
Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks - deepblueocean
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/us/officials-say-us-may-never-know-extent-of-snowdens-leaks.html
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spodek
Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to
home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people
they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone
whose resume they didn't have.

Not that anyone in D.C. is holding the accountable, but if someone
hypothetically did want to hold them accountable, how high would their
threshold for failure have to be for outcomes like this?

> _Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of
> the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama
> administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his
> revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders._

Mending relations is probably hard to do while continuing the programs and
their secrecy. It probably wouldn't be that hard to mend them if they shut
down the program.

It would save money and stop breaking the Constitution too.

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iwwr
_> Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close
to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what
people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with
someone whose resume they didn't have._

Would you rather these agencies be truly competent and efficient that their
activities would never come to light?

~~~
fidotron
One of the greatest arguments against the invasions of privacy they're engaged
in is such competence by government departments is absolutely impossible, and
the only way around this is to not collect the information in the first place.

If you create a department that knows everything about everyone then it
creates such a big single point of failure that it will be attacked
continuously. This is on top of the general human error leading to data dumps
being left on public transport etc.

A honest and competent version of the NSA would acknowledge that leaks would
be going to occur (malicious or accidental) and that it would need to be very
careful about what it collects in case it could be used against it when it
leaks. Once more government secrecy is actually just a way of hiding
incompetence.

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film42
Off topic kind of: It's a shame that the headlines immediately after Snowden's
initial press release turned from, "The government is spying on you" to
"Snowden is evading!"

By this I mean, It was unfortunate to see Snowden's punch dissipate with
headlines that focussed on his safety and whereabouts, instead of keeping
focus on the crimes committed by the US government.

Did anyone else notice that?

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yodsanklai
I did, when talking with my american friends. Most of them are saying that
Snowden is not a "whistleblower" because he fled the country to Russia. And
after all, government spying has always been there, and everybody does it, and
it serves the US best interest and so on... And this comes from people that
are educated and usually critical on governments.

I find it worrying. I don't follow closely what happens in the US, but my
overall feeling is that on many important issues, there is very little
opposition or at least questioning to what the US government is doing. People
seem more concerned with taxes and immigration reform.

It also struck me during the presidential debates. Both candidates pretty much
agreed that the "bad guys" should be caught, but it didn't really go much
deeper than that! It seems voters have basically not the slightest control on
what their leaders are doing. Depressing...

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lawnchair_larry
_" I did, when talking with my american friends. Most of them are saying that
Snowden is not a "whistleblower" because he fled the country to Russia."_

Anecdotally, that view does seem to be the minority in the US. Increasingly so
as time goes on and more is understood. That was a gut reaction by many
conservatives initially, but I think most understand by now that him going to
Russia is irrelevant, even if they do disagree with the act of disclosing.

Polls seem to back this up: [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/uk-usa-
security-pol...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/uk-usa-security-
poll-idUKBRE95B15H20130612)

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Bahamut
I found this line interesting: "Six months since the investigation began,
officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into
classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as
well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the
system."

On its face, this sounds unethical for someone who made his decision on
morality. Has anything more been published about this aspect anywhere
(rationales, details, etc.)?

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crazygringo
What, why?

Are you saying there's inherently something "immoral" about covering your
tracks, using other passwords, or hacking firewalls? On what basis?

If the guy is already copying documents he's not allowed to have access to,
what difference does it make using passwords he's not allowed to have access
to?

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nitrogen
Could "using passwords" be PR-speak for the su command?

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maxerickson
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-
securit...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-
snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108)

"Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords - sources"

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salient
This is because they want to obfuscate as much as possible what is being done
within the agency. If everything was logged, and you knew exactly who did
what, it would be a lot easier to audit the agency, which is what they don't
want. So they have a conflict of interest here. Make everything auditable,
trackable and searchable, or risk other leaks.

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belorn
If everything is auditable, trackable and searchable, they just need to delete
the tapes if someone comes looking.

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asn0
... or all the other people who have taken data from the NSA, that we don't
know about (yet).

~~~
fidotron
Exactly. If Snowden managed this with a full on media storm it's a given that
a good number of US antagonists already had access to everything he copied.

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suprgeek
Which is why there is some talk of offering him Amnesty - to find out exactly
how much and what he leaked (Among other things) [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2013/12/report-nsa-mulls-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2013/12/report-nsa-mulls-snowden-amnesty-but-it-probably-wont-happen/)

~~~
ceejayoz
My understanding was he doesn't have the files at this point - they're all in
possession of the journalists. Snowden can't put the genie back in the bottle,
and the NSA wouldn't ever trust that all copies had been destroyed.

I'd be pretty dubious about taking amnesty if I were him, too. Contracts under
duress aren't legitimate. Chances are decent they'd get him here, claim
duress, and throw him in Guantanamo.

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greenyoda
Forget Guantanamo. He's dealing with a government that has killed U.S.
citizens with drone-fired missiles without due process. If I were Snowden, I'd
be concerned that if I came anywhere near the reach of the U.S. government,
I'd be secretly declared an "enemy combatant" and an "unfortunate accident"
would happen to me.

~~~
pekk
When did this ever happen? al-Aulaki's case is not at all as you described

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dalke
At least 4 US citizens have been killed by US drones. Anwar al-Awlaki is the
only one who was specifically targeted. His son Abdulrahman, also a US
citizen, was killed two weeks later by drone, but was not specifically
targeted, according to the US.

The US lawyers argued "Mr. Awlaki was a lawful target because he was
participating in the war with Al Qaeda and also because he was a specific
threat to the country... And while the Constitution generally requires
judicial process before the government may kill an American, the Supreme Court
has held that in some contexts — like when the police, in order to protect
innocent bystanders, ram a car to stop a high-speed chase — no prior
permission from a judge is necessary; the lawyers concluded that the wartime
threat posed by Mr. Awlaki qualified as such a context, and so his
constitutional rights did not bar the government from killing him without a
trial. ... it is not unlawful “murder” when the government kills an enemy
leader in war or national self-defense [so] the foreign-killing statute would
not impede a strike" [NYT, March 9, 2013].

greenyoda wrote: "He's dealing with a government that has killed U.S. citizens
with drone-fired missiles without due process."

It therefore comes down to what you mean by "due process." I hold with
greenyoda that the circumstances around Awlaki's deliberate killing were
insufficient as to allow the exception to the judicial process, and that he
therefore did not receive due process owed him by birthright.

You may think otherwise, but even in that case the situation as described is
very close to to what greenyoda wrote. Why do you think it's "not at all" as
described?

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chinpokomon
"But for all of Mr. Snowden’s technical expertise, some American officials
also place blame on the security agency for being slow to install software
that can detect unusual computer activity carried out by the agency’s work
force..."

Should we be surprised that they are ignoring the real problems? Neither
Snowden, nor the lack of surveillance is the issue. What the documents
revealed about the NSAs Unconstitutional programs is what should be alarming.

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espeed
_The official said the State Department often described the spying to foreign
leaders as “business as usual” between nations._

It's interesting the last line of the article says State often described it as
"business as usual," an idiom sometimes used in reference to activities of the
CIA (AKA "The Company").

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moocowduckquack
Well, at least we now know the answer to _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_

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coldcode
Government Intelligence is an oxymoron. Anyone with a sense of security knows
that the most dangerous people are the ones you see every day. Yet they
allowed him to basically steal everything.

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ihsw
Just goes to show that the NSA doesn't give a rats ass about defence other
than penetrating it.

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spot
these are the clowns who say we should trust them with our private data?

