Is NSA just lying because it hopes the problem will go away? I guess that is not unreasonable. Public has a pretty short attention span. So rather than trying to engage just brush off and deny everything.
Was anyone at the NSA ever punished for lying to the public or Congress? If not they have exactly 0 incentive for not doing it. The part of "Oh yeah here is the email" and the follow up question of "Why were you lying?" quite often never comes. Everyone just moves on.
Looking at the organization as a whole and comparing to a person, NSA acts like a psychopath that climbed its way up to into a power position. Lying through its teeth. Engaging in illegal activities. Every time they are caught, telling lies, they follow up with more lies. Spy on Congress members and judges. Presumably to be able to manipulate them. This is a person you'd want to run away from in real life as fast as possible. They are dangerous because they have power and they have no morals.
So why is this significant? Well, this guy’s name is John Poindexter, and he’s incidentally the guy who was found to be most responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal. He was convicted of lying to Congress but then never went to jail. And in 2001, he started a Government program called ‘Total Information Awareness’. He made a speech when he announced the program, where he said that “…data must be made available in large-scale repositories with enhanced semantic content for easy analysis”.
> "So how do you explain that you lied before?" (silence)
Given that the email they showed does not represent a change to their story (that they never received an emailed concern from Snowden) I'm not sure that it's obvious it was a lie.
After all, Snowden's question was purely procedural, not a pronouncement of wrongdoing of any sort. The most action you'd possibly expect to be taken as a result of that email is that NSA's internal training adds a footnote to the hierarchy of authorities slide.
> Was anyone at the NSA ever punished for lying to the public or Congress?
The man who lied to Congress is the DNI, not a member of the NSA, and his testimony was a designed sandbagging: He could be charged with an actual crime no matter which answer he had given, so I'm not surprised that the DOJ isn't racing to proffer charges here, especially since the Senator asking the question both already knew the answer, and knew that he could have given the answer to the public directly, if he wished, since he has Congressional immunity to his comments on the Senate floor.
The NSA itself doesn't talk to the public as a rule, so it would be hard to convict members of them of lying in the first place. Their public statements are clearly designed to be at least technically truthful.
So I'm concerned then, that this has all become a giant echo chamber: People are fed information and use that to confirm that which they already believe, even when the evidence actually presented is contradictory. I know you're probably trying to vent more than anything but I don't see as a possibility that many people here will be changing their mind any time soon.
And I say that as someone who changed my mind; one of my highest-voted comments here was in support of Snowden on the occasion of the first story that popped up, before it became clear that the story being presented wasn't the same as the story as it actually was.
This is interesting. So you were a Snowden supporter at first, but changed your mind after seeing more evidence. I'd like to know what made you change your mind.
PRISM was announced as a system that could "literally read your thoughts as you type". Greenwald said the NSA had direct, unfettered access to Facebook, Google, etc. So naturally I was pretty concerned about this vast abuse of authority and massive blow against Constitutional freedoms, and expressed as much here on HN.
But just reading the NSA slides made it clear that something much different (and far less sinister) was being talked about. They couldn't "read our thoughts" after all. At worst, the system allowed tech companies to automatically package up the data legally obtained through actual warrants or subpoenas, something previously routinely done manually. PRISM even still required the company's manual involvement for each and every single request. The reality was far different from what had been implied, and sometimes even actually stated. Greenwald himself had either lied, or been mislead by someone, and my money was on the latter. But it was Snowden's job to know how PRISM worked and get Greenwald to explain it right.
When it turned out that the self-described "career intelligence operative" was... not, I quickly realized that things weren't as they seemed. And then all sorts of excuses started piling on: Oh, PRISM does require a warrant sometimes, but the Court that issues them gives secret rulings (oooh). Never mind that the Court in question was around since 1978, or that no other nation even bothers putting judicial oversight on foreign intelligence. Snowden said he'd have been fine with PRISM with Article III warrants, but when an Article III warrant was duly issued for his own arrest then all of a sudden all U.S. courts were corrupt. And on it goes.
And it's turned out that way for almost literally every single leak since. Some claim would be made about the NSA, but then when pressed Snowden or Greenwald would have to admit that the topic being discussed was a capability, but there wasn't evidence of major misuse. Or they'd leave out important context.
A lot of this stuff would have been damning in some way on its own, so I could never figure out why the shiftyness was required. When you're debating with the USG and the USG is more honest, that's sad in many ways.
I honestly thought you were going to provide some solid information, but this doesn't hold up in my book. These are weak reasons to change your mind (in my opinion).
Snowden explained the "literally read your thoughts as you type" part in the NBC interview. Seeing someone's typing, erasing, changing words is a window into their thought process. Not sure why you disagree with that.
And when you make a joke about the court that issues them "gives secret rulings (oooh)", why are you making a joke out of one of the most serious loopholes in the whole system?
> why are you making a joke out of one of the most serious loopholes in the whole system?
Because the rulings are not secret. They just happen to not be public, like many other court rulings that the people are perfectly fine with accepting.
Well, from the looks of it Snowden was asking a procedural question, not outlying any concerns. He also received a response. I have to wonder if you actually read the email.
> The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers - after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns.
^ Something Snowden says, at the beginning of the article.
It's something Snowden claims, but I don't see the justification for it if you actually read Snowden's email.
Snowden says his one (instead of multiple emails as he previously claimed) disproved this NSA claim:
"after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention."
But his one email made no such suggestion as bringing any legal matter whatsoever to anyone's attention. It asked whether an E.O. was really at the same level of statute law (it is, it is only the scope of effect that is different). Snowden's email didn't even suggest he had any complaints to make about NSA interpretation of law. If anything it reminded me more of the arguments made by "Freeman on the Land".
Snowden claims that other emails do exist though, with actual substantive complaints. But I'm not sure what to believe, if he actually seems to think this email of his represented a formal complaint, then who knows what was actually in his claimed email to the SID Office of Compliance?
He also doesn't mention who he sent his email regarding his EO 12333 question to. Was it this very email? Does he expect legal counsel to read minds too? And either way, his complaint was that the activity conducted under EO 12333 was "indefensible", not "illegal". But I don't know of any major organizations (private corporations or public agencies) that would deliberately take a harder route to undertake an activity they were authorized to do.
There was no complete denial. Does anyone really believe the NSA said "We promise we have never received a single email from Edward Snowden"? He'd probably have to send dozens of emails every day in the normal course of his duties.
The NSA did put out a complete denial that he has raised an actual issue with the agency's conduct of their intelligence programs, and this email doesn't contradict that line one bit.
There may be such emails out there (Snowden claims there's at least one), but this isn't one of them.
You've missed the point. If that's all there is, why lie about it. Their lying is becoming obsessive. They have no credibility to believe that there are no more Snowdon emails. The content of this one email isn't relevant.
What was the lie exactly? Snowden asked the General Counsel a procedural question. As far as we know, Snowden never brought any legal concerns to superiors or otherwise concerning the classified programs of the NSA. And in that regard, the NSA may not be lying.
Simply put, if the NSA did not receive concerns from Snowden on the legality of the classified programs, then the NSA is not lying.
Again, the content of the email they produced isn't the point. That they spent much of a year denying any such emails existed is. Also, you're assuming their statement that this is the only email is true. By now, everthing they say, imply, or don't say must be suspect.
As he said in the article they continue to contradict themselves. They said no communications existed - and now suddenly they have one. Why should we believe them when they say they don't have any more when they've already lied about it once?
> They said no communications existed - and now suddenly they have one.
There's no contradiction at all.
He said he sent emails of a certain category. NSA still says they have no emails of that category—but they do have an email of a different sort, asking a procedural question.
NSA probably has lots of emails from Snowden on file, after all. What they've said (and continue to maintain) is that they don't have any reflecting a concern (edit: typo fix) over these programs. The email they released from him certainly doesn't show any concern. Seriously, read the actual question:
"I am not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply that Executive Orders have the same precedence as law."
This is hardly anything even approaching a hard charge of misconduct being done. Especially so given that the General Counsel announced that they agreed with Snowden's interpretation, "That said, you are correct that E.O.s cannot override a statute."
> The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers - after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns.
^ Something Snowden says, at the start of the article
On the Washington Post comments section, I feel that users "still here" and ".Morti" are shills from the NSA. One of Snowden's leaks confirmed that they do try to change viewpoints on online discussions.
Maybe. Maybe they just hold the opinions they profess. I know people who would agree with them and i'm certain they don't all work for the NSA (I live in Texas, and believe me, there are a lot of "still heres" and ".Mortis" who'd see him strung up from a lamppost as soon as look at him.)
How does one tell the difference, and does it even matter?
>How does one tell the difference, and does it even matter?
It matters very, very, very much. The more those opinions are presented as if they were the opinions of the majority, the more people who disagree silence themselves to protect themselves from the majority.
Given some of their arguments, part of me wonders whether such people really even understand what it is that Snowden leaked. The same could be said for a number of the loudest voices in government.
I have watched some accounts on HN gain over 1000 karma in less than 80 days. They appear to be using machine learning techniques to pump links into the site. They made no comments for days until their karma was high enough.
It is interesting to watch the ebb and flow of political opinion on discussion forums. And it would be extremely interesting to have logs of HN or Reddit to do shill and multiple account detection.
How can the supposedly most capable "intelligence" organization in the world be so dumb at understanding public opinion in the internet age? It's like they are operating out of a 1930s propaganda playbook ..
Especially when Snowden, Greenwald et al appear to be masterminds at the same task. Of course, it helps to have the truth on your side, but considering that they are up against the most powerful people on the planet .. very impressive.
1. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Replace "understand" with "acknowledge" as necessary.
2. They know they only need to worry about the opinions of certain key players, not the public in general.
(months later)
"Oh here it is, an email from Snowden"...
"So how do you explain that you lied before?"
(silence)
Is NSA just lying because it hopes the problem will go away? I guess that is not unreasonable. Public has a pretty short attention span. So rather than trying to engage just brush off and deny everything.
Was anyone at the NSA ever punished for lying to the public or Congress? If not they have exactly 0 incentive for not doing it. The part of "Oh yeah here is the email" and the follow up question of "Why were you lying?" quite often never comes. Everyone just moves on.
Looking at the organization as a whole and comparing to a person, NSA acts like a psychopath that climbed its way up to into a power position. Lying through its teeth. Engaging in illegal activities. Every time they are caught, telling lies, they follow up with more lies. Spy on Congress members and judges. Presumably to be able to manipulate them. This is a person you'd want to run away from in real life as fast as possible. They are dangerous because they have power and they have no morals.