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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 is incredibly easy to be smarter and more moral than anyone in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the government.
Sometimes you need to detonate the on-site warhead.
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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.
There is no open court "route" left in the US for cleared staff. You face the people you work for with your cleared lawyer selected from a short list of lawyers in a sealed court. He's smarter as in he saw the many who have tried before him and saw the color of law results - even with political support in sealed courts - nothing gets done or out to the tame US press. The rest is history, for academics, the press, lawyers and courts to work out in the US and around the world over time. :)
Better crypto for all the internet and less junk software is always a good thing
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
I think there are a lot of smart people in the executive, judicial, legislative, and even in the intelligence branches of government. The problem is, they are in opposition (e.g., the executive preventing consideration of these issues by blocking court cases for years), the judiciary can only interpret the law as it is, the legislature has signed "blank checks" and been told only a limited amount of information about what is actually going on, and the intelligence agencies have regularly downplayed or outright lied about what they are actually doing.
At no point have the public been properly informed or consulted on this. Everything that was done to this point was a token, bogus effort. In the government it's a lot of smart people with (I believe) largely good intentions, but none of them have been allowed to see all of the pieces of the puzzle at once, or alternatively been able to share it with the public to get the public's views. That's a fundamental failure that defies the entire point of democracy and representative government. Yes, Snowden "chose the nuclear route" to get information out there, but considering the couple of decades of opportunity for any of those branches of government to do the right (inform and consult the public), it was justified. There was ample time for smart people in government to say "Wait, no, we shouldn't be doing this. At least, not without the public *really* knowing about it and giving their okay." Fail.
While I agree exposing these abuses of power has come at a high cost, there are two reasons why my concerns are tempered: 1) government had their chance to do it right, and didn't; 2) if nothing else, this episode should demonstrate yet again what most people should already know: you can't keep a secret forever, and it's better to get in front of it than to deal with the aftermath of an uncontrolled release to the public that isn't on your terms.
The public probably would be willing to grant the NSA and other intelligence agencies a lot of leeway to do their job, if properly monitored. Now? Not so much, because public trust has been violated.
It is incredibly easy to be smarter and more moral than anyone in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the government.
General opinion is that even used-car salesman can do as much.
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.
Actually, there aren't any ways to address government abuse of power, except whistleblowing.
Kiriakou: torture whistleblower, only person person to go to prison over torture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou
Binney: Going to the DOJ about waste in the NSA will fuck up your life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intelligence_official)
Drake: Going through the legal processes within the NSA got him prosecuted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Processing is what was always done, listening to a call for keywords, known numbers used, voice print - the resulting file size kept was not huge per call, person. :)
The flow of data in was vast but not hard for the US and UK to balance for fast processing over a few sites around the world.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering really shows the end game - decades of calls reduced to a usable size under just one simple program.
The next trick will be to have it made legal in US domestic courts, no more magical parallel construction needed
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You are correct -- in Snowden's case, it is actually impossible for him to mount a defense at trial:
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/12/if-snowden-returned-us-trial-all-whistleblower-evidence-would-likely-be-inadmissible
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.
There are, but when you are likely to get brushed under the rug, other approaches need to be used. He essentially blew a hole through the rug, meaning there was no way to hide his message.
Was the way he did things the best way, it is hard to say, since I don't fully grasp the workings of the agency, but I suspect that there are too many people with vested interests in hiding their and the agencies failings? Sometimes in politics you need someone to put their neck on the line for the greater good, but it has to be done with care since otherwise to have collateral damage and possibly a miscommunicated message. IMHO Snowdon probably did something many people would have wanted to do, in the sense of causing change, but are too stuck in the political labyrinth to achieve anything. Don't underestimate the weight of government and bureaucracy to block real change. Too many stake holders who either have vested interests or don't want to experience change.
However you look at things, Snowdon was brave, but he did follow his convictions to the end. I think many of us would be too coward to do what he did.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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!
We've already suffered a soft coup by the Executive branch, I don't know why you think a different coup would make things better. One of the Unique things about the revolutionary period in 1700s and early 1800s, was the focus on liberty and democratic institutions of various varieties, but most coups are just about a different group of power hungry dicks taking power from an established group of dicks.
What we need is a judicial and legislative branch willing to step up to the role created for them in the Constitution -- to jealously guard their powers against Executive abuse rather than cede it, and to thereby ensure that no side gets too powerful. The mistake the founders made was in believing that politicians would consider it in their self-interest to protect their power areas and that this conflict would prevent the rise of one all powerful branch.
Over time, however, the branches got wise to this. For example, Congress figured out is was politically expedient to let the President "declare" war, or the Courts decided to defer to the Executive on anything labeled "State Secrets" and exercise no oversight -- now we have ideas such as the Unitary Executive, signing statements, extra-judicial everything. If the other branches got off their collective asses and protected their turf, a lot of these problems would go away. And note, this turf protecting presumes that they're all sociopaths -- it is the process of turf protection that was designed to protects us, not reliance that the people in the dirty fight would be good people. Our problem is that the politicians have figured out how to go beyond that level in furthering their self-interest and no longer engage in that internal war the founders envisioned, to our deep detriment.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.