
What did Edward Snowden get wrong? Everything - llambda
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0811-liepman-snowden-and-classified-informat-20130811,0,2610260.story
======
nailer
> This is done under tight and well-thought-out strictures. I witnessed
> firsthand the consequences of breaking the privacy rules of my former
> organization, the National Counterterrorism Center. As the center's deputy
> director, I had to fire people, good people, and remove others from their
> posts for failing to follow the rules about how information could be
> accessed and used.

1\. We know from these leaks that is little to no practical control over
access to all communications data, only a process that could simply be ignored
without oversight. Andrew Liepman does not address this at all.

2\. Liepman makes no argument whatsoever as to why a warrant is no longer
required to get access to our 'hay', as he puts it.

3\. It's fairly established the US is collecting the actual contents of
private communications as well as meta data, Andrew Liepman strangely limits
his discussion to metadata (which is also sensitive but less so).

4\. Andrew Liepman is publicly arguing for the abolition of the forth
Amendment, and perhaps other parts of the US constitution, and perhaps also
the United States itself. We have no idea whether Andrew Liepman is planning
violent action against Americans, and need to arm ourselves with the tools to
protect ourselves from men like him who seek to do harm against the United
States of America.

------
acabal
Having our communication intercepted, stored, and analyzed en masse is not bad
because of whoever is in office today. It's bad because someone different,
someone with less scruples, could be in office tomorrow.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I actually believe that the people in charge
of this stuff today are at least _trying_ to be careful about what they're
doing with the information they've collected. But once the infrastructure to
surveil, analyze, and more importantly _store for all eternity_ everybody's
communication is in place, you're leaving an awfully tempting pot of gold for
the people in power a decade from now. _That 's_ who I don't trust.

In either case, saying mass surveillance and archiving of everybody's personal
communications is OK because "trust me guys, I'm for realsies not gonna screw
you" is ignorant at best and despicable at worst. I didn't elect this guy and
I've never met him, and he doesn't have my interest at heart--his interests
are catching terrorists, and soon _everybody 's_ going to be a terrorist.
We're already calling nonviolent nuns terrorists:
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/protesting-n...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/protesting-
nuns-branded-terrorists/?page=all)

~~~
LoganCale
> I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I actually believe that the people in
> charge of this stuff today are at least trying to be careful about what
> they're doing with the information they've collected.

They're passing intelligence to the DEA and IRS for domestic crimes, with
orders from the top of the DOJ to hide that intelligence from everyone, even
the courts, and only use it to construct a parallel case to prosecute with. I
don't believe that's "trying to be careful" with the information. That's a
blatant abuse of our legal system.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-
intel...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-
laundering)

~~~
malandrew
Yup. We don't have to wait 10 years. The people with less scruples are in
office now already abusing the system. If these are the norms of acceptable
behavior now, I fear what they are going to consider acceptable (ab)use of the
system in 10 years.

------
mef
The author writes that, even though abuses are possible, they aren't happening
and won't happen because, not only is the intelligence apparatus not
interested in the mission-irrelevant data which could be abused, but those in
a position to abuse are policed internally to ensure abuse doesn't happen.

Assuming this is all true, here's a thought experiment: in the event that this
was no longer true and abuses were occurring, how would the public ever know?
Since this entire process is impenetrably opaque to anyone on the outside, the
public has only the assurances of those folks running these programs.

~~~
fixxer
That is exactly the problem with these people: they refuse to acknowledge
basic logic, so such a thought experiment is beyond them.

~~~
fbuilesv
Does our discussion really benefit from comments attacking "these people" just
for the sake of criticizing them?

Please don't take this personal, I'm not a US citizen and I don't like the NSA
capturing and archiving my personal, "private" information either, but what do
we get from just venting our anger in an online forum?

~~~
fixxer
Suggest an alternative.

------
gee_totes
The thing that this OP-ed misses is that the fear around this surveillance is
that once we're done with terrorism, the "haystack" of data will be searched
for tax fraud, drug deals, etc. If the writer of the op-ed could address those
fears, this would actually be an enlightening read, not just a boilerplate
response from someone in the intelligence community.

~~~
ihsw
I wonder when the well-connected neighbourhood white knights will get access
to that information, and at that point we'll truly be in Hell. Voting records
are currently anonymous, but what of our personal opinions? Some publicly
identify as a certain political persuasion, but privately they identify
another political persuasion.

For example, there are people who truly believe in communism but any public
endorsement of it is dangerous, and others adhere to economic conservatism but
their feelings extend farther towards libertarianism.

What about when our neighbours attack us based on our online conversations?
It's not as uncommon as you could think, gerrymandering and the electoral
college already stir up seething and venomous hatred of The Other Party(TM).

It's not a matter of _if_ the NSA's treasure-trove of information leaks out,
but _when_.

Imagine for a moment if Zimmerman were as evil as the media paints him, and,
instead of callously shooting the Treyvon boy, he queried the local PRISM data
distribution centre. He could instead engage in a smear campaign against the
young man. In retaliation, Treyvon's allies gather data on Zimmerman that
indicates he's a bisexual and he's a swinger with his wife. These "data wars"
may seem far-fetched, but lately I've been feeling a bit more paranoid than
usual.

How about job discrimination? Surely your _public_ online activity can
directly influence the kind of jobs you can get, but the _private_ online
activity could permanently damage your career prospects. Vetting processes
nowadays check for a variety of red flags that are unrelated to activities
that pertain to your job. Imagine if your entire browser history -- including
the things you say, in addition to the websites you visit -- is indexed and
stored in perpetuity. _And it 's all completely outside of your control._

Now let's take this a step further. The TSA manages a no-fly list that is
well-known for false positives, and victims have no recourse over this at all.
Now imagine that false positives occurred during job vetting processes and
your job application is silently denied because someone else's unpleasant
online activities were accidentally linked to your own. _Again, you have no
control over this, and you also have no recourse._ There is nothing you can do
to remedy the situation.

------
dictum
>Let me break this to you gently. The government is not interested in your
conversations with your aunt, unless, of course, she is a key terrorist
leader.

I'm quickly becoming the go-to person for "what about the foreigners"
comments, but I couldn't let this one pass:

By thst logic, since the NSA is tasked with spying on any foreigner without
any kind of warrant or safeguard, all foreigners are key terrorist leaders, at
least in the eyes of NSA employees/the USG.

Addendum: "Let me break this to you gently" was not a very reassuring thing to
read from an ex-spook. Apparently, we're stupid and the intelligence community
has to nudge us out of our stupidity with an additional helping of
condescendence.

------
Zigurd
> _But the intelligence community — always a less sympathetic protagonist than
> a self-styled whistle-blower — actually has a good story to tell about how
> seriously the government takes privacy issues. We should tell it._

Ok. Go on. Better late than never, right? Or is the condescending
paternalistic boilerplate you stuffed this op-ed with your "good story?"

------
rplst8
He's actually wrong. If you read the executive orders that set up the legal
basis for the classification system, it says to err on the side of lowering
classification. I.e. not everything should be classified.

~~~
rplst8
Sec. 1.2 (c) [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-
order-c...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-
classified-national-security-information)

------
LoganCale
Propaganda-filled statist bullshit. Appeals to authority, and uses ridiculous
examples to justify it.

> But I worry less about what happens to this one man and more about the
> damage Snowden has done — and could still do — to America's long-term
> ability to strike the right balance between privacy and security.

The only valid balance is 100% privacy. A government that violates its
citizens' privacy is not acting legitimately.

> Ever since Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency,
> leaked top-secret material about its surveillance programs, he and the U.S.
> government have locked horns about the nature of those programs.

He's trying to rephrase the story to be one of Snowden vs. the U.S. rather
than the U.S. government vs. the people.

> Second, despite the grumbling from Snowden and his admirers, the U.S.
> government truly does make strenuous efforts not to violate privacy, not
> just because it respects privacy (which it does), but because it simply
> doesn't have the time to read irrelevant emails or listen in on
> conversations unconnected to possible plots against American civilians.

If it's archiving them, it has all the time in the world, and can search
through them at later times and forward information to relevant agencies. And
we already know this happens with the DEA and IRS, so his argument here is
even more irrelevant.

> I know firsthand that Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, is telling the
> truth when he talks about plots that have been preempted and attacks that
> have been foiled because of intelligence his agency collected.

It doesn't matter how many attacks they believe they have foiled, that doesn't
justify dragnet surveillance. Nothing does.

> Let me break this to you gently. The government is not interested in your
> conversations with your aunt, unless, of course, she is a key terrorist
> leader.

Trying to sideline the issue by suggesting ordinary people only talk about
irrelevant things. What about journalists, politicians, political activists,
and people who commit victimless crimes? As noted in a fantastic article by
Moxie Marlinspike, laws can't be overturned without people breaking those
laws: drug laws won't be overturned without people breaking the laws and using
the drugs and wanting them to be legal, etc.

> Unfortunately, during the Snowden affair, many news outlets have spent more
> time examining ways the government could abuse the information it has access
> to while giving scant mention to the lengths to which the intelligence
> community goes to protect privacy. We have spent enormous amounts of time
> and effort figuring out how to disaggregate the important specks from the
> overwhelming bulk of irrelevant data.

"Trust us. We have a policy." Not everyone is guaranteed to always follow that
policy, and it's a secret policy, with no legitimate oversight.

~~~
tzs
> The only valid balance is 100% privacy. A government that violates its
> citizens' privacy is not acting legitimately.

What do you mean by "100% privacy"? For instance, are wiretaps authorized by a
warrant from a district court OK, or do those violation your 100% privacy
condition?

~~~
Zigurd
Modern crypto offers 100% privacy if you do it right. How would you enforce a
court order to tap a conversation that's encrypted and the keys are discarded
after use? It's tantamount to a court order to defy gravity. Sure, you can
write such a document, and it might be constitutional to write such a document
and you might even throw someone in jail for contempt for disobeying such an
order. But... so what?

~~~
malandrew
At the end of the day whatever crime you are trying to get them for is
occurring in the real world as well. All that physical evidence should help
with convictions.

When there is a murder, there is a body. When there is a rape, there is a
victim. When there is a robbery, there are stolen goods. When drug trafficking
has occurred, there are drugs. When there is child porn, there is a child
involved. When there is a network breakin, there are server logs. When there
is drug or bomb manufacture, there are raw materials.

The police should be able to put people in jail based entirely on evidence of
a crime without ever having to rely on anything a potential suspect has said
or written. If that's the only way they can put someone away, I question how
much of an actual crime has even occurred. If you can't come up with physical
evidence, has society suffered enough harm for it to be even worth jailing
that person?

If all the physical evidence is still not enough for a conviction, then get a
warrant and observe everything you can about that person of interest the old
fashioned way. Eavesdrop on them with bugs (but don't remotely activate a
backdoor in a phone that shouldn't exist). Stake out police officers at their
house. Do undercover work. etc.

Will some people get away with their crimes? Certainly. And that's okay.
That's the cost society pays for their privacy. Police work is expected to be
expensive. The cost of investigative work is something that provides checks
and balances to abuse. A corrupt individual will have a very hard time hiding
the misappropriation of police resources for political or personal reasons. If
you need to stake out cops at a politicians house to get dirt on them to
blackmail with, that probably won't happen. If you can just type an email into
the system, then the barrier is so low to committing such an abuse and the
likelihood of getting caught so low, that you can be sure that that abuse will
happen.

Also, keeping the cost high ensures that only those people who actually are
terrorists, like active members of Al Quada are investigated. Right now the
bar for investigation is so low that there has been a massive re-
categorization of many domestic groups such as Occupy WallStreet as terrorists
to be surveilled.

I have absolutely no qualms with paying more taxes to hire more detectives as
the alternative to making sure that we catch the terrorists. Having a high
price to pay for investigations forces us as a society to ask the hard
question of what we actually think is worth investigating and what is merely a
nuisance for some that we can live with. Paying for those investigations with
our privacy is entirely too high a cost.

------
dnautics
"Second, despite the grumbling from Snowden and his admirers, the U.S.
government truly does make strenuous efforts not to violate privacy"

How can this guy be so sure? More importantly, how can WE be sure? It's all
secret.

~~~
gmuslera
And over that, they made perfectly clear that they don't care at all about
privacy of foreing people (or the people connected with them in any way), in
fact the main focus of the surveillace are european countries.

------
hypersoar
I actually believe a lot of what he is saying about the culture of US
intelligence agencies. I'd bet that there's little to none of people, for
example, extorting people by threatening to expose their fetish-porn habits.
I'll even believe that the people who work there care about protecting privacy
(insofar as one can when you work at an agency that keeps everybody's
communications on hard drives). But there needs to be some oversight. There
should be people from outside the Executive Branch with some actual power
watching them. If you believe in the US's mass surveillance programs, then you
should be willing to concede that, at the _bare minimum_ , this much should
happen.

Of course, I don't think the mass collection should be going on at all. That
data is too easily abused. If someone takes control of it who has less
integrity, is less interested (or able) to prevent violation and corruption,
then we have a massive problem. I believe this is what Snowden was referring
to when he mentioned "turnkey tyranny".

~~~
LoganCale
Most ordinary people will never be on their radar. That's usually the case,
even under tyrannical regimes. But that ignores the journalists, the lawyers,
the rival politicians, the activists, the dissidents…

~~~
_delirium
True, though historically in the U.S., the FBI has been the agency where those
kinds of abuses show up. The foreign intelligence agencies have had more of a
culture of viewing domestic affairs as petty and beneath them.

Trusting a three-letter agency's cultural norms isn't very solid protection,
admittedly.

~~~
LoganCale
The NSA now does intelligence collection for the FBI and other federal law
enforcement agencies.

------
cinquemb
" _Let me break this to you gently. The government is not interested in your
conversations with your aunt, unless, of course, she is a key terrorist
leader._ "

Let us contrast this with what Hayden's remarks were (after which going on to
compare the following group to Al Qaeda and the attack on 9/11 if you watched
the speech [lets not forget the DoD internal report that came out recently
about how the DoD is currently funding them [0], but that is neither here nor
there…]):

" _Nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who
haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years._ "

I guess this career CIA officer didn't get the memo that "terrorist" will be
used when it is convenient.

[0] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-30/al-qaeda-backers-
fo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-30/al-qaeda-backers-found-with-u-
s-contracts-in-afghanistan.html)

------
pkinsky
>(The NSA) simply doesn't have the time to read irrelevant emails or listen in
on conversations unconnected to possible plots against American civilians.

Possible "plotters against American civilians": -Occupy -animal-rights
protesters -environmentalists -tax evaders -prominent politicians
([http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/new-york-times-nsa-
ag...](http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/new-york-times-nsa-agent-was-
reading)) -whistleblowers

~~~
coldtea
human rights groups, eff, labour rights groups, black and latino leaders, etc.

We're talking about the kind of people keeping tabs and working against people
like MLK.

In a country were some random governor can censor Howard Zinn from school
libraries...

------
jipumarino
> I wish I could tell people the amazing things I witnessed during my 30 years
> in the CIA, that I've never seen people work harder or more selflessly, that
> for little money and long hours, people took it for granted that their flaws
> would be scrutinized and their successes ignored.

30 years? Then those flaws include helping overthrow a democratically elected
government in my country, among many others. That's a kind of flaw that needs
to be scrutinized and prevented at any cost.

------
mistercow
> I realize many Americans don't trust their government. I wish I could change
> that. I wish I could tell people the amazing things I witnessed during my 30
> years in the CIA, that I've never seen people work harder or more
> selflessly, that for little money and long hours, people took it for granted
> that their flaws would be scrutinized and their successes ignored.

It takes far more than doing Good to earn trust. You must also not do Bad.

------
junto
The "I know secret stuff and you guys just have to believe me" doesn't cut it.

The CIA have a pretty atrocious record. Gun and drug running, undermining
other countries democracies because they don't toe the Washington line,
funding and founding Al-Qaeda through its proxy war against the USSR in
Afghanistan.

Really this guy need go take a long walk of a short bridge.

What is really sad is that they all think like this. He isn't an isolated
case.

------
a3n
4th Amendment says warrants are supposed to be specific. I don't have the
background, years of reading or sophistication to understand how the general
Verizon and other warrants are constitutional, so I believe these programs are
unconstitutional. So this opinion piece is falling on my deaf ears.

They need to figure out how to do this constitutionally, at least at the broad
institutional and program level, or not at all.

------
scdoshi
"and if the goal is security, the harsh truth is that we should often err
toward more secrets rather than fewer."

I thought the ongoing debate was to determine whether the security afforded by
the secrets is worth it if it means establishing a surveillance state. The
goal is not security at any cost, is it?

~~~
glenra
The actual truth is that we should err towards fewer secrets rather than more,
because _secrets make you stupid_.

When the President and the people around him are acting on secret information,
they have to lie about why they do things and they have to parse all response
and criticism of their actions through a "if he knew what I know, would he
still think that?" filter. The upshot is the President can be making
boneheaded mistakes and utterly incapable of recognizing it because the
relevant subject-matter experts that could TELL him this aren't part of the
security apparatus - they can't tell him his "secret" info is bogus.

And the secret info the president sees isn't neutral. It gets assembled for
him by people who _have a point of view_ so he's likely to see the info that
supports what other people want him to think or what other people think he
wants to hear. So it's easy to get stuck in an error cascade, where everybody
inside the tent has a false view like "Saddam Hussein has nukes" which anybody
outside the tent can see is idiotic.

The solution to this problem is transparency. Get rid of the secrets and our
politicians instantly get a lot smarter and more able to notice and learn from
their mistakes.

------
MetaCosm
> Yes, some things that are classified probably don't need to be. That may
> undermine public trust and dilute our ability to protect the data that
> really need protecting.

Import things that need protecting like the fact that the secret FISC court
thinks what the NSA is doing is illegal -- that kind of important secrets.
([https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-
secret...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret-court-
opinion-law-underlying-prism-program-needs-stay))

------
skrebbel
Well, this great, because it's a discussion about _what_ Snowden leaked, and
not about which hotel he's staying in.

Apparently, the debate finally got big enough that those who support the NSA's
actions feel the need to defend themselves, in detail, and not just oneliners.
This is an open debate, in the media, very different from e.g. Alexander's
talk on Black Hat.

Sure, we all disagree with him, here on HN. That's not the point. Everyone
reading this can make up their own mind. The point is Snowden's leak is
starting to have the desired effect.

------
DanielBMarkham
There are two issues here. The first issue is the author telling us that yes,
there are real threats and that these systems have made the country safer. I
fully agree with him here.

The second issue is whether these systems can continue functioning in a free
society. Here we part ways. He wants to convince me by stressing that his
personal experience is such that it's obvious. Once again, I have no doubt
that he's telling the truth. The problem is that a democracy doesn't run on
magic people having special knowledge that the average citizen is denied.
Sure, we need secrets, but we can't have so much information under control by
the people that have the power to imprison us. It just won't work, terrorism
or no terrorism. (Although short term and on a small scale, sure, you can get
away with it)

You can see the problem with this ends-justifies-the-means thinking when you
think of all the other uses such a system could have helped. How can the
government use this only for terrorism, and not murder trials? Why not civil
cases? The problem isn't that the world is full of conspiracy-weaving ill-
informed people; it's that this relationship of government to the people is
_non-functional_ over the long term.

------
jpalioto
What has the USG done that would engender this level of (misguided) trust??

“Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good will and kind
conduct more speedily changed.” ― John Jay, The Federalist Papers

------
jmckib
If I might ask a meta-question, how could this story have gotten on the front
page? The vast majority of the comments vehemently disagree with it.

~~~
cynwoody
Voting an article up implies interest, not agreement. People vote an article
up to see it discussed more thoroughly. And, if they disagree with it, to have
it get slapped down roundly.

------
coldcode
What did the LA Times get wrong? Everything.

~~~
LoganCale
To be fair, the LA Times has been fairly good in covering this issue overall.
This is an op-ed by a career intelligence officer.

------
csours
What about the numerous lies about the existence and scope of domestic spying
and data-gathering?

The existence of domestic spying is not at all surprising to me, but lying
about it to the American people is deeply unfortunate.

------
CleanedStar
> The conspiracy buffs are too busy howling in protest at the thought that
> their government could uncover how long they spent on the phone with their
> dear aunt. Let me break this to you gently. The government is not interested
> in your conversations with your aunt, unless, of course, she is a key
> terrorist leader.

Let me break this to you gently. The president of the United States would
never send burglars into the opposing political parties national headquarters
to ransack the place and conduct espionage, in addition to many other covert
and illegal actions, in an attempt to force the next presidental election his
way. If the FBI and press began uncovering this, he would never abuse
executive powers to strongarm the FBI, have congressmen of the same party
attack television media licenses of the media companies reporting this etc. Oh
yaa, this actually did happen. Within my lifetime.

It's good to hear the CIA can be trusted. In the 1980s, Congress banned the US
from sending money to terrorists who were fighting to overthrow the elected
government of Nicaragua. Terrorists who killed Americans like Ben Linder.
Oliver North joined the National Security Council and began secretly funding
these terrorists in violation of Congressional mandate. When it became public
he was doing this and Congress began investigating, North testified CIA
director William Casey shred all documents pertaining to his illegal activity,
so that Congress could not find out what had happened.

The average American has no idea what it means when it leaks out that fibre
optic beam splitters are making records of our conversations and data
connections, or how something like XKeyscore work. We have a better idea of
what is actually happening in this respect, which is why we have some extra
concern. And a more realistic view of what is happening, despite what this
former-CIA Rand Corp. apparatchik says.

