House Committee: Edward Snowden's Leaks Did 'Tremendous Damage' (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The U.S. House intelligence committee on Thursday unanimously approved a blistering report on the activities of Edward Snowden, saying his disclosures of top-secret documents and programs did "tremendous damage" to national security. "The public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions," said the report by staff members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrary to Snowden's statements that he intended to reveal programs that intruded on the privacy of Americans, the House report concluded that the vast majority of the 1.5 million documents he stole "have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests. They instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America's adversaries." The report said Snowden did not, as he claimed, try to express his concerns about potentially illegal intelligence gathering in a way that would qualify him as a whistleblower. The report was disputed by Snowden's ACLU-provided attorney. "This is a dishonest report that attempts to discredit a genuine American hero," said Wizner. "But after years of 'investigation,' the committee still can't point to any remotely credible evidence that Snowden's disclosures caused harm. The truth is that Edward Snowden and the journalists with whom he worked did the job that the House Intelligence Committee was supposed to do: bring meaningful oversight to the U.S. Intelligence community. They did so responsibly and carefully, and their efforts have led to historic reforms."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that ass fucks the government is right as rain for me.

the government doesn't hesitate to ass fuck you every chance it gets.

Re:Good

[Gadget_Guy]

Try living somewhere with no government and report back to us. That is if you get out alive.

So you think the only alternative to a government that tramples over the rights of the citizens is no government at all? Did it not even occur to you that it might be nice to have a law-abiding, privacy-respecting government?

Just because "it could be worse" does not give the government permission to do whatever they want.

Re:Good

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the same false "choice" being suggested in Europe: we are offered a choice between *this* EU, with lack of democratic oversight, officials that are appointed rather than elected, and drunken would-be despots like Juncker in charge... or no EU, which means war (which was the thread made during several EU related referenda: vote against, and "the lights will go out")

This is the same thing: suggesting that a government with sweeping powers to spy on and control its citizens is the only alternative to anarchy and chaos, and that Snowden's actions threatened the stability brought about by the Panopticon.

liars gonna lie

[TheGratefulNet]

too bad those that we trusted to uphold the constitution failed us SO MISERABLY.

even their lies are transparent and shameless.

Re:liars gonna lie

[thestuckmud]

Technically the NSA was not doing anything illegal with it's efforts to collect call meta data because they were not specifically barred from doing so.

The problem here is that NSA is a foreign intelligence agency, specifically prohibited from domestic intelligence collecting. So, it actually takes a great deal of effort to justify wholesale collection of data on US citizens by the NSA. The way they did it was by redefining the meaning of "collected" so that it no longer refers to data acquired through surveillance. Only data viewed by an NSA analyst is consideder "collected" under this scheme. Brilliant!

Of course, our foreign partners at GCHQ are said to have unfettered access to this trove of data, which remain conveniently uncollected until NSA sees it.

To make matters worse, this Orwellian justification for extra-legal domestic surveillance was kept secret from both the public at large and most of Congress. And top intelligence officials (I'm thinking about DNI James Clapper) lied to Congress about it when asked.

"Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

-- George Orwell, 1984

Re:liars gonna lie

[dgatwood]

Technically the NSA was not doing anything illegal with it's efforts to collect call meta data because they were not specifically barred from doing so.

You mean except by that pesky thing called the fourth amendment, where it says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized," I assume.... That specifically bars them from doing so.

The term "papers" as used in the fourth amendment referred to all forms of non-face-to-face communication. At the time the Constitution was authored, the current state of technology limited the forms of such communication to printed matter, such as pamphlets and snail mail (as affirmed in Ex Parte Jackson, 1876).

These days, private long-distance communication can also take the form of phone calls, Internet communication, and so on. These new forms of "papers" are fundamentally the same sort of construct as personal papers and letters—the very things that the fourth amendment was explicitly designed to protect. As such, there is absolutely no plausible legal reasoning by which one could rationally argue that these newer forms of papers should be treated differently from the forms that existed when the Constitution was created, for precisely the same reason that your Internet communication and phone calls are protected under freedom of speech laws even though they are being carried over wires as a series of ones and zeroes—something that the Founding Fathers would never have understood as being speech at the time.

Therefore, it should be clear to any reasonable person that third-party doctrine is fundamentally flawed reasoning. Any argument to the contrary must involve some plausible reason why the law should treat a company's personal papers (telephone logs) differently than your own.

Edward Snowden Leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided a vital service to all people of the world and deserves a presidential pardon, post haste.

The US government is the villain and Snowden is the hero. Nothing but a full presidential pardon will be acceptable. Heck, I'll sleep on my couch and he can move into my bedroom, for free.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Naw, that's just ridiculous. Snowden is not stupid and he did not keep the stuff with him. Nor can he possibly recall everything he saw, though he would make up some great stuff with a bit of torture.

Putin likes Snowden on the loose because that embarrasses the heck out of America. (Well, more like a leash than the loose.) His intelligence value is negligible, but the political embarrassment is priceless.

If Snowden became a nuisance to Putin, then he would be disposed of instantly, and without any regard to possible gratitude for any information he had brought with him. You can bet Snowden is smart enough to know that and is not going to do anything to piss off Putin. He may still get thrown back to the States if Putin decides it is politically expedient.

They are right

[Archfeld]

Snowden did do our government a disservice when he posted those documents online. What the report didn't state was that our government did the US people a HUGE disservice when they acted as they did to force his hand. Torture of POW's ? The violation of US laws to support US interests. The means does not justify the end and just because they chose to take the acts out of the US doesn't absolve them of the guilt.

[citation needed]

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll save you the time - the article is devoid of any reference to what "tremendous damage" was done.

No it didn't

[Lord Apathy]

Bullfucking shit. Snowden's leaks did no such thing. It was you god damn bastards illegally spying on American citizens and foreign citizens that did the damage. If I had my way I would fly Snowden back here and pin a medal on his ass.

Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[silvergeek]

If the NSA does not want the hassle of whistleblowers, then it should simply follow the law.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[davester666]

Unfortunately, the US gov't now considers and treats the American people as "the enemy".