Slashdot Mirror
Snowden Queries Putin On Live TV Regarding Russian Internet Surveillance
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Edward Snowden appeared on a Russian television call-in show to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin about policies of mass surveillance. The exchange has a canned quality which will likely lead to questions regarding the integrity of Snowden's actions, in the query of his host in asylum."
These propaganda sessions for Putin are pre-staged so Snowden has allowed himself to be used as a "propaganda tool". Considering how freedoms are curtailed in Russia, it seriously deminishes Snowden's reputation.
It loses a bit in the translation but essentially it says "When you're living with wolves, you better learn fast how to howl, lest they might think you're a sheep".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"We will hear and they will be punished!!!"
I wouldn't put it past the Russians to stage such an appearance by threatening Snowden. In fact, that's the most likely scenario; Putin could hand him over to the US at any time.
Yes but if you read Putin's words...
"First of all, our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law," Putin said. "So how special forces can use this kind of special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone online, you have to get court permission to stalk a particular person. We don't have a mass system of such interception. "
He never says that they don't collect blanket data explicitly just that they don't do it illegally and that they cannot match the abilities of the NSA.
To add to this the Wiki article on SORM states that the equipment was mandated by Law. So technically the surveillance is legal and transparent.
The only diffrence I'm seeing here is that 1. The Russians aren't as good as surveillance as the NSA. 2. They are totally open about the fact that everything you do on he internet or over a telephone is tracked. Color me shocked...
But you have to read the statement carefully to understand what he says. It is true that Russia doesn't have the money to put everyone under surveillance like the US does.
So they might not do a mass surveillance like the US, instead they just put everyone interesting under direct surveillance: every Duma representative, every Oligarch, and especially everyone who is in public politicial opposition to President Putin. The NSA can't do that even when they would want to, so they simply target everyone: it's wasteful but now they can't be accused of any bias or that they target anyone they don't like.
Let me guess, you're writing these lines from the comfort of your air conditioned home office?
Give the man a break, he's had more impact than close to everyone on this site will ever have. And now he's in Russian hands, who have can easily blackmail him into anything.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
LOL oh man you are so right, look how many terrorist attacks have happened since the snowden leaks eh, now that all of the NSAs spying techniques are known and now stopped. I guess the bad guys have all moved now from forming plots via gmail & twitter & facebook to secretz underground cave meetings! Snowden deserves to be somewhere better than back in the US, unfortunately, not too many places qualify for a position like that these days...
The "document dump" to the public wasn't from Snowden, it was from Greenwald and Poitras. Like a number of whistleblowers who Americans have come to praise in respect, Snowden gave these documents to journalists and asked them to redact them before release to the public. If you have any issues with how that played out, Greenwald, Poitras and other news figures involved are the ones to blame.
Rumours circulate that most if not all of the hard drives that Snowden had with him upon his flight to Hong Kong were decoys.
When did Slashdot become infested with NSA apologists?
Putin does this show annually. I am sure that the callers are vetted, but the questions tend to be wide-ranging, and don't really seem scripted to me. (I liked the one about buying Alaska back.) After all, it's a 4 hour show.
Now, as for Snowden, I see this as positive. State security is not talked about that much in Russia, and he brought it up. While Putin said pretty much what Obama might have said in 2010 (in other words, it's fair to doubt whether he was being truthful), it gets it out in the open, and all in all I think that is a good thing.
...know about surveillance?
Even the questions you can ask are provided by the state..
OF COURSE it was scripted and likely highly edited. This is 100% propaganda aimed squarely at the west by Putin. Snowden is just being used to attract attention and shape the message. He's just a pawn in a much larger game.
Reading between the lines though, I wonder what Putin is up to. Why bother with this?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
To anyone who ever says that Snowden told the terrorists about bugging. The 2010 film Four Lions has a scene with the terrorist plotters using a spoof on Disney's "Club Penguin", making it the only safe method to chat to each other (it's a black comedy). Interception was so widely known, it was a joke (see Bin Laden's lack of house-hold comms).
The people who didn't suspect that electronic comms were all thoroughly bugged were the other 99.999999% of the population. They thought the 'goodies' were targeting the 'baddies'.
But the way forward is clear. Make internet surveillance legal, and a free and open society will blossom, untroubled by questions of legality
Of course you will. The Obama administration has prosecuted journalists and leakers at a far higher rate than before. How is one supposed to report on his failings, if the act of revealing them triggers immediate accusations of being a traitor and guaranteed prosecution? The US based papers who reported the Snowden leaks took big risks to do so, and of course their source is now in exile ...
Don't forget about all the Bush admin people that lied us into the Iraq war. Lots of those folks were the ones that STARTED all these surveillance programs.
You have the same government that you started this century with.
They just changed spokesmodels - while you felt like you had a say in the matter... Your coup happened in many stages, over many decades - but defining moments happened with the Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy years - with a decisive event in Nov 1963...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Congratulations. Your post wins the "who can represent the worst stereotypes about Americans" prize for this thread.
Let's recap. Snowden revealed gross abuses and illegality in your government. Doing this results in the same sort of punishments as it does in many other countries with overly authoritarian leadership: lifetime in jail, as you request. So to do the big reveal you admit is something you "really needed", he had to run. His first choice was Hong Kong, but when it appeared the Chinese might hand him over or keep him jailed for years in diplomatic limbo he decided to go to Latin America, probably Ecuador. He was en-route there when the US Govt revoked his passport, leaving him stranded in Russia which happened to be on the way.
Your post and general mentality have multiple failures, but don't worry, they are correctable.
There's a simple fix for your predicament - never use the word "traitor" ever again. It describes a state of fevered flag-waving tribalism which allows your own government to blind you and switch off your critical thinking. The people in power are not better than you or anyone else, they are just ..... the people in power. Your country is not better than other countries, it's just .... the place where you were born. Your rulers deserve no loyalty, no special breaks. They are corrupt and untrustworthy to the core, they need to be watched constantly lest they abuse the powers they were temporarily granted for some purpose or another. You cannot be a traitor to such people, the concept simply has no meaning.
Once you get into this mentality, your recollection of historical events will probably improve.
Resorting to hyperbole to make a point? Let's look at the facts, The espionage act was used eight times:
Thomas Drake -Allegedly retained classified information about the NSA's program of wiretapping without warrants. Charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government information
Shamai Leibowitz - Charged for "knowingly and willfully disclosing to an unauthorized person five FBI documents classified at the 'secret' level that contained classified information concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States.
Stephen Jin-Woo Kim - For leaking information about how much the US knows about North Korea's nuclear program.
Chelsea Manning - Disclosed classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Jeffery Sterling - Disclosed what the US knew about Iran's nuclear program.
John Kiriakou - Former CIA agent disclosed the identity of CIA agent working in the CIA interrogation program.
James Hitselberger - Charged with retaining classified information and shipping it back to Stanford University which contained "sensitive information about troop positions, gaps in U.S. intelligence and commanders' travel plans."
Edward Snowden - disclosed the existence of U.S. government surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
As someone into the business, there's only two prerequisites (concerning surveillance) to operate as an ISP in Russia. The first one is that you must (by the law) to store your ISP's netflow for 2 years, and to provide information for a) specific user (given by First + Last name) or b) by the IP address involved, to a) police, b) FSB or c) court, when they wanted to. And the second one, is that ISP required (by the law) to install surveillance equipment, sufficent enough to capture all the traffic of ISP's very own local clients (not the transit ones). That equipment is called "SORM" which means something like "support of investigation operations". That equipment is a bulk storage that is filled with data from selected customer IP when configured to. Equipment is controlled from local FSB office, using only E1 (smth like DS1) control channel. There's no bulk channel between ISP and FSB office because there's no bulk money at local government to pay to ISP for that. When they think they had gathered enough data. for specific subject, they can use this captured data from the SORM storage in the court. With the current ISP traffic plans, that storage can only held smth like 2hrs of all client's traffic captured simultaneously. Could you consider this as a "massive surveillance"?
Do you think there is a useful difference in specificity there? Details matter. The claim that the terrorists "just knew already" is bullshit and a whitewash. Terrorist groups have changed their communication methods since Snowden's leaks and intelligence has been lost because of it.
Does the NSA not have the technology to steam-open their letters, or what? (Also, I call bullshit. The actual (non-business secrets, non-webcam) intelligence the NSA has captured is about zero. Notice how surprised everyone was (is) by the Crimea-Ukraine-thingie? And if they didn't see something like that coming...)
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
I don't understand the hatred towards Snowden for asking an important question regarding surveillance. From the linked article his question:
"So I'd like to ask you, does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals? And do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigations can justify placing societies, rather than subjects, under surveillance?"
It is a perfectly valid question which needs to be asked to all world leaders. While Putin's answer can certainly be seen as pure political spin, the question itself is a legitimate and forceful question to be posed. And by asking it, it forced Putin to provide an answer through which he can be measured against. He has basically said in nationwide tv that if they did have a mass surveillance system, the state would be breaking the law. This public statement can now be used to hold him accountable should evidence surface proving him as lying.
I would also argue that the question is a far more direct one regarding surveillance than any that has been posed to Obama. And unlike Putin, Obama insists such a surveillance program is legal and necessary. One cannot reform the system without admitting the problem first. Were Obama to give the same answer as Putin to that question, the repercussions would be enormous, as it places a moral and legal standard on the role of surveillance in our society from the chief executive of the nation itself.
Amusingly, the entire Crimean plan is in the Wikileaked documents from 3yrs ago.
Hello? That isn't an act of terrorism, it's a planned mass murder - nothing more, nothing less. Or at least it would be if the term wasn't hijacked lately.
Also where did you get the information that "Terrorist groups have changed their communication methods since Snowden's leaks..."? Made up on the spot _or_ "leaked" from NSA? We know from reliable sources that terrorists have used very sophisticated communication for a long time with the leadership often only being accessible indirect by technical means (using human couriers) making tracking them via RF hard or impossible. We know that using one-way communication, disposable mobile phone and steganographic techniques have been used. We know that standard, reliable communication techniques like dead drops and reliable encryption have been used.
The revelations are showing that we are much closer to the 1984 scenario than even some paranoid groups thought possible.