It would be a great plot for a movie: Snowden et al, were given fake information to lead the world to believe it was being surveilled, eliminating a lot of bad behavior.
This already exists... and has for thousands of years. It's called "religion." ;)
Potentially saving the government a lot of money in the process. Money, which in the movie of course went to private hands of evil politicians and businessmen instead of being saved. As the plot develops, the protagonist slowly uncovers the evidence of that widespread conspiracy and in the climax (after enough scenery porn and helicopter chases to justify the budget for 3D version) heroicly exposes corrupt actors for what they are to the entire world. Cue in happy ending and closing credits, as behind them the whole world tears itself apart in a yet another case of Hollywood not thinking through the morality and consequences of protagonist's actions.
I'd definitely go see that movie.
Nah, I'd go regardless.
You can blackmail all those in positions of power (politicians , judges, etc) into doing what you want? Who cares what the rest of the population (those low-life sheep) think.
(This is what most likely goes on in their minds.)
However, I don't actually believe it. This assumes competence above and beyond reasonable suspicion. It's much more believable that security was really just very poor. At some point somebody might have done a little less than possible to let him go, but that's about as much as I'm willing to believe.
In addition to embarassing the American political establishment, Snowden revealed JTRIG; he revealed acts of industrial and political espionage; and he revealed the undermining of public cryptographic standards by government henchmen. This to me is the big one, and it's why it's so unlikely for Snowden to be a limited hangout.
Prior to Snowden, if you weren't being paranoid, you were just sticking your head in the sand. You would be exposing yourself to the risks of parallel construction, backdoors in hardware, sabotage of public cryptographic standards, and the manipulation of online discourse if Snowden hadn't given people like me the power to credibly parry critics who are all too quick to discredit with terms like "troll" and "conspiracy theorist".
Snowden showed James Clapper to be a criminal, too. And the IRS claiming its own electronic paper trail of criminality could be somehow "lost" in this age of pervasive surveillance lends credibility to the idea of there being a clear divide between those who are above the law, and the rest of us. The Rulers and the Ruled.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12...
The surveillance people have a saying. To find a needle in a haystack first you need a haystack. But you don't want a bleeding haystack, you just want the needle -- and now you've put a haystack on top of it. Now all the good guys are developing and using anti-surveillance methods.
The bad guys were already assuming they were under surveillance. They aren't being deterred by surveillance of everybody else, they're just getting access to new tools developed by the good guys, and are aided by the fact that anti-surveillance methods are no longer suspicious.
A standard play these thugs often set up is a single intricate surveillance incident where the mark knows they're being watched very closely, then do another one much later on. This is intended to leave the victim in a state of constant paranoia during the majority of the times they're not being watched. It takes a lot of self-control to remain calm most times when this one's used against you.
Another technique when the surveillers have less control is the fatwa. I was in Hong Kong about 12 years ago on a ferry from some outer island when one (a young Australian-sounding male) of two people talking a few seats behind me suddenly said to the other (a young North American girl) "There's some people back home who want to know where in the world that guy up there is at all times. I better ring this in." He then talked loudly on the phone giving some details about me. The girl he was with had an embarrassed expression on her face like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. This all happened while I was moving from Melbourne (Australia, not Florida) to China to live. Unfortunately, that surveillance fatwa against me seems to still be in place over a decade later, and those who issued it are even willing to nudge along local people in China to use methods that would be illegal back in Australia/NZ.
Perhaps good news is that those in control of the surveillance always use intermediaries to hide themselves, and most intermediaries have a need to show off rather than hide themselves. By doing things like talking to yourself or "to God" a lot out loud within hearing of where bugs may be, changing what you say for different locations, you can often find out something about probable actors involved when stuff you've said comes back to you.
The preachment as presented was only pretending to be aimed at me, but was actually aimed at others. What I was being told was "My blog is bigger than your blog, our budget is bigger than your budget", a message given many times via CBS, ABC, Fox, etc over the past few years. The actual preachment line is for certain TV viewers, especially in places like Australia and China, saying it's OK to target me because I treat other people like pawns. This latest fatwa-style call to arms is of a similar method to many previous ones for surveillance like the one that came from Melbourne Australia 12 years ago which I mentioned 3 comments up in this thread.
The preachment relies on erroneous assumptions of course. I never liked fighting other people, prefering instead co-operation and group activities like bush hiking (tramping) and camping, but I've since learnt that a more appropriate line instead of Harold Finch's is one by Leon Tolstoy: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you". I've been attacked in various psychological ways over the past few decades, which I now recognize as being a formulaic and ongoing operation by some people to wear me down, originating in New Zealand but spreading to Australia and the U.S. These are the people the Groovy/Grails managers got into bed with when I first started to respectfully work my way into that community. And I've since learnt I have to respond to war with war, using many varied tactics such as timing bait comments with a 2 month lead.
Another erroneous assumption in that preachment is that I use other people like pawns. I don't know any other people very well, and if I make an effort to build relationships with others, sometime down the line they'll start to experience anonymous harrassment in an apparent attempt to get to me. Warning someone that this might happen isn't sufficient because a warning is only words, and they wouldn't really know what I was talking about until it starts happening to them. I know this because 20 years ago someone in NZ said the same to me about himself and I had no concept of what they were really saying. I wouldn't want to ever knowingly be the cause of this to be in someone's future. It's the sociopaths behind these fatwas, who hide themselves behind layers of intermediaries, who are the real users of other people. I'm fighting the war as a lone guerrilla.
Anyone involved as an intermediary in some action against me should realize that the reason they're being given is just a cover story to make their handlers look like "good guys". I know far more names of people involved than the very few I've mentioned on my blog but only wanted to name and shame the sociopath puppeteers, not their pawns, because the intermediaries "know not what they do". The only smart response by someone to a fatwa to fight me is to refuse to take part, but of course that might also suit the sociopaths now that I'm "losing" as a result of their previous attacks.
“Gang stalking” – also known as “organized stalking” – is a slang term for a set of tactics used in counterintelligence operations involving the covert surveillance and harassment of a targeted individual. The goal of such operations – in the parlance of counterintelligence personnel – is to “subvert” or “neutralize” an individual deemed by a government agency (or corporation) to be an enemy.