

Snowden documents could be 'worst nightmare' for U.S. - mdelias
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/13/usa-security-snowden-greenwald-idINDEE96C05520130713

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smsm42
I suspect bluff. The damaging revelations about surveillance are already done,
unless he has document suggesting Putin is a CIA operative or the notorious
Chinese hackers actually work for NSA, or has recording of Obama ordering
assassination of Tea Party leaders, or something of that measure of insanity -
I don't see what else could he reveal. By now everybody is pretty much sure
NSA owns phone networks (at least in the USA) and the Internet (pretty much
anywhere) and gets unreserved cooperation from every major provider. What else
could there be?

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malandrew
I highly doubt that the information he has only contains the generics that
have been disclosed so far. When you grab a bunch of data, you probably don't
pick and choose what you need for whistleblowing, because the collection of
the data is the riskiest activity before whistleblowing is actually acted
upon. Instead you collect everything that may be of service and you dole out
what is necessary to achieve your goal of whistleblowing. With that in mind,
it's far more probable that he is heavily editing what is being released to
only prompt discussion and oversight and not put specific people in harms way.

AFAIK none of the documents that have included specifics on the people
involved and I highly doubt that documents circulate without _metadata_ of the
specific people responsible or with awareness of what's going on.

It's the release of specific examples and metadata identifying the people
behind this and their actions that can be more easily construed as aiding the
enemy. He really hasn't released any of this kind of information.

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smsm42
Suppose we learn that the guy responsible in the NSA for internet surveillance
is named John Smith. What would it change? This is surveillance on US soil,
not covert ops in some country in Latin America, how the names would change
anything?

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mtgx
We already know they've been spying on politicians and tapping the underwater
Internet cables, along with their friends from other continents, to get all
the data. So how much worse could it get? Proof that US has been assassinating
politicians (in recent times)? I think something like that would be a "worse
nightmare" than it already is (don't forget Snowden worked for CIA before).

Now I _almost_ want something bad to happen to Snowden, just so we find out
what could possibly be "much worse". It's time for all US' power games to be
shown in broad daylight.

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gatekeepr
Having given it some thought, I think that leaks that shows disruption of
democratic processes can be considered a 'worse nightmare'.

This could be election fraud, corrupt officials or some kind of shadow
government.

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pvnick
Indeed, I think you're right. So far, the only justification we have in
support of these programs is to protect from terrorism. If it can be shown
that they were used to subvert democracy, there would be _zero_ support left
for them.

