
Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald: AUAA - ahamdy
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/
======
grey-area
_Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and
human rights is actually founded on the violation of law....Ultimately, if
people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history
when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren 't just ceding control
of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures._

There are lots of really interesting and cogent replies from Snowden on this
thread already, I'd encourage everyone to check it out.

~~~
recondite
I find the rest of that specific comment particularly amazing:

> _How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today
> are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate
> the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens '
> discontent._

> _How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the
> application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if
> they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will
> implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights,
> but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights._

> _You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of
> government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major
> technology providers. The idea here isn 't to fling ourselves into anarchy
> and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must
> always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and
> that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and
> individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if
> government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the
> citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and
> permanent -- basis._

> _Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature.
> But it 's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are
> precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy._

> _We haven 't had to think about that much in the last few decades because
> quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a
> significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and
> there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where
> governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they
> "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what
> is moral._

> _In such times, we 'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the
> law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to
> our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it
> toward just ends._

I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that
he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a
shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved to ensure that
can't happen (e.g. Koch brothers donating $1billion dollars in the next
election cycle, Citizens United, etc). Sure, there will be some pandering by
both sides of the aisle next election about how _they 're_ the only true
candidate that will protect individual rights, but once they've been
sufficiently elected and absorbed by the machine, they'll continue along the
trend that started 50+ years ago. Obama was a constitutional lawyer ffs.

But hey, as long as gas prices are low, Netflix stays up, and I can get my $10
Domino's large pizza delivered to my front door, I'll vote for whoever sounds
good and promises me the most shit. /s

~~~
RafiqM
This question from the AMA directly answers your point:

Question: _Mr Snowden, do you feel that your worst fear is being realized,
that most people don 't care about their privacy_

Answer: _To answer the question, I don 't. Poll after poll is confirming that,
contrary to what we tend to think, people not only care, they care a lot. The
problem is we feel disempowered. We feel like we can't do anything about it,
so we may as well not try._

The full answer is worth reading:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/coup51w)

------
nickysielicki
>Much like physics post-Manhattan project, an entire field of research that
was broadly apolitical realized that work intended to improve the human
condition could also be subverted to degrade it. [1]

What an incredible analogy.

[1]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/coutuaq)

~~~
Sven7
At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans
got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans, Japanese or Russians did?
I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day
of the week.

Do I like the tools the NSA has in its possession? No. But I am happy they got
there (and have access to them) before the Chinese, Russians or Arabs did. Are
there going to be disasters like Hiroshima and Nagasaki thanks to these tools?
I don't think so.

Will the NSA and the government misuse the tools and make mistakes?
Definitely. Their effectiveness must be constantly monitored and questioned.
(Huge respect for Snowden for making that possible.)

But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart
technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers
(the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design
better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or
ISIS recruitment drives.

~~~
nickysielicki
>But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart
technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers
(the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design
better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or
ISIS recruitment drives.

You're wrong on two counts.

1.) It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism.
It's American foreign policy that __must __fix it. You cannot expect tech to
fix the problems of that. Technologies are tools, nothing more. Terrorists and
tax payers are technology users alike, and that will always be the case.
(Sidenote: anyone who is intelligent should hate the word 'terrorism', it is
blatantly doublespeak.)

2.) These spy tools are going to die, because we can make technology that
makes them infeasible. Indeed, we already have. Tor is reportedly unstoppable
by the NSA. GPG exists and falls under the same category. The way things are
headed, the only thing that will change with time is that tech companies will
embrace encryption and help the general population of innocents to stop being
tracked.

Those that care enough (eg: terrorists, libertarians, anarchists, and nerds)
have already taken back their freedom... And will continue to do so. And
there's nothing those 3 letter agencies can do to prevent it, because they've
shown their hand. Anyone who has taken a cryptography class / a theory class
knows that it's an unwinnable battle to try to fight RSA... It's just a matter
of time before someone persuasive enough gets the message through to policy
makers.

~~~
GabrielF00
> It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism.

That's a very reductionist analysis. The Muslim Brotherhood has existed since
the 1920s. However, it was a secular, Marxist, anti-colonialist ideology that
was most successful in the Arab world for the next few generations. Then these
secular Arab states lost the Six Day War, and failed to provide either good
governance or economic opportunities for their populations.

The reason that Islamists have become so powerful is that the governments of
many Arab countries have proven themselves to be completely bankrupt. If
you're young (and the population pyramids in places like Egypt are very fat on
the bottom), and you have very few economic opportunities, and your society is
incredibly corrupt, then a radical change becomes very appealing, particularly
if the people advocating that change are seen as pure and uncorrupt. The fact
that Islamist groups oppose the US is one aspect of their appeal, but it's
really only one factor. The fact that Hezbollah and Hamas are actively
opposing Israel, while Egypt made peace with Israel in 79 is also a factor.

~~~
nickysielicki
I'll be the first to admit I'm a dumb 20 year old that largely doesn't
understand the world. You seem to know a great deal about the intricacies of
the history in the middle east. I know nothing. I'm genuinely curious, though,
do you think there is no argument for what I said?

>If you're young [...], and you have very few economic opportunities, and your
society is incredibly corrupt, then a radical change becomes very appealing,

I recall looking at the revolts in Iran in 2009 [1] and what I saw was
fundamentally different than what you see with ISIL. I saw people
disenfranchised with the middle east governance and culture, but they were not
angry or vindictive. They were productive and wanting to change things. I
think that exists in the middle east, and I think that they're separate from
Islamic extremists.

Meanwhile there's the anti-American camp... Is their hatred because of our
actions?

* We funded Osama Bin Laden. [2]

* We trained people fighting for ISIL. [3]

* We killed 130k+ innocent civilians in the region in the past decade and a half. [4]

I think it's plausible. Sure, they might dislike us even if we hadn't done
those things...

That being said, I think reasonable people in the middle east have reason to
dislike America. (I think any reasonable person has reason to dislike
America's actions.)

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_presidential_elect...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_presidential_election_protests)

[2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-
Qaeda_controvers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-
Qaeda_controversy)

[3]: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-
training-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-training-
syrian-rebels-jordan)

[4]: [https://www.iraqbodycount.org/](https://www.iraqbodycount.org/)

~~~
GabrielF00
The comparison between Syria and Iran is a bit strange. These are two
completely different countries. Syria is primarily Sunni, Iran primarily
Shi'a. Syrians speak Arabic, Iranians speak Persian. The two countries have
different systems of government, different histories, different cultures.

When young people are angry in Iran, they're angry at a theocratic, clerical
government. When young people were angry in Syria, they were angry at a
secular, socialist strongman. If you're disaffected in a theocracy, you don't
become a supporter of theocracy. If you're disaffected in a Baathist regime,
then it's natural to become an Islamist.

To my knowledge there has never been much evidence that the US funded Bin
Laden in the '80s. The CIA funded Afghans to fight the Soviets, and some Arab
Islamists were also fighting the Soviets. My understanding is that the CIA did
not fund the Arabs. (My source for this is Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll, which is
excellent).

The Guardian article you're citing is actually talking about something
completely different than US training of ISIL. There are many factions in the
Syrian civil war. ISIL is one faction that emerged out of al-Qaeda's Iraq
branch with some members from the dredges of Saddam's regime. These people
have been fighting the US for over a decade. There are also groups that oppose
both ISIL and the Assad regime. These groups are being supported by the West.

All of that being said, I agree with the fact that the invasion of Iraq
produced extremism. However, the place to start when studying the Middle East
is not "What did we do to these people that caused them to hate us." What
happened is much, much more complex than that.

~~~
nickysielicki
Wow, thanks for typing that up. You're really knowledgeable!

I generally thought of Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan sharing the same
political and cultural climates. It's very interesting to hear that they're so
different, I had no idea.

What do you think that America should do / shouldn't do to try to stabilize
that region? How do you think America should be fighting terrorism?

More importantly, as we're on HN, how do you think that NSA data collection
plays into it all?

~~~
GabrielF00
I appreciate the complement. I've read a lot about the region and have
traveled a bit, but am not an expert.

If we could resolve the Israeli/Palestinian issue that would be a great help.
However, I don't think anyone is optimistic on that front. If the negotiations
with Iran over its nuclear program are successful (and it looks promising)
then at least one very scary scenario will be on the back burner. Pretty much
everything else looks very grim.

I don't think that the NSA stuff will have any lasting impact on US relations
with the Middle East/perceptions of America in the Middle East. It may have an
impact on our ability to understand what's going on in the region, but I think
that's very hard to assess from outside the government.

------
DAddYE
A good thing about America is that while the "politics" lag behind citizens
and US companies try at least to solve partially the problem. I liked these
bits:

 _Google encrypted the backhaul communications between their data centers to
prevent passive monitoring. Apple was the first forward with an FDE-by-default
smartphone (kudos!)_

We often denigrate US and his biggest companies like: Apple, Google or
Microsoft.

So I agree since then in the politics nothing big has been changed but I'm
glad to see that now we take care about things like https or generally how our
data is protected.

~~~
pizza234
Companies won't solve the problem, because the problem is in a different
domain.

"Our data" may be sort of safe, but the civil rights are being eroded, which
is a much bigger issue. Having such powerful entities living in complete
independence from the government, and with complete unaccountability, is a
social disaster.

Besides, the data owned by a user in the more "immediate" sense, may be sort
of safe, but don't forget that you're not the only possessing data about you;
there is a large ecosystem, and such entities will be always a step ahead in
the game.

In absence of accountability/civil rights, such entities are completely free
to rape you, independently of your technical private defenses.

~~~
grey-area
_Companies won 't solve the problem, because the problem is in a different
domain._

I think this is an interesting question, because it intersects with the rise
and fall of the nation state - at some point (perhaps that point has already
been reached) corporations will have greater reach and greater power than
nation states and individuals will start to feel less allegiance to the state
of their birth. Will they start to look to companies to protect their rights?

I disagree that laws which govern a nation state are the right level for this
sort of issue or that nation states are more trustworthy - those are precisely
the laws which have been subverted and used against us in order to subvert
encryption of websites, sim cards or any of our other communications and allow
recording of it all. Just as one example of how easily our laws are subverted
the man in charge of supervising UK surveillance can be bought for a few
thousand pounds for trivial matters:

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/23/mp-
malcolm-r...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/23/mp-malcolm-
rifkind-clings-on-to-chairmanship-of-intelligence-committee)

International law is even worse. Even with the relatively good accountability
and civil rights in the US (for most citizens most of the time), the US
government has arrogated the right to kill you without trial, detain you
indefinitely without trial, or torture you without legal recourse because to
give you legal recourse would endanger state secrets. Such is the state of our
civil rights - they are selectively applied and withdrawn by the state as it
suits them, and words like traitor or terrorist are used to put someone beyond
the pale of civilisation and therefore outlaw.

Here is what Snowden had to say about it on that AMA:

 _How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the
application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they
will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement
systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but
removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights._

I agree with that - what is effective is moral certitudes which individuals
agree and act upon, not nation state law or international law which are so
easily ignored or subverted. That means technical solutions, not legal ones,
though I agree it is better to rely on neither the nation state nor the
corporation in proposing solutions.

------
panarky
_We have to ensure that our rights aren 't just being protected by letters on
a sheet of paper somewhere, or those protections will evaporate the minute our
communications get routed across a border._

Reminds me of Lessig's "Code is Law".

[http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-
html](http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html)

------
tobylane
The AMA says that Citizenfour will be on HBO tonight, in the UK it'll be on
Channel 4, 11:05 Wednesday and 4od after that.

~~~
username3
And it's currently free.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_snowden_laura_poitras_and_glenn/couuobz?context=3)

 _The movie is currently available for free as the movie is used as a public
evidence in a lawsuit_

------
logn
> Snowden 2016

Is there any legal reason why this couldn't happen? Edit: aside from age if
we're talking presidency.

~~~
logn
Following up on my own question...

 _Section 3 prohibits the election or appointment to any federal or state
office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in
insurrection, rebellion or treason._

 _Section 3 was used to prevent Socialist Party of America member Victor L.
Berger, convicted of violating the Espionage Act for his anti-militarist
views, from taking his seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920._

\- source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Participants_in_rebellion)

And as far as pardoning oneself as president, it's possible:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/19...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/1998/12/can_president_clinton_pardon_himself.html)

------
mkramlich
HBO here in Colorado was scheduled to show Citizenfour at 7pm local time. At
approx 6pm I turned it on to get it ready. Black and silent. Continued black
and silent up thru 9pm local when it was supposed to have ended. All other
cable TV channels and local/public channels have worked normally during this
period that I can tell. HBO worked fine yesterday and every day before for as
long as I can remember. Unprecedented black out.

suspicious is saying it mildly. I wanted to post this here and on Reddit for
public record in case this is evidence of a censorship attempt by NSA/gov or
aligned entity.

I feel like a tin foil hat wearer to even post this but its frightening enough
and serious enough that it should be recorded somewhere, as insurance.

Colorado, a dominant provider of local cable TV service, hesitant to say which
city. again, all other channels are working normally. and HBO had no similar
blackout effect observed by me ever before. so the cause is both unknown and
suspicious.

~~~
numinit
Whoa, really? What cable provider?

~~~
mkramlich
its one of the two local dominant ones but I'm not sure which. I'll try to
find out tomorrow. I'd say the city but this topic is already terrifying
enough considering the nature of the "adversary", haha, oh man. if you email
me I'll tell you city. I'm hoping to see reports from others. I find it hard
to believe it would just be one person, one device. surely whoever/whatever
did this would do an entire region/provider combo, at a minimum

10pm local. checked again. still black and silent. all other channels fine
still, showing shows.

~~~
ScottBurson
We've just been watching it here in Sunnyvale, CA.

------
rndn
What's the reason this is being flagged?

~~~
spcoll
"Snowden", "NSA", and similar keywords are auto-flagging triggers. The HN team
has algorithms in place to minimize discussion and awareness of these topics.

See: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-
works.html)

"It appears that any article with NSA in the title gets an automatic penalty
of .4".

~~~
dang
There hasn't been any penalty on NSA/Snowden stories for a long time. I'm
surprised to see this even come up, since I've commented on it quite a bit and
thought the information had gotten around by now.

"Minimize awareness"? Obviously we don't try to do that, nor would we ever
want to, or even think that way.

The reason there was a penalty—the mildest possible—was procedural. For
several months after the Snowden news broke, HN's front page was overrun with
copycat stories that were simply follow-ups and added no new information. Many
users complained about this, and they were right. So we applied the best tool
we had available, with the intention of taking it off when the flood died
down, and so we eventually did.

~~~
mixmastamyk
That doesn't appear to be the case:

    
    
        7.  Hacking Oklahoma State University's Student ID (snelling.io)
            94 points by samsnelling 5 hours ago
            
        9.  Introduction to Facebook's Flux architecture (ryanclark.me)
            204 points by wayfarer2s 8 hours ago
            
        11. Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald: AUAA (reddit.com)
            376 points by ahamdy 4 hours ago
    

Maybe there is some forgotten code in there somewhere?

~~~
dang
You can't compute story rank from just points and timestamps. The story is
being weighted by user flags, by the fact that it comes from a source of a lot
of flagged content in the past, and possibly by other factors. But none of
that has anything to do with NSA, at least as far as the code is concerned.

------
rurban
Similar to the HN penalty, reddit also seems to have some Snowden
countermeasures in effect. It was a very popular IAmA, but the Android AMA
app, displayed only 2 answers for it, and the 3 people who wanted to answer,
Laura Poitras, Ed Snowden and Glen Greenwald, were limited to about one answer
per 10 minutes, so for the whole hour they could answer about 10 questions.
This limits usability and civil interactions a bit.

People should really choose boards without such censorship in place.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
I love that you completely guessed the incorrect answer, and then moved right
to calling it censorship and critiquing Reddit based on your assumption.
Snowden's account was rate-limited because accounts with no activity are more
scrutinized for spam purposes. If the other accounts were (and I see no
evidence of that, since Glenn Greenwald has done his own AMA before), it's the
same reason. That limit exists because new account creation is so trivial. It
also exists on HN in different ways, you forget.

It took me several thousand comment karma on Reddit until I stopped noticing
the rate limit entirely. I can't speak to the Android issues.

Either way, the moderators worked it out; there was some confusion about the
accounts downthread. I don't begrudge someone speculation, but when you then
immediately move to acting on your speculation and decrying a community
incorrectly, you should probably check if you're correct first.

~~~
pests
Specifically Snowden was commenting on two different accounts. I assume his
Android AMA app messed up due to their being so many authors to the AMA.

