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Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache
Dega704 writes with news that Edward Snowden is believed to have a collection of highly sensitive classified documents that will be released in the event he is detained, hurt, or killed. According to Reuters, "The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown." These details have caused several security experts to express skepticism, but multiple sources, including Glenn Greenwald, believe Snowden has not released all of the documents he appropriated. "U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories." Whether or not it's true, U.S. and U.K. officials clearly believe it, which can only serve to protect Snowden.
There is years' worth of material that makes intelligence analysts nervous. Just how much dirt could the US possibly have that they don't want people to know?
Bruce Schneier commented on this a while back:
I'm not sure what Snowden's alternative is, but a doomsday switch isn't exactly foolproof.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Because two years of constant media coverage and new information beats the hell out of a 1-week load-blow that the public immediately forgets about
Because there is some stuff in there that legitimately should be kept secret. Snowden's goal is to protect his safety and liberty by hanging this cache of really damaging data over their heads as a way of discouraging any attempts to capture or kill him.
What does that even mean? He re-encrypts it every 4 hours and emails out the passwords and the file? This is either super spy sheit, or just plain bull sheit.
There are a lot of things, actually. None of them have to do with anyone's personal porn stash, or the fever-dreams of people who hate the U.S.
Why would the US government intentionally indicate that they believe such a thing? What this accomplishes is to encourage anyone who wants to hurt the US to kill Snowden (forcing the release of the supposed super-damaging materials). If that's the message the US propaganda spooks want everyone to hear, then you should be looking for ulterior motives. I'd guess there isn't anything so terribly damaging (that can't be whitewashed away as well as the rest of the stuff has been) that would really be "doomsday" for the US.
Rather than having everything eventually trickle out over several years, well-times to keep the media pressure against the US surveillance state, I suspect it would be preferable to the NSA and friends if Snowden were forced to dump everything all at once (perhaps by being killed). Everything's going to come out eventually --- by having it all in one heap, the total impact on public perceptions (what really matters here) is reduced: one quick spike in media attention and outrage, then it's all "old news" and there's no time for serious public analysis of the implications of each individual revelation.
Snowden and friends of democracy and freedom have an advantage by controlling the gradual release of information --- otherwise, they'd have dumped it all already. Forcing everything out at once (by encouraging every dumber enemy of the US to try assassinating Snowden) would help the PR effort to quickly wash this whole mess away from public attention. It would sure make it easier for the US officials to keep their lies straight, if everything they were lying to refute was already available.
if they are fearing what he hasn't released yet.
They know what they did was wrong, and apparently have done even worse stuff.
Time for a change in Government.
Be seeing you...
Snowden's slow release has been keeping this story in the news. He's helping to build controversy around the programs. Releasing everything at once would just overwhelm the media and the pubic's ability to address all the issues raised.
They should fear the Constitution and not do this shit in the first place.
Didn't they say you only need privacy if you've got something to hide?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I have mixed feelings about Mr. Snowden..... his disclosures of NSA's domestic activities may have been legitimate, but I have yet to hear a good justification for his leaks about NSA's foreign operations. I know a lot of people are expressing shock about NSA's overseas SIGINT activities, but they aren't doing anything that every other country isn't trying to do to the United States, and none of their actions came as a surprise to any serious student of geopolitics. Every disclosure that he has made on this subject has inflicted serious blow-back to US foreign policy, and I don't recall him being one of the choices on 6 Nov 2012, when I had my say regarding the selection of the person that was to set American foreign policy for the next four years.
I don't expect many non-Americans to understand this, and even many of my fellow countryman will rush to shout me down, but NSA's overseas activities are legitimate activities that every other nation-state on the blue marble engages in. Some may be poorly targeted (seriously, Germany?), some may be politically obtuse, but the bottom line is Edward Snowden was not in a position to make these sorts of far reaching decisions. Nobody voted for him, nobody sought him out, and nobody entrusted him with this sort of power.
As for what should happen to him now, that's beyond my pay grade. I do think he will come to regret some of his decisions, particularly as he matures, and regardless of what his ultimate fate turns out to be. I wouldn't salute the flag to the point of loading the boxcars, but it would take a lot more than my country spying on other countries to convince me that the only remaining recourse was to betray confidences and seek refuge from quasi-hostile foreign powers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not that they've been doing a particularly good job lately; but the US's strongest international PR move (and, incidentally, weapon in encouraging foreign defectors) is being 'the guys who don't have any creepy secrets (aside from things like the specifics of how atomic bombs work, which the Rosenbergs went down for). Unfortunately, we've squandered that of late. Being 'the good guys' isn't just some bleeding-heart bullshit to appease liberal pinkos. It's a powerful tool in any soft-power contest of ideas. Having nothing but weapons-related details to hide was an extreme moral-high-ground position. We'll be damn lucky to see something nearly so good again in my lifetime. Will we ever see something truly golden, as we did in WWII, with Axis units bumbling around looking for Americans to surrender to? That is what 'soft power' really looks like. It doesn't deliver the goods every day; but on a good day it isn't some theoretical, it's one hell of an advantage. Can we regain that sort of reputation?
In other words, Snowden is neither stupid nor suicidal.
"Every disclosure that he has made on this subject has inflicted serious blow-back to US foreign policy, and I don't recall him being one of the choices on 6 Nov 2012, when I had my say regarding the selection of the person that was to set American foreign policy for the next four years. "
This is a disingenuous argument if I ever saw one. These were the policies of George H.W. Bush, and they have been made even more the policies of Barack Obama. You have absolutely no evidence that Romney would have changed these policies.
I might buy this argument if you'd voted for a Libertarian candidate, but Paul was taken off the table, and though it's possible, it's not likely you voted for Johnson.
The fact that you conflate Snowden, Manning, Radack, Rowley, et al, with actual traitors, like the conspirators in Lincoln's assassination, the Rosenbergs (or at least Julius), et al (why did you omit the Walkers?) shows that you suffer from from an extreme authoritarian streak and an inability to use judgment. You seem to think that everyone that the US government claims did something to endanger the "national security" is a traitor. Learn to think for yourself.
P.S. For people like the Walkers, I think they should have brought back drawing and quartering. Some of the other people you mention should have monuments erected to them.
Oh, good point, a former Marine Corps sharpshooter would have no idea that shooting down at a steep angle would affect the trajectory of the bullet...
It was a damn good shot, I'll admit that. But I've seen plenty of people make tougher shots at faster moving targets from more restrictive positions while hunting wild game.
He wouldn't have needed a spotter because he would have had plenty of audible cues for the approaching limo. Watching people in the crowd react would have served as all the warning he needed, as they pointed, stood up, jumped waved, shouted, cheered, and generally became exited as JFK came into their view.
As for the angle, it's entirely possible that he shot the rifle left-handed which would have made it a lot easier to get that angle without leaning so far out. I myself am a right-handed person but I'm what is often called "left-eyed".. it's easier for me to shoot a rifle left-handed than right.
As for knowing which head to shoot at, that's also pretty easy. It's the one right next to his wife. If I were in his shoes, I would've just looked for the woman with the fashion sense who stuck out like a sore thumb in a group of men in suits. She was always well-dressed and easy to spot in a crowd.
I'm not saying I necessarily think Oswald did it alone, but all the things you've brought up I can quickly find reasonable explanations as to why they don't prove anything. And they were all already addressed many times in both official and unofficial examinations of the shooting. Keep in mind that Oswald was highly experienced and military trained, he wasn't just some random guy who picked up a rifle for the first time that day.
There's no literal way for that to work,
So, theres a server you input the password into. The login page or client connection port is only available at certain times. Once all the right passwords have been input by everyone it decrypts and displays the password to decrypt some torrent that's floating around the net -- Maybe posts it to facebook and twitter, pastebin, 4chan, et al.
I can think of about 20 other ways to time limit a password, but this seems feasible. There's no way to know which server or wordpress blog has the additional capabilities added to it -- This would be important because you would want it to be an action the individuals usually make (login to their blog, etc) but this time using the special password. Break the 4096 bit key into multiple parts and give it to folks so the decryption key's not on the server.
Why even time limit it though? A lot of people are wrongheadedly forgetting part of the equation that a good security researcher would not: The people part. The time limit isn't for security in the cryptographic sense. It's to synchronize the human input to the equation and reduce the window of time between when the first suspected keyholder performs their part in the unlock procedure and when the payload is deployed.