
Some facts about how NSA stories are reported  - trauco
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/23/facts-nsa-stories-reported/
======
higherpurpose
Why do those people think "it's ok" for NSA to hack Huawei's servers? Is it ok
for China to hack Google's servers, then? You can't have it both ways. Also, I
remember Obama saying that a "cyberattack" is just as bad as a real world
attack. That reinforces the fact it's bad for both China _and_ US to be doing
these sort of attacks - unless they are outright calling each other "war
rivals".

This is still very much WW2 thinking that you need to have spies within a
country and hack into them _at all times_. It also exposes US for its
hypocrisy, because until now they've only said about "how bad China is for
hacking others". Something tells me they'll shut up about that now.

I also disagree with the Lawfare guy. Here's the thing, if either NSA or CIA
starts conflicts abroad, then it's _very much in the interest of the US
public_. The people deserve to know when it's the _US_ starting conflicts for
various reasons, otherwise they'll only experience the _backlash_ from those
conflicts, and they'll _wrongly_ think that country is the aggressor. And of
course the US government will do whatever it can to paint them like that, too.
This is why it's so important in such cases to unveil the truth, even if it
"damages national security".

Governments are often led by corrupt psychopaths, and the people should know
the truth so it can stop its own government, before creating a major crisis
that everyone will pay for with blood. The American people deserve to know if
the US gov is pissing off China with its hacks, to the brink of war, just like
the Chinese people deserve to know if its own government is doing the same
with its cyberattacks against US. Either way, the people need to know, and
secret ops should be kept at a minimum.

~~~
EGreg
OK is relative to whoever is making the judgment. US, Russia and China have an
imperialistic mindset. They violate sovereignty of other nations to further
their own nationalistic agenda, often to increase their influence on the
international world stage. Sad to say, the USA now truly believes that
controlling the world is crucial for its national security, when in fact this
foreign policy invites blowback in many different forms.

Elected officials are known to do backroom deals. However, bureaus and
agencies such as the NSA can be even less accountable, since they have YEARS
before anyone representing the public would find out. And someone with the
technology and incentives like the NSA would OF COURSE go overboard doing
whatever they could do and push the envelope because they could do it.

Sadly the system of oversight and checks and balances in empires always gets
corrupted.

~~~
nemesisj
Actually, of the three, China is the only country that has no demonstrable
history of imperialism outside of its historically occupied borders. Setting
Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan aside (for at various times throughout history,
all three of them have been occupied or fallen under the umbrella of Chinese
influence), China as a civilisation has operated on a tribute model. Not one
of imperialism.

The same can't be said of Russia or the USA.

While it's convenient to portray China as just another modern (western)
country with the typical aims of a modern western power, the facts don't
really fit this view. For thousands of years China has been content to stay
within it's nominal boundaries. Even now, most of the forays China makes that
the USA or Russia feels threatened by are economic overtures (hospital ships
to africa, supporting less desirable governments, etc) designed to secure raw
materials and achieve economic (not imperialistic) objectives.

~~~
tokenadult
_China is the only country that has no demonstrable history of imperialism
outside of its historically occupied borders._

I call baloney on that. (Basis of knowledge: study of Chinese history,
culture, and language since 1975 and residence overseas in east Asia.)

China's territory has expanded ENORMOUSLY from the historic regions that were
part of the mainstream development of Chinese history and culture. The Chinese
language developed a new word for the chief national ruler (皇帝),
conventionally translated "emperor," at the time 2,000 years ago when China
went on a long period of sustained imperial conquest and expansion. This is
still very much part of Chinese geopolitical thinking today. The current
occupation of the historic territory of Tibet and Eastern Turkestan by the
People's Republic of China regime actually has very meager historical
precedent, as those territories and the territories of China proper have
mostly only had common rulers during the conquest dynasties of the Yuan
(Mongol) and Qing (Manchu) periods of Chinese history. I live in a town with a
very large Tibetan diaspora (I see "Free Tibet" bumper stickers all over town,
and the Dalai Lama recently celebrated Tibetan New Year here), and I am well
aware that Chinese conquest of Tibet is historically recently, naked
imperialism, and extremely disliked by the population of Tibet.

~~~
nemesisj
Hmm, maybe we're simply debating when the Chinese territory solidified? I
think it's generally accepted that China's territory has been more or less the
same through most of its history (or at least for the last thousand years?).
In fact, if anything, today's borders are less than several of the most recent
dynasties. Yes, if you go back to several thousand years BC, you'll find the
civilisation concentrated quite a bit more, but so was every other people
group.

Here's a nice illustration:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynasties_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynasties_in_China.gif)

Yes, you can make an argument that Tibet and Xinjiang are not part of the
mainstream Chinese territories, but I think it's hard to argue that other
regions aren't or are recent imperialistic expansions. At what point does it
cease to be "imperialistic" and start to become "the way it has been for most
of history?" Compare this with almost every other empire: American, Roman,
Russian (Soviet), Greek, Persian, etc - all of them expanded in a short time
and collapsed (USA maybe not so much, but still lost colonies and concessions
in...China! for example) in a short time, and don't today enjoy anywhere near
the territory they did after their big imperial outings. Their presence today
mirrors their presence before their big imperial thrust.

Today, if you visit most places in China (again, Xinjian and Tibet excluded),
you're not going to find really anyone who feels the borders are out of place.

Wheras China's claims to both of those provinces has always been "to get back
to the way things were" (for instance, in the Yuan dynasty), there isn't any
other territory other than Mongolia for China to really claim based on
history. It is unlikely that China would therefore have ambitions beyond it's
current borders.

------
intslack
A big takeaway is in the second point:

>By publishing yesterday’s Huawei story, the NYT obviously made the editorial
judgment that these revelations are both newsworthy and in the public
interest, should be disclosed, and will not unduly harm “American national
security.” For reasons I explain below, I agree with that choice.

>But if you disagree – if you want to argue that this NSA story is reckless,
dangerous, treasonous or whatever – then have the courage to take it up with
the people who reached the opposite conclusion: in this case, the editors and
reporters of the NYT (indeed, as former DOJ official Jack Goldsmith
observed[1], the _NYT‘s Huawei story was “based on leaks other than the
Snowden documents_ ”).

[1] [http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/03/the-nyt-on-nsas-huawei-
pe...](http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/03/the-nyt-on-nsas-huawei-penetration/)

------
mcphilip
It's not just "US Journalists Against Transparency” up in arms about this
release, apparently popular opinion is mixed too, as evidenced by the reddit
comment section on the NYT article submission [1]. This firstlook.org article
is important in that it highlights how journalists and editorial boards are
deciding what to publish.

However, this safeguard is made more problematic by the fact that journalists
outside of the US have access to the same set of documents and don't have the
same degree of concern over exposing US national security interests.

I can't decide whether or not I think this info should have been published. I
liked the irony of the NSA deeming it necessary to compromise telecom
equipment while simultaneously declaring said equipment unsuitable for use in
the US since it may have back doors. On the other hand, this does seem like an
expected function of the NSA best left implicit instead of explicitly exposed.

[1][http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2139b3/snowden_do...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2139b3/snowden_documents_reveal_nsa_breached_servers_of/cg98hcl)

~~~
sentenza
Many of us over here in Europe lost a lot of respect for the NYT when it
failed to denounce the complete garbageness of the Saddam-WMD connection,
which was widely reported on over here.

Personally, I was also disappointed when Cablegate happened. I still own all
five newspapers that collaborated in the dissemination and back in the day I
read through the reporting of every single one of them.

Only one did not apologize for reporing on the cables (El País). The NYT, on
the other hand, was the most apologetic by far.

A free press should report on all the secret shenanigans. Clearly, in the
past, most major newspapers in most countries were not free in that sense, as
they have refrained from reporting certain things on the intelligence agencies
of their home countries.

This includes the Western World. In my home country, Germany, we recently were
made aware of the fact that the West German intelligence agencies had opened
and read all correspondence between citizens of East and West. Best detail: If
they couldn't re-seal the letter in such a manner that you wouldn't know it
had been read, they would just throw it away!

Somehow, this was kept a secret for decades, even though a massive amount of
people were involved. So much for free press.

I guess the Americans have to decide. Do you want to be West Germany? Or do
you want to be the United States of fucking America?

------
acqq
The book, apparently soon going to be published in Germany, from which Der
Spiegel and the NYT took the Huawei story for their last articles:

[http://www.amazon.de/Der-NSA-Komplex-Edward-Snowden-
Überwach...](http://www.amazon.de/Der-NSA-Komplex-Edward-Snowden-
Überwachung/dp/3421046581)

The article by Der Spiegel:

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-
chine...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-
government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html)

The information is already internationally known no matter what the NYT
decides to cover. The NYT was only able to decide if they are going to be the
first to report it or to leave it to some other (U.S.?) media.

Can anybody really imagine supporting U.S. doing censorship like this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_19...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989#Censorship_in_China)

------
dan_bk
> these journalists argue that these revelations are unjustified, even
> treasonous, because this is the type of spying the NSA should be doing

No, the NSA should NOT be doing this. It's not done to prevent any attacks on
the US, it's simply economic espionage. It's economic warfare. It doesn't
belong in any "democratic" country.

~~~
GabrielF00
The NYTimes article provides some valuable context. This isn't economic
espionage in the sense that the NSA wants Cisco to have Huawei's plans and
technology in order for Cisco to compete better. The US government has
concerns about how independent Huawei is of the Chinese government and the
PLA. They want to know whether China is able to use Huawei's networking
equipment to spy on other countries or conduct cyberwarfare. They want to use
information from Huawei to assess China's larger plans. They want to be able
to target Huawei's customers, many of which are not friendly to the US
(specifically cited: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Cuba). All of these
seem like fairly legitimate intelligence goals.

[[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-
ch...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-
servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?hp)]

One of the frustrations I have with the Snowden leaks is that we see some of
the process of intelligence gathering but we don't see the results. We don't
see what the intelligence community found out about the relationship between
Huawei and the PLA, for instance. It's difficult to assess tactics without
knowing their effectiveness at answering broader questions. It's also
concerning that because of these leaks, the US government may not be able to
answer these questions. Understanding the Chinese military's capabilities and
goals (not to mention understanding what's going on in Iran, Afghanistan and
Pakistan) is a strategic necessity.

~~~
gareim
> They want to know whether China is able to use Huawei's networking equipment
> to spy on other countries or conduct cyberwarfare.

The answer is yes, they are able to. If we got into Huawei, the Chinese
government could too (if they wanted to).

I really dislike the "we have to spy on them because they might spy on us"
argument. Especially when we point fingers at how everyone else is doing wrong
and then come back and while forgetting when we have committed the same wrongs
and while we are still committing those wrongs.

We give billions of dollars in aid to Israel, who refuses to stop expanding
their settlements into Palestinian territory. We condemn Russia for reclaiming
land that was theirs not so long ago, land that has more Russians than
Ukrainians living there.

The hypocrisy is starting to drive me insane.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
The Chinese hacking narrative seemed to stop entirely once the leaks started.
The US were victims and China were villains. Suddenly...silence.

------
cinquemb
I found these parts interesting:

> _Now, obviously, anyone is free to agree or disagree with Snowden’s
> framework for how these materials be handled and reported. I personally
> think the process of government consultation is often used to suppress
> newsworthy information, though for the NSA stories I’ve worked on,
> government arguments to suppress information have been rejected in at least
> 99% of the cases; I also think non-traditional outlets such as WikiLeaks
> have done a superior job in many cases with reporting classified documents
> than government-loyal traditional outlets._

Ok, so mention how people can disagree with Snowdens framework, mention
suppression of information through traditional media outlets (NYT, Guardian,
etc), mention the superior job non-traditional outlets have had when it comes
to classified documents with WL as the example, and some how trying to put
Firstlook on the same pedestal indirectly if we ignore or are ignorant of the
conception of the two identities/orgs? Amusing.

> _But what you shouldn’t feel free to do is ignore that this is the framework
> on which Snowden insisted. You shouldn’t demand that journalists violate
> their agreements with him (by publishing all the documents) unless you are
> willing to admit that this is what you’re advocating. And you definitely
> shouldn’t pretend that it’s Snowden, rather than these media outlets, who
> are making the choices about what gets published in order to demonize him
> for the latest disclosures you dislike while cowardly refusing to criticize
> the media outlets that actually made the choice to publish them._

Because amongst this "public service" that is to determine what is "public
interest", there remains the profiteering of the "leaks" (that have been
mentioned to the public by Binney, Drake and many others in the past to some
degree), kind of makes this moral argument to the sanctity of an agreement
between multiple parties (founded on treasonous grounds if you would ask the
Five Eyes) pretty laughable.

------
eliteraspberrie
If I were to export a single chip to Iran, I would be a legitimate target of
NSA. When Huawei sold network monitoring equipment to Iran -- knowing full
well that equipment is used to target and kill people, and in contravention of
US export laws -- they made themselves legitimate targets of the NSA.

~~~
Spearchucker
Lets say you're exporting a single chip to the US. You know full well that
your chip will end up in a drone. That drone then obliterates an innocent
child in some godforsaken backwater in Africa or somewhere. Does that
legitimize their making a target of you?

~~~
eliteraspberrie
If exporting chips to the US were against Chinese laws, yes, of course.

~~~
insuffi
Your argument makes sense. However, let us take into account the fact that
there are all kinds of laws passed[0] that frankly shouldn't.

[0]Under the disguise of national security concerns.

------
EGreg
You know guys, to be fair... with all these stories coming about Snowden
revelations, it's not very clear how this information is obtained or revealed.
Until now I had been actually wondering why the stuff is coming out piecemeal.
If I, a person who is interested in this kind of stuff and reads HN quite a
bit, could have missed the mechanism of how NSA stories are reported -- for
months, mind you -- then so can other more vocal people. Including
journalists.

In short ... this info should be more widely disseminated.

~~~
forgottenpass
_with all these stories coming about Snowden revelations, it 's not very clear
how this information is obtained or revealed_

It's been written about quite a bit. Unless you want it mentioned in every
single article that reveals another document, it's pretty well out there. I
don't even think this is the first time Greenwald has written a clarification
article about it.

------
plorg
Greenwald quotes Goldsmith in saying that this information was received from
sources "other than Snowden", while the articles that both cite (the NYT and
der Spiegel) state expressly that the information did come from Mr. Snowden's
releases.

I'm not sure what to make of the argument that by releasing the trove of
documents to journalists (instead of, say, as a big torrent) Snowden is
absolved of complicity in any releases of information. That almost sounds like
doublespeak. It also suggests that he either didn't know what he was releasing
or didn't understand all of its ramifications. Both could be permissible (and,
indeed, given the things that we have learned from the releases, is probably
laudable from at least a utilitarian perspective), but it complicates the idea
of Snowden as a brave truth-teller. Then again, that whole thought is filtered
through the lens of this particular piece, in which Greenwald seems to be
trying to separate a part of the leaks and recontextualize it separate from
the other, definitely necessary stories.

~~~
acqq
Daniel Ellsberg also released a trove of the material about Vietnam:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg)

"In 1967, he contributed to a top-secret study of classified documents
regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by Defense
Secretary McNamara.[7] These documents, completed in 1968, later became known
collectively as the Pentagon Papers. It was _because Ellsberg held an
extremely high-level security clearance and desired to create a further
synthesis from this research effort that he was one of very few individuals
who had access to the complete set of documents._ "

Do you also question he being a brave truth-teller? Ellsberg has no doubts
about Snowden:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vahsi/i_am_pentagon_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vahsi/i_am_pentagon_papers_leaker_daniel_ellsberg)

"I am Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Edward Snowden is my hero. (...)
I believe that _Edward Snowden has done more to support and defend the
Constitution—in particular, the First and Fourth Amendments—than any member of
Congress or any other employee or official of the Executive branch, up to the
president_ : every one of whom took that same oath, which many of them have
violated."

The oath of the president is:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States)

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, _preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution of the United States._ "

~~~
plorg
Largely, yes, I believe he's done some great work bringing to light
constitutional abuses. I am glad Mr. Ellsberg believes him to be his hero. I
believe he is a flawed hero, though I also believe that all humans have their
own flaws.

However, this is somewhat tangential to my post. Whether you want to call him
a criminal, a miscreant, a hero, or even a minor deity on account of his
actions, you cannot do so while simultaneously claiming that the information
the public receives from these leaks is, morally speaking, completely removed
from Mr. Snowden because he handed it off to media outlets. That's what Mr.
Greenwald is arguing, and it's confounding.

Finally, Greenwald's post was literally written to respond to the claim that
the info released about the NSA compromising Huawei has little to nothing to
do with the upholding the Constitution. If that's what the leaks are about
(which you seem to be suggesting), this is the wrong place to use that as a
basis for calling the leaker a hero.

~~~
acqq
Ellsberg also leaked a lot of material to the press. The press then decided
what to publish. Snowden did the same. Do you believe Snowden had to leak only
a few pages? It simply wouldn't work. It is doubtful if even the attention the
topic received up to now is going to result in any change to the politics. If
the political conditions present now remain even after the future articles
covering Snowden's material then Snowden still leaked too little and not too
much and the press failed to make the change using what he leaked. The world
is still in the middle of the attempt to induce a change, we certainly can't
consider it done, even if the particular agencies would prefer that.

~~~
plorg
Let me make this explicit: I am not trying to address whether Snowden is
lawful, chaotic, good, bad, or neutral. That is left as an excercise to the
reader, though I guess I've proposed some of my ideas above, since that's
apparently what you think I want to talk about.

I am talking of Greenwald's argument. His argument, again, is as follows: once
Snowden handed off the documents, he was absolved of moral responsibility in
the matter because he gave the authority to release information to [a list of
publications apparently excluding the NYT, but not in such a way as to prevent
the NYT from collaborating with the institutions]. This argument seems
willfully off-base, because without his participation - or, actually, his
instigation - the journalists wouldn't have papers to release at all. He is
obviously, then, the prime mover, and so trying to pretend that he doesn't
exist as a moral agent is an exercise in willful ignorance.

------
dreamdu5t
We need less journalism more information. We need less journalists more
Snowdens.

~~~
alecdbrooks
As the article describes Snowden's decision to leak to journalists rather than
directly to the public, this isn't a coherent argument. If we had "more
Snowdens" we'd potentially need more journalists to cover the leaks.

Even if you had said "more Mannings" instead, how many people would have heard
about anything she leaked without journalists?

~~~
dreamdu5t
The reason we haven't heard most of it is journalists. Snowden should have
just posted it all to 4chan.

