Snowden Calls Russian-Spy Story “Absurd”
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
At some point these elected and unelected idiots in government are going to have to recognize that most of the american public (referring to US citizens) is coming to view him as a hero. And Obama, who was supposed to be "for the people, by the people" has done nothing to dismantle the programs put in place by previous administrations or to even curtail advances during the six years of his "kingship".
I love my country, but how can I not be disillusioned with my government?
Of those that do care, I've seen just as many saying he should be shot, as those that say he's a hero.
Honestly disapproval means nothing as apparently none of the mentioned have done enough to sufficiently get people off their butts. Well the Republicans offended a lot of their conservative base to cause a splinter group, but as whole most Americans are completely satisfied as verbally only expressing disapproval.
As in, doing whatever requires no effort or the least amount of it.
By 'get people off their butts' what do you mean exactly? Not patronizing, just curious what you think a solution would be, other than trying to get someone you believe in elected (to president in the above case). Are you suggesting some sort of revolt or more physical action than campaigning and voting?
It seems that there really isn't much option for change as far as actual politics go... As South Park noted, you usually get the choice between A Giant Douche and A Turd Sandwich.
For a starter, watch Lawerence Lessig @google talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
Get off your butts and vote independent. For those who claim that you're throwing your vote away reply with "No, you're throwing YOUR vote away."
I agree it would be a change but how can you be certain that independent 'party' person will be any better than the previous crop of Rs and Ds? Especially (and some may call this tin-foil hattery) if there is a massive surveillance regime in place that is digging up (or can dig up) dirt on any politician for blackmail?
IE People in my circles generally vote against democrats or against republicans (actually Im Canadian so it's more like vote against Liberals vs against Conservatives... but you get the idea). They dont care about the person their voting for, they are voting to keep someone out.
My concern is that the two major parties are basically the same, so the dichotomy isn't rep vs dem; it's voting for what you believe in vs voting for what you don't believe in. If you vote for what you dont believe in, you are truly throwing away your vote.
There is no proof that an indy would be better than mainstream, but politics is never about proof, and always about trust. You have to trust that the person you're voting for will do whats right for you. If you get your trust broken, that's a different kettle of fish entirely.
If you truly favour one politician in the mainstream, then by all means vote for them. But if you're just voting against someone, you are throwing your vote away.
I personally believe the 2 party system in general is broken and without major reform it will continue to be garbage in, garbage out
At some point? Why do you think they are working so hard to destroy the image before they destroy the person? They already realized that and are actively working to counteract it.
I would really like to hear tptacek take a scientific approach in a comment about this. Is it a likely scenario that Russia intelligence could recruit, contact and provide help to an NSA employee without NSA knowing about it? Without NSA having any trace what so ever (in contrast to Manning and his chat conversations)? If Snowden sold information, is it believable that such trade could happen without NSA finding any incriminating evidence after-the-fact?
Same goes for credibly shown any harm to persons or national security. Is NSA so incompetent that a half year later, they can't find a single documented case of a person dieing, U.S. informers having to flee, or facilities being broken in to? The number of documents is massive, so surely, if they were provided to Russia or china, some verifiable damages should have happened by now?
I ask, which side should a scientific and rational mind side with. I would pick what ever is the most probable chain of events, and leave conspiracy theories to be argued by people with political agendas.
That really does not seem "spy-ish" to me: spying is a game, the goal is information. In that mindset, since the whole world got the information, the straightforward explanation is: Snowden is playing for all of us.
In my opinion[ * ], the only plausible scenario where Snowden is a Russian spy is: the Russians did not want the intel for themselves, they wanted it public. It probably does not make much sense that it was to undermine the USA's international image or to cleanse their own; the remaining possibility would be to play on their domestic image (saying "hey, we Russians are more libertarian than Americans"), but that seems like a bit of overkill (and a lot more subtle than what Putin used us to.
[ * ] The sole alternative is: Snowden gave more info to Russia than he gave the newspapers. That would make the whole story worth becoming the next James Bond screenplay (or would have made, in a universe without Daniel Craig), and would give it a nice antique Cold-War aura; however, I fail to imagine what kind of intel could justify such a twisted plan.
Yes? Very yes? But stop assuming you know what I think about Snowden. I find the idea that Snowden was literally an FSB mole to be far-fetched. I think he did what he did because he thought it was the right thing to do (I think he was probably wrong about a lot of what he did, though).
Basically, my problem is with the narrative fallacy. I find that most people's thinking about stories like these latches immediately to whatever makes the most sense as a story. "Snowden is a hero who was driven to leak exactly the right information by a system that was utterly disinterested in abuse reports and who will now lead the charge to abolish the NSA". Fiction. "Snowden is an agent of the shadow Soviet government who was charged with infiltrating the US government so he could help sabotage the world's last remaining superpower." Fiction.
Reality is almost always messy and incomprehensible. The Snowden situation has all the hallmarks of not being a clean good-versus-evil narrative.
I do not think you would answer different, but your recent comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094408 showed an identical speculative narration as in this article. Speculations that portraits a good-versus-evil narrative.
Reality is indeed messy and incomprehensible, which is why it do not need all that additional speculations. Talking about Russian intelligence, China agents stealing documents, and Snowden providing wholesale access to intelligence services is simply fiction until more details is reveled. Nothing more.
If you're saying "we should all shut up about Snowden", I'm right there with you.
Now, if some authentic documents are leaked, those can and should be discussed if they are related to the interest of HN readers. They are after all by by definition, authentic and thus no longer speculations.
This seems like an ahistorical assumption. Are you aware that a senior FBI agent in the Soviet/Russian counterintelligence group was a spy for the USSR/Russia for nearly 16 years before being caught? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
Russia intelligence is an external threat, and its threat model is well know. Whistleblowers are an internal one.
So to me, its not difficult at all to see why external well know threats are today less likely to happen, while new internal ones are missed. I have the same view of Windows security, in that Russian hacker has a hard time to break in, but a Microsoft employee would have a much easier time.
Different threat models. I assume you are well familiar with the concept so I am a bit baffled by your baffledness.
side note: After they identified Robert Hanssen as a rouge entity, were the NSA unable to provide evidence after the fact? This is after all the question I originally made.
If there wasn't a real fear of long-term moles in government, counter-intelligence wouldn't be such a huge part of what the Intelligence Community does.
A "go bag"? You mean a packed suitcase?
I'm only speculating here of course.
And no shit he was ready to go. He knew what he was up against. Snowden's been a step ahead of the gov't at all times. Read some of his writing, he's incredibly smart and eloquent. It stands in stark contrast to the sweaty mealy-mouthed denials of the bureaucrats trying feebly to discredit him.
In black and white literal terms, he's certainly a criminal. It has so little to do with right and wrong that it hasn't affected his credibility much.
Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.
The point of this sort of statement is not persuade or clarify, but to muddy the waters and confuse the public. All he has to do is get the statement out there, and people that aren't paying close attention will conclude that it's an open question.
If he goes too far, he can always tone it down, change his mind "based on new evidence" or even apologize if it comes to that. People that criticize him will have to acknowledge his new position. But people that aren't paying close attention won't notice, and any retractions won't connected back to his original statement. That will still be out there on the net, getting quoted, linked to, retweeted etc, doing it's job of misinforming the unwary.
It won't, until we figure out to fetch such information automatically in a proper context.
Elsewhere on HN there's a discussion right now about an piece of journalistic nonsense thrashing Google that was written by a person who is known to exaggerate and write falsehood in her articles. I know that because someone brought it up in the comments; what I would like to have is a small pop-up, appearing immediately as I open the article, that says: "warning, this article was written by a known liar with history of writing falsehood".
It doesn't matter if stupid statements never disappear, until we have a way for them to resurface when needed.
He could be acting in the best interests of the FSB, with friends slightly pushed by the FSB, and still think he's working alone.
Not all spies know they are spies. Not all assets are 100% willing assets who signed on a piece of paper "I am aiding and abetting the Russians." Some of the best assets that have ever existed in intelligence thought they were working on their own and were working in their own interests.. those interests just happened to line up with the controller's interests too.
If a single person had died as a result of Snowden's actions, the US Government would trumpet the loss as the most tragic breach of national security and call Snowden a murderer.
But they haven't. Because they can't.
Two weeks after Edward Snowden's first revelations about sweeping government surveillance, President Obama shot back. "We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany," Obama said during a visit to Berlin in June. "So lives have been saved."
In the months since, intelligence officials, media outlets, and members of Congress from both parties all repeated versions of the claim that NSA surveillance has stopped more than 50 terrorist attacks. The figure has become a key talking point in the debate around the spying programs.
Fifty-four times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe — saving real lives," Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on the House floor in July, referring to programs authorized by a pair of post-9/11 laws. "This isn't a game. This is real."
...
Earlier this month, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pressed Alexander on the issue at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
"Would you agree that the 54 cases that keep getting cited by the administration were not all plots, and of the 54, only 13 had some nexus to the U.S.?" Leahy said at the hearing. "Would you agree with that, yes or no?"
"Yes," Alexander replied, without elaborating.
I believe this has subsequently been revised to zero...
There is simply no way the FSB - successors to the KGB - is that inept.
/bonus: if we are in bizzaro-world and the FSB somehow missed what their main adversaries were up to over the last decade, then must not be much of a threat and we can scale back all our expensive spy programs.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Service_(R...
He's wrong, it will stick. What makes it stick is not which story is told first, its the one that's being told the most. In the end the media will just be beating this story to absolute pulp and most Americans will probably respond with absolute apathy towards the whole thing.
In EU we're just getting a good kick out of a classic spy story, and hope the protagonist wins.
In the U.S. people are constantly drawn between two strongman caliber opinions of what it means to be a true patriot. The "traitor" thing usually ticks off a lot folks, and imho will just more quickly draws them towards that side of the argument, just to be save.