
Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal - aburan28
https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive
======
StanislavPetrov
It is abundantly obvious that the NSA has no interest whatsoever in following
the law or offering an avenue for whistleblowers to point out wrongdoing. This
well-written and detailed article is just more confirmation. It seems clear
that any internal compliance channels purportedly offered as a way to raise
concerns about violations of law are worse then just windowdressing - they are
more like a honeypot used to sniff out employees who have any regard for law
or ethics.

>During the course of the interview, standard interview questions were used,
but were tailored as needed to follow the flow of the interview. It is also
important to note that there were questions included that were meant to
uncover whether Mr. Snowden was dissatisfied with the US government.

The "standard interview questions" asked when an employee raises a legal
concern about the practices of the NSA are used to turn the microscope onto
the employee, rather then the legal issue (a practice certainly not lost on
employees considering raising an issue). The message here is clear - keep your
head down and do what your told, or you will be hammered down like a nail that
sticks out from a board. The willingness of the NSA to continue its constant
and continuing barrage of lies is troubling and revealing, laying bare the
immoral, illegal, and sociopathic tendencies of those employed there.

~~~
nugget
I remember when the scandal first broke I asked a friend whether he thought
Snowden had truly tried to follow proper whistleblowing channels before going
rogue. To which my friend replied, ''Do you really think the NSA would have
shut down a multi billion dollar project because a young kid in Hawaii raised
some Constitutional objections?'' I know a lot of good people working at three
letter agencies but I do think they take on a life, mission, and momentum of
their own sometimes.

~~~
gumby
The article cites Snowden as saying that as a contractor he was not subject to
the protections of the whistleblower law.

Perhaps I should write "protections" since we also know that whistleblowers
are punished rather than protected.

------
jackgavigan
So, having read through that extremely long and largely uninformative article,
I'm left with the impression that there's no real story of any substance here.
The NSA spent a lot of time and resources trying to find any evidence to
support Snowden's claims that he raised concerns about the legality of NSA
programs but they couldn't find any, apart from a single email whining about a
difficult question in a test he failed which even the most generous of
interpretations would struggle to describe as "raising concerns".

In other words, the headline is a lie.

Ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.

~~~
tehwebguy
> The NSA spent a lot of time and resources trying to find any evidence to
> support Snowden's claims

== "NSA has investigated NSA and has found no wrongdoing."

Your mind was already made up, not sure why you bothered reading it.

~~~
jokermatt999
I came to the same conclusion after reading it, and the entire time I read the
article I was hoping for more evidence of the title. I still agree with his
actions (especially in light of how previous whistleblowers were treated), but
I don't feel like this article delivered what was promised. I'm actually
disappointed by that.

------
woodman
"An NSA official offered up several options for dealing with NBC News, only
one of which was left unredacted..."

I understand not wanting to make public internal conversations, but this sort
of redaction really sets the imagination down a dark path. Not Gary Webb dark,
but HBGary-fabricating-evidence-to-discredit-journalists kind of dark [0].

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=1&hp)

~~~
aburan28
Certainly makes you wonder if Brian Williams being outed had something to do
with his interview with Snowden

~~~
wallace_f
Can you please explain how the military revealing the Brian Williams scandal
would have anything to do with Snowden?

------
ufo
I got a bit confused about halfway through this long article. Could someone
please provide a summary or a link to one?

\- What instances of Snowden voicing his concerns internally do we now know
of? \- Which of these are "old news" and which are "fresh news"? \- How did
the NSA respond to each of these cases that we know of?

~~~
opsiprogram
This article is almost a conspiracy itself! Haha I really went through it
slowly, and unless I missed something...it really doesn't seem to read the
government was repressing documents...more they just struggled to find all the
emails. From what I can tell no document was revealed which shows Snowden
really raised concerns in the way he claims. The title of the article is
definitely misleading and sensationalist.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> The title of the article is definitely misleading and sensationalist.

I had forgotten what the title was in the process of reading the article.
You're right, it's a near perfect example of _spun_ journalism.

Consider the following:

> Because none of the people interviewed by the NSA in the wake of the leaks
> said that "Snowden mentioned a specific NSA program," and "many" of the
> people interviewed "affirmed that he never complained about any NSA
> program," the NSA's counterintelligence chief concluded that these
> conversations about the Constitution and privacy did not amount to raising
> concerns about the NSA's spying activities.

> That was the basis for the agency's public assertions — including those made
> by Ledgett during a TED talk later that month — that Snowden never attempted
> to voice his concerns about the scope of NSA surveillance while at the
> agency.

Note the infrequent 'Because ... Than ...' type of construct -- but that a
_particular_ fact is selected for the 'Because ...' clause it inclines the
reader to believe that something is being omitted or hidden from public view
(one spuriously continues reading the article hoping to find what it was) -
but all the reader gets is:

> Snowden declined to answer a number of very specific questions for this
> story.

The whole article is written as if something is hidden, omitted and about to
come into view! How else to justify the headline title!? But there's really
nothing at all.

------
nickpsecurity
Wow, that was a lot to read. After reading all that, I wonder why Snowden
didn't just take his own emails with him, too. He might have overlooked it.
Yet, a carbon copy or just stealth copy of any complaints to compliance groups
or whatever might be worth remembering for future whistleblowers.

~~~
riskable
He probably couldn't without raising alarms. As administrator to the
SharePoint site he had many means to access (and copy) the files contained
therein (from the servers themselves) but to make a big copy of his emails
would require very risky operations on his personal workstation. A device that
is probably intricately monitored.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Yeah, the stuff was probably extremely hard:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-113051-Monitor-
Splitter/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-113051-Monitor-
Splitter/dp/B005H3I38G)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dCIZAXceQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dCIZAXceQ)

Really, difficult. ;)

~~~
woodman
The concern is a plausible cover for action. Your suggested solution would be
a little difficult to explain away - especially considering the kind of
coworkers you'd have at the NSA. Instead of explaining why you're archiving
all your mail, you'd have to explain the cabling, capture card, massive video
files...

~~~
nickpsecurity
He connected on monitored systems to all kinds of servers under several
credentials to steal their files. You think a hidden camera on his chest aimed
at his monitor or phone just angled in its direction is too much risk, though?

~~~
woodman
Yes. There are a lot of rational explanations for why you'd break security
protocols, there is no good reason to come into work wearing a wire. Would you
rather have to explain a login to IT security, or explain the pinhole camera
taped to your chest - after a newly instituted random wanding takes place?

~~~
nickpsecurity
There is not a single, rationale reason why one guy would be mass downloading
files under several people's names on his personal machine. Whereas, wearing a
wire long enough to look at a few emails entails almost no risk in comparison.
There will be nobody noticing it unless you're very careless. You will also
leave no records.

There's about no comparison between screenshoting some emails and conning
employees out of passwords then mass downloading TS files. My suggestion is
WAY lower risk. Worked for CIA and KGB whole Cold War, goo. ;)

~~~
woodman
I know that you have a good grasp on security, not only is it in your name -
but we've discussed the issue before... so the position you're taking on this
is surprising. You've never seen an employee blatantly violate security
policies in order to meet a deadline, or just because they're way out of their
depth? He was writing a unit test that ran in a production environment, there
- stupid reason that gets you fired but doesn't result in the FBI landing on
you like a ton of bricks. This is kind of a silly discussion though, Snowden
was in a very good position to be aware of the risks for his selected course
of action.

Cover for action is a tradecraft phrase - the CIA and KGB recognize the
importance of running an op on more that wishful thinking and luck. The only
reason why miniature cameras are associated with them is because of
embarrassing public failures, not because that is their MO.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I just said in another comment he could've done it in many ways that don't
involve a camera. It's one among many. Overall point is he was moving massive,
unauthorized data from his computer to HD's or something. He could've moved
some emails, too. If not due to security, he could sneak photos of a handful
of emails. Cover or not given he was about to crash and burn his whole life.
He could save them for last.

~~~
vidarh
Do you know how the NSA internal systems operate? Unless you have insider
info, I don't see how you can be so sure what risks are involved. It depends
entirely on the setup.

E.g. my very, very cursory contact with military computer systems involve
visiting offices where access to the classified data and e-mail were
physically separated onto different computers and different networks,
maintained by different people working in different locations.

It's very possible to have the run of one network and not be able to be sure
of how closely he was monitored on the other.

As for taking photos, on one of the contracting gigs I did that involve
entirely unclassified jobs at a research institute nothing like the NSA, I was
assigned a full time babysitter during the contract. The guy even waited
outside the toilets when I had to go, because they were not allowed to let me
go anywhere at all alone. These places take security seriously. It is not at
all a given that Snowden had reasonable expectation of being in a position
where he could take pictures without someone seeing it.

That he was able to do other things is not a good reason for him to take
additional risk. On the contrary - it may have been good reason for him to be
particularly careful about appearing squeaky clean in other ways to improve
his odds if he had to explain away something else.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"Do you know how the NSA internal systems operate? Unless you have insider
info, I don't see how you can be so sure what risks are involved. It depends
entirely on the setup."

They're normal, boring-ass machines at Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden knows the
setup because he configures and administers them. I can't find article right
now but we also know Booz Allen Hamilton had less security than what is
typical for commercial sector. I think Snowden was even accessing stuff from
home WiFi. It was that ridiculous.

"I was assigned a full time babysitter during the contract. The guy even
waited outside the toilets when I had to go, because they were not allowed to
let me go anywhere at all alone. "

Snowden's situation was nothing like that. He was instead more likely to be
the baby sitter as he was in one of most trusted positions. Nobody was looking
over his shoulder except if a supervisor or manager showed up on occasion.

"That he was able to do other things is not a good reason for him to take
additional risk."

You could say the same thing about the leaks themselves. He took the risk
because it was important. That he tried to handle things internally is also
important. He repeats it constantly. A tiny risk doing something I've done and
covered for 50+ times in shady organizations is worthwhile for him. We
wouldn't even be having this discussion if he had.

------
patcon
Seems to say a whole lot about the lack of clear process. Despite all the
investigative power of those following up, they seemed unable to discover if
complaints had actually been raised.

------
juliangamble
Is this article meant to rebut the claims of Clinton et. al. who claim that
Snowden could have been an effective whistle-blower? (ie this article is
saying he already tried that path and it didn't work)

> Cooper turned to Hillary Clinton and asked, “Secretary Clinton, hero or
> traitor?” Clinton, who earlier in the debate had described herself as “a
> progressive who likes to get things done,” replied, “He broke the laws of
> the United States. He could have been a whistle-blower. He could have gotten
> all of the protections of being a whistle-blower. He could have raised all
> the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive
> response to that.”

[http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/hillary-
clinton-i...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/hillary-clinton-is-
wrong-about-edward-snowden)

------
rdtsc
> "We can only crystal ball so much, especially when the protagonist is not
> bound by facts or the truth."

It is fascinating to read internal debates and conversations happening at NSA.
A good number those people publicly claim Snowden is lying and fabricating
facts.

I imagine they have to all think at some superficial level that he is a
terrible person, liar, criminal, traitor etc. If they question or doubt that
they face their cognitive dissonance -- maybe their workplace is the immoral
agency here, maybe they are lying and skirting the law. That is a hard pill to
swallow I think. It is easier to just keep lying to yourself overall.

~~~
wrong_variable
'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it'

\- Upton Sinclair

------
danieltillett
I know this is a little off-topic, but this is the first time I learned that
Snowden worked for the 'Office of Information Sharing'.

------
hackney
Apparently your best defense is to lawyer up and flat out sue. Being nice gets
you nowhere.

~~~
jackweirdy
As an outsider looking in, that seems to be good advice for all American life.

~~~
tacone
You can't call yourself an adult until you get a lawyer,

------
karmacondon
I don't know what Snowden expected. Was the NSA supposed to cancel its
multibillion dollar program because it went against a contractor's
interpretation of the Constitution? It seems to me that the system worked. He
raised his concerns and they were duly noted. I don't think he presented any
new information that the IG wasn't aware of.

I understand that the NSA is extremely unpopular here, but their actions had
the implicit consent of every branch of the US government. I don't see
anything in this lengthy article that makes me think they should have acted
any differently than they did. The only person that has veto power is the
president. Everyone else has to go through proper channels, and should do so
with the expectation that nothing will change.

~~~
ageofwant
All branches of government, generally, at least in western democracies, are
subject to the rule of law. The "implicit consent" of anyone does not, or
should not at least, come into play.

------
jokoon
Even if you're against Snowden and defend the NSA, I believe there really was
a big miscalculation about how employees would perceive such program if it was
badly implemented, and the potential for misuse and mismanagement of those
tools. It sounds like immense negligence combined with hawkish cyber warfare
ambitions.

The first thing that comes into my mind, is the cost/benefit estimation of him
leaking those things if I were in his shoes. So far he managed to mitigate the
cost done to him, and did something he believed would benefit his country.

What I'm curious about is the intelligence costs those leaks generated. Were
the documents leaked carefully chosen to limit that damage and still prove
those programs were unconstitutional? Or was the damage real?

------
theophrastus
The wild conjecture is out there that as one of the final acts of his
presidency, Obama will pardon Snowden. Mostly to get this messy matter off the
table of the next president. I really don't know where to place the likelihood
of this actually happening.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
By the way, I just looked at this a little, it appears like it would be
POSSIBLE. Meaning you can pardon someone, like Snowden, before they've even
been charged:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/07/preemptive_presidential_pardons.html)

But that being said, I don't think Obama of all people would. He has been more
pro surveillance than Bush Jr, was more damaged by Snowden, and had tons of
political friends damaged by Snowden.

I think people confused the person they wanted Obama to be, and the president
Obama has actually been. He is more similar to Bush Jr in these matters than
different, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers.

~~~
rhizome
Nixon was pardoned without being charged.

 _I think people confused the person they wanted Obama to be, and the
president Obama has actually been._

Not confused, disappointed.

------
forgotpwtomain
Surely this being HN I will be down-voted terribly for this. But I am not at
all convinced that Snowden's account is 100% to be trusted in this.

The article in question spends an exceptionally long time examining NSA/DoJ
decision making in responding to Snowden's claims that:

> . "I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than 10
> distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them."

The article provides no evidence that this was true. Or that US Officials'
rejection of this position was contrary to the facts. In fact a different
reporter might argue that the lack of such evidence given the new
documentation provided supports the opposite conclusion.

> The NSA portrayed it as an innocuous question that elicited a direct
> response when it released the email in 2014.

It may not be an entirely innocuous issue, but it's certainly not equivalent
to _raising_ concerns. To suggest the later requires perfect ignorance of how
bueracracy works. No one is going to look for 'implicit intent' in you raising
a question and escalate it to something more than that. They cc'ed relevant
experts to provide an answer and that's really the best you should expect from
a large organization. Unless you explicitly report a complaint, nobody is
going to go around knocking on the higher ups doors for you.

Another point that I would like to raise that hasn't been mentioned is
Snowden's account of his career at the CIA. According to him he was quite
senior.

> In March 2012, Dell reassigned Snowden to Hawaii as lead technologist for
> the NSA's information-sharing office. [0]

In this article we clearly see he signs ( when answering a question about file
types) as:

> Ed Snowden, System Administrator

I'm not bringing these up as a proponent of NSA surveillance, but I do think
it is important to be critical in this - and I'm no more convinced of Edward
Snowden as a witness than before I started reading this.

Particularly I think the article is disingenuously written (Clickbait Title)
in following a very lengthy narrative ( to build up suspense? ) without
providing much in the way of strong evidence; one expects to finally find it
at the end, but curiously finds nothing. If they told me at the start "no
emails which would significantly alter the known facts were disclosed" \- I
could have saved 30 minutes.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden)
[http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-
snowden/](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/)

~~~
b1daly
I understand your point, but I think you're misreading the situation a bit.

The U.S. Gov's response that Snowden should have raised his concerns through
"proper channels" is pure propaganda. Unfortunately, the highest levels of the
executive branch have a very large megaphone, and they rely the fact that
there are still citizens who will give them the benefit of doubt, and take
what they say at face value.

The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would
have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was
one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have
been some kind of corrective response.

The only corrective response would have been to crush him like a little bug.

It's hard to say what Snowden was getting at from the sketchy information we
have when he had those contacts with members of the NSA OIG. But he did raise
topics that were connected with his concerns. I took it as him gingerly
putting out feelers to find out how the programs were perceived within the
NSA, and the kind of response such inquiries might generate.

One might hope, in a perfect world, that his questions would lead those
innocent recipients of his concerns to investigate further, and join the fight
to hold these powerful law enforcement organizations accountable to the rules
of law.

But we're not living in Disneyland here...

~~~
foldr
> The laughable implication of the official response is that if Snowden would
> have brought attention to illegal spying to leadership of an agency who was
> one of the main architects of the illegal spying programs, there would have
> been some kind of corrective response.

The bottom line, though, is that you can't criticize the NSA for what you
suspect it would have done. You can only criticize it for what it has actually
done. You can suspect all you like (and I'll probably join you in suspecting),
but if Snowden never did blow the whistle, we'll never know what would have
happened if he did.

------
zer00eyz
I hadn't really thought about the issue of contractors and whistleblower
status in depth till reading this.

I would assume that he (Snowden) had to talk to someone about blowing the
whistle to know he wasn't covered before he did it. He didn't just pull these
facts out of his ass. The question is who did he speak to, and what was the
context and color of that conversation.

~~~
gcommer
Alternatively he could've just read about prior NSA whistleblowers (like
Binnie and others) who tried to blow the whistle on many of the same issues
more quietly and instead of being able to keep fighting for the Constitution,
they got their doors kicked in and silenced by the legal system.

Edited to correct smartphone auto-"correct" typos

~~~
zer00eyz
Have a hearty thanks and an upvote for your $0.02, I had not thought of the
other whistleblowers as a viable means of figuring this out.

------
vessenes
That was a very long read, and the journalist did very little work on behalf
of the reader when it comes to summarizing. On the other hand, some in-depth
context is good at times.

One thing that jumps out at me as a new understanding of the situation is a
kind of mutually-sympathetic view as to how both parties got to where they
were.

If you take all the direct statements from both sides as true, then one
question is: do we have a plausible story that could have occurred? I'd say so
based solely on this article.

To me, I am imagining Mr. Snowden who has significant ethical concerns. Or as
is suggested in kind of a classic 'newspeak' bit of advice by the NSA
'process' concerns.

And, as he digs in a little, he learns:

* He has no real protection for whistleblowing, or at least he has even less protection than some other whistleblowers, whose lives are essentially shit.

* The training materials are at best outdated, and if you're inclined to be untrusting, teach people they have legal rights which have expired. Presumably he had become well educated on these laws, and so felt upset when he answered the training test per actual active law, and then failed.

* There is no real culture of concern for uncovering and fixing these gaps.

In addition, the NSA docs say he hadn't been briefed on any methods he could
engage with whistleblowing-type concerns.

It's also pretty obvious that those concerns would have been quashed. There
has never been, to my knowledge, a public NSA statement that his ethics
("process") complaints had merit.

So, in that world, he made his choices, and he and we live in the world shaped
by the consequences of those choices.

On the other side, you have a group of people who felt they were doing the
right thing -- good people trying hard in the cause of nationalism and safety
-- and just have typical organizational slippage. Nothing nefarious.

And they feel targeted by a very junior contractor with a chip on his
shoulder. The e-mails are like "Wait, we train them who to call with concerns.
.. Um, well we're supposed to, but schedules are tight lately. So he didn't
get that training. ... Yeah, so is there a problem with that 702 test? No,
that's just someone junior complaining. People who work here know the drill.
That's totally immaterial bitching from someone who's salty about failing. Did
he actually raise a big stink about these process concerns? Well, I found this
one clarification e-mail. Nothing like what he claims. Are there more? I
dunno."

So, maybe there's some whole internal investigation and response that was
triggered that's not being released under this FOIA. But it seems to me like
both parties could be telling the truth as they see it, at least up to the
point that the PR folks get involved and add spin, there's plenty of spin.
But, the fundamentals seem to me to be comprehensible from either side.

