Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have.
Not that anyone in D.C. is holding the accountable, but if someone hypothetically did want to hold them accountable, how high would their threshold for failure have to be for outcomes like this?
> Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.
Mending relations is probably hard to do while continuing the programs and their secrecy. It probably wouldn't be that hard to mend them if they shut down the program.
It would save money and stop breaking the Constitution too.
>Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have.
Would you rather these agencies be truly competent and efficient that their activities would never come to light?
One of the greatest arguments against the invasions of privacy they're engaged in is such competence by government departments is absolutely impossible, and the only way around this is to not collect the information in the first place.
If you create a department that knows everything about everyone then it creates such a big single point of failure that it will be attacked continuously. This is on top of the general human error leading to data dumps being left on public transport etc.
A honest and competent version of the NSA would acknowledge that leaks would be going to occur (malicious or accidental) and that it would need to be very careful about what it collects in case it could be used against it when it leaks. Once more government secrecy is actually just a way of hiding incompetence.
I am also wondering, is it smart for an intelligence agency to tell the truth when they say "We don't know how much was leaked"? Or is this a large lie in order to lower, I don't know, someone's guard. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.
Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have.
And the NSA wasn't the only intelligence agency that vetted and hired him.
Off topic kind of: It's a shame that the headlines immediately after Snowden's initial press release turned from, "The government is spying on you" to "Snowden is evading!"
By this I mean, It was unfortunate to see Snowden's punch dissipate with headlines that focussed on his safety and whereabouts, instead of keeping focus on the crimes committed by the US government.
That's just basic diversionary and disinfo tactics. Make the story about anything but what it's actually about, because what it's actually about is damaging. Snowden just happened to be convenient, and, for lack of a better word, "exploitable" to that end, having hopped off to Hong Kong and then Russia like that.
It's more specific than that: make the story about the person rather than the information. Change the focus, change the framing, change the questions asked by reporters. This is a mechanism employed by powerful entities over and over throughout history, especially in the Information Age.
The news headlines that do as you describe seem to be solely a US phenomenon.. Much of the rest of the world continues to be outraged by the leaked information
It doesn't help that Snowden divulged all the classified information he could get his hands on, even that unrelated to domestic spying. It comes across as a desire for fame rather than a principled action.
Assange was into monetizing leaks and being in control of what was leaked, to whom and when.
Snowden went out of his way to not be 'in charge' of what was leaked, to whom and to when. He put trust in Greenwald and co. to do that. Snowden has not been paid, there is no ban on Paypal et al. accepting funds for him because, unlike Assange, he is not soliciting funds. He found himself employment in Russia to pay his way in the world.
Clearly Snowden's work was wasted on you, just hope you have nothing to hide!
I did, when talking with my american friends. Most of them are saying that Snowden is not a "whistleblower" because he fled the country to Russia. And after all, government spying has always been there, and everybody does it, and it serves the US best interest and so on... And this comes from people that are educated and usually critical on governments.
I find it worrying. I don't follow closely what happens in the US, but my overall feeling is that on many important issues, there is very little opposition or at least questioning to what the US government is doing. People seem more concerned with taxes and immigration reform.
It also struck me during the presidential debates. Both candidates pretty much agreed that the "bad guys" should be caught, but it didn't really go much deeper than that! It seems voters have basically not the slightest control on what their leaders are doing. Depressing...
"I did, when talking with my american friends. Most of them are saying that Snowden is not a "whistleblower" because he fled the country to Russia."
Anecdotally, that view does seem to be the minority in the US. Increasingly so as time goes on and more is understood. That was a gut reaction by many conservatives initially, but I think most understand by now that him going to Russia is irrelevant, even if they do disagree with the act of disclosing.
I found this line interesting: "Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system."
On its face, this sounds unethical for someone who made his decision on morality. Has anything more been published about this aspect anywhere (rationales, details, etc.)?
Are you saying there's inherently something "immoral" about covering your tracks, using other passwords, or hacking firewalls? On what basis?
If the guy is already copying documents he's not allowed to have access to, what difference does it make using passwords he's not allowed to have access to?
To me the hilarious/horrifying thing is that if these guys with access to the most powerful spying apparatus in the world would simply give their passwords to a coworker, that well and truly means we cannot trust them with access to the most powerful spying apparatus in the world.
So if the intelligence community is lying about how he got access, it is an extremely stupid lie that makes them look like idiots. If they're telling the truth, then it clearly makes the case that their operation is a humongous liability and should be shut down. Either way that explanation/story is bad for the NSA.
Leaving aside the fact that I applaud the actions Snowden took, in general if one's credentials are used in unapproved ways then one will face investigation, in any setting. When you have to use passwords, use good ones, and keep them secret.
You also have to consider the possibility that that is a lie. One of Snowden's comments was that many individuals had access to what he released (as in most standard NSA employees), discrediting that statement is in the governments best interest.
Meanwhile, on their face, comments by anonymous "officials" who depend on the intelligence communities for their livelihood are to be taken seriously? I mean really.
This is because they want to obfuscate as much as possible what is being done within the agency. If everything was logged, and you knew exactly who did what, it would be a lot easier to audit the agency, which is what they don't want. So they have a conflict of interest here. Make everything auditable, trackable and searchable, or risk other leaks.
Exactly. If Snowden managed this with a full on media storm it's a given that a good number of US antagonists already had access to everything he copied.
My understanding was he doesn't have the files at this point - they're all in possession of the journalists. Snowden can't put the genie back in the bottle, and the NSA wouldn't ever trust that all copies had been destroyed.
I'd be pretty dubious about taking amnesty if I were him, too. Contracts under duress aren't legitimate. Chances are decent they'd get him here, claim duress, and throw him in Guantanamo.
Forget Guantanamo. He's dealing with a government that has killed U.S. citizens with drone-fired missiles without due process. If I were Snowden, I'd be concerned that if I came anywhere near the reach of the U.S. government, I'd be secretly declared an "enemy combatant" and an "unfortunate accident" would happen to me.
In a perverse despotic dictatorial way, killing US citizens is okay because "they're my slaves" kind of thing. He's dealing with a government that has killed a group of Yemeni family folks in Yemen who were allegedly attending a wedding accidentally with a drone strike. It is my imagination where they just say "Oops".
At least 4 US citizens have been killed by US drones. Anwar al-Awlaki is the only one who was specifically targeted. His son Abdulrahman, also a US citizen, was killed two weeks later by drone, but was not specifically targeted, according to the US.
The US lawyers argued "Mr. Awlaki was a lawful target because he was participating in the war with Al Qaeda and also because he was a specific threat to the country... And while the Constitution generally requires judicial process before the government may kill an American, the Supreme Court has held that in some contexts — like when the police, in order to protect innocent bystanders, ram a car to stop a high-speed chase — no prior permission from a judge is necessary; the lawyers concluded that the wartime threat posed by Mr. Awlaki qualified as such a context, and so his constitutional rights did not bar the government from killing him without a trial. ... it is not unlawful “murder” when the government kills an enemy leader in war or national self-defense [so] the foreign-killing statute would not impede a strike" [NYT, March 9, 2013].
greenyoda wrote: "He's dealing with a government that has killed U.S. citizens with drone-fired missiles without due process."
It therefore comes down to what you mean by "due process." I hold with greenyoda that the circumstances around Awlaki's deliberate killing were insufficient as to allow the exception to the judicial process, and that he therefore did not receive due process owed him by birthright.
You may think otherwise, but even in that case the situation as described is very close to to what greenyoda wrote. Why do you think it's "not at all" as described?
Keep in mind that amnesty could simply be a ruse to bring him into the country, after which they can say, "he's not telling us everything!" (see: Salim Hamdan) and arrest him based on that.
"But for all of Mr. Snowden’s technical expertise, some American officials also place blame on the security agency for being slow to install software that can detect unusual computer activity carried out by the agency’s work force..."
Should we be surprised that they are ignoring the real problems? Neither Snowden, nor the lack of surveillance is the issue. What the documents revealed about the NSAs Unconstitutional programs is what should be alarming.
The official said the State Department often described the spying to foreign leaders as “business as usual” between nations.
It's interesting the last line of the article says State often described it as "business as usual," an idiom sometimes used in reference to activities of the CIA (AKA "The Company").
Government Intelligence is an oxymoron. Anyone with a sense of security knows that the most dangerous people are the ones you see every day. Yet they allowed him to basically steal everything.
Not that anyone in D.C. is holding the accountable, but if someone hypothetically did want to hold them accountable, how high would their threshold for failure have to be for outcomes like this?
> Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.
Mending relations is probably hard to do while continuing the programs and their secrecy. It probably wouldn't be that hard to mend them if they shut down the program.
It would save money and stop breaking the Constitution too.