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."

Comments

Modern Jesus

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This man may well be our Jesus. The government is going to crucify him in their fury.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Confusedent]

It's pretty amazing, and here's hoping the sacrifice isn't completely wasted. The fact that this stuff hasn't led to protesting in the streets really reflects just how complacent the US population is. Or how afraid of the government we really are, knowing just how well equipped and militarized the government has become thanks to 60+ years of growth in the military-industrial complex. I for one am ashamed I voted for Obama in 2008, and I hope there's a clean sweep of every Congressperson who didn't specifically oppose this type of stuff during the next elections. If that doesn't happen, I think the government will just treat it as a mandate to continue expanding their global power ever faster. Something needs to happen while people's attention is still focused on it.

It'd be nice if the public vitriol towards the current administration also helped Manning avoid further abuse, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Modern Jesus

[pepty]

This man may well be our Jesus. The government is going to crucify him in their fury.

Except, of course, he's unlikely to come back from the dead, or for his death to provide a means of eternal life.

So exactly like Jesus then.

Re:Modern Jesus

[beamdriver]

Actually, most of this stuff, the basis for it anyway, goes back to Eisenhower.

You can blame Bush for the PATRIOT act, but that was just another step down the road we've been on for a long long time.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Confusedent]

Actually, failure to vote for third parties is the primary reason they're able to get away with stuff like this. The whole "wasted vote" thing is probably the most damaging logical fallacy being used in politics right now. Don't get me wrong, it's unlikely a third party will ever win a presidential election, but that's not the point. When politicians are losing enough votes to them that they risk losing to their opponents, they're forced to change their platforms. You can see this happening already with the Republican's reconsideration of immigration reform. They know the tide is against them and they'll have to make policy changes they haven't wanted to in the past. Aside from that, only about half of the population actually votes. There are literally twice as many people who aren't even going to the polls than there are supporting Democrats or Republicans for any reason. If the left was losing 10% of their voting base to the Greens and the right was losing 10% of theirs to the Libertarians (or whatever other party you may like), you can bet they'd be picking up pieces of those platforms in order to continue out-competing third parties.

tl;dr: Voting for the proverbial "lesser of two evils" is the mandate we give them to get away with all this crap. Neither side is less evil than the other anymore.

Re:Modern Jesus

[MightyMartian]

Can't we blame them both?

Re:Modern Jesus

[tukang]

Guess you didn't RTFA. He was going to blow the whistle but held off when Obama got elected because he hoped things would change, instead, they only got worse. Please understand that the "left vs right" thing is just a distraction. Both parties are happily taking our liberties away.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Grishnakh]

Obama's no centrist, he's thoroughly right-wing. Unfortunately, the Republicans are extreme right-wing, so your choices are 1) right-wing, and 2) even more right-wing.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

It may lead to protesting in the streets. From the Snowden interview:

"It is not like Occupy Wall Street but there is a grassroots movement to take to the streets on July 4 in defence of the Fourth Amendment called Restore The Fourth Amendment and it grew out of Reddit. The response over the internet has been huge and supportive."

Re:Modern Jesus

[greenbird]

Please understand that the "left vs right" thing is just a distraction. Both parties are happily taking our liberties away.

Amen to that. It's the age old divide and conquer strategy. Get the people focused on and fighting over irrelevancies while they turn the country into a police state.

Although this man did nothing wrong and should be protected under whistle blower shield laws he will be crucified for the simple crime of embarrassing Obama.

Re:Modern Jesus

[greenbird]

Actually, failure to vote for third parties is the primary reason they're able to get away with stuff like this.

What third party? Do you really think that would make any difference? Under the current system anyone elected is controlled or made irrelevant. Until the money is removed from the electoral process this won't change.

you can bet they'd be picking up pieces of those platforms in order to continue out-competing third parties

One of Obama's primary platforms was "Open Government". That worked out well, didn't it? Kinda hard to make an informed decision when most of the important information is secret and anyone who exposes it is thrown in jail or worse (see Bradly Manning).

Re:Modern Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush is out of office and cannot effect any changes on this at this point, so why are we harping on Bush and absolving Obama? Yes, Bush started it and gets blame where blame is due, but Obama ran on a platform that included dismantling this program. He changed his mind and actually ramped up the program from what information we are getting now.

Obama has the power to stop this but he doesn't so he deserves all the blame we can throw at him.

Re:Modern Jesus

[tgd]

Guess you didn't RTFA. He was going to blow the whistle but held off when Obama got elected because he hoped things would change, instead, they only got worse. Please understand that the "left vs right" thing is just a distraction. Both parties are happily taking our liberties away.

More specifically, the people involved in creating programs like this transcend any particular election cycle.

Its not the parties doing it, on either side. Its the inertia of huge organizations following misguided policies stacked on policies, most likely created by people who really believed it was the best thing for the country.

"Do less" isn't an idea that creates a motivation for change, so time will always trend these sort of things into doing more and more.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Grishnakh]

Wrong. Obama has the unilateral power to make lots of changes:
1) wars. As commander-in-chief, he decides if troops are to be deployed or not. He hasn't exercised his option to avoid going to war at all.
2) the drug war. The AG (who is Obama's stooge) has the unilateral power to decide which drugs are on the "banned" list. If they wanted to legalize marijuana, Obama/Holder could do so tomorrow. But instead they've stepped up anti-marijuana enforcement at the federal level.
3) prosecuting whistleblowers and being transparent: Congress has no power here, it's all on him.

Stop being an apologist for Obama. Yes, there's many things that he has little to no power over, but there's lots of things he has absolute power over, and he consistently does the wrong thing.

Re:Modern Jesus

[ArcherB]

Obama's had 4.5 years now to fix Bush's problems

He's also had Bush's Congress to work with. As much as I wish he'd done better, I look at the GOP and it's fixation on introducing bills to ban abortions and I understand why the country is so fucked up. The folks making the laws are morons.

Bush's Congress? You mean control of both chambers of Congress with supermajority control of the Senate?

Sorry, Jack. That don't fly. Obama had absolute control of Congress and chose not to touch this issue.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

FISA was written in the late 1970s after the public found out that the NSA and CIA (sometimes in cooperation with the FBI) were snooping on domestic postal and fax transmissions. Only then did Congress pass laws and rules which ostensibly prohibited the NSA or CIA from operating domestically. Prior to that the only thing preventing them from operating domestically was the FBI protecting their turf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

In all likelihood, it was probably only the Nixon debacle which primed the public to actually reject this kind of snooping. Today we might just roll over. Then, like now, there are too many apologists and protectors of the police state, and not enough level-headed people willing to reject it. Perhaps the Tea Party radicals might actually be worth something, or maybe they'll just provide an easy excuse to ignore the naysayers as conspiracy theorists.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Alomex]

As commander-in-chief, he decides if troops are to be deployed or not. He hasn't exercised his option to avoid going to war at all.

He put an end to not one, but two wars and refused to go to full out war in Libya and Syria. That seems a radical difference with the previous holder of the oval office to me, and very much exercizing that option.

. If they wanted to legalize marijuana, Obama/Holder could do so tomorrow. But instead they've stepped up anti-marijuana enforcement at the federal level.

Funny that you mention marijuana, because he has done exactly that:

CNN: President Barack Obama says that federal law enforcement agencies have "bigger fish to fry" than prosecuting marijuana users in Colorado and Washington, which voted in November to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. (late 2012)

or much earlier than that:

Although federal criminal law does not have an exception for the medical use of marijuana, several statements made by Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and their spokespeople in 2008, 2009, and 2010 reflected that the enforcement of federal criminal laws against those complying with state medical marijuana laws would not be an enforcement priority.
In 2011, U.S. attorneys and the office of the Attorney General backtracked on prior statements, indicating that larger-scale providers could be targeted, but that enforcement against patients and those caring for them would not be a priority. Here is a collection of statements from Barack Obama, his spokesperson, and
the Department of Justice on federal law enforcement and medical marijuana.

Your last one:

prosecuting whistleblowers and being transparent: Congress has no power here, it's all on him.

That one I agree with. But so far you are one-out-of-three.

Re:Modern Jesus

[Trepidity]

Perhaps the Tea Party radicals might actually be worth something, or maybe they'll just provide an easy excuse to ignore the naysayers as conspiracy theorists.

I do think that could be one possible positive outcome of the Tea Party, if it could be channeled into an anti-surveillance political force. An engagement with techno-libertarian issues has historically been a weakness of American libertarianism, which is to a large extent based on imagining sparsely populated frontier localism: no taxes, let me keep my rifle, I'll fight off the government with my militia when they come, etc., etc.

Mostly it's ignored the information sphere and the need to keep any sort of pervasive surveillance state from being built, and has been relatively disconnected from considering what freedom might mean if you live in a modern city, rather than a sparely populated frontier. Not everyone has ignored it, of course, but it's gotten comparatively little focus, compared to guns & taxes.

Unfortunately, in my corner of the country (Texas), I see some signs that nativist worries are interfering with anti-surveillance instincts. It's not everyone, but a lot of tea-partiers around here have gotten the idea that some crazy pro-police-state ideas are not so bad, if they keep the Mexicans out. Everything from drone patrols of the border to regular ID-card checks to employment databases seems to be seen as a potential aid in the War Against Illegal Immigration, whereas to me all that is a lot scarier than the illegal immigration is.

Re:Modern Jesus

[AthanasiusKircher]

George W. Bush may well have been a terrible President. The world may have been a better place had he not been President.

But you're reciting the stupid mythology made up by the Democratic party 13 years later.

Well, we did have 8 years of President Bush as a result of a third party candidate bleeding votes away from Gore...

Newsflash: Gore and Bush both made numerous decisions during their campaign that had greater impacts than anything Nader ever did. Blaming the loss of an election on a 3rd party is just buying into the two-party BS rhetoric that's trying to trick you into voting for them.

Just for one example, take the Democrats in Florida who voted for Bush. Approximately 12% of registered Florida Democrats voted for Bush -- roughly 200,000 voters. This is a significantly larger number than all of Nader's votes combined, including Democrats, Republicans, and independents who voted for him.

When a greater number of your own party defects to vote for "the other guy" than all of the 3rd party voters combined, I don't think you get to blame the 3rd party voters. You blame the guy who lost for not being a better candidate and for failing to convince members OF HIS OWN PARTY to vote for him. You blame the voters who actually voted for Bush. The 3rd party voters were a much smaller effect than anything done by the two major parties here.

(Granted, Bush was more the GOP members of the Supreme Court being corrupt and helping Bush out,

Good lord. This nonsense again. The actual situation is complicated, and thus the Democratic spindoctors have convinced people like you of a false narrative even 13 years later. Here's what actually happened.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 (including two "liberal" justices) that the recount in Florida had Constitutional problems. The only place where the five "conservatives" come into it is in the remedy. The five "conservatives" looked at a ruling by the liberal Florida Supreme Court just made a few days earlier, where the Florida Supreme Court interpreted state law to say that all recounts should be finished by date X. Given what the liberal Florida court said, the US Supreme Court decided that it was impossible to complete a recount according to Florida law since it was already date X.

Now, from a technical legal procedural standpoint, the appropriate thing to do here would have been to send the case back to Florida and let the Florida court say, "Yeah, we can't do any more recounts now," even though they had already effectively set the date. Instead, the US Supreme Court set the remedy themselves, which is a bit unusual.

Nevertheless, the US Supreme Court then remanded the case back to Florida. The Florida Supreme Court could have turned around and said, "Well, no, actually our ruling didn't mean to set date X." The Florida court did no such thing.

Gore's lawyers could have requested another hearing and made arguments that Florida law didn't say that and the Florida Supreme Court's ruling on date X was wrong. Gore's lawyers did no such thing.

A week or two later, instead, the Florida Supreme Court actually dismissed the case, thereby officially ending any recounts. The US Supreme Court did NOT "decide the election" or even officially "end" it.

Given that Gore and the liberal Florida court didn't contest the US Supreme Court's citation of the Florida court's ruling about date X, we can safely assume that Gore and Florida didn't think there was any legal argument to stand on in disputing the US Supreme Court's ruling.

In other words, while there were a couple procedural oddities about the actions in this case, the actual liberal parties involved chose not to contest the ruling... and, in fact, it was originally the liberal Florida court's interpretation of Florida law that set the deadline the US Supreme Court followed.

and G

Making them put their money where their mouth is

[spiritplumber]

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.

Definitions

[InfinityWpi]

Wrong? No.

Illegal, Yes.

Be careful, Mr. Snowden, they're going to be after you...

Pulling an Assange?

[Bananatree3]

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.

Thanks, Mr. Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:But why?

[maxwell demon]

What exactly does it help if the world does know his name?

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.

Why do you joke about prison rape?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why do you joke about prison rape?

[Luke has no name]

I don't get offended by many things, but I don't think it's humor, and that's why I don't like it. I know too many people who say of convicted felons "I hope he drops the soap a lot" and whatnot. Lots of people see prison rape as a valid part of one's punishment, and it's wrong.

Re:Why do you joke about prison rape?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's called "black humor". It's funny, but in a horrible way, and reminds us what horrible and inhumane places US prisons are.

I don't think so. There is practically no public discussion of just how fucked up the prison system is in the USA. It is just jokes like the OP. It took more than 20 years of me hearing FMIA jokes about prison before I ever considered what it all really meant for the people who have to suffer it and I like to think I am more attuned to thinking about this stuff than the average american citizen.

I get that all humor is rooted in suffering, but we need a lot more people shooting down the FMIA jokes with the sober details of what is essentially legalized torture. Until that happens FMIA jokes aren't a way of coping with the horror, they are a way to avoid acknowledging and fixing it.

Human chain

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

Re:Making them put their money where their mouth i

[maxwell demon]

Given that the NSA has a lot to hide, they must have done a lot wrong. ;-)

Re:not a good idea. actually a horrible idea.

[PeeAitchPee]

Bull fucking shit. I own a technology company and I'd hire this guy in a second, and there are thousands of other business owners like me across the country who would do exactly the same. He's got more integrity and courage than just about anyone I've ever met.

To all Americans

[vikingpower]

Read this, and ask yourselves what your country has become

Why should Mr. Snowden become the sacrificial lamb

[Taco Cowboy]

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 !!!

Re:Why should Mr. Snowden become the sacrificial l

[currently_awake]

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.