Snowden Is Lying, Say House Intelligence Committee Leaders

cold fjord writes "There are new developments in the ongoing controversy engulfing the NSA as a result of the Snowden leaks. From The Hill: 'Emerging from a hearing with NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the senior Democrat on the panel, said Edward Snowden simply wasn't in the position to access the content of the communications gathered under National Security Agency programs, as he's claimed. "He was lying," Rogers said. "He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actual technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." ... "He's done tremendous damage to the country where he was born and raised and educated," Ruppersberger said. ... "It was clear that he attempted to go places that he was not authorized to go, which should raise questions for everyone," Rogers added.'" U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has also told the E.U. justice commissioner that media reports surrounding PRISM are wrong: "The contention it [PRISM] is not subject to any internal or external oversights is simply not correct. It's subject to an extensive oversight regime from executive, legislative and judicial branches and Congress is made aware of these activities. The courts are aware as we need to get a court order. ... We can't target anyone unless appropriate documented foreign intelligence purpose for the prevention of terrorism or hostile cyber activities." Meanwhile, Bloomberg has gone live with a report (based on unidentified sources, so take it with a grain of salt) saying that private sector cooperation with snooping government agencies extends far beyond the ones listed in the PRISM report. "Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said." Whatever PRISM turns out to be, the NY Times is reporting that at least Yahoo, and probably other tech companies as well, tried to fight participation in it. Other reports suggest Twitter refused to participate, though there's been no official confirmation.

Comments

Re:Of course.

[afxgrin]

A government program that can spy on any American citizen's internet communications at any time _only_ costs $20M/year to operate? The slides themselves are unbelievable ... Just about any government program on this sort of scope has to run into the billions ...

Gulf War 2 was sold to the Bush administration on information fabricated by an unconfirmed source to get America to topple Saddam. Why not fabricate information about a surveillance program to slander the current federal government so someone like Ron Paul can be ushered in as the saviour of America? Snowden made quite clear his political leaning after donating to Ron Paul's campaign.

We should also remind ourselves that people have given up far more just to get their ideological fix before ... ex. any suicide bomber.

Also, where is the rest of the slide presentation? As a sysadmin he would have the basic knowledge to post that file any number of places (mediafire/rapidshare/torrent cloud), make a tweet about it's location, and let it propagate onto the rest of the internet. Instead he goes to only two newspapers, the Washington Post and The Guardian, and provides only them with the presentation where both papers refuse to publish more than 4 slides.

This whole thing seems like a scandal fabricated to generate page hits or to sling political mud at opponents.

Re:Of course.

[steelfood]

Forget the war of Independence. Look at Manifest Destiny. Look at slavery. To think that the U.S. has ever been better than that is to ignore U.S. history altogether. It's been 250 years worth of power grabbing at all costs. The "land of opportunity" did not refer to wealth.

Thankfully, it's all coming to an end real soon. Or maybe not so thankfully. The beauty of the system of government laid out by the Consititution is that it enables and dictates a regime change once every 4-8 years under peaceful, orderly circumstances. When that comes to an end, the only regime change that'll happen will neither be peaceful nor orderly.