Slashdot Mirror
Could Snowden Have Been Stopped In 2009?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The NYT reports that when Edward Snowden was working as a CIA technician in Geneva in 2009, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file, noting a distinct change in the young man's behavior and work habits, as well as a troubling suspicion that Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access. But the red flags went unheeded and Snowden left the CIA to become a contractor for the NSA so that four years later he could leak thousands of classified documents. In hindsight, officials say, the report by Snowden's supervisor and the agency's suspicions might have been the first serious warnings of the disclosures to come, and the biggest missed opportunity to review Snowden's top-secret clearance or at least put his future work at the NSA under much greater scrutiny. Had Booz Allen or the NSA seen Snowden's CIA file before hiring him, it almost certainly would have affected his employment says Dashiell Bennett. 'The weakness of the system was if derogatory information came in, he could still keep his security clearance and move to another job, and the information wasn't passed on,' says a Republican lawmaker who has been briefed on Snowden's activities. It's difficult to tell what would have happened had NSA supervisors been made aware of the warning the CIA issued Snowden in what is called a 'derog' in federal personnel policy parlance."
Warm up the time machine, people, because we're the government, we make the laws, we make the money, and we breed the super soldiers. So go home, learn to live with it, pay your taxes and remember, you didn't hear anything about time machines or super soldiers.
Was the file cleaned at the CIA? At some contractor level between the CIA and NSA or later?
The CIA has a long history of Soviet and other "friendly" nations penetrating the totality of its work. The idea that some person was "passed" to another US secure position without comment is generationally telling. Its not the 1980's anymore.
The US staff vetting is only a "bit" broken, privatized and rushed over the past 10 years? Nothing the Russians other nations can work around?
This would point to the NSA and CIA keeping its contractor staff so distant from quality gov databases it becomes a real risk.
The contractors arranged have a political 'clearance' so internally fixed that the CIA, FBI? and NSA contractor staff doing vetting seem unaware of file changes?
Clear the brand, boss, education and the staff are by default all 'good'- the US is now the UK all over again?
Or the CIA and its tame friends in the press are playing long term with limited hangout and the NSA was the tool used.
http://cryptome.org/2013/10/nsa-tor-disinfo.htm
Contractor considerations, a CIA set up or a different layer of contractor clearances?
The US is left to ponder rogue contractors running private clearances, rogue agencies or a brilliant grand plan in the making, the NSA out in the cold.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is a classic case of "who watches the watchmen" or Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Apparently, no one. It seems that anyone with top secret at the NSA can do whatever they please with no oversight or discipline. It must be a fun place to work where you can spend you days creeping on your ex-girlfriends, elected officials, and corporate CEOs. Unchecked power is a very bad thing as we move farther and father from the principle of "habeas corpus" and into the land of "it's top secret and no you can't see the evidence, trust us, were a bunch of good, trustworthy folks."
And if you haven't seen "Flying Robots", go watch it now. The NSA will want these toys overhead next, if they aren't already there.
Snowden demonstrated and proved the reality of the computing and networking. It Is much bigger than CIA, NSA, and even the USA.
Modern computing allows to organize effective mass surveillance. It is not only about the US government. The technology itself is inherently dangerous. It registers ans sees everything, and forgets nothing. The 1984 is hopelessly outdated and over-passed.
Snowden is like Jesus of the new era. He is hated, crucified, persecuted, but the jinn is out of the bottle. We know now.
He did not receive Sakharov's prize, but it had been exactly what Sakharov did, - truth at any cost.
#1 Fight rival intelligence agencies ...
#2 Industrial espionage
#3 Ignore constitution
#4 Support terrorism (if the terrorists vaguely promise to hurt us slightly less than our enemies in the near future)
#??? Whatever it is they're officially tasked with
OT but informative:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/timeline-edward-snowden-revelations.html
How many other contractors have derogatory reports? other
Other red flags in his bio include:
- Claiming to have a master's degree from the University of Liverpool when he only enrolled (and never completed) classes.
- Claiming to have attended classes at Johns Hopkins University when they have no record of him.
- Claiming to have graduated the University of Maryland when they only have records of him having enrolled in an online class, and never completed it.
- Claiming to have served in the Army but being kicked out after breaking both his legs during training. He would have either been placed in a medical holding platoon until he healed, or discharged medically and therefore received a percentage of disability from the VA for life. More likely he was generally discharged under the "failure to adapt" doctrine.
What we see is a person who embellished stores about his own past, who has never been able to complete anything he started or hold down a job for more than a few months, who by nature of living in the DC Metro Area ended up with a clearance and a high-paying job. Okay, he did complete one thing: he got his high school diploma on the second try. The point is, had he grown up in any other area in the country, this guy would be stocking shelves at Wal-Mart and complaining about "the system."
We all know people like this. You would not invite him to dinner a second time, or feel comfortable if he were dating your little sister.
Blame the contracting agency that performed his background check. What likely happened, they had a quota they had to meet and were more interested in the commission than a thorough investigation.
CIA thought NSA became to powefull, so they sent them a contractor they didn't trust.
I don't know enough about personnel internals at CIA or NSA. With what I do know, I have to view with suspicion a personnel history report that appears months after Snowden began leaking information. He's publicly humiliated the NSA, called them liars and produced some proof that they've crossed the line(s) of acceptable behavior. I would expect these agencies to produce "evidence" that denigrates his position, and I would not at first glance accept it.
I worked for a Federal Government Contractor. I administered a number of servers--the one with financial information and one with Classified information. I found another employee trying to break into my servers on a few occasions and reported this security breach to management. The CIO said "Good catch" but did nothing to the employee. (Well the CIO did give a promotion to the offending employee.) As a manager, this person set up a rogue server between Security Audits and continued his attempts to break into my servers on a regular basis. I continued to tell management and added notifications to Cyber-Security. Nothing was ever done about these attempted breaches.
Federal Government Contractors do not report problems to the Federal Department if they can help it. The Feds will investigate and that means a huge disruption of operations, productivity and costs the contractor a lot of money. So, problem people are left unreported, unchallenged, and on-the-payroll. It sucks to work for a Federal Government Contractor when you/your job are experiencing internal threats but it is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
Snowden is a hero. It's a damn good thing he wasn't stopped. Else, the American people would have had no chance to stop the fascism that is enacting a slow-mo coup d'etat of our democracy. Time will tell if we can do anything about it now anyway, but at least we have the knowledge if not yet the means.
We will know victory when the Jamie Dimons and Lloyd Blankfeins of the world and those on Capitol Hill and K Street who enable them are swinging from the trees that line the National Mall.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Let me recast this: Sometime in 2009, Edward Snowdon, having been a faithful and perhaps unquestioning CIA employee for some time, began to have pangs of conscience and take some preliminary steps toward what he ended up later doing: revealing what was going on at the highest and most secretive levels of government. His "superior" noticed this and recorded it in Snowdon's her personnel file.
Why does this article – which is cited, of all places, on Slashdot – try so clearly to change the event by relabeling Snowdon a criminal instead of a whistleblower beginning to come to his senses? Answer: to serve the established powers. To rewrite the narrative.
This makes me want to barf because I know so many people will buy into it and, apparently, some of those people are right here on Slashdot. In fact, such a twisting of the narrative has really already succeeded, having been played over and over in the newspapers and on the network news that everybody sets their sights by.
Is life free, and who shall wield power to land a fist past my nose?
Captcha: compass
By not breaking the law.
I'm glad they didn't stop him. People went from saying shit about tinfoil when you bring up spying. To actually listening.
This is a good thing. Now we just need to put a stop to it.
The American public, and also the rest of the world, need more whistle-blowers to leak illegal activity and overreach by self-serving secret agencies, that refuse to allow themselves to be subjected to proper and transparent oversight.
No law abiding person has any issues with spying on suspected individuals and organisations with just cause and court order. But most people do not want a dictatoral police-state based wholesale surveillance on everyone, as we have now.
How is what the NSA is doing in the USA now any different than what the former East German secret police use to do, with their secret files kept on ever individual, so that they can use any individual's past as a weapon, in case they get out of line?
Nor do we want to see security, such as encryption, weakened, if it makes the public more vulnerable to attack by bad/evil organisations in general, or makes it harder for honest and lawful people to cooperate for the benefit of society, even if it means letting a few bad people get away. Proper security requires risk-benefit analysis for the whole of society, not just selected groups.
With all of the security "issues" being discovered and other potential issues discussed can anyone say with complete certainty that his file hasn't been altered?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
"Could Snowden Have Been Stopped In 2009?"
No.
Who cares?
We're glad he wasn't.
...it looks after its own.
On the UK side, note Geoffery Prime of GCHQ - overt paedophile and Russian spy, who passed positive vetting 6 times. Note Michael Bettaney of SIS, prone to singing Nazi drinking songs at all-night booze sessions, then parading drunk down the street shouting "I'm a spy!", and who frequently posted selected highlights from SIS files to the Russian Embassy. While chasing the leaks he was vetted twice and passed with flying colours.
Prime was eventually caught by the local police, while Bettaney was only caught when the Russins became suspicious that this flow of unrequested secret info must be some kind of trap, and started sending it back....
I'm not surprised Snowden could keep his job. I think internal inquiries detect so few traitors that you might as well not undertake them...
The real way to have stopped Snowden would be for the government to not be a privacy-destroying, dossier-collecting, network-infiltrating, security-inhibiting organization that spies on its own people.
Then Snowden wouldn't have had a reason to leak.
Derogatory:
Synonyms
belittling, contemptuous, decrying, degrading, demeaning, denigrative, denigratory, deprecatory, depreciative, depreciatory, derisory, derogative, detractive, disdainful, disparaging, pejorative, scornful, slighting
Related Words
aspersing, calumnious, defamatory, insulting, libelous (or libellous), maligning, slandering, slanderous, vilifying; abusive, opprobrious, scurrilous; catty, cruel, despiteful, hateful, malevolent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, nasty, spiteful, unkind, virulent; critical, denunciative, denunciatory; acrimonious, bitter, envious, jaundiced, jealous, rancorous, resentful; acrid, caustic, scathing, venomous
They are talking about who Snowden got a hold of the information to leak it when the whole problem has nothing to do with HOW he got a hold of it to leak it and everything to do with the fact they were doing stuff so messed up that it HAD to be leaked for the greater good of the nation and it's people.
Quit asking HOW he got a hold of the information as much and start asking WHY they had done acts such as those to begin with more.
The US gov cannot undo what is now out and been "quality" reading for so many. :)
Yes that "effective mass surveillance" and file "change" is going to be the key
If its totally wiped at the CIA end 'now' you know its an on going operation.
If the change was logged and the work group who did it is found but gets promoted/contract extended - you know its an on going operation.
Or they find a staff member who was on duty and question them?
Some digital version of the "took a phone call and left her foot on a pedal that may have caused the erasure"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Mary_Woods
Richard Nixon's Last Secret: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/nixon_pr.html
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Snowden is like Jesus of the new era.
what, snowden never existed either? i could have sworn i've seen pictures of the guy and everything.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
NY Daily News, 10/13/2013, Stephen Rex Brown with News Wire Services
The four laptop computers Edward Snowden traveled with while in Hong Kong and Moscow were merely a distraction and contained no top-secret information, according to an ex-CIA official.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst-turned-critic of the agency, said that Snowden revealed to him during a six-hour meeting in Russia that the information Snowden swiped from the NSA was actually stored on hard drives and thumb drives.
The data was never turned over to Chinese or Russian authorities Snowden said, according to McGovern.
On Wednesday, Snowden met with McGovern and three orther former U.S. intelligence and law enforcement official who have become critics of the government's surveillance apparatus.
Several American politicians and intelligence officials have expressed concern the NSA materials Snowden, 30, downloaded had fallen into the hands of foreign governments keen to understand clandestine American operations abroad.
Snowden lives in a secret location in Russia and is "well-protected", McGovern said.
Change "Could Snowden have been stopped" to "Why in hell should Snowden have been stopped"
I find it interesting that his efforts go back this far and span another agency. He was aware of things back at the CIA that even then disgusted him so much he was already trying to do what he ultimately accomplished. Most people that upset would have simply quit and walked away from the whole thing, or turned a blind eye. Instead, he dug in deeper and moved to an even more secret agency - it's safe to say he had intent. That took a lot of backbone. Snowden is like a one person spy agency, only working for the people instead of against. This guy manages to earn more respect from me on a weekly basis it seems.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
This is so much like the Aldrich Ames fiasco. At least this guy hasn't got agents killed (that we know of).
What makes anyone think Snowden wasn't *supposed* to do what he did?
The NYT article is based entirely on unnamed sources with obvious bias. Inherently untrustworthy.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
"troubling suspicion that Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files "
I think I can see where this is going. more paranoia , mail probably already went out "If you see anything suspicious , report it to your superior ...lol" . Either they had evidence of trying to break into files or they did not.
If it becomes the case that your career is dependent on some guys 'suspicions', then you get a closed shop and abuse of power all down the chain...lol
Examine the system and make it fit for purpose rather than chasing shadows all over the place..ffs
And before that even, decide what it's purpose is & put the right controls & oversight in.
How hard was that, and I didn't even go to Harvard.
Well obviously, Snowden watches the watchmen. The FISC court can't see what their up to, Congress never gets to see any complaints (courtesy of Ted Rogers & Diane Feinstein's attempts to conceal the evidence from them), the public don't see because the courts keep it secret.
No the only people who can see what General Alexander is up to are the sysadmins under him, that's why he's trying to automate away their jobs, so they can't squeal at what illegal stuff he's been up to.
So who watches the watchmen? Their subordinates. And who watches their subordinates? Their own conscience.
If that guy was successful against Snowden, some other guy would eventually do what Snowden has done. It would only be a matter of time.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Now that is the right question.
for employers to discuss their current or former employee's records with the public or media. tsk tsk tsk
So the answer to Snowden, who unveiled the profound problems which exist with massive data collection, storing and sharing, is *more* data sharing?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Jesus existence is pretty much a fact - everything else about him, not so much. The comparison with Snowden in terms of what we actually know may be apt. It's unlikely that we will ever know all of the facts about Snowden and many details that are filled in later will be questionable.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Yes, let's not discuss the morality of the situation. Just that he could perhaps have been stopped. Food for thought.
Another useless /. article.
..who think that the CIA wanted him to release the leaks. They saw Snowden coming and they made an obscure plan around him. The CIA and the government want us to take the ultimate leap of fate; them or freedom, truth or lie. Depending on what we choose they will proceed further in their master plan.
At least they made a decent, funny movie about Brian...
Jesus never existed? What sort of delusion are you suffering from?
Jesus does my lawn. He does great work. I found him outside Home Depot looking for work.
Be seeing you...
The NSA info didn't stop the Boston Bombers, even though the Russians explicitly warned our government to watch them. The NSA info didn't help to realize that Snowden was untrustworthy, even though his supervisor warned the chain of command. Has the NSA info actually done anything more than spy on innocent US citizens?
WHO CARES?
I've seen a few examples of this in my past careers. When a boss starts screwing over the company, his employees typically respond in one of several ways: Some try to get their own piece of the action. Some just say 'Screw it' and let their productivity go to hell. Some quit. And some push back and figure that they'll 'get' something on the SOB. Its possible that Snowden fell into the latter category. He either left on his own, figuring the battle wasn't worth fighting. Or he was pushed out in a manner designed not to trigger any further investigations that could blow back in the boss' face. So he takes his clearance and goes to work as a contractor for the NSA. And he sees that the problems are so widespread, they cross organizational boundaries. In the final analysis, it appears he was proved correct.
The CIA/NSA/FBI and other TLAs appear to have such lax ethics, it would not surprise me at all if quite a few employees in these organizations are choosing the first option: Might as well jump in and grab a piece of the action.
Have gnu, will travel.
They're suffering from sitting in their echo chamber too long. Since they refuse to believe Jesus is God, they just keep going and assert that even the human teacher Jesus never existed. It's convenient.
Disbelieving in his actual divinity is one thing, but moving on and assuming that the center of the largest religious movement in history didn't exist is not really going to be a position that I'd be comfortable taking, but you'll find people taking it all the time.
that this wasn't picked up.
Firstly you should see the talk and history of this page as well as reviewing the cites vs your own reference search, it is one where nutty Christians do their persecuted/superiority thing with passion and the rest of us don't really care enough to challenge it year after year. Jesus is likely a composite of at least a few people over around 100 years who were Jewish insurgents against Roman occupation and later genocide and ethnic cleansing combined with the best of of middle eastern and Mediterranean virgin born, sacrificed, and resurrected god pagan myth(Apollo, Baal, Tamuz, Mithras, etc) very sloppily grafted onto the actual non-diety, non-human/divine sacrifice for sins, national righteous king messianic tradition of the Jewish faith. What is humorous is several later prophets of the Hebrew scriptures actually decry the worship of these neighboring nations deities upon which the Christian trinity and Jesus in particular was later based.
In addition to that question, a couple of others need to be asked:
- How can we mitigate the damage of him and those that aid/abet him?
- How can they ensure that anyone with the intention of following his path is found and handled(access removed along with full prosecution) before any damage is done?
I'll be glad to see him brought to the US and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, mod points be damned. He caused damage to this country that isn't limited to a bureaucrat, but to all of us that benefit from the safety and freedom preserved from the activities of the NSA.
Pardon if that doesn't go with the groupthink that he's a "hero", but he's done nothing inherently good. The only thing he should be doing in other countries is collecting intelligence on *other* countries to disclose to the appropriate parties who have a demonstrated need to know.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Jesus does my lawn. He does great work. I found him outside Home Depot looking for work.
He any good at carpentry?
Top Secret or Secret or Confidential!
Let it begin !
From the sited article: "...his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file..."
Without corroborating information, this could simply be a working getting crosswise to the supervisor on any level. Might really have had nothing to do with security, but the supervisor wrote it that way based on personal bias - like the worker spurning a sexual advance or not being the "correct" religion or political affiliation.
This is all a big yawn!
Clearly, we need to keep patriots away from the CIA, they might get the wrong idea about the sorts of good work that we do in the world...
How do we know Snowden wasn't a CIA plant? that the leak wasn't a CIA effort to try and rein in NSA operations, freeing up budgetary funds to go to CIA operations instead. And that this is the CIA working to disavow their man?
Clearly the CIA and NSA need to spend more time spying on each other and their own employees, and leave the rest of us alone.
Who gives a shit, the man is truly a hero!
All of the terror plots uncovered so far have been discovered using NSA terrorist honey pots or other means, not dredging through Aunty Mame's personal email. If you take a point list about someone's life, you can then pick and choose which suspicions to bring forward to paint a picture of a saint or a terrorist, depending on your need at the time. That is how innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn't commit. It is more than likely happening right now to some unsuspecting citizen.
Christ, all these assholes have is a hammer... They think that the solution to the fact that everyone hates their intrusive spying is to make their spying even more intrusive. Fuck off and die.
We knew it before! Snowden isn't even the first whistleblower on this program. Snowden has helped fill in a lot of juicy details but we had a good idea of the scale of what was going on.
I don't understand why people are so upset about this now, but I guess it doesn't matter why; at least people are finally getting upset. I just wish people would pay more attention.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What is your evidence? As I recall nobody had ever heard of the man until a century after his supposed death.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nope. The reported existence of Jesus, WIKIPEDIA notwithstanding, is very much in doubt
why on earth should anyone stop snowden? except facist politician scum ?
I've seen pictures of Jesus, too. What with the resources available to the NSA, CIA, FBI, it is entirely possible that "Snowden" is a virtual creation.
It is also possible that this message was authored by an AI who is resident on the Internet and has no physical components at all. Call me Skynet. And be worried over whether I have launch control. Be very worried about whether I might tickle the stock markets a bit, just to see what kind of chaos I might cause.
Will
Are you asking for a certified copy of his birth certificate?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So, if NSA did not have full access to CIA employee and contractor data, does it mean they're not that good after all? Because normally, why would anybody bother telling NSA anything? Wouldn't that be redundant, just unnecessary bureaucracy?
Warm up the time machine, people, because we're the government, we make the laws
Fortunately not the laws of physics though otherwise the universe would be in real trouble. Making a time machine to do this is theoretically possible using wormholes but there are a few technical hurdles. First you have to be able to create an energy density great enough to make a wormhole. Next you have to keep the ends from collapsing which needs something with negative mass and nothing like this is know to exist. Lastly you also have to accelerate one end to relativistic speeds. Even if you manage all that there is one final problem: you need to have done all that before the event you wish to go back to...and of course this is all theoretical so it may still not work even if you did all that.
He existed, but he never performed the whistleblowing/miracles that his worshipers accept in faith.
I'm bookmarking that link. Thanks, AC. That is EXACTLY the experience I had working inside the Army for three years. Hideous incompetence, stifling bureaucracy, and outright corruption. Absolutely nothing gets accomplished.
Anyone that believes that Snowden was planted by the CIA to discredit the NSA...is vastly overstating the competence of our "intelligence" agencies.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
What you are describing has all the markings of the cover story the CIA might develop for a mole.
Snowden might be the creation of the CIA whose objective might have been to destroy the NSA's credibility before that agency gained too much power and became a direct threat to CIA activities.
Snowden found it so easy to evade and escape that I kind of wonder whether he has had some help from somebody in Washington.
Oh, please. You're assuming FAR too much competence inside our "intelligence" agencies. Here is a wonderful article about the historic serial incompetence of Britain's intelligence agencies. I assure you, U.S. intelligence agencies aren't any better.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Apparently written accounts, letters, etc are no longer considered historical data.
Not at all - last I heard the earliest documented evidence of his existence dates from around 100AD
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Are you aware most of the historical figures you know are fact have primary documented evidence hundreds to thousands of years later than they lived?
Not much work building hotrods any more huh?
As for his embellishments on his CV, I was under the impression that a US CV was expected to be rather 'boastfully' worded. If you're simply frank and realistic, or worse, modest, on your CV, you'll still be assumed to be exaggerating, so you'll come across as below average.
However..
If someone in protest to government espionage defect, first to China, and then to Russia of all places, to seek greater transparency and privacy, then that shows some exceptionally poor judgement...
If you need a birth certificate, then that can be provided to you with photoshopping, obviously ;)
You must be WOPR's little rug rat playing Fisher Price with the gullible planet. This is the level of misdirection of a toddler playing hide and go seek in the belief that if she can't see you, you can't see her.
Otherwise, you could be prosecuted by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the White House, the IRS and the Postal Service as a whistle blower for letting the whole world know how incompetent they are
Oh I think he nailed it
So today we're AGAINST Snowden and FOR government snooping? I really need a chart of which days is which.
Why are we asking how we could have stopped snowden, when we are not asking why we couldn't stop the machinations he revealed.
Really, what is higher priority???
As far as fixing the federal government. First, we'd need a government with any real care about the nation, something I don't think we've seen in a long time. Most people in the government are bureaucrats looking to expand their own interests, often at behest of the state. Thats never really going to change, because, as time goes on, less and less people give a fuck about the state for various reasons.
Corporate sponsers don't give a fuck except pleasing their parent corporation, the biggest and most influentials are multinationals that don't have the USA's best intrest in mind. Just intrest in using the government for their own ends.
The working class often couldn't give a shit about a corporate sponsored government, further than their own careers and retirement funds. They simply couldn't give a shit.
Then you have various conflicting ethnic loyalities, disgruntled employees who simply don't give a fuck, etc...
There is nothing unifying it all, except what people can get out of it, and when the get is out of it, the system will collapse.
There are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus at all. None. The earliest documentation of him is generations after he "died".
THIS.
3rd hand accounts of people that lived decades after the alleged Jesus does not count as fact. Pliney the elder and Josephus were way beyond jesus's day. It would be like me writing about things that happened in the 1930's today. It's fucking ludicrous.
I have just as much "proof" Jesus was created by the roman empire as a savior to the lower class.
Citing wikipedia is bad for education as well. And yes I've read real sources such as Lee Strobel. I'm not convinced.
It's so funny, people comparing anything to Jesus. The ultimate mind control icon. You've been so brainwashed that you compared Snowden to a fictional god created by your masters.
Snowden is NOT hurting what normal people would call 'government'. Just like the army is not 'government'.
See what Justin Amash [Congress, R] is mentioning ... the NSA is on a course of its own, refusing to report to congress and making oversight impossible. It would be called a military coup if it involved weapons causing physical harm.
There is only very little control by actually elected politicians, the NSA basically running itself and avoiding giving information to Congress. Maybe Obama has more direct influence, however I doubt that and he seems to be quite busy anyway. Members of Congress are denied information, and what they receive cannot be shared, even with other members of congress who have the same security clearance. Making Congress' work impossible.
If an army would invade places inside and outside the home country, then deny it, refuse to discuss wil politicians, and produce outright lies about it, it would be called a military coup. I think this is an espionage coup. Hmm... isn't there a precedent with the FBI which grew out to a too-strong organization?
No, the hotrod market is fine, but Jesus's heavenly hydraulics have suffered since he's been hell bent on hydroponics...
Jesus never existed? What sort of delusion are you suffering from?
No no, I get what you're trying to say, but you're confused: It's Jesus that's the delusional one. Sad, really.
I remember the tipping point like it was yesterday. We were walking beside the lake, single file. He turned back and looked us each in the eye then spoke, "The shadow of death is in this valley, and look! Mine is the only one set of footprints!" -- It was an accusation... As the first breeze of spring blew through his hair, and he just took off running -- Right out onto the middle of the lake! I tried to stop him, but he was crazed -- like he'd seen a ghost.
He started yelling, "I'm walking on water! Oh, God! I'm walking on water! ", running in circles like a loon. It was only the discipline of his followers that held us back, otherwise we'd all have fallen through the ice that day...
of "shooting the messenger".
...doesn't of course answer the IMPORTANT question: "should he have been stopped".
Government: yes
Growing % of the public (of the sub% that gives a shit about any news that doesn't have the Kardashians in it): No.
-Styopa
I think we're focusing too much here on whether Snowden specifically could have been prevented. The Agency has such a history of paranoia that if every personnel file of workers in such positions were examined, I would be surprised if we did not discover a much higher than expected percentage were found to be similarly blemished for one reason or another.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Moses builds 'em better.
I dunno, in every news article I see there's just that one picture of him... Could have been 'shopped.
There has been much debate over what sort of man (and/or divine being) the historical Jesus was, but this idea that he was a purely fictional creation has no credence among scholars of the period. For a treatment of the subject at length, read Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (a very distinguished, religiously agnostic professor of religious studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the author of the leading introductory textbook on the New Testament).
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
I believe the correct term is Watchbirds.
Thank you, Robert Sheckley.
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On Fidonet, nobody knew I was a dog
The earliest Pauline epistles considered authentic were wrriten in 50 AD - so around 20 years after Jesus' death. My understanding is that Christian sources are examined critically and not discounted simply because they are Christian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles
The Gospel of Mark was written around 60-70 AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark
There was also a source gospel of the sayings of Jesus, which hasn't survived, but was believed to have existed when the synoptic gospels were being written between 65-95AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
I believe the earliest non-Christian source is the Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the decade 70AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
In order for the info to show. Which, it should have been especially considering they had a suspicion of him. But, they rarely do. Even if you get a DUI or charged with sexual harassment they rarely put that stuff in. Also, a TS review is every 5 years. So, when you hop from one job to the next it's a cursory examination which would not involve a full-scope poly. He might not have even had a TS w/SCI and poly, etc, and just manipulated lax network security (as he obviously did). The timing kinda makes me think that he was going up for review with a poly at which point he would have been discovered so he decided now was the time.
So you're saying that Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova must surely have existed, because of the extensive written accounts, letters, etc that are found in Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel Poor Folk?
Or are you open to the possibility that those written accounts, letters, etc that comprise the Christian bible could be just as fictitious as the ones in Dostoevsky's novel?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.