Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up | Hacker News Reader

Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up

motherjones.com

115 pointsLibertatea84 comments

This whole affair gives me an odd vibe. For reasons I can't figure out, I feel like everyone is holding back information. Obviously the government is, but it sure seems as if the journalists reporting this story have also declined to tell us everything they know. Maybe there's good reason for this. But I wish I knew what it was.

Perhaps it's that the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes. It makes sense for The Guardian/Glenn Greenwald to put out just enough information to cause a ruckus while keeping everything else to themselves.

You obviously aren't familiar with Glenn Greenwald. He's been extremely critical of the Obama administration on a variety of issues. What your claiming makes zero sense. There is a reason why Edward Snowden sought out Greenwald.

That's true. Could you elaborate?

PS I think you are reading something I didn't write.

I'm claiming that it makes sense for The Guardian/Greenwald to hold back because they can drip feed information that creates a long running 'scandal'. That has two effects: it keeps The Guardian itself in the news and it prolongs the story.

Perhaps you think that I am equating Obama as a "Democrat" and The Guardian's notion of "Left Wing" as the same thing. I am not.

For example, The Daily Telegraph did a similar thing with revelations about MP's expenses in the UK. They had all the information but over a period of days let out different bits of information. This is the sort of thing newspapers will do, and, for The Guardian, Snowden's leaks are a massive story. They'll milk it as much as they can.

The problem for me isn't the left or right wing nature of the Guardian, just that they, like many papers, don't have a good history when it comes to accuracy and morality.

In the UK there was a scandal when a low end tabloid 'hacked' in to the voice mail of a raped + murdered school girl. They were looking for some story no doubt hoping to hear that she had gone to meet someone.

This was a scandal that ultimately would lead to the closing of the tabloid. It was a shame though, because the Guardian made a claim too many, they asserted that the tabloid journos deleted voice mail messages, as the mailbox was full, and they wanted to hear more gossip. According to them at the time this lead to the family being given false hope about their daughter been alive.

Now, when you consider the questionable value that this untruth added to the story (it is frankly immoral and shocking enough that the tabloid hacked the phone) and ask how was it acquired? Why was no standards of integrity followed, but mostly, why did they not think of the effect it would have on the friends and family of the murdered school girl. I mean come on, is it helping things to print such speculation?

Anyway, the retraction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/20/correction...

This is the most shocking example I can think of, and why I always take that news outlet with a grain of salt, expecting them to be full of hypocrisy (See auto trader sale and tax campaigning).

Well the courts could not "prove beyond reasonable doubt" that the NI employees deleted the VM - they got off that one on a technicality and the fact that the police did not investigate at the time.

The vast majority of the UK public believe this to be the case.

I consider that the Guardian performed a great public service in relation to the phone hacking investigation. Without it, the illegal activity at NI and associated corruption in the police and prison service would not have been revealed. Multiple people are in prison right now because of this. The prime minister's former press secretary and the former ceo of nI in the UK are about to stand trial. This is a big deal and good journalism.

The Guardian retracted the claim about NI deleting the messages because it could not be proved, not because it was shown to be false. The police's opinion as given in the Leveson Inquiry report was that "It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted," [1][2]. The Guardian team originally believed, based on police sources, that messages had been deleted. When it couldn't be proved they retracted the claim. How is this not "moral"? Did it really shock you so much?

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler-deleti...

[2] http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/...

Frankly the GP seemed like one of these special pleaders whose favorite paper or political group can do anything it likes because after all they're good chaps, but if the Guardian or any other media source criticizes the favorite it had better be as pure as the driven snow. Any missteps will be remembered for decades as "proof" of the Guardian's hateful bias. Only angels have standing to criticize the favorite.

>that "It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted," [1][2].

Did you read the linked document?

"These events support the suggestion that the voicemail box was full with the 10 messages that could be left, and that on 24th March, some 72 hrs after Millys last sighting, messages could be left again. Mrs Dowler’s call is likely to have been made when one of the previous messages from 21st March had been automatically deleted."

So they probably didn't delete it. People here (including the guy below) have gone to a frankly worrying guilty until innocent mode. If I write something about your firm, I have to be able to prove it, not you disprove it.

Which is my point, they had a scoop, by questionable means they had found out that NoTW had been doing very immoral things. Why not leave it at that, why did they have to crank it up a sensationalist gear?

Oh of course, because when The Guardian does it, it is for the greater good! [1] When anyone else does it, its 'titter tattle'.

This is why I treat the Guardian with a pinch of salt, its not like Sun or Mirror or News of the Screws, they sometimes get some good stuff correct before other sources. It's just often they are very hypocritical, and not quite 100% with the truth. This bugs the crap out of me. Most newspapers are like this. This is why I hate most newspapers. Hell if anyone can recommend something more frequent than the economist I'd be interested!

But on this context of phone hacking, it is funny that their defence is similar to an NSA one isn't it? Intercepting private communications is bad, but when we do it, we have only good motives.

[1] - http://metro.co.uk/2011/08/04/guardian-journalist-phone-hack...

Admit it dude. You worked at NotW.

Absolutely. Glenn Greenwald is attacked from both the right and left constantly. The Republicans call him a socialist because he's spoken at the Socialism Conference a few times and because he was critical of the Bush administration. Democrats call him a libertarian because he's associated with the Cato Institute and has been critical of the Obama administration. Greenwald has written a really good paper on Portugal and drug decriminalization. [1] I'm assuming it's published by Cato because of the prominence it has on their website.[2], [3] are videos of Glenn Greenwald speaking at Cato conferences. [4] is a video of him doing an interview with Reason.

[1] http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminal...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPok-FIKGgc

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PabkB4RnGJQ

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuvXdqKM0M

Here's some of his articles criticizing the use of the obama administration, use of drones, etc.

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/obama-wa...

- http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/americas_drone_sickness/

- http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/obamas_dismal_civil_libertie...

- Here's a speech of him criticizing Obama's awful civil liberties record http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rN5Nl...

Without a doubt the Guardian is taking a specific approach to leaking the documents, but I think a big part of it is that they have a lot to process. That's something that Greenwald has continually said on his Twitter feed. I guess what made me so angry about your comment is that it's often used as a smear against Greenwald. Greenwald doesn't prescribe to the left/right paradigm. He is both vilified and exemplified by both the left and right wing media all the time.

I guess what made me so angry about your comment is that it's often used as a smear against Greenwald.

Then I apologize for that. I was not attempting to smear Greenwald. I was attempting to point out that the reason we don't have the 'full story' is that The Guardian/Greenwald are likely sitting on information for the reasons I've outlined elsewhere in this thread.

The Washington Post also has the same slides, and probably other information, but are being equally slow in releasing it.

then I don't understand why you brought "left wing" and "editorial slant" into it?

And what's wrong with prolonging the story? If they had dumped all the documents in one go, people would be outraged for a bit and then forget about it. Then it would just be Snowden. I am sure that The Gaurdian is holding out until the focus shifts from Snowden to the leaks. Or at least, I hope they are.

As long as the story is out, so long will the US government have to play defence rather than offence. And that's never good in politics.

That's what I thought why not talk to a more experienced Journalist such as Duncan Campbell that covers the security area.

Does sound like Snowden was shopping for a journalist who "wanted to believe" to borrow a line.

To be fair to Snowden, he may not have been aware of Duncan Campbell who is well known in the UK and Greenwald being a US citizen who is very critical of the US administration probably looked like a good choice.

If Snowden was a "patriot" who wanted to expose wrong doing surly a more experianced neutral journalist would be better.

Greenwald has only worked as a Journalist for a couple of years.

Greenwald has written for years about abusive government by both the Republicans and Democrats. He was the best person to pick, in my opinion. Lest us not forget that the Washington Post sat on the documents. So perhaps Snowden did contact other journalists and they weren't interested or just strung him along.

> Lest us not forget that the Washington Post sat on the documents

I think 72 hours is hardly a reasonable deadline demand for fact-checking from a reputable publication.

Is the 72 hours counted from when Snowden submitted material, or from when The Guardian published?

Anyway, it's fairly common for WP to publish articles describing events of the last several hours. Presumably a shorter fact-checking interim is required in such cases.

> Presumably a shorter fact-checking interim is required in such cases.

This isn't talking about news reporting about a current event, this is talking about a major scoop of highly secret government programs.

In the event both Guardian and WaPo had to backtrack to various degrees on what they claimed of PRISM, so obviously there was more "fact-checking" yet to do.

...obviously there was more "fact-checking" yet to do.

When is that ever not the case? News media retractions are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Occasionally a flawed story will harm a private citizen, but that isn't possible here, as we are talking about the activities of public servants.

I didn't downvote you but I'm not sure how the "editorial slant" of the Guardian is significant. Would you be happier if the revelations had come from a right-wing newspaper with a libertarian opposition to government surveillance? Or a 100% non-slanted media outlet? What difference would this make?

And since you used the word, what do you think the Guardian's "agenda" is?

I didn't downvote you.

> Perhaps it's that the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes. It makes sense for The Guardian/Glenn Greenwald to put out just enough information to cause a ruckus while keeping everything else to themselves.

You say that this paragraph means "The Grauniad has some juicy information. They drip this out, because that keeps people buying their paper. It keeps the story alive."

I agree with that.

But reading the paragraph quoted it starts "the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes." - which makes it sound like the paper is drip-feeding the information to push a left-wing agenda, not to increase sales.

Speaking of slants and agendas, motherjones.com has all the subtlety of mises.org in theirs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you can pretty much guess either one's opinion on any given topic without having to bother reading the actual article.

I'd prefer to see neither one here, but I suppose that ship has sailed - and the site holed below the waterline with all the politics and 'outrage stories' we're seeing lately.

The joys of information asymmetry. I have a feeling that Glenn is playing a long game here. Also with Snowden in Limbo I suppose he just sits and waits for a good timing.

"Profiles describe him as secretive, fascinated with computers, and with knowledge of things like Tor (a peer-to-peer network for maintaining anonymity for computer communications)."

Doesn't that describe most of us on HN? ;-)

and that's a great example why data retention is bad.

Money quotes:

an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.

Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets. They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system.

So basically he was a professional hacker. That takes a fair bit of intelligence, knowledge and experience, and is a fair bit beyond the job of a sysadmin, which is what everyone was assuming based on the title.

I guess it made sense. Unless you're Dr Evil, you probably won't call your hired mobsters "assassins" either, instead you might call them something neutral like "Situation Specialists"...

No if you where a TLA why would you use job titles that gave anything away about what the persons job was.

And how does one go from "Infrastructure Analyst" to being a government hacker looking at job postings for Infrastructure Analysts seems to indicate that it is a posh word for systems administrator.

No one hires hackers using normal job postings and titles. They show up at DefCon and Black Hat Briefings and then schmooze in t-shirts and blue jeans.

Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM

Yes I see it the same way. Still, I don't understand what the article wants to deduce or imply from that.

> Unless you're Dr Evil, you probably won't call your hired mobsters "assassins" either, instead you might call them something neutral like "Situation Specialists"...

Private Security Contractors.

> So basically he was a professional hacker.

Which explains why Obama called him a hacker last week. Everybody (well some bodies) thought Obama was using language to trivialize the leaks since none of the leaks involved Snowden doing any hacking. Turns out Obama just accidentally revealed more about Snowden than we realized.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/obama-edward-snowde...

It was the right "strategy". If they would've released everything in one day, we'd probably already be on to the next thing by now, and the whole scandal would've lasted a week. They've done you a favor doing it like this.

I agree mtgx. Snowden has stated before that he's wanted to keep the focus on PRISM and not himself, although I'm sure the media has a hand in focusing on him, and not on what he has risked his life and livelihood to reveal.

Is it the responsibility of a newspaper to create a long-running scandal, or to report on the news/truth?

I'm confused by people that say the motives of someone like Snowden or an institution like The Guardian are irrelevant yet then laud The Guardian for having a clear motive.

I have to admit I've been increasingly concerned that something about this is not adding up as well. I can't precisely put my finger on it. The link to wikileaks gives me pause and the more recent stuff about foreign spying which, while politically incorrect, is kind of the NSA's primary sigint job. The most recent PRISM slide release also seems to suggest a narrower and more targeted US role than was let on initially.

I speculate that the reason his Ecuador papers were revoked has more to do with Ecuador's dirty laundry than Snowden's. It's my view that this is the largest existential threat to the US Security Apparatus (e.g. Booz, et al. ) that has ever existed. Under that level, I could imagine they are pulling out all their stops.

> What was Edward Snowden's job when he worked for Booz Hamilton as a contractor to the NSA?

We don't know. That's the nature of jobs with security clearances doing work for Secret Government Spy Agencies.

> The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind? Did he actively search out vulnerabilities in other networks that NSA could exploit? Did he do this only at Booz Hamilton, or did he have basically the same job previously when he worked directly for the NSA? Exactly how much does he know about the NSA programs he's been revealing to the world?

There are two issues here.

1) How can we organize effective oversight of secret spy agencies?

2) How can we trust whistleblowers? How knowledgeable are those whistleblowers?

For 1) we have to create strong law. We then give a small independant group oversight powers. We then have to trust the spies, and the people overseeing them, to obey the law. We have to be careful about crafting the laws, because these people want to push the boundaries of what they can do.

For 2) I guess we just have to accept that people tend not to whistleblow unless they feel strongly about something. He's been called a traitor for revealing this much. Imagine what happens if he reveals even more.

> Or, at the very least, I'd like to know why I can't know.

There are several guesses we can make here. i: The slides reveal information that put people's lives at risk. ii: The slides reveal information that give too much information to the enemy; or cut off information to the US. iii: The slides are not particularly relevant to the prism story. iv: The slides contradict the prism story, and giving the whole context ruins the story, and the journalists are sensationalising scumbags. v:etc.

The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind?

Frankly, I don't think any of these questions matter, and the speculation without evidence is not useful. We should be discussing the leaks, not Snowden's motivation in leaking, his background, his girlfriend, how much he understands of what he leaked etc. The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government.

What's more, Snowden apparently thought the entire set of slides should be revealed to the world. I'd like to know what changed his mind.

Snowden gave the documents to journalists so that they could fact-check, start asking questions, and release what they thought was appropriate. According to Greenwald he specifically mentioned that he didn't want to dump all this data, and I can see good reasons why he wouldn't want to - there are probably things in the documents that would be very damaging (and not just to reputations) if released, some documents have been redacted before release, and they require explanation and context - none of that comes with a simple dump of the documents.

There are also sound tactical reasons for allowing the administration to tangle itself in its own lies, and to prevent the story simply being buried so I completely understand why they do this. Of course the newspapers and journalists involved have their own opinions, but trying to reduce those opinions to left wing or libertarian or whatever other labels you care to apply does nothing to elucidate how they have affected the presentation of the information. On the contrary, it just allows people to dismiss the information without bothering to address its implications. Greenwald for example has been labelled extreme left-wing, libertarian, extreme right-wing and everything in between, but I think he's really interested in privacy and surveillance, not joining the left-wing or right-wing club and hating the other side. The Guardian has not pursued an agenda here that I can discern aside from trying to sell more newspapers or get more hits - they've printed stories from all over the political spectrum, and they are not the only newspaper releasing stories - the most important recent leak of 4 slides was from the Washington Post, which is also in possession of this material, papers in Hong Kong and Germany have also been given some information. Snowden was also interviewed in Hong Kong by veteran diplomatic reporter Ewan MacAskill[1] who seemed impressed with his credentials and honesty so he's not completely opaque. I'd recommend any who haven't to watch this interview with the Guardian editors explaining the process in a bit more detail[2].

I find the disturbing allegations of unregulated, widespread, and deep surveillance used for economic and political ends far more important than Snowden's role in all of this, and I think he'd agree with that. While it's tempting to get obsessed with Snowden, his character, his job, why he leaked etc, and create grand conspiracy theories surrounding it, it's more healthy to discuss the facts we do know and their implications for how we use the internet. More information will come to light in time, and the information we do know raises serious questions about just how far state surveillance should be allowed to go.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz...

You kinda sounds like you agree with Snowden's message, appreciate his risk, but then want him just left to hang out to dry? Surely this bloke deserves protection? If he is forgotten while people deal with the allegations, he'll rot.

I do agree that the issues are important, but the life of one human being, especially the one who made the debate possible, has to be as important. If publishing personal stuff protects, and at the moment it seems that keeping him in in the public eye is probably helping keep him alive, then so be it.

Also, freedom is partly about how we treat individuals in the extreme. The US reaction to this says a lot.

In the world as it exists today, whistleblowers against the US virtually forfeit their lives. He's a dead man walking, and by talking about him instead of the larger issues you give leverage to ignore the larger issues.

This is always the way it works - ad hominem, discredit the person, imprison/kill him as an example, roll cute summary stories in the press about what a deranged maniac he was, and the populace forgets all about the larger issues once the human interest drama is wrapped up.

So please, accept that he's thoroughly and truly fucked, and try to make the incredible orwellian surveillance state they've built the focus.

"He's a dead man walking" - surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot. The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

> surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot.

I can't figure out how this would actually matter to Obama, more than a few speeches' worth. Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters, who won't be voting for him again anyway. The administration's main political foes seem to recognize that there's a big issue here (after all, slightly more than half of their constituents think that the NSA actions are "hurting Americans"[1]), but don't quite know how to capitalize on it, since they were all in favor of things like this before the story broke. The outrage within the US about this is spread so evenly across the usual parties that it's not clear that there will be any actual fallout for future elections.

> The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.

I would suppose that if they choose to kill him, they'll try pretty hard to do it in a way where it's not provable that the US killed him. Future-leaks-wise, though, it might seem beneficial for people to suspect that the US killed him, since presumably that would deter future leaks to some extent.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/fox-news-poll-mix...

A few thousand? The petition to pardon Snowden (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow...) has over 124 thousand signatures, and that's hardly going to represent everyone who cares about the issue.

I wasn't being dismissive of the number of people who care about this issue at least somewhat, or enough to say angry things and click on an internet petition. I was, as an aside, being dismissive of the number of (US-type) libertarians there are. Of the people signing the petition, there are people who think that their team is for a pardon, and people who actually hold an opinion personally and are for a pardon. The former group might well have a different opinion next week if they believe their team does. The latter group are mostly those who were hard-core Obama supporters, whether or not they still are. The largest remaining block of people in the latter group are libertarians, but there are probably few of them. I would guess that right-leaning people who are outraged about the NSA activities would nevertheless feel uncomfortable calling for a pardon for Snowden.

The number of "US type libertarians there are" is presumably a super-set of the number of people registered members of the US Libertarian party, which (according to wikipedia) seems to be about 330 thousand.

I will refrain from asides poking fun at my political group in an otherwise serious post in the future. Well, maybe not. :)

Poking fun is great, but don't undersell!

> Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters…

No, Obama's most fervent supporters want to hang Snowden for treason, and Greenwald along with him. They're quite happy to use the word "treason" for both of them.

Ever since the leak supporters of Obama on blogs and Twitter have been attacking Snowden and particularly Greenwald with ferocity. [1]

A derogatory term has recently been coined and is now being applied to anyone on the left who supports Snowden and Greenwald. This term, "emoprog," basically translates to "whiny progressive." The complaint is that emoprogs, instead of falling into line and unquestioningly supporting whatever Democrat is president, whine disloyally about principles said president is violating or not pursuing with enough vigor.

So no, Obama's most fervent supporters wish Snowden and the whole issue would just go away and find infuriating the disloyalty shown by Greenwald and his emoprog supporters.

[1] https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/351829186991759360 https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/349308095987593217 https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/348879008747896833

You're both right, its just one of you is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters prior to the Snowden case, and one is talking about Obama's most fervent supporters in relation to the Snowden case. These are mostly not the same groups of people, and overlap only to the extent that both include the practically policy-blind cult of personality than any major politician (or celebrity more generally) will end up attracting, but this is a fairly small slice of either group of "fervent supporters".

Where is the outrage at the treatment of other whistleblowers?

"The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia."

Not if they got the mafia to do it. Could the CIA covertly pay the Russian mafia to kill Snowden at the airport? Probably, though the real question is what the US government would gain from that. What would be the point in killing him now?

Oh I don't think they'd overtly kill him. Torture, imprison, exile, leave him marooned, break him economically, sure, any of those things, and I'm sure they have black bag people to 'accidentally' take care of him if needed.

At this point you have to remember that there are only two criteria: A) He can't ever be allowed to look like he 'won', like Ellsberg did and B) it has to be public, so that anyone else considering an ethical stand will know that their life is irrevocably ruined if they do.

...would put them on par with mafia.

A careful comparison of the two groups doesn't find much to distinguish them, in terms of what they actually do. The mafia kills people; the government kills people. The mafia regulates commerce; the government regulates commerce. The mafia provides services; the government provides services. The government limits some of the mafia's more outrageous behavior; the mafia limits some of the government's more outrageous behavior. (E.g. tariffs, taxes, and regulations on particular goods may only be effectively increased up to the point at which organized crime is providing the bulk of those goods.) The only differences are those of degree.

I'm not saying this as a criticism of either group.

Shades of good ol' Rod Kiewiet in PS 12 rear up behind my monitor screen when I read this.

You mean that he might suffer the fate of Daniel Ellsberg?

Remember Ellsberg got off because of evidence that the government was illegally wiretapping him. I don't believe that's a possibility in Snowden's case...

Nixon looks like a saint compared to people willing to shrug at the routine surveillance of everyone.

Remember that there hasn't been a president since well before Carter that went through office without personal blood on his hands - the ordering of covert missions with intent to kill has been endemic.

Could you provide me some evidence for the "personal blood" from these presidencies? It's not something I've learned about in school and would like to know more.

Obama, at the very least, personally authorized http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15121879

Bush 2 I think is clear, c.f. iraq and afghanistan, other targeted interventions

Clinton: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/clinton-orders-ai... as well as kosovo, mogadishu, and other interventions

Bush 1 and the invasion of Iraq, part one, as well as other more targeted actions

Reagan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/15/ne...

Carter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

Ford, not counting the Vietnam War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_incident

LBJ and Nixon both obviously one can count the Vietnam war.

Aren't the people most able to keep that focus future leakers and whistleblowers like Snowden? Do you want to empower the message now playing out in front of our eyes that such people had better not even think about trying?

That's very much the wrong approach, IMO. Allowing just whistleblowers to be crucified kills the future of whistleblowing, which hurts us a lot more than struggling to address the snooping because we are focused on the whistleblower's well-being.

If you throw the messenger to the lions, you get this one message, but you won't be getting any more messages.

I certainly don't want him to be left isolated, but I disagree that speculating about him or his motives keeps him safe.

I think it becomes far easier to demonise him, spread confusion about his motives, and engage in baseless smears of his character or competence, if we allow speculative articles like this one to direct the debate.

Consider this: the whole point of his huge sacrifice was to get people to talk about the information he revealed. If we expend too much of our energy talking about him and the way he got the information to us, rather than the information itself, then doesn't that just make his sacrifice kind of a waste? People don't have infinite attention and energy for these discussions.

"The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government."

I agree with the second part, but the motivation of a source can be important to those aims. When we're dealing with an incomplete picture, sometimes a carefully filtered one can be more misleading than a randomly populated one even if the former has fewer dots. Understanding why those dots appear lets us correct somewhat for agenda (but of course, we have to be careful not to be correcting for the wrong agenda or things may only get more distorted...).

Of course I meant even if the latter has fewer dots. That a sparser picture can be more misleading shouldn't come as any surprise.

What is interesting about the article, in its barely-informed conjecture, is the "revelation" that NSA employs people who focus on attacking infrastructure, and that Mr. Snowden may have been one of these people. Instead of destroying his credibility, identifying his role as more active than "a sysadmin" would add credence.

Right now (it's even the top comment on the article) the focus is on his being a "high school dropout with no degrees or credentials," which has been established to be incorrect. "Hacker who was housebound with mono for a year and worked for the NSA as a cyber-sniper-scout," is more difficult to dismiss.

(Off topic: your first link wants me to see,"emacscankill," to which I wish to say: yes, but there's no default keybinding.)

The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand that governments may have shadowy departments doing illegal things we don't know about, but the whole scope of Prism seems to be too wide. When people talk about it, they describe computer systems I couldn't even begin to imagine, let alone design.

Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

Add to this the emphasis by all parties on Snowden and his shenanigans, and I'm just left confused.

> Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

That's because it is not possible. The $20M/year number is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg for one little program that seems to be more like the GUI on top of the data from all the other programs. The NSA alone has a budget on the order of $10B/year - the entire (american) "intelligence-industrial complex" is estimated to be around $50B/year.

> Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year.

PRISM is nowhere near 'spying on all traffic', which is how NSA was able to do it for $20M a year.

I do find it baffling that Greenwald hasn't written an article detailing his relationship with Snowden, the timeline of when they began communicating and when Snowden started at BAH, if they are in contact still, etc., at least to dispel any questions people would raise about it.

I suspect Greenwald would say he hasn't done this because he thinks that Snowden isn't important to "the story", yet he still happily tweets snarky things about Snowden and what other journalists write/think:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351910567210004480 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351453433989054464

Snowden is the red herring. It is more interesting for news cycles to talk about a person. What he does, what he likes. It is hard to talk about "the government". There is no one person to interview, we can't find out what food "the government" likes etc. We should be focusing on the leaks and the systems that allowed the surveillance to happen.

I find it very interesting that there is only one photo of Snowden, and that nobody has seen him.

That photo is a still from a video interview he had with The Guardian.

But always _that_ photo. Never a different photo. Seems odd to me.

It's simply become memetic. Why bother combing through the video for a different still when you can use the same one everyone else is?

I'm not sure if you're being ironic because you answer your own question. A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors. It takes little effort to "comb through the video" to grab another screenshot. I also find it odd that everyone is using the same still.

A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors.

Except in this case the Snowden image is not "content". It is an icon: visual shorthand that catches the eye and identifies the topic. In a story about a corporation, they would use that corporation's standard logo rather than a unique picture of the generic corporate campus.

All of the pictures of Snowden's girlfriend in various poses and states of undress? Now that's content.

Snowden is privacy conscious. I'm sure after seeing all the information regarding PRISM and other NSA spying initiatives, he wasn't too thrilled to make a Facebook profile and show off pictures of him drinking beers with his buddies and what not, haha. He's probably tried to keep as minimal a web shadow as possible.

I kind of hope that it's making SV types realise that some people just don't appear online.

I guess there's a bell curve. At one end are the extremely privacy conscious with no-online presence and at the other are the people plugged into everything. Do start-ups want to grab the hump of the curve? Or do they want to target the careful users at the lower end?

Coincidentally, since mid-May I've been on an online scrubbing spree. Any post/photo/comment I might have made under my "real" handle, I'm trying to delete it. 13 year old me was way stupid if I see what I've written online over the course of the past 15 odd years. Of course, I'm just trying to reduce my google-footprint, it's not like the data has gone forever.

[Sites such as Hacker News don't allow you to edit, much less delete comments once a certain time has elapsed].

Yeah, I can answer that. Here in Hawaii they showed interviews with his neighbours (since he worked here).

Here, quick Google search found this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nsa-leaker-edward-s...

and this:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/girlfriends-blog-...

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