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NSA WhistleBlower Outs Himself
An anonymous reader writes "The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. 'I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,' he said."
This man may well be our Jesus. The government is going to crucify him in their fury.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I guess this will put the whole "If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" thing to rest, if there's any sense in the world. Mr. Snowden, thank you.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Wrong? No.
Illegal, Yes.
Be careful, Mr. Snowden, they're going to be after you...
Sooner or later, the NSA would have found this guy. I wonder if outing himself first gives him "media immunity." It's harder to take someone out quietly, if they're in the limelight.
Both the best and worst-case scenario put you in jail for a good long time.
Seriously? And those who put in place those systems shall not be prosecuted?
This dude has balls of steel and I think deserves our help. If a fund is established, I'll gladly chip in a few bucks.
Dude thanks, what you've done requires real courage and people like you change the world for the better. You will probably be dragged through the mud. That inteligence aparatus which you helped build and outed is working right now very hard to get dirt on you, and will probably succeed. If there is no dirt to be gotten it will be manufactured.
I think coming out into the public was the smartest thing you could of done, i doubt you will be rendered because the damage is already done. Discrediting you is about the most they can do in damage control ATM.
They've learned (i hope) from the Manning case that locking you up into the loney bin and psychologically torturing you just make it worst. You've just surendered your remaining expectation of privacy to save ours, and for that i thank you sir.
I guess the NSA already knew his name, and he figured that he'd be safer if the public knows it, too. If a person with a name nobody has ever heard of disappears somewhere in Hong Kong, nobody will care too much. If the person who is known to have leaked the NSA documents disappears, it might make the media notice.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Prison rape is not funny.
This isn't about political correctness or about getting "offended", by the way. I don't care if you want to joke about racial or gender stereotypes, for example. Those kinds of jokes can often be quite funny, without a doubt.
But where is the humor in a man, potentially one who hasn't even done anything seriously wrong, repeatedly getting his rectum painfully torn apart by one or more thick, erect penises while in prison?
Where is the humor in that man possibly getting AIDS, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, or any number of STIs?
Where is the humor in the mental anguish that such a man will very well endure, not only during the attacks, but for the rest of his life?
Where is the humor in all of this physical and psychological harm?
There is no humor in it at all. That is why prison rape is something that should not be joked about. It's just not funny.
In specific cases, a primary challenger might help. But it really depends on whether enough people care, and if a primary challenger who's clearly better appears.
The two parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee, both strongly in favor of the program, are:
Actually Chambliss's reelection is coming up soon enough that Georgia Republicans might want to start looking at primary challengers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I have a fantasy in which 1 million well-armed patriots surround this guy and tell the NSA / CIA / FBI / federal marshals that they're on the wrong side of the Constitution and can't have him.
He wanted to go on the record to verify the authenticity of the leaked documents, that they were not altered in any way, and to confirm that what the documents state is actually happening. It was just a matter of time before the gov't figured out his identity, so at least now he has a chance to tell his side of the story in face of all the denials coming out of Washington.
Why are you not out there protesting? Why are you waiting for others to do it? Right there in the article is your call to arms: " I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."
Grab your supplies, head out, start protesting. Don't wait for others to do it first. If our forefather's had, we'd not be here now.
Wow, holy moly! He articulated in his video interview better than the newspaper articles why this NSA stasi 2.0 is such a bad idea, they might have good intentions (to catch bad guys) but what they're creating is a MONSTROSITY. They are recording everything for later analysis, from everyone US and non-US. And from what I could tell from reading the articles and EFF untangling obtuse NSA terminology they dont call it "collected" until they come to sift through it later. So that maybe part of the PR spin of how they claim to not collect data. There is a lot of lying and careful PR spun wording about which law, terminology, whether the access is "direct" vs via a relay server, or an API, or done by a defense contractor and not NSA direct etc. You cant trust a word the NSA Clapper guy is saying. Trust Binney, this new leaker and hopefully the google, facebook etc who claim ignorance are not spinning and lying also and if so that they clean house - find the trojan hardware, remove it and fire those who installed it, and have a proper legal review of future requests. I'm thinking the leaker Edward Snowden coming forward makes it a lot harder for NSA Clapper to lie his way out of. Binney also (another recent leaker) deciphered and laid out whats really happening. Terrorism is bad, however they have to note some of it is blowback for interventionist foreign policy by US, UK and others in the middle east. As in physics actions have opposing reactions. Not all actions were particularly just in the first place. And well the world is still pretty safe, despite all that, still more Americans apparently die annually from furniture falling on them. Actions of a government should be proportional to the risk, and balances based on informed consent of the population. What we have here is repeated entrenched lying to US congress, oversight committees, secret (and blatantly incorrect and stretching) interpretations of law. Very very bad. This guy Edward Snowden is a US patriot and an international hero and will go down in history as such.
Given that the NSA has a lot to hide, they must have done a lot wrong. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Hopefully we won't be asking ourselves "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" anytime soon. Good luck to him.
...it has to be stated:
This man is a hero.
(Shit, the govt probably just recorded that)
look, the last thing we need is yet another whistleblower rotting in prison or blackballed from their profession.
People are all "oh, this is so noble". Uhm, yeah. Its noble, and thousands of other people have already done it, and they suffered immensly for it. Go read some books by actual whistleblowers. Imagine making $50,000 a year and then going down to minimum wage because its the only job you can get after you get blackballed. Imagine you lose your health insurance, your house, and you have to go into debt to pay lawyers to keep you out of prison.
Imagine your wife, family, friends, being raided by the FBI with guns. Imagine getting stopped at every airport checkpoint, train station, etc for the rest of your life.
Imagine never working in your field again.
Imagine a large number of your friends just drop you. No contact. No calls. No meetings. Nothing.
Thats what a lot of whistleblowers face.
Oh, how noble. But if this guy was makign your french fries or bagging your groceries, would you say "oh how noble" to him? or would you continue your day to day condescending attitude towards those who have to live outside the system for whatever reason?
This guy should have hid under a fucking rock and let the NSA and FBI go fuck itself for 10 years trying to track down the leak source. Just laugh at them from the shadows.
It reminds me of the story in Mandela's autobiography. There were a lot of anti-apartheid activitists who operated purely out of some messianic belief they were right. Well, the enemy used this, and decimated them. They went to prison. They disappeared. They got murdered. Most of all, they didnt contribute to the continuing battle. They are like Petya Rostov in War And Peace, all heart and no brains. They might have done something admirable, but they didnt actually help win the battle or the war because they were no longer around to fight anymore.
Now, the enemy, the NSA, or FBI, can just take this guy and swallow him into some prison.
Oh well.
China doesn't, but Hong Kong does. They retained roughly 90% of everything they had when the British owned the island, and there's protests if not small scale riots every time China tries to do something to change well...anything.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's why you insist on Jury trial and educate the Jury that they have the power to find
that he met the legal requirements for conviction under the law, but NULLIFY the conviction
by returning a solid NOT GUILTY. This is how our system is supposed to work when
a law is passed that is more harmful to society than had the law not existed.
But the Jury is not required to demonstrate this; they're only to return a verdict.
CAPTCHA = 'monotony'
surprise, there is no law making it illegal to give this type of information to a reporter.
why? this information has nothing whatsoever to do with "national defense information" which is the standard of the Espionage Act. not 'classified'. But National Defense Information. and its not illegal to leak classified information.
These programs have little to nothing to do with national defense. They are domestic spying which the NSA shouldnt be involved in at all.
Therefore they are not a violation of the espionage act.
What other law could we be dealing with? The CFAA? Hell, this guy may have had every right to access this information, therefore he didn't break the CFAA.
Not to mention that, the Whistleblower laws can in theory protect people when they are uncovering blatant illegal activity by government employees.
Fuck the government's lawyers, they have no case to stand on here.
Has it ever occurred to you that most people who are against this type of snooping do not doubt the program's effectiveness of stopping terrorists but are simply not willing to trade their liberty for safety? "Give me liberty or give me death" has turned into "Take my liberty for a little bit of safety".
Not everything that is legal is right. Not everything that is illegal is wrong. The distinction will become apparant when you have matured some.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. This guy saw the direction that the NSA and other agencies are taking and, at considerable personal cost, took a stand. I applaud his actions and hope we can have a meaningful discussion about where we're heading as a species. Maybe you're comfortable with the government knowing so much about you, whom you talk to, what you do on the internet, where you spend money and so forth. I'm not. As for your "Islamist hordes" comment - you should probably lay off the colorful rhetoric for a while there. Makes you look both racist and stupid.
"The disclosure by a person, usually an employee in a government agency or private enterprise, to the public or to those in authority, of mismanagement, corruption, illegality, or some other wrongdoing.
Since the 1960s, the public value of whistle-blowing has been increasingly recognized. For example, federal and state statutes and regulations have been enacted to protect whistleblowers from various forms of retaliation. Even without a statute, numerous decisions encourage and protect whistleblowing on grounds of public policy. In addition, the federal False Claims Act (31 U.S.C.A. 3729) will reward a whistleblower who brings a lawsuit against a company that makes a false claim or commits Fraud against the government.
Persons who act as whistleblowers are often the subject of retaliation by their employers. Typically the employer will discharge the whistleblower, who is often an at-will employee. An at-will employee is a person without a specific term of employment. The employee may quit at any time and the employer has the right to fire the employee without having to cite a reason. However, courts and legislatures have created exceptions for whistleblowers who are at-will employees.
Whistleblowing statutes protect from discharge or discrimination an employee who has initiated an investigation of an employer's activities or who has otherwise cooperated with a regulatory agency in carrying out an inquiry or the enforcement of regulations. Federal whistle-blower legislation includes a statute protecting all government employees, 5 U.S.C.A. 2302(b)(8), 2302(b)(9). In the federal civil service, the government is prohibited from taking, or threatening to take, any personnel action against an employee because the employee disclosed information that he or she reasonably believed showed a violation of law, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public safety or health. In order to prevail on a claim, a federal employee must show that a protected disclosure was made, that the accused official knew of the disclosure, that retaliation resulted, and that there was a genuine connection between the retaliation and the employee's action.
Many states have enacted whistleblower statutes, but these statutes vary widely in coverage. Some statutes apply only to public employees, some apply to both public and private employees, and others apply to public employees and employees of public contractors...."
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Whistleblowing
So, on the balance we have individual privacy (with huge implications) and FBI's investigating ability (let's face it – that's very important for our society too).
What about this scheme: NSA collects everything they can put their paws on, but people's records get encrypted right away (separate public key for each individual); keys for decryption go to escrow of some kind. So when FBI wants the data on a particular individual, they present the case to a judge who unseals the data if he sees it fit.
So, no fishing expeditions, no witch hunts (everything court related is on the record), and safe against leaks.
He is a far better (and more effective) patriot than Bradley Manning; definitely more like Daniel Ellsberg.
Manning (and Wikileaks) dumped a huge pile of classified information on the internet with little regard to the consequences of their actions. Material that any thinking observer would regard as quite sensibly classified, and discussing no sort of malfeasance or wrongdoing, was revealed. This gave the government ample cover to prosecute Manning with little fear of popular outrage. Real (and innocent) people had their lives hurt (and probably ended) by Manning's leaks. He's essentially getting tried for treason, and the government has ample reason to do so. The fact that he was motivated by moral outrage isn't really relevant, as much of the information he revealed had nothing whatsoever to do with the things he was unhappy about. (And Assange going on an ego trip didn't help.)
This man, on the other hand, copied a very specific and small set of documents revealing something that every thinking citizen does indeed have a right to be angry about. He put nobody in danger (unless you subscribe to the "If the all-seeing-eye doesn't know everything, the terrorists win." school of thought.) The documents he revealed are all directly associated with what he's unhappy with. No actual investigation details (current or past) have been revealed, no names are mentioned, and he's neither hiding nor chasing the spotlight.
He appears to be a principled and thoughtful patriot, and I think despite their best efforts, they'll have a tough time demonizing him for the public, although it won't be for lack of trying. If they do capture him and put on trial, and he will almost certainly lose. Despite him doing the right thing for the right reasons, this is not a strange or ambiguous application of the Espionage Act. His only hope would be for a successful court challenge to the programs he has disclosed, but given the current proclivities of the Supreme Court, that is unlikely, to say the least.
While it will be little comfort, I believe history will vindicate him.
Yes, it has occurred to Slashdot that this "[limits] our government's ability to challenge people who wish us ill".
We've traded that ability in return for trying to limit the actions of a government that, in this case, wishes its citizens ill.
A government that thinks nothing of stripping liberties in the name of security is a far greater threat to our freedom than "Islamist hordes".
Read this, and ask yourselves what your country has become
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
...well, not the money in this case.
Why did he do it? My guess is this: He's worked in the industry long enough to figure out that they would get him, sooner or later. And that they don't forget.
Going public might be his life insurance. At least it'll make it more difficult to make him vanish.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Whistleblower Act will be no protection whatsoever. For that to work, the program he disclosed would have to be found illegal. Given that the Supreme Court won't even summon the balls to agree to hear a case about far-more-egregrious warrantless wiretapping, the likelihood of the program he disclosed being found unconstitutional is approx. zero.
Without a ruling that the program was illegal, he puts himself firmly under the jurisdiction of the Espionage Act, and his confession makes a chance of conviction approx. 100%.
Why is it that *nobody* is outraged over the fact that the phone companies and ISPs already collect this information? The only scandal I see is that the gov't forced them to give it up for free, cuz the US is too broke to just buy it like everybody else.
1) The Inspector General would have done nothing. This was not a tiny program by some rogue field office. This was a widespread program that was approved by the (toothless) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. It had the backing of pretty much the entire DoD, and I'm sure all the appropriate BS memos were on file at the DoJ.
2) Congress knew about it already, and did nothing.
3) Why does it matter which country the media organization was based in? Why was calling up the Guardian and having them publish it somehow different than the New York Times doing so?
4) If he's a spy, he's really shitty at it. He's a whistleblower in every sense of the word.
5) He didn't have a huge number of choices in places to flee to. Most of the countries that would ordinarily protect someone making such a disclosure are US allies with bigger diplomatic fish to fry than protecting him, making an asylum application problematic. (Of note is that the program he disclosed would not have been illegal in most "free" countries.) He could have fled to some 3rd-world $hithole, but in those countries it'd be easier to simply snatch him off the street. Hong Kong is not the worst choice out of a whole pile of bad options.
That said, if the PRC government gets a hold of him, they will indeed pump him for all he's worth and then publicly shame him as a defector. Here's to hoping going public before that happens insulates him somewhat from that.
As a side-note, here's the tactic I suspect they'll use to publicly disgrace him and distract the public from the documents: They'll argue that he was not, in fact, motivated out of a noble desire to advance our civil liberties, but rather tried, and failed, to sell secrets to the PRC. (No sense in claiming the PRC actually bought them... that'd pointlessly shame them for something they didn't actually do. (for once.)) They'll claim he has a lot more secrets in his possession than the ones he's revealed, and that those other secrets contained stuff that should have stayed secret. (Of course you can't know what those are, because it's too dangerous to tell you...)
This will be effective, because they don't actually have to reveal their evidence (or lack thereof) for such a tale during trial. His confession is already more than enough to convict him under the Espionage Act.
(All this said, the PRC was an odd choice... I'm not sure he had any good choices, as the program he revealed would have been legal in most of the countries he otherwise could have fled to, but he's going to be called on to elaborate a little further beyond waxing poetic about the peace-and-freedom loving people of Hong Kong. Personally, I would have picked Sweden or Finland; they're neither an enemies of the US nor members of NATO or reliant on the US for anything in particular. They are, however, harder to hide in.)
Snowden made the same legal commitments as Manning. The oath is unrelated to access to state secrets. Many soldiers never get a clearance, and many civilans get it. The penalties for violating each are also separate. (Manning may be hit with both.)
I can imagine that the court may find some leaker innocent if his actions were necessary and the information could not be gotten out in any other way. (For an imaginary example: you send a spy across the border; he radioes that he fell into an abandoned mine shaft and is about to die if not helped. You call your counterpart in that country and tell him where to find the spy. The spy is saved. But you broke the laws on secrecy.)
In absence of clear danger (an asteroid hitting the planet, or a terrorist with a nuke,) I cannot imagine that the US court will find actions of Mr. Snowden necessary. The court will find that there was no immediate danger to anyone, and that the whole matter is purely political, and the disclosure was made for personal reasons. The conviction is then assured.
This man is a true American hero. He found an injustice, and he is taking a stand - even despite potentially horrible consequences to himself and his family. Regardless of how you view his actions, he is a shining example of the American spirit -- strong and deeply committed to democracy. We should all be proud to have men and women like this in our country. Home of the free. Land of the brave. Let no one forget how long and hard we have fought for these ideals.
It's pretty amazing, and here's hoping the sacrifice isn't completely wasted
When I read statement like the above, I cringe
I cringe because of that "I can't do nothing" feeling that is being felt by so many people today
So, we are just going around and sit in front of our compute screen (or look on our mobile devices) and let Mr. Snowden become the next sacrificial lamb ?
If the Arabs are so brave as to stand up against their tyrannical leaders, if the Turks are so brave to tell their "elected dictator" to fuck off, why can't we, the Americans, the supposed "Braves" who live in the "land of the Free" ?
Have we, the Americans, become pussies ?
As an American, I am damn proud of what Mr. Snowden has done
He has given back to me, the hope for my country
I left my country, America, a decade and a half ago, because I could see no hope no more, but now, Mr. Snowden has given me the hope, that my country is worth fighting for
No more shall I be scared by fuckers in Washington
No matter they are Democrats or Republicans, no matter if that guy in the White House is Obama or any other person, if they fuck my Constitution, I am going to fuck them back
And I have the duty to do so, yes, not only the right to do so, but the DUTY, as an American citizen, to take back my government from those motherfucking tyrants !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Duverger's law: It's not so much a fallacy as it is a close cousin to the prisoner's dilemma. With enough prisoners--...ahem, voters, it becomes a near mathematical certainty.
Yes, vote for third party candidates when the Rs and Ds aren't very good. This doesn't solve much, because good third party candidates frequently don't run at all, knowing they can't win. What we really need is a different voting system that doesn't have as many problems. While I like Condorcet systems, Approval voting is a much easier sell.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
..."He broke the law"...
Society use your Sciences
Has it ever occurred to you that most people who are against this type of snooping do not doubt the program's effectiveness of stopping terrorists ...
Speak for yourself. I agree that even if it was effective, trashing the Bill of Rights is not a good tradeoff. However, I question whether the data overload you get from a program like this is even helpful, and may even be harmful. 9/11 could have been prevented by FBI headquarters just reading the emails from their field offices.
A lot of tough talk, but what can everyday Americans do to change their government?
Join a militia to do some group violence? Hear that--that's a drone coming, you've got about 10 seconds...
Go solo against the government? Enjoy your one-way ticket to a secret prison somewhere.
Civil disobedience? How does spending the rest of your life in prison sound?
March in protest? Worked in the 60s, not anymore, unless you like a mouthful of pepper spray and a tear gas canister shot into your skull.
Vote? LOL
Revolt against the government is an act of desperation. The people of the USA are not desperate, they still have too much to lose by fighting. So long as the US government ensures most of the people have something to lose they won't revolt, regardless of what happens.
Same here, man. I'm going to give our government such a stern posting on the Internet the likes of which they've never experienced before!
I understand the danger of Islamic terrorism, first hand
I can't tell you where I am, suffice to say that I am posting this comment from outside of the United States of America, and my primary task is to penetrate some of the more virulent Islamic circles to obtain info on the global jihadist movement
However, the danger of the Islamic terrorism can not, and should never, be used to justify the destruction of the Constitution of the United States of America
Two wrongs can never make a right, sir !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm afraid that without the unpleasant consequences of martyrdom the standard social inertia cannot be overcome. It is the brutality of the oppression of the martyr that incites the rebellion, not his call for social change. The martyr accepts that he's going to be oppressed and acts for change anyway. That is what makes martyrs special. We had this need long before the time of Jesus and I don't expect an end to it in my lifetime.
The law is wrong and needs to be changed. He did, in fact, break the law: he divulged state secrets entrusted to him under threat of severe penalty for disclosure. I believe he did the right thing, but it was still illegal. If you have strong moral convictions but not the will to expose yourself to punishment you should avoid this situation because the internal conflict between your will to do the right thing and your fear of punishment can drive you insane. In that case you are not martyr material.
Since this is the NSA he had to know they would find him - that's what they do. By outing himself he probably avoids some extrajudicial retirement. Nobody from here out is going to believe he locked himself in a duffel bag, or died of autoerotic asphyxiation, or overdosed on bath salts.
I'm not saying that he should be punished - only that he will. They'll get Julian Assange one day too, even if his punishment is to be hunted to the end of his days. By dragging it out so long that the defiant act becomes disassociated in the public mind with the tyrannical punishment the authorities may be doing themselves a favor and blunting the rebellion. But eventually Caesar gets what is Caesars until Caesar is no more.
Anyway, what do you care? By your own account you fled. You should probably fix or prevent the problems in your new home wherever it is. All politics are local. If things get too tough in your new home you can always find another one more to your liking. People who flee tyranny also do not martyrs make. Fleeing tyranny is for most the wisest course until there is no place to turn. If you've go the wit and will to make it anywhere and lack anchors like family and tradition, going to where the field is ripe with berries and the wolves are more like dachsunds is just smart. Win wherever you are! If things are going like you think our generation's version of the underground railroad is going to need another end. By building up resources to shelter refugees you can be that end. That seems to be a role you're more suited to than taking up arms against the tyrant.
Certainly if you intend to act, this is not the place to say so.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Americans don't care. Democracy requires intelligence. The increased breeding among fat, smug, anti-intellectual, racist, TV-junk-food-and-monster-truck-engorged white trash is lowering the intelligence of our country.
TFTFY.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The problem is that the media has managed to alter the perception of formal democratic protest to be little more than a hobby for jobless extreme left liberals, making it something to be ashamed of and even arrested for.