

Snowden, NSA, and counterintelligence - rtpg
http://20committee.com/2013/09/04/snowden-nsa-and-counterintelligence/

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richardjordan
This comes across as a lot of nonsense. There is little here to support the
rather outrageous claims. The whole "Ed" thing is typical of folks of a
certain political bent who think diminishing a person through disrespectul
over-familiarity helps their argument (think folks who constantly throw
"Barry" into discussions referencing the President).

If there were ANY evidence Snowden was a Russian agent the US authorities
would be leading with that for the simple reason it would rapidly undermine
any popular support for him.

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mullingitover
That's the thing I've been wondering about--either Snowden was a full-blown
spy with lots of outside help, or he hacked his data out of the NSA on his
own, with no formal spy training (and it wasn't as easy as downloading some
files, either), which is ridiculously embarrassing for the NSA. The fact that
they haven't branded him as a foreign agent _immediately_ is telling.

The author in this article seems like he's being deliberately obtuse--

" _Putin today called Ed “a strange guy” – whose main purpose is causing pain
and suffering to Washington, DC. Which, let it be said, he has done rather
well, thanks to the propaganda offensive waged by Greenwald, Poitras, and
their helpers in several countries, with Ed’s purloined information, and who
have masked their radical activism under the (thin) guise of post-modern
journalism._ "

Right, because there's nothing at all problematic with the programs that
Snowden revealed, and anyone who has a major problem with them is clearly a
'radical activist.'

I think we've found a great example of the type of mindset that led to these
programs being created in the first place.

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richardjordan
Sysadmins have lots of access into systems. Governments routinely favor
security theater over actual mechanisms to secure things. The US government
has a strong cultural bias towards having outside contractors rather tha
employees on the government payroll (partly due to the ideological bent of the
major political parties and partly due to lobbying by contractors). These
things make it more than plausible that contract sysadmins had far too highly
elevated access into far too wide-ranging sets of systems. No spying needed.

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GabrielF00
While this post doesn't strike me as particularly credible, the ties between
Wikileaks and the Kremlin bear some investigation. Assange chose to host a
talk show on RT, which is a mouthpiece of the Kremlin. One wonders to what
extent Assange, in his opposition to the United States, has allowed himself to
be used by a regime that is considerably less progressive and democratic than
the Obama administration.

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jmspring
I read it as an interesting mix of conspiracy theory and potential counter
intelligence ties. It certainly raises a couple of questions that are worth
exploring. It will be interesting to see how things play out.

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alan_cx
Interesting reading this. Particularly the language used. Shame in a way,
because if it wasn't written in they way it is, it would sound plausible.

