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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

Exactly right tptacek... people forget that Snowden isn't just disclosing NSA spying. For example, he disclosed intelligence about a failed al-queda plot that:

revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaida, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack [0]

And as a result, they may have changed communication methods.

He's had other questionable discloses as well.

0. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-und...

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You mean the journalists, who vetted and chose to publish the material, disclosed this. As has been discussed exhaustively, Snowden didn't disclose anything himself, opting to rely on the expertise and judgement of partner journalists to select which items to write about. Keep in mind, many times more items were withheld than not.

I'm not sure how this is seen as a positive thing. Journalists, with, on average, limited knowledge of infosec, holding in their possession classified documents. Lots and lots of classified documents. I'd wager a guess that at least a handful of these journalists were holding said documents on a system that had its share of known vulnerabilities.

I'd be absurdly happy to be proven wrong, but there is a very high chance that every single document snowden distributed is on sale to the highest bidder, and has been for a while.

There is zero evidence that the data was stolen from these journalists and sold to the highest bidder. Since there is zero evidence, you have to cinsider yourself wrong for now.

Ah, I am not so sure about that. [1] These are just things publicly available on google in a 3-minute perusal of search results.

Paragraph 15 [0]

[1] http://politix.topix.com/story/6798-who-stole-computer-from-...

[0]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said-to-h...

Even still, no claims by any government agency or any other source have been laid that the data in question was stolen from Greenwald or his team. Believing that the data was stolen and sold is mere conjecture.

I guess you didn't read the links.

> Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.

I believe that qualifies as a "claim by a government agency"

actually, i did read it (you seem to assume a lot of things). speculation by two ex-intelligence experts hardly confirms that the data was stolen. Believing the assumptions of two experts is no better than believing your own assumptions.

You have an odd definition of disclosure. Snowden took the documents and gave them to journalists. That _is_ disclosure.

If what you say were true, then Snowden should just come back to the US. He doesn't even need a pardon. Afterall, he didn't disclose anything.. the journalists did.

No, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If Snowden truly is a hero, then he has to be held responsible for the outcomes of his actions. By definition, heroism involves intent and responsibility.

Snowden was a steward of the documents, albeit taken against the will of the NSA. Relinquishing those documents to journalists he knew to be technologically uneducated (remember, he had to teach Poitras and Greenwald how to use PGP and adopt the basics of computer security) cannot, with logical consistency, be considered as placing them into authoritatively safe hands.

In most cases, information disclosed to a journalist should be considered to be disclosed to that journalists' readership.

“The switches weren’t turned off, but there has been a real decrease in quality” of communications, said one United States official, who like others quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence programs.

A couple of days ago news outlets were calling Seymour Hersh a conspiracy nut because his report contained information gained off anonymous sources in the intelligence community.

I said "_may have_ changed communication methods". Whether or not they changed, it doesn't change the fact that Snowden disclosed monitoring of AlQueda's communications.

And if anyone was wondering, Seymour Hersh is the journalist who wrote the killing bin laden story. He has nothing to do with the article I linked to.

Seymour Hersh is a conspiracy nut. He believes USSOCOM is run by Opus Dei. Opus Dei actually had to release a statement.

He is also one of the most important investigative journalists of the last 100 years. The two roles are not mutually exclusive.

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

My understanding of that statement is that he meant that they were deeply religious and were members op Opus Dei, not that there's a secretive organization that's controlling USSOCOM.

Even terrorists have the right to private communications.

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