Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
m.washingtonpost.com
m.washingtonpost.com
What is the Washington Post not telling us?
[1] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/15617022129
[2] http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/wapo_denies_allegation_it_sat....
[3] http://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/the-scoop-that-got...
[4] http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100787/CBS-Let...
[1] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-lea...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/snowden-maass-tra...
Why whine?
True enough, but I think everyone already knows that.
The content of the recent Snowden interview, not so much.
The NSA is under pressure from the public, less so from the intelligence and defense communities. If anything Snowden has caused those areas of government to close ranks even tighter. There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people. There are orders of magnitude more people who hate General Alexander now than there were two years ago. But his own people love him even harder.
The NSA may or may not lose some funding in the coming years. It will probably just transfer over to the NRO or the Office of Intelligence and Analysis or one of the dozen other agencies that we haven't come to know and hate yet. If there's one thing government is good at, it's maintaining the status quo. Public support has never meant much to the intelligence community. These are people who signed up to serve in secret, who have dedicated their lives to what they believe to be just causes. They won't pay a thought to a year or so of bad press.
Snowden's future is unclear. He'll probably be in russia for several more years, if he doesn't overstay his welcome. It's possible that some future president will see pardoning him as a free goodwill card. Or perhaps he'll be able to start a life as an overseas media personality, reaping the benefits of what many see as a heroic action. One thing is for certain: US intelligence agencies will continue business as usual.
Edward Snowden has shown the light, and his work is indeed done. It's up to us to effect real change and shape our government in our own image. Maybe things will change, maybe they won't. But those who dislike what he has revealed have their work cut out for them.
The major change that I am seeing is that cases previously dismissed due to "national security" or other factors due to classification are now being heard in public courts. This allows the judicial system to perform its job properly and for Americans to bring their grievances formally to effect change. This is a big move forward, and will catalyze a great deal of change as court rulings can sometimes move faster than legislation.
Please let's not confuse the responsibilities of the courts and the responsibilities of the legislature. They're different for very good reason.
There's little to legislate here, anyway. What Snowden's revelations are targeted to doing is bringing the Government's actual behavior in line with the law, (in this case the 4th amendment of the Constitution). That's strictly the purview of the courts.
The bits that will require legislation (like "Data collected by the GCHQ on Americans should be treated the same as if it were collected on american soil") are loopholes in the wording of the law that the Government has exploited to do whatever it wanted to do. Closing technical loopholes like that may require legislation.
Everyone knows that government has continually grown in size and scope during this past century, but how and why has it done so? Is this growth inherent in the nature of government or because of some greater social needs, or are there other causes? In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs shows that the main reason lies in government’s responses to national “crises” (real or imagined), including economic upheavals (e.g., the Great Depression) and especially war (e.g., World Wars I and II, Cold War, etc.). The result is ever increasing government power which endures long after each crisis has passed, impinging on both civil and economic liberties and fostering extensive corporate welfare and pork. As government power grows, writes Higgs, it achieves a form of autonomy, making it ever more difficult to decrease its size and scope, and to resist its further efforts to increase its reach, so long as the citizenry remain uninformed of its true effects. One of the most important books ever written on the nature of government power, Crisis and Leviathan is a potent book whose message becomes more trenchant with every passing day. -- http://www.onpower.org/about.html
In reality though, they obviously do not. Everyone has the exact same rights (and they don't include coercing other people), and you can't delegate rights you do not have. But the belief in political authority is the root cause of practically all problems in today's world. Once the "Authority Religion" unravels, so does mankind's enslavement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE
I would say being aware of the problem and its scale is a massive achievement. Awareness of the nature and scale of problem is the first step towards solution.
This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now highly visible enemies that unite the US military?
A friend of mine participated in a GoRuck challenge in Portland. The team my friend participated in were mostly military or former military, trudging along in one of the most liberal, anti-military cities around. There were folks throwing out taunts (weirdly, most of them were on the top floors of buildings and other relatively inaccessible places). She said it was the first time she felt like kind of resentment and hate the military feels from civilians. She watched her teammates bear with it stoically, focusing on the mission. It was a sort of honor and duty servicemen feel when they stake their lives and sacrifice their innocence, dirty their hands to protect folks back home, even when those same folks don't appreciate it, can't understand it.
There's honor in that. Sadly, there are often agendas that abuses this. And there's always that nagging bit, that maybe all the stuff you've seen and done was for nothing.
The real change, I think, isn't a reform of the NSA. It's a greater and greater openness and awareness of the insanity of war and conflict. The root of the problem here isn't that the NSA are spying on ordinary people, it's that we've created enmity and now we're having trouble getting disengaging from conflicts. It comes from ordinary people demanding security, it's not something that can be pinned exclusively on the military.
what? no, that is exactly the problem. isn't it?
Why is the NSA spying on ordinary people?
There might be a few bad actors, but all in all, folks in the NSA, and the military in general, actually think they are defending America from enemies. They are not far from wrong. There are actually some significant conflicts around the world, a lot more dirty stuff than what you hear from the Snowden disclosures. We American civilians are generally pretty sheltered from all of that. We actually think we're the good guys.
So the root of the problem is that we have conflicts at the world stage. If there were no conflicts, there would be no need for the military or intelligence agencies. It is that simple.
That might sound outlandishly impractical. Of course everyone has conflict. That's a given, right? Fighting over limited resources. Ideology. Unending cycles of revenge. These are rooted in human nature and emotions, stuff that can change, stuff that every single human has to deal with and learn how to handle. These concerns on privacy, while disturbing, are a distraction -- at best, a stepping stone for each of us to deal with the real issue: human nature.
Not much. The only positive change here is that people are now widely aware that they're being spied on in everything they do online, so now there's less resistance to "conspiracy theories" (ie. "reality"). On the other hand, that very same awareness serves to advance "the chilling effect", so it's unclear if it's even a net positive.
Other than that, everything keeps changing for the worse, of course. The police are increasingly militarized, secret courts keep doing their thing, and people keep losing their liberties. The only possible "solution" to this insanity is spreading awareness of the fact that governments are inherently immoral. They're based on taxation, and taxation itself is based on coercion. The way it works is that people are punished for attempting to keep their property. Does it make sense to punish you for keeping your computer? No? -Okay then, does it make sense to punish you for keeping your money? .. Well no. No it doesn't. Yet, that's exactly how taxation is forced upon everyone. If you do not pay taxes, you will be punished for attempting to keep your property. Something is wrong here.
Nothing. And that seems to be his point. He's done (more than) his part. Now, if we don't like 1984, then it's now up to us to start acting.
Now nobody cannot say they did not know. Wether you choose to care or not is your own decision.
Honestly I'd be more happy with the telecom companies doing it. They can do much less harm with any data they get.
The only solution is for the data never to exist at all.
As an aside, when you think of corporations try not to think about the imagery they bathe you in. Think of a serial killer sidling up next to you all smiles and compliments. That would be more accurate.
It's true that lots of corporations do unethical things, but you also should keep in mind that at its heart, it's people like you and I that are doing it. They respond to incentives like the rest of us, they (mostly) have a conscience, and generally try to do the right thing.
They're not always successful, but I don't think that your caricature is generally accurate.
As for being arrested by a corporation - that will change. The UK government for one are beginning a process of outsourcing some elements of front line policing.
At present it's anonymised and is being used for broad profiling of areas, but I can see that changing over time.
AT&T, Verizon et al can't unilaterally decide that you're a terrorist and arrest you, but the government can.
The government should be the gatekeeper for what can be done with your data, but it should not be allowed to own that data itself.
He can't run til 2020, but I'll cast an early vote now.
I second that vote.
It's no different from what Snowden has done. You want to know why the US wants to crucify him? That's why.
He's a messiah. Just like Obama was 5 years ago.
Despite a fair amount of indignation from the public, it seems to me that the majority has accepted the new surveillance reality.
Privacy as an abstract concept is meaningless to most Americans -- thanks in part to pervasive data mining and targeted advertising by Google, Facebook, credit card companies, and so forth. That's not to say privacy doesn't matter to them. Children often want to keep things private from their parents. LGBT persons often want to keep their sexual orientation private from less tolerant members of society. But that's because the consequences of such a violation of privacy are immediate and visceral. In contrast, the automatic mass collection of data by the NSA doesn't have any more of a tangible impact on most people's lives than does Google's or Facebook's.
To put this another way, very few Americans have altered their behavior because of Snowden's revelations. And it's largely because the government hasn't given them any reason to. The NSA can read my e-mail, but I can safely say "Fuck the NSA" without consequence. In contrast, when I was in China, attempting to visit a prohibited website would result in my Internet connection being blocked for up to an hour. Or to pick an example in the U.S., making an illegal turn in front of a traffic camera would result in my getting a ticket. Absent that sort of "feedback" from the NSA's surveillance, the harms of mass surveillance simply don't click with a lot of people.
That's not to say such very real harms don't exist. The NSA's data collection is tied in various ways to the no-fly list, the war on drugs, and targeted assassinations, each of which result in visceral, immediate harm to real people. But from my perspective, the surveillance aspect of these stories have not been told particularly well.
There have been enough revelations to see that the NSA got to keep what it is in entirety; mission accomplished.
A global psyop; it was a show of complete dominance?
With a 'D-Notice' to effect the same in the UK and coupled with the usual soft measures - threaten to take away press passes from journalists (and their papers) - the whole lot could have been kept out of the papers.
The fact that these measures have not been used means that this was a limited hang out - or - that the Obama administration just does not know how to use the law as well as the Bush administration.
Even articles in publications like "Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press" refer to this phrase as a thing for prisoners: http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news-media-la...
So it's unclear what you're talking about.
Most of us concerned with civil liberties feel like those sorts of court cases and issues go underreported. Start sending federal agents to reporters in order to "collect any inappropriate documents" and kill stories and things will get messy quick.
If you're the administration and you are aware of something you don't want the papers to have, you take them to court. (which is messy enough)
(read: black bag jobs, rubber hose decryption, and even piscine sleep therapy)
The fact is that the Obama administration seems to have been kept out of the compartment on a number of programs; which is not surprising, but very naughty.
From Smith V. Maryland.
"If the Government were suddenly to announce on nationwide television that all homes henceforth would be subject to warrantless entry, individuals thereafter might not in fact entertain any actual expectation of privacy regarding their homes, papers, and effects."
FYI: Smith V. Maryland is the justification the FISA courts have used to argue surveillance is legal. It argues, in a nutshell, that when you route phone calls through a telecom you are forfeiting your expectation of privacy, and therefore your fourth amendment rights.
I am concerned that the surveillance industry may be trying to establish the legal precedent that because everyone knows about the surveillance, it is legal. This is a paradoxical argument: the logic would effectively be that if they told everyone they were doing it ahead of time, it would be illegal, but since they told everyone after the fact it is legal.
Now, I'm not a lawyer. This is my laymans understanding of the issue and I don't really have the body of knowledge regarding expectation of privacy to adequately discuss this. These are just the things that, as a layman, I am currently afraid of.
One specific concern I have: I wonder if members of congress feel threatened by the power of intelligence insiders to end a politician's career?
(at that time published on whitehouse.gov)
http://web.archive.org/web/20011116191708/http://www.whiteho...
"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful."
And, for the opposing view, also to think about the 2006 speech of then senator Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfX7RI7DGI8
"No President is above the law. I am voting against Mr. Hayden in the hope that he will be more humble before the great weight of responsibility that he has not only to protect our lives but to protect our democracy.
Americans fought a Revolution in part over the right to be free from unreasonable searches -- to ensure that our Government could not come knocking in the middle of the night for no reason. We need to find a way forward to make sure we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy and liberty of innocent Americans. We have to find a way to give the President the power he needs to protect us, while making sure he does not abuse that power. It is possible to do that. We have done it before. We could do it again."
And as Snowden mentions, the oath the President makes is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President...
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
The Constitution.
It's the end of 2013.
Why is this such a trumping goal (or even a goal at all)? It's an impossible task without singnificant imposition on everyone's lives (we're no where close to being able to stop anything, and things are already leaning too far away from the people).
A disproportionate amount of time and resources are already being dedicated to "fighting" terrorism, with diminishing returns and uncountable atrocities done by our government.
Now if only he was interested in "protecting us". What you're suggesting is that we need to give a fox the power to protect the hen house, and to ensure it won't abuse that power. What do you think will happen? It's not about the president either, by the way. He's just a puppet for The Powers That Shouldn't Be.
What happens next ? Will things go back to businesses as usual?
There are fewer than 500 comments on that site as of right now, that doesn't mean anything about anything.
Sometimes I wonder if people are actually aware that the United States has more people in it than can fit into a single room.
And then there's the poster with the avatar of Archie Bunker...
Opinions don't magically drop down from heaven like mana. Just because an opinion is there doesn't mean we can't ponder how it got there.
> Now I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but let's keep in mind that their opinion is just as valid as yours.
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" --- Isaac Asimov
Personally I worry about how long this takes to resolve; if it takes too long, there might be enough social value drift no one will be upset by this sort of thing anymore. And that will be a much harder to fix starting point. Well, I would consider it a state worth fixing, at least.
This statement's conclusion does follow from its premise and it's a valid argument, but not a proof.
I think this sentiment has been expressed since the 1800s. Same criticism applied to Rome... and all human civilization, really. We are a lost species, it would seem.
Then again from Darwinian view point we have been quite succesful...
Given how pervasive surveillance is in most European countries, the only real difference between us "lost" Americans and the "found" European countries is that we didn't know it was going on.
This could have the effect of validating the NSA's activities in many Americans' eyes ("see, the NSA is unable to its job without invading our privacy") and we would see a whole new round of new laws capitalizing on Americans' fears of terrorists (which means their terrorism succeeded).
That doesn't imply that what Snowden did was wrong, though. We trade security for freedom in a thousand ways in American culture, and now we have a chance to debate that tradeoff for digital data.
The people and corporations who benefit most from the current systems also happen to have the power and wealth to significantly influence the public channels of debate.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” ― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
So how will the US plutocracy desire the debate of 'trading security for freedom' to go?
This is something really important: it's not out-of-the-box obviously wrong (talk to people who aren't into civil liberties for this perspective) that our communications are monitored. But it is very important that, as US citizens, we have an understanding and a grasp of what is done and what could be done in our name, and that we regulate its activities based upon our choices, not that of shadowy figures telling us we don't have the capacity to understand. As a representative democracy, we have the right to be informed and to select representatives & leaders who take policies that we can agree (up to majority) on.
Further, we have almost no power as a representative "democracy": the public can't recall a representative at all, for example, and it is only done by an internal chamber discussion (it has happened very few times in the history of the US).
Thus, we're really not supposed to "vote away" basic, sane axioms in the first place. The point of the US was to have those rights held firmly in place, and for its citizenry to use their right to bear arms to protect themselves against a government that tried to take them away. It's indicative of the US's culture at this point that stating this position (which is easily backed up by many of the founding fathers' writing) brands you as a "libertarian wingnut" or "on the fringe." Am I advocating violent revolt now? No, because most would not actually know what to revolt against (and probably don't perceive the corporate/government power structure in place in the US).
Then again, any attempt to do the aforementioned has failed in this country. A great example are the Alien and Sedition acts, which were passed conveniently around the time of the French Revolution.
Point: Police power is inherently a use of force on the citizenry. The Army is the same, loooosely.
Point: Taxing, coining, patenting are all applications of force.
Point: The 5th amendment clearly lines out uses of force.
Point: The 5th amendment also includes a key phrase, "due process of law", indicating that the government is limited. The 3rd amedment supports this as well, requiring a limitation on quartering in time of war via law.
Point: Law & regulations, period, are the application of the government's use of force to ensure a smooth governing (See Hobbes for a work known in the late 1700s).
Conclusion: The US founders designed the government to have power (Unverified statement based on recollections - but split in such a way that each arm of government was naturally incented to limit the power of the other arms).
Nit: The US is a republic, not a democracy. It's regrettable that a district can't recall its representative wholly on its own. Perhaps that would restrain certain foolishness in the system...
Happy Holidays.
We're not a direct democracy, we're a representative democracy, but that is still a form of democracy.
For an example of a democracy that is not a republic, see the UK.
For an example of a republic that is not a democracy, see China.
I noticed it while getting a bunch of inappropriate 403 responses on basically any website, and my location kept showing up as "Ashburn, Virginia" automatically on weather sites.
What proof do you have that the NSA has any effect on terrorism? you may not remember but USA failed to prevent 9/11 precisely because it relied to much on technology and not enough on intelligence on the ground. You dont catch terrorists in a cave by wiretapping them.
Assumption #2: That successful attacks in this scenario would lead (reasonable or otherwise) people to demand less surveillance.
Assumption #3: Terrorists want to the NSA programs ended, which would not make sense if #1 is true.
So I'm not sure why this would be a good strategy for anyone.
Assumption #1: What is good for terrorists is bad for the NSA.
I think you will find that terrorist's successes have a very beneficial effect on the power and budget of the NSA. Look at what 9/11 did for them.
j/k I don't really wonder...
Then I thought, hey, it's just like bus transit: the rich folks don't ride buses, so that kind of utility gets no money. The NSA, uh, people, don't get robo-calls, so they don't see the problem.
This debate may have begun with worries about the risks posed by NSA overreach, but it does not end with them. As Bruce Schneier pointed out, the tools of today's spies are the same as the tools of tomorrow's criminals.
Whilst I am not exactly comfortable with the idea of persistent, intimate state surveillance, this discomfort fades into paltry insignificance when I consider the implications of criminal entities controlling the computing devices that I use to analyse and understand issues, make decisions and interact with the world.
I studied Artificial Intelligence as a student. I buy (somewhat) into Kurzweil's view of the future. Today, my computer may be a "bicycle for the mind", but tomorrow, we may have difficulty distinguishing between rider and vehicle.
The security of today's internet; today's computing devices, profoundly affects how securely, how effectively, and how independently I will be able to think in 20 or 30 years time.
We need to start talking more (much more) about the weaknesses and security vulnerabilities inherent in the architecture and design of our public communications and computing infrastructure. This debate has to get detailed and has to get technical. Fast.
Falling to the "you don't know what it's like" argument is never a good sign. You're acting out of pain and so emotionally invested in justifying your actions that you're incapable of communicating an evidence based rationale to an outsider. You can't reach a reasoned resolution like that.
It's a shame, that your leaders can see in technology only surveillance, war machinery and ways to humiliate and subjugate others.
It's a shame, that USA's participation in computing is still a "donkey work", as tortured (and probably killed) Alan Turing once said.
Some won't listen, some will, some won't rock the boat, some will. But unless you push you'll never know.
He is right though the system is broken it gives too much power with too little oversight.
What I find admirable is the way he's gone about disclosing these documents in such a responsible and controlled manner.
If these are his words to be remembered by, history will have kind thoughts for him.
Second, if he were being charged in the correct jurisdiction, i.e. Hawaii, where he committed his crimes, I would agree with this sentiment. But no, he's been charged with crimes in Virginia, the backyard of the intelligence community. His peers are the American people, not the intelligence community. The government had no business bringing charges against him in another jurisdiction than the one he committed the crimes in. Doing so, shows incredibly poor faith, and a clear intention to get a conviction and harsh sentence by any means necessary, even if it means subverting how our justice system is supposed to work.
[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-l...
Do you believe that by taking refuge in Russia he's "propping up" their government? How?
Do you believe that giving up a 6-figure salary and life to expose violations of the US constitution is an act of a coward?
Are these opinions harbored by real people, or is this a troll?
This one is pretty much obvious. It is a massive PR win for Putin, looking at uninformed online comments such as yours.
I believe he's paid much more by Russian intelligence services for all the secrets he has "exported".
The last question doesn't even deserve a response. If you're this closeminded, you shouldn't argue on the Internet at all.
Everyone understands Snowden is hiding in Russia to avoid torture by the US. Everyone also knows Russia does worse than NSA things. There is no contradiction, and trying top highlight a contradiction smells of dishonesty.
You believe he's paid but you have zero evidence for it. Russia gains virtually nothing from it, Snowden can't live a normal life for the rest of his life.
Would you be content with the NSA continuing illegal oversight and building a total surveillance society?
Even when it comes to the NSA, let's make the most of what Snowden did do -- he might be the last whistleblower we've seen in a while, seeing how the NSA said they would seek to replace as human system administrators with automation where possible.
He wasn't born tomorrow.
In any event, he's mixed up in realpolitik but that was his only choice, if he wanted to avoid the domestic repercussions of his actions.
Citizens of many countries don't have the luxury of knowing which journalists they can approach with their leak.
Bet they were worried for a whole minute there.
I won't be surprised if like Homeland Security Theater their funding will increase and not decrease after the exposure.
Well at least gitmo was closed. Oh wait. Guess we accomplished less than nothing.
What was the last leak, then, RSA security?
"By the way, RSA sucks! Mission accomplished."
Maybe canada or south america ?
“'For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,' he said. 'I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.'”
Do you want to live in a total-surveillance society?
How in the world is it possible to post something as ridiculous as this? Is this what you kids truly believe? Snowden might be colour blind, but you sure are tone deaf.
It looks like you just got down-voted by almost everybody that read your comment. I guess when you look at yourself you should now say "here is a man that went thermonuclear only to find nobody else shared their disability." (When a man makes one judgment upon another, he should keep the ability to judge himself likewise.)
FYI the article I read had him expecting to see grey and finding an ever blackening black - so in contrast to your own comment, you need to realise that you are communing with people that aren't color blind and believe that these shades of reality are complex and require discussion.