his goals are to (a) maximise exposure of the things he's blowing the whistle about and (b) minimise his likelihood of getting screwed over, this seems like a pretty decent strategy
(I think other respondents are reading your comment about 'doing the right thing' as indicating that other whistleblowers are somehow more morally pure rather than hopelessly naive; whether you intended it or not I'm definitely on the side of the latter interpretation :)
That said I still think this article has value as a think piece.
Neither of those books addresses whistleblowing or the NSA in any detail. e.g.: the word whistleblower appears precisely once in The End Of America. Neither the acronym "NSA" nor the phrase "National Security Agency" appears at all. So if Wolf does have some sort of authority in this very specific domain, it doesn't come from those books as you claim.
Naomi Wolf's theory that Snowden is part of a propaganda effort by NSA/CIA/FBI/??? to make people fearful makes no sense. There is no secret "intelligence/police state" in the US but a state that has police and intelligence functions. It is run by actual people and we know their names: Obama, Holder, Panetta and Clapper. Naomi is either saying these people planned this or some rogue group inside NSA/CIA/FBI/??? planned it. Neither scenario is plausible because any possible benefit is outweighed by the political, career and diplomatic risks. These are not stupid people.
The accusation that Snowden's "very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend" is running a PR campaign is hilarious coming in a post on Facebook hilarious from a supposed feminist and PR expert.
Actually you are right calhoun - this is "complete and utter bullshit".
For instance, did GG know if Snowden planned to take the BAH job for the purposes of taking documents?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-glen...
So, reading between the lines, PGP is safe, but that's hardly headline news.
We've increased typical keysizes for PGP many times over the years because we expect there's a reasonable change for smaller keys to be broken too quickly.
In other words: You should not infer that PGP is "safe", but that he believed PGP with the key size he used would protect the messages until it doesn't matter if they're revealed at least from the level of monitoring he feared, which could just mean safe against routine intercepts and security scans for the few months until his identity was revealed anyway.
Being on a remote island with just over a million inhabitants would not make it easier to stay anonymous. Not to speak of the strong military presence there.
2. Use this account to contact Greenwald and exchange encryption keys for future communication
I don't doubt the authenticity of the leaks and I don't doubt Snowden saw abuses of power. My question is, is this really big news? I remember hearing about it in 2006 and since then I thought we all knew the government was vacuuming up phone and Internet data like it was going out of style. This leak is more confirmation of what we already knew with a few new surprises sprinkled in, but nothing that could overshadow the big problem which was that the government is intercepting about all communications within the US.
What I doubt are some of Snowden's motivations and the amount of information and power he really has. He addresses the question of why he chose to not be anonymous by dancing around the question with some hand wavy answer that just about translates to "because I'm gonna be a patriot and/or a hero". He calls a lot of attention to himself very unnecessarily too. It's almost like there's a part of him that wants to feel important.
Another thing that doesn't fit the narrative around this story is Snowden's role before he became a whistleblower. We're very quick to jump on the idea that the US government is this incredibly powerful, nefarious organization that's been competent enough to conduct a truly massive global and domestic secret spy program for 8 to 15 years depending on your sources. If that's the case, how do you let individuals like Snowden, with what we know about him so far (he's a young high school dropout hopping from job to job somewhat frequently, working for a contractor, who even describes himself as no one special with no special skills - ie an "Everyman") have as much power and access as he claims to have? If you're trying to keep a secret you make damn sure to compartmentalize the hell out of your organization so that no one person can see the big picture without having to go on a wild goose chase to put all the pieces together. Hell, even I don't have access to things you'd think I should have access to at my job and there's not a damn thing secret about it.
There's no defending the NSA though. What's happening is wrong and there's no gray area there. However, I don't think Snowden can be any help to anyone anymore beyond simply getting attention and having something to talk about in the absence of any other concrete facts. I see Snowden as the guy who brought up an issue we should have never let go back when it first came out and because of that I'm glad he came forward. Other than that, I think he overstates his role and maybe even some of the particulars relating to this spy program.
Is it news in the sense that people didn't suspect it was going on? No. Are the details news? Definitely.
Things came to light before in a way that was easy to sweep under the rug. This guys seems to want to make sure we have a conversation about it.
> He addresses the question of why he chose to not be anonymous by dancing around the question with some hand wavy answer that just about translates to "because I'm gonna be a patriot and/or a hero". He calls a lot of attention to himself very unnecessarily too. It's almost like there's a part of him that wants to feel important.
The likely answer is he revealed himself because he's scared and so the U.S. or China will have to treat him like a human being. Having a public profile affords a great degree of safety. I don't know that talking strategy about his safety would have been the best use of an opportunity in the introduction video interview.
>We're very quick to jump on the idea that the US government is this incredibly powerful, nefarious organization that's been competent enough to conduct a truly massive global and domestic secret spy program for 8 to 15 years depending on your sources. If that's the case, how do you let individuals like Snowden, with what we know about him so far (he's a young high school dropout hopping from job to job somewhat frequently, working for a contractor, who even describes himself as no one special with no special skills - ie an "Everyman") have as much power and access as he claims to have?
This is one of the bombshells of the story. If this is true--the government is building the programs and infrastructure that has been revealed, and this IT consultant had access to the information he claims he did--it's all we need to know to conclude these programs are extremely dangerous and that we shouldn't be running them, at least as they're currently conceived and implemented.
>I see Snowden as the guy who brought up an issue we should have never let go back when it first came out and because of that I'm glad he came forward. Other than that, I think he overstates his role and maybe even some of the particulars relating to this spy program.
Again, his point seems to be to bring back the conversation. So far, it seems "his role" is more a safety thing than an attention thing.
Why?
She offers:
"...From the standpoint of the police state and its interests — why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times — unless we know about it?"
More than tinhat?
What struck me, and why I remember it, was the freehand watercolor/acrylic bluish/dark painting graphic of the entire cover page, Showing a long straight road/landing-strip(?) made of rectangular tiles, receding into a horizon's vanishing point of a low horizontal mountain range. To one side, we see a small green budding plant surfacing through some broken tiles. Suggesting to me: "A weed surfacing through a sidewalk needs to be snipped."
- William Binney
----
P.S. Ok, for the downvoters: I tend to engage in humor on HN in very limited amounts. (Yes, the way things "used to be", here.)
I knew the risks in making my comment. But, the parent reminded me of the linguistic (and logical) tangle we can start entering in discussing conditionals upon conditionals.
Which in turn reminded me of this other linguistic tangle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
That's the context of my remark.
TL,DR: Programmer dies but his program manipulates the world after his death, then the US government spreads word that the program is a hoax, so later in the novel most people disbelieve that such a program can even exist (because the government "disproved" it!), hindering any chance that society would even believe that something like this existed, let alone was possible.
I just wanted to throw it out there to illustrate the parallels of the plot in the novel with the current things happening right now...
b) Or he might just be a regular Nerd who took a long time to think about this stuff.
c) Or he might just be a regular Nerd with the typical emotional detachment from what he is doing while still being deeply intellectual invested.
d) Pure speculation without any weighting.
e) What?
f) Ah good, it's not like he addressed this point in particular.
g) Meta Speculation.
h) Well that doesn't even begin to make sense.
It's funny - she actually has a point. But the point can stand on its own, all the points she is clearly making up actually serve to cheapen that point.
You're smart enough to look at history, prepare, be presentable and don't even need a lawyer. BOOM.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus
Add that to the concerted effort of the powers that be to paint China as our cyber-terror-enemy ... and he is aligned with China now, vis-a-vis HK ... you know very well that j6p already refers to him as "that nerd that defected to China".
Why not flee to a country that is a weak (but not too weak) ally of the U.S., thoroughly outraged by the PRISM program, and which doesn't have an extradition treaty that could possibly be construed as permitting extradition under the stated terms (as Hong Kong arguably does with the U.S.).
I'm not try to defend Wolf. Just sayin' . . .
Even small businesses won't hire someone unless they have a four year degree. I know its possible for developers to get a job based on being self taught. I highly, highly, doubt a government agency like the NSA would hire someone with such sketchy credentials.
My other real concern was brought up in the article. Once you're about to feel the full brunt of the United States Government coming after you, it's usually standard procedure to lawyer up. Considering this guy hasn't done so indicates he's not scared of whatever bad guys are coming after him. Which means, either he's really stupid, or he has no reason to be afraid.
Absolutely. It's boilerplate on job descriptions for Federal jobs of any consequence. You can't answer the phones without having a four-year degree.
Disclaimer: I don't know this for sure, just repeating one explanation given in another recent thread about this.
>Considering this guy hasn't done so indicates he's not scared of whatever bad guys are coming after him. Which means, either he's really stupid, or he has no reason to be afraid.
He's been working with ex-Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald since January. He is very well advised, and I'm sure he'll lawyer up if he ever finds himself back in the US.
He enlisted in the Army and got a security clearance, which is the credential that's really crucial for CIA/NSA/contractor jobs. The Army is willing to accept a GED, which you can get in an afternoon.
Here's an article from 2009:
http://www.nodropouts.org/blog/bad-economy-bad-news-dropouts...
"Army recruiters now tell potential recruits that their chances of getting into the service are not good if they don't have a high school diploma. And even a GED won't cut it in most cases."
I did notice the "in most cases" language, so maybe he got in on a pass from someone?
Yes, that's what I mean by "willing to accept". If a person's ASVAB scores are high and they're not a total mess, they can get a waiver for many things. It varies by service, of course; I'm not surprised that the Marines and Air Force don't waiver GEDs.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/10/hong_kong_...
To expand on this scenario: Snowden knows that the bureaucratic wrangling to get him out of Hong Kong by the book would be significant. He assumes he'll get at least several months of effective asylum in Hong Kong while having easy access to high speed internet, professional filmmakers, etc., all of which are crucial for waging an international public relations campaign. Meanwhile, he's geographically adjacent to China, home of the only government in a strong enough global position to openly vie for him to release state secrets in exchange for protection. This puts the U.S. gov't into a difficult position: they can extract/assassinate him illegally, which of course is a public relations nightmare. They can wait six months to extract him legally, and take the chance that he'll make a deal with China (or be illegally extracted by the Chinese). Or they can look the other way while he pursues another option - asylum in a country like Ecuador for instance. That last option is his only real hope. Basically, that he's able to put enough pressure on the U.S. gov't through public relations and international positioning that they don't pursue backdoor sanctions against a country granting asylum.
> Having worked at a U.S. military base in Japan, Snowden reportedly had a deep interest in Japanese popular culture and studied the Japanese language.[15] He also has a basic understanding of Mandarin, was deeply interested in martial arts, and claimed Buddhism as his religion.[16] Before his disclosure of top secret documents to the public in 2013, Snowden had travelled to Hong Kong for a holiday with his girlfriend Lindsay Mills.[17]
He speaks some Mandarin (which would be somewhat useful in HK, especially if he can read it, which he probably can since he's studied Japanese), and he's been to Hong Kong before. All his justifications about HK's legal system is probably relative to the other choices he was considering (presumably Japan, HK, Taiwan, mainland China).
He worked in a start-up which sold anime. "Anime nerd flees US, resurfaces in East Asia" is not really surprising. I guess he picked HK because it has a lower US presence than Taiwan and Japan; and mainland China was a bit too scary.
He could have picked a more secure place to flee to, but most of what he's done hasn't been totally rational.
And the writing is all pretty similar (Japanese Kanji, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified).
Just look at how the pirate bay guy was deported from Cambodia to Sweden. You need someone really ballsy to stand up to the U.S.. If you don't want to end up in some 3rd world clusterfuck (e.g. North Korea, Venezuela) your options are pretty much limited to Russia and China. Hong Kong combines a relative first world living standard wit the backing of a true superpower.
And he gives China a huge reason not to extradite him - reciprocity for the US granting asylum to Chinese dissidents, and further the ability to use his case to advance their argument that the US government is being hypocritical when it criticizes China for all manner of things, from civil rights violations to cyberespionage.
He is a huge political coupe for the Chinese government, that just sort of fell into their hands, and as the Xinhua article supporting asylum for Snowden shows, they are going to milk it for all it's worth.
He's playing a dangerous game, and there are no guarantees anywhere for him, but I'm pretty certain he put himself in the best possible place with the best possible odds. Better to play one superpower off another, than to put yourself in the power of a country that may share your sympathies but have no power to protect you.
China is not an US ally, very powerful, easily offended and aggressively nationalistic i.e. no US special ops team is going to kidnap Snowden on Chinese territory. That would most certainly start a serious international conflict with China and arresting Snowden is not worth that.
There are many anti-totalitarian government activists in HK. There has already been a pro-Snowden support rally in HK: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1261433/live-upda...
English is a common language in HK so Snowden doesn't necessary need to learn a new language.
Overall HK looks like a logical choice to me.
Which is it? Seriously, this article does more to decredit Namoi Wolf than anything else. I had more respect for her prior to reading this piece.
I could continue to rip this article apart but I'm hungry and need to cook dinner.
On the issue of hiring a filmmaker, a little investigation suggests that Greenwald might have had a prior connection with her. The filmmaker's name is Laura Poitras [1]. There's a New York Times article covering her involvement in making the video [2]. In April 2012, Greenwald wrote an article about the U.S. detaining her at the border [3]. I think it's reasonable to believe that Greenwald may have had a prior connection with her.
Also, as I mentioned in another comment [4], history shows that reformers learn from their predecessors' successes and mistakes. The way he orchestrated the release of the documents could be a symptom of his learning from previous whistle-blowers.
It's unfortunate that the best part of her post was at the very end. Regardless of the merits of the rest of her post, I think her last statement is worth remembering: "But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times — rather than the machine itself — that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests — why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times — unless we know about it?"
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/business/media/filmmaker-l...
[3] http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...
The implication in the United States is more serious -- the secrecy and double-talk around surveillance means that a Big Brother state can be implemented, and that the people are lied to, and perhaps the Constitution is not being upheld after all.
Shallow reasoning ... check
No understanding of subject matter ... check
Usage of pseudo psychological nonsense instead of any hard evidence ... check
http://news.yahoo.com/5-ways-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens-stor...
It's possible that Snowden was including reimbursements, a medical/dental plan, a pension, a company car, life insurance, that sort of thing. BAH may also be reporting his pay after taxes.
>He reportedly left his home on May 1
Why does this matter? Has he ever claimed that he went straight from his house to HK?
>Snowden didn't have 'authority' to wiretap anybody/He might not have had the ability to do so, either
How do we know? If he had root access to a mail server, or a single-sign-on server, he could have leveraged that into access to much more of the network. You're not supposed to send passwords over email, but people do it all the time. I don't think he's saying that he could have also gotten away with it, merely that he had the capability to, in contrast to earlier NSA testimony that the NSA did not have the ability to collect those communications.
>Snowden's résumé is fishy
Why does it matter that Snowden is a dropout? He clearly worked for BAH. The only question is what his capacity was there:
>and that the terms Snowden used to describe his agency positions did not match internal job descriptions.
What does this mean? Does it mean, literally, that the job title that he had didn't exactly match what he said in the interview? Why aren't they stating what his actual job title was? Privacy concerns?
Then there are the theories like "9/11 was an inside job" and "JFK was killed by the CIA," ones that would require an order of magnitude more people to do things an order of magnitude more reprehensible and keep perfectly quiet for many, many more years, yet make slip-ups that only amateur sleuths can find (or at least dare to report on) -- all for claimed ends which are, to say the least, dubious. There are common psychological threads to these theories (the Illuminati run the world, but we know the truth and that gives us some power back), but the most fascinating thing about them is that you literally can't disprove them: they're not making falsifiable claims. Scant or contradictory evidence just shows how successful the conspirators have been; lack of mainstream reporting just shows how the media is part of it.
The thing is (to get back to your actual musing), once you get into that mindset, it's turtles all the way down. It's not really a left/right thing, it's a "fringe" thing -- I suspect the more you feel that your voice is shut out of the mainstream discussion, the more likely you are to suspect it's because the Powers That Be don't want to hear your voice. You may be right, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's because they can't face the holy light of your truth. Even if she hasn't gone full Alex Jones, Naomi Wolf has often seemed to me to be flirting with that kind of conspiracy mindset.
I can't speak to Maher (I can't find any comments he's made on Snowden), but he seems to have a different set of biases, not as much conspiracy-based as a kind of reflexive skepticism.
° They're on the fringe for reasons that don't interest, not really, because they're on the fringe. Where they are because that's where they are. Not that you or anyone knows this, but this topic "fascinates" you so much that you "suspect" it. That's either hardcore trolling or awkward irony, you decide.
But Greenwald was the one drawing attention to that stuff, by asking Snowden what he expected the US government to do to him. Snowden wasn't volunteering that on his own; it was Greenwald trying to play up the human-interest angle.
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy 2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place 3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens 4. Set up an internal surveillance system 5. Harass citizens' groups 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release 7. Target key individuals 8. Control the press 9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors 10. Suspend the rule of law
The book details how this pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and elsewhere, and analyzes its emergence and application of all the 10 steps in American political affairs since the September 11 attacks."
When I watched this, the assumption I made was that he was carefully prepared to take on this massive endeavour – better to be prepared for the consequences and media than to foil the effort.
But, really, we have no fucking idea.
Governments, Corporations and Media are out of control.
These prominent components of our society are increasingly driven by hypocrisy, corruption and greed. They have never been more powerful than they are today, and their ability to shape the outcome of events goes mostly unnoticed by the public at large.
The Cryptogon refers to the hidden structure underlying and interconnecting the political, economic and perception management systems currently in operation on this planet. When John Ralston Saul states that, “In reality, we are today in the midst of a theology of pure power—power born of structure, not of dynasty or arms,” the “structure” he is referring to is what I am calling the Cryptogon.
On the other hand, I wonder what the NSA is doing in all those huge buildings, if not spying on all Americans and the rest of the world. Perhaps they're empty? Not very likely, but it would make a great story.
If Wolf is right, it certainly seems like a risky move on the part of the NSA (or related organization) - one that could easily backfire, since for the most part it's just fomenting more negative sentiment toward government in general. The shock of these "revelations" will subside and the country will likely go back to business as usual (as it does after most shocking revelations"), but with even less trust in its leadership.
As for discouraging whistleblowing, they have so far missed the mark - for the most part Snowden has come across as pretty difficult to hate, even for people who disagree with his actions.
I admit the expressive neo-feminist pole dancing gf seems a bit gratuitous.
Not to get all metaphysical but the more that's hidden from us the less we're able to know what in the world is ever going on. It's weird being a human.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...
That would be interesting. Is there any studies on how those figures come into being? I bet there are a few real Goldstein in history. Do they start already protraited as failures or at some point they have the popular opinion on their side?