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5 Years on, US Government Still Counting Snowden Leak Costs (apnews.com)
National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the lid off U.S. government surveillance methods five years ago, but intelligence chiefs complain that revelations from the trove of classified documents he disclosed are still trickling out. From a report: That includes recent reporting on a mass surveillance program run by close U.S. ally Japan and on how the NSA targeted bitcoin users to gather intelligence to combat narcotics and money laundering. The Intercept, an investigative publication with access to Snowden documents, published stories on both subjects. The top U.S. counterintelligence official said journalists have released only about 1 percent taken by the 34-year-old American, now living in exile in Russia, "so we don't see this issue ending anytime soon." "This past year, we had more international, Snowden-related documents and breaches than ever," Bill Evanina, who directs the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said at a recent conference. "Since 2013, when Snowden left, there have been thousands of articles around the world with really sensitive stuff that's been leaked."
I'm happy to hear they're still facing consequences, even if those consequences aren't nearly severe enough to make me content.
in the history of the United States and Cop Math is still a thing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The government isn't really doing anything to prevent a Snowden 2.0 either. They're still after prosecuting him, which means the next Snowden will also flee overseas and leak to the media. There isn't really a "legal" way for someone like Snowden to report government abuses; the only alternative is through the media.
I've not seen the government make any steps to prevent the next Snowden from following the same steps Snowden made.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
On my tiny violin.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to, you know, not rely on extraordinary rendition, illegal spying, extra-constitutional structurally biased special courts, intra-agency webs of secrecy, and all that?
This seems more than a bit like "If it weren't for those darn meddling kids, everything would have been fine, JUST FINE," then complaining how expensive that now-ruined mask on the floor was.
Ryan Fenton
the world is not your enemy, you paranoid PoS country. I hope we see more leaks so the world wakes up to all the wrong horrible things America is doing, and it becomes more and more clear how paranoid they are and how they view the world as an enemy.
5 years has passed - would be nice if 100% of the data was released to us so the IT security professionals among us can actually do our jobs.
It cost the guilty nothing either. How many were fired after they were exposed? I haven't heard of a single person going to jail over any of it. It just cost them their reputation. Which is and will always be nothing. It only exposed what we already suspected. Our government will go to any lengths to keep their crimes secret.
Uncovering the truth and doing "The Right Thing".
With all the revelations, the main takeaway I got is the NSA is pissed that they got caught acting poorly. Given their lack of apology, it's clear the NSA isn't at all motivated to, you know - change, and stuff. All the NSA seems to want to do is deliver maximum stitches to maximum snitches.
I sleep better.
The fact that the U.S. government continue to persecute this whistle-blower is much more damning than the things he revealed.
IMO Snowden should be pardoned & given a medal.
Look, I still don't think Snowden helping Russia is a good thing, especially the many attempts in the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK to interfere (which are still ongoing, regardless of my personal viewpoint that Scotland deserves to be it's own nation, as it has always been, and the Soviet-backed Brexit was atrocious).
But, the agencies (five of which you know about, others which you don't) that are actively spying on US citizens both at home and abroad, did in fact go too far.
That said, using clouds or any external non-controlled data stores always is insecure, just like the President's cell traffic which is easy to locate to within centimetres.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Instead, he's landed a cushy job at CNN.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
$2.3 trillion? Your mom spent that on condoms last year alone!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A Cautionary Tale:
"Think for just one moment and I'm sure that you will see,
the moral of this story - that what shall be must be.
He who gives his soul to Hell, must dare to pay the price,
he versed in divinity must live a noble life -
OR ELSE HE IS DAMNED!"
The wages of government stupidity is maybe another century of these releases. Governments can't keep secrets, so they're ethical to within practical limits, or else they are damned.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem with trickling out the documents over such a long period of time is that people ultimately get bored or complacent with it all and pay little attention to it. It's human nature.
Think of the nightly news.
It's full of non-stop murder and mayhem every single day and most of us don't even blink an eye at it anymore.
The Catch-22 part of the problem is this:
If you released it all en masse, many will raise hell for a few weeks then promptly forget about it as soon as the next tragedy or engineered distraction comes along. Either way, the information becomes irrelevant soon enough.
Personally, I think they should just release the cache and let folks decide for ourselves what we think of it all instead of continuing to dangle that carrot. Though, folks like The Guardian or The Intercept love to have their name in the headlines from time to time so folks remember they exist, so we'll probably be seeing bits and pieces of this forever.
I see little reason not to as the Government has had YEARS to pull folks from the field in the event the unredacted documents put anyone in harms way. If they haven't, then it tells me they're not concerned about it as they claim to be.
It is claimed that this is largely a myth and debunked. It is though I will admit... strange that the day after Rumsfeld complains about the not properly tracked money...
"""The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Monday September 10th, 2001"""
Illegal domestic collection should have stopped in the 1970's.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
He destroyed the myth that Five Eyes were not spying on their own citizens and/or passing the data to the NSA. He destroyed the myth that the NSA was not spying on American citizens. Basically, he destroyed the myth that our governments did not lie to us.
To quote Oliver Stone,"We are the terrorists, many times. In Syria we are supporting the terrorist group, the Al-Nusra front. We don’t report to the people, what we’re really doing. We report our point of view, our propaganda."
Clapper lying https://duckduckgo.com/?q=clapper+not+spying+on+citizens&t=canonical&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=AGYn7ER5U_0
Obama lying http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-says-there-no-spying-americans
Gen. Keith Alexander lying http://www.ibtimes.com/nsa-chief-denies-agency-employees-can-spy-americans-1312799
Five Eyes used to target NZ citizens https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/new-zealand-appears-to-have-used-nsa-spy-network-to-target-kim-dotcom/
NSA gathering Aussie communications http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-08/australian-nsa-involvement-explained/5079786
etc.....
Illegal domestic spying AC. Something that should have stopped in the 1970's AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The world knows of the big US brands that helped and supported PRISM.
The networks that did not have the skills to detect gov collect it all deep in their most secure big brand networks.
The big US brands that sold and gave away junk crypto as crypto standards.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Politics. Publishers have their own party politics to consider and present.
Release the junk crypto facts and let the internet sort it out.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Look, I still don't think Snowden helping Russia is a good thing
The only evidence that he's helped russia is by capitalizing on his position as a public source of embarrassment to the US to garner asylum in russia. A choice he was forced into by the US cancelling his passport while he was en-route through a russian airport.
Contrast that to somebody like Assange who has not only knowingly served as a cut-out for russian disinfo operations, but also participated in them himself, particularly his public embrace of seth rich conspiracy lies to simultaneously puff himself up and put his thumb on the scale in US elections.
The day Snowden starts collaborating with the russians to advance their authoritarian agenda I will totally cut him loose. But for now there is no evidence he's doing anything to help them beyond simply continuing to breath in the place circumstances beyond his control put him.
The E911 Document was also proving a weak reed. It had originally been valued at $79,449.
Computer-knowledgeable people found this value -- for a twelve-page bureaucratic document -frankly incredible. In his "Crime and Puzzlement" manifesto for EFF, Barlow commented: "We will probably never know how this figure was reached or by whom, though I like to imagine an appraisal team consisting of Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller, and Thomas Pynchon."
Zenner gave the witness a copy of "BellSouth E911 Service Interfaces," which cost, as he pointed out, $13, straight from the catalog. "Look at it carefully," he urged Ms. Williams, "and tell me if it doesn't contain about twice as much detailed information about the E911 system of BellSouth than appeared anywhere in Phrack."
http://nuclear.gla.ac.uk/~protopop/archive/hacker/part4.php
lotta america haters here. smells like potatos and vodka.
It didn't. Now what? I hear people talk about how things should be and what the law says and what the constitution says and so on.
These are mere words that where written down at some point in time and as such are meaningless. The words themselves have no impact. I can say "I want to be rich." I could even make a law that says I must be rich. Yes unless people act upon those words, they are meaningless.
The main issue is that there is no accountability. If I tell a kid that he is not allowed to take a cookie and he takes one, if there are no accountability, why would he not take another one.
If there IS accountability, e.g. he must go to bed early or no PC for a week, he might STILL eat the cookie, sure, but he knew what would happen.
Where we are now is that the NSA says and almost brags that they are spying on everybody and nothing happens. Nothing. So why should they stop? Why should they change? What do they gain if they change? Their work becomes harder to do. It will be more expensive. They already believe they are good citizens, so that is not a solution. And why do they think they are good citizens? Because if they are not, they would be held accountable.
Without accountability, all the words and laws are just interesting things for a writer to drive a plot, like the 3 laws of robotics.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Re It didn't. Now what?
The CIA and NSA faced closed gov question is the 1970's. That was it.
The thinking goes that budgets got restricted.
Iran Contra was the thinking around any such US gov funding changes to world wide CIA activities.
The US gov said no more funds? Create your own agency funds using products and services that are in demand and do the mission.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
No, it smells like apple pie.
Well, I've really been missing the obsessions of the birthers.
Glad to see that, with the change in administrations, the other team has unleashed its own obsessives.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.