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Snowden Claims That NSA Collaborated With Israel To Write Stuxnet Virus
andrewa writes "In an interview with Der Spiegel Snowden claims that the NSA, amongst other things, collaborated with Israel to write the Stuxnet virus. Not that this is news, as it has been suspected that it was a collaborative effort for some time. When asked about active major programs and how international partners help, Snowden says: 'The partners in the "Five Eyes" (behind which are hidden the secret services of the Americans, the British, the Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians -- ed.) sometimes go even further than the NSA people themselves. Take the Tempora program of the British intelligence GCHQ for instance. Tempora is the first "I save everything" approach ("Full take") in the intelligence world. It sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it. This buffered storage allows for subsequent monitoring; not a single bit escapes. Right now, the system is capable of saving three days’ worth of traffic, but that will be optimized. Three days may perhaps not sound like a lot, but it's not just about connection metadata. "Full take" means that the system saves everything. If you send a data packet and if makes its way through the UK, we will get it. If you download anything, and the server is in the UK, then we get it. And if the data about your sick daughter is processed through a London call center, then ... Oh, I think you have understood.'"
not at all surprised. some of us have been saying this kind of thing has been going on forever while all the while getting laughed at for being paranoid. But what I am really interested in is what now happens to Snowden. Russia said they would help him as long as he stopped leaking information. Will Russia do anything about this? or do you think it was just lip service??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
who suffered financial loss because of stuxnet use this evidence to sue the NSA & Mossad for damages ? If not, why not ?
Or maybe it's not as compartmentalized as you theorise.
Or maybe Snowden was working at a higher level than the US government has admitted.
Or maybe Snowden simply used the skills he was taught to use against the Chinese against his own government.
Either way, what he says has enough validity that world leaders are listening and issuing formal statements over it, and the US isn't denying it, so it's obviously got a reasonable degree of validity to it and isn't just about parroting speculation like you claim.
Same with if an author sends a draft of a book to a publisher.
Seems to me those programs could be charged with piracy, no?
I knew that pretty much from the get-go. Only the truly deluded didn't immediately realize that Mossad and/or the CIA were behind that. Of course, there are always those idiots out there who reflexively deny that the U.S. government is behind ANYTHING--who seem to think that the tens of thousands of employees of the CIA and NSA just sit and stare at walls all day, I guess.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I've seen that movie. It was really a wormhole!
Just to clue you in on another obvious fact, for those of you who may have somehow missed this too: Mossad has been assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists (with the CIA's full cooperation).
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
You would be surprised how many would go to great lengths to deny U.S. and/or Mossad involvement, even on /. Some even went as far as claiming that Iran had done it to *themselves* to elicit sympathy. When you're truly deluded, you can convince yourself of anything, no matter how illogical.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Yeah it's BS and he made it up, that's why they're hunting him.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That summary was all over the place. It barely talked about what was in the headline.
He is so desperate to stay in the news that I think he is resorted to parroting what was speculated in the news almost a year ago.
According to the article, the interview was conducted anonymously through a third party before Snowden publicly revealed himself.
I won't speculate on your motives for making such easily disproven claim about Snowden's character.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
... if someone emails someone else a compressed (.zip etc.) file, do the computers automatically decompress it to examine it, or do they store only the compressed version?
I recall people using specially designed .zip archives which decompress to many times their original size (a 10KB file turning into a 100GB file, for instance) as a form of DoS attack. If the spooks have been lazy the same thing might catch their computers out...
An amazingly well written worm designed to target a particular brand of hardware PLCs that most hackers have never even heard of (and certainly couldn't afford), and not only target them, but target them in a way specifically designed to destroy the attached equipment under a VERY specific set of curcumstances.
That has "nation state" written all over it.
Not only that but it has "very high tech nation state" written all over it.
Basically about the only people with the will, the resources, and the ability are US + Israel. There's basically no one else that was likely to have done it.
But honestly, it was one of the most amazingly awesome high tech attacks ever perpetrated. I mean seriously they managed to successfully target machines that weren't connected to the public internet and physically destroy them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just before Edward Snowden became a world famous whistleblower he answered an extensive catalog of questions.
That includes the question about stuxnet. Doesn't address how he knows it, but " lying in a desperate attempt to stay in the news" doesn't fit since this came out before he was in the news.
I've always said, since the NSA is reading all of my e-mail anyway, the least they could do is filter out all the spam for me ... If I could subscribe, via RSS from an NSA site, a .procmailrc; that'd be bitchin'...
Snowden is not really revealing anything that is not widely known. He's just sensationalizing it. Low level access like Snowdens is a general knowledge of whats going on. High level access would be specific knowledge of results and what those results are achieving, which it seems Snowden doesn't have.
I'd personally be a little disappointed if a Western Intelligence agency wasn't making every effort to data farm all communications in and out of the country. However the counterpoint to this is that individuals and companies should be making every effort to ensure their data and communications cannot be trivially breached.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Maybe he went looking for stuff. NSA security isn't magic, once inside their network with some privileged access it isn't impossible to imagine that he could access other secure briefing files.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I wonder how many of the software technologies that these agencies are using, have their roots in open source? Hadoop? Hbase? Hive? Mahout? It would be nice to see them publishing their developments back to the Open Source communities.
Which limits his access how?
Why? Because it stopped 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing...oh wait....
LMOL yeah whoring attention BEFORE he became people knew about him. Nice job troll....
.. and if he were to disappear, do you think anyone in public office would give a wet slap? We've had a steady stream of nuclear scientists, environmental scientists and people working in the field of genetics to die in mysterious circumstances over the years, and once they disappear it doesn't take long for the memories to fade.
At this point, I'd say he's proven himself to be a credible source. Confirming something that was already believed to be true doesn't change that, or make it any less true.
My government has been doing what the UK does for many years already, we learnt this weekend. I'm Dutch, BTW.
-- Cheers!
Information about stuxnet was already leaked to the press and allegedly by retired Marine General James Cartwright. I think it is more likely he is just repeating what he heard speculated in the news already and tried to use his former position to give himself credibility. According to the Der Spiegel article they were trying to evaluate if he was truly a NSA whistleblower, so they submitted some questions to him via email and received his prepared answers. He had plenty of time to look for information already in the news.
The paper must not have thought much about the credibility of their informant since they chose not to run the story until after Snowden made himself known to the public in Hong Kong.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Apparently he's run out of useful stuff.
Eh no. Snowden told everything when they did the interview, the papers who got their questions answered are just sitting on it in order to let the information trickle out over the summer - all in an effort to stay relevant for longer. The people's watchdog my ass.
... whatever
Its important to clarify what this system is intended to do, as im certain the government will furiously refute this new round of allegations...presuming mainstream media feels like covering this one
This is not, nor has it ever been about terrorism. Its about the maintenance of power, wherein terrorism is a convenient excuse as it directly challenges and undermines a governments authority. All legitimate challenges, be they from disenfranchised middle eastern nationals or occupy protestors, are now taken very seriously. The middle east questions everything from the well established narrative of american freedom in the context of guantanamo bay to the carter doctrine of foreign imperialism and Israeli occupation each time a bombing or attack is successfully affected. People begin to ask why we are being attacked, and the excuse that terrorists "hate our freedom" becomes less effective with each blast that rocks a city as more of its citizens learn about the home state of the bomber, her motives and objectives and most dangerously, the full context under which america became a part of it.
the occupy protests question the narrative of the american dream in the context of class stratification that is so rife with inequality it guarantees forty percent of a worlds wealth is concentrated amongst one percent of its wealthiest inhabitants. Bank foreclosures and unemployment can only be explained by "economic downturn" and "irresponsible homeowners" so many times before the answers do not work anymore, and with each march or sit-in a protest gains momentum to change this class stratification. protests like occupy work to force a ruling class to remain under scrutiny or crush dissent. Crushing dissent is a force multiplier however, like water on a grease fire, and merely galvanizes your opponents. Ruling plutocracies cannot tolerate sustained scrutiny.
the middle of the road is simply surveillance. Find the organizers, topple them first, and the dissent never has an opportunity to interrupt the american "dream." pre-emptive detention of G8 protesters, flypapering articles about how much americans think Snowden is a traitor, and manufacturing crimes against peaceful demonstrators is much more efficient and effective. you contol the outcome of the detentions, and without a rally point protestors are supplanted by media reports of valiantly thwarted attacks by the TSA or FBI. Snowdens security state, as its been exposed, also serves also to galvanize more severe convictions against protestors by providing nearly infinite evidence of any crime the prosecution so wishes. its a slightly larger padlock by which political and social unrest is quelled. it is our form of political prisoner.
to fix it not only requires expunging elected leaders but cutting the feed bag from a society that largely reviles the poor and champions the rich, and consents to warrantless search so long as they have enough room on the DVR to still make it home in time to catch up on Big Bang Theory. We must begin to ask uncomfortable questions: Why are people rich, what is the longstanding history of our foreign policy and its potential future ramifications, why should corporations be given say in politics, and why do we need a deep-rooted surveillance system to combat something that kills orders-of-magnitude fewer people each year than heart disease?
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think the US government has switched to an MS Windows type infrastructure for its less classified information. This effectively makes things wide open, in comparison to a well designed secure system. In particular, in Windows, if you have backup operator permissions, you have access to everything - no questions asked.
For highly-secret information, it is necessary to look at the contents of the file and previous queries before determining if an access request will be allowed. For instance, any kind of multiple download request should automatically trigger security checks. This is fundamentally different that the access locks in most commercial operating systems, because the history of previous requests affects your authorizations. Bulk downloads will trigger alarms.
Backups can be performed with secure operating systems. The backups are done with special encryption. A backup operator cannot tell which (or if) data changed by differential analysis of the encrypted backup.
Re "suppose to be highly compartmentalized" would be for per person clearance and project access.
Snowden was not just a person on the Russia desk, a cryptologist, translator or other user of the NSA cloud.
Over time he would have come to understand that searches would lock down or trigger investigations.
As an admin tasked to look after networks/cloud and connect or disconnect users to a certain clearance level - he would have come in allowable contact with a lot of projects for a short time.
How or why the NSA would be so trusting with its cloud and outside contractors given its own understanding of past walkouts from other agencies is strange.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
What the fuck are you asking here?
Yeah it's BS and he made it up, that's why they're hunting him.
Maybe they are hunting him down for divulging information about the email surveillance program that he was under contract to interpret the information. This one fact that he revealed doesn't make the other facts any more credible. It is more likely that his 15 minutes of press exposure is almost up and he'll claim to know more than he actually knows to either remain in the spotlight or make himself appear more valuable to potential host countries.
No one is questioning the information he leaked that was directly handled by him. We are questioning all this new insight that he claims to have on old subjects that were already speculated heavily in the news.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Stop fucking focusing on the person and look at the facts instead. If what he has leaked harms the US government or any other government, so be it - you reap what you sow. Snowden would not have any means to harm the US if the US had not conducted itself in a way that left it open to harm. Shut the fuck up with this person pro/con agenda.
... whatever
You realise that some of the people carrying out extraordinary rendition to black sites, something that's established fact, not spy fiction were also contract employees right?
The US has been using ever greater numbers of contractors since 9/11 for a combination of the fact that many politicians have shares in said companies so it profits them directly and also because it provides a layer of deniability should it come back to bite them - "Oh we had no idea the contractors were doing that!". The third and final reason was simply that private sector could scale faster than existing public sector organisations after the massive influx of security spending post 9/11. None of which means that they have any less access to secretive material, in fact, given the sort of risky operations they're using contractors for it's often the contractors that are engaged in the really dirty stuff the government doesn't want to get directly implicated in.
That and the fact that Snowden wasn't always just an external contractor of course, he did actually work at the NSA for some time.
It's not about me reading spy novels (I've never read a single one, don't interest me), it's about your naivety and lack of understanding of the structure of modern military and security operations by government. Or to cut a long story short, you've obviously just not been paying attention this last 10 years.
..they must have 3 days retention and 100% completeness on alt.binaries.*, no!?
All access is limited to a "Need to Know" basis. All of it. even lower classifications aren't available unless there is a Need to Know.
Two words: Gary McKinnon.
"All access is limited" is so ambiguous as to be almost meaningless. Do you mean "Actually no one, no matter how skilful and unscrupulous, can possibly gain access"? Or "Some bunch of military dimbulbs sitting around a table have decreed that access shall be limited"?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I find it comical that people are still arguing over the validity of Snowden's claims, as he continues to be hunted down by the very government who is attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing.
Perhaps the governments stance to dismiss this as nothing (at least on the surface) has merit, for the government knows that no matter how alarming, no matter how bad the breaches of privacy are or has been, citizens simply don't give a shit enough to care.
And the government knows this. So do many major companies, which is why they continue to operate the way they do (yes, AT&T I'm speaking to you and your recent surcharges that generated hundreds of millions...yes, I'm speaking to you Facebook, and your gall to start charging to put an email where it belongs).
Why do governments and corporations act in this arrogant way? Because they know that no one gives a shit anymore.
Apathy will be the demise of all privacy and Rights as we know them today. I promise you that.
And regardless of Snowden's claims, proof, facts, or evidence, not a damn thing will change for the better. Not a damn thing.
Now, go ahead. I dare you to prove me wrong.
seriously?
we've just got confirmation the suspicions, which were deniable, are true - and no longer deniable.
yeah, lets downplay snowdens contribution to us knowing what the government is up to.
That's probably the most pathetic article I've ever seen. It's 80% hearsay, and the remaining 20% has since been proven false by the government themselves.
The paper must not have thought much about the credibility of their informant since they chose not to run the story until after Snowden made himself known to the public in Hong Kong.
Wow, its like your only objectively reality is that Snowden sucks.
First it was Snowden doing whatever he could to keep publicity on himself and when that theory went over like a lead balloon you trot out the exact opposite. Now it isn't Snowden's decision to hold off because he sucks, it's the newspaper's decision to hold off because he sucks.
The important part of coming up with an explanation is that it must include the fact that Snowden sucks, everything else is mutable...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Maybe they are hunting him down for divulging information about the email surveillance program that he was under contract to interpret the information.
You don't call in the military to deal with a 5 year old shoplifter.
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
NSA security was "magic", just like East German spies in the West could be assured that their details would never be lost.
The "magic" both sides used was simple. Every project was cut up into tiny details no one person could walk out with.
Why was this done? East German lost its spy network list after a trip to West Berlin by one person who requested their own exit visa.
After that East Germany got very creative with putting a spy codename, address and ongoing mission into massive near useless paper filesystems.
Only with face to face meetings could parts be collected and connected.
East Germany later went digital and all the spies names where recovered by the CIA in the late 1980's.
The US did the same with its very advanced computer files systems. Until massive cloud like networks where demanded by outsiders about 10-20 years ago it seems.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The messenger always has as much to do with the facts as the facts themselves, as well as how they project the facts. Get a report that global warming has been overstated? Might want to check to the back of the report to see if the words "Koch Brothers" are somewhere in there.
Got a poll saying that Americans think unions cost jobs and can't be trusted, might want to see if the Chamber of Commerce wrote it, got a sensationalistic headline that 1 in 4 Women have been raped, might want to find out how those facts were come up it and who came up with them (NOW, and included things like having sex after having 2 Aspirin or Tylenol).
You can't separate the message from the messenger or the facts from the source. That's why scientific data is considered worthless if it can't be repeated completely independently. You need to know the methodology, you need to know the circumstances, the motive, the chain of custody, you need to see if there is corroboration or not.
Now I realize none of this applies if your trying cause political damage where evidence doesn't mean a damn thing and your simply trying to slander someone. After all when your trying to do political damage the facts don't matter and if they come out later well it's too late. Now, if you actually give a damn about the truth, than you'll care about everything I said.
Also keep in mind that when working in government or other institutions in various support roles, there are jobs where you can have access to all kinds of things. Serving in the military I had a job like this, with nearly full access and permission to enter whatever spaces. (Some still required attendance by a person of higher or different clearances though, it wasn't all open-door. But I could pull papers, state reasons, and be backed up by superiors in my department.) However despite all the things I had physical access to, doing stuff like equipment validation while using fairly complete manuals, I wasn't too terribly nosy about things. (Of course being purposely not-nosy helps to stay out of trouble along with not having the greatest long-term memory when it comes to various details. Agreeing to confidentiality works in more than one level that way.)
I'm sure the same would also apply to IT, communications specialists (like Manning), or people like yeomen or secretarial staff. Very easy to have access to more than what your own clearance calls for, but most people stay out of trouble by keeping to one task and tuning out all the other stuff. (Keep in mind how bureaucratic systems work. Like recent news that has gone public in relation to leaks military people aren't allowed to see it for classification reasons. It's typically better to avoid the hassle.)
Of course then you have people like Snowden who take advantage of the situation. There's only so much manpower, and by trusting people to stay on task, they don't really watch everybody and what they may pick up on the side. Whether that's for better or worse, who knows? (But some of the CYA stuff really is in violation of the public trust for those in authority to do the right thing. Doing stupid shit and covering it up only serves to eliminate any moral or ethical higher ground you may have been considered to have stood upon. How about staying clean and not doing it in the first place? That really would have been the easiest way to prevent leaks that harm reputation. But nope, people still get caught doing shady crap, and the first response is to go and shoot the messenger.)
First everything Snowden says is common knowledge.
Second, everything Snowden says is false.
Third, Snowden has committed treason by endangering national security by revealing information that is both false and common knowledge.
He means he's full of shit, that's what he means.
Having got security clearance and worked on defence projects for a third party contractor in the past myself I can say with absolute certainty that compartmentalisation in the security services isn't as good as his computer games, movies and spy thrillers would have him believe.
When Chinese hackers stole a load of information about the F-35 it wasn't because they pulled off some righteous hack that required skill, perseverance and a high degree of technical knowledge, but precisely because protection of such sensitive data is sloppier than the good practice guidelines claim it should be.
It isn't magic, but it *is* supposed to be compartmentalized. That's the whole "need to know" situation. There shouldn't be a bunch of files for various classified programs sitting together in the same place or even on the same segment of the network for him to just grab.
Perhaps, as an admin, he did have access to multiple systems, or perhaps the compartmentalization was lax or failed, but even a TS/SCI clearance and admin access to hosts for one program isn't supposed to grant you access to all NSA programs. Government security, even government contractor security, is supposed to be very careful about specific requirements about networks, data access, and even facility security.
That's why some people are incredulous that Snowden is suddenly able to spout off about all sorts of programs as if he had all that data. Even with his elevated access, he should not have been able to comment authoritatively on anything but what he was working on directly.
I am not going to be incredulous by default. It may be possible he does know these things, but the assumption that just because he have "privileges" with some NSA programs does not make him an expert by default on all of them. He should have only been able to see what he was working on. So, if there is one thing that I do want to know from all of this, it might be whether their security was lax where Snowden was working.
incidents stopped: 0
incidents not stopped: 2
No, that's a valid question. If the government has all this information then why can't they make anything better with this information? The govt needs to lay their cards on the table there is too much injustice in this country and the citizens have no recourse most times. The government which has been monitoring all of this the whole time which is completely unwilling to help its own citizens using this same information.
Bradley Manning is another good example, he was working at a field base in Iraq yet not only did he have access to military cables for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Apache video, he also had access to diplomatic cables from embassies across the globe. All this despite being a low ranking bottom of the pile private on a pretty basic wage.
This alone shows what an utter farce the GP's claim is, there's been plenty of evidence that compartmentalisation in the US security services is far better in theory than it actually is in practice.
Well, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Hostess Cupcake Bakery that created stuxnet. But that's just the opinion of some guy on teh intarwebs[1], not a alleged rogue NSA cyberspy mastermind.
.sig:
Snowden strikes me as Walter Mitty, cyber-janitor.
Has he revealed anything that anyone paying attention hadn't already assumed to be happening somewhere?
Come on guys, isn't time for another episode of the wacky adventures of Where in the World is John McAfee? At least throw us a new bitcoin story for us to bitch and moan about.
[1] see
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
So, how did bugging the EU office in DC ward of terrorists? Do you flip open the "good citizen manual" and invoke the next boogeyman on the list to explain that one away?
... whatever
Maybe they are hunting him down for divulging information about the email surveillance program that he was under contract to interpret the information. This one fact that he revealed doesn't make the other facts any more credible.
Of course it does, that is the basis of all human trust relationships. If you tell me true things, and I've never caught you in a lie, then that makes you more believable. It doesn't make me automatically accept everything you say as fact, but it means that I trust you more than I otherwise would. So in fact that one fact does make the other facts more credible. However, it wasn't just one fact. He got the EU to search all their offices for bugs. If they had found nothing, I'm sure there would be a lot of European countries who would be happy to score a mountain heap of brownie points with the US by saying so and thereby discrediting Snowden. They haven't said so. He so far has a perfect record. He is now the single most believable source on secret government spying that you have ever had access to. That could change, but for now it hasn't.
You don't ask allies to close their airspace just because somebody broke an NDA.
Okay, now he's just telling us things we already knew. Next he'll announce that box mapping is possible with Magic the Gathering booster packs, lol.
Just imagine the amount of putang Snowden must be getting in Moscow airport. Anna Chapman, the hot ex Russian spy even proposed marriage. http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/07/russian-spy-anna-chapman-proposes-edward-snowden/
Re 'citations please' by the AC:
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco whistleblower was found hanged in his apartment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostas_Tsalikidis
Exposed tapping mobile phones of members of the cabinet, the Prime Minister, and hundreds of others via foreign “interception” software.
Adamo Bove head of security at Telecom Italia who exposed the CIA renditions via cell phone log in court ‘fell’ to his death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISMI-Telecom_scandal
Illegal domestic surveillance program on politicians, magistrates.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam was found hanged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Jeane_Palfrey
David Kelly and the prewar intelligence Britain had on Iraq.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I just wonder why they collaborated with Israel, given that I am sure that they are perfectly capable of writing it themselves. There must be some "political" motive, either the cooperation is in exchange for something else that NSA can't get themselves (info from agents), provides some form of damage control ("we didn't do it, it was the Israelis"), or it is just a firm demonstration of commitment to the Israeli government.
There is a difference between speculating and knowing. Maybe takes time to dig thru gigabytes of information, or decided to release it not all at once to let people assimilate all of it. But is highly possible that had first hand access to that information.
Also, "for a field that is compartmentalized".... maybe really a lot (half a millon? 5 millon? at that range don't matter anymore) of people had access to all that information, or at least all your information, that surely used it in a totally responsible way. Don't fall into the survivorship bias, don't focus in the visible Snowden, but in all the others that had the same access and could had used all that information in other ways.
It's ALL about the ego.
This whole Assange/Snowden thing is one enormous, gigantic wankfest.
"Look at me! Look at me! LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEE!"
It's all about self-aggrandizment, notoriety and ego.
True, any information you get must be run through the bullshit filter, and that includes evaluating the source(s), this is taught in high schools - at least where I come from, although it may have changed, it's been a while.
Science isn't produced by people, it is discovered by people. It doesn't matter who reports the facts, because the funny thing about facts, and the reason the scientific method works, is that they don't care what you think about them, they just are. You can reproduce someone's experiment, or you can't.
This situation is unique though, since Snowden hasn't produced the information, only handed it over. We can eliminate everything he says and still have a treasure trove of information available. That is my point, and one I get modded down for on a regular basis, that's ok though, karma is not important for anything other than mental masturbation.
The debate needs to shift from Snowden this, Snowden that, or any other figurehead, because it detracts from the actual substance of the case. If what he leaked is damaging, it is because people in power did things that were damaging, not because someone exposed it. You also need to get over yourself and realise this is not about the rights of the American people, but the rights of everyone, everywhere. Frequently, only the American side of these leaks are discussed, but that is only part of the story, and only the tip of the iceberg.
... whatever
All access is limited to a "Need to Know" basis.
The "cablegate" state department documents, including names of US informants around the world, were apparently accessible to .5 percent of the US population...
Unless you believe that it takes 10 years to plan a new terrorist attack.
Without many of these extraordinary laws in place, the time between highly visible attempts on the World Trade Center was 8 years - first in 1993, then in 2001. So yeah - 10 years between major attempted attacks in an unfriendly country where you don't have complete freedom of movement doesn't seem particularly hard to believe.
#DeleteChrome
i like it can we get the mpaa and riaa to attack the nsa maybe the would destroy each other and leave the rest of us in peace.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I don't think he *wants* to be stuck in one of those countries. I just think his problem is that he's subscribing to an internal belief that if he leaks everything he can, he's automatically doing the right thing.
No doubt he noticed the adoration that certain people in his circle had for people like Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, and he feels this is how he can be a modern hero. The best way to do that is throw out as much information as possible, damaging the reputation and standing of the United States, while convincing himself that such damage is fine because it's being done to the government and could only be good for everyone else.
Maybe he's right, but I am concerned with the idea that just throwing stuff like this out there is a good idea. It's like telling someone's husband that their wife is cheating on him. Sure, he shouldn't have that stuff going on behind his back, but there is a more than remote chance that someone will instead get beaten or even killed due to that revelation. On the world stage, lesser things have served as justification for warfare. If I were him, I don't think I'd only be looking at this as some sort of little man vs. the government situation.
For the record then...
Dear David Cameron, greasy pig faced piece of shit that you are.
Why are you spending our tax on this?
#KillthePM_lovetheAM, #how_to_make_a_bomb_in_cash-investingold, #Al-Qaeda,Joe-Qaeda,Fred-Qaeda
So if it was true...they would not want to extradite him? Is that the logic?
At this point, I'd say he's proven himself to be a credible source. Confirming something that was already believed to be true doesn't change that, or make it any less true.
Actually no. Confirming something **believed** to be true is a tactic of deception, a tactic of creating the **perception** of credibility. Perception may not match reality.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
Why does everyone assume that this is a first-person account? If you have access to things, you probably know other people who have access to other things. Perhaps these people talk to one another. Snowden could know these things the same way we know them: someone else spilled the beans.
Next up: Bill_the_engineer thinks Snowden is a pasty-faced four eyed butt-head.
You forgot nigh-immunity to FOIA quests.
Or maybe it's just to use the money to make those (and other) countries assume that they'll get it and budget accordingly, and thus keep them dependent and subservient to the money for later bludgeoning.
"Sure you can let that fugitive of ours go...and we can also...uh...accidentally forget our next aid payment. Wouldn't want your kids to starve or anything right? Right? Goooood. Cough'im up."
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
No.
They were accessible to more people than they needed to be, yes. They were accessible to Bradley Manning, yes.
When you get a clearance, they don't just hand you access to the computer systems that contain that kind of data. Those documents were on a SIPRNET server. You cannot, in fact, simply wave your clearance at a computer and pull documents off of SIPRNET. It is a lot more trouble than that.
A lot of people had access to them, yes, but it is not nearly as large as the set of all people with TS clearance.
So, how did bugging the EU office in DC ward of terrorists? Do you flip open the "good citizen manual" and invoke the next boogeyman on the list to explain that one away?
That's pretty much business as usual, spying like that has been going on for centuries and the US is not doing anytying especially unusual. While embasies are theoretically off limits they do get penetrated and the US has bugged embassies before, even those of it's allies. Most embasies have a faraday cage in the cellar where sensitive discussions get held and most offices get swept for bugs regularly. Even mildly sensitive phonecalls do not get made anywhere near a window and anything down to mundane items like laser printers and photocopiers are either imported from a secure source or if they are bought locally they are examined back to front to make sure they haven't been interfered with. That is to say if the country in question takes it's security seriously. Personally, if I was the EU, I would not trust Windows or Apple PC's nor would I trust Blackberry, Windows Phone, iOS and Android devices, except Linux/Android devices made by trusted European manufacturers and preloaded with a OS'es whose entire source code had been vetted line for line. If you are conducting sensitive negotiations you assume you are being watched, that every conversation is possibly bugged, that opposition's people are trying to bribe/blackmail your staff, that every transmission is intercepted and when you sweep for bugs you bring in your own people from Berlin, London, Paris, Washington or in this case from Bruxelles and you never ever use local specialists for anything you don't want the opposing party to know.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
Like forcing a presidential plane to land in search of the person, and thereby ignoring all diplomatic conventions...
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
The measures taken by the government to take Snowden into custody only confirm that he is wanted for a serious violation of the law. That doesn't confirm in any way any specific claim he has made any more than a felony warrant confirms the claim of any other fugitive that "I didn't do it! I'm innocent!"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This should be good.
From the GP: "Your country is owned by Jews. You are a slave of the Jews. "
From the parent: "America gives millions to Muzzie savages . . ."
Please, the two of you, do go on. This will be both enlightening and intelligent, I'm sure.
I am not a crackpot.
If the data he released was false, like has been claimed, then the data was not stolen, it was fabricated, and this whole thing is to go after a "liar." If the data is true and it was stolen, I think the government has some splaining to do, and they are using the manhunt as a distraction.
If true, then the NSA has a really big security problem.
Snowden was a contractor, I could see him getting access to the stuff that he is working on, which would be enough to get him into the trouble he is now. But for him to have access across all areas and departments. There is a serious problem with NSA internal security.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sure, but that assumes everyone needs handholding to understand the information. You could have similar results by releasing it all at once and then running a series of articles on the major points individually.
... whatever
He got the EU to search all their offices for bugs. If they had found nothing, I'm sure there would be a lot of European countries who would be happy to score a mountain heap of brownie points with the US by saying so and thereby discrediting Snowden.
I don't think you understand how the world of intelligence works. The EU members knows their offices are bugged by the US, the US knows their offices are bugged by their allies in the EU. Everybody continuously hunts for those bugs long before Snowden revealed water is wet, and they stay quiet when they find them because the value is not knowing that there are bugs, it's in knowing where they are. Nobody wants to opt out of the game, and it's all about playing along, pretending you don't know about it while simultaneously accepting it as a fact of international politics. Everybody except Ecuador, who recently claimed they were surprised their embassy was bugged. Of course, it was bugged, it was an embassy. That's where most of the spying goes on. Bug was probably there long before Assange ever walked in.
Of course, we see this every time there is an election of pretty much anyone to any office, if there is the slightest whiff of dirt on someone, their message drowns in the smear campaign that ensues. For higher offices, a smear campaign will be launched no matter the credibility, as a knee-jerk reaction. We see this with any whistleblower too, and that is why their person and the cause they presumably support needs to be separated. It sucks to be Snowden right now, no doubt, but let's keep focus on the real issue here: western governments and the rotten core that is starting to be exposed.
... whatever
What the frick are you babbling about? Governments should have absolutely nothing to hide, and if they do, they're no longer democratic, since INFORMED fucking CONSENT is at it's core.
... whatever
That's insightful? Seriously?
"Two people died in separate car accidents at intersections in my city. The intersections were controlled by pesky traffic lights that slow everyone down, and yet people still died in two incidents!"
"Look at all the inconvenience those so-called safety devices are causing us and all the money spent on them: incident's stopped: 0, incidents not stopped: 2"
The worst damage to the US was not so much inflicted by Snowden but by the US government itself. Just look at recent head lines: the farce about Evo Morales' presidential aeroplane caused a lot more long term damage than all of Snowden's disclosures combined. Given that the US go out of their way (laws or international treaties be damned!) to make Snowden's life miserable, I sort of understand why he tries to poke back at them once in a while.
Latin American Presidents would have just "had an accident" during the Cold War for a stunt like this.
I believe at least one African head of state met his demise this way, so yeah.
Because he WILLINGLY SIGNED UP WITH A SPY AGENCY ...
He signed up with Booz Allen to work at the NSA. When I signed up as a contractor to work at ExxonMobil, it was to fix broken tech., not to accept responsibility for the Exxon Valdes, et al. Snowden is a civilian, not a spook. This why he couldn't use whistleblower laws for protection (as if they're any protection).
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you the "Iran probably did it to themselves" nutter that I referenced in my earlier post.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Even with his elevated access, he should not have been able to comment authoritatively on anything but what he was working on directly.
In the real world there is a vast ocean of difference between "should not have" and "could not have".
Quite often not having access to something is more a matter of policy than the presence of any actual barrier.
According to the NSA they stopped "multiple" attempts. This information is classified of course, but you can totally take their word for it.
He certainly could have accomplices, and that would be an interesting situation. Still, to be taken seriously, he should have some sort of documentation, which if compartmentalization was working, they would have had to have provided to him. This means that they would have to take risks similar to him, while they remain in place.
And let's be clear, this is not supposed to be water cooler talk. You're not even supposed to tell your wife what you do at Top Secret. I know a number of people who work in government in what I presume are similar positions. They can tell me that they work at a certain company. That's it. They can't tell me what they do, where they do it, or what they are working with in the slightest. They can't even tell people who have a TS clearance what they do, unless they are in the same area of operations. Those are the rules.
While the government may have difficulty determining if you told your wife something (assuming she could keep her mouth shut), telling anyone less intimate might be be prone to discovery. Indeed, for all they know *I* could be a security auditor or agent. After all, it's not like they've known me since high school or anything.
So, talking to one another is always possible but fraught with the possibility of discovery, and you have to be consciously breaking the rules to do so. To what extent that those people break the rules in reality, I could not say, but I cannot imagine it is very common. If it happened in this case, it would be noteworthy.
I cannot believe they managed to re-route a plane belonging to a president of an independent country! I would think that counts as an act of war.
More or less, but what's Bolivia going to do about it? Attack?
Nope, they're going to do exactly what they did: protest loudly, then move on with their lives...
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
The measures taken by the government to take Snowden into custody only confirm that he is wanted for a serious violation of the law.
The measures taken so far confirm only that he seriously pissed off an embarassed administration, and why would that be?
This is par for the course in this century. Somehow they've come to believe that the world is their playground and they've every right to change any rules on a whim, in theory "for our protection."
Snowden's not the story. He's just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
All access is limited to a "Need to Know" basis. All of it. even lower classifications aren't available unless there is a Need to Know.
yeah and boatloads of people are in need to have potential access to all, how can you cross reference and lobby for MORE MONEY FROM GOVERNMENT if you don't have that? you can't. this is where the ambiguous wording from the public officials comes to play, about the safeties, they never of course specified if you actually _need_ to have the secret court orders for accessing the data and what's more you don't actually need even that if you don't think that the guy is american - point is, that the court is not the entity that holds the access keys or decides who gets to see what, just that the people looking at the data are supposed to not look at it if they don't have a legit reason.
the spying operation is for 2 things and the second thing is driving the first. the first thing is it's easy to sell the idea that you must know more and knowledge is power therefore you need to know "all". the second thing is quite simply that private contracting companies provide a fucking good way to pump boatloads of money out of government under the table and those contractors aren't meant to work well either, they're just meant to provide means to pump cash out of the government. that it's all secret just makes it all the easier, no press can meddle with the money flow and performance per dollar is immeasurable. so kiss good bye to your lunar program while the brass is funneling your money to their contractor buddies providing them and their friends with cushy parachute positions.
the short term gigs the contractors are handing out is indicative of this kind of arrangement - that it's a money pumping operation. if it was really need to know and "top notch" operation for public safety's sake, do you think they would use private contractors? fuck no.
and you see same kind of money pumping happening out of certain tech companies as well - where the dividing the need to know happens _only_ on the lines needed to be kept for the money pumping to continue, not on actual company secret lines.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
He's 13 months late with that one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange.
Ha ha, very funny. Please explain why the UK HAD TO dump money down that well. I suspect there's a bully "across the pond" that's threatening them to do so based on some under the table "special relationship" handshake which neither would like to openly admit to, because it would confirm for ALL to see that one party is a pawn and the other is a bully. That would make them both look pathetic should it ever manage to make it onto the nightly news.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Most NDA's don't involve Top Secret intelligence information. Who did the asking, by the way? You may remember that the UK warned airlines that they would be liable for all expenses for handling Snowden (arrest, confinement, etc.) if they brought Snowden to the UK. The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange.
The UK will be compensated - one way or the other - for this. There is no treaty obligation on the UK authorities to go to such extreme efforts to block Assange from leaving and this is very irregular, so the simplest explanation is that there is a keen interest in this.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
He didn't actually poke back though, not in this instance anyway, but I agree with your overall point. As a European, I'm also glad that the mischievous doings of governments on our side of the pond has come to light, we really need to get over this "US bad guy" rhetoric and start working for some real change across the board. Anyone thinking this is isolated to the American, U.K or French governments are seriously deluding themselves.
We live in a post cold war, post 9/11 world, where the worthless solutions of the previous century is applied to any issue, without questioning the merit of those solutions. Whenever there is a percieved problem anywhere, it can be solved with guns, sanctions or more spies. There is always a boogeyman waiting in the wings to justify spending resources on weapons of one kind or another, to the detriment of everyone.
... whatever
No, given the fact that travelling from point A to point B through country C means that you are in country C's airspace, then country C can deny you use of their airspace unless you comply with their conditions.
That said, there are agreements that countries have signed regarding use of airspace, so this is indeed highly irregular, even if it is not actually an act of war.
What would be an act of war is attempting to apprehend that world leader or probably to remove materials belonging to them which were property of the diplomatic delegation. It is not clear to me if Snowden himself would have been so protected. My guess is that he could have been removed from the plane, or a standoff might have ensued to get the Bolivians to hand him over. I can't see that having a happy ending for anyone, so I am not sure what they would have done even if he was on the plane.
And to be sure, while we don't feel threatened by Bolivia, there is a lot more at stake in removing their president from his plane than simply the threat of war with Bolivia. Such an action could open up harassment of US diplomats all over the world. Presumably, these consequences must have been understood and deemed acceptable, but I would love to hear their reasoning.
Secret laws, secret evidence, it's all unprovable bul**hit.
There really hasn't been a noticable change in the number of 'incidents' after the creation of the NSA to before the creation of the NSA.
Of course the NSA 'claims' they stopped stuff, but they can't tell you what or they'd have to kill you. Yeah, right. Excuse me, the B.S. detector is red-lined and pegging.
Can you trust the NSA? Not in the slightest.
Can you trust Snowden? Unknown, but his 'revelations' have really put the NSA into a frenzy, which if nothing else, indirectly indicates that they feel he is blowing the whistle on them. If they'd have gone a softer route, it would probably indicate that they were just dealing with an inconvenience, but this harder attack by the NSA has the hallmark of a wounded animal. So yes, his information is probably has a definite ring of truth, if not photocopies of it.
If it's true, why is he still alive? First of all, you've been watching too many movies. That's not to say the US hasn't and doesn't have some pet assassins, but let's face it, those are really hard to employ. A bullet to the head is dramatic, but it also causes lots and lots of problems. Then there's the 'accident' rouse. Do that to someone in the spotlight, and everybody screams conspiracy. Again, big hairy problems. On top of that, it's not easy to do that kind of stuff in other countries, especially if the target keeps moving. Ok, it's nigh bloody impossible if you aren't in a war torn nobody cares what you do third world toilet, there, you happy? A far more common, easier, cheaper, and more effective method is discrediting the problem. If you can just convince people that the leak is full it, a publicity seeking whore, or completely nuts, if not all of the above, there's no need to kill anyone.
Now, some of you are still going to obsess on Borne Identity. Sure it's a good movie, but come on. Let's put it this way, in real life, how many thousands of cops are shot in the face when they pull over someone? How close to 100% of the cars involved in a crash explode? How many surprise election results are due to mind control? Just how many of your neighbors have been abducted by aliens? Do you have a gun with a capacity of 6, 10, or 12 rounds that can fire at least 30 shots before reloading?
Hollywood sells stories. The more extreme, dramatic, and exciting it is, the more they like it. They don't portray reality, you have PBS for that, they portray excitement. The real world is really boring, until someone starts shooting at you, then it's so scary you need new undies. So when it comes to what you've seen in movies and tv shows, ignore it, it's about as accurate as a pink magical unicorn offering you his services as a butler.
Do I believe Snowden? Honestly, I want his claims investigated. First, he seems to have a rather broad range of subjects he's been privy too, which seems odd. Second, somebody whacked that hornets nest called the NSA pretty good, so there has to be a stick in there somewhere.
In other words, I'm not going to give him carte blanche, but he's definitely right about something.
I cannot believe they managed to re-route a plane belonging to a president of an independent country!
Yeah, after all the crazy shit the TLAs pulled off during the Cold War (Chuck Yeager breaking the Sound Barrier, Nazi rocket scientists, Glomar Explorer, Allende's Chile, The Missile Crisis, The Tonkin Incident), you'd think they ought to be able to come up with better than that. The US must have lost its mojo somewhere.
I guess petty tyrants aren't what they used to be.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
But for him to have access across all areas and departments. There is a serious problem with NSA internal security.
If they're designing security for their military compadres down the hall, that pretty much explains the Bradley Manning debacle, yes?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Even mildly sensitive phonecalls do not get made anywhere near a window and anything down to mundane items like laser printers and photocopiers are either imported from a secure source or if they are bought locally they are examined back to front to make sure they haven't been interfered with.
Given what we know about the US government, I think I'd have more faith in a laser printer bought from Walmart than one imported from a "secure" source.
It violates HIPPA too, but fuck 'em; they're only people.
And possibly close their US embassy.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
You are obviously unfamiliar with the level or reliance the federal government has on contract companies. There are thousands upon thousands of businesses whose sole income is from developing and managing top secret projects. This isn't the first or the last case of highly sensitive information becoming public because of a contract employee.
Here's another example:
Contractor at fault for leaking the specs of the Presidential helicopter Marine One
A fairly cursory google search will net you a few more.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
When it is clear that your side does the same things, if not worse, to its enemies? Is it OK if it's your team doing the hacking, as Western hypocrisy typically dictates?
As an aside, Snowden has set back American foreign policy deeply. He really is a traitor. Of course we'll take it gladly, he's helping our cause every day.
You conservatives crack me up.
How is being skeptical of extraordinary claims made without proof or explanation being conservative?
Embracing such a claim because it agrees with your political or philosophical orientation is something that those who practice deception count on. If you don't want to be manipulated you should be skeptical whether the extraordinary claim agrees or disagrees with your politics or philosophy.
He was a sysadmin at the NSA ...
You are expecting that all servers at the NSA have the same admin passwords? That one admin has access to everything, all departments, all projects?
As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security of an unlocked screendoor.
Disclaimer : Wild speculation to follow.
If Snowden's job was to analyze data that had passed through the internet, isnt it possible or even probable that he'd be asked to evaluate data that was a leaked?
If that's the case, a person might be granted limited access to a very broad range of classified information. Compartmentalization could become moot, if the compartment in which Snowden existed was precisely designed to evaluate things outside of that compartment.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
He's claiming all traffic, from all sources, is saved in some indexed form. Three days worth. Thoughts on the amount of data that is likely to be? Every image? Every communication/call? Knowing what I know about data storage / data writing / data access I find it VERY hard to believe such a facility exists. Even if it was billions and billions of dollars of SSDs that could be rapidly written as the information streamed in...
Either that or they have a couple million RAM buffering the influx and writing it to hard disk.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security of an unlocked screendoor.
Note that I said extraordinary claims should be accompanied with evidence or explanation. Manning provided the evidence. He did not merely make a **claim** about what was in diplomatic cables, he provided the cables themselves.
Assuming that Snowden had access to stuxnet because Manning had access to diplomatic cables is a huge **leap of faith**.
Diplomatic cables are routinely shared with the military and intelligence agencies. Why would this suggest that the stuxnet team would be sharing its work with the email analysis team?
As a sysadmin, do you have access to every secret your company or organization has? No. Do you have access to some of them? YES.
He doesn't need to have access to every secret at the NSA. Anyone who works for even a few years in an administrative capacity at any organization has probably absorbed enough dirt to at least embarrass them slightly. Which is all he has done really.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
If you have access to things, you probably know other people who have access to other things. Perhaps these people talk to one another. Snowden could know these things the same way we know them: someone else spilled the beans.
It doesn't even need to be that, if unconsciously. Think about how ordinary users work. Do they studiously lock their desktop every time they step away from it? Hardly. I've been on contracts where I had to use my supervisor's login creds for the first month until they got around to building my own accounts.
Users run across stuff in their day to day they find interesting and copy it to their home dir. That thingy that was only available to someone with their specific access privs may now be available to anyone who can access the copy.
Snowden's a knowledgable tech. He's been reading the same geeky newssites we read (see Ars for that story). He probably is familiar with all the dopey crap that's gone on since Captain Crunch was using a cereal box prize whistle to steal long distance phone calls from a too confident AT&T. That he was able to pull any of this off would only be a surprise to your average tech ignorant user, assuming the NSA's been as lax at internal security as all outward indications (Bradley Manning) indicate.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Except everything Snowden has released isn't news. We've been suspicious for some time that the US helped develop the stuxnet virus. Major virus companies claimed this. The FBI/CIA surveillance revelation isn't new either. It was revealed back in the late 90's that this was happening. Yet again by AT&T a few years ago when they were being sued for something unrelated. Quit giving this retard the time of day because unlike Wikileaks who actually released credible secrets this guy is repeating stuff that anyone with google can find.
If you are so sure of that then what is this? http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/
Pretty darned good PR, and cheap at the price. A few NSA sharpies come up with something like that and get it out to thair alternates in the community, and it makes the whole of the NSA look like thay're all super elite security wizards, and they can all go back to playing Angry Birds; pats on backs all around, bonuses for the sharpies. Smoke & mirrors.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
My personal experience is that people take security clearances very seriously. My father was a civilian engineer for a contractor that built the Trident submarines, which carry Polaris nuclear missiles. He designed some of the systems.
I just told you everything I ever learned about what my father did for a living.
So rather than examining the evidence, you resort to attacking the messenger. Bill_the_stooge?
Bill the Social Engineer.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I think it is safe to assume that most people in this world need handholding. If Snowden's goal is change, then having the public's attention (as large a public as possible) on the problem for as long as possible is the only chance that change occurs.
The leaked secret FISA order already allows the NSA to pass on any "criminal" information it finds. I suspect a broad interpretation of that order could also include copyright infringement.
The problem here is that there aren't any appropriate channels. Secret agencies, acting under secret laws, overseen by secret courts, where does one blow the whistle? His only course of action was to report potential (likely) constitutional violations to the same people who put them into place or to go public. Several NSA whistleblowers have already gone the former route and they got nowhere.
Because he has been planning this for awhile. As a long time NSA employee and contractor, he developed significant knowledge of their security systems from the inside. He then took the one job that he knew would allow him to access significant amounts of the NSA without suspicion (he said as much during an interview). Using this knowledge, he fabricated authentications to numerous systems that he wasn't supposed to have access to. Is it really that hard to comprehend?
Nice try. I still assert that Snowden will try anything and everything possible to keep publicity on himself.
Snowden's desire to remain in the news and the paper's decision to wait until after the story broke to publish these questions are not mutually exclusive.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Of course most people will need handholding, not very many of us are spies or experts on spies. But we don't have to be, and it is not for the media to decide which story has more value than another. The press is supposed to be the watchdog of the people, and as such their mission is not to sit on information for our own good, quite the opposite.
... whatever
No they wouldn't because that would make him a martyr. It's best to let Snowden stay isolated and eventually he'll fade into obscurity.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
PRISM, Enchelon, Carnivore... this is nothing new.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I still assert that Snowden will try anything and everything possible to keep publicity on himself.
Of course you do, that's your reality - Snowden sucks, no matter what.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
When Chinese hackers stole a load of information about the F-35 it wasn't because they pulled off some righteous hack that required skill, perseverance and a high degree of technical knowledge, but precisely because protection of such sensitive data is sloppier than the good practice guidelines claim it should be.
I worked for the US military many years ago as a civilian programmer and I'd agree with this based on what I saw. I don't want to embarrass the particular branch of the service by naming them, but I used to say that their motto ought to be "Using yesterday's technology today" based on how many antiquated computer systems we had to work on and support. We actually had a system that still used punch cards and when I was in college the course books were already beginning to mock punch cards as being ancient technology. I can say that the government really doesn't want to be incompetent and have bad security, but the powers that be have too much blind faith in civilian contractors and Snowden burned them very badly as a result. The lesson that should be learned from this is exactly what Congress has been saying for years - "We need fewer non-government employees with access to these sensitive programs and their data" - but you'll be able to knock me over with a feather if there's a decrease in contractors as much as 10% as a result of this.
It is for the media to raise awareness of issues. If the reporter had simply released all the stories at once, then the potential exists that all of the stories would have been lost on the public as they could not focus on any given issue. This is smart journalism in my mind.
That's one reasonable scenario, and one way I assumed he might have picked up the information.
Having said that, analysts frequently get the actual data, but the means by which the data was actually obtained might not be specified. Obviously, if they are looking at high res photos, they might assume that the particular characteristics of the photo means it was taken by a U-2 recon plane, but it might really have been taken by a new type of drone, or a spy satellite.
In the same way, Snowden might see data, but he wouldn't necessarily know how it was obtained. If he's working the data end, he might be able to see across program lines, but he shouldn't be able to get details about the collection of the data. If he's working collection, his insight should be limited to the collection methods his program is involved with.
Of course, that is how it is supposed to work. The amusing thing is that I could not care less about his revelations, these programs as specified don't bother me in the slightest, but I am keenly interested in how the security on them seems to have failed.
It would be disappointing (although oddly reassuring) if he was just making up some of this other stuff. I find it hard to believe he'd just make things up, but it is known that people will conflate their feelings with actual data, or even make up additional things to increase their own importance.
Oh really? Do you have anything to backup a story that EU or perhaps NATO members are spying on US? I mean bugging-US-Embassy level, not compiling-newspaper-articles level, of course. Oh boy, now that would be a Story with capital S I would love to see.
Given confirmed cases of abuse of power within the federal government to harass or stonewall a specific political group, how could you possibly be perfectly fine with a mechanism that could explicitly map out such a group and it's allies?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Then Obama and the rest of the neocons would be laughing as they publicly point out what a liar Snowden is.
Apparently you believe Snowden is a saint, no matter what.
I have doubts on how much he actually had access to. Most of what he revealed was already speculated in the press. The only subject matter that Snowden may have some credibility is his original email surveillance disclosure. Everything else doesn't appear as credible since it was already speculated in the press prior to Snowden's rise to "sainthood".
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I would really enjoy if you could let your imagination loose and describe what would happen if Air Force One was forced to land and some peon expressed the desire to search, uh sorry, to have a nice cup of coffee inside.
Is that a new motto of US State Department? That would clarify a lot.
So you have a big issue with Snowden getting some publicity over THE GOVERNMENT SPYING ON PEOPLE WITHOUT ANY WARRENTS AND WITHOUT ANY CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT but you're giving every single musician, movie star and politician a free pass for making a big deal about what they ate for breakfast. Yeah, totally consistent view you've got there.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
" The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange."
Yeah, like money is all that matters to them.
Again, I ask people to look through past posts of "Cold Fjord" and look for patterns. They're pretty easy to spot. Once you've done that, please take a look at the document linked in my forum signature and compare the tactics outlined in that document to the tactics used in posts by "Cold Fjord". Look closely at the wording he uses. Come to your own conclusions.
My conclusion? This person is a NSA/Government shill--a forum breaker. There are others here on Slashdot, but I am beginning to suspect that all of them are actually puppet accounts(for harvesting moderation points as well as obfuscation) of three different people--the processes by which the NSA determines intent, motivation and relationships in communications are available to all of us, provided we know about them. My goal here is let as many people as possible know about those tools so that they may use them to protect themselves (and the forums they use) from the likes of "Cold Fjord". Put those tools to use--the NSA does.
This is one arena you can fight back.
I agree that it is smart journalism, but i challenge the assertion that it is the only way to accomplish that goal. Releasing all the information at once doesn't magically make everyone understand it, but running a series of articles on it might. The reason they do it this way is not due to a handholding agenda, but to keep their rivals from the source material for as long as possible. That we, the people, are left in the dark too is considered acceptable collateral.
I know they have to keep an eye on their profit margins, and that in turn leads to sensationalism. But when they put their own bottom line above the common good, I don't really see the big difference between the corrupt governments they expose, and themselves.
Right now, those of us who value the ideals most of the democratic nations of the western hemisphere were founded on, have an interest in prolonging the newsworthiness of this story, and as such it happens to overlap with what the media is doing. But we shouldn't be making excuses for why it's the right thing to do, because they also use the same technique to discredit political candidates by running stories at oppertune moments, much more than they expose scandals of actual substance.
... whatever
I won't speculate on your motives for making such easily disproven claim about Snowden's character.
Snowden to newspaper: I took contractor job to gather evidence
That would be Edward Snowden, the man who took a contractor job under false pretenses to steal what top secret classified information he could in 90 days. He then fled the United States for a city in the People's Republic of China, after which he fled to Russia due to an extradition request. Since his flight he has been dispensing classified information that has resulted in the compromise of secret intelligence programs and strained diplomatic relationships among multiple allied countries. He is currently under the protection of Russia's President Putin, a former career KGB officer, while he awaits the results of his applications for asylum. So far it appears he has three countries willing to offer him asylum, all are Latin American countries with an ideological disposition hostile to the US. The disposition of Snowden's four laptops of top secret data is unknown. The final damage toll of Snowden's actions will not be known for some time as he continues to leak information and terrorists groups are altering their communication methods in light of Snowden's leaks.
Despite applying to at least 20 countries for refuge to avoid U.S. prosecutors, Snowden’s choices now seem to boil down to a "trifecta" offer of asylum by three leftist and vocally anti-Washington, Latin American nations: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. And maybe also Iceland. -- more
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Dude I take it you never worked corporate? You ALWAYS end up with the grunts knowing a hell of a lot more than they are supposed to, be it from some PHB just being lazy or a loudmouth to some secretary having ears like a fricking bat, there is ALWAYS plenty of info the grunts aren't supposed to know or have access to that ends up getting into their hands.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Since his flight he has been dispensing classified information that has resulted in the compromise of secret intelligence programs and strained diplomatic relationships among multiple allied countries.
Wow. Are you seriously blaming Snowden for strained diplomatic relationships that became strained because the other countries found out that the US was spying on them?
If what he leaked is damaging, it is because people in power did things that were damaging, not because someone exposed it.
This is only partially true. Had the administration remained silent on the matter it would have held, but it went something like this instead:
1) First leak - 'they are keeping your data' ...and so on.
2) The administrations says 'we have policies that protect you, nothing to see here'.
3) Next leak - 'they have polices that describe how to break the policies safely'.
Since the government claims to know everything he took, I'd wager that there is more yet to be discussed here. This isn't a case where he dumped everything on the web for all to see. This appears to be a planned, staged release, and it appears as though the US government is playing right into the plan.
Hell I got an even better example...has everybody forgotten how the plans for Marine 1 (the POTUS personal chopper) ended up on fricking P2P already?
As somebody who used to work corporate i can say that a LOT of the so called "high level access" stuff is frankly pretty damned easy for somebody on the inside, especially somebody in IT, to get access to. Never forget folks how damned easy it is to become complacent in an org, you see the same guy day after day and people automatically assume "well i'm sure he has a reason" and goes on about their business. I used to have a bud that worked IT in the military and he told me the same thing, he'd get hassled here or there by some BOFH but soon enough he had a superior that got tired of him calling with this or that problem and would just rubber stamp anything he said so that he wouldn't be bothered anymore.
With any large org you get bureaucratic bullshit and you quickly learn how to get around as much as possible just so you can do your damned job, I have no doubt if Snowden was there for more than a year he already knew how to run the maze and bypass the bullshit, you really have to just to do your job in a big org, at least that is what i found to be the case.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You've pretty much already made the argument. Try reading your post again. It is self explanatory. Or maybe try this, "Are you blaming the house catching fire on the guy playing with matches?"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That wouldn't be an act of war either. They'd probably negotiate forcefully. If it took too long, they'd spin up the helicopters and send in Delta. War? Only if it got much, much worse than that.
What the US has over Bolivia is that the US can probably back up some pretty serious diplomatic threats.
The UK has a treaty obligation to honor EU arrest warrants. I doubt the UK will be compensated for this. They had Assange in custody and didn't keep control of him. Now Assange is sheltered in a foreign embassy and there is no reason for him to emerge. If they don't watch him, he could escape completely.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"but I used to say that their motto ought to be "Using yesterday's technology today""
It's a problem here in the UK too. Case in point, I believe in the UK the MoD or at least The Army is still standardised around IE6, there has been talk for years about upgrading but I still do not believe it has happened yet.
Because he WILLINGLY SIGNED UP WITH A SPY AGENCY, and accepted the responsibility for secret clearances, and that's how they handle "leaks".
I'm pretty sure the NSA et al. were already spying on him among everyone else before he joined the NSA. If the NSA was leaving everyone alone and then Snowden signed a contract with them, then you might have an argument for holding Snowden accountable to the contract.
As it is, since the NSA was the one who chose not to play nicely, anyone else can and should do whatever the hell they want in retaliation.
You again? Well, I guess you're a half step up from the look alike trolls that were hounding me: coid fjord , co1d fjord I don't think your purpose is much different. I'll be interested to see if you start posting about "mycleanpc."
Yeah, like money is all that matters to them.
It isn't all that matters to them, but the government is under considerable financial strain and is making cutbacks of all sorts. They don't want to waste money if they can avoid it. Having to keep watch over Assange so that they can fulfill their EU treaty obligation to Sweden to extradite him is quite expensive and consumes resources that could be put to better purposes. Not that you would actually care about the UK's financial problems.
Again, I ask people to look through past posts of "Cold Fjord" and look for patterns. They're pretty easy to spot.
Well, that's a no-brainer, I have a different viewpoint from that of many other participants on Slashdot. Maybe you haven't noticed, but between the many Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, American progressives, and various other people from around the world, the left is over represented compared to various societies. Different viewpoints don't constitute a conspiracy.
Cute idea you have to drive up web traffic at your site though, including hosting a story from Der Spiegel.
My goal here is let as many people as possible know about those tools so that they may use them to protect themselves (and the forums they use) from the likes of "Cold Fjord".
It looks to me like your purpose is to harass, stifle dissent, and drive up your web traffic. But maybe I'm being hasty. Maybe people will fear giving me bad moderation? (Hmm, hadn't thought about that.) Either way, you do seem to be interested in creating fear in people and peddling crank ideas. Take the line below in this post of yours:
This is East Germany, all over again--the NSA literally has us spying on each other, inadvertently or not. Secrecy=Fear=the need for secrecy
Who is it doing all this mutual spying? The idea is nonsense. But it does play into your fear inducing agenda, including your attempts to make people suspicious and fear me. You are engaging in the very same sort of behavior you seem to be complaining about.
But hey, if it works out to my advantage: Anachragnome thinks I am an NSA plant. He wants people to visit his web site to view documents and perhaps for other unknown purposes. (The visit will leave a web trail. His site is known to NSA.) If he is correct, you may end up on a government list by giving me bad moderation. Apparently the only people that disagree with him are spies. Bow to his power, or you may be branded a "shill" and "forum breaker." Follow his fear. He expects you to inform on each other. Obey him, or you may be branded a traitor.
How's that?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The UK has a EU treaty obligation to Sweden to honor its arrest warrants. The UK had Assange under arrest and allowed him to escape. Assange is still in the territory of the UK hiding in an embassy. It is up to the UK to take him into custody again. If they don't watch Assange's location continuously, he will escape. I think referring to Sweden as "a bully "across the pond"" is a bit extravagant. Sweden is a fellow member of the EU since 1995. The "special relationship" that is relevant here are the EU treaties. This information has been made clear many times. It is puzzling why you don't recognize this.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Apparently you believe Snowden is a saint, no matter what.
Have I said that anywhere in this thread? No, I have not. I have not even hinted at my opinion of him. All I have said is that you keep making up scenarios and the only thing consistent from one scenario to another is that snowden sucks.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In all likelihood his "objective opinion" is one that he's been paid to have by the Obama administration.
No, I do not think so. The user-id has a long history of posts on multiple topics. It is unlikely that someone would have put in that much effort for an astro-turfer. If they had put in that much effort, then that would not fit with the exceptional lack of finesse of his responses - a smear campaign would be a lot more subtle.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Is that a new motto of US State Department? That would clarify a lot.
Sadly, it appears to be... (Obviously, I wasn't agreeing with that approach - it's awful what this country had come to - but it's reality...)
Snowden to newspaper: I took contractor job to gather evidence
What does that have to do the singular point of the post you are responding too? In what way does Snowden deliberately looking for evidence of wrong-doing in any way have anything to do with when he gave the interview in question?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
He got the EU to search all their offices for bugs. If they had found nothing, I'm sure there would be a lot of European countries who would be happy to score a mountain heap of brownie points with the US by saying so and thereby discrediting Snowden.
They are officially asking the US to explain itself, which is even more unlikely if they had not, in fact, found bugs.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I have a website? News to me. Care to clue me in with a link to my website?
He should have only been able to see what he was working on.
"should" being the keyword there.
Your average windows admin in your average corporation can access all the company data if he wants, including the CEOs e-mails with his mistress. Yes, that is badly set up security and compartmentalization, but it is also reality.
With all respect for the NSA, they are unlikely to be perfect. It is not unlikely that Snowden had more access than he strictly should have been. In fact, it is the more unlikely claim to believe he didn't.
The question is phrased wrong if you ask how he could have had access to something he wasn't working on directly. Assume that the permissions and restrictions were not perfect, because they rarely are. The correction question is not if, but how wrong they were. How much access to stuff he did not work on can we assume he had? Some, much or a whole lot? Both "none" and "all of it" are unlikely answers.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
See Edward Snowden
Wait a second.
Are you seriously suggesting that I am John Young (of Cryptome)?
Care to add your two-cents to the discussion, John? I believe the man just opened the door for you...
I have no idea who you are, and don't really care. And I doubt you can really prove it one way or another.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I won't disagree with you that this tool, as most tools, can be used for good or bad (and you gave excellent examples of bad times to withhold a story). While their motives and mine might not be the same, all I can do is commend the journalists when they do good and condemn them when they do bad.
The final damage toll of Snowden's actions will not be known for some time as he continues to leak information and terrorists groups are altering their communication methods [latimes.com] in light of Snowden's leaks.
As if any organization needs secret information to improve their communications. They already have a stellar example with Bin Laden's network that persisted for 9 years. Trusted human couriers with no network access. Any organization too stupid to use the same methods wouldn't be smart enough to alter their methods just because of Snowden.
Not everyone can use Bin Laden's method due to concerns of timeliness, flexibility, and possibly bandwidth. You seem to be claiming that they wouldn't alter their communications methods in the face of reports that they are. You aren't offering any proof to challenge the report, only argument. You're waving the hand and chanting, "This isn't really happening."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The interview makes it clear that he must have lied from the beginning to get his job, and that he planned from the start to steal classified documents. He wasn't an innocent that was confronted by wrongdoing and then made an ethical choice. This addresses the question of his character. His employer would never have hired him, nor would he have received a security clearance for his new position if he hadn't lied repeatedly. And that is before you consider his behavior in fleeing the country and beyond.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So to summarize - what you wrote has absolutely nothing to do with the post you responded to.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sorry, but that is nonsense. You touched on the question of character (shall I quote you again?), I addressed the question of his character.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Sorry, but that is nonsense. You touched on the question of character (shall I quote you again?), I addressed the question of his character.
No need to, I'll do it for you:
According to the article, the interview was conducted anonymously through a third party before Snowden publicly revealed himself.
I won't speculate on your motives for making such easily disproven claim about Snowden's character.
I said nothing one way or the other about Snowden's character. The only, even unasked, question was why the OP lied. Your responses suggest that he lied because he thinks Snowden sucks and therefore lying about people you think suck is fine.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I won't speculate on your motives for making such easily disproven claim about Snowden's character.
Your statement is in essence a defense of Snowden's character. The issue of character is explicitly raised in your post. I responded to that statement. My response has nothing to do with the GP post. And even if the GP post was faulty in the second half of the post, the first half was a reasonable issue to explore, i.e. Snowden's seemingly vast access to what should be compartmentalized information which would seem to raise even more issues. My response directly questions Snowden's character on its own merits.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Your statement is in essence a defense of Snowden's character.
Only to someone so hyper-sensitive that anything not derogatory must be supportive. In other words someone with such a massive hate-on for Snowden that he can't see the world in any other terms besides pro-Snowden and anti-Snowden.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What exactly makes anything this dickhead says reliable? He is a traitor and a turncoat. Last time I checked, nothing that such a person says would even rate a news story yet alone be believable.
Tell me about it. It's hard to believe he got re-elected, isn't it?
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Snowden please go a head and tell on yourself, and everybody else, we are all so tired of this shit. But any conscious brother knows about government spyware, being even in your toilet and the games they play to regulate the internet before some real hacker does. huh...
Can only imagine we'll read this next...
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
[guy at NSA in charge of minimizing leaks hitting forehead] "D'oh!"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar
Casteism
Like when some heavily armed Apache helicopters enter the airspace of a sovereign country and head in direction of the capital city?
You mean like our "war" with Pakistan when we killed Osama bin Laden?
Yes, flying some helicopters over someone else's airspace is generally hostile, but it doesn't always mean it's a war or even an intent to start one.
I believe that the use of high technology will render the concept of absolute privacy to be an outdated concept in the fairly near future. In short, all of this was inevitable anyway. I am less concerned that the capability exists and more concerned with making sure that the capabilities have proper oversight.
Additionally, I believe that this capacity will be developed by just about everyone eventually. Which means that the longer we dither over the fact that this stuff exists, we're putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage against countries who are not as beholden to public opinion in the same way.
As far as I can tell, the Snowden leaks have told me about something I already knew existed, but I'm expected to be annoyed with it because the capability simply exists. I don't need this capability justified to me, because I know it is coming whether I like it or not. My solution is simply assume I am being watched and to watch what I say to whom. That's a good idea in any case.
Why I don't like Snowden's action is more that I feel he's just pandering to a viewpoint that exposing anything that is classified and could be used in a bad way is heroic. In short, he's telling me something I already knew in the most obnoxious way possible.
I'm not one of those people who implicitly trusts the government, and I definitely want less of it, but I also realize that to do the job that voters clearly expect from it, they need to do certain things. If they are arresting American citizens and throwing them in jail based on this data, then that is a problem that needs to be addressed. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that we disband the IRS over this, we actually need revenue collection, they are merely desiring that we punish what we have seen as transgressions.
Oh, he'll die, sure enough. Probably of some nasty sexually-transmitted disease and the pathologist won't notice the inoculation mark. They'll have to burn the body "for public safety".
Death won't be sufficient ; there will have to be humiliation too.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"