Edward Snowden's New Job: Tech Support

Nerval's Lobster writes "Government whistleblower Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia after releasing top-secret documents about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities to the press, has a new job: tech support. Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the Associated Press that his client starts work Nov. 1 for a "major" Russian Website, which he declined to name. In June, Snowden—a former CIA employee who worked as a contractor for the NSA—began feeding an enormous pile of classified charts and documents about federal surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers. Many of those documents suggested that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans, which in turn ignited a firestorm of controversy. The Snowden revelations have continued into this week, with The Washington Post reporting that the NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers. Snowden's documents suggest that the agency has figured out how to tap the links connecting the two tech giants' datacenters to the broader Web. Google told the Post that it was "troubled" by the report. A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.""

Comments

IT support

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"IT support. Have you tried turning the NSA tapping device off and on again?"

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, it was working fine last week. I had Merkel's phone records, Calderón's e-mails, I even had Rousseff's contact list. Can't you IT people keep anything working!

Re:IT support

[Thanshin]

"IT support?"
"Yes."
"I hear a strange noise on my phone."
"It's... cosmic radiation. Yeah. That's it. A whole bunch of cosmic radiation."
[long pause]
"... Tovarisch, you know in this country we do study physics, right?"

Re:IT support

[FriendlyLurker]

...not to mention disrupting a string of profitable industrial espionage gigs!

Re:IT support

[LifesABeach]

News Flash! AP - (Moscow,Ru) Edward Snowden discovered that the Russian government has tapped into all phones, and internet traffic, globally; film at 11.

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

two wrongs do not make a right. Especially if you sell yourself as being morally superior (then we find out that your the opposite)...

Re:IT support

[Frigga's Ring]

While you might have been joking, they have been caught trying. http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/29/5045076/russia-denies-using-poisoned-flash-drives-to-spy-on-g20-attendees

Re:IT support

[IamTheRealMike]

Actual most likely job, from the BBC: "Pavel Durov, who founded VKontakte in 2006, invited Mr Snowden through a post on his own webpage to join the company's St Petersburg headquarters to work on data protection."

VK would count as a major website, for sure.

Re:IT support

[erikkemperman]

the Bastard Operator From Hell at El Reg was looking for helldesk fodder... Coincidence? I think probably so.

Re:IT support

[FriendlyLurker]

Much more likely it is an NSA/GCHQ malware USB stick given they have been caught red handed spying at the G20. Even going as far as setting up dummy internet cafes which are a lot more expensive than distributing a few USB sticks.

Accusing Russia at this point of a few malware USB sticks without presenting any hard evidence is really just lame and shows how desperate they are to divert media attention off their own despicable actions (i.e. spying for industrial and economic espionage purposes, G20 has nothing to do with terrorism).

Step forward with the hard evidence if your trying to justify your own criminal actions by accusing others of what you have been caught doing... and even if true it hardly excuses the fact.

Re:IT support

[BitZtream]

Accusing Russia at this point of a few malware USB sticks without presenting any hard evidence is really just lame and shows how desperate they are to divert media attention off their own despicable actions (i.e. spying for industrial and economic espionage purposes, G20 has nothing to do with terrorism).

Not nearly as lame as pretending Russia doesn't do it.

Here's a hint guys ... our spy agencies ... SPY ON PEOPLE, ITS THEIR FUCKING JOB. Why the fuck do you guys act surprised or outraged? This has been going on for thousands of years, you're an idiot if Snowden has told you something you didn't know before.

You should be pissed that the NSA is spying on Americans. But you should be more pissed if they weren't spying on leaders of other countries. That is their charter. EVERYONE KNOW IT except apparently a bunch of moron wanna be geeks who seem to be shocked that our spy organization spy on people.

Re:IT support

[telchine]

"IT support. Have you tried turning the NSA tapping device off and on again?"

"Hello my name's Edward Snowden. I can help you today. I can see you tried switching it off and switching it off again but the password you just entered is not the one we have on file."

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

save the arguments about moral superiority. it's not really a meaningful argument to claim that something didn't live up to whatever expectations you put on them based on faulty perceptions.

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot if you feel like the outrage being expressed here is somehow the result of ignorance. You're even more of an idiot if you think your cynical-by-default position makes you not an idiot.

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a hint: spying for economic and industrial espionage is CRIMINAL. Spying for the purpose of squashing democratic political discourse as was the case with OWS leaders is CRIMINAL and morally unacceptable. We are well within normal parameters to be shocked and outraged at this abuse of power...

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like being spied on and fuck anyone who thinks I should like it.

Re:IT support

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"IT support?"
"Yes."
"I hear a strange noise on my phone."
"That's my voice."

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the excuse was "War on Terror" and I don't know for sure, but I don't think Merkel has any ties to Al Qaeda... again, I don't know, just guessing here...

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, this is Edwardovich, what data can I copy from you today?

Re:IT support

[cold fjord]

Much more likely it is an NSA/GCHQ malware USB stick given they have been caught red handed spying at the G20

Why? Do you think there is a rule that only one country is allowed to spy per meeting? That would be news.

Re:IT support

[TrueRecord]

Leave the global total control to the United States, no other country can afford that scale of surveillance of every one.

Re:IT support

[dunkelfalke]

maybe, maybe not.

Re:IT support

[dantotheman]

Because the excuse was "War on Terror" and I don't know for sure, but I don't think Merkel has any ties to Al Qaeda... again, I don't know, just guessing here...

Isn't this the line of reasoning the NSA is using to spy on everyone

Re:IT support

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot. Most of the people on this site are either -
- mal-adjusted programmers (yes, that's a redundant phrase) who are spoiled children,
- shills/astroturfers paid by a foreign government,
- English ankle-biters who somehow have a guilty conscience for no reason, thinking that "imperialists" need to atone for imagined sins of the British empire,
- a few normal people who occasionally set the rest of them straight.

SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think so !!

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

You thought so before this.

You'd think so even in the face of evidence against it.

Why?

Because you want to think so.

But answer this: if he WERE a double agent, SO WHAT? Does that make the data he got wrong? No. Does it make what the documents say a good thing for the NSA to do? No.

So *even if* you're right and Snowden is a double agent, that has no bearing WHATSOEVER about the crimes the revelations have documented.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[captainpanic]

But answer this: if he WERE a double agent, SO WHAT? Does that make the data he got wrong? No. Does it make what the documents say a good thing for the NSA to do? No.

So *even if* you're right and Snowden is a double agent, that has no bearing WHATSOEVER about the crimes the revelations have documented.

You don't get it. It is not about the data. At this moment the global attention is aimed at the NSA, and it says: "NSA = bad" and "Snowden = good". Some people just want to turn that around, and make it "Snowden = bad", and make people forget about the NSA.

It's really that simple.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you mother fucker.... Snowden is a traitor that needs to be killed. Fuck him and fuck you.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[JeffAtl]

Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though. He lost a lot of sympathy when he went down that road.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it really IS simple.

Unfortunately, it's simply stupid, isn't it.

It is the same people who say "Oh, oh, don't say bad things about the USA or point out the USA doing bad things, because it's anti-US!".

And the same people whine about how China kills people, has the great firewall, is a real bad person on human rights. And never once think "That's anti-China!" and stop.

However, this current "He's a double agent" doesn't even make a claim on the information! There is no more clean and pure an example of an ad hominem than this! It doesn't even manage to claim the data is wrong, it just goes "The person telling this IS A DOUBLE AGENT!!!".

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[CreatureComfort]

That is so incredibly devious! It take s real fiend to spread rumors and lies this malicious.

NSA Operative: Our public profile is way too high, and this Snowden jerk is winning in the popularity polls. We need to discredit him, quick!
NSA Public Relations Rat: Well, we need to get people to despise Snowden and focus on him and his new antics so we can fade back into the background.
NSA Operative: OK, so who is the most despised group on earth? Terrorists? Traitors?
NSA PRR: No. No. We've been trying that for months, and we just can't get any traction with the press or public. Worse, both those arguments lead back to us and our data.
NSA Operative: How about members of Congress, or the White House?
NSA PRR: You mean get him elected? No good, do you know what a seat in Congress is going for these days? Even our black budget can't afford any more than we already have, and don't even get me started on what a White House position costs now.
NSA Operative: Hmm... pedophile rapist?
NSA PRR: Maybe you're onto something... He is in Russia after-all... Wait! I've got it. The most universally reviled, disgusting, hated group in the world!
NSA Operative: What? What!?
NSA PRR: We'll tell everyone he's....... Tech Support.
NSA Operative: You vicious bastard. Even I couldn't have some up with something so foul. I love you for it.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[BitZtream]

Snowden is bad. He's the definition of traitor. If you support him, you're just an ignorant tool.

He didn't release documents describing the NSA spying on its own people. He's a traitor who released any and all documents he could get his hands on, just like Bradley Manning. The newspapers and reporters are the ones who zeroed in on the NSA spying on its own citizens and made sure you heard about it first. They actually looked for BAD things that were going on, and didn't just throw everything out there.

If Snowden only released documents about spying on Americans, then you'd have something to work with, but he did no such thing. He dumped it all, including operations information that is most certainly well within the NSAs purview. Spying on Merkel? Guess what, ITS THEIR JOB TO DO SO.

He's not a whistle blower, he's an attention whore. The reporters that went through these documents and found the information about spying on American citizens are doing the right thing. Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason. If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that. He never should have published ANY of that sort of shit.

Being a whistleblower is different than stealing a bunch of documents, regardless of what they say and publishing them for all to see.

Sorry you're such a fanboy of his, but he's a douche bag traitor. Deal with it.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Swampash]

Sorry you love the Federal Government so much, but Snowden is a patriot standing up for the ideals on which the USA was founded. Deal with it.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't release documents describing the NSA spying on its own people.

Wow, what backwards alternate universe did you pop in from? So far the documents have revealed precisely the opposite of what you claim: that the NSA has been spying on American citizens. And not just plain, vanilla spying, but spying with raisins in: over-aggressively gathering and hoarding details about who, when and where everyone communicate with anyone.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Nyder]

Snowden is bad. He's the definition of traitor. If you support him, you're just an ignorant tool.

He didn't release documents describing the NSA spying on its own people. He's a traitor who released any and all documents he could get his hands on, just like Bradley Manning. The newspapers and reporters are the ones who zeroed in on the NSA spying on its own citizens and made sure you heard about it first. They actually looked for BAD things that were going on, and didn't just throw everything out there.

If Snowden only released documents about spying on Americans, then you'd have something to work with, but he did no such thing. He dumped it all, including operations information that is most certainly well within the NSAs purview. Spying on Merkel? Guess what, ITS THEIR JOB TO DO SO.

He's not a whistle blower, he's an attention whore. The reporters that went through these documents and found the information about spying on American citizens are doing the right thing. Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason. If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that. He never should have published ANY of that sort of shit.

Being a whistleblower is different than stealing a bunch of documents, regardless of what they say and publishing them for all to see.

Sorry you're such a fanboy of his, but he's a douche bag traitor. Deal with it.

How is that NSA job working for you? Good benefits? Kids don't respect you anymore? Your wife left you? Your dog ran away? Ya, that's what I thought.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason

If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that.

Snowden committed treason by telling us what everyone already knows?

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason.

If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that.

Snowden committed treason by letting the morons know what the rest of us already knew.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Remus Shepherd]

'Traitor' and 'whistleblower' are not contradictory concepts. Snowden committed treason to reveal illegal behavior in the NSA. I am in favor of using his information to force the NSA to follow the law, *and* in favor of putting him in jail for treason.

It's also wrong to suggest that whistleblowers should receive automatic pardons. There were ways to reveal this information without committing treason; Snowden chose not to take that route. He's a traitor *and* a hero, and ideally his actions would cause positive change in the world while he's rotting in jail.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[crimson tsunami]

So NSA spying on you is good
Snowden spying on them is bad.

Why? IF he was a spy and stole secrets, so what, it's what they do!!
Why are you getting your panties all in a twist?
Spies spy, Deal with it.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[GodfatherofSoul]

I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.

Now, I accept that people overseas are thrilled with him because it's in their interests. It is NOT in the interests of Americans to have someone indiscriminately dumping intelligence secrets to the press. Let the British, French, and German posters cheer Snowden on. Americans definitely should NOT be.

And, for those of you bemoaning the evils of surveiling allies, this was, is, and shall always be a part of foreign affairs and EVERY nation does it. EVERY nation. As a Senator pointed out last night, we've historically found through surveillance foreign politicians pushing inexplicable, self-defeating agendas who were on the take from some mega corporation. Lots of naive people think that just because you shake hands with the prime minister of nation X, that means you can turn your back on him.

That being said, the NSA leaks are our fault for expanding surveillance to dragnetting proportions so large that we relied on private contractors hiring high school dropout hackers.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[StevenMaurer]

George Washington spent approximately 13% of his federal budget on intelligence services, whereas today we spend less than 6% to the same ends.
So before you go all teabagger on us, imagining that your political position are the "true ideals on which the USA was founded", I suggest you do a little research.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[aaaaaaargh!]

Blablabla National security babble.

Snowden's just a guy who did what he thought was the right thing to do. Even if he did the US a disfavor, which is unlikely, he did the majority of the world a big favor.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

You can dream, shill, but so far Snowden is still thoroughly fucking you and yours. Cheers to him.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[shutdown -p now]

The federal budget in Washington's times was how much of the country's GDP?

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[shutdown -p now]

There were ways to reveal this information without committing treason; Snowden chose not to take that route.

Can you give some examples? Because, you know, a bunch of NSA whistleblowers came out lately and noted that they were trying to reveal a great deal of what Snowden dumped on all of us through "proper channels", but no-one was interested in anything other than reprimanding them.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider for a moment that you are supposed to have a representative government that governs with the consent of the governed.
Regardless of what you personally think about foreign spying (Merkel and the hundreds of millions of the French, Spanish and whoever else), look around and see the reactions from your fellow citizens. Do they all agree with you? Hell, even Dianne Feinstien who is is on the intelligence oversight committee was caught unaware of some of these programs.
These actions are happening in your name - you're ultimately responsible for the results. If the result of these actions is economic sanctions causing you to lose your job or you being drafted and shipped off to war, you might want to reconsider your position on having an informed electorate.
The stuff they are keeping secret right now has no business being decided and carried out in secret. If you're fine with spying on allies, then make it known your official policy is to do so - if it's truly necessary, it's not a policy you need to be ashamed of, and don't worry - you will find supporters for it. Don't claim one thing and do another though.
Personally though, I'd be happier if the individual listening to Merkel was a little more interested in listening to Tsarnaev (since even NSA resources are finite and all...).

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[lister king of smeg]

That is so incredibly devious! It take s real fiend to spread rumors and lies this malicious. ...

...NSA PRR: Maybe you're onto something... He is in Russia after-all... Wait! I've got it. The most universally reviled, disgusting, hated group in the world!

NSA Operative: What? What!?

NSA PRR: We'll tell everyone he's....... Tech Support.

NSA Operative: You vicious bastard. Even I couldn't have some up with something so foul. I love you for it.

could be worse they may have called him a telemarketer

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Uberbah]

Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though. He lost a lot of sympathy when he went down that road.

Then this should be easy, Slick: who'd he spy for?

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Uberbah]

I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.

Yeah, that was a bullshit talking point the first time around, too. Manning didn't "leak documents indiscriminately" - if I were king for a day fascists would recieve an automatic shock to the balls for using that talking point - he gave them to a responsible media organization: Wikileaks. Who vetted the documents before release, and even asked the USG for help in redacting names of sources, etc.

But given the fact that Snowden personally selected the information he wanted, rather than a lowly grunt taking a database dump, that junk talking point doesn't even get off the ground. You guys also tip your hands by getting all hot and bothered over the laws broken by whistleblowers while at the same time not giving two shits about the lawbreaking revealed by said whisteblowers.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Uberbah]

You keep using that word, traitor. It does not mean what you think it means. You're also ignoring in swearing the Oath of Office you swear to uphold the Constitution. Then there's the fact that "proper channels" are designed around keeping this shit secret. Leaving people of principle with no choice but to reveal classified information to the public.

In 2009, Kiriakou took the position of senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under John Kerry. His job was to investigate waste, fraud, abuse and illegality and he turned his attention to the 2001 Dasht-i-Leili massacre, in which an American-backed warlord had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Taliban soldiers when he ordered them to be crammed into metal containers and then loaded onto trucks bound for a prison in Shibarghan, Afghanistan.

A source had told Kiriakou that Americans wearing T-shirts and blue jeans oversaw the box-up of the prisoners.

"I wanted to know," Kiriakou said, "were these guys CIA officers? If they weren't, who were they? Were they Defense Department? Were they contractors? Who were these guys? And why didn't they stop this from happening?

"I interviewed everybody," Kiriakou said. "I interviewed Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff and Karl Ford, the assistant secretary, Pierre Prosper, the special rapporteur for human rights. I called Colin Powell."

Six weeks later, Kiriakou got a phone call from John Kerry asking if he was investigating the CIA.

"I said, 'Yes, I am.' [He said,] 'I want you to stop right now.' I said 'but we've got a story here. This is a serious situation.' 'I want you to stop right now,'" Kerry repeated. "So I stopped."

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[DNS-and-BIND]

So Timothy McVeigh is a patriot now? How does that work, exactly? Sorry your flawed ideas led you to this place, but as soon as you agree with right-wing nutbags that "TEH FEDURUL GUBMIT IZ BAYYYUD" then the civilized world tunes out.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[cold fjord]

Sorry you love the Federal Government so much, but Snowden is a patriot standing up for the ideals on which the USA was founded. Deal with it.

Snowden is a patriot standing for the ideals on which the USA was founded in much the same way as another American patriot and hero of the early part of the Revolutionary War did. That hero was General Arnold.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[SoTerrified]

Snowden is bad. He's the definition of traitor. If you support him...

Then you are supporting the ideas and principles the United States of America was founded on.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[GodfatherofSoul]

Demagogue much? How do you know what I give a shit about? And indiscriminately dumping documents to the media and asking them to scrub them before release is the same thing as indiscriminately dumping documents on the media. The kinds of revelations we got from Mannings leaks about communications between low level diplomats including some personal shots that have no bearing on national policies illustrate what I'm talking about

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Uberbah]

You apologists for corrupt police state criminality are so cute when you get called out for your defense of the indefensible. Unfortunately for you, facts matter, and the fact is that neither Snowden nor Manning leaked documents "indiscriminately". That's you trying to find some excuse to dismiss the messenger without addressing the message - classic ad hominem cop out.

communications between low level diplomats including some personal shots

Hey, how about those double taps striking first responders, which we call terrorism when someone else does it? And how about that child sex trafficking by American contractors in Afghanistan? You out yourself as a hack with your priorities.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Flere Imsaho]

... your a moron

You should get that printed on a tee shirt. You could wear it, you know, ironically.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[shentino]

here were ways to reveal this information without committing treason;

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The powers that be make it treason on purpose specifically to prevent whistleblowing.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[geekoid]

NSA = Bad
Snowden = Bad.

Both are bad but for different reasons.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[geekoid]

Apparently every friendly and enemy nation in the world.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[geekoid]

Patriot? no. He did it for notoriety.
I didn't realize are ideals where lying, cheating, and narcissistic delusion of grandeur.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[geekoid]

What lawbreaking was revealed? The NSA had permission to do what they where doing. It's congress you need to direct your Ire at, not a legally operating agency.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[geekoid]

So you argument breaks down to an Ad Hom?

you lose.

many of us can contain several thoughts. Such as:

1) The NSA was acting legally.
2) I don't like the framework that allows that to be legal.
3) I direct my anger to congress, the people actually responsible.
4) Snowden and Manning both suffer from over inflated belief that they are important.
See it's not one or the other.

"And how about that child sex trafficking by American contractors in Afghanistan? "
and how does the pertain to this argument?

"how about those double taps striking first responders, which we call terrorism when someone else does it?"
You really don't understand the situation at all. But you sit there rage filled with the ability to only think of one group and not be able to think any deeper.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

So if it's the NSAs JOB to spy on everyone except Americans, why is it such a problem for someone to show evidence that it's happening? Hardly seems like a huge traitorous act, then.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

"The NSA had permission to do what they where doing."

No they did not.

That is why they hid their acts.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Sabriel]

"1) The NSA was acting legally."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%9307)

I'm really not sure how anyone manages to keep a straight face when they say things like that, but I guess on the internet it's not necessary.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Swampash]

The Washington Post already owned you so I don't have to.

What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but “ridiculously cinematic” and “narcissistic” as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a “traitor,” he lacks the requisite intent and menace.

But traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called. Harry Reid: “I think Snowden is a traitor.” John Boehner: “He’s a traitor.” Rep. Peter King: “This guy is a traitor; he’s a defector.” And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a “traitor” but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney’s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.

The early denunciations of Snowden now seem both over the top and beside the point. If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America’s most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III’s army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Swampash]

I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.

But... that's exactly what he HASN'T done.

He has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations — The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. — and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra “Information wants to be free.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you're such a fanboy of his, but he's a douche bag traitor. Deal with it.

Spying on allies and friends is not okay. Deal with it.

Snowden is a hero, not like the lowlifes at the NSA and their supporters. The NSA has done incalculable harm to the USA with their actions (which would've come out eventually even without Snowden) and the country as a whole will pay for it. Lack of trust is an insidious thing and when you've proven yourself untrustworthy people deal with it in a host of different ways.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Uberbah]

What lawbreaking was revealed?

Your ignorance of infants being shot in the head, among many other crimes, is not our problem.

The NSA had permission to do what they where doing.

You mean when Congress specifically defunded Total Information Awareness only for the executive branch to do it anyway under a different name?

It's congress you need to direct your Ire at, not a legally operating agency.

Garbage. That there is plenty of blame to go around does nothing to change the fact that those who actually commit an act are actually most responsible for it. And how, exactly, is Congress supposed to stop what they don't know about? More than one senator or member of Congress has said they learn about the activities of the NSA from newspapers before being briefed by the administration.

So you argument breaks down to an Ad Hom? you lose.

You wish. Dismissing whistleblowers for arbitrary reasons - in this case the 'leaking indiscriminately' lie, since the information was given to responsible media organizations - is attacking the messenger without addressing the message. And we have a term for that: ad hominem.

The NSA was acting legally.

Bad-faced lie. See above about the defunding of TIA. You might also want to read up on the 4th Amendment.

Snowden and Manning both suffer from over inflated belief that they are important.

Without Snowden or Manning we wouldn't know about any of this. "We" includes members of Congress, since they are left out of the loop.

"And how about that child sex trafficking by American contractors in Afghanistan? "
and how does the pertain to this argument?

Could we get some more intelligent trolls here please? By focusing all your attention on the procedural rules violated by whisteblowers - designed to stifle whisleblowing - and not on the crimes revealed you out yourself as a mindless authoritarian hack. Because anyone who's not a sociopath would demanding that contractors that traded children to war lords to be used as sex slaves would demanding that they be prosecuted before, and for far longer terms, than any whisteblowers.

But you guys don't do that. Which is why you out yourselves as mindless authoritarian hacks.

Then this should be easy, Slick: who'd he spy for?
Apparently every friendly and enemy nation in the world.

Apparently you answered the question: he's even remotely close to being a spy.

Re:SNOWDEN !! DOUBLE-AGENT ??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not true for EVERY nation — not every nation kill or bomb or thrill people all over the world, man. No wonder that some people more likely support Snowden than NSA. What would you say about german antinazi during WWII? Are the traitor too? They are the only who were to save nation's honor eventually.

permissions

[schneidafunk]

Don't give him root.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

snowden ALL=(ALL) ALL

Don't worry, we have an audit trail!

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give him root.

This.

Agree with what he did or not, he certainly has proven to be unreliable with proprietary information.

I wouldn't trust him with my company's data.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he'd know what to do with "root" but he might want "administrator" rights or perhaps "domain admin". Likewise, I don't think he'd know what "/" actually is, he's more about "C:\"

.

But this IS slashdot so I'm sure this will start a flame war.. FLAME ON!

Re:permissions

[Reverand Dave]

Well, some information is so important that it begs to breach the proprietary wall.

Re:permissions

[Chatterton]

If your data's are completely legitimate and show no wrongdoing from the company part, I don't think you should be afraid of him working for your company. A whist-blower is not someone who like to share your data, it is someone who can't bear all the wrongdoing you/your company are doing that he don't see other way to make you stop doing it than showing it to the world hoping that you will change. Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.

Re:permissions

[Sarten-X]

Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.

Or at least they think they do... but then again, the people they work against also think they're right, as well. Who exactly gets the absolute right to decide what's ultimately "wrongdoing" as opposed to just "secret"?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, before it's too late, if you have an account at MAIL.RU , it might be time to switch email providers and wipe your trash box.

Re:permissions

[jbolden]

Who exactly gets the absolute right to decide what's ultimately "wrongdoing" as opposed to just "secret"?

For the USA, the people of the United States who elected a president that made campaign promises not to do many of the things that Snowden proved they were doing. For corporations the government which they are chartered or acting.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.

Morals are not universal. Perhaps your morals are not 100% compatible?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's really immoral and wrong that you keep all your money hidden away in a bank account. If I worked for you, it would be my moral obligation to whistle-blow your account number.

Oh, what constitutes a wrongdoing is your opinion, right?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

For the USA, the people of the United States who elected a president that made campaign promises

And history suggests that this is a good indication of what happens after elections....

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.

Morals are not universal.

Oh, the fuck they aren't.

I'm getting pretty fed up with people excusing fucked up behavior by claiming, 'waaah, but morals are hard!'

No, they fucking aren't; you want to be a morally just person? Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated. Excluding true sociopaths who are chemically unable to parse the concept, yes, morality really is that simple.

Re:permissions

[schlachter]

Root for Snoden. He's a hero.

Re:permissions

[interval1066]

Funny, I have no reason to trust the Gov. with it either, now.

Re:permissions

[AchilleTalon]

I do not agree with this simplistic view. The guy may think you are evil and decide to share your data, it is all left to his own appreciation and judgement. A single guy may destroy a lot of other guys because he believes it is the right thing to do. In some sense, your data is better in the hands of the NSA than in the hands of a free-electron you don't know really what he is thinking and cannot predict what he will do with it..

Sorry to say that, but a whistleblower isn't automagically a good guy with high moral and integrity. You just don't know.

Re:permissions

[timeOday]

you want to be a morally just person? Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

That logic can be used to argue both sides of almost anything, from making kids eat their veggies to invading Iraq (if you convince yourself you'll be greeted as a liberator).

Re:permissions

[BitZtream]

HE stole and released all sorts of documents. Some showing bad things the NSA was doing, but many just showing the NSA doing their job and containing information that ruined all sorts of operations.

You can't trust that he won't do the same again. Sure, he might find and tell people about something one of your accountants was doing wrong ... but thats only by accident and in the process, he'll have told the world your business strategy for the next 3 years.

Re:permissions

[Vitriol Angst]

That was the same argument justifying the spying in the first place; "If you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear?"

What about the poor Business that happens to be friends on Facebook with a corrupt Business? Or how about a company that legitimately owns and bribes a politician in the LEGAL way?

Even an honest, unassuming corporation has to fear whistleblowing, because they might lose a parent company -- and who wants to lose a mommy or a daddy? OF course, any honest and unassuming corporation in the USA is likely on the path to bankruptcy since we don't do that "regulate and make things fair" thing anymore. So I'm merely throwing out a hypothetical. No good company will hire Snowden because there is no good company. Nor any Good Scottsman for that matter...

Re:permissions

[Vitriol Angst]

The barriers to entry for whistleblowing are so great and self-selecting for GOOD PEOPLE that I think your point that "automagically" isn't good is moot.

Can you name any bad guy whisteblowers? I only know heroes. There are howwever, a boatload of cowards, nihilists and jackboots with the opinion "let's suspect they are bad until proven otherwise."

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

you want to be a morally just person? Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

That logic can be used to argue both sides of almost anything, from making kids eat their veggies to invading Iraq (if you convince yourself you'll be greeted as a liberator).

Um, no. Think about it; we'll use your Iraq example, since eating vegetables is more of a health issue than a moral one.

Does anyone want someone else to come into their home and level it? Of course not, thus, it is an immoral action. It's when people start making up addendums and exceptions to the Golden Rule (like, "Well, I wouldn't want to be invaded, but those people probably want us to invade them!") that the waters get unnecessarily muddy.

Re:permissions

[Vitriol Angst]

THIS a thousand times.

IF the internet had a "punch in face" button, I'd be pressing it a few times for the next person who tries to debate torture, spying and why we shouldn't be pushing green tech yesterday. There's debatable points, but some things aren't up for debate.

The NSA is doing the wrong thing, and it isn't even after bad guys -- it's clear they were on the path of control and a lot of their data was going to be used for Corporate Espionage. Stop pretending that the CIA and these other three-letter companies haven't gone well past their original purpose and into the deep end. The number of people doing the wrong thing doesn't justify doing the wrong thing -- they just have a lot of cover and finger pointing exercises.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

The barriers to entry for whistleblowing are so great and self-selecting for GOOD PEOPLE that I think your point that "automagically" isn't good is moot.

Can you name any bad guy whisteblowers? I only know heroes. There are howwever, a boatload of cowards, nihilists and jackboots with the opinion "let's suspect they are bad until proven otherwise."

A "badguy" whistleblower usually attempts to steal information and profit. But we don't call them whistle blowers. We call them scam artists. If you have all that information and you give it away for *free* at the risk of your entire life and/or well being, likely the reason is because you sincerely believe that what you are telling is important. That doesn't always make it right, but it is a lot more likely than not, in my opinion.

Re:permissions

[Nyder]

you want to be a morally just person? Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

That logic can be used to argue both sides of almost anything, from making kids eat their veggies to invading Iraq (if you convince yourself you'll be greeted as a liberator).

Ya, and you can use math to make it seem like anything is possible. What is your point?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

So a masochist would be allowed to hurt other people?

Re:permissions

[10101001 10101001]

HE stole and released all sorts of documents. Some showing bad things the NSA was doing, but many just showing the NSA doing their job and containing information that ruined all sorts of operations.

You mean all those operations where the NSA was spying on allies and enlisting other allies to their aid? Yea, I guess technically that's the NSA's "job". But, you know, perhaps it shouldn't be?

You can't trust that he won't do the same again. Sure, he might find and tell people about something one of your accountants was doing wrong ... but thats only by accident and in the process, he'll have told the world your business strategy for the next 3 years.

Great analogy there. Because God knows that people knowing your business strategy for the next 3 years will ruin you. Oh, right, that'll come out in 3 years time anyways. Meanwhile, back in NSA land, operations that are decades old remain classified because the NSA doesn't want to acknowledge its past "job" activities--ie, that we spy on heads of state today is because we did in the past so to show we did in the past confirms we do it today. Any way you spin it, the NSA never wants to let anyone in the public know what it does because it fears to do so would "[ruin] all sorts of operations".

Well, golly, if we let the NSA follow through with that, then they can be wholly corrupt and we have to rely upon the few safeguards, those in Congress or the President, to do their job and actually stop the NSA. And what did we find out from Snowden? The Congress and the President are complicit in letting the NSA run amuck because, presumably, they care too much about letting the NSA do it's job that it'll forgo pointing out any one of its misdeeds. In effect, the NSA holds the rest of the US Government hostage and is above inspection. If the only sort of way to in any fashion resolve this hostage situation is to "[ruin] all sorts of operations" run by the NSA, then it's worth it. That Congress nor the President were willing to do that shows them to be spineless. That you should decry Snowden's acts doesn't speak too highly of you, either.

PS - Beyond the grandstanding by our allies, have there been any actual harmful effects from "[ruining] all sorts of operations"? Because, you know, NSA operations are not meant to be an end unto themselves. So, their ruin isn't inherently a bad thing. And, honestly, if neither Congress nor the President will reign in the NSA and the only way to punish the US (through the NSA) for its actions are through some sort of international sanction, then truth be told it's the NSA, not Snowden, and Congress and the President that has brought to bare those sanctions upon us (and to an extent the international community). Really, though, I'd like to see some specific point that could level actual blame upon Snowden rather than vague details. But, then, I imagine you don't have any because, as above, only the journalists are the ones with any details so only they would know and honestly that only they know almost assures that your claim couldn't be true.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

A whist-blower is not someone who like to share your data, it is someone who can't bear all the wrongdoing you/your company are doing that he don't see other way to make you stop doing it than showing it to the world hoping that you will change. Generally they are people who have a high level of moral integrity.

I speak with first-hand experience. We had a 'whistle blower' who had reported negative info on our company to a regulatory agency. Company was afraid to fire him, but had to find something for him to do. He reported to me for a while after that, and basically fucked up a project I was working on. He had decided that equipment he was TECHNICIAN for was not properly engineered or installed - went straight over me to our VP with his accusations (our VP called me into his office and showed me his email with all his "documented evidence", and claims that I was willfully negligent.) Threaten to report to yet another outside agency. All this did was stall my project for about 2 months. Turned out, he didn't know what he was talking about (big surprise.) He had an over-warped sense of right and wrong that he projected onto EVERYTHING. Company did eventually fire him for cause. Anyway, this is what I observed - Sorry for the AC post.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

That's retarded. I'm not going to treat 8-year-olds like they're 35.

Re:permissions

[timeOday]

There actually were quite a few Iraqis who opposed Hussein, and many of them did want us to invade You can read about them. Naturally the pro-invasion movement here gave the Iraqi opposition lots of attention, and they tried to convince us that most Iraqis were silently on their side (supporting their case with lies at times). The Kurds hated Hussein so much that there had been sporadic civil war in Iraq for decades, they wanted the government of Iraq off their backs enough to fight and die for it.

Re:permissions

[Christoph]

Caring / avoiding harm, and equity/justice are universal morals (care about others, don't hurt them, and be just and equitable to others).

Humans and primates have these values ingrained in them. When people violate them, they feel guilty (sociopaths are pathological because they violate them without guilt).

Other universal morals, like group loyalty, are usually subordinate to these main two. That is, you should not harm lots of outsiders unfairly out of blind loyalty to your own group.

"Do unto others" is much too simple, but I think it's intended to suggest care/avoid harm and equity/justice.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

As a exhibitionist who's also a voyeur, I couldn't agree more. Now if you'd just open the curtains a bit more...

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

All well and good, but you still haven't answered the fundamental question: would you want some other nation and their government to invade your homeland and blow it 3/4 of the way to shit?

Side note: I get the feeling, had those Iraqi people who wanted us to invade actually known what the repercussions would be (loss of life, introduction of terrorism, destruction of infrastructure, etc.), they would have kept their mouths shut.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

You might build your argument on something other than a fucking lie.

Re:permissions

[Ravaldy]

The way I see it is, if you had you family killed by say "a terrorist" and the NSA told you: "we could have prevented that attack if we were allowed to tap in". You would have a completely different view of the whole issue and would consider Snowden to be a hold back towards American family's security.

On the flip side you could be the 22 year old paranoid tech savvy guy that cares so much about his privacy that Snowden is a hero.

So who is right? The answer is nobody. It's a split debate and some will see data tapping as a good thing and some as a bad thing.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

"Do unto others" is much too simple, but I think it's intended to suggest care/avoid harm and equity/justice.

I actually came up with a second cardinal rule that pretty much shores (sp?) up the shortcomings of the first, but for the life of me can't remember how it goes... I'll call that a consequence of rarely being put into morally questionable circumstances.

If it does come to mind I'll let you know.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is cool for you to let the taliban kill your daughter for going to school because he himself would want you to kill his daughter for going to school (if he didn't discover it first.)

Good call...

If you want to discuss universal ethics, try reading Universally Preferable Behavior (I think it is called UPB: A proof of universal moral ethics.)

I don't agree with everything in there, but it makes much more sense than your noise.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

HE stole

No, he didn't. He copied them. The rest of your post is a transparent attempt at personal assassination. We're past that, since quite some time. Try to keep up.

Re:permissions

[AchilleTalon]

I suppose your last sentence is adding some credibility to your point. Can't you find more insults to spite? I find it short, maybe you are lazy today?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Give him good bodyguards to keep the CIA kidnapping / death squads at bay.

Re:permissions

[nblender]

"I treat my shareholders the way I would want to be treated. I extract the maximum amount of revenue from my customers while giving them as little value as possible so as to keep my margins as high as possible and stay just on this side of 'legal' so as to give my shareholders the maximum return for their investment"...

oops, Now I'm now treating my customers the way I would want to be treated as a customer... What to do?

Re:permissions

[khallow]

Morals are not universal.

Oh, the fuck they aren't.

I'm getting pretty fed up with people excusing fucked up behavior by claiming, 'waaah, but morals are hard!'

Being hard is not even remotely the same as being universal. The earlier poster was correct.

The classic example is the person who knows best. Because then there's no issue with them imposing their moral views on you. They are treating you exactly like they would want to be treated, if they were as much a bitter clinger or whatever as you. And it's infamous how little the people who know best agree with each other.

Re:permissions

[Uberbah]

Sorry to say that, but a whistleblower isn't automagically a good guy with high moral and integrity. You just don't know.

If Snowden was a guy with dubious morals and integrity, why didn't he sell the information he possessed to a foreign government instead of releasing it to the public? He could be sitting in his own mansion in North Korea, with blackjack and hookers, instead of constantly looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

Re:permissions

[Uberbah]

So it is cool for you to let the taliban kill your daughter for going to school because he himself would want you to kill his daughter for going to school (if he didn't discover it first.)

Good call...

I don't agree with everything in there, but it makes much more sense than your noise.

Says the guy making an utterly moranic Taliban analogy. Would you want to be killed for going to school? No? Then your comparison is nothing more than "noise" to begin with.

Re:permissions

[Bucc5062]

"Who exactly gets the absolute right to decide what's ultimately "wrongdoing" as opposed to just "secret"?"

The society we live in with laws for starters.

Your comment really does not make sense. Some guy works for the Mob. The mod just loves what it does, traffic in drugs, extortion, prostitution, and the occasional killing. They feel they are just "doing good". A fellow working in the mob stats to think "hey, what they are doing is in fact "not all right", because we are breaking laws, hurting and killing people. Thus he gathers incriminating evidence and turns it over to the proper authorities (one's that have not been corrupted). In the same instance he is labeled a hero and a stool pigeon, shunned by those who know him for fear of reprisal, squeezed out and thrown away by the "good guys".

And we wonder why more people don't speak up.

In the case of the NSA, What has been reveled shows that the Agency did lie, did break the law, did act outside the even loose legal requirements asked for by "The People". Snowden's actions only shine the light on that which was "wrong" by the standards set by our society. My own feeling is that more information will continue to be presented as long as Congress continues to look the other way and secretly allow the NSA t o spy on the world.

Re:permissions

[Uberbah]

That's retarded. I'm not going to treat 8-year-olds like they're 35.

So, you're some kind of jerk then.

Re:permissions

[green is the enemy]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

Slight correction: Act in a way that is not harmful to the rest of society.

This requires a bit more consideration, but summarizes most of morality more accurately in my opinion.

Re:permissions

[Uberbah]

There actually were quite a few Iraqis who opposed Hussein, and many of them did want us to invade You can read about them

If Obama had dumped mustard gas on OWS protests, maybe. Or if the angry American ex-pats supporting an invasion were looking to sink their hooks into the economy and political establishment after the invasion.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

snowden ALL=(ALL) ALL

Don't worry, we have an audit trail!

ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
ftfy

(Captcha: extras)

Re:permissions

[timeOday]

Iagree overall, but The Iraq War Was a Good Idea, If You Ask the Kurds.

Anyways, any sensible interpretation of the Golden Rule re-interprets it to treat others as they wish to be treated in preference to how you like to be treated, if you happen to know how their preferences are not yours. I.e. don't take a vegetarian out for steaks.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

"I treat my shareholders the way I would want to be treated. I extract the maximum amount of revenue from my customers while giving them as little value as possible so as to keep my margins as high as possible and stay just on this side of 'legal' so as to give my shareholders the maximum return for their investment"...

oops, Now I'm now treating my customers the way I would want to be treated as a customer... What to do?

Stop smoking crack?

Are you seriously trying to say that there's no way to run a profitable business and still be morally just? There is - it's called 'not being a greedy fuck who cares more about money than people,' and it's actually really, really easy to do... if you're not a greedy fuck, anyway. There's nothing moral about putting profits over people; not to mention, you've failed to apply the rule to all parties involved - if the shareholders weren't so greedy, the company wouldn't be compelled to be so greedy, and the customers would get a decent product for a decent price.

For examples, see how Sam Walton ran his retail business, or check into Henry Ford's policies regarding employee treatment.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

Morals are not universal.

Oh, the fuck they aren't.

I'm getting pretty fed up with people excusing fucked up behavior by claiming, 'waaah, but morals are hard!'

Being hard is not even remotely the same as being universal. The earlier poster was correct.

The classic example is the person who knows best. Because then there's no issue with them imposing their moral views on you. They are treating you exactly like they would want to be treated, if they were as much a bitter clinger or whatever as you. And it's infamous how little the people who know best agree with each other.

You're talking about either liars, who are amoral, or sociopaths, who I already exempted.

FWIW, nobody knows what's best for me but me.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

Slight correction: Act in a way that is not harmful to the rest of society.

This requires a bit more consideration, but summarizes most of morality more accurately in my opinion.

Morality is personal; it has nothing to do with society, other than the fact that personal morals affect how people interact with each other.

To that end, if everyone treated everyone else the way they wanted to be treated, there would be no societal harm. If you disagree, please provide some sort of example.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

Think of it this way:

- We don't want our country invaded and blown up, so we shouldn't invade other countries and blow them up.

- I'd wager that Saddam Hussein probably wouldn't be keen on being tortured, dismembered, murdered, etc., so if he had been a moral person, he wouldn't have treated the Kurds so poorly, and they wouldn't have wanted us to invade.

That's the problem, I think: most people seem to have trouble applying The Rule universally.

Anyways, any sensible interpretation of the Golden Rule re-interprets it to treat others as they wish to be treated in preference to how you like to be treated, if you happen to know how their preferences are not yours. I.e. don't take a vegetarian out for steaks.

Sigh... boy do I tire of explaining apparently simple concepts...

For one thing, it's not amoral to invite a person to a steak dinner, regardless of what their eating preference is; granted, if you know they're a vegan beforehand, then it is a dick move, but not amoral, because A) it causes no harm, and B) you're not treating them in a way that you would not appreciate being treated (not a vegan myself, but I wouldn't be offended in the least if one invited me to their favorite non-meat-serving establishment).

Conversely, forcing a vegan to eat steak would be amoral, because you would not appreciate it if someone forced you to eat something you refused to eat.

FWIW, I really shouldn't complain, considering the mental gymnastics some folks perform to justify things that actually do cause harm, like wars and racism.

Re:permissions

[green is the enemy]

You might be right. What I was referring to might not be "morality," but more closely related to "ethics." The definitions for these are not strict. Some examples of why treating everyone like you want yourself to be treated is a bit iffy:

Some people like questionable things. It's not a good idea to treat others as if they like the same things.

There are difficult moral choices where harming someone is actually beneficial to society at large. Snowden's leaks are an example, but there are far more extreme examples like wars. Whose shoes do you place yourself in to make this decision? Considering the greater society is inevitable.

Re:permissions

[rmstar]

I do not agree with this simplistic view. The guy may think you are evil and decide to share your data, it is all left to his own appreciation and judgement. A single guy may destroy a lot of other guys because he believes it is the right thing to do.

The solution of this riddle is that you cannot judge without context. Snowden, for example, betrayed the NSA. Judging by the information he uncovered, he is obviously a very good guy. A real hero. There is really very little to discuss here.

In some sense, your data is better in the hands of the NSA than in the hands of a free-electron you don't know really what he is thinking and cannot predict what he will do with it..

Sometimes yes, sometimes not. If what you want people who just follow orders without having a concience - well, that doesn't say much good about you.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

All well and good, but you still haven't answered the fundamental question: would you want some other nation and their government to invade your homeland and blow it 3/4 of the way to shit?

If that's the only way to get rid of Obama, Biden, Boehner, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, and company, it might be worth it.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no chemistry involved in parsing the concept. It's just that the sociopath's software is inadequate for the task. Like, for example, a server that would run MS Windows.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

You might be right. What I was referring to might not be "morality," but more closely related to "ethics." The definitions for these are not strict. Some examples of why treating everyone like you want yourself to be treated is a bit iffy:

Some people like questionable things. It's not a good idea to treat others as if they like the same things.

In statistics those people are called 'outliers,' because they fall outside spec. Most of those people understand that their choices are against the norm of human psychology, and thus can adjust their interpretation of The Rule appropriately; the ones that can't, or won't, are sociopaths, and thus excluded from the count.

There are difficult moral choices where harming someone is actually beneficial to society at large. Snowden's leaks are an example, but there are far more extreme examples like wars.

OK, so the Snowden's leak example: I can imagine ol' Ed asking himself, "Would I want my tax dollars to pay for my own government to break its own laws and cause harm to my fellow citizens, loved ones included?" Obviously the answer is no, so he did what he thought was morally just - expose the governments crimes. However, if the government were morally just, there would have been no illegal surveillance for Snowden to expose.

Speaking of war, the aggressor is never morally just.

Whose shoes do you place yourself in to make this decision?

My own. Who else's point of view would I know to make the decision from?

Considering the greater society is inevitable.

Sorry, don't agree with that; IMO, doing much more than asking yourself that Golden question is just an attempt to rationalize bad behavior.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I see it is, if you had you family killed by say "a terrorist" and the NSA told you: "we could have prevented that attack if we were allowed to tap in". You would have a completely different view of the whole issue and would consider Snowden to be a hold back towards American family's security.

There hasn't been a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11.

Do you think it's because no terrorist organizations want to?

Re:permissions

[maxwell demon]

FWIW, nobody knows what's best for me but me.

Really? Say there is some poisoned food, but you don't know that it is poisoned, and you are hungry. But someone else does.

According to your claim, that other person should not stop you from eating that stuff, because after all, you know best what is good for you.

OK, now you will say "ah, but that's just a lack of knowledge, if I knew what is in that food, I'd certainly decide not to eat it." So let's slightly modify the situation:

You know quite well that there's cyanide in the food, but you believe cyanide would be harmless. The other person knows quite well that cyanide will kill you. So should that other person still stop you?

OK, let's modify again: The person doesn't know that there's cyanide in the food, but only firmly believes it. Should she still prevent your from eating it?

OK, make another slight change: She doesn't believe that there's cyanide in the food, but she believes that God will throw you in hell if you eat that food. Should she still prevent you from eating it?

Now I'm pretty sure that in the first scenario you'd say "prevent" (thus violating your own rule), and in the last scenario you would say "not prevent". But where would you make the switch, and why?

Things are simply not as simple as you want them to make.

Re:permissions

[green is the enemy]

Snowden's thinking was more complicated than this. He also considered the harm his actions will cause to innocent bystanders and to himself, obviously.

It's kind of similar to the reasoning of revolutionaries: do we break a brutal regime and start a civil war that will result in many innocent casualties, or do we continue to obey the current regime? How do you apply your simple rule here? Most of the more difficult moral decision arise when confronting the morally unjust people that hold a lot of power. These people won't go away just by wishing that everyone obey one simple moral rule.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

FWIW, nobody knows what's best for me but me.

Really? Say there is some poisoned food, but you don't know that it is poisoned, and you are hungry. But someone else does.

According to your claim, that other person should not stop you from eating that stuff, because after all, you know best what is good for you.

Oh, come now. You know as well as I do that is a ridiculous non-sequitur; hell, in your next couple of sentences you pretty much call yourself out on it!

OK, now you will say "ah, but that's just a lack of knowledge, if I knew what is in that food, I'd certainly decide not to eat it." So let's slightly modify the situation:

You know quite well that there's cyanide in the food, but you believe cyanide would be harmless. The other person knows quite well that cyanide will kill you. So should that other person still stop you?

That other person would have to ask themselves, "If I was about to eat something that would kill me, and someone else knows that I shouldn't, would I want that person to tell me about it?"

The Golden Rule still applies.

OK, let's modify again: The person doesn't know that there's cyanide in the food, but only firmly believes it. Should she still prevent your from eating it?

Is that something you would want someone else to do to you? Because that's your answer. Personally, I wouldn't be poisoning other people's food to begin with, because I'm not an amoral asshole.

OK, make another slight change: She doesn't believe that there's cyanide in the food, but she believes that God will throw you in hell if you eat that food. Should she still prevent you from eating it?

Well, for starters, she should ask herself the Golden Question.

Secondly, if I'm the one who's got the food, how is the other person's decision on whether or not to do the moral thing my responsibility? In your attempts to negate the Golden Rule, I fear you may have lost track of your own train of thought.

Now I'm pretty sure that in the first scenario you'd say "prevent" (thus violating your own rule), and in the last scenario you would say "not prevent". But where would you make the switch, and why?

And where does this nonsense come from? At what point does "treat other people the way you want to be treated" become a bad thing, outliers and sociopaths aside?

Things are simply not as simple as you want them to make.

Yea, actually they are. Stop trying to rationalize bad behavior.

Re:permissions

[CanHasDIY]

The ultimate point is this: If everyone obeyed the Golden Rule, there would be no moral questions to be answered. Yes, I know that's not how things actually work, but that's not the point I'm making. It never has been.

However, I will state this: Just because other people are dicks and do evil, amoral things, does not give anyone else an excuse to follow suit.

Re:permissions

[Flere Imsaho]

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated. Excluding true sociopaths who are chemically unable to parse the concept, yes, morality really is that simple.

Remind me to stay away from BDSM fetishists...

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you like getting blowjobs? How about giving them?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "having a backbone". You should try it sometime.

Captcha: posture

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

... people start making up addendums and exceptions ...

Yes, but that's the point. "You hate the same things we do" works to a point but still allows terrorism and gay-bashing. We make addendums and and exceptions because you are not the same as us and we choose exceptions that are convenient to us. To phrase it more simply, "I don't mind and you don't matter". You can't bypass human greed and laziness.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

True. From a spiritual standpoint, it's all dependent on the maturity of the soul, and the necessary experiences each soul needs to experience to further evolve into self-realization, before merging back into the void.

It's simplistic to view ignorant people as evil. Evilness is usually just dumbness, immaturity and hurtfulness in disguise.
Good and evil is the illusion. Wisdom and ignorance is the relative Reality. Wise people abandon absolutes until the very last moment before merging back into the void.

Captcha: hooked
*grin* ;-)

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Morals are not necessarily wisdom. Wise people abandon absolutes, morals and sometimes even ethics. It's too linear for practical reality. They're all too theoretic, with terrible results in practice.

Wise people do acknowledge Consequences. However, the truly wise does not necessarily assume they know it all before it happens, and thus also abandon notions of consequences when non-linear and spherical thinking is what's called for, also called intuition.

What logic cannot describe, maybe poetry can (made for this, and only this occation, at this very moment):
Experience is the field in which intuition may grow.
The best intuition comes from the best intention.
The best intention comes from listening, not by speaking.
The best speech comes from the one who listens the most.
The best listener is the one who observes with abandon.
The best observer is the one who abandon objectivity and objectification.
The best thoughts are the subjective ones.
The best subjective, is the one with the highest and best intention, for everyone and everything.
The highest intention comes from the source intuition.
Only in silence can true realization inspire.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

IF the internet had a "punch in face" button, I'd be pressing it a few times for the next person who tries to debate torture

Now that's funny

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

" treat every other person the way you want to be treated"
sigh. I like how you assume everyone want to be treated the same way.
The idea of morality was shot down over 100 years ago. See Kant, for starters

No, morality is a lot more complex.

Maybe you mean reciprocity?

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

"Does anyone want someone else to come into their home and level it?
First off, you raised it from invasion to 'level it'. stop changing the parameters.
Secondly: If we were invaded by another force, I would like out allies to come and help us, even if it mean fighting in our streets.

And buy avoiding the veggie question, you prove our point.

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

"would you want some other nation and their government to invade your homeland and blow it 3/4 of the way to shit?"
that depends. From what?

I lie how you think people you disagree with are stupid and didn't think about that. They are well aware of the consequences.

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

"Sigh... boy do I tire of explaining apparently simple concepts.."
That is what we call irony.
Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Criticisms_and_responses_to_criticisms
then this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
then read Kant.

Your example of morality it flat out wrong.

"A) it causes no harm"
irrelevant. It can cause no harm and not be moral, it can cause harm and be moral.

You seem to be in a tautology
I can show you example that are moral but violate the golden rule, but you refused to acknowledge them as moral becasue they aren't the golden rule.
.

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

So simple minded.
He is saying there are many situation where life involved more then two people, often wishing to be treated differently.

IF you first response to an example is to pick apart the example, it's likely you don't know what's going on.

"Walton leased the space mainly to preempt his competitor from expanding"
How is that moral?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

People who don't fall into you narrow definition are liars or sociopaths.
Do you even know what you are saying?

Re:permissions

[geekoid]

So it was immoral to be against slavery in the south?

Re:permissions

[khallow]

You're talking about either liars, who are amoral, or sociopaths, who I already exempted.

Then you just excluded a lot of people, perhaps even everyone, depending on your definitions of "liar" and "sociopath".

Re:permissions

[Guest316]

>I'm getting pretty fed up with people excusing fucked up behavior by claiming, 'waaah, but morals are hard!'
He didn't say "hard," he said "not universal." I know, the words look pretty similar, it's an easy mistake to make.

>Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.
That always gets me slapped. :/

Re:permissions

[green is the enemy]

It's not immoral to be against slavery. Freeing the slaves dramatically improves their lives in the long term. Taking the slaves (property) away from the slave owners punishes the morally corrupt (the slave owners would not want to be slaves themselves). Is there really a moral problem here? The only issue is what happens to the freed slaves in the short term. They suffer because they have no possessions or the necessary skills to integrate into the existing society. This short term - long term tradeoff is pretty common in moral decisions.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

They fucking aren't. Try traveling around the world some, you'll find that many things you believe to be universal just aren't. I like it when people ask my name. In some cultures (I don't mean Botswana, I mean in western Europe), it can come across as rude to ask what your name is when you meet someone.

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

Even this is not universal. What do you do if you find money on the street? Some places the right thing to do is to turn it into the police, to try to get it back to the rightful owner. Other places people treat it like a gift from God.

What if you know someone who seems cool, but they work for PETA, and they discover that you have a fur coat given to you by your grandfather? I mean seriously, this could go on all day ....

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about either liars, who are amoral

Show me someone who says that not once in their life that they lied, and I'll show you a liar. You have the moral outrage of a 10-year old that just discovered that Santa isn't real and you don't always have things turn out happily ever after.

or sociopaths, who I already exempted.

How kind of you.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

As this is in regards to morality from the US to Russia... I imagine from your tone that you are American. How many Russians do you know? I have many friends from both nationalities, but I would not be so flippant as to suggest that people of either country have the same worldview.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

The ultimate point is this: If everyone obeyed the Golden Rule, there would be no moral questions to be answered. Yes, I know that's not how things actually work, but that's not the point I'm making. It never has been.

Well, it's how it works when the stork brings kids.

Morality must spring from the fact that at one point we are all children who make mistakes and don't know any better, and that at one point we all die. In the middle we hope to do some good in this world. Your concept of the "Golden Rule" ignores this life-cycle completely.

Your version of morality seems to be religion (probably of your parents, though perhaps in a way that you are not even aware), with all references to God scraped out.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

So killing and eating an animal is moral because you'd like it done to you ?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you just excluded a lot of people, perhaps even everyone, depending on your definitions of "liar" and "sociopath".

Excluding a lot of people is the good moral thing to do.

How could Snowden become a whistle blower if he did not have the conviction to exclude most of the his collages and employers and government, deeming them as corrupt? How could the Tea Party stand up against the majority of Congress if they don't have the balls to excluding many of them (including their fellow Republicans, deeming them as RINO) and keep up the fight?

Even in the business world (where morals take a backseat to profits), a good employer knows when he has to exclude people by firing them or not hiring them in the first place. Good employees also know who they should be friends with/suck up to.

The GP is right that there are universal morals, he's just got the wrong moral. The universal moral isn't treat others like you would want to be treated. The universal moral is "exclude those you don't like", for whatever reason

The socialist excludes "greedy rich people". The capitalist excludes "entitled leeches". The libertarian excludes threats to their liberty. The authoritarian excludes those who threaten their authority. etc

Re:permissions

[khallow]

The GP is right that there are universal morals, he's just got the wrong moral. The universal moral isn't treat others like you would want to be treated. The universal moral is "exclude those you don't like", for whatever reason

Even if that were true, and it isn't, not everyone dislikes the same people. Second, "exclusion" is overly broad with a vast range of possible behaviors. I might "exclude" you by mildly disagreeing with what you say. Pol Pot might "exclude" you by dumping your corpse in a field.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Morals are not universal.

Oh, the fuck they aren't.

Okay, so you mean to say that morals are universal, not personal? I'll play along for a moment....

Morality is personal; it has nothing to do with society, other than the fact that personal morals affect how people interact with each other.

Dude, I think your account has been hacked.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

There are these little things called laws which cannot violate this thing called the Constitution. They don't "think" they are doing what's right. They are doing what they think they can get away with, knowing full-well that it is wrong.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if that were true, and it isn't, not everyone dislikes the same people.

Oh it is true, and not everyone disliking the same people doesn't make it less true. Even if you and I don't dislike the same people, the way to live our respective lives is still to exclude those who we don't like.

But don't take this as some false dilemma where you have to exclude somebody. You can always just don't have anybody you dislike so much that you'd exclude them. One reason I post as AC and browse at -1.

Second, "exclusion" is overly broad with a vast range of possible behaviors.

That's a feature not a bug. Morals covers a vast range of possible situations. It's just a general guideline.

I might "exclude" you by mildly disagreeing with what you say. Pol Pot might "exclude" you by dumping your corpse in a field.

And I (and other people) can exclude you and Pol Pot back. Exclusion isn't free of consequences. One consequence of Pol Pot's exclusionary actions is that people exclude him back, including the war which ended his regime. Furthermore, many people have become vigilant in making sure anybody else who thinks like him will get excluded, nipping them in the bud.

All this falls within the framework of exclusion.

Re:permissions

[ThomasMcA]

The Golden Rule is wrong. Although the concept is valid, the implementation is wrong. People are different, and not everyone wants to be treated the same way that YOU do. The Platinum Rule is better - treat each person the way THAT PERSON wants to be treated.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

GP writes:

Remember one rule: treat every other person the way you want to be treated.

And you write:

THIS a thousand times.

IF the internet had a "punch in face" button, I'd be pressing it a few times for the next person who tries to debate torture, spying and why we shouldn't be pushing green tech yesterday. There's debatable points, but some things aren't up for debate.

Seems as if you don't agree with GP once - "a thousand times" is a stretch.

Reality already has a "'punch in face' button" called "your fist". You want something on the internet so you can replicate what reality has without facing the consequence of getting punched back or going to jail.

Contrary to what GP states, morality is hard. That is not too say it is hopelessly subjective (it may be objective or it may be subjective, but not hopelessly so). One obvious example to GP are sadists and psychopaths or even martyrs. I wouldn't want to be treated the way many people want themselves treated.

Neither would you unless your internet punch thing works both ways.

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Sow... you're saying they don't have to worry if they have nothing to hide?

Re:permissions

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in a fantasy world where the Huns, Mongols, and Nazi Germany never existed, don't you?

Wow, harsh.

[T.E.D.]

So he hasn't even been arrested yet, and his punishement has already started?

Re:Wow, harsh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, ouch. Apparently being on the opposite side of the world from the US doesn't save you from enhanced interrogation techniques.

I wonder if they'll let him go if he cracks, or if Russia's just amused by his anguished screams.

Re:Wow, harsh.

[Thanshin]

"IF" he cracks?

Man, I know he's a pretty tough guy but let's be realistic.

Re:Wow, harsh.

[martinQblank]

Seriously. Gitmo sounds better.

His new employer

[qbast]

He will be tech support for ... FSB

Re:His new employer

[auric_dude]

Edward Snowden to start work at Russian website Former NSA contractor who was granted temporary asylum in June finds job providing support for unnamed site http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/31/edward-snowden-work-russian-website-nsa-contractor, must be true as it is reported in TheGuarian. . .

Re:His new employer

[intermodal]

I found myself wondering, which website? Pravda or Izvestia?

Re:His new employer

[tinkerton]

For the NSA actually. Since they're sacking all their sysadmins

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/09/snowden_nsa_to_sack_90_per_cent_sysadmins_keith_alexander/

Undisclosed web site

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe www.fsb.ru?

Thanks to him

[Anonymous Coward]

The world now is a better and safer place.

.
.
.

OH WAIT!

Re:Thanks to him

[Opportunist]

He's just the messenger. Whether it gets safer or not is up to us now.

Re:Thanks to him

[gmuslera]

Knowing that there is a ticking bomb under your feet don't automatically disable it, you are not safer than before. But let you take measures to try to be safe in the future, before it explodes in your face. For making the world better you must know where it is broken.

Re:Thanks to him

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows where its broken:

1 - ) The World's Economic System
2 - ) The USA Imperialism
3 - ) The invention of Religions

Re:Thanks to him

[Anonymous Coward]

He's just the messenger. Whether it gets safer or not is up to us now.

Oh, sure. Up to us. Somehow. Way to skirt! So now we can all... I dunno, send good vibes out to the cosmos and wait until they come down to undo a power structure built up over the span of the existence of entire civilizations! At least now we can be specifically miserable while we make no progress on that!

Hey, maybe if we all clap our hands, Tinkerbell will come back to life, too!

Re:Thanks to him

[dchinu]

3 - ) The invention of Religions

Agreed on two but talk about religion in /. is a attributed misnomer by contemporary culture here Broke one's Nose does not mean the idea of facial identity is broken

Re:Thanks to him

[Anonymous Coward]

That Line break is definitely broken

Re:Thanks to him

[Anonymous Coward]

"Insightful" more like "Delusional"

Re:Thanks to him

[Opportunist]

Just because the ways that can work have been outlawed (well, duh...) doesn't mean you have to ignore them.

Now *that's* punishment

[Chris Mattern]

He should've just let them shoot him.

A bunch of lying liars who lie

[Dishwasha]

A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency, unless Edward Snowden has evidence that we were cooperating the entire time at which point we will clam up and not be available for comment."

There, fixed that for you unnamed Yahoo spokesperson.

Re:A bunch of lying liars who lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent off-topic, we already have another story today for that. Troll is also acceptable, as the poster is completely incorrect in regards to the facts of the story. Check ArsTechnica for the source article.

Re:A bunch of lying liars who lie

[Jason Levine]

What I took away from the Yahoo comment was how it was worded vs the Snowden revelation. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency." However, the Snowden leak said that the cables to the data centers were tapped. The NSA wouldn't need access to the physical servers if they could just grab a copy of all data heading into and out of the data center. Now, this could have been done without Yahoo knowing or it could have been done with their help (but without giving access to the data center to allow for plausible deniability should the story get out).

Re:A bunch of lying liars who lie

[Uberbah]

Spot on, you have to read between the weasel words. Like when some security state tool is testifying before Congress and is asked if the government is doing xyz, and he responds with "no, not under this program...."

Re:A bunch of lying liars who lie

[Anonymous Coward]

What I took away from the Yahoo comment was how it was worded vs the Snowden revelation. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency." However, the Snowden leak said that the cables to the data centers were tapped. The NSA wouldn't need access to the physical servers if they could just grab a copy of all data heading into and out of the data center. Now, this could have been done without Yahoo knowing or it could have been done with their help (but without giving access to the data center to allow for plausible deniability should the story get out).

Unless you have access to those Snowden files, the only thing I have heard about possible tapping in of these companies lines is from security experts and or former surveillance employees that have made a "suggestion" that the NSA "could" have done a tap. But they also pointed out that these tech companies have possible security protocols that would alert them to such a thing.

While it isn't a secret these tech companies where all willing to just give out whatever the NSA wanted, with out any FISA letters, it would seem that any break into there data centers from a tap in would be noticed. And reading the article yesterday 10/30 on /., suggested the NSA was netting info from foreign servers which are heavily linked to US data servers. And I find that another loophole or back door into the NSA just taking whatever it wants without citizens or what little oversight they have from government jumping up and down about domestic (actual US stored information) spying.

I am not sure if these latest report from various media outlets is actually true or if US based news papers are trying there own PR spin either from government pressure or because they all heavily rely on these companies for AD revenue, and whatever else, or because they fear lawsuits from these tech companies for defamation. And this is the very problem with the media you never know what "there" motives really are. Because it isn't in the interest of telling the truth or reporting things like this would have been great 10-15 years ago. Writing rumored babble isn't something the have shied away from, despite what they say or claim about having "sources" to confirm it happened..

Poor guy,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, he's got to go to work.
But who would have thought that a contractor would be able to be called a whistle-blower? Or that a snooping agency would have been able be snooping? And that one or the other would be abusing the power of office. Or that the contractors could have two bosses. I wounder...

Re:Poor guy,

[Anonymous Coward]

"But who would have thought that a contractor would be able to be called a whistle-blower?"

What is that supposed to be telling anyone?

Taken on face value, this says "people who have evidence of a crime will be called whistleblowers when blowing the whistle on the crime even if they're a contractor".

Well duh.

"Or that a snooping agency would have been able be snooping?"

Ah, you DO know that the NSA were not tasked with "snooping", right?

There's a reason why, for example, the CIA investigate external threats and the FBI investigate internal threats and that it is a bad thing for the CIA to be investigating internal threats EVENE THOUGH "Who would have guessed an investigation organisation would investigate, huh?"

That is because they aren't tasked with "investigate stuff". They have a remit, as do the NSA, and that they stepped outside it.

Think on the recent USA's bellicose attitude to "Chinese cyberwarfare!".

Who would have thought it? An intelligence agency trying to gather intelligence on a foreign government?

Except when it's not the USA doing it, "THIS MEANS WAR!".

Re:Poor guy,

[JeffAtl]

"Ah, you DO know that the NSA were not tasked with "snooping", right?

There's a reason why, for example, the CIA investigate external threats and the FBI investigate internal threats and that it is a bad thing for the CIA to be investigating internal threats EVENE THOUGH "Who would have guessed an investigation organisation would investigate, huh?"

That is because they aren't tasked with "investigate stuff". They have a remit, as do the NSA, and that they stepped outside it.

As you rightfully pointed out, the NSA snooping internally and sharing it with internal law enforcement are extraordinarily major issues - but that is where it ends. Everything else that Snowden revealed was espionage against the United States.

Foreign intelligence agencies have always spied and snooped so the rest of the world should drop their shocked outrage act.

Re:Poor guy,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everything else that Snowden revealed was espionage against the United States."

Nope. Espionage is defined already and what Snowden has done is NOT espionage, moron.

Re:Poor guy,

[JeffAtl]

Could you share your own personal definition of "espionage"?

idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

since the u.s. claims global jurisdiction over its citizens regardless of where they travel to or reside, and he is still one, now he's gonna have to file taxes.... that means if they don't know it yet, by april 15th, the feds will know his address... and if he doesn't file, he can then be arrested on tax evasion.. even if what he's done already ends up being legal whistleblowing.

Re:idiot

[Opportunist]

The US claims global jurisdiction over its citizens, so what? You can't always get what you want, ya know?

Re:idiot

[kav2k]

Wish I had mod points. It's both hilarious and insightful.

Re:idiot

[bobbied]

Just not all that true. The same Russians that denied extradition of Snowden from the transit lounge at the Moscow airport are not likely to agree to have him arrested and sent to the USA for tax evasion.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. They revoked his passport, he's effectively being treated as *not* being a US citizen anymore.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's not a moron he will renounce his citizenship as soon as he can find a place willing to let him join.

Re:idiot

[JeffAtl]

That doesn't strip a person of their citizenship - just the ability to travel.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

He only has to claim taxes if he makes above a certain limit. Doubtful he'll do that.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Russia hand him over to the I.R.S. and not the F.B.I?

Considering how Russia has been pushing back on the U.S. in Syria, I don't see them letting him go so easily.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

False. US Citizens are required to file an Income tax report for all income, made anywhere in the world, regardless of their country of residence if they make more than the standard deduction (less than $10k!). Additionally, they are required to submit to the financial crimes enforcement network (FINCEN) the full bank names, account numbers, and addresses for all accounts they hold when their total assets outside the US exceeds $10,000 US. If you fail to do this, you WILL be found out when FATCA is ratified next year as the IRS will withhold 30% tax automatically from all banks that don't hand the balances of all US citizens to them on a silver platter. That basically forces banks to violate the constitution of the countries they operate in by discriminating against their customers based on their country of origin.

I renounced my citizenship over this in protest.

Re:idiot

[telchine]

if he doesn't file, he can then be arrested on tax evasion

Yeah, he's wanted for international espionage. I'm sure a charge of tax evasion doesn't bother him! What are they going to threaten him with next? A speeding ticket? Jaywalking? Littering?

Re:idiot

[BitZtream]

They didn't deny extradition. They said we don't do any sort of thing like that in the transit lounge because we don't consider those people to be in our country, so its not under our jurisdiction. They simply said thats a no fly zone for any sort of activity, and we expect others to do the same in their transit lounges.

That changes the instant he left that tight little area and stepped on to 'Russian soil' so to speak.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

One doesn't have to file taxes if previous year's income does not exceed $10K. How long did he spend hiding?

Re:idiot

[bluegutang]

If he's earning less than about $100k/year, he won't have to pay or evade any US taxes. He will have to submit a tax return though.
http://taxes.about.com/od/taxhelp/a/ForeignIncome.htm

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy. It worked for Kim Dotcom.

Re:idiot

[romco]

since the u.s. claims global jurisdiction over its citizens regardless of where they travel to or reside, and he is still one, now he's gonna have to file taxes.... that means if they don't know it yet, by april 15th, the feds will know his address... and if he doesn't file, he can then be arrested on tax evasion.. even if what he's done already ends up being legal whistleblowing.

Cant he just use a PO box for his address?

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really tax evasion if you miss-spell your address?
What a strange country.

Re:idiot

[bob_super]

No it's not. It's pretty dumb, really.

  - What, exactly, is preventing him from filing? He can fill his forms (even online, maybe) and send them in. Even illegal immigrants inside the US can file taxes. Can you tell me why he wouldn't file?
  - "by april 15th, the feds will know his address" Do you actually believe they don't know it yet?

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the Russians granted him asylum, he wouldn't have left the transit lounge without it.

Re:idiot

[shutdown -p now]

I'm pretty sure they already know his address. So what? It's in Russia. Who's going to do the arresting?

Also, I would assume that, at this point, Snowden is applying for Russian citizenship. Once he gets it, he will be covered by Russian laws that flat out forbid extradition of citizens to other countries.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he's wanted for international espionage. I'm sure a charge of tax evasion doesn't bother him!

Amusement aside, the tax Snowden owes the IRS is likely zero.

It is true that all American citizens worldwide are supposed to file with the IRS.

But, if you have no US-sourced income, it is unlikely that you owe anything to the IRS.

To my surprise, there is a US-Russia tax treaty to avoid double-taxation: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/International-Businesses/Russia---Tax-Treaty-Documents

The bigger hassle is that US citizens worldwide have to declare all their bank & investment accounts to the IRS under the recent FATCA law: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-(FATCA)

Re:idiot

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Is this really a serious concern? He's already trying to be extradited, who cares if they want him on tax evasion? He's never going to have a trial to make it "legal whistleblowing" and will never be coming back to the US and is trying to get asylum in a country who won't extradite him to the US for espionage, let alone tax evasion.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

that means if they don't know it yet, by april 15th, the feds will know his address...

thats hilarious. the man just exposed the world's most advanced spying apparatus, and you don't think they know exactly where he is at this very moment? unless he has gone completely low-tech and off-the-radar, nowhere near a phone or a computer, you can be certain they are listening to him and monitoring him as a top fucking priority.

Re:idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just get tired of him and he'll have a car accident in a few years.

The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the leak

[davide marney]

Whatever Snowden did to bottle up his stolen cache of documents, it has apparently kept the entire US security apparatus at bay.

Now, THAT'S a project that would look good on an IT resume, anywhere.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Document leaker provides IT support for YOU!

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

Just encode them as illiterate, incoherent, childish ramblings and post them to Slashdot. No one will ever find them there... like looking for a needle in a haystack!

VKontakt

[Deflagro]

That's my guess. :)

Re:VKontakt

[MrNJ]

Yep. Durov offered him a job pretty much as soon as he landed in Russia

Hell Desk

[Anonymous Coward]

I can feel his pain.

Re:Hell Desk

[rvw]

I can feel his pain.

Then it's your pain, not his.

Re:Hell Desk

[Yomers]

According to initial tweet on Russian he'll be supporting one of non-government internet portals - more like system administrator, not customer support.

Re:Hell Desk

[ackthpt]

I can feel his pain.

Then it's your pain, not his.

In Soviet Russia Snowden feels your pain TOO!

Re:Hell Desk

[cold fjord]

... he'll be supporting one of non-government internet portals ...

Odd that the Russian government took a pass on hiring such talent. On the other hand, the Russians aren't stupid.

Re:Hell Desk

[Anonymous Coward]

And and and.... there's this bloody dammed article about how easy it is to socially engineer your way into a place.

Question 1: What parts of the net does the Portal link to/from?

Question 2: What happened to the Dell articles?

Question 3: Which officials use this portal?

Question 4: What is the proliferation of Tor channels through this portal?

Question 5,6,7: Russia, really? Give him a tech job?

Now, just to be clear: This post isn't about whether what he did was good or bad about whistle-blowing, but is primarily aimed at the job hiring process itself.

fyi: The first time I knew anything about Snowden was the picture. I literally skipped the headline (as websites are super dumb when it comes to phone screen size.), looked at the picture and stated "Hey, why would a sys admin be front page news?" This guy ain't a representative of whoever he is supposed to be.

Re:Hell Desk

[Anonymous Coward]

The private sector tends to pay better, but don't let facts stop your tireless tirades and obvious shilling, cold fjord. Are you still delusional enough to believe that you have any credibility?

Snowden is a patriot standing for the ideals on which the USA was founded

Indeed he is. I did you a favour by cutting off the lie part of your sentence, since it being a lie was nicely demonstrated by another poster.

You really, really should reconsider your stance, cold fjord, since you have absolutely no credibility.

Good life

[skaag]

After having lived in Russia for some 6 month cumulatively, I have this to say: Edward Snowden is going to love it.

A few reasons:

- Incredibly beautiful women
- Incredibly cool clubs and bars
- Awesome Moscow Ballet / Classical Music / Cultural Events / Arts / Museums
- McDonalds has a whole wheat bun, need I say more?

Re:Good life

[bobbied]

So, he's going to be able to get into the cool clubs, pay for the beautiful women's drinks, take them to the ballet and then to McDonald's for a whole wheat bun Big Mac on a Tech Support Technician's pay?

I don't think so... Unless tech support pays a LOT more there than it does here, only the trip to McDonald's will be happening, and I'm guessing he will be without an escort.

Re:Good life

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not sure about Moscow (which apparently is one of the most expensive cities to live in), but I remember taking a girl out in st Petersburg for $40 for the both of us, a couple of years ago. Not to the hottest venues in town to be sure, but it got us good seats at world class ballet (the Kirov, who at the time outshone the Bolshoi company), a great dinner, and drinks and dancing into the wee hours. Damn, Russia was a fun place back then.

Re:Good life

[isorox]

After having lived in Russia for some 6 month cumulatively, I have this to say: Edward Snowden is going to love it.

A few reasons:

- Incredibly beautiful women
- Incredibly cool clubs and bars
- Awesome Moscow Ballet / Classical Music / Cultural Events / Arts / Museums
- McDonalds has a whole wheat bun, need I say more?

It drops to -560 degrees in the winter. He used to live in Hawaii.

Re:Good life

[Anonymous Coward]

- Incredibly beautiful women

Every country can claim this.

- Incredibly cool clubs and bars

Like many other countries?

- Awesome Moscow Ballet / Classical Music / Cultural Events / Arts / Museums

Remove "Moscow" and you can find these in many other countries.

- McDonalds has a whole wheat bun, need I say more?

I don't eat dog food.

Re:Good life

[Anonymous Coward]

Winter gives you more wardrobe options. Plus, you can pretend you live on Hoth.

Re:Good life

[Uberbah]

So, he's going to be able to get into the cool clubs, pay for the beautiful women's drinks, take them to the ballet and then to McDonald's for a whole wheat bun Big Mac on a Tech Support Technician's pay?

Pfft. The beautiful women are going to be buying him drinks. Rich ones, too. Because while there are plenty of rich Russian men, there are very few that have brass balls of a size and magnitude to make an elephant blush a la the guy that took on Imperial America.

Re:Good life

[Anonymous Coward]

double absolute zero.
To go with the vodka of the same name.

Re:Good life

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about Moscow (which apparently is one of the most expensive cities to live in), but I remember taking a girl out in st Petersburg for $40 for the both of us, a couple of years ago. Not to the hottest venues in town to be sure, but it got us good seats at world class ballet (the Kirov, who at the time outshone the Bolshoi company), a great dinner, and drinks and dancing into the wee hours. Damn, Russia was a fun place back then.

So... ummm.... oh, come on, you know what everyone wants to know - did you get lucky?

Re:Good life

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's a true slashdotter, he will never get the problem of the cost of a night out with a hot girl anyway ;)

Re:Good life

[dunkelfalke]

Who knows. Personally I wouldn't want to live in Russia voluntarily even though I speak the language and mostly grok the culture I don't like the attitude of many Russians.

Re:Good life

[antdude]

Vodkas! :P

Re:Good life

[skaag]

You have clearly not been to Moscow...
I live in New York. The clubs in Moscow put the New York clubbing scene to shame.
And the Armitage museum in St. Petersburg rivals the Louvre in France.
And the ratio of beautiful/ugly women in Moscow is incomparable to ANY other country.

You need to actually be there to witness it, or you will never believe it.

Worked for Capone

[Overzeetop]

If the FBI can't get him, the IRS will. Nice.

Re:Worked for Capone

[dargaud]

If the FBI can't get him, the IRS will. Nice.

Happens to the best...

May not have given it ...

[gstoddart]

A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.""

Yahoo may not have given it, but it sure sounds like the NSA has done it anyway.

Would Google and Yahoo fess up if true?

[NormAtHome]

If the NSA had actually tapped the fiber between Google and Yahoo's data centers and the internet without their knowledge and this actually turned out to be true after they investigated would either company actually publicly say "After an investigation we have found the NSA has been tapping our fiber without our knowledge and we are taking steps to stop this"? I think that highly unlikely and if anything even if this was true Google and Yahoo would continue to issue denials that this had ever happened or that it was possible.

Re:Would Google and Yahoo fess up if true?

[Tokolosh]

They are prohibited from telling us that they are sharing our data with the government.

They are prohibited from telling us that they are prohibited from telling us.

We cannot sue to ask, because we cannot demonstrate that our data have been shared, because we are not allowed to know or tell that our data have been shared.

And I was hoping...

[bobbied]

I was hoping he was going to have to learn the Russian phrase for "Would you like fries with that comrade?" Not that tech support isn't punishment too, it just pays better.

His English is likely pretty good, so maybe phone support would be a good gig for him.

What is his job spec ?

[Alain Williams]

Manager of external archiving by any chance ? :-)

Wait a minute

[Provocateur]

Did he start to believe all those In Soviet Russia jokes??

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) from qualified organizations to partner with DOE and NREL in facilitating collaboration and best practices in regional stakeholder engagement. NREL plans to fund up to six Regional Resource Centers (RRCs) to carry out stakeholder engagement activities to support responsible development of land-based, distributed, and offshore wind energy in regions across the nation. Proposals are due December 5th, 2013.

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Provocateur]

He can outbid anyone on Ebay. Anyone.

Are you a bot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is completely incoherent.

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Anonymous Coward]

The Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), as part of its commitment to strengthen the nation's clean energy economy and to increase communications with the public and other stakeholders, today announced the launch of a new blog on Energy.gov.

Probably "Russia Today" (aka RT)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my guess. Any others?

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Sarten-X]

Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple!

Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google!

Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple!

Apple! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple!

Google! Google! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple! Google!

Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple!

Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Google!

Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google!

Apple! Google! Apple! Google! Google! Google! Apple!

Undetectable.

Bah. Stupid filters don't understand my intent. "Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition."

You merkins.

[Anonymous Coward]

When China wiretaps and cracks US systems, it's an act of war.

When the USA wiretaps and cracks soverign states like Germany, it's "Well, they're spies! Whadayuhexpect?".

Re:You merkins.

[bobbied]

How you see it depends on what side of the firewall you are on.

Generally, I figure that everybody that's thinking about the social and political world is going to be involved in collecting as much information as they can. They'd be stupid not too. If there is information you don't want others to know then it is YOUR responsibility to protect your information. If somebody manages to get such information from you, it's your fault.

That the NSA monitors world leaders phone calls should come as no surprise to anybody (foreign or domestic). We have done this sort of thing for centuries and have grown quite good at intercepting and deciphering communications of all sorts. Other countries are doing the same thing and many of them are quite capable of gathering information too. Some of these countries are friendly some are not. So, if you don't want your information compromised? Hide it better.

This is not to say anything about how STUPID it is to get caught spying on your friends. Never, ever, get caught spying on your friends should be in the top 10 most important rules of foreign relations. Not that you don't do it sometimes, but that you DON'T get caught doing it, ever. Also, figure that your friends are spying on you too and take the steps necessary to protect yourself and deal with it. So when you boil down all the common sense here, it means that spying on friends happens from time to time, but it should be rare. It should also NEVER be discovered.

Re:You merkins.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it bro.

Re:You merkins.

[Uberbah]

How you see it depends on what side of the firewall you are on.

But just one side has almost all the firewalls. Most of the world's communication infrastructure resides in the United States, across client states of the United States, or between client states of the United States in undersea cables.

The problem with the "everybody does it" canard is that not everyone has the same capability to spy.

Re:You merkins.

[bobbied]

China has a pretty good set of firewalls, even though they are more for controlling data accessed by their people, than keep others out..

But.. More to the point. The USA has the capacity because we have developed said capacity over many decades of working on the technology. We built it, so we use it? Is it OUR fault that others don't protect their information as well as they could? It is decidedly easier to *protect* information than it is to obtain information that's protected, so is it our fault you don't protect it well enough? Encrypt it better, don't transmit it over public networks, keep better physical control of your stuff... So, for instance, if you don't want somebody to take your picture of you in your skivvies, stay out of the front yard until fully dressed. Or if you don't want your identity stolen, don't put it in an E-mail that's not encrypted.

So I disagree that "Everybody does it" is a canard. It is a valid reason to do monitoring. That way you may find out about your enemies capacity to monitor you, know what he's up to, what his contingency plans are, who makes the decisions and most importantly how he expects you to act. It's about being able to control the situation without having to resort to overwhelming force where you put lots of people into harms way. Which is WHY we've spent trillions of dollars on this capacity, why we should keep spending on it and why we should keep using it.

In war, you need to have every advantage you can, and take advantage of every opportunity to gain an advantage when possible.

Re:You merkins.

[Uberbah]

But.. More to the point. The USA has the capacity because we have developed said capacity over many decades of working on the technology. We built it, so we use it? Is it OUR fault that others don't protect their information as well as they could? It is decidedly easier to *protect* information than it is to obtain information that's protected, so is it our fault you don't protect it well enough? Encrypt it better, don't transmit it over public networks, keep better physical control of your stuff... So, for instance, if you don't want somebody to take your picture of you in your skivvies, stay out of the front yard until fully dressed. Or if you don't want your identity stolen, don't put it in an E-mail that's not encrypted.

You could have just said "I blame the victims" and saved yourself some typing.

So I disagree that "Everybody does it" is a canard. It is a valid reason to do monitoring.

I suppose if you think that Steven Hawking vs Wladimir Kilschko is a fair fight because....well because, I suppose you could see it that way. Even if "everyone" wanted to spy on everyone, you're still going to have to deal with the disparity in capability.

Re:You merkins.

[bobbied]

The victim who doesn't do what they should to protect themselves is stupid. But we are not talking about victims of crime here.

There is a difference between what a government does and what an individual does, morally and ethically.

You grab somebody off the street when they don't want to go with you and it's kidnapping, but the government can put folks in jail and hold them.

You force somebody to pay you and seize their assets when they don't and it's stealing, but the government collects taxes.

You kill somebody on purpose and it's murder, but it's capital punishment when the government does it.

You set off a bomb in a city and kill folks, you are a terrorist, but if you are in the military dropping bombs on orders you are a solider.

Yandex?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is Yandex, they have a popular search via DuckDuckGo, and if they can upgrade their stuff (needs https on search) so we can ditch DuckDuckGo (US based) for Yandex directly, I'll happily switch.

"NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers"

Why aren't NSA attacking Microsoft Live / Hotmail? I suspect they don't need to to get whatever access they want.

Nice that the FISA court said NSA couldn't hack Google and Yahoo, so they did it under a different authority that doesn't require the FISA court.

Re:Yandex?

[mrchaotica]

My guess is Yandex, they have a popular search via DuckDuckGo, and if they can upgrade their stuff (needs https on search) so we can ditch DuckDuckGo (US based) for Yandex directly, I'll happily switch.

HTTPS on search won't help anything; the NSA surely 0wns the certificate authorities.

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[gmuslera]

The US plugged the leak, no new documents has been leaked lately, just been releasing the June documents in a timely rate. And while there are no new leakers, the government keep promising that they did not ever, is not doing, and will stop doing whatever is in this leaks, hoping that there are people with lower IQ than body temperature (in celsius) that believes them, while now there is no way to truly verify that (they probably will even release their own "leaks" to keep the illusion of that all will be legal from now on).

Anyway, for what Snowden did, (if i owned a big enough company) i would give him a good salary even for doing nothing. And if can do something useful, something that he would enjoy doing, the better.

worst IT support EVER

[drewsup]

Ed - "Hello this Edward, how can I help you today."

L User - "yes Comrad, my mouse appears not to be working anymore."

Ed - " Ok" (.Clicky- clack- clack) "just let me get root access here on your PC"...

L User- "Click"

Ed - "Hello Comrad, are you still there? I seem to have lost you..."

“[A] firestorm of controversy.”

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he didn't. He achieved nothing—not even controversy. The most he did was sacrifice a great life in exchange for an apathetic nonresponse from the American people. “Nobody can hear you. Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this.”

Well done, Snowden!

Re:“[A] firestorm of controversy.”

[rock_climbing_guy]

No, there's outrage, all right. It's just that the powers that be are trying to make you think that you're alone in your outrage.

I don't know what will ultimately come of it.

Understatement in Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

... Many of those documents proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans ...

FTFY. The released documents 'suggest' wrongdoing by the NSA in much the same way a bear eating your face off 'suggests' the presence of dangerous wildlife in the area.

His new job...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they don't tell you what site he's working for is because they don't want you to know it's hosted in Russia....It's the Obamacare site! Maybe he can get it running smoothly!

steals Russian secrets now

[peter303]

Once a thief, always a thief.

Re:steals Russian secrets now

[Anonymous Coward]

yah, and the guys who executed Mussolini, once a murderer, always a murderer, right ?

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[stiggle]

Snowden is no longer leaking docs, and hasn't since the original handover.
Its the journalists (Glen Greenwald & Laura Poitras) he handed the docs to who have been trickling out the docs.

They have stated that they have multiple copies in multiple locations and the intercept at Heathrow Airport of Glen Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, where the British confiscated USB drives containing copies of classifed materials did not hinder their access to the material.

(Who gives their partner a bunch of classified docs and then asks them to fly via one of the USA's closest allies and not expect them to get stopped?)

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Waldeinburg]

No no no, it's too intuitive that Google is 1 and Apple is 0! You should swap them!

Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/257/

Language & Accent training

[Frankie70]

He is a currently in a language & accent training class learning how to say 'This is Vladmir speaking. How may I help you?' in Russian.

In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLean

[Ancient_Hacker]

The USSR often gives jobs, usually non-cushy ones, to defectors. Lee Harvey Oswald got a job in a radio factory assembly line. I guess IT support is the modern equivalent.

No. He did not

[Anonymous Coward]

"Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though"

No. He did not.

He was a whistleblower and remains a whistleblower.

Re:No. He did not

[isorox]

"Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though"

No. He did not.

He was a whistleblower and remains a whistleblower.

He did. Initially the U.S. media were supportive of him as a whistleblower. Their owners and editors then had their briefing, and suddenly actions that were pro-american whistleblowing were anti-american spying.

So yes, he didn't change, but the media's portrayal of him did, and that's what's important.

Re:No. He did not

[Nyder]

"Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though"

No. He did not.

He was a whistleblower and remains a whistleblower.

He did. Initially the U.S. media were supportive of him as a whistleblower. Their owners and editors then had their briefing, and suddenly actions that were pro-american whistleblowing were anti-american spying.

So yes, he didn't change, but the media's portrayal of him did, and that's what's important.

Yes, the U.S. media, now there is a group that sticks up for the rights of the people over the government & corporations. And yes, I am being really fucking sarcastic when I say that. Who the fuck do you think the U.S. Media works for, and why the fuck do you think Snowden ignored them and went to the Guardian?

Re:No. He did not

[JeffAtl]

When he started revealing US intelligence secrets and methods to foreign powers he became a spy. It really is a shame as his initial actions were a good thing, he just went down the wrong path later.

Re:No. He did not

[lister king of smeg]

No he gave them to a reputable journalist and documentary film maker and they have been publishing them to everyone, snowden gave his only copies away to Greenwald and Poitrus. Secondly all of the documents released have been redacted by the journalist to keep individuals names, and details that could be used to duplicate these programs secret. Quit shilling for the NSA

Re:No. He did not

[cold fjord]

Their owners and editors then had their briefing, and suddenly actions that were pro-american whistleblowing were anti-american spying.

So yes, he didn't change, but the media's portrayal of him did, and that's what's important.

Many people that did and would have continued supporting him as a whistleblower changed their minds once the leaks shifted from alleged violations of the rights of Americans to revealing American intelligence operations overseas. Not hard to figure out.

Re:No. He did not

[geekoid]

Because Snowden is delusional and has no fucking clue?

Re:No. He did not

[Nyder]

Because Snowden is delusional and has no fucking clue?

How's that worked out for Manning? Snowden made the correct decision.

Google is quiet

[mr100percent]

Google is "troubled" but I doubt they will raise a much bigger fuss than that. Why? Because they are competing for government contracts against Microsoft and other vendors for Cloud services etc. So while this deeply undermines the company, they probably won't get too loud about it until it starts to wreck their reputation too severely.

your reputation will precede you...

[kcmastrpc]

I'm surprised he was hired in the first place. He might be talented and an asset to any organization but he's also proven himself to be a liability. He will likely never be hired anywhere anybody has something to hide ever again.

Re:your reputation will precede you...

[Nyder]

I'm surprised he was hired in the first place. He might be talented and an asset to any organization but he's also proven himself to be a liability. He will likely never be hired anywhere anybody has something to hide ever again.

And yet he was given a job.

You know the saying, if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide? Well, that applies to jobs he works at. If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear.

If the NSA had nothing to hide, why do they fear what Snowden leaked? Remember, they first said he didn't have access to anything and didn't have anything important. Are they still saying that? No, they went to tell the other countries that will force economic sanctions on any country helping him. Which is a lie, because they haven't done shit to Russia.

If i was a honest company, Snowden is the sort of person I'd probably like working there.

Re:your reputation will precede you...

[onyxruby]

Now the problem is that non everyone shares the same values, or even definitions of what a word means.

Let's say you have an 'honest' company by your given view. Now let's say we talk with someone else and get their idea of an 'honest' company. Chances are you will have slightly different views about what 'honest' means. Now, let's extend this to hundreds or thousands of different people and see what happens to the definition of honest.

Many of those people would probably agree that someone that breaks their word is dishonest. You don't even need to bring up politics, just describe that someone (Snowden) broke their vow to protect secrets. It would be a very safe bet that most people would describe Snowden as dishonest if they only knew about his behavior and not his name.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that your concept of having nothing to hide (just curious if you believe in privacy) is that it can't withstand your own proposal of owning a company. Perhaps you hired a communist that thinks any profit is inherently dishonest? Perhaps you hired someone that thinks janitors deserve to be paid as much as PhD's as they do honest hard labor and PhD's sit around all day. Perhaps you hire someone that thinks all information should be free, despite the fact that your company spent years of time and millions on dollars on R&D costs?

The concept that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear simply cannot survive in the real world.

Re:your reputation will precede you...

[Camel Pilot]

"If i was a honest company, Snowden is the sort of person I'd probably like working there."

Until he thought your trade secrets was something that should be generously shared....

Re:your reputation will precede you...

[Nyder]

Now the problem is that non everyone shares the same values, or even definitions of what a word means.

Let's say you have an 'honest' company by your given view. Now let's say we talk with someone else and get their idea of an 'honest' company. Chances are you will have slightly different views about what 'honest' means. Now, let's extend this to hundreds or thousands of different people and see what happens to the definition of honest.

Many of those people would probably agree that someone that breaks their word is dishonest. You don't even need to bring up politics, just describe that someone (Snowden) broke their vow to protect secrets. It would be a very safe bet that most people would describe Snowden as dishonest if they only knew about his behavior and not his name.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that your concept of having nothing to hide (just curious if you believe in privacy) is that it can't withstand your own proposal of owning a company. Perhaps you hired a communist that thinks any profit is inherently dishonest? Perhaps you hired someone that thinks janitors deserve to be paid as much as PhD's as they do honest hard labor and PhD's sit around all day. Perhaps you hire someone that thinks all information should be free, despite the fact that your company spent years of time and millions on dollars on R&D costs?

The concept that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear simply cannot survive in the real world.

And yet this is how the USA Government is acting towards it's own people, if we have nothing to fear, then we have nothing to hide. And yes, the US Government is showing how they have something to fear, because they've been hiding something from the world, that the world isn't going to like.

Re:your reputation will precede you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Honest company... that's not quite an oxymoron but name me one large corporation that isn't cheating, lying, corrupting or oppressing somehow.

Re:In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLea

[Anonymous Coward]

Comrade, Berlin wall has fallen decades ago. Boris the Drunken rode tank to White House and threw Communists out. Oligarchs in charge now.

That's not the point

[mha]

The point is that IF (or when?) they get him, instead of an ugly trial process that the government may even loose, or not get a severe enough punishment (for them), or they may be forced to reveal (even more) stuff they don't want to, they have a very easy and clear-cut tax evasion case. Also, the public doesn't like people who avoid taxes, so it's also much easier on the PR front. And no war between the pro- and contra-Snowden factions, at least not nearly as much compared to if the trial is about "treason".

Re:That's not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't his tax liability be zero, since he is both residing abroad, and receiving income from abroad? Having trouble finding clarity on this question. It seems that the only complaint would be that he isn't REPORTING a ZERO tax liability. Is that correct?

Snowden's new gig

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet he's designing the Putincare website - which will work flawlessly!!

Re:Snowden's new gig

[BullInChina]

Wait a minute, I thought that Putin designed it and coded it all in a weekend while entertaining ladies.

In Soviet Russia, pain feels you!

[techsimian]

or so I'm told...

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[bobbied]

Whatever Snowden did to bottle up his stolen cache of documents, it has apparently kept the entire US security apparatus at bay.

"US Security apparatus At bay"? How so?

As I see it, they have stopped him from having access to any additional materials to leak, effectively confined him to living in Russian hands and although additional documents are trickling out, his time in the limelight is almost over. As I see it, he is alive today only because the US security apparatus decided to let him live for now, and the Russians are only going to be interested in him for as long as they can keep documents trickling out that they haven't yet seen.

Where Snowden did control part of this whole fiasco at the start, he is in large part just a pawn now, has been since he left Hong Kong. I don't see any way for him to become relevant again, which is probably why he's still alive. The Russians may or may not keep him. If they don't, he will likely be captured and returned to the US for trial. If they do decide to keep him, it's only because it would be another jab at the US and might serve to get NSA funding reigned in some. The Russians do give a flying flip about privacy, monitoring phone calls or other things the NSA might do, they just want to make the NSA/CIA as least capable as they can and Snowden gives them a little bit of leverage.

The real question is would Snowden's capture and trial or the grant of his asylum claim serve their purposes the best. You can bet he'll be in US hands within hours if they want the trial. In the mean time, they just wait and watch the NSA get defunded.

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[Sarten-X]

That's why I encrypted it with ROT-13 before encoding. Twice, for extra security.

Then I remembered that there's some obscure vulnerability in the double-ROT-13 implementation, so I ran it through ROT-26 as well. I figure that's good enough for anybody... but just for fun, I then XOR'd it with a string of 0xFF bytes. Since XOR encryption is fairly easy to hack, I took the resulting string, converted it to binary, and ran an extra ROT-1 pass on it (modulo 2, of course... I'm not stupid), and converted the result back to ASCII.

That's what I encoded.

Are you sure?

[workdot]

The linked slashot article is the only one that I've seen that specifically mentions tech support. All of the other articles, including the source Russian articles don't mention specifically what he'll be doing there. Something tells me that you do just out out there and hire Edward Snowden as a first level help desk rep or something similar. I think Slashdot is just making up stuff again. My guess is that he's probably involved in security or IT administrator role. Wow, even the MSM is covering this one more accurately than /.

Re:In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLea

[BitZtream]

You might want to look up your history a bit ... Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed 2 days after he shot Kennedy while in police custody in Dallas ... he never made it anywhere near Russia ...

background

[mynameiskhan]

Hopefully, the "major Russian website" company asked USIS (www.usis.com) to do a thorough background check on Snowden. They have done admirably in the past.

Pension

[mynameiskhan]

He will also receive a honorary pension from KGB.

Re:Pension

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there... expect NSA snooping around your shit in 3, 2, 1

Re:In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLea

[Arker]

"You might want to look up your history a bit"

Irony detector overload.

You might want to look up some history yourself. Mr Oswald worked in a factory after defecting to the USSR, before returning to the USA and ultimately eating those bullets.

SCARY +++

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm logging to all our infrastructure from shared wifi networks using telnet

Re:SCARY +++

[Anonymous Coward]

that was meant for the halloween thread but it's OK here too

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[GodfatherofSoul]

He's no longer in possession of them. He hasn't had his documents since he left the country. He also wouldn't have the means to protect them. The ONE smart thing he did was not taking the documents to China or Russia.

What if scenarios turn real

[asticia]

Events around NSA, Snowden etc. bring whole new dimension to playing Splinter Cells and watching Person of Interest. It's always interesting when scenarios that were "what if" during the time game or show was made actually meet reality. "Told you so!" syndrome?

Re:In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLea

[Anonymous Coward]

So ignorant.

Fuck you dipshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you dipshit. You should be beaten for the tone you use.

BREAKING THE LAW IS NOT AMORAL

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

save the arguments about moral superiority. it's not really a meaningful argument to claim that something didn't live up to whatever expectations you put on them based on faulty perceptions.

Ask George Washington, Mohandas Gandhi and Oskar Schindler.

SNOWDEN IS NEW BOFH!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Call the Register!

No need. There's one already out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Offical. From the USA, even.

Snowden doesn't fit the definition.

Re:No need. There's one already out there.

[JeffAtl]

Apparently your personal definition differs from the official one from the USA as Snowden faces espionage charges.

Address

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Can't he provide his lawyer address or some Russian address that is not where he actually lives at? Taxes would be the same in one or another Moscow neighborhood.
If he ends up legal, giving a false address while still paying doesn't seem a serious charge (IANAUS&ATANAL).
If he ends up illegal, he should avoid being arrested anyway (do you get extradited for tax evasion? Even if you are acknowledged a refugee?)

Google and Yahoo...crocodile tears

[Anonymous Coward]

Google if you are so upset, how about diverting some of that lobbying money (~$3.5 million) towards representatives that want to fix this problem..Because lack of trust by your 'customers' is a big problem for you and your ilk. One which might not manifest itself immediately but will over time.

And while you're at it, stop by to Diane Feinstein's office and ask her what the heck she's smoking! She's gone warmongering at John McCain levels at this point.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

[evilmidnightbomber77]

He'll be back to the US before you know it, for a nice easy life term.

In bed with the enemy

[whodunit]

When Snowden first started leaking intel, it almost all pertained to the blatantly illegal and overreaching domestic surveillance of US citizens. Now that Snowden is in Russia, being offered jobs by Russian firms, his leaks are ones that greatly embarrass the US on the international level and spoil relations between the US and its NATO allies. This isn't a coincidence. The Russians snapped up Snowden the instant he landed in their territory, and now he's entirely dependent on them - even for a livelyhood, now. I wonder just who has custody of that laptop with all the encrypted files he was toting around, at this very moment. Even if Snowden still has physical possession of it, I rather suspect the Russians are the ones making "suggestions" about how he uses the data therein. He started this as a whistleblower - and he might well still be one, but I doubt he's calling the shots anymore.

I love your homepage

[Any Web Loco]

I love that your homepage at the time of posting was www.NSA.co.il

Re:I love your homepage

[skaag]

Actually this was purchased years ago and is the initials of 3 partners. The resemblance to the US NSA was purely coincidental.
The names are Nadav, Shlomi and Aric. NSA.

Re:The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the l

[mcgrew]

Just encode them as illiterate, incoherent, childish ramblings and post them to Slashdot.

That's impossible, illiterates can't write at all. I will agree that there seems to be a whole lot of aliterates here, though. "There car's are over they're." Aliterate.

"The man who doesn't read has no advantage over a man who can't read." -- Twain (Clemons)

Nope, the definition is the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You think that the charges are correct MERELY BECAUSE THEY ARE CHARGED?

No.

They do not.

The official USA definition of what espionage is and what a spy is DOES NOT include Snowden.

Re:In the long tradition of Philby, Oswald, MacLea

[Anonymous Coward]

The USSR often gives jobs, usually non-cushy ones, to defectors. Lee Harvey Oswald got a job in a radio factory assembly line. I guess IT support is the modern equivalent.

Gasp! You mean just like how those dissidents from China and the old USSR somehow managed to find a job after they got to America? Who would have thought there would be companies willing to hire them?! Right?

Why haven't we sent out someone to

[Anonymous Coward]

put a .22 through snowden's head? I think this sets up a bad presedent, just send someone and put him down like the treasonous dog that he is, to ensure that this does not happen again.

Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

One aspect about this guy that hasn't been covered enough, at least as far as I have seen, is Snowden's use of Twitter.

https://twitter.com/EJosephSnowden

Like really, that's all the guy has right? Can he use email, because can he ever trust it? Meanwhile he's twitterin' with the best of 'em, from an undisclosed and secure location somewhere inside Russia. I am surprised he's as vocal as he is, albeit on Twitter. Maybe I'm mistaken and that feed is a hoax, but it seems real to me.

The press never seems to cover his twitter feed, although I did hear about Anna Chapman's marriage proposal she sent to him via Twitter. But I imagine if he were to take her up on her offer, he'd get in trouble with whoever it is that issued his US government clearance, seeing as how she was kicked out of the country for being a spy.