
Interview with Edward Snowden - bjoko
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-edward-snowden-about-his-story-a-1286605.html
======
sixstringtheory
> a guy who was supposed to be teaching me...sometimes...would spin around in
> his chair, showing me nudes of whatever target's wife he's looking at. And
> he's like: "Bonus!"

And that's just a lackey... this only worries me as to what a determined,
calculating person is capable of with these tools.

> The most important part of the Rubik's cube was actually not as a
> concealment device, but a distraction device...I really gave Rubik's cubes
> to everyone in my office as gifts and guards saw me coming and going with
> this Rubik's cube all the time. So I was the Rubik's cube guy. And when I
> came out of the tunnel with my contraband and saw one of the bored guards, I
> sometimes tossed the cube to him. He's like, "Oh, man, I had one of these
> things when I was a kid, but you know, I could never solve it. So I just
> pulled the stickers off." That was exactly what I had done -- but for
> different reasons.

Love this, totally poetic at the end there. This really does read like a kid's
spy thriller.

Can't wait to read the book.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> this only worries me as to what a determined, calculating person is capable
> of with these tools.

What do you think they would do that they haven't been doing for decades? This
target has a court-ordered wiretap on them. The police can request everything
up to and including bugging a target's house in these cases, as long as the
judge approves.

You seem to believe they can get this data for anybody, but the company that
has the data will not hand it over without a court order

------
tptacek
This is a terrible title, which would be better as "Interview with Edward
Snowden".

"You can be sure I was pushed" is an aside, and has little of the connotation
the title has (that Snowden truly believes he's at risk of being
assassinated); rather, it's a tossed-off comment about the fact that he's not
suicidal, despite reports that he's been depressed.

~~~
ma2rten
I totally agree that it is a terrible title. Der Spiegel does very high
quality reporting, but I got the impression that German journalist like to use
sensationalist quotes as the title even more than English speaking ones do.

That said, I genuinely got the impression that Snowden is concerned that he
might get assassinated and that his history of depression might be used
covered it up.

~~~
hencq
There's nothing wrong with the title. It's a direct quote from the interview.
Also, the article literally has "Interview with Edward Snowden" above it with
a picture of him. Just because it entices you to read doesn't automatically
make it clickbait. I do think that the subtitle "Interview with Edward
Snowden" would be a much better title for the HN submission. The current title
without any context (picture + sub title) doesn't provide any information if
it just appears in a list of text links.

~~~
tptacek
"Terrible title for HN" captures more precisely what I meant to say, thanks. I
don't so much care how publications choose to tease articles in their own
pages.

------
lettergram
One thing I always find striking is that Snowden is very good at articulating
himself on the fly. He doesn’t always “sell” the general audience, as he gets
too technical. However, he’s extremely good at providing solid answers
consistently to pretty much every question.

~~~
marricks
I thought it was kind of surprising at first then I realized it’s because he
already thought deeply about everything he’s been asked.

After careful deliberation he made a moral choice to leak information at great
risk to himself. This makes him not only good to talk through the technical
implications of his choices but also moral ones.

~~~
jonahbenton
Please consider alternative narratives.

He acted selfishly, not morally. Like a startup founder he wanted to disrupt
an existing infrastructure, with a one-sided view of the trajectory his impact
would have on the domain. Any collateral damage would be easy to hide in the
personal narrative memory hole.

Deep thoughts and intellectual defenses are not so hard to construct, should
not be uncritically accepted with significant corroborating evidence, and
should certainly not be taken in any way to imply morality, as shown by the
growing list of deep thinkers who supported and participated in Jeffrey
Epstein's schemes.

With Snowden we have very little corroboration, so best reserve judgement. And
if he does wind up dying as many other Russian actors have...

~~~
dilippkumar
> Please consider alternative narratives.

No.

> He acted selfishly, not morally.

No, he acted morally.

> Deep thoughts and intellectual defenses are not so hard to construct, should
> not be uncritically accepted with significant corroborating evidence, and
> should certainly not be taken in any way to imply morality, as shown by the
> growing list of deep thinkers who supported and participated in Jeffrey
> Epstein's schemes.

No. It's simple. Snowden = Good. Stop trying to "muh Russians!" this.

> With Snowden we have very little corroboration, so best reserve judgement.

No. His documents appear sufficiently authentic to be acted upon. I, and
people I know, are not reserving our judgements.

> And if he does wind up dying as many other Russian actors have...

We all will know exactly what sort of people run our government.

~~~
pdonis
_> No. It's simple. Snowden = Good._

Sure, if you only read his side of the story. Anyone looks good if they get to
make up their own narrative about themselves.

The fact is that anyone with half a brain should have known decades ago that
the US government, like all governments, does all kinds of surveillance and
classifies all kinds of information, and not all of it is going to be pretty.
When you tell the government you want it to protect your security and stop
terrorist attacks, it's going to do whatever it takes to do that. For Snowden
to talk as though he just found all this out when he got access to NSA's super
sekrit systems doesn't show that he's good. It just shows that he was
ignorant.

Also, while it's perfectly reasonable for ordinary citizens to question what
level of surveillance is justified and what kind of information the public
should get to see in order to hold the government accountable, it's _not_
reasonable for an individual to just decide on his own that it's OK to violate
the law and the agreements he signed up to when he got his security clearance.
That is exactly the kind of personal hubris and lack of accountability that we
are trying to _stop_ in people who have privileged access to government
secrets. We have processes for holding our government accountable: we have
FOIA requests, we have lawsuits, and ultimately we have elections. Those
processes don't always work well, but that doesn't mean it's ok for one person
to arrogate to himself the right to bypass them all.

~~~
cryptonector
> The fact is that anyone with half a brain should have known decades ago that
> the US government, like all governments, does all kinds of surveillance
> [...]

Before Snowden you could say that TLAs were surely reading everything, but no
one took that seriously -- "what a tinfoil hatter" might have been their
internal response.

After Snowden we all know that TLAs are reading everything.

> Also, while it's perfectly reasonable for ordinary citizens to question what
> level of surveillance is justified and what kind of information the public
> should get to see in order to hold the government accountable, it's not
> reasonable for an individual to just decide on his own that it's OK to
> violate the law [...]

Indeed. Yet it _happened_ , and now we have to decide if what Snowden did is
good or bad, and that's not as easy as it is to determine that he broke the
law.

Another case like Snowden's that of the former head of the NSA, Admiral
Rogers, who visited the President elect to tell him (many presume) that he was
being wiretapped. Was that breaking the law? Almost certainly -- surely it
must be illegal to tell the target of a secret FISA warrant that they are
being monitored, though in this case it wasn't the President-elect, but
someone in his campaign, but still, telling must have revealed things which it
would not be legal to. Was it _good_? That depends on a great deal on your
political views. And even if what Admiral Rogers did turns out to have been
legal, you might still think it was bad.

Snowden clearly broke the law, perhaps even committed treason as defined by
the U.S. Constitution. But so did the Founders (they inarguably committed
treason against the Crown). Breaking the law is not necessarily enough to make
an action bad, and sometimes it's more than enough to make it good. As to
Snowden, I think the metaphorical jury is still out.

~~~
pdonis
_> Before Snowden you could say that TLAs were surely reading everything, but
no one took that seriously_

If this is true (I'm not sure it is, "no one" is a pretty strong claim), why
not?

 _> it happened, and now we have to decide if what Snowden did is good or bad_

No, we don't. We only have to decide if, given this additional information we
now have about what the government is doing (if it was additional to you--it
wasn't really additional to me, I had for years assumed that something similar
was going on even if I didn't know every little detail), we should do
something about it. That doesn't require us to pass judgment at all on
Snowden.

------
slg
>The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was
for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're
going to make the world better."

I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the
fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage
in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You
certainly have the right to do that, but that abdication can't be apolitical.
It is instead a tacit endorsement of the status quo. How good or bad that is
depends on your personal politics and whoever happens to be in political
control at the time.

One example that I think most people on HN can agree on is climate change. You
can either work to fight climate change or you are allowing our current path
of ignoring the problem to continue. Think of it like inertia. If we don't
interact with a political issue, it will keep moving unchanged forever. The
only way it changes is when we apply political force to it.

~~~
forgingahead
Please stop this. You're just buying into the false narrative, pushed
specifically by media companies, that "you can't disengage". This specifically
serves their purpose of creating content for the sake of conflict, in order to
make money off your attention.

You can disengage. In fact, I highly encourage it, and one's mental health
greatly benefits from it. You're not more "enlightened" or "wise" if you
follow along the twists and turns of every silly development, most of which
can ultimately turn out to have no impact on daily life. Forest for the trees
and all that.

Trust the system you live in, and for most HN readers, from developed western
economies, things will self-correct. If you have specific ideas and a platform
that you feel isn't represented, jump into the political arena yourself, it's
certainly your right. But please don't force the rest of us to tag along.

~~~
deanCommie
That is a highly privileged position from someone who benefits from the
current system, or at the very least isn't actively harmed by it.

I realize I know nothing about your station, but understand that being able to
make that statement is inherently privileged, and one millions of people
around the world cannot proclaim.

If you have access to benefits and advantages in the system that others do
not, then if you are not actively working to improve that system, you are
COMPLICIT. Plain and simple.

Nothing happens autonomously or through self-correction. It happens through
the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of others (including those as
privileged as yourself) while you disengage and offer nothing.

~~~
slg
People hate the word privilege nowadays (and that is probably why you are
being downvoted), but I really can't think of any other word for the idea that
something like civil rights for LGBTQ+ people happens out of some type of
"self-correction". People fight for that. They literally die for that. It
doesn't just happen automatically.

To quote Desmond Tutu:

>If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say
that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

~~~
Viliam1234
Did Desmond Tutu participate in all conflicts in the world, or only the
selected ones?

Because people can care about many things, and yet your favorite cause may not
be among them.

------
ChuckMcM
I respect Snowden's ability to clearly articulate his position. I look forward
to his book. And unlike the somewhat polarizing discussions of others, I found
his statement on the difference to between intelligence and the actions of
covert action, propaganda, and influence to be quite reasonable. In much the
same way that accounting systems suggest you firewall the people who can sign
checks from the people who can enter legitimate expenses to prevent
embezzlement, the 'rules' in an intelligence agency have to firewall the
collection and analysis of intelligence from the operational abilities on the
other side.

We see this is civil intelligence agencies where police officers (who are the
operational end of law enforcement) are given direct access to intelligence
sources (from places like Palintir) and then abuse that relationship to
collect intelligence on enemies (like ex spouses) in order to inform how they
can operate against them.

A more effective system is to put a strong firewall between the intelligence
and the operator so that there is always documentation when operations
requests intelligence information and the justification given for that
collection. It creates an auditable paper trail that allows for a
prosecutorial effort to be mounted against bad actors.

As one person put it, watching the watchers only works if you have a record of
everything they have done that can be authenticated. Such a system would log
every piece of intelligence an analyst received, and with a check in place to
validate a 'need to know' for things like a target's spouses nude photos, your
auditors could weed out bad actors in the pipeline. That is the sort of
structure that makes institutions stable and more difficult to corrupt.
Processes that survive execution with a number of bad actors.

------
kamyarg
> if I had wanted to live a safe life, I would still be sitting in Hawaii in
> paradise with the woman I love collecting a huge paycheck to do almost no
> work.

Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.

People that sacrifices their safety or lives to help a good cause are the ones
I respect the most. I hope he will be able to visit his country safely
sometime.

p.s. Please fix the title, it is clickbaity and almost unrelated to the actual
article/interview.

~~~
seppin
> Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.

Edward Snowden became an international celebrity because of what he did, and
traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow. Please
don't speak of him in the same vein as, for example, a disappeared Chinese
dissident who has actually sacrificed everything for what they believe.

~~~
boomboomsubban
> traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow

A comfortable life in Moscow that was never guaranteed beforehand, and could
be arbitrarily taken away with no notice. Being fortune enough to end up in a
decent situation does not change what he sacrificed.

~~~
seppin
> Being fortune enough to end up in a decent situation does not change what he
> sacrificed.

It really bugs me that people who defend him for ideological reasons cannot
admit that he had benefited from the entire ordeal. He bemoaned the lack of
respect at CIA (being the IT guy isn't high up on the totem pole) and now he
can skype into a conference in Geneva with thousands of people hanging on his
every word. He has a twitter account with a headshot of him doing his best
impersonation of a greek philosopher with millions of followers.

To a lot of people, people that don't feel respected in the life and work,
that type of celebrity is priceless. Money and a beach house is nothing
compared to that.

If you don't think people like Assange and Snowden have a hero complex, and
are only motivated by "truth" and "justice", you are kidding yourself.

~~~
boomboomsubban
None of the things he has was guaranteed when he went public. There was a good
chance he never made it out of Hong Kong as a free man, and a decent chance of
death. Even if he did desire the fame, which I do not personally believe, he
risked everything for it.

~~~
seppin
I don't think I ever insinuated his move was without risk. I said it was
calculated to shield himself from any consequence, and maintain the narrative
so he could enjoy his new-found power and celebrity.

Like I said, you want a real hero search in the political prisons of Iran or
China. Or Russia, the place Snowden now calls home (under circumstances we
will never know).

------
lifeisstillgood
> Let's assume you could simply poke an icon and all the hidden activity would
> stop, would you do that?

> DER SPIEGEL: Of course.

That I think is the crux of the issue - our consent is not real.

~~~
shelvacu
No, that doesn't seem quite right. I think the issue is that people don't
understand just how valuable their data is.

Technically, it's posed as an exchange. People "pay" their data to get these
services. People so freely give their data/privacy so much that at this point,
it's a required part of using most of humanity's technology. The icon exists,
it's called the power button, because if you stop paying, they don't provide
the service anymore.

Don't get me wrong, it's a terrible state of affairs, and plenty of people
don't even realize they're "paying" like this (likely on purpose, data is much
more valuable when people don't realise the data is being collected). But
there's no competition, no alternate provider of free maps & guidance that is
as good as google maps and protects privacy.

So yes, of course. For the same reason that if I could simply poke an icon and
receive $1000, of course I would do that.

~~~
dexen
_> people don't understand just how valuable their data is._

My data isn't valuable. Your data isn't valuable[1]. The data of all HN users
is of some value. The data of all Facebook users is highly valuable. But no
single FB user has any claim to having valuable data; not even in proportion.

The value is in having a collected, curated, normalized, and cross-tabulated
dataset. One that can be queried at scale and with good certainty to accuracy.
The value is emergent, a property of the whole graph; it's not merely sum of
all the parts nodes[2]. This is one of the reasons "databases" are a separate
protected category under IP laws. Come to think of it, the value was created
by Facebook, by collecting, managing, and processing the dataset, rather than
by users collecting the individual datasets.

We may need a whole separate branch of jurisprudence and legislation, dealing
with situations where value (or harm) is an emergent phenomenon in a dense
network, not only not attributable directly to any singular node, but also
much greater than straightforward sum of nodes' values.

There's a similar (if of destructive value) case for vulnerable "internet of
things" / "smart devices". Any singular such device being vulnerable to remote
exploit is barely notable. Together, a vast army of vulnerable small "smart
devices" easily become a botnet in hands of criminals, with power vastly
larger than mere sum of parts. Question arises how to handle responsibility &
culpability of vendors (or owners).

\--

[1] aside of being directly useful to you.

[2] possible edges = n(n-1)/2, thus value = O(n* *2)

~~~
speedplane
> We may need a whole separate branch of jurisprudence and legislation,
> dealing with situations where value (or harm) is an emergent phenomenon in a
> dense network, not only not attributable directly to any singular node, but
> also much greater than straightforward sum of nodes' values.

The basic concepts already exist in current jurisprudence, like class actions
(many people aggregating together) and punitive damages (damages exceeding
cause and effect losses). Don't think these concepts require a sea change,
just a modern-day upgrade.

------
phil248
Let's hope it doesn't come to... defenestration!

~~~
dundercoder
> Defenestration

The act of throwing out of a window. Early 17th century from modern Latin
defenestratio(n-), from de- ‘down from’ + Latin fenestra ‘window’.

~~~
scrumbledober
always reminds me of one of my favorite plants, the succulent fenestraria,
that basically has a super cool adaptation to survive in dry spells by using
leaves that are basically fiber optic cables to deliver light to chloroplasts
underground.

------
artsyca
I'm turned off by typos, especially one in the subject's name so early into
the text -- "Snwoden"

------
ngcc_hk
If you were working against police as a group, you may have no escape. No one
will ever know.

------
draw_down
Probably worth calling out, since we're apparently supposed to believe Jeffrey
Epstein broke his neck by kneeling too hard.

~~~
on_and_off
why does this get downvoted ?

Epstein dying in his cell is a major scandal.

~~~
diminoten
Because it's completely unrelated.

~~~
wolco
Is it? People killing others in secret to avoid information getting out but
framing it differently.

~~~
thaumaturgy
The really dumb title for this submission is distracting from the better parts
of the interview. That quote wasn't Snowden implying he thinks he's in
imminent danger of being murdered; he was just rebutting people saying that he
was suicidal.

The interview itself has zero relationship to the whole Epstein thing (of
which I find many of the details to be scandalous).

~~~
Udik
> That quote wasn't Snowden implying he thinks he's in imminent danger of
> being murdered

Probably not, but it's pretty clear he believes that secret services killing
someone and making the death appear a suicide is a common occurrence. And I
doubt he doesn't have the Epstein case in mind, as the most recent example.

------
chupa-chups
Spiegel has become one of the worst propaganda magazines (not for the
government, but for highest bidder) in Germany. It was once famous for
investigative journalism, nowadays the most relevant question is who paid most
for the article.

Sorry for this rant.

Still, occasionally you'll get a really good article. This is probably one of
those.

~~~
lispm
Sorry, no sorry for your posting.

That wasn't a rant. It was more a failed attempt to spread FUD.

If you have actual information how and when companies regularly bid/paid for
articles, you should tell us. Who bid/paid for the articles in the current
edition, with the main article about the car industry?

------
crb002
The defenestration of Snowden.

------
galaxyLogic
He comes off as a guy with integrity. But what about Julian Assange? The
consensus in the US media now seems to be that he just wanted to hurt Hillary
by helping Donald Trump, and thus was working for team Russia?

~~~
jonahbenton
The ad hoc but exceedingly purposeful collaboration between Wikileaks, Russian
military and civilian agents, the Trump campaign and other actors is
documented extensively in the Mueller report. The Report[1] podcast does an
excellent job of making it more accessible. Longtime US intelligence community
players eg [2] have made explicit claims that Wikileaks is in part a Russian
intel operation. Those claims should be taken with some salt, all is not spy
novels and deep state games, but it seems clear that motivated and intelligent
"transparency" actors like Assange and Snowden can- want to- cause
asymmetrical chaos, so are useful to support.

1\. [https://www.lawfareblog.com/introducing-report-podcast-
serie...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/introducing-report-podcast-series-
lawfare)

2\.
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/20committee.com/2015/08/31/wiki...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-
is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/amp/)

~~~
ryacko
If you can prove knowledge and intent, you can charge under a whole variety of
crimes.

Has the US criminal justice system gotten so weak from prioritizing easy wins
for the sake of getting hired at a private law firm that they don’t even know
how to prosecute or even ask Congress for transparent mechanisms to prosecute?

What is even the end goal beyond giving US intelligence a bad day? Your
allegations do not pass muster.

------
lowdose
Is Snowden publishing a book at the same time there is some confusion about
voting in Russian elections? I'm a big fan of Snowden and don't want to
insinuate malice. Is this just a mere coincidence?

[https://www.newsweek.com/russia-novosibirsk-sergey-boyko-
nav...](https://www.newsweek.com/russia-novosibirsk-sergey-boyko-
navalny-1459145)

~~~
skybrian
It's an English-language title, and publishers typically schedule things
months or years in advance.

------
pier25
Of course the US would not push him through a window but someone that wanted
to damage the US international image might...

~~~
josho
If you read American history there are all kinds of shady things that the CIA
have done. You might be surprised to learn the lengths they will take to
protect American interests.

~~~
pier25
Maybe it wasn't clear from my comment.

My point was not that the US/CIA don't "push people out of windows" but that
they wouldn't do it because Snowden is such a public figure.

------
cypherpunks01
I do wonder which specific philosophical objection to suicide Snowden ascribes
to?

~~~
jstanley
If I were afraid that I might be hurled out of a window against my will, I
think publicly going on the record as philosophically opposed to suicide would
be a very good idea.

~~~
sokoloff
If I were a trolling or narcissistic prankster considering suicide, I might do
the same. (No suggestion or accusation about Snowden is implied.)

