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
For instance, did GG know if Snowden planned to take the BAH job for the purposes of taking documents?
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.