
Intel Committee Releases Declassified Snowden Report - kafkaesq
http://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=743
======
kafkaesq
There's no bombshell here. The section on "foreign influence" is still heavily
redacted -- leaving literally just one and half sentences to read, in a sea of
black. And both of the assertions it makes in those 1.5 sentences are quite
vague:

 _" Snowden has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence
services"_ (with no specifics). Yes, there are probably plants among the
various Russian nationals he deals with. So what? (They make it sound like
he's holding regular briefings with these people in a mahogany-paneled room
somewhere).

 _" And in June 2016, [a Russian PM] asserted that 'Snowden did share
intelligence' with his government."_ (That's _not_ what the Russian PM, Frantz
Klintsevich said -- and it's dishonest of the IC to assert otherwise). Also,
this non-revelation was already made when the initial version of this
problematic report was first published over the summer.

The overall weakness of these statements suggest that even now -- 3+ years
after being stranded in Moscow, as a more or less direct result of the Obama
administration's yanking his passport -- they still don't have anything to
nail the guy with.

~~~
dogma1138
There is no chance that the Russians let him in without debriefing him.

If and what information was handed over to them is another thing.

Likely that they got the same package that the reporters got plus maybe some
documents related specifically to Russia that weren't released.

~~~
kafkaesq
You can speculate about what went on after his arrival in Moscow, all you
want.

The point is that the Committee's report (in its current version) provides
precisely zero information about what happened.

~~~
_audakel
exactly. if something had actually happend, as in they had hard evidence of a
specific incident, they would broadcast that all over to prove that he is a
criminal.

as far as i know, this has not happend yet.

~~~
Proof
Nor it will ever happen because he arrived in Russia without possession of any
documents. They had had already been taken by Laura Poitres and Glenn
Greenwald.

As many of the commentators have already stated, they should either exonerate
him(not likely) or figure out a way to brand him a peadofile.

My guess is; if they were to label him outright then everybody would call the
government out and they maybe put in a awkward position of vindicating him.
Will be interesting to see what 2017 brings.

~~~
mSparks
Not sure where you're getting that from. certainly not an official source.

[http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/ar...](http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1568673.ece)

->RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.

~~~
mSparks
and for those to young to remember.

Rewson, SAFE, Waihopai, INFOSEC, ASPIC, MI6, Information Security, SAI,
Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism
Defensive Information, Defense Information Warfare, Offensive Information,
Offensive Information Warfare, The Artful Dodger, NAIA, SAPM, ASU, ASTS,
National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, SAO, Reno, Compsec, JICS,
Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, RSP, ISS, JDF,
Ermes, Passwords, NAAP, DefCon V, RSO, Hackers, Encryption, ASWS, CUN, CISU,
CUSI, M.A.R.E., MARE, UFO, IFO, Pacini, Angela, Espionage, USDOJ, NSA, CIA,
S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secert Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White House,
Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, SALDV, PEM, resta, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet,
AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, SAMU, COSMOS, DATTA,
Furbys, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, ram, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC,

etc etc.

------
givinguflac
If there was any reasonable evidence proving the position of the USG it would
be front and center in size 50 font, underlined and bolded. This only further
proves that Mr. Snowden is truly one of the great selfless heroes of the
modern era. Not that they'll be reasonable and let him come home, but at least
those who care enough to pay attention and think critically will know a little
more of the truth. Snowden links to this well done takedown of some of the
many blatant lies in this report: [https://tcf.org/content/commentary/house-
intelligence-commit...](https://tcf.org/content/commentary/house-intelligence-
committees-terrible-horrible-bad-snowden-report/)

------
grandalf
If America's adversaries benefit from Snowden's leaks that would be
unfortunate, but far less of a problem than the existence of the excesses
Snowden revealed.

Until the government starts to take seriously the idea that it has seriously
broken trust with the American people, it's hard to take seriously any talk of
the damage alleged to have happened due to Snowden's leaks.

~~~
mindcrime
_Until the government starts to take seriously the idea that it has seriously
broken trust with the American people, it 's hard to take seriously any talk
of the damage alleged to have happened due to Snowden's leaks._

Exactly this. Our government has to own up to the wrongs it has committed and
take responsibility for fixing the problems that allowed those things to
happen, and quit looking to make Snowden a scapegoat. Trying to handwave
around the real issue and make this about Snowden is just doubling down on the
same mindset that caused this trouble in the first place.

~~~
jwtadvice
Unfortunately that's not how the state thinks.

Washington knows that it has a lot of levers that it can pull to influence
public opinion and narrative (just look at the poor quality and compromised
character of international reporting in the US).

Snowden as a concept is a threat to Washington's legitimacy. Not only because
he exposed massive illegality and wrongdoing on their part, but because if
he's considered a hero then:

1\. they are the villian. That's bad for state power.

2\. it could inspire more leaks of more illegal and ethically questionable
behavior. Which could start a spiral.

From a purely game theoretical point of view, Wasthington has to insist that
it's the good guy in this situation and it was Snowden who was behaving
irresponsibly.

Given the collective approach that the US government is known to take (e.g. it
gets to write the history books that children are educated with) and the
opposition to this narrative track among informed and disillusioned Americans
are not collectively organized over the long arc of history probably
Washington can have its way.

~~~
grandalf
This is a very insightful comment, not sure why anyone would vote it down.

Indeed the wrongdoing revealed has compromised the legitimacy of the state
significantly in my mind. When you combine deliberate PR/propaganda with a
surveillance state the result is pretty scary.

The worst part is that our president has not even addressed the issue head on
and acknowledged blatant excesses and offered reassurance that something (even
in secret) is being done.

I'm sure that if I worked at the NSA I'd take it for granted at some level
that the work I was doing was inherently good, and thus I'd read critiques
like this thread as horribly misguided.

But there is such a thing as consent in a democracy, and while we don't have a
direct democracy there are certain rights which the government is not supposed
to violate under any circumstances.

~~~
cryptarch
Maybe it was downvoted for being "tinfoil"?

I know there are some ridiculous conspiracy theories out there, but is it too
tinfoil to assume powerful actors had a hand in stigmatizing the concept of
conspiracy and abuse of power in the U.S. government?

~~~
jwtadvice
I take comments like this very seriously, having been accused of "tinfoil"
when pointing to evidence of global surveillance programs (e.g. Office of
Strategic Influence, Total Information Awareness, etc) before journalists
broke the Snowden story.

Luckily, I think most people on Hacker News are realistic people not easy to
excite into witch hunts and victim-blaming like you suggest. I think most
people on Hacker News believe that the governments of Russia, France, Turkey,
Germany, China, and others including the United States, manage their
appearance to the publics they represent, making appeals for and finding
evidence to build the case for their own legitimacy. That's not an
extraordinary claim, you can find media reporting that suggests a wide range
of policies and rhetoric from around the world are motivated by public
appearance and appeals to legitimacy. Much of the censorship that people
experience in the world is similarly motivated.

The character attacks against Snowden have evolved over time: "he didn't
understand the programs / he was just a low level employee", "his girlfriend
was a stripper", "he's a Russian spy", "he didn't go through the proper
channels", "he just wants to be in the news", "he was a disgruntled employee".

These slanderous rumors, spread by anonymous officials and PR contracts, belie
the fact that there is no desire to discuss the abuse disclosed by the
whistleblowing. What anonymous officials, press offices and paid PR coverage
want to talk about are rumors and opinions about Snowden's intentions - topics
that not only distract from the documents (which are conclusive evidence of
highly illegal and unethical behavior) with inconclusive speculation but
topics that have a specific effect on the public attitude and narrative
understanding of the events that unfolded.

Those who think that there has to be some wide ranging conspiracy for
officials to react in a self-defensive manner are unrealistic. Those who think
the human nature of American officials deeply differs from Chinese officials,
French officials, or Turkish officials (etc) are unrealistic and unconvincing.

So to the first question you posed: no. I have a higher opinion of Hacker News
commentators than that. I don't think they are dumb or immature or
unrealistic. At least, not to that extreme degree.

~~~
cryptarch
I didn't mean to accuse you of being "tinfoil", I'm sorry if it came across
that way.

HN may be very reasonable compared to the average when it comes to Snowden and
dragnet surveillance, but the existance of that surveillance has been
plausible and even likely for a long time before Snowden came, and before
Snowden it was considered tinfoil by most (I heard) that knew of the
possibility at all.

It is now "in" or "socially acceptable" to acknowledge this possibilty now,
though once you start thinking about it and try to find ways of living that
reflect this knowledge (e.g. refusing to use smartphones, social media or the
internet in general) you again tend to enter "considered tinfoil territory".
What I'm trying to say is, I think "tinfoil" is mostly a label used to
stigmatize and supress a concept or person, based on social convention or
"perceived consensus" (which is manipulated by media, which are manipulated by
all entities with enough power and the incentive to do so). I perceived GGP to
be at risk of that and wanted to indicate that in my comment.

Kind of like how saying the Intel ME is a backdoor is viewed now (while it is
literally an autonomous remote management module, that is included in almost
every consumer PC and which cannot be removed or inspected).

That's why I don't trust other people's opinion on what is "tinfoil", and can
be a little cynical about it.

~~~
jwtadvice
I am 100% with you and thank you very much for your well thought out comments.
I did not reply earlier because of end-of-year vacationing.

------
tupshin
Edward Snowden responds to the HPSCI report on his disclosures

[https://twitter.com/i/moments/812014048866877440](https://twitter.com/i/moments/812014048866877440)

~~~
pstuart
But who will people listen to, Tupshin?

~~~
CodeWriter23
They'll listen to the "real" news, of course.

------
dmoy
Title may be more readable with the word "Intelligence" first, not Intel, just
to avoid confusion with the company (Intel), not e.g. The Company (CIA)

~~~
FlorianRappl
Thought exactly the same!

------
msimpson
The problem I have with this entire situation rests in the following timeline
of events.

June 2012 at NSA Hawaii: Snowden receives a quick rebuke for roping in a
deputy head of NSA's technical services directorate on an email conversation
regarding a workplace spat over issues updating a few servers. Snowden does
not deny that this incident occurred, and the NSA has quoted directly from the
resulting reprimand showing Snowden's apologetic attitude in regard to his
actions after the fact.

June or July 2012 (a few weeks later) at NSA Hawaii: "Snowden began the
unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks."

December 2012 at NSA Hawaii: "Snowden attempted to contact journalist Glenn
Greenwald."

January 2013 at NSA Hawaii: "[Snowden] contacted filmmaker Laura Poitras."

March 2013, James Clapper's Congressional Testimony: Snowden deems this his
"breaking point" in regard to the question as to "Why he did it?" Although, as
the report states, he began his mass download nearly a year prior to this
event, as well as contacting both a journalist and filmmaker before even
taking another NSA position as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton.

Nowhere has Snowden particularly refuted this timeline. He, and those
journalists who support him, have only cherry picked falsehoods from the
overall report alluding to the rest as merely fruit of the poisonous tree.
Yet, this timeline seem quite factual and troubling.

------
_audakel
>It will take a long time to mitigate the damage he caused

I am assuming he means a long time to fix the trust btwn the US govt and
people? Because I am not aware of any concrete evidence that shows damages
specifically caused by the disclousres.

Pretty sure most terrosits already knew that they had to be careful with their
comm. as it was most likley monitored. And the bombings in europe where not
coordinated by advanced encryption, but normal social media accounts as i
understand.

~~~
BoringCode
Due to the nature of this type of damage you likely won't hear any evidence
for many years.

~~~
michaelmrose
If they can't produce proof of damage I'm going to go ahead and assume it
doesn't exist.

~~~
BoringCode
That's fine, you should be skeptical.

But do you really expect a nation state to say "hey, this is exactly how were
are damaged. Please exploit us." That's just the nature of the intelligence
business, it's hard to provide proof of damage without causing further harm.

~~~
pdkl95
> do you really expect a nation state to say "hey, this is exactly how were
> are damaged ...

Yes, if they want any rebuttal to Snowden's accusations. Snowden brought
proof. If the state wants anybody to believe an alternative explanation, they
need to provide at least _some_ evidence. "Just trust us!" is not a useful
defense.

> it's hard to provide proof of damage without causing further harm.

That isn't always true, but potential future harm hasn't stopped the
government in the past. If revealing sensitive information is politically
useful, the perceived realpolitik benefit can outweigh theoretical future
harm. This is especially true in today's hypernormal "narrative based"
political climate.

------
wdr1
"“Snowden infringed the privacy of at least [redacted] NSA personnel by
searching their network drives without their permission"

Wait... the NSA is complaining _their_ privacy was infringed upon because
documents were searched without proper approval?

Wat?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right! He was an NSA employee as well, so authorized to violate basic privacy.
It came with the job.

------
readams
These claims are extremely weak. Even taking them all at face value you get a
straightforward account of a whistleblower. The only statement of harm
speculates that documents that were not released got into the hands of Chinese
or Russian intelligence.

------
Sanddancer
One of the things I'm seeing there that strikes me is the lack of criticism of
using contractors in this kind of work. I'm curious as to how many off the
cuff conversations about the programs weren't brought up in hearings because
he was a contractor, and thus not afforded as many of the rights under
whistleblower statutes that employees are afforded. His chain of command is so
meandering and circuitous that it would discourage damn near anyone from
reporting if the toilet was backed up, let alone real problems.

------
dom0
Read the headline and thought "What the hell does Intel have to do with
declassifying some reports!?"

------
throw2016
Snowden has done important work, but only by making an example of him will the
state ensure anyone who entertains similar thoughts knows the cost of exposing
wrong doing.

You essentially have to give up your life like Snowden has and for those with
kids and family this might be a price too high.

The media, commentators and assorted vested interests are old hands at
dismissing concerns that do not fit an agenda as 'conspiracy theories' so the
importance and rarity of 'the smoking gun' that Snowden produced cannot be
underestimated. And as a side effect he exposed the galling hypocrisy and
pretension of Europe as the enlightened refuge for dissentors and the
'orchestration' of the global media with it.

The only way to address the fallout is 'normalization'. And it seems the
narrative is the world is such a dangerous place that total surveillance is
essential, never mind our security forces and foreign policy is directly
involved in propping up terorrist funders and groups.

And this narrative is being expaned daily. We should realise the state is
supposed to represent our interests and the only endame for such unaccountable
and powerful security services is eventually our supression.

------
oneplane
The report seems to be a PDF.. that was then printed, badly scanned, and saved
as a PDF again. Didn't know it was still 1995!

~~~
mjevans
It's understandable as a reasonable process for redaction. If you flatten it
to a pure black and white image you get something you can print (the
government loves that), but not something you can easily search (good for
whoever's doing the publishing), and the security step is the flattening of
the mask over the data with complete overlap and uniformity.

Edit: Of course actually printing it at any point in that process IS
insane/beyond paranoid.

~~~
dest
Printing, despite being old-fashioned, is friendly with air-gapped networks.
It is also very low cost compared with the cost of those investigations.

So, not so insane in my opinion.

------
coldcode
Given that we are now "friends" with Russia and Putin (according to some) I
wonder what will happen to Snowden.

------
besselheim
Interesting read, and sheds some more light on Snowden's motivations and
attitude. I thought it quite ironic that while he complains about supposed
privacy violations of Americans, he was doing the exact same thing - on a
smaller scale - to his co-workers. Of most concern is the huge excess of
documents exfiltrated that had nothing to do with mass surveillance.

Also interesting is how well the accounts of his work behaviour match up with
these posts from an HN user earlier this year, who claimed insider knowledge:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=buttcoin](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=buttcoin)

~~~
jwtadvice
His actions were perfectly consistent with his attitude toward global mass
surveillance.

In particular since there wasn't an individual document that stated "we are
surveilling the American homeland in addition to the remainder of the innocent
world", Snowden choose - I think history vindicated him in this regard - to
grab many documents and let journalists choose what to publish.

I think the journalists who disclosed the documents did a wonderful job
selecting what to publish directly, what to report on, and what to black hole.
They chose to report on what was in the public interest.

The public interest included revelations about mass surveillance of allied
nations, espionage to help American business prospects, memoranda for allies
to spy on one another's citizens, backdooring and infiltrating American
products and standards so that they could be military weapons overseas and a
great many other things.

Another wonderful outcome of Snowden having provided a large collection of
documents to journalists is that in reading them as a wholistic collection
gave journalists the context to understand the motivations and methods of mass
global surveillance - indeed it allowed journalists to effectively question
American official denials about its behavior. America had been guessing what
was taken and so it wasn't sure about what it could get away with lying about.
Journalists were able to publish documents that contradicted the official
narrative coming out of the White House when it tried to downplay the massive
illegal and unethical apparatus.

In any case, it's wrong to abuse Snowden in this case. Journalists made the
decision about what to publish. I don't remember anyone's privacy inside the
agency getting ruined, but if that did happen the blame rests with the media.

~~~
besselheim
I'm suspicious of his primary motivation being a distaste of global mass
surveillance. This passage is especially damning:

> _Snowden would later publicly claim that his "breaking point" \- the final
> impetus for his unauthorised downloads and disclosures of troves of
> classified material - was March 2013 congressional testimony by Director of
> National Intelligence James Clapper._

> _But only a few weeks after his conflict with NSA managers, on July 12, 2012
> - eight months before Director Clapper 's testimony - Snowden began the
> unauthorized, mass downloading of information from NSA networks._

Given that Snowden claimed his motivation was seeing Clapper "lie on oath",
there's some irony in seeing Snowden caught in a lie about this claim, as at
that point not only had he already downloaded and exfiltrated much of what he
later leaked, but had already been in contact with Greenwald and Poitras for
two to three months.

~~~
Clubber
I could see that in a similar manner of wanting to quit your job. You make
moves so that it can happen quickly, you save up some cash, you make some
calls, but you don't pull the trigger so to speak until you just can't take it
anymore; something pushes you over the edge.

But that doesn't really matter, does it? I mean we now know we're being spied
on either directly, or indirectly (wink wink). Data collection is spying.
Metadata collection is spying. It's happening; both parties vigorously support
it; and it's most likely unconstitutional. That's what matters.

------
immortalmathgod
The tone and ambiguous thought process of the press release is alarming. He
was justified and has allowed for us to have a clearer conversation in regards
to security. The consequence is sifting though the noise for credentials and
concreteness. Glad to see that many, but not the majority, have the ability to
look at all of this critically and logically.

------
gurneyHaleck
I can't help but stand this next to the Challenger Space Shuttle O-ring
thread, without feeling a profound sense of resonance between these 2
scenarios.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238346)

Compare this passage:

    
    
      (U) Third, two weeks before Snowden began mass 
          downloads of classified documents, he was 
          reprimanded after engaging in a workplace 
          spat with NSA managers. Snowden was repeatedly 
          counseled by his managers regarding his behavior 
          at work. For example, in June 2012, Snowden became 
          involved in a fiery email argument with a 
          supervisor about how computer updates should be 
          managed. Snowden added an NSA senior executive 
          several levels above the supervisor to the email 
          thread, an action that earned him a swift 
          reprimand from his contracting officer for failing 
          to follow the proper protocol for raising 
          grievances through the chain of command. Two weeks 
          later, Snowden began his mass downloads of 
          classified information from NSA networks.
    

Compare to:

    
    
      2) The engineers actually knew the risk (~1% chance 
         of loss per launch, not specific to the o-rings, 
         compared with two actual losses of the shuttle 
         over ~130 missions). Management used entirely 
         invented numbers for the risk which were not 
         justified.
    

It's like, hey, Snowden _tried_ to tell them to apply their updates. He
_tried_ to tell them the o-rings might blow. He _warned_ them that there was a
one-in-one-hundred probability of failure.

If he didn't blow the gasket on the launchpad himself, before launch, how
disasterously awful might this have _really_ been, if he had behaved like a
good little cubicle drone, followed protocol, drank the Kool-Ade, and
permitted this so-called "counseling" to brainwash him?

~~~
234dd57d2c8db
Except he didn't blow the gasket on the launchpad. He just dumped fuel
everywhere and threw a match as maintenance crews and innocent civilians were
standing around.

He didn't have to release all the documents in the manner he did. He could
have leaked them to Krebs on Security or something else. Krebs is very
trustworthy at protecting sources and data itself. Instead he just dumped it
all to the world with disregard for the damage it would cause and the innocent
lives it would impact.

There's a difference between drinking coolaid and realizing there's drugs in
the coolaid so you blow up the entire party coolaid is served at damn the
consequences to the innocent waiters and waitresses tending the party.

~~~
krallja
> Instead he just dumped it all to the world

Sure you're not thinking about someone else? Snowden gave his files to
journalists, not WikiLeaks.

~~~
cschmittiey
I see this misconception all the time -- a teacher of mine (who is generally
reputable) was absolutely convinced Snowden had given the documents to
Anonymous. I wonder what's caused that.

~~~
intransigent
Old people aren't quite as tuned-in to the technical realities of the internet
and its in-groups and out-groups.

The premise that "there is no anonymous" escapes 4 out of 5 people I talk to.
It takes very careful explaining, to bring people to the understanding that
their are hacking teams with names, that get away with things, and the things
that those named sub-groups manage pull off are perpetrated by " _some
unknown, anonymous group of people_ " until evidence demonstrates who done it.

Because of this, The Proles (people who aren't paying close attention) often
confuse the premise being a simple anonymous tipster with being affiliated
with the fictious premise of an organized, regimented imaginary hacking group
that possesses a rightful claim to the mantle of "Anonymous" as if it were
Batman.

Then media outlets exploit this cluelessness, to sell advertising, by drumming
up exciting click-bait that perpetuates the false narrative that there is a
movement called Anonymous, rather than the prank call it really is.

