
Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims - emingo
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/3-former-nsa-employees-praise-edward-snowden-corroborate-key-claims/276964/
======
gruseom
The interview he's talking about [1] was posted here [2] and it really is
extraordinary. I highly recommend watching all the videos—unfortunately, they
carved it into pieces and you have to scroll down the page to get at them. But
it's worth it. The transcript doesn't convey how dramatic the discussion was,
or capture William Binney's muttered asides ("including content! including
content!") or show the meaningful expressions on their faces, or how the
others react as each one is talking. I found the whole thing riveting and I'm
still surprised that USA Today put it together. Having all four of them around
a table created something entirely more compelling than one-on-one interviews.

Edit: also, the transcript is incomplete and leaves out some of the best
parts, such as Binney's story of how he called "Tom" (i.e. Drake, whose phone
he knew was being tapped) to let the government know that he had evidence of
malicious prosecution. Plus the endearing smile on his face as he points out
that his prosecution was dropped after that.

USA Today should put up the whole unbroken discussion. Apart from the
obviously important content and the obvious authoritativeness of the speakers,
it's just a great piece of television—and it's not even television. It puts
actual news TV to shame.

1\.
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-
whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5891101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5891101)

~~~
rdl
IMO Binney (and possibly all 3) deserve the next Nobel Peace Prize.

~~~
rdl
Actually, today I learned Thomas Drake essentially got screwed out of his
federal pension from his whistleblowing, and currently works in an Apple
retail store in the DC suburbs. He has 4 sons who are approaching college age.
Both Binney and Wiebe are retired (and presumably got their full pensions).

So, the ideal thing would be some kind of prize or other financial reward (or
higher paying job) for Drake, or scholarships for his children.

~~~
vidarh
The Nobel Peace Price includes 8 million SEK (ca. $1.2 million).

------
sologoub
Interesting that no one seems to be talking about what a treasure-trove such a
storage system would be for organized crime and foreign intelligence services
(such as China). Imagine if someone could compromise it and get to the same
data. Doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

~~~
nano111
This data could probably also be analyzed to help predict the stock market.

~~~
grecy
Even better: Use the data to figure out when and where the citizens are going
to organize a protest against the current government....

~~~
sologoub
While the recent IRS disclosures of targeting Tea Party activists is
deplorable, I'm still optimistic that it's the exception and not the rule in
the US.

Criminals gaining this access is definitely plausible.

Foreign governments using it for oppression/retaliation is also very
plausible.

~~~
wavefunction
What do you call government officials that don't respect the rule of law?

~~~
krichman
Congress.

------
pfortuny
"The idea that we have robust checks and balances is a myth."

Albeit to be taken with a grain of salt, this is what I was supposing: you
cannot have such a huge organization working "properly" on a day-to-day
threat-response basis without some "elastic" access control. Even less if you
are a contractor like B-A-H.

This, in a private entity, is less dangerous. You can have a lot of sysadmins
with some access to Google's data because the data is properly partitioned and
especially because there are no "targets". When each individual is a target,
it is too hard to get proper partitioning.

Also, Google's employees have little to no incentives to make those data
"public." And I guess direct access to the real emails is pretty hard:
Google's money is not there but in the analytics. So internal anonymization
may be not only performed but even easy to do. And this is good for Google &
its clients.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
The biggest phrase that I see missing from the private vs government
discussion is "monopoly on force".

The Federal government has the authority to create regulations, create laws,
collect taxes, send people to your house to enforce those laws,
remove/restrict your rights, sentence you to a prison term, send in armed
officers to take down civilians groups viewed as dangerous, etc etc all the
way to declaring full scale war. And, perhaps most importantly, the government
has the authority to coherence third parties to cooperate in information
sharing. Google will never be able to force Facebook to hand over their data,
but the Federal government can force both of these parties to hand over their
data to them.

The catch with having a monopoly on force is that your hands are supposed to
be tied by the will of the people. There is a tremendous and intentional
asymmetry in power. This necessitates an equally tremendous system of
transparency, accountability and oversight.

I think once a day I hear "people willingly give all there data to facebook,
why do they care if the NSA is listening", people need to understand what
"monopoly on force" truly means.

~~~
mpyne
I wouldn't be so sure about Google vs. Facebook. All they need to do is hire
away the right person (or simply conduct corporate espionage themselves).

But as you mention, that monopoly on force is tied to the will of the people.

If the government were to use force in a way other than approved by the laws
setup by the peoples' representatives then you're already talking about
something much worse on the totalitarian continuum than phone metadata.

And at that point, once the law has no limiting effect on the government
anyways they could setup things hundreds of times worse. But they would hardly
need to, as they could manufacture evidence of supposed "crimes" if need be
and carry out sentences of their choosing for any reason at all.

They would only need things like Prism for dissidents, and dissidents would
already assume that things hundreds of times worse were in place and take
defensive measures accordingly.

So you're right that the monopoly on force is dangerous, but it has _always_
been so. That's why it requires that tremendous system of transparency,
accountability and oversight that you mention.

But given that we're able to provide those controls in the first place
(controls which we _cannot_ enforce on private companies, btw!) it makes sense
again to ask the question of whether programs like these are both reasonable
and effective, whether they can be properly supervised, and if so whether
current systems are "proper supervision".

"Monopoly on force" is a warning about government, not the NSA. And especially
not in the context of _knowledge_ , where the government is mostly far out of
its league compared with the private sector, and it's only getting worse.

~~~
Spooky23
I disagree. The impact of Facebook being discovered stealing data from Google
systems is complete and utter destruction of the company, Enron-style.

The real danger of programs like PRISM, outside of abuse of power by the
executive branch, is access to the data leaking from the national security
realm to the normal law enforcement channels. The data collected by commercial
entities is dangerous because unlike NSA stuff, its just a subpoena away from
any police department.

------
at-fates-hands
Interesting video with Binney who says they would've stopped every terrorist
attack, including 9/11 had they used a simple technique him and his team
outlined which he referred to as a "two degree principle".

He said its a myth they need all the data to make the connections in order to
catch terrorists.

[http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2475191994001/former-nsa-
empl...](http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2475191994001/former-nsa-employee-on-
dangerous-information/)

He starts talking about at the 2:57 mark.

------
freyr
It's been purported here that the media is coloring its reporting to paint
Snowden in a bad light. But when the bias favors Snowden, everyone looks the
other way. For instance, they conveniently left out any mention of this quote
by Binney:

"But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into
China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't
think he had access to that program. But somebody talked to him about it, and
so he said, from what I have read, anyway, he said that somebody, a reliable
source, told him that the U.S. government is hacking into all these countries.
But that's not a public service, and now he is going a little beyond public
service.

"So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor."

~~~
ianterrell
They didn't leave it out entirely. From the last paragraph:

> one thinks he may have crossed a line by talking about surveillance on China

~~~
freyr
Ah, I completely missed that, thanks.

------
Shivetya
Now all we need is someone like Edward Snowden to step forward from the IRS.

~~~
xradionut
The major problem with the IRS is that is handicapped by law and politics from
doing it's job. There's an insane amount of capital sitting in offshore
accounts that probably should have been taxed. Loopholes for the big players
are crazy.

~~~
talmand
If the law prevents the capital from being taxed, such as loopholes, then
those laws are not handicapping the IRS in any way as the practice is
perfectly legal. The IRS has no standing to do anything pertaining to that
capital in the first place. If the capital should have been taxed and hasn't,
then that implies law-breaking that's a bit beyond what involves just the IRS.

But you are correct about the politics, as it is politics that creates the
loopholes to begin with. But that's a matter of annoyance, not illegality.

~~~
king_jester
Tax loopholes are usually used in the context of money that was intended to be
taxed but cannot be due to technical reasons, such as language of the law or
inability for the IRS to execute enforcement of the tax.

~~~
talmand
If the loophole exists because of the law then the practice is perfectly legal
and therefore that money was not intended to be taxed in the first place. In
that case there's nothing to prevent the IRS from doing something because
there's no reason for them to do anything at all.

If the IRS is unable to execute enforcement of the law concerning taxation
then that's not a loophole, it's likely a criminal act. That would imply that
something could possibly change in the future that would no longer prevent the
IRS from collecting the tax, with penalties.

I see these two as completely separate things.

People need to get out of this mindset that the big companies are using
loopholes in the tax code to cheat the government out of tax revenue. If the
loophole exists due to the law then there is no cheating, just bad law. Public
companies are practically obligated to reduce their tax liabilities as much as
possible and if the government gives them the abilities to do so, then why is
that the company is considered the evil entity in the matter? They are simply
doing exactly what the government and the law has told them they are obligated
to do.

------
jacoblyles
It's time for a "Tea Party" of the left to take down pro-surveillance
Democrats in the primaries.

~~~
wavefunction
Maybe all right-thinking (as in clear headed, not right vs left politics)
Americans should dispense with the corporate duopoly presented to us by both
the GOP and the Democrats.

~~~
flyinRyan
You're 100% right, but you can't win on 3rd party in the US and even if you
did your options are people like Ron Paul (good with many policies but
dangerous on others).

The best is to do exactly what the GP said: invade a popular existing party.
Though, my choice would be the republicans because I anticipate backlash
against the dems in the next election cycle.

~~~
user24
> you can't win on 3rd party in the US

We used to think that in the UK too.

------
dclowd9901
Odd they referred to these other whistleblowers as "Former NSA Employees" in
the headline. It seems disingenuous to leave that out of the headline, but
then I suppose "Fellow NSA Whistleblowers Praise Newest Whistleblower..."
probably doesn't sound as interesting.

~~~
trendoid
It actually makes more sense to mention just "Former NSA Employees" as they
were not whistleblowers per se. They went by the book and never went public
the way Snowden did.

------
jenandre
I would find it really interesting if some employees at companies like Google,
Microsoft, etc would come forward and corroborate Snowden's claims as well. At
some point, SOME engineering work was involved on their side to make it
happen, and there is likely documentation. I would love to see design
documentation on how the collection systems work so we can confirm exactly the
government has automated access to.

~~~
asperous
In another thread some Google employees were saying that it's unlikely that
Google has a secret backdoor system, since keeping products of any size online
requires a lot of collaboration amongst the different teams, and the
infrastructure changes so often anything that was at one point installed would
be broken by now.

But that's just hear-say.

~~~
jenandre
Yeah, my point is, we don't really know what the scope is -- we have Snowden's
word and some slides that mention direct access to servers. But the engineers
who worked at the companies and performed the integrations know and probably
have evidence if it was just standing up a box they scp'd data to manually
upon request, or a more elaborate automated system. If some of those people
would step forward with evidence, we could could confirm or refute Snowden's
claims.

~~~
oarevalo
But the minute some Google (or Facebook, etc) engineer mentions some slight
detail about how that access works, you will have half the Internet trying to
break it. Although that would be kinda fun....

------
ck2
Another good article from The Atlantic.

ps. Can they start using other photos of Snowden? I mean come on, is that the
only one the media has?

~~~
kylelibra
I think the lack of photos is intentional. If I were him, I'd make sure
everyone thinks I look a certain way and not give evidence of a variety of
ways I could look.

~~~
pkfrank
He's also said repeatedly he wants the focus to be on his disclosures and the
wrongdoing; NOT on him, how his girlfriend looks, etc. Using the same boring
picture over-and-over is probably what he wants and appreciates.

