
What Snowden really revealed - kostyk
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/what-snowden-really-revealed-20131228113515573236.html
======
canadev
I think this was well written and I enjoyed reading it.

It brought some interesting information to my attention that I was not aware
of (e.g. the porn habit blackmail scheme) - there have been so many articles
about the leaks that despite them being important to me, I've made a conscious
decision not to read them all.

I really like the quote (that I can't find a source on) that he "defected from
the American government to the American people."

Edward Snowden is one of my heroes. This is something I find that I don't say
very lightly or very often about anybody.

~~~
Sharlin
Using your powers to acquire sensitive information in order to blackmail
political opponents is certainly nothing new - just ask J. Edgar Hoover.

~~~
erichocean
Is there something special about "newness" when determining what our response
should be to a particular "bad thing" (generically: evil)?

It almost seems like posts like yours–something tptacek is perhaps the master
of–are saying, perhaps subtly or even inadvertently, "this evil is not new,
and therefore _you should not oppose it_ ".

My take is this: just because some humans who were born before me were unable
to recognize, or if they were, oppose, a particular bad thing makes no
difference whatsoever. There is no statute of limitations on opposing evil and
doing good. Wrongs can—and should—be corrected no matter how much time has
passed since the discovery and the subsequent correction.

~~~
saraid216
> It almost seems like posts like yours–something tptacek is perhaps the
> master of–are saying, perhaps subtly or even inadvertently, "this evil is
> not new, and therefore you should not oppose it".

While I can't speak for Sharlin or tptacek, when I point out that things have
happened before, my intent is to prompt people to stop being merely outraged.
It is all very nice to say that wrongs should be corrected, but it is entirely
useless to waste that outrage on complaining at a local watering hole.

Articles and comments like this have, at best, some vague hope that
Congresspersons will notice and wish to pander to those particular
constituents by authoring a bill. What kind of lackluster plan is that? Near
as I can tell, most people are outraged because it makes them feel like they
are similar to the other outraged persons and, action proving truth more than
word, entirely disinterested in changing the status quo.

~~~
mercer
Speaking of history... I notice a great deal of arm-chair anger all around me
combined with a strong lack of faith that anything can change. Most of my
friends, even those with some political engagement, consider things like
protests (peaceful or otherwise) completely ineffective and keep any kind of
moral change limited to their personal lives. Do you have an idea of how
common this kind of situation has been in the past? Is it a natural step in a
growing anger, or is our situation somewhat special?

Slavoj Zizek seems to mention this issue in some form or other quite often. He
argues, as far as I understand, that a big difference between 'us' and
previous generations is that we seem to both disapprove _and_ accept the
status quo to an unprecedented degree. I've also heard others claim that we
are a 'silent generation' that just kind of tries to be different in the
private sphere, and leave it at that.

I don't know if this is true, but I do know we often consider our situation
unique when even a cursory look at history shows that it isn't.

~~~
saraid216
It's really hard to accurately gauge this kind of thing. If you go too far in
the past, then the percentage of literate people drops too fast for us to have
first-hand accounts of what people really thought of their contemporary
policies. The accounts we have available are accounts from those who were
affluent enough to bother with literacy: precisely the groups that would
contest the power of the state. If you stick to the last few centuries, you
simply don't have enough data.

I'm a liberal, which to me, includes being a meliorist. This means, roughly,
that I believe that things get better, and that this is especially true over
the long run. I think that the present day society is better than those in the
past. So that's the context in which I say, "Yes, we can do something."

The silence of our generation comes, in part, from our multiculturality. Too
many of "us" feel like we're irreconcilably different. Race, sex, industry,
level of education, socioeconomic status, etc.: we see more ways in which
we're different than in which we're the same. So we retreat behind facades of
private domains, where the differences can be muted by not seeing them, and in
a vicious cycle, reinforces our inability to come out into the public sphere
and engage. We spend our days traveling from our private homes, along roadways
where our interactions with others involve cursing and frustration, to private
businesses, and so many of us need to be back home to sleep soon afterwards
for another day of work. If your neighbor went on strike, would you even know
or care?

I realize I didn't really answer the question, but I don't really have an
answer.

------
Derbasti
At this point, it may well be impossible to shut down the NSA. I imagine every
opposing politician gets visited by some agent at some point, showing him
records of his own wrongdoings.

Imagine every politician ever be forced to choose between the end of his
career and opposing the NSA. How can we get out of this mess?

~~~
jjtheblunt
The idea of shutting down the NSA is destructive: their charter is to listen
to foreign traffic, and to secure domestic traffic. That's what they kick ass
at. That their abilities got co-opted for unapproved purposes was NOT the
NSA's doing. The problem came from outside the NSA, and was likely out of
their control.

~~~
javajosh
Actually, no. Snowden was the only one willing to sacrifice anything to reveal
the truth to the public - and he wasn't even an official NSA employee. We can
gnash our teeth and pull our hair about how the agency was "co-opted" but the
fact remains that precisely _zero_ of the NSA's ~40,000 employees stepped
forward with anything like this. So what can we infer from this? Many things,
of course, but that the organization was whole-sale "co-opted" is rather a
stretch. 40k people doing something horrible for 12 _years_ and a trickle of
ineffective attempts to do something...

There is, perhaps, a more "innocent" explanation - or at least one that
reflects better on the rank-and-file at the NSA: that it took someone like
Snowden, not just idealistic and willing to sacrifice, but his intelligence
and unique collection of technical skills, to make something like this happen.
The NSA is a frightening adversary, the best funded, best equipped, most
sophisticated intel organization on the planet. One could be forgiven for
thinking twice before burning them... But is that fear enough to keep 40k
people quiet for 12 years?! I'd say that we can only infer that the rank-and-
file are massively in favor of the steps the NSA is taking, and probably
mostly for noble reasons of wanting to "protect" us all. And what we can infer
from that is that clearly the NSA selects for loyalty over principle, every
time. Well, maybe they failed that once.

The thing that really bothers me is that it's such an inevitably fail-prone
approach to protection, as it requires massive numbers of people to keep a
secret in perpetuity. And now the big reveal: it has materially damaged us
all. American technological trustworthiness is (rightly) at an all time low.
My only hope is that this failure has been dramatic, so memorable, so
horrible, that it will spur all computer technologists to learn more about
security, the details of cryptography and random number generation, and to
stop assuming that US authorities will show anything like common sense when it
comes to restraining themselves and their power. They are drunk with it, self-
righteously drunk with it, and we must work to take that power away in every
possible way: politically, technologically, and indeed, philosophically. I
mention philosophy last, but it's really the most important: are we a nation
of principles, or are we a nation that takes shortcuts, sacrificing principle
for pride of protection? In addition to testing for technological prowess, we
need to test our intelligence staffers for high ethical intelligence: they
need to be willing and able to rebel against illegal orders just as Snowden
has done.

------
radiorental
What Snowden _really_ revealed is that the goal of the terrorists has been
achieved. The 2996 souls who lost the lives on 9/11 were unfortunate
collateral damage.

The hysteria since and "hollowing out of our democracy" is the goal of a
terrorist.

This is not to say things weren't peachy before the attack, but the US has
lost so much moral standing, respect & power since due to our government's
actions.

We should have kept calm and carried on, we did the complete opposite.

~~~
frostmatthew
> The hysteria since and "hollowing out of our democracy" is the goal of a
> terrorist.

Exactly! "we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of
life or restricting our freedoms" \- George W. Bush (9/12/01)

It's a pity he (and/or Obama) didn't actually follow through with that
promise.

------
Ygg2
I wonder, at what point would NSA start manufacturing threats. It seems like
clear progression of their behavior. Because you can't constantly cry wolf,
you have to fight a straw-wolf from time to time.

~~~
salient
They have FBI doing that for them, and ATF [1], and who knows who else. I
think many of these agencies are starting to ask for funding specifically for
these sort of "operations", where they not only try and convince people to
commit crimes, but give them all the funding and resources they need to commit
them, too.

We've gotten to the point where the government has to manufacture or invent
crimes in order to arrest people. Even the War on Drugs isn't enough for them
anymore. They need more. I'm actually really curious what will happen when the
War on Drugs will end. Because that would leave a huge hole in their plan to
criminalize just about everyone.

Will they start sending SWAT teams to people's homes for pirating movies? Will
they start arrest people on the street for pissing them off somehow? I don't
know, but I'm really curious what would happen. I certainly don't expect them
to just lay back and ease up on the arrests, if the War on Drug is over.

[1] [http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-
ro...](http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-
tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html)

~~~
aric
> _Will they start sending SWAT teams to people 's homes for pirating
> movies..._

This _happens_ already.

When government institutions aren't victimizing everyday people for engaging
in nonviolent behavior, such as duplicating ones and zeroes, they're not
growing. Paychecks aren't increasing. Power isn't consolidating. Terrorizing
modern humans is often par for the course to any indoctrinated group/cult.
It's easy to be trained and then divided against an enemy. Breaking down
Grandma's door over a Britney Spears album, threats and extortion of
exorbitant fees over crap people wouldn't otherwise purchase, at 250000x per
unit, locking people into cages for consenting behavior like the trade and
intake of chemicals, and on: power a mafia and warlords can only dream about.
Corporate law won thanks to an oligarchical system of government.

The only temporary hope for pawns being victimized is when SWAT/militia shoot
only the family dog but not other members of the family.

------
DanielBMarkham
Hey I'm as big of a hair-on-fire guy as the next guy, but this is getting too
much.

A bit of context. Please.

The U.S. has always overreacted to existential threats. In fact, that's the
way the system is designed. If it has to fail, it fails towards a dictatorial
president and overbearing laws -- which are removed by a frequently-elected
and truly representative Congress as soon as the threat is gone. We've been
going along like this for 240 years or so. There is nothing new about the
abuse of power or removal of freedoms (unfortunately).

So what's changed? First, internet companies are tracking every freaking thing
you do online. They figured out that the average Joe will give up his privacy
for free email, and they're having a field day with it.

Governments trump companies, and since the data is already collected, every
government on the planet is wanting a piece of that action.

Second, there is no ever-changing Congress looking to score points with the
folks back home. Instead, there's a static political system that fears looking
bad -- and it's grown a perpetual fear machine built up around terror that can
make it look really bad.

Folks do this issue a great disservice when they focus only on the U.S., or
only on the NSA. Look guys, if the U.S. and the NSA disappeared tomorrow,
you'd have the same problems you have now -- you just wouldn't know so much
about them. This has nothing specifically to do with them. (I'm not making
excuses, only pleading for context).

The tech community brought this on themselves. We are the people to blame. The
trade-off of tracking data for free stuff was too good to be true. In fact,
instead of the tracking data being almost worthless to the average citizen, as
it turns out this data is much too valuable to give up under any
circumstances, at least in the aggregate. Until that leaky bucket is fixed
somehow, nothing changes.

~~~
deelowe
There's a big difference between my agreement with a private company which
allows me to use their webmail service in exchange for scraping my data for ad
use and agents of the state watching everything I do with the expectation that
this data will be used to harass, fine, detain, prosecute, or execute me or my
family. The distinction here is that state entities are granted authority to
do things no corporation can.

TL;DR - Google doesn't use this data to kill people or rig elections.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
No, but once the instrumentation is in place to collect it, by Google or
anybody else, it's fair game for various governments to use it to do just
that.

What would the alternative be? To have Google et al be above the law?

You can't have it both ways. If you give up your data, you give up your data.
You can't just give it up for special purposes. You don't get to choose. (And
neither does Google or whoever is on the other end of the transaction)

You could even take all government influence out of it and still have
problems. Companies could just buy up each other, pay for illegal data
transfers, and so on. That's kinda the point here. A tiny little piece of data
like my email to Aunt Claire this morning is almost completely worthless.
Almost. But zillions of pieces, accumulating day-by-day? The value, in both
monetary and intelligence terms, just keeps going up. Every day the economics
of getting that data, by hook or crook, changes in favor of it being lost. And
once it's lost, in most cases it's lost forever. There's no "going back" to
having the data private again. That's an unsustainable system.

~~~
DennisP
The spying goes far beyond webmail. Most people haven't agreed to have their
phone calls tapped, or backdoors put into networking hardware and encryption
standards.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
My comment wasn't specifically about Google or webmail. That was simply an
example. It's the principle of trading private information to another service
in return for something that doesn't scale. Whether it's software, network
infrastructure, web apps, etc -- the specific type of trade or vendor involved
is not the point.

------
joseflavio
"all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed" \-- Preamble of the declaration of independence

It is going to be very difficult to motivate people to change something...
until a big part of population is starving I believe...

------
daphneokeefe
This is one of the clearest explanations of the situation that I have read.

------
boldklubben
> We have sacrificed our freedoms and morals in order to make war on those
> abroad

There are unperceivable powers that be. Possibly and even likely without what
we consider morals. Bear with me. When you had enough wealth and can own or
have anything, what's next? It's human nature.

~~~
Derbasti
The thing is, I don't think _we_ have sacrificed anything. No one ever gave
the NSA explicit authority to do the things it does. It's just that they did
do them snyway.

~~~
cims
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"

~~~
shalalala
Seems to me this problem can be solved by turning to our founding fathers
advice as well. For starters, abolish the production of porn and the other
filth that Muslims hate us for. Then, if that doesn't work. Drop a few nuclear
bombs on the Middle East. Turn the whole area into a parking lot. This could
be accomplished in two months.

------
DonGateley
What's wrong with this logic is the presumption that the intelligence
community would share any effective results of their work with the public.
That would be just plain stupid. Rather than an endless argument over
disclosing and justifying results, it is far simpler to simply say there
aren't any. Yeah, image takes a hit but those people are much less concerned
with image than with doing what they have been chartered to do.

Anyone to whom any of this (other than the capabilities) comes as any surprise
at all is naive indeed and probably has no memory of the hostile spy era that
spawned and justified it.

------
jebblue
The article is hosted on the same site that cooperates with terrorists,
regardless how you feel about Snowden, pro or con: [http://www.aim.org/aim-
column/al-jazeera-still-promoting-gun...](http://www.aim.org/aim-column/al-
jazeera-still-promoting-gun-violence-and-terrorism/)

~~~
samstave
If you are concerned with that then you should be just as concerned that the
USG was providing arms to Syrian "rebels" and weapons to Mexican drug cartels
in only the most recent examples of supportin terrorism.

The USG is basically a terrorist incubation machine.

