Civil Liberties Expert Argues Snowden Was Wrong (usnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes that in 2014, Geoffrey Stone was given access to America's national security apparatus as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Last week Stone, a staunch civil liberties supporter, moderated a live discussion with Edward Snowden from Russia, and this week he actually praised the NSA in a follow-up interview: "The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...

"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.

Comments

thats the problem

[geoskd]

The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...

That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner. It is not, and never was the NSA people had specific issues with. The problem is the precedent this sets for future activities because sooner or later, someone comes along who isn't so diligent, and isn't so trustworthy, and they use these programs as precedent to justify all manner of nasty crap.

It should also be noted that the NSA is in a unique position to see what the worldwide effects of overreaching surveillance can be. They, of all the organizations on this planet, get a ring side view of just what oppression can come from universal surveillance. In a very real sense, they should have known better than to set the precedent they tried to set. They cannot justify their actions through the claim of combating terrorism because the situation this precedent would have created has the potential to be far worse than any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve.

Re:thats the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner.

Remember LOVEINT?

What about recent allegations that many NSA workers are child-porn fiends?

When you operate with basically no oversight whatsoever, what's there to keep you within the bounds of basic professionalism?

Re:well intentioned?

[Spazmania]

Exactly. The NSA reached spying on Americans one step at a time, each step thoughtful and with the best of intentions. Some paranoids may be shocked to learn there was neither nefarious intent nor careless disregard of people's rights. Just good intentions and thoughtful compromise.

Fascinating word, compromise. It's represents both the positive give and take of cooperation and the destructive loss of that which is important.

Re: Just doing its job

[Sarten-X]

The FISA court is a rubber stamp. They almost never reject an NSA request. Why would the NSA go around the FISA court when they know the court will say yes? That would be stupid.

This was debunked around the last time Slashdot covered it. I don't know if the debunking ever made it here, though. I saw it from SwiftOnSecurity, I think. In short, the FISA rubber-stamped most requests only after heavy revision that happened before the final request was submitted. The reviewers looked at requests, had a hearty laugh, and suggested changes to the search scope so it wouldn't be rejected.

Back when I worked in government contracting, we'd do the same thing. We'd get the test criteria from the customer and make sure our tests passed before the government representatives showed up. Our record never showed any failures, because they never made it to the final scored test.

As I understand it, lawyers are appointed and paid to argue against the NSA before the FISA court. The problem is these lawyers are paid by the government to argue against the government, which is a conflict of interest.

There's no evidence that any such conflict has actually affected anything. The government is not a coherent entity. It is a multitude of departments, agencies, and hierarchies, usually with very intentional disagreements in purpose. If one guy is being paid expressly to advocate for human rights, and another guy is being paid to advocate for security, there's no reason to assume either will shirk their duties, regardless of where their paycheck comes from.