
My Summer of Snowden - ForHackernews
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/edward-snowden-operation-firstfruits/610573/
======
ACS_Solver
Fascinating article, well worth reading for those who have been following the
Snowden story and (US) government surveillance in general.

It's interesting to read about the lengths to which journalists go to maintain
proper information security. Layers of encryption, safes for hardware,
physical removal of wireless chips, and so on. I'm curious as to whether all
of that is anything more than a mild annoyance to the NSA or other major
intelligence agencies, but I imagine they can hack into those computers with
relative ease. There's just no viable way of preventing tempest attacks
against your home or office, of preventing surveillance through vents, and
more.

One thing about Snowden specifically, he's understandably careful about
protecting the secrecy of his residence, but I'd be really surprised if the US
government didn't know where he lives. Snowden lives in Moscow, legally, is
known to move around the city, he uses the Internet, he's not just holed up in
some cave. Between all the CIA people in Moscow and the NSA's near limitless
capabilities, Snowden's whereabouts are almost surely known - he's being kept
safe by the fact that Moscow is Moscow.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>One thing about Snowden specifically, he's understandably careful about
protecting the secrecy of his residence. I'd be really surprised if the US
government didn't know where he lives

I agree with that, but it's reasonable to assume other countries would have
some interest in him. His international value has likely dropped by now, but
I'm sure many agencies wondered what else he might have.

------
polytely
>"He resisted questioning about his private life, but he allowed that he
missed small things from home. Milkshakes, for one. Why not make your own?
Snowden refused to confirm or deny possession of a blender. Like all
appliances, blenders have an electrical signature when switched on. He
believed that the U.S. government was trying to discover where he lived. He
did not wish to offer clues, electromagnetic or otherwise. U.S. intelligence
agencies had closely studied electrical emissions when scouting Osama bin
Laden’s hideout in Pakistan."

This reminds me of one of the discussion threads that was happening here last
week [0] where people were speculating about the next generation of spy
satellites.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151301)

~~~
barbegal
Has anyone got a citation for "U.S. intelligence agencies had closely studied
electrical emissions when scouting Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan"

Being very liberal with the truth, using a radio scanner could be classed as
"closely studying electrical emissions".

Firstly, to get a blender's electrical signature you'd need to be pretty close
to the blender, even along the transmission line. And I think it would be
tough to tell one person's blender motor from any other cheap motor powering
kitchen gadgetry in the local area.

~~~
polytely
A cursory duckduckgo reveals: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/to-hu...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/to-
hunt-osama-bin-laden-satellites-watched-over-abbottabad-pakistan-and-navy-
seals/2013/08/29/8d32c1d6-10d5-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html)

which in turn links to: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/cia-f...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-
flew-stealth-drones-into-pakistan-to-monitor-bin-laden-
house/2011/05/13/AF5dW55G_story.html)

Which talks specifically about the RQ-170 Sentinel monitoring electronic
transmissions in the area, so it might be conflating the two?

The information about the Sentinel comes out of this leaked black budget:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/black...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-
objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html)

If I recall correctly Bin Laden mostly used couriers to transmit information
and didn't use much tech because they were well aware that it would be a huge
security risk.

This Intercept article based on leaked internal NSA newsletters has a lot of
juicy details: [https://theintercept.com/2015/05/18/snowden-osama-bin-
laden-...](https://theintercept.com/2015/05/18/snowden-osama-bin-laden-raid/)

------
MiroF
> On the Gmail page, a pink alert bar appeared at the top, reading, “Warning:
> We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your
> account or computer. Protect yourself now.”

Fascinating that Google does this. How do they know?

~~~
barbegal
They won't tell us according to
[https://security.googleblog.com/2012/06/security-warnings-
fo...](https://security.googleblog.com/2012/06/security-warnings-for-
suspected-state.html)

And I doubt they display this warning any more, it seems like it was a bit of
a publicity stunt back in 2012.

------
secfirstmd
The complexity of the amount of security measures a modern day journalist
needs to take to manage the digital, physical and operational of themselves
and their sources is immense. It's why we built Umbrella App
([https://www.secfirst.org](https://www.secfirst.org), so they could have one
simple location, open source, open content that they could quickly reference
on a phone.

------
boomboomsubban
I've quite often seen people claim Russia and/or China had full copies of the
Snowden documents, and try to use that to accuse him of being a foreign agent.
It's interesting to see a high ranking NSA employee say the journalist were
likely the unwitting source.

~~~
mindslight
If you're referring to this:

> _" My take is, whatever you guys had was pretty immediately in the hands of
> any foreign intelligence service that wanted it," he said, "whether it was
> Russians, Chinese, French, the Israelis, the Brits. Between you, Poitras,
> and Greenwald, pretty sure you guys can’t stand up to a full-fledged nation-
> state attempt to exploit your IT. To include not just remote stuff, but
> hands-on, sneak-into-your-house-at-night kind of stuff. That’s my guess."_

It's unsubstantiated chest thumping. "You're acting irresponsibly because
you're vulnerable without our protection, which you don't have because you
went against us". It completely brushes aside the idea that if these agencies
weren't acting as domestic enemies in the first place, whistleblowers and
journalists wouldn't be adversaries.

~~~
boomboomsubban
> It completely brushes aside the idea that if these agencies weren't acting
> as domestic enemies in the first place, whistleblowers and journalists
> wouldn't be adversaries

Even if the NSA wasn't treating them like domestic enemies, all of those other
countries would likely want their own copy of the complete leak. And the rest
of the article shows other agencies arw probably capable of such acts.

~~~
mindslight
The motive is there, but the evidence is not. For all we know, the mysterious
device behavior could have been the NSA itself, if only trying to delete any
files that were on insecure devices. It obviously could be foreign actors too,
but there is nothing in the empty NSA statement to inform that possibility.
The best way to view such a statement is simple misdirection / public
relations.

~~~
boomboomsubban
I'm unsure of what mysterious device behavior you are talking about, and I
don't see the point of running such a misdirection years after the fact
accomplishes.

My only point was that even the Chinese/Russian copy some people claim exist
still wouldn't mean Snowden gave it to them.

------
fomine3
Cool story.

