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Snowden Says His Mission Is Accomplished
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Edward Snowden met with reporters from the Washington Post for fourteen hours and in his first interview since June reflected at length about surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed. 'For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won,' says Snowden. 'All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.' Snowden says that the NSA's business is 'information dominance,' the use of other people's secrets to shape events. But Snowden upended the agency on its own turf. 'You recognize that you're going in blind, that there's no model,' says Snowden, acknowledging that he had no way to know whether the public would share his views. 'But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act, you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis. Because even if your analysis proves to be wrong, the marketplace of ideas will bear that out.' Snowden succeeded because the NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever, and says people who accuse him of disloyalty mistake his purpose. 'I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it.'"
He's not wearing a jumpsuit and standing on an aircraft carrier with a banner behind him.
Snowden is a real hero. I am sorry he can't be home for the holidays this year because of his sacrifice.
The NSA should be dismantled....
Hang on, someone's at the door.
... when he was working there. According to Forbes, his coworkers report that he would wear a Electronic Frontier Foundation hoodie to work and have a copy of the constitution on his desk to argue when he was asked to do something against the constitution.
They just had to emulate him and he would still be in Hawai with his girlfriend and working for the NSA.
If nothing has changed, it's not his fault.
It's ours.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's pretty obvious from what he says in the interview that he was well coached ahead of time on what message to get out. But despite that, he comes across as essentially saying that he's smarter and more moral than anyone in the executive, judicial, or legislative branches of government.
There are ways to address concerns about abuses of government power, he chose the nuclear route. Whether exposing the abuses of power that were happening is worth the side effects remains to be seen.
And nothing has changed. What a waste of time. Enjoy your stay, comrade.
It took years for this shit to become entrenched, it is going to take at least as long to unwind it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
We don't want a lot for Christmas
We know almost everything we need
We don't care about the peasants
They give their information for free
We just want you for our own
You are ours Edward Snow'n
Make our wish come true oh
All we want for Christmas is you
One of Snoiwden's coworkers told him that they were processing as much data as in the Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds. Sources say that the Library of Congress has 235 TBytes of data.
(235 [TByte] / 14.4 [sec]) X 60 [sec/min] X 60 [min/hr] X 24 [hr/day] = 1.4 X10^18 [Bytes/day] = 1.4 [Exabytes/day]
> he comes across as essentially saying that he's smarter and more moral than anyone in the executive, judicial, or legislative branches of government ... which seems not to be a very high bar, alas.
> he chose the nuclear route [...]
which other routes, pray tell, were open to him?
> Whether exposing the abuses of power that were happening is worth the side effects [...]
It is worth the side effects. It can be seen already.
Do you really think the NSA has time to waste on Slashdot? We have much more pressing issues to take care of.
No! We need real change away from both what Bush did AND what Obama is doing.
Every time people make the "but Bush" argument they're giving Obama more power to abuse the system.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The US public understands the role of the Fourth Amendment, the role of supporting 'freedom fighters' and woke up to the rush for war in Syria before it was too late.
Thanks to Snowden the US courts are able to understand what was going on domestically and there is less cover for tame press and well funded sock puppets.
http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/federal-judge-rules-against-nsa
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I wish I had a mod point.
The usual procession of the conversation on this goes from "Obama did X, facscist, marxist, communist!" to "Bush did X too" to "OMG!!!1!! Obamabots don't take responsibility". Both of the last two administrations have MAJORLY fucked up our basic civil rights and since, once again, the air to so super-partisan we can't have a clear conversation about how the presidency is going downhill.
Sad part is, there is nothing they "could have done" to prevent the 9/11 attacks that was prevented by the legal actions available at the time. There was absolutely no need for any additional powers or surveillance. Since they found zip with all the new surveillance after 10 years, I think it is safe to conclude the threat is greatly exaggerated. Where were they when the Boston Marathon attacks were being planned? They were snooping on Brazilian oil companies.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
"A republic, if you can keep it." -Benjamin Franklin
"Remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself." -Edward Snowden.
We finally have a new picture of him.
There are some people that I would consider "smart" that don't even know who Snowden is or what the NSA does. These people are successful professionals, some valedictorians of their undergraduate colleges. There is always going to be a small segment of the population that is critical of the government, paranoid about the encroachment on civil liberties, and overall dissatisfied with the status quo. But that isn't a majority. Its not even half. I would guess it's less than 25%.
Snowden sacrificed a lot for the world. I wish I knew of a way to get the world to care.
The NSA's policies have remained constant through "liberal" and "conservative" administrations. This is not a liberal/conservative or right wing/left wing issue. You don't need to decide which side you are on before you decide where you stand on the issue of the NSA's bulk surveillance of American citizens. Maybe you actually ought to think for yourself on this issue!!!
The NSA is a HUGE waste of money. I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
I like the idea of the NSA spying on the rest of the world. But when the NSA starts spying on Americans, bad people--very bad people--have taken over the NSA. These people are acting just like Stasi functionaries and it is scary.
This is awful and it needs to stop.
People talk about whistle blower protection and legitimate whistle blower, etc. There is no whistle blower protection for the Intelligence Community (IC). The IC is specifically exempted by U.S. law from all whistle blower protection acts. Posted via TOR, for good reason!
It's possible that Wikileaks served as inspiration for Snowden. With any luck, both will serve as inspiration for future whistle-blowing.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Heck, they've already forgotten the Boston Marathon bombing.
Obviated by the fact that even though the NSA keeps telling us their illegal spying program has stopped terrorist attacks, they never seem to want to talk about the ones they "failed" to stop.
Scare quotes around "failed" because I question whether the federal government ever had any intention of preventing said attack.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Hmm,
I think a few things are or will be changing. Now as an amateur democracy activist I think more things would change if U.S. citizens realized how much political power they actually have.
Read and understand the Constitution: the only powers the government has are specifically listed in that document; to that end, it even states that any power or right not specifically delegated to the government in the Constitution (and Amendments) is a right and power of the people.
The people running the government have been very successful at convincing regular folks that we don't actually have as many rights as the Constitution allows us. Not sure what to do about that one...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Does this imply there is an "information dominatrix?"
"50 shades of gray for your firewall?"
He may have gotten us all to open our eyes regarding the NSA, Constitutional abuses, Corporate America's involvement and capitulation, etc, but as long as he has more documents his mission is not complete.
If he's smart (and I think he is) there is a cache of documents somewhere that the NSA never wants exposed. The NSA knows he has them. That's Snowden's insurance policy. They will only come out if Snowden is killed or captured.
Bah!
There are ways to address concerns about abuses of government power, he chose the nuclear route
They leave you no choice. For decades now they've been saying "we'll protect the whistle blowers" and doing the exact opposite.
I've heard some people say that this is the same mentality that put Hugo Chavez in office. Why? Because whenever a moderate left-leaning person got in office, the CIA toppled them. Thus, the only way to go was full-bore hard Left militant. It's the same logic you get when all crimes are capital. You don't steal bread when all crimes are capital. You steal a gun and a jeep, rob the bank, and bust through the border blazing away.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
How quickly we forget things like this right?
To claim that it does not happen, when we have evidence that it does happen is beyond idiotic. It is complete and utter bullshit (either intentional or from ignorance.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I used to have ambition to form cogent thoughts. I used to use my logic and education to say things like, "Obamacare as a model can never be as good as what they are saying, economics doesn't work like that" and, "Maybe we shouldn't be using drones to kill people willy nilly," and "Maybe this administration should use its power to curb the abuses the American people are suffering at the hands of the TSA."
After you get called "racist" enough times for saying these things, you no longer care to try to fix the problems we face as a country. You almost start to dislike the people who call you a racist, and you almost wish bad things for them, like getting everything they claim to want from their elected officials.