
Edward Snowden: The Untold Story - promocha
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/
======
tokenadult
I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The
comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are
correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But
the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did
the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative
reporter, James Bamford, who has broken many important stories about NSA in
previous years. The writing is worth reading and discussing here, and it's too
bad Wired's editors mucked up the reader experience so much with the strange
user interface and formatting.

"I confess to feeling some kinship with Snowden. Like him, I was assigned to a
National Security Agency unit in Hawaii—in my case, as part of three years of
active duty in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Then, as a reservist in law
school, I blew the whistle on the NSA when I stumbled across a program that
involved illegally eavesdropping on US citizens. I testified about the program
in a closed hearing before the Church Committee, the congressional
investigation that led to sweeping reforms of US intelligence abuses in the
1970s. Finally, after graduation, I decided to write the first book about the
NSA. At several points I was threatened with prosecution under the Espionage
Act, the same 1917 law under which Snowden is charged (in my case those
threats had no basis and were never carried out). Since then I have written
two more books about the NSA, as well as numerous magazine articles (including
two previous cover stories about the NSA for WIRED), book reviews, op-eds, and
documentaries."

As a substantive comment on the article, let me say that I find it interesting
that Snowden himself thinks it is appalling that NSA's internal security
auditing is so poor that NSA can't even tell which documents Snowden disclosed
to journalists, nor can it tell how many other leakers may still be on its
staff. This seems to be a completely plausible claim, and that would be a
reason why many American voters or leaders of countries allied to the United
States might desire the current leadership of NSA to resign and be replaced
with more competent leaders.

~~~
nabla9
NSA started to move towards "two-man rule" system where system administrators
work in pairs when accessing servers with highly classified information only
after Snowden leaks. When you know that Russia and China have good track
record of long running human intelligence operations in the US, this looks
like really gigantic security lapse.

They are not stupid and they must have been discussing it. There must have
been strategic decision where they prioritized the expansion of intelligence
collection over internal security (effectively cutting the work that skilled
people with security clearances can do to almost half must be real cost and
resource bottleneck).

If I had to guess the situation, I would say that for every whistle blower
there is two spies who spy for Russia or China and they have collected all
documents they can. Russians&Chinese spying US spying the world. The cost of
setting up good HUMINT must be fraction of the cost of the NSA infrastructure.

~~~
toyg
_> I would say that for every whistle blower there is two spies who spy for
Russia or China_

That's an exaggeration, IMHO. This is not the Cold War, where many actors were
moved by ideological considerations that crossed national borders (like the
Cambridge Five, for example). Nowadays, national and cultural lines are
extremely well drawn, so motivations for "traitors" boil down to money and/or
blackmail, which are usually easier to defend against at the top level.

~~~
nabla9
I think records speak against your IMHO.

1\. Ideology has not been the major modus operandi in long time (since 50's).
Nowadays idealogical reasons are replaced by cultural and ethnic loyalties.
Wast majority of people who spied for China have had Chinese heritage.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_operation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_operations_in_the_United_States)

2\. Money and personal problems/reasons seems to be major reason for spying
against US and for Soviet Union/Russia during and after cold war (Hanssen,
Ames) According to American counterintelligence Russian espionage reached Cold
War levels already in in 2007.

~~~
differentView
>Wast majority of people who spied for China have had Chinese heritage.

Though I also believe this to be true, what we know for sure are that most of
the people CAUGHT spying for China had Chinese heritage.

~~~
electromagnetic
Exactly, its easy to spot a Chinese spy when you investigate your Chinese
workers.

The notion that a spy is only someone loyal to a country is just quite
frankly, silly.

~~~
pekk
No one says that spies are always loyal to a country. It's not surprising that
made-up positions are silly.

------
adityab
Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown:

1\. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and
bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's
eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way
for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great.

2\. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% automates adversarial
hacking in retaliation to detected attacks. Very Strangelove-ian, as the
article says.

EDIT: Typo, thanks to not having had coffee in time.

~~~
slg
It is in revealing things like this that make me question Snowden. While both
points are interesting and maybe a little troubling, they are certainly not
whistleblowing in the name of protecting the rights of American citizens. He
has moved from simply exposing the breadth of the domestic spying apparatus to
exposing the tactics the United States uses in legitimate espionage
operations. Isn't trying to compromise the communication network of a country
like Syria the exact thing the NSA is supposed to be doing? And what positive
value comes from Snowden releasing something like that?

~~~
scrollaway
> Isn't trying to compromise the communication network of a country like Syria
> the exact thing the NSA is supposed to be doing?

What is wrong with you; what the hell do you have against Syria? What if this
was France? The UK? Germany?

This was a mistake that happened while "attempting to bug Syria". Knowing the
NSA, they bug almost every country out there — so yes, this could have
happened to any of the ones I've listed.

Internet is a public service, one as essential as water and electricity. How
do you call a country that disrupts another country's public services? In my
book, I call it an act of war.

So you tell me, slg, is it the NSA's job to randomly decide to declare war
against other countries?

~~~
devindotcom
Getting intelligence out of a country in the middle of a civil war, in a
powderkeg of a region, seems pretty critical to me. We also have spies and
malware installed all over the world, and the world is doing its best to spy
on and infiltrate us. This is the reality of espionage, intelligence, and
counter-intelligence.

~~~
scrollaway
This school playground logic of "it's ok because they started it" sickens me.
OK. I get it; espionage is a reality and only espionage can deal with it. But
for god sake there's people in here commenting that Snowden is a traitor
because he leaked information that didn't directly concern the american
people.

Really, now.

Compare those two situations:

"A group of hackers have targeted Syrian ISPs and, in an attempt to wiretap
the nation, have brought down internet services in the entire country" <\-
Scum of the earth! How dare they! People have likely died as a result of this;
in the midst of a civil war, too!

"The NSA has targeted Syrian ISPs and, in an attempt to wiretap the nation,
has brought down internet services in the entire country" <\- Well it's OK
because other countries are doing it too. Also, by revealing this, you are an
unpatriotic traitor and have endangered the american people."

I call BS. Some people here either lack the most basic critical thinking
skills, or are NSA shills.

~~~
slg
No one is saying that it is ok because they started it. We are saying that we
believe international espionage is a requirement for a country like the US and
this operation seemed to be a standard and worthwhile one that happened to be
a spectacular failure.

You are free to disagree, but I don't think any serious politician in the US
would. Revealing something like this doesn't seem to advance Snowden's initial
goals and makes it incredibly hard to gain any political support in the US. So
my initial question stands, what positive value comes from Snowden releasing
something like that?

~~~
qiqing
It has positive value if you believe that non-American lives are as valuable
as American lives, something a lot of people outside of the U.S. happen to
believe.

------
e0m
This mentioned the NSA's "Mission Data Repository" in Bluffdale, Utah. They
mentioned it could hold 1 yottabyte of data.

Let's put into perspective 1 yottabyte:

All Gmail accounts (~500 million users * 10GB/user = ~5000 PB) + All Facebook
photos (~2 billion users * 1GB/user = ~2000 PB) + All of Netflix's videos (1-5
PB) + Library of Congress (10-30 PB) + Wikipedia (0.0005 PB)

= ~7000 PB = 7 Exabytes. = 0.0007% of 1 Yottabyte!!!

1 Yottabyte = 250 billion 4TB hard drives.

A hard drive is about 4" x 1" x 5.75".

The Pentagon is a big building (6,636,360 sqft over 5 floors). If you started
stacking hard drives inside the Pentagon it would take about 50 pentagons to
hold 250 billion hard drives.

At scale you might be able to make a 4TB hard drive for somewhere between $10
and $100.

1 Yottabyte would be $2.5 trillion - $25 trillion in hard drives. That's a
couple USA GDPs.

Okay, I think a yottabyte clearly can't be what they mean because that's just
unfathomable.

They also mention a 1 million sqft facility.

In a 1 million sqft you can probably pack about 250 million 3.5" hard drives.
If each drive was 4TB you'd end up with 1 million PB, or 1000 EB, or 1
Zettabyte

So by Yottabyte they might (maybe) mean Zettabyte. Only off by a factor of
1,000.

Even still, all of the data of Gmail, Facebook, Netflix, Library of Congress,
etc is still probably only ~10% of this data center.

Nuts.

~~~
debt
I know it seems crazy but they might have a storage technique that is unknown
to the public.

~~~
baddox
That seems unlikely, considering that there is a massive incentive for private
firms with tons of money to attempt to create such a storage technique. I
doubt any government could beat them to the punch while keeping it a secret.

~~~
adventured
Especially given the NSA borrows an awful lot of its software inspiration from
the private sector (eg Google's BigTable). There's little reason to think
their hardware efforts would be dramatically more advanced if their software
effort isn't.

What the NSA has are three things: a lot of money coming in every year; a lot
of relatively intelligent and highly skilled people working for it; and a
license to do terrible things and get away with it (ie they can take
incredible risks, and try outrageous things, with minimum concern, and or
certainly previously could).

The NSA has a budget roughly the size of Microsoft's annual R&D budget,
without needing an $80 billion highly profitable business to be maintained.
It's amazing what you can do and or attempt with a 'free' $10 or $12 billion
per year to burn.

~~~
BuschnicK
> What the NSA has are three things: a lot of relatively intelligent and
> highly skilled people working for it;

Do they though? I have sometimes wondered about this. In order to work for the
NSA you have to make a lot of sacrifices. You have to be a US citizen. You
have to pass a background check. You have to be contend with a government
salary. You may never talk about your job (how does that look on a resume if
you ever want to apply somewhere else? Prior experience: classified). You have
to work in one of the few locations they operate in. You have to be a pretty
hardcore patriot to put up with the things the NSA is doing and still be able
to sleep at night.

In summary: it seems that the pool of potential employees should be severely
limited. Hence my guess would be that the top talent ends up in the private
sector instead of the NSA.

Or, just read the NSA quote from the movie Good Will Hunting again:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/quotes?item=qt0408102](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/quotes?item=qt0408102)

------
elwell
> One day an intelligence officer told him that TAO—a division of NSA
> hackers—had attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the
> core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the
> midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to
> email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something
> went wrong, and the router was bricked instead—rendered totally inoperable.
> The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to
> the Internet—although the public didn't know that the US government was
> responsible. (This is the first time the claim has been revealed.)

~~~
crunchcaptain
It's very interesting that TAO attempted to remotely compromise a core router.
What happened to diverting Cisco boxes to an "undisclosed location" for
installing implants?

~~~
noobface
It's illegal for US corporations to do deals directly with several
governments. Syria most likely bought the gear used through gray/black market
channels.

~~~
tacotime
Where can I get me one of those sweet sweet black market routers?

------
ch4s3
"Programs like this had existed for decades, but MonsterMind software would
add a unique new capability: Instead of simply detecting and killing the
malware at the point of entry, MonsterMind would automatically fire back, with
no human involvement. That's a problem, Snowden says, because the initial
attacks are often routed through computers in innocent third countries. “These
attacks can be spoofed,” he says. “You could have someone sitting in China,
for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in
Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens
next?”"

This piece is pretty interesting.

~~~
purephase
It's fucking crazy. It means that the US could instigate either a "cyber-war"
or a real war between two separate nations with no one being the wiser.

Truly terrifying, and probably the largest revelation in the article. This is
was the major news outlets should be covering, right now.

~~~
ch4s3
Yeah, I'm surprised this didn't lead in the article.

------
normloman
What the hell. I start scrolling with my mouse wheel, but nothing moves. I'm
thinking my mouse must be broken, until 30 seconds later, I notice the "cover
image" fade in and out. I swear, crappy flash intros are alive and well. They
just don't use flash anymore.

~~~
waylandsmithers
I think they might have been attempting to simulate a magazine-like
experience, where the pictures that required more scrolling than normal were
supposed to be like turning the page to a full page image. I feel like I've
seen this attempted before but with flashing down arrows to tell you that you
need to keep scrolling. Based on the reactions here, I don't think it was
successful, but I do appreciate efforts to enhance the reading experience.

~~~
DanBC
> but I do appreciate efforts to enhance the reading experience.

I don't. I just want the words. Ideally I want the words to be in a nice font
and nice contrast and well laid out. In a perfect world there would be some
diagrams and illustrations to support the text.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I don 't. I just want the words._

Me too. But I don't know what else to do other than reading longer articles
through Pocket/Instapaper and sending everyone I know [0] as a reminder every
once in a while.

[0] - [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

------
pflanze
I've made a reformatted copy for easier reading:

[https://github.com/pflanze/wired-snowden-untold-
story/blob/m...](https://github.com/pflanze/wired-snowden-untold-
story/blob/master/untold-story.md)

(Plain text version in the history, at [https://github.com/pflanze/wired-
snowden-untold-story/blob/c...](https://github.com/pflanze/wired-snowden-
untold-story/blob/c25c669f9c4b6cc57c117500dfe77c1f555c2307/untold-story.txt))

~~~
wldcordeiro
I find that harder to read. It's just one long wall of text.

~~~
pflanze
The reason I did it was that (even with JavaScript off, as I always try to do)
the layout made it hard to know how far in the text I was, and jumping back
and forth was accordingly painful. Also, the huge pictures and "emotional"
style of the layout distracted me.

The drawback of the Github formatting is that the lines are a bit too long,
and narrowing the window size doesn't fix that (there's something in the
layout that forces a certain width). I could have put the page on my own
server, but I thought it's nicer for people to have direct access to the
Github features in case somebody wants to edit or annotate it, also
"integrating" it into my own website may violate copyrights, whereas this
might not (IANAL).

------
bgentry
_> Indeed, some of his fellow travelers have already committed some egregious
mistakes. Last year, Greenwald found himself unable to open the encryption on
a large trove of secrets from GCHQ—the British counterpart of the NSA—that
Snowden had passed to him. So he sent his longtime partner, David Miranda,
from their home in Rio to Berlin to get another set from Poitras. But in
making the arrangements, The Guardian booked a transfer through London. Tipped
off, probably as a result of GCHQ surveillance, British authorities detained
Miranda as soon as he arrived and questioned him for nine hours. In addition,
an external hard drive containing 60 gigabits of data—about 58,000 pages of
documents—was seized. Although the documents had been encrypted using a
sophisticated program known as True Crypt, the British authorities discovered
a paper of Miranda’s with the password for one of the files, and they were
able to decrypt about 75 pages. (Greenwald has still not gained access to the
complete GCHQ documents.)_

FYI, Glenn Greenwald is denying that any of the claims in this paragraph are
true, and says that Wired never even contacted him or Miranda about the
article:

[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499570835989213184](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499570835989213184)
[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499570963638669312](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499570963638669312)
[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499572407284563969](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499572407284563969)
[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499587347630284800](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/499587347630284800)

------
Rapzid
Well.. I knew our(US) government downplaying Snowden's credentials was just
propaganda(lies)... But wow, were they ever downplaying his credentials. And
our media was mostly content to just spread the propaganda with a smile :|

~~~
toyg
As a European, I've always been somewhat aware of a certain degree of internal
propaganda going on in US media (things like different magazine covers for
international editions were always quite glaring), but since 2001 the
situation worsened so much, I do feel for you guys. Lessons from the '00s were
not learnt, US newsrooms are full of sycophantic _Judith Millers_ and people
like Greenwald are still ostracized. EDIT: not that Europe is much better, eh
-- just slightly (or it's just done more subtly over here).

~~~
dan_bk
> a certain degree of internal propaganda going on in US media

The movie industry is one of the very powerful tools for shaping the public
opinion in the US. This obviously includes TV series ("24" is an example for
not-so-subtle manipulative material).

~~~
jsmeaton
Are the shows made because they are now more relevant, or are they made to
influence? _shrug_

------
belorn
A division of NSA hackers attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in
one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which
was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. But something went wrong, and the
router was bricked instead, which caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection
to the Internet.

So in middle of a war zone, US conducted sabotage to core infrastructure of an
other nation, with unknown cost to property or human lives.

It really should be seen as the obvious reason why hacking is not an
acceptable tool to use in peacetime against other nations. Its not a defensive
weapon, it hurt people, and it done with no responsibility what so ever.

~~~
chatmasta
> In middle of a war zone

> In peacetime

So which is it? There was (is) a war raging in Syria, the US has interests
there -- like it or not -- and the NSA is a US intelligence agency. This story
sounds like an example of the NSA just doing its job.

I have no problem with the NSA spying on foreign communications or disrupting
them. After all, that's their job. What else would we use the NSA for?

What I do have a problem with is that the NSA makes apparently zero effort to
disambiguate between foreign, and domestic, communications.

~~~
drez
> I have no problem with the NSA spying on foreign communications or
> disrupting them. After all, that's their job. What else would we use the NSA
> for?

Really? You don't have an issue with a foreign intelligence agency disrupting
core infrastructure for a nation in the midst of a civil war? Especially
against a nation we are not even at war with?

What if the Chinese (or anyone else) did something similar? Would that not be
considered an outright act of war?

We are not at war with Syria, we should not be disrupting _anything_. There
could have easily have been numerous deaths directly resulting from that
outage.

~~~
tptacek
Do you really believe that France, China, and Israel haven't owned up US
routers? Should we declare war on them?

~~~
anon1385
That is some very weak whataboutery.

If there was a civil war going on in the US and disrupting the internet was
likely to lead to loss of life then we might have a comparable situation. That
isn't the situation though.

I am making a note of the fact that you view the Chinese government as a good
barometer of morality in readiness for the next time you bring up their human
rights record.

~~~
tptacek
What a strange comment. You appear to believe that you can sum up the human
rights characteristics of entire countries by the answer to a single question
about routers.

Here's a characteristic of Chinese human rights that isn't captured by that
question: it is the official policy of China that the police can convict and
sentence its citizens to a year of labor camp ("reeducation through labor")
without a trial. I find that characteristic more important in assessing
Chinese civil liberties than the fact that they have _obviously owned up a
bunch of our routers_.

~~~
nitrogen
International politics' favorite excuse for everything comes straight from the
grade school playground: "He started it!" We ought to do better.

~~~
tptacek
If you reread my comment, you'll see I didn't employ that logic at all. I
asked a simple question. Should we declare war on France, China, and Israel?

~~~
belorn
If a french governemnt agency put a exploit in a nuclear reactor, and a bug
caused a meltdown inside the US, should the US declare war on france?

let me ask your question with an other question: How many lives can a spy
agency kill until it is no longer acceptable?

~~~
tptacek
What?

~~~
belorn
The job of spies around the world is to infiltrate infrastructure. The
intelligence value of knowing how much power is being produce, and the option
to turn them off in case of war is of high military value.

So let say the French intelligence service decide to plant one on a nuclear
power plan in the US. Sadly however it has a bug which goes off and partial
shuts down the reactor. A meltdown happens, killing a few thousands and
irradiate the surroundings.

Do you go to war over this? Would you classify it as an attack, a accident, or
a act of war?

~~~
dntrkv
Are you seriously equating the internet going out for a few hours to a nuclear
meltdown?

~~~
belorn
During extreme crisis, communication networks are _vital_ in order to minimize
casualties.

Lets assume that radio and TV inside Syria informed the public where current
fire fights happened, where people should go to seek shelter, and other
warnings of dangers to the civilian population. Radio and TV get this
information from sources inside government and reporters on the field, some
using _The Internet_ to transmit this information.

You cut that communication line and radio and TV do not have current
information to broadcast. People dies as a result. A lot of innocent civilians
dies. This singular event could have killed more people than horrific event
like 9/11 or a meltdown at a power plant.

This is why I ask: How many casualties is a spy agency allowed to inflict
until it is no longer acceptable.

------
csandreasen
If the last straw to leak this information was when Snowden learned about this
MonsterMind program, why are we learning about it more than a year later
without any prior mention whatsoever? (and without documents to back up the
claims) Also, if he learned about it after taking up his job with Booz Allen
Hamilton in 2013, why was he contacting Glenn Greenwald in December of
2012?[1] Ditto with the excuse that Clapper's testimony in March 2013 factored
into his decision to leak...

I'm honestly curious why so many people are willing to take Snowden's claims
at face value. The NSA rightly got a lot of flack for the softball interviews
on Dateline a few months back, but it feels like the general consensus is that
the softball interviews with Snowden are beyond questioning.

[1]
[http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9781627790734](http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9781627790734)

~~~
scintill76
It was the "last straw" that broke the camel's back, not necessarily the
"heaviest straw" to Snowden, or the one the public most needs/deserves to hear
about. Besides, I think I have essentially read about this already (automated
cyberdefense with offensive capabilities), minus the codename or apparent
connection to the Bluffdale facility.

I can understand the timing suspicions. Frankly, I'm in the camp that tends to
trust Snowden, but putting that aside, I think some discrepancies could at
least be partially explained by one or more factors:

a) the journalist is putting some words in Snowden's mouth about "last straw"
or "the time had come to act";

b) Snowden was still deciding what actions to take (yeah, he emailed Greenwald
back then and was almost certainly going to share something, but may have been
on the fence about how far to go);

c) Snowden has sort of unconsciously mentally revised the exact timeline -- I
think this is not unusual for someone looking back on their "life-changing
moments", difficult decisions, months-long transformations etc. Or, the quote
about Clapper may have been Snowden using it as a microcosm for everything
else that put him down the path he was already on (by contacting Greenwald.)
Maybe as it happened he saw it as vindication of the decision he'd already
made. Maybe he was going back and forth for months -- although he'd contacted
Greenwald and started collecting documents, he had left open the option of
turning back, but had his resolve renewed by "the Clapper event."

So yeah, it's fishy, but I don't think there are any smoking guns per se. It's
not like they quote Snowden as saying, "After Clapper's false testimony, I
contacted Greenwald for the first time" while Greenwald says it happened 6
months before.

Pro-NSA people say it's not a fair debate because the government isn't allowed
to talk about the classified details. That applies to Snowden too, because
it's difficult for him to communicate his side to the public, being filtered
through journalists (who may be juggling his quotes around and mixing up the
timeline for the sake of a better story) and not having many opportunities (or
eschewing them, to avoid becoming the center of focus.)

I read an interesting and new (to me) statement of intense premeditation in
"There was one key area that remained out of his reach: the NSA’s aggressive
cyberwarfare activity around the world. To get access to that last cache of
secrets, Snowden landed a job as an infrastructure analyst with another giant
NSA contractor, Booz Allen." So he took a job specifically for the access it
would afford him, with the specific intent to steal and leak?

------
ArtDev
Here is the article on Readability:
[https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub](https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub)

~~~
psychboo
Interestingly that link re-directs me to the original article.

------
vdm
Just the copy:
[https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub](https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub)

------
2close4comfort
The TAO killed the internet in Syria not to mention MonsterMind. Just when you
thought it was safe to get back on the internet...

------
ibisum
This question: "Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What
drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents,
revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government’s domestic
surveillance programs?" .. hasn't it already been answered by now? Snowden did
what he did because he feels the American people have been betrayed by their
out of control government. He's said it enough times now for it to be
perfectly clear.

Is this just lazy journalism?

------
jeffrey8chang
In that article, Snowden said that "We have the means and we have the
technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all,
without any policy changes.” The answer, he says, is robust encryption.

And that's exactly what I'm doing through JackPair, a low-cost voice
encryption device that empower every citizen to protect their privacy over the
phone:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/620001568/jackpair-
safe...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/620001568/jackpair-safeguard-
your-phone-conversation)

It uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange and stream cipher with keystream from
pseudo random number generator seeded from DH. It's similar to one-time key
pad with no key management and zero-configuration.

As Snowden mentioned in the article, by adopting end-to-end encryption
technologies like this, we can collectively end mass surveillance not just in
the United States but around the world.

------
archagon
Great article. Snowden's closing thoughts make me excited about the idea of
mesh networking with all these mobile devices in our pockets. Hopefully Google
or Apple will give it the push it deserves. (Apple is already taking baby
steps in this direction with its Multipeer Connectivity API.)

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nadstat
[http://pastebin.com/Rkf41XCF](http://pastebin.com/Rkf41XCF)

~~~
CamperBob2
Thanks. If I were James Bamford, I'd be hopping mad at Wired about the
stupidity they perpetrated on my article.

~~~
crucini
Why should he be mad? Think of it as a simple cryptogram, like ROT13.

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jmscharff2
I can buy that he saw a lot of things that made him mistrust the government.
What I have a problem with is that it seems as though he took jobs and looked
for positions that would give him access to even more data. If he was really
just working and saw this stuff that is one thing to go in and try and steal
it is another, whether or not he did the right thing is up for debate. Selling
USA secrets to other governments is espionage no matter how you slice it. If
it was just leak it to the USA and the world at the same time then sure I
could buy the whistleblower if it is go run and hide in Russia or China and
sell information that is a different story. I dont think anyone has all the
facts about this though.

~~~
toyg
He didn't sell anything to any government. If you can prove otherwise, please
do; but I note that not even the almighty US intelligence apparatus going into
overdrive like a wounded animal could point to anything indicating any of
Snowden's statements were false at any point in time. If you have better
sources at your disposal than the US President, by all means feel free to
share them with us.

He's stuck in Russia because no other government wants to compromise their
relationship with the US, to our eternal shame (as in "us citizens of non-US
countries"); and because if he had remained in the US, he would have been
renditioned in Guantanamo on day 1.

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pdknsk
> He is living on New York time, the better to communicate with his stateside
> supporters and stay on top of the American news cycle.

I hope he has Vitamin D stocked.

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2close4comfort
written by James Bamford too

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Kapow2112
Does anyone have a link to the text in a more readable format?

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ArtDev
Here is the article on Readability:
[https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub](https://www.readability.com/articles/42wfcyub)

~~~
yutah
this link redirects me to the wired.com article...

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gbrindisi
He is a fucking legend.

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XorNot
So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating.

They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly.
Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation.

This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense,
that I've ever seen.

~~~
dabernathy89
I actually don't mind this kind of scrolling - I think it can be useful for
storytelling. In this example the scrolling over text doesn't seem to be
messed with, which is good.

I think what's frustrating about this example in particular is that there is
no feedback for scrolling when the page 'pauses' on an image. There should at
least be an element moving so that the user knows the page isn't freezing.

~~~
XorNot
I disagree but you really shouldn't be being downvoted for this opinion.

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notastartup
I fear we will never realize the true freedom Snowden sacrificed himself for.

~~~
joeclark77
I fear we will never get to see Snowden hanged, despite having do endure years
of all his internet fanboys swooning over his supposed "sacrifice".

------
jwjwtest
wwwwwww

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Hacker37
I am not sure what part of the story was not already told.

~~~
toyg
TAO bricking the Syrian main router and MonsterMind implementing a sort of
cyber-MAD system, are explicitly called out as exclusive revelations. They are
important because:

* Until now, any loss of Internet connectivity in Syria has always been interpreted as "bad dictator censoring people". I'm not saying that's never been the case, but now we know the US can have more control on global internet infrastructure than we knew possible. Next time some "bad" middle-eastern country loses the internet, US propaganda will have a harder time making people believe it's all due to bad actors.

* As Snowden eloquently says, an automated response system has very serious ethical challenges. Automation is not flawless, we've learnt it in the '70s and '80s through a number of very close calls with nuclear missiles; and in such an ethereal world as the internet (where bits can be faked almost at will), aggressive response should probably never be automatic.

The article also fleshes out Snowden's career in a better way than most
similar pieces, and heavily suggests that the "second leaker" theory has some
legs (at one point, personally I thought the second leaker was actually a
USgov operation to distract reporters from the Snowden trove and/or spend some
capital to re-establish relationships with them; but if Poitras really
lawyered up when asked, chances are that there's something else as well).

~~~
cpwright
> if Poitras really lawyered up when asked, chances are that there's something
> else as well).

Or it is in her (and Snowden's) interest to not say exactly what came from
where. If there is a second leaker, confirming it could create or increase the
intensity of a witch hunt. If there is not, it would confirm that Snowden may
have took more material than he claims.

Either way, there is no benefit to her answering either in the affirmative or
negative.

There is also no benefit to answering herself, as she's likely already
retained the lawyer because of handling this sensitive material.

~~~
toyg
_> If there is not, it would confirm that Snowden may have took more material
than he claims._

That's not really in their interest -- they have been very good at making the
most out of the story, both from a political and personal point of view, so it
would be in their interest to claim ownership of anything actually related to
the leaked documents. The only reason I can see for covering the fact that
there might not be another leaker, is if they (accidentally?) passed on the
documents to somebody else and don't want to be legally accountable for that
particular transaction. As long as Snowden was the only one moving stuff
around, Greenwald and Poitras are mostly in the clear from a legal point of
view, they are just reporters; the moment they provide them to third parties,
they lose that protected status. However, this would not matter if their aim
was just to involve another journalistic outfit like _Der Spiegel_ (unless
German law does not provide the same cover to journalism activities as US
law), so I can't see why they'd want to have such a charade going on.

I personally find much more likely that there is a second (or even third)
leaker but they don't want to put him/her under pressure, as you say.

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AwesomeTogether
"Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden
to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have
laid bare the vast scope of the government's domestic surveillance programs?"

if the article presents a different answer than what's already known, through
snowden statements communicated to laura poitras and greenwald, then they're
probably not true, and if it repeats the same stuff, this is obviously a
stupid question to ask and the article's just marketing b.s.

~~~
igravious
Exactly. Snowden has answered this many times. He has said (and I paraphrase)
that the public of the USA needs to know what is being done to them and in
their name so that they can get to choose and have a decision on the scope and
limits of these programs. In other words Snowden has said effectively that if
the public could get a direct vote on these issues and the public chose the
status quo then he'd go along with that.

I don't doubt that Snowden doesn't want the status quo, he'd like to see the
more (in his opinion) egregious civil liberty over-stepping practices rolled
back but if his views differed from public majority he'd go along with that.
He just wants the public to know and have a say, he's made this point a bunch
of times and I'll cite it for you if you really insist :)

~~~
joeclark77
Right, but that's what's called a "lie" and everyone knows it, hence the
question is still seeking an answer. No way did Snowden read hundreds of
thousands of documents and decide that _all of them_ were relevant to his
personal crusade against whatever it was.

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peterwwillis
Can someone remind me why Snowden became a public figure in the first place?
The second leaker is anonymous and practically invisible, and here Snowden is,
constantly getting more press. It's like he wants to be as visible as possible
while other leakers want the opposite.

Edit: Can somebody tell me what was downvote-worthy about this comment? This
is getting ridiculous.

~~~
tinco
You are downvoted because you imply Snowden was not wise for becoming a public
figure, and it looks like you think he didn't want to be as visible as
possible. This is exactly opposite to his strategy.

He wants to be visible as much as possible for two reasons.

The first is that this is the way for him to make the release of documents as
effective as possible, something which he has been very succesful at.

The second is that being in the public eye makes it more difficult for
organisations to lock him up or assassinate him quietly. The same reason why
you'd arrange to meet up with a stranger at a busy public location.

~~~
peterwwillis
People are reading too much into my comment, then. I didn't imply anything,
actually - I made a comparison and provided no detail that could lead a
conclusion, other than the idea that he wants to be visible, and questioning
that decision.

Your first reason doesn't make sense because all the other leaks by secret
leakers have caused uproar and changes, so a person behind them isn't
necessary, clearly.

Your second reason doesn't make sense because as long as nobody finds out who
you are, they can't kill you. Other leaks in the past have been done with
anonymity. And honestly, they'll rendition him regardless of the public outcry
because he's broken the law.

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AwesomeTogether
Ed Snowden acting out his WhiteHouse situation room fantasies

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10328969/rolledupsleeves...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10328969/rolledupsleeves.png)

