
The man who made Edward Snowden inevitable - gyre007
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21683975-man-who-made-edward-snowden-inevitable-black-chamber
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danso
God damn, I could just feel the writer stretching to make the parallels
work...that last attempt at poetry in the last line, "Then, along came Mr.
Snowden". A code breaker who wrote a book to make money during the Great
Deprssion is what made Snowden inevitable? And no one of worth came after
Yardley to expose the NSA, not James Bamford nor Bill Binney?

If there was anyone who made Snowden inevitable, it was whoever was doing
sysops.

~~~
schoen
I'm also confused about whether the connection between the two is more meant
to be "both Yardley and Snowden told the public about signals intelligence
activities because they thought the government was doing the wrong thing" or
"because Yardley was so indirectly successful at making the U.S. government
aggressively spy on communications, it was inevitable that people working in
that field would some day be disturbed and frightened by the scope of
surveillance". (Or both?)

~~~
danso
Yeah I read through his Wikipedia page...granted, it was before I had coffee,
but I didn't see anything where it was said he did it out of conscience. The
Wikipedia entry claims he couldn't get a job in U.S. government so he ended up
working for the Canadians.

I felt as if the article was trying to make it sound like it's unfair that
Yardley is in the NSA hall of heroes while Snowden is in exile. First of all,
Yardley was inducted decades after his death; we don't know how things will
change with Snowden.

Second, Yardley actually contributed to "the cause"...that is, codebreaking
for World War II...in fact, according to the OP, he _led_ it. The problem was
when he decided to write a book for it to make some money. And of course, he
did it during a time when giving up cryptography secrets was not seen as
treasonous (was it still too new?), which is a big factor.

~~~
qubex
Yardley was active during World War I (aka ”The Great War” before we had to
number them), not World War II — a minor typo I'm sure but relevant for the
comprehension of the comments by a cursory reader.

