
Edward Snowden Q&A - sethbannon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower
======
pvnick
This guy is amazing. The thing I love about him is he truly embodies the
bravery that goes along with the idea that it's better to live in a free
society with a modest threat of terror attacks than to live in an oppressive
society where we are supposedly kept "safe" from the terrorists hiding behind
every corner.

It takes courage to make such an assertion. The NSA spying route is
fundamentally based on cowardice.

~~~
synctext
Amazing poetic writing skills, love it:

    
    
      "Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't
       I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living
       in a palace petting a phoenix by now."
    

why did I not drop our of school and get a 200K job:-(

~~~
tlrobinson

      "If they had taught a class on how to be the kind
      of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have
      finished high school."

~~~
tankbot
This was by far my favorite quote from his answers. Perfect way to cap off
that whole paragraph.

~~~
dsuth
Yeah, that's incredibly cool. Make a meaningful statement whilst throwing
their own rhetoric back at them. The more I hear/read from this guy, the more
I like him!

------
LiamMcCalloway
Oh wow:

MP_Stroebele_GER 17 June 2013 3:53pm

Mr Snowden, as a deputy at the Bundestag (German Parliament) who is
responsible for the supervision of the intelligence apparatus, I am eager to
know if you have any knowledge about information which was given to the German
Government or the Bundesnachrichtendienst by the NSA within the PRISM
programme. If so, do you know how much and what kind of information was given
to them and if the BND knew that it was gathered by PRISM? Best regards, Hans-
Christian Ströbele

~~~
LiamMcCalloway
Saving you all ddging it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-
Christian_Str%C3%B6bele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-
Christian_Str%C3%B6bele)

~~~
synctext
The Green Party is sharpening their axe!

------
terhechte
_Sigh_ :

"So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public
debate?"

"Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now
seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend
looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance
in human history."

:(

~~~
grecy
Remember, the mainstream media is for _entertainment_ , not to keep you
informed about significant events.

~~~
revscat
That, and government propaganda. Look at CNN's lede:

"Washington (CNN) -- The man who admitted leaking classified documents about
U.S. surveillance programs purportedly went online live on Monday to declare
the truth would come out even if he is jailed or killed, and said President
Barack Obama did not fulfill his promises and expanded several 'abusive'
national security initiatives."

This is textbook propaganda. The news media like CNN may partially be about
entertainment, but it is also about propagating the government position,
specifically the intelligence agencies positions.

[http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/politics/nsa-
leaks/index.html?...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/politics/nsa-
leaks/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)

~~~
stellar678
Can you explain the propaganda angle there? To me, that reads like a
straightforward summary of what is going on.

~~~
revscat
Sure.

To start with, take a look at that first clause: "The man who admitted leaking
classified documents..." The framing of this is right off the bat aggressive,
casting him in the light of a criminal. Were CNN to want to cast him in a
positive light they could have chosen to write it something like this: "The
man who exposed widespread secret surveillance of American's electronic
communications..." Instead CNN chose to emphasize the criminal aspect, rather
than the civil liberties/anti-democratic aspect.

Next: "... purportedly went online..." The use of the word "purportedly" here
is interesting. Why is that questioned? To associate doubt with him. It's
subtle, but nevertheless there it is.

Next: "declare the truth would come out even if he is jailed or killed". Out
of all the questions which were answered CNN focused on this one because it
most easily supports the "egotistical" narrative they are attempting to paint
him with. Implication: "He is setting himself up as some kind of _martyr_! How
arrogant!"

Next: "Obama did not fulfill his promises and expanded several 'abusive'
national security initiatives." This one is, to me, the most blatant. The
scare quotes around "abusive" are of course the most obvious. But look how the
frame it: "national security initiatives". Not "domestic spying programs", or
"electronic surveillance mechanisms", or something else. After all, no one who
calls themselves reasonable can be opposed to national security!

It's subtle, and of course debatable. But it's certainly present. CNN has
their own slant, and it is obviously pro-NSA.

Also note that nowhere to they actually link to the Q&A page.

Let's rewrite it, communicate the same information, but make it skeptical
towards the NSA:

"Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who exposed widespread secret
surveillance of American's electronic communications and online activities,
did an online question-and-answer session today, making himself available to
provide follow-up answers to questions raised by concerned citizens over the
reach and power of the notoriously secretive intelligence agency."

~~~
pwf
"The framing of this is right off the bat aggressive, casting him in the light
of a criminal." Ignoring any moral aspects, isn't he technically a criminal?
This certainly seems more neutral than your suggestion. Calling him a traitor
would be out of line, but I do believe it was against the law to do what he
did.

It IS only 'purportedly' him; why do you expect CNN to report what it cannot
confirm?

The quotes around 'abusive' are suggestive, but it is also how you indicate
that the word came from someone other than the author of the article. If you
expect neutrality, expect the writer to segregate their words from their
subject's.

Your summary is far more emotionally charged and subjective.

~~~
nitrogen
Which summary you find more emotionally charged probably depends on your
existing opinion, and how often you consume mainstream news. To me CNN's
wording (and, for that matter, all TV news reports) feels like a stream of
verbal knives, each word chosen to induce anxiety and put the viewer/reader on
edge. Regardless of their veracity, "aggressive" is an apt description of
their tone, and it's not limited to just this story.

~~~
freyr
> * "aggressive" is an apt description of their tone, and it's not limited to
> just this story.*

Of course it is. CNN competes with 250+ other channels to grab your attention,
draw you deeper in, and serve you commercial breaks.

You could claim it's a carefully orchestrated propaganda machine designed to
scare people into ceding their rights to the government (of course, such
arguments might also designed to scare you). Or you could claim that they need
to do this to excite their broad audience and thereby preserve their jobs and
paychecks.

You could say the media dug up pictures of his girlfriend in provocative
outfits to discredit him among conservative Americans. Or you could
acknowledge that they didn't have to do much digging at all, that sex sells,
and that the public love personality news (see all the Hollywood "news"
shows).

There's a conspiracy lurking around every corner, if you go looking for it.

~~~
jlgreco
Who said anything about _" orchestrated"_, carefully or otherwise?

~~~
freyr
Fine, call it a haphazardly improvised propaganda machine if you prefer.

~~~
jlgreco
You seem to be ruling out the possibility that they are acting as peddlers of
propaganda of their own accord.

~~~
freyr
Ah, you're not yet up to speed with the new revised definition of
orchestrated.

------
clicks

        He will be online today from 11am EST/4pm BST today. An 
        important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's 
        security concerns and also his access to a secure 
        internet connection. It is possible that he will appear 
        and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while 
        to get through the questions, please be patient.
    

Hah, nice. Reading that just made me smile. Loads of people are going to be
patiently watching out for the lag, for the possible periodic
disconnects/reconnects, and they will be vaguely internalizing why Snowden has
to do this. And this is pretty mainstream news at this point, people are going
to be on edge listening for his words. I like the cyberpunk feel of these
happenings. We live in interesting times.

~~~
JDGM
"he will appear and disappear intermittently"

How frustrating a taunt to those in the NSA who would rather make him
_disappear permanently_.

------
jervisfm
Here is an interesting remark by Edward Snowden during the interview:

 _Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began
operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were
prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance
that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual
communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth
it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet
we 've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling
victim to it_

~~~
gfodor
I think the best part about this is he is not completely willing to say that
the U.S. should or should not be doing what it is doing _per se_ , just that
it should not be doing it without the _consent of the governed._ He wants us
to ask where the line should be drawn as a people, and his basic concern is
that we are not being informed, not that the wiretapping is happening. This
shows a profound respect for democracy and the country, since he seems to have
faith that if all the facts are laid bare our country will do the right thing.

~~~
temp453463343
I wish that were true, but in the context of everything he says it doesn't
seem true.

This part especially his belief that privacy is a universal right:

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction
from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not
become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of
100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-
evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

------
kore
The mentions of his security concerns reminded me of this:
[http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-
fr...](http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-from-here/)

"As a thought experiment, imagine that Osama bin Laden was still alive and
that he used the Tor network to do a Reddit AMA once a month. How long do you
imagine it would take for the US to find and neutralize him? I posted this
question on Twitter and, while responses varied, ex-NSA Global Network
Exploitation Analyst Charlie Miller guessed one to two months. I would be very
surprised if it took more than three."

~~~
rtb
"neutralize"? Say what you really mean.

~~~
Ygg2
Reminds me of the George Carlin's sketch on political correctness. Eventually
"neutralize" will be replaced by "moved aside" or "inconvenienced".

~~~
jlgreco
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill)

------
Tloewald
The key point in the answers thus far is that when he refers to "direct
access" he means to some database that has all the stuff in it, and not (e.g.)
via a direct conduit to Google or whoever's database.

So what I think is going on is that the NSA archives packets it can see in
transit, but doesn't necessarily know who all the endpoints are. (It probably
has a VERY good idea most of the time.) When someone becomes of particular
interest they can execute a warrant on Google et al and get more detailed
information on a specific target which lets them make better use of data
they've already got.

The key thing they're doing is, fundamentally, logging packets that they can
see going past any number of bottlenecks in the internet, which should have
been perfectly obvious that they would try to do from day one. This alone is
enormously powerful and all the extra info from service providers is probably
only icing on the cake. If you can be identified from some cleartext comms
somewhere then all you other dealings have been archived, and can be
correlated, and then decrypted and traced back to you posthoc.

~~~
jread
This is my belief as well. A few years ago I worked for a company that sold
packet capture appliances to unnamed government agencies. The higher end
appliances were capable of 10Gb/s packet to disk streaming. I helped write a
search interface for the resulting data capable of the type of filtering and
data reconstruction described. If organizations directly, indirectly,
knowingly or unknowingly allowed the NSA to tap Internet links, they could
theoretically provide full data access, while at the same time publicly deny
direct server or backdoor access.

~~~
chris_mahan
How do they get past the ssl encryption? Mmmm? You don't have to answer
that...

~~~
TheCoelacanth
For a government agency like the NSA, that's easily accomplished by a man-in-
the-middle attack. They can almost certainly convince multiple US-based
certificate authorities to give them a certificate that will be included in
the default set of trusted certificates by all mainstream browsers. They would
only have problems with the very small number of people who are both paranoid
and tech-savvy enough to change the certificates that there browser trusts.

~~~
LoganCale
Chrome, at least, has certificate pinning for Google properties (and perhaps
some other big sites?), which prevent the use of a different but otherwise
valid certificate from a trusted CA.

------
Kylekramer
Seem like more like a platform for self aggrandizing quips than anything
substantial. I guess it isn't surprising that Snowden and the Guardian are
remaining vague, but we are pretty much no closer to the truth than day one.

~~~
slg
I agree, he said a whole lot of beautiful nothing. He didn't really add any
new information to the discussion.

The question I most wanted to see asked was a request to expand on the notion
that he had the ability to wiretap anyone up to the president. When this came
up he simply went on a philosophical rant about the nature of bureaucratic
creep and how our constitutional rights should extend past our borders.

~~~
aspensmonster
The first part of Snowden's response to that question:

>Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and
again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection -
policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical
protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter
is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as
the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time.

So, he stands by what he said and expanded on the scope of his capabilities by
addressing the claims that there are "systems" in place to prevent someone
(such as himself) from grabbing domestic data. He details that there are
"policy" protections --that he asserts are effectively no protection at all--
and "one very weak technical protection" that acts as a filter of some sort on
incoming data. He goes on to describe the filter as "constantly out of date"
and specifically configured to be as ineffective at its stated purpose as
possible by letting us know that the configuration is "euphemistically
referred to as the 'widest allowable aperture.'"

Really, I'm just retyping what Snowden has already said. It looks to me like
he most certainly did expand on his claim.

~~~
slg
Ok, I will be happy to break down that particular question if you want. His
initial quote was as follows, emphasis added by me:

>"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the _authorities_ to wiretap anyone,
from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I
had a personal email."

He doesn't say he has the capability, he says he has the authority. That is an
important distinction.

>"Yes, I stand by it."

He doesn't waiver in his initial statement.

>"US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections"

While it might not be clear in the initial interview, I think most people
would assume that this type of power isn't given to everyone so some type of
policy protection was obvious. Snowden doesn't add anything new here because
he doesn't give any details and his statement just raises more questions. The
question that relates directly to his first statement is whether he really did
have _the authority_ to wiretap the president like he initially claimed? But I
would also like to here more explanation of these policies. Was this an honor
system? Was there any oversight? Did these things require a warrant or any
approval?

>"(and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no
protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens)"

Part of the philosophical musings that I mentioned in my initial post.

>"and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our
ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is
euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be
stripped out at any time."

This is another vague and almost worthless statement. At this point and with
this level of detail, we can only speculate on these "technical protections".
It would seem to imply that there is a technical filter in place that prevents
information about US citizens from ever entering the system. But the way
Snowden dismisses it as soon as he brings it up makes it seem like it is
useless. Some followups would have been helpful here. What does he mean that
the filter is constantly out of date? What does "widest allowable aperture"
mean? Who has the authority to "strip it out at any time"?

I don't think he provided anything new here outside of simply confirming that
there were policy and technical limitations in place, something that would
likely be assumed by most people.

~~~
akiselev
> This is another vague and almost worthless statement. At this point and with
> this level of detail, we can only speculate on these "technical
> protections". It would seem to imply that there is a technical filter in
> place that prevents information about US citizens from ever entering the
> system. But the way Snowden dismisses it as soon as he brings it up makes it
> seem like it is useless. Some followups would have been helpful here. What
> does he mean that the filter is constantly out of date? What does "widest
> allowable aperture" mean? Who has the authority to "strip it out at any
> time"?

Snowden definitely needs to expand more on these things and talk about the
technical aspects more specifically. It seems that Greenwald (who admitted he
is very nontechnical) is guiding Snowden into dumbing down his technical
descriptions (for whatever reason, maybe its to avoid declassifying stuff that
would actually impact national security) and that is doing him a disservice.

Snowden seems to be exaggerating in the sense that he, a knowledgeable IT
contractor employed to overlook the NSA infrastructure would be able to get
the data he needs, bypassing the policy protections. I don't think he means
that any "associate" level NSA agent without technical knowledge of the
infrastructure can easily get any data he wants, even with the policy
protections. This is just my interpretation, based on how I've seen other
technical people exaggerate.

------
polyfractal
_> [...] if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into
Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now._

If I didn't like this guy before...I certainly do now.

~~~
jlgreco
I hope somebody breaks it to him gently that phoenix aren't real. ;)

~~~
fredleblanc
Or perhaps he has some secret knowledge that has been hidden from us!

------
tripzilch
Oooh, this one from the article comments, one that tptacek will be happy about
;) (and it's a good question, to settle):

> Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

~~~
mikeevans
Unfortunately he didn't really answer it.

"More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the
reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw
SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone
number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the
same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based,
and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and
easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited
queries is only 5% of those performed."

~~~
thrownaway2424
No, he did answer the question, with the biggest walk-back in the history of
whistle-blowing. He defined it as "direct access" to internal databases of
shit the NSA has already collected. Absolutely not the same as what Snowden
was selling the newspaper reporters a week ago, which was "direct access" to
Google servers.

Also, by the way, 5% auditing is an very high rate. With a 5% audit rate,
you'll catch evil-doers in no time at all.

~~~
codeulike
But the picture I'm getting is that they 'collect' everything (via fibre
intercepts etc), because they've interpreted the rules as being "collect
everything but then ask permission to look at it"

~~~
thrownaway2424
"Collect everything; analyze later" is not a feasible strategy. Nobody has
that kind of storage, and even if they did, nobody has the CPUs to ingest the
stream. I think it goes without saying that you need a Google-scale computer
to ingest Google-scale network traffic, and that's just one of the companies
in question, on top of all the public transit bandwidth. Nobody has presented
any evidence that the NSA has computing facilities on that scale. The only one
we know of is not yet built, and way too small.

I think it is completely feasible that the NSA would or does collect all or a
great deal of voice traffic, because that's a tiny piece of network traffic
these days.

~~~
logn
I've always assumed the US gov't does have this computing power and that's why
we spend so much on national defense. Besides, when you employ more
mathematicians than anyone else, I'm sure you can come up with some smart ways
to store big data. Also, I think it would be fairly cheap to just write
everything out to tapes or disk and dump them in a closet, even if you don't
have the money to load them all in a database (so that you can put them online
when technology improves or you have more budget/time). Further, I haven't
seen where Snowden clearly retracted his 'direct access' assertion. You might
keep some identifiers in a database and the whole dataset on a user can be
ingested on demand from Google or whichever company (even if that means
sending an automated request to Google which automatically responds by dumping
data to FTP).

------
e3pi
Edward, do you believe winning the Nobel Peace Prize would help get the
hunter-killers off your back?

~~~
netrus
Has some truth to it. It would compensate the horrible mistake of 2009.

~~~
freehunter
Imagine the US assassinating or imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize winner. It
wasn't that long ago where we would fight regimes who did that.

~~~
dllthomas
Chile is eager to imprison a particular Nobel Peace Prize winner... and
frankly, I more or less support them.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Can you state which one you're talking about for ease of Googling?

~~~
dllthomas
Henry Kissinger.

------
LiamMcCalloway
He's retaining a sense of humor:

> Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
> that all US Persons are created equal."

~~~
aqme28
I loved this line. A lot of people don't seem to understand that our
constitution explicitly denotes between rights provided to citizens and rights
provided to "persons." Most of the constitution and the bill of rights is
worded to apply to _persons,_ not necessarily US citizens.

~~~
LiamMcCalloway
Don't forget the Declaration of Independence:

    
    
        We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
     are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
     Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
    

EDIT: I quote it because it too makes a _universal_ claim

------
SCAQTony
Obama, The NSA and the usual internet suspects: Google, Yahoo, Facebook are
getting their asses kicked. This man is the Thomas Paine of our day: "Give me
liberty or give me death."

~~~
ianhawes
Actually he's coming off as arrogant with delusions of grandeur.

~~~
knotty66
That's a predictable smear that's aimed at every whistleblower.

~~~
jgross206
predictability doesn't imply innacuracy

~~~
jlgreco
Perhaps in the sense that predictably broken clocks are correct twice a day.

------
brown9-2
I imagine that today will be a very interesting day for the Guardian's
operations team.

------
groys
Man this guy can write,

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an
American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein,
and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be
the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high
school"

~~~
e3pi
Who is 'King'?

~~~
gfodor
Rep Peter King of NY who has a hardon for protecting the children from
terrorists.

~~~
e3pi
Lemme get out the `FUEL' moleskin, ....ah,yes:

Mitch McConnell James Baker Dick Cheney Bush POTUS' Feinstein Peter King

Got it. thank you.

------
shailesh
"This country is worth dying for."

Hats off to him.

~~~
grecy
_" This country is worth dying for."_

I find that a very perplexing notion (I'm not American)

How bad would things have to get before it wasn't worth dying for?

Do you find it scary that the citizens of any country your country is at war
with think the same way?

Personally, I have no interest in dying for any country. If my country were
doing something that required me dying, then I'm leaving for a country that
doesn't require my death.

~~~
alexqgb
The point is that America's founding ideals are very much worth dying for.
"How bad it gets" is totally irrelevant in this context, since the "it" refers
to specific conditions, whereas the ideal remains separate, over and above
them.

The thing to understand is that "country" in this context, means the
embodiment of an ideal, and not just a particular piece of territory, or a
group of people inhabiting it.

If you don't feel that there are any ideals worth dying for, then all of this
will be much harder to understand.

~~~
grecy
> _The point is that America 's founding ideals are very much worth dying for.
> _

In _YOUR_ opinion.

> _" How bad it gets" is totally irrelevant in this context, since the "it"
> refers to specific conditions_

But those specific conditions have not existed for many, many years, and your
death won't bring them back.

> _If you don 't feel that there are any ideals worth dying for..._

Why die for them when I can just go somewhere else that already has them?

It's amazing more American's don't realize _they_ are the fundamentalists they
are told to be afraid of.

~~~
kbenson
> In YOUR opinion.

In Snowden's opinion as well, obviously.

> Why die for them when I can just go somewhere else that already has them?

Because this totally ignores the reality that this other place didn't appear
out of thin air. It has people there that care about these ideals, and most
likely some that would be willing to die for them.

In some respect, not attempting to change your country to be what you consider
a better place and just migrating to a different location is leeching off the
world, and those that work hard to make it what they consider a better place.
We all do it to a lesser or greater degree, but to just throw your hands up
and give up on your current circumstances entirely in favor of a move is
beneficial to no one but yourself and those you disagree with.

This is as true for neighborhoods as it is for countries.

~~~
grecy
> _Because this totally ignores the reality that this other place didn 't
> appear out of thin air. It has people there that care about these ideals,
> and most likely some that would be willing to die for them......In some
> respect, not attempting to change your country to be what you consider a
> better place and just migrating to a different location is leeching off the
> world, and those that work hard to make it what they consider a better
> place...... This is as true for neighborhoods as it is for countries._

I agree that we need to work hard to make a place
(country/neighborhood/whatever) better. I personally protest, picket, vote,
write to and call my representative, etc. etc.

If it gets to the point I need to die to make something better, it's not worth
it.

~~~
alexqgb
"If it gets to the point I need to die to make something better, it's not
worth it."

You know what? That's fine. In reality, most people feel the exact same way.
But here's the other reality: without people who felt otherwise, there
wouldn't be better places for you to go in the first place.

So when you encounter the kinds of people who realize that someone needs to
make the ultimate sacrifice, and look to themselves, instead of looking around
for others, the least you can do is to treat them with gratitude and respect
instead of disparaging the very ideals that prompted the extrordinary
sacrifice from which you (and millions of others) so clearly benefit.

------
clamprecht
I'd like to ask him how people can support him financially. A Bitcoin address
would be cool, but he'd still have to convert it to local currency.

------
martindale
I find it somewhat amusing that he's at least somewhat likely to use Tor,
which was developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory.

~~~
clicks
Actually that would be a good question to ask him.

Him intimately knowing about how NSA does stuff, what would be his suggestion
of ensuring anonymity. What steps should one take, what tools should one use,
etc. His answers on this would be very telling. Someone please ask him that!

~~~
abrichr
Asked: [http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-
permalink/24386192](http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-
permalink/24386192)

~~~
xmcri
mm. also, [http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-
permalink/24386031](http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-
permalink/24386031)

upvoted your link.

------
aroch
How do we know it's Snowden?

So are more documents going to drop?

If yes the the former, why can't _The Guardian_ do an all-out dump instead of
piecemealing it?

~~~
vidarh
Because the point whether or not you believe they care about the content, or
are cynical and assume it is just about their traffic, is to get maximum
mileage out of it. And the way to do that is to drag it out.

If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a
small number of the most interesting revelations.

~~~
aroch
You can dump everything and then spend the next 6 months going through it with
a fine-toothed comb and writing articles daily. Is the public really better
served by waiting months to hear everything?

~~~
guizzy
Other journalists would try to beat The Guardian to the scoop, with the same
result. Everyone would be talking about it for two weeks, then we'd forget.

By controlling the flow, they can make sure that each important revelation is
allowed some time in the spotlight. The issues gets a lot more attention that
way.

~~~
jessedhillon
You people are un-fucking-believable. You are literally lauding -- no,
contorting yourselves to defend -- the hoarding of information you consider
vital to the public good, and the slow, drawn out manipulation of the public's
attention for private gain. This is, at a high level, directly analogous to
whatever evil you think the NSA is committing.

And the dumbest of all ironies, which I'm sure is lost on all of you, is that
you are employing utilitarian ethics to defend it. That is exactly how a spy
program is considered ethical.

God. The humanities really are dead if this kind of clueless doublethinking
represents the future thought leadership of our world.

~~~
justsee
No, I think the unbelievable people are supporting the gradual release as they
feel it maximises the impact of the revelations, for the public good. What
with news cycles and short attention spans and everything.

You seem to disagree, but don't make any convincing arguments that dumping all
the information immediately is better for the public good. Probably because
it's a very hard task.

~~~
jessedhillon
I'm not saying whether it should or shouldn't be released. IMO there is no
"there" to this story anyway, as will be revealed when/if these mysterious
documents arrive. My critique is of the naked speculation run rampant on HN,
and the post hoc rationalizations for believing wholeheartedly claims which
are, at best, dubious and in any case unsubstantiated.

The story doesn't even pass the simplest of tests for self-consistency. An NSA
contractor claims that the government is listening to all digital
communications, but is somehow able to transfer classified files, taken from
the NSA, to a journalist in the UK. If we believe the first part, how could
the second part happen? If the agency had such a capability, I would assume
that a call between low-level NSA employees and _journalists_ (foreign ones
especially) would trigger all sorts of alarms.

~~~
grey-area
_IMO there is no "there" to this story anyway_

I disagree, there have been significant leaks - confirmation of the NSA
collecting every phone record in the US on a daily basis, confirmation that
the DNI lies to his oversight committee, confirmation that the NSA has
collected almost 3 billion records on the US in march 2013, allegations that
the NSA is attempting to collect all internet traffic, both outside and inside
its borders, in the broadest possible sweeps. If it was such a non-story, I
don't think Obama would have done a press conference about it, would he?
That's a lot of 'there' for a non-story if you ask me, and sounds like the NSA
has significantly expanded its mandate without proper authorisation or
oversight.

 _An NSA contractor claims that the government is listening to all digital
communications, but is somehow able to transfer classified files, taken from
the NSA, to a journalist in the UK. If we believe the first part, how could
the second part happen?_

Just because lots of data is collected, that doesn't mean they can find what
they want from it, except in retrospect, so I'm not sure where the
contradiction lies there for you - I think his communications with Greenwald
were encrypted (according to the film-maker he contacted first) after first
contact.

Also, I don't remember him saying specifically that they are listening to all
digital communications, just that they can if they want to listen in to any
communications, did he allege that somewhere?

------
brent_noorda
Vote Snowden for President in 2020

------
aw3c2
PSA: 11am EST is when this comment turns 55 minutes old.

------
malandrew
I don't understand why people here are getting all hung up over the words
"direct access" when it comes to Google and Facebook. At the end of the day,
if they have access to email and phone records, especially SMS, then they
essentially have direct access to any one of these services via the password
reset feature, even if you have two factor authentication turned on.

------
stcredzero
Mr. Snowden seems more informed than many of our politicians. (And many of our
journalists as well.)

~~~
freyr
Mr. Snowden didn't have to spend the majority of his time being a professional
fundraiser.

------
rlwolfcastle
Can't wait for the twitter pic of him holding up a piece of paper saying:

"Hi Reddit! 17th June, 2013"

------
Jabbles
" _NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are
monitored._ "

So how was he allowed on the plane? Surely part of the passport/no-fly-list
check would have caught that. Or did he drive to Mexico and fly from there?

~~~
acomar
It's an employer policy, and it has nothing to do with the passport or no-fly-
list. In normal circumstances, flying without declaring his travel would put
his clearance in jeopardy and he'd have federal marshals waiting for him upon
his return. Similarly, he'd have security officers checking up on him at home
if he failed to show up at work on time (and failed to answer the check up
call).

~~~
Jabbles
If he failed to show up for work, officers would be sent out of concern for
his wellbeing.

The whole point of banning him from leaving the country is to try to prevent
him "defecting". Waiting for him to come back is pointless. He's already not
allowed "to defect" \- so not allowing him to leave the country is stupid if
no one is going to enforce it.

Finally, when your employer is the NSA, I figure they'd have different/special
rules. Do any non-governmental jobs forbid flying due to "policy"?

 _defect_ may not be quite the right word - _flee_?

~~~
acomar
> If he failed to show up for work, officers would be sent out of concern for
> his wellbeing.

Right, but it's dishonest to pretend that's the only motivation.

> The whole point of banning him from leaving the country is to try to prevent
> him "defecting". Waiting for him to come back is pointless. He's already not
> allowed "to defect" \- so not allowing him to leave the country is stupid if
> no one is going to enforce it.

Preventing defection takes a lot of different tacks (social pressure,
education, threat of prosecution, etc.).

------
susi22
His answer to the question "What direct access means":

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the
reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw
SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone
number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the
same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based,
and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and
easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited
queries is only 5% of those performed.

~~~
samcrawford
For me, this was a really unsatisfying answer. Maybe the question should have
been more specific, but I took it to relate to the PRISM programme and the
specific technology that provided direct access to data at the companies
involved. His reply seemed to focus on the policies (or lack thereof), with an
example relating to call logs (which I already assumed would be provided by
some (S)FTP feed from the carriers and bulk loaded into a database anyway).

~~~
marshray
Maybe he doesn't know how every server is configured. Why would he be expected
to?

If one data feed uses a fiber tap and another uses a daily sftp transfer, does
it really matter if some/most/all of Americans' communications is ending up in
a database to be queried by analysts today and god-knows-who 30 years from
now?

------
tigerweeds
I'm curious if the US govt will DDoS The Guardian during the q&a

~~~
MattyRad
Doubtful, but certainly a curious thought. I'm skeptical that actively
censoring the media via "hacking" (because DDoS is classified as hacking to
them) will bode well for their situation. Still, they could blame it on
citizen traffic.

------
freyr
When asked for a flat-out answer whether he gave classified information to the
Chinese government:

 _" No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the
Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists."_

Perhaps he should rephrase that as "no _direct_ contact." Apparently, by
handing over classified information to journalists, he believes he's absolved
of any responsibility where it eventually winds up, whether on the desk of
Chinese officials, or in the morning paper.

~~~
jlgreco
Using the word "direct" again like that would probably not have the effect of
improving the general quality of discussion. It would be a pretty "troll" move
at this point.

Maybe he should have said, "Not wittingly."

~~~
freyr
_> It would be a pretty "troll" move at this point. Maybe he should have said,
"Not wittingly."_

He wittingly gave Greenwald classified documents to make public, so "not
wittingly" is not true. Via Greenwald, he gave classified information to the
Chinese government (and everybody else).

I'm just saying, he should be transparent and honest about the implications of
his actions. When he hands classified information over to journalists, he
loses all control of that information. It could be made public, it could be
handed over to government officials, it's impossible to say.

He says he's sitting on a lot more information that he plans to release, and
everybody here seems very comfortable with that idea. We're being extremely
trusting to hand this man the sole authority to decide what information is
leaked to journalists and what remains classified.

At the least, we should get the sense that he's being fully transparent and
intellectually honest about his actions and their ramifications.

~~~
jlgreco
You clearly have not subscribed to the revised definition of "wittingly".

~~~
chris_mahan
you mean perhaps the least untruthful definition of wittingly?

~~~
jlgreco
"least untruthful" is not how I would describe the 'New American Revised'
definition.

------
Tycho
I imagine the types of question he'll get asked are fairly predictable.
Potentially he could have done extensive mock-interviews already and somebody
will just post his answers online in response to any matching questions. That
way he could avoid being traced.

------
bbuffone
I have a question that no one i think has asked. Do you think Facebook's
"search" capability was born out of their work with the government? When it
first came out everyone was talking about how this could be used to violate
privacy.

------
ibejoeb
I'd like to know if geolocation data is collected as part of the "meta data"
in any of these sigint databases. Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked at the FBI hearing
about the implications in light of US v. Jones.

------
jeanjq
The Guardian approach to this thing is infuriating. There's little useful
information from it. eg this question and answer

 _Question: Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA
survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption? Answer: Encryption
works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things
that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak
that NSA can frequently find ways around it._

Pfft. What size RSA keys are unbroken (2 048, 4 096, 8 192)? Is there a
backdoor in the ECC NIST P256 (or similar) curve? How many TOR exit nodes does
the US government manage and how good are they at in/out correlation?

~~~
kbenson
He may view that as beyond the scope of what he's comfortable releasing, if he
knows it. Remember, he's not supposed to be bashing the NSA and releasing all
secrets, but specifically blowing the top off what he believes is an illegal
program. Releasing unrelated secrets from the NSA would probably have a
negative effect on that.

------
zby
Let's upvote here questions to him - then someone will post them at the chat.

------
schtev
Anyone else notice he doesn't flat out deny giving secrets to the Chinese when
asked?

~~~
peripitea
Yes he does, further down.

------
sweetix
"2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many
different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?"

Answer - 2) "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be
able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it
cannot be stopped."

That last sentence must have Obama quaking. I wonder just how much more
can/will come? And if/when it does - I wonder just how bad it will be?

~~~
malandrew
I just hope that documents are leaked in response to any outright lies by the
executive branch, congress or the NSA. It's clear that they have lied and
continue to lie, but we don't know what is and is not a lie. Having a bunch of
documents lined up to call anyone out for lying to the American people is a
powerful incentive for those in charge to be honest and candid.

Reminds me of War Games... "The only winning move is not to play"

