Slashdot Mirror
Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, writes at Slate that if Edward Snowden's stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the domestic surveillance by the NSA, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing. But Snowden did much more than that. 'Snowden's documents have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA's interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan's northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what's going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls 'worldwide,' an effort that 'allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.' Kaplan says the NYT editorial calling on President Obama to grant Snowden 'some form of clemency' paints an incomplete picture when it claims that Snowden 'stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency's voraciousness.' In fact, as Snowden himself told the South China Morning Post, he took his job as an NSA contractor, with Booz Allen Hamilton, because he knew that his position would grant him 'to lists of machines all over the world [that] the NSA hacked.' Snowden got himself placed at the NSA's signals intelligence center in Hawaii says Kaplan for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents. 'It may be telling that Snowden did not release mdash; or at least the recipients of his cache haven't yet published — any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China,' concludes Kaplan. 'If it turned out that Snowden did give information to the Russians or Chinese (or if intelligence assessments show that the leaks did substantial damage to national security, something that hasn't been proved in public), then I'd say all talk of a deal is off — and I assume the Times editorial page would agree.'"
The Ellsberg days are over, There is no open court for cleared material. You face the same people you are wanting the press to know about with your cleared lawyer... in a sealed court. Nothing will ever get out and you still face a US court.
Many good people in the US have tried the US court path, some with political protection. After the Ellsberg generation nothing much ever gets out to the tame press anymore.
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm
Getting out was the only way to get to the press. Now the press is releasing the material in its own way and the wider public can understand what they are getting when they use crypto.
http://cryptome.org/2013/11/snowden-tally.htm
http://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-codenames.htm
Russia just has to wait and see if the info has been pre sorted, is bait, a trap or has unique internal errors to track Russian spies within the USA.
Russia would be very careful with any free press material vs a person they understand working for them deep with in the US gov over years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Public knowledge is not declassified.. the US gov in court would be reviewing classified material.
http://www.whistleblower.org/action-center/save-tom-drake shows some of what can happen.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's not what the author is saying. He's saying that there is evidence that Snowden is not some heroic patriot, but just a regular old spy that got paid off by the Russians or Chinese, and is just using the domestic spying to help get the public on his side and make it more difficult for the U.S. government to catch/prosecute him. And even if that is not the case, he still exposed a lot of the U.S.'s international spying efforts which could potentially cause immediate harm to U.S. forces overseas, in addition to exposing the domestic spying.
They want to criticize Snowden for not being more selctive in his release of information? But he offered discuss with the NSA what releases might compromise US security. They refused to talk with him. Now they say he released more than the minimum necessary to demonstrate that the NSA was breaking the law. What is a respecatble whistle-blower to do?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
This is not Edward Murrow's opinion - the guy's name is Fred Kaplan, and he's the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Of course, this is Slashdot, so reading the first sentence of the summary is far too much to ask.
'It may be telling that Snowden did not release — or at least the recipients of his cache haven't yet published — any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China,'
Why would he have access to Russian or Chinese documents?
Because most of the NSA's job is to research foreign intel agencies, therefore it has to have some data on those agencies. Signals intelligence is all about reading the other guy's communications, and you can't really do that unless you have some idea what he's communicating about.
More relevant to Snowden his job was China. He gave presentations on China. He managed to find lots of info on Democracies whose intel agencies he wasn't supposed to be watching (like Australia), but jack-squat on the one that he was supposed to be watching. He did this mostly by acquiring usernames and passwords from people who were working with those democracies, which kinda implies that even if he didn't have access to the NSA's info on Russia officially he could have gotten it unofficially.
I can't think of a reason a rational person would think he could out ALL our intelligence operations to literally everyone (including the Russians, Chinese, and Al Qaeda), and he'd get a pardon because some subset of those operations annoy people. I suspect he didn't think that. He feared Russian and Chinese assassins more then he feared US warrants, therefore he didn't out their operations; and now even if he's got 0% chance of getting a pardon his only play is to ask for one.
actually wrong. Snowden had worked for the CIA prior, not the NSA. He had worked WITH the NSA, but not for.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Founding Fathers were traitors to the Crown, whatever history will think of them London wanted to see them hang. Any Nazi commander who refused to take part in the Holocaust faced an execution squad. Historians might argue, but if Snowden ever sets foot on US soil he'd never see the outside of a prison cell ever again. Many people will argue that Snowden has not only exposed a runaway government agency, he's also exposed the nation's secrets to its enemies. That despite the best of intentions, you can't have people running around exposing classified documents as they feel like. Even those who like the message would kill the messenger.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Also, his country wants to throw him in jail for exposing foul play, so he is forced to flee. Some other country offers shelter, perhaps in exchange for information, and so an idiot says "oh, that kind of betrayal is unforgivable". Really? Hey, US, protip: want to avoid the risk of defection? Then don't treat your own like enemies to start with.
Your post is one of the most venal I've read in a while. There is no way to perfectly separate the two kinds of information- illegal domestic spying and "other". You are perfectly well aware of that. So is everyone else making this kind of argument.
I makes me wonder how many commentators on slashdot are actually placed there to shape public opinion by the agencies concerned.
This is just another pile of bullshit to turn the nation's attention away from the fact that the NSA is breaking the law in very dangerous ways and needs to be reigned in.