

Snowden a prize for Russians until they have his secrets - wj
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snowden-russia-intel-value-20130625,0,257512.story

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btipling
Wikileaks says nothing of the sort has happened, someone from Wikileaks is
with Snowden:

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/349787949644267520](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/349787949644267520)

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digitalengineer
See how this free press thing works? In the old days this story would have
been believed all over the world, it was 'in the news' so it's true. Nowadays
it's a lot easier to fight propaganda.

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Svip
I wouldn't call it propaganda as much as wild speculation based on nothing but
assumption that it is still the Cold War.

In Russia's eyes, this is a huge embarrassment to the United States, letting
him go where he wants is exactly in Russia's interests. Russia probably
already know what he leaked.

~~~
corresation
Russia is still very active engaging in espionage in the West, just as we know
the reverse is true. In that sense it is very much the way it always was, and
that "Cold War" still exists.

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Svip
Not in the same way; during the Cold War, the Russia would always be
interested in interrogating Americans should they be near them. Today Russia
maintains diplomatic relations with the United States and is a trade partner,
a massive change from the Cold War, where both blocs could sustain isolated.

This changes in focus and ways of how espionage in both countries is
conducted. Russia does not unwittingly wish to provoke the Americans; and for
what? Snowden is hardly a high target in terms of intelligence, as he was
merely working for a contractor to the NSA.

Russia wins by doing nothing.

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throwaway10001
_Russia wins by doing nothing._

Russia wins by copying his files and denying it. Espionage is alive and well,
just last month a CIA officer was arrested allegedly trying to recruit agents
for as much as $1 Mil a pop. The info Snowden has in his laptop is super
valuable, why not have it?

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Svip
Because they most likely already have it?

~~~
throwaway10001
You never know unless you doublecheck it. But yeah, with tens of thousands
working with NSA /CIA odds are that Russia and China both know a lot

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rurounijones
This seems like another character assassination article.

"See, he was stupid enough to go to the _russians_ and now they have our
secrets because of his incompetence"

It even _starts_ with a presumption that "Now that Russian intelligence
services have presumably gotten what they want from Edward Snowden"...

I am having serious problems with the bias of this "article".

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Svip
What are the chances that Russia _doesn 't_ have spies infiltrated in American
agencies?

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madaxe
Very low. Ergo Snowden is of more interest as a political football than as an
intel source - he likely knows nothing the FSB doesn't already.

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siddboots
Is it just me, or did that entire article rest on the assumption that
Snowden's data is not encrypted?

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bradleyland
This gets trotted out a lot, but encryption is only as secure as the
protection of the passphrase. Being realistic, any country Snowden visits has
tremendous leverage on him because of how easy it would be to simply arrest
him and hand him over to the US.

[https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)

~~~
ganeumann
Not to go down the wrong rabbithole--the article should be in the Fanciful
Speculation section of the paper, not the News section--but handing over a
passphrase would mean the the Russian authorities' statement that they "are
not working with" Snowden would not be semantically correct.

Not that I believe the Russians wouldn't lie, but the internal logic of the
article does rest on the assertion that they are technically telling the truth
while leaving themselves a loophole. Since it is safe to assume that Snowden
did strong-encrypt the docs on his laptops, this internal logic falls apart.

(As a sidenote, I don't think I've heard the phrase "semantically (in)correct"
as much in my life as in the past month. Someone should write a browser
extension that automatically replaces it with the phrase "weasel words".)

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mpyne
Is it truly "working _with_ " if they compel him to speak though? ;)

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siddboots
I believe it's "working with" in the same sense that I "work with" PL/SQL. You
get the data you need, but it certainly isn't an _amicable_ relationship. :)

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stcredzero
I should think Snowden is savvy enough to encrypt his hard drives and files.

