Snowden; In hindsight it looks clear he is/was a whistle blower

[2slow]

Greenwald educates a BBC journalist about journalism.

that was great, I wish we had 1000 Greenwalds running around news rooms.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Me too, 2.

 

[Chuck D.]

TIGER!!!!!

Never get off the fucking boat.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Pardon Snowden

He should also get a medal of some kind for his service.

 

[Mark K]

Pardon Snowden

He should also get a medal of some kind for his service.

If he helps Putin snag someone who is plotting to plant a bomb at Sochi, he may get one.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

Pardon Snowden

He should also get a medal of some kind for his service.

I dunno, Tom - while *some* of his illegal revelations may indeed have had a social benefit - the damage he caused to our collections capabilities, trust relationships, and business will take an awfully long time to recover from, if we ever can. Give him a medal? I don't think so. He is reckless with his revelations, in that he made decisions to reveal national secrets without being able to understand the ramification of his revelations. Hero? Sounds a lot more like personal hubris.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

TIGER!!!!!

Never get off the fucking boat.

Somebody gets it!

Best watched exhausted and intoxicated, like "The Wall".

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Pardon Snowden

He should also get a medal of some kind for his service.

I dunno, Tom - while *some* of his illegal revelations may indeed have had a social benefit - the damage he caused to our collections capabilities, trust relationships, and business will take an awfully long time to recover from, if we ever can. Give him a medal? I don't think so. He is reckless with his revelations, in that he made decisions to reveal national secrets without being able to understand the ramification of his revelations. Hero? Sounds a lot more like personal hubris.

Illegal revelations? Did you read the piece above about the previous whistleblower who tried to do it through legal channels and found that they all dead-end in a swamp? Illegally was the ONLY effective way to accomplish his goal.

They were not reckless, and are not being reckless. Watch the interview above with Greenwald. They have been careful about what they released.

Our collections capabilities continue to improve with technology and he did not halt that, he just exposed what has been happening. If that sunlight on the situation damaged trust relationships that were ill-founded, so be it. Who is to blame? Those who can't be trusted, or those who expose the people who can't be trusted?

Meanwhile, Snowden's actions continue to have positive ramifications. Hat tip to Obama for at least a modest reform in the metadata program, something that would not have happened without Snowden.

Over in Congress, they are learning about NSA activities from private security experts because the NSA won't tell their overseers in Congress what they do.

Yes, he's a hero to me. He did this so that we could know what our government is up to. I appreciate it. I don't trust the ever-expanding security state and appreciate whistleblowers.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

Pardon Snowden

He should also get a medal of some kind for his service.

I dunno, Tom - while *some* of his illegal revelations may indeed have had a social benefit - the damage he caused to our collections capabilities, trust relationships, and business will take an awfully long time to recover from, if we ever can. Give him a medal? I don't think so. He is reckless with his revelations, in that he made decisions to reveal national secrets without being able to understand the ramification of his revelations. Hero? Sounds a lot more like personal hubris.

Illegal revelations? Did you read the piece above about the previous whistleblower who tried to do it through legal channels and found that they all dead-end in a swamp? Illegally was the ONLY effective way to accomplish his goal.

They were not reckless, and are not being reckless. Watch the interview above with Greenwald. They have been careful about what they released.

Our collections capabilities continue to improve with technology and he did not halt that, he just exposed what has been happening. If that sunlight on the situation damaged trust relationships that were ill-founded, so be it. Who is to blame? Those who can't be trusted, or those who expose the people who can't be trusted?

Meanwhile, Snowden's actions continue to have positive ramifications. Hat tip to Obama for at least a modest reform in the metadata program, something that would not have happened without Snowden.

Over in Congress, they are learning about NSA activities from private security experts because the NSA won't tell their overseers in Congress what they do.

Yes, he's a hero to me. He did this so that we could know what our government is up to. I appreciate it. I don't trust the ever-expanding security state and appreciate whistleblowers.

Tom - the bolded part of your comment speaks to your naivete. By exposing these capabilities, he has effectively negated our ability to employ them! ALL nations conduct espionage and collect intelligence - and we're more open about our capabilities than any other country in the world. We don't live in a "happy happy joy joy" world - there are evil people who will use whatever snippets of information that they can grab to cause harm, and Snowden has handed and continues to hand those people the greatest bounty that they could ever hope for - knowledge of what our intel community is interested in, how they go about getting it, and who they get it from.

Tell me please, from an international perspective, if you think that you are able to define who can and can't be trusted?

Careful about what they released? Yeah - to the point of maximizing the "WOW" factor.

As to knowing what your government is up to - I understand and appreciate your sentiment. But - as with all knowledge, a little is a dangerous thing. You wanna read up on how nuclear fission works? COOL - go do it. I'd suggest that before you make your own Mr. Reactor, that you also learn how to control the reaction before you set it in place. Snowden's revelations are a lot like that. The protestations of his defenders aside, he started the reaction without having any idea how many people would be burned, with no way of knowing that anyone could control it before he set if off causing harms a really don't think he intended. If that's not reckless, than I don't understand the definition of the word.

I don't trust our government to do much right - and I definitely don't trust them to not misuse information or improperly expand precedent to increase their power, control and authority.

That said - there isn't anyone else that's in the business of trying to protect us from the bad actors, and good intentions be damned, he willfully damaged their ability to provide that protection. That doesn't make him a hero - he's caused some real hurt. That you're applauding him says that the people you're OK hurting have been doing a good job at insulating you and everyone else from the wolves that are barking at the door. You might wanta think a little about that before you submit Snowden's Canonization.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I doubt the really dangerous people were unaware of NSA capabilities before Snowden's revelations.

They can't use the capability to collect data on all of us? Boo hoo. I don't think all of the "wolves at the door" are overseas.

From an international perspective, I trust no one and no government. But domestic surveillance is not international, it's domestic.

You seem to sort of agree that all the wolves are not overseas:

I don't trust our government to do much right - and I definitely don't trust them to not misuse information or improperly expand precedent to increase their power, control and authority.

How do you propose to prevent it? Through proper channels, I'd guess, since you do not like the illegal route. Did you happen to notice how that went when it was tried?

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

I doubt the really dangerous people were unaware of NSA capabilities before Snowden's revelations.

They can't use the capability to collect data on all of us? Boo hoo. I don't think all of the "wolves at the door" are overseas.

From an international perspective, I trust no one and no government. But domestic surveillance is not international, it's domestic.

You seem to sort of agree that all the wolves are not overseas:

I don't trust our government to do much right - and I definitely don't trust them to not misuse information or improperly expand precedent to increase their power, control and authority.

How do you propose to prevent it? Through proper channels, I'd guess, since you do not like the illegal route. Did you happen to notice how that went when it was tried?

Your comment about where the wolves are is spot on - they're everywhere. W/R/T bad actors being aware of our capabilities - there's a HUGE difference between understanding what's technically possible, and knowing how that technology has been put into operation, who it targets, and what's being done with the collections.

Would you want to give your opponents in a football game your playbooks before you met 'em on the field? In my angry opinion, that's what Snowden has done.

The way we collectively control our government is to first prevent them from having uncontrolled authority in the first place. Ooops - our bad - we screwed that up already. The only other mechanism we have is to address their enforcement actions when those actions appear to exceed the boundaries of authority that have been accepted by the voting populace.

So - do we want to continue to develop actionable intelligence to provide protections for the citizens and businesses of the country? Or, do we want to accept that bad people are going to continually try to do bad things? Or - do we want to reduce our desirability as a target to the point that nobody wants to cause us harm? I'd like the 3rd - but, given our hesitatingly accepted role as the big kid on the block, I don't know how we do that without accepting some other perhaps not as benevolent entity as that new big kid.

I don't know what the correct set of answers is to balance government's exercise of authority with the need for it to be somewhat intrusive to provide what we ask of it.

I don't think that doing what Snowden's done is the answer.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I doubt the really dangerous people were unaware of NSA capabilities before Snowden's revelations.

They can't use the capability to collect data on all of us? Boo hoo. I don't think all of the "wolves at the door" are overseas.

From an international perspective, I trust no one and no government. But domestic surveillance is not international, it's domestic.

You seem to sort of agree that all the wolves are not overseas:

I don't trust our government to do much right - and I definitely don't trust them to not misuse information or improperly expand precedent to increase their power, control and authority.

How do you propose to prevent it? Through proper channels, I'd guess, since you do not like the illegal route. Did you happen to notice how that went when it was tried?

Your comment about where the wolves are is spot on - they're everywhere. W/R/T bad actors being aware of our capabilities - there's a HUGE difference between understanding what's technically possible, and knowing how that technology has been put into operation, who it targets, and what's being done with the collections.

Would you want to give your opponents in a football game your playbooks before you met 'em on the field? In my angry opinion, that's what Snowden has done.

The way we collectively control our government is to first prevent them from having uncontrolled authority in the first place. Ooops - our bad - we screwed that up already. The only other mechanism we have is to address their enforcement actions when those actions appear to exceed the boundaries of authority that have been accepted by the voting populace.

So - do we want to continue to develop actionable intelligence to provide protections for the citizens and businesses of the country? Or, do we want to accept that bad people are going to continually try to do bad things? Or - do we want to reduce our desirability as a target to the point that nobody wants to cause us harm? I'd like the 3rd - but, given our hesitatingly accepted role as the big kid on the block, I don't know how we do that without accepting some other perhaps not as benevolent entity as that new big kid.

I don't know what the correct set of answers is to balance government's exercise of authority with the need for it to be somewhat intrusive to provide what we ask of it.

I don't think that doing what Snowden's done is the answer.

Which capabilities did he divulge the use of that concern you so much? Specifically, please. And what actionable intelligence have these programs yielded?

Re the bolded bit, actions that never appear would seem to be exempt from that kind of control. If we don't know about those enforcement actions, how are we to know they exceed the boundaries?

Since the only way to know appears to be illegal whistle blowers, I support them. Without them, that "only other mechanism" you spoke of does not exist and we are left with no mechanism for control.

 

[Mark K]

There have to be secrets in LE, so total openness is problematic. There will always be things that "we" can't verify. Don't set the standard there, because that will never happen. Some parts of the government must be brought into it for oversight, the only discussion that is worth beans is what parts of it are and should be doing that.

It doesn't make sense to spend billions on crafting ways to detect bad guys and then hand them a blueprint of how to avoid those methods, so Snowden's behavior will never be rewarded by the USG. He has to uncover actual abuse, not evidence of the potential for abuse to qualify for whistleblower status. So far, no dice.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

There have to be secrets in LE, so total openness is problematic. There will always be things that "we" can't verify. Don't set the standard there, because that will never happen. Some parts of the government must be brought into it for oversight, the only discussion that is worth beans is what parts of it are and should be doing that.

It doesn't make sense to spend billions on crafting ways to detect bad guys and then hand them a blueprint of how to avoid those methods, so Snowden's behavior will never be rewarded by the USG. He has to uncover actual abuse, not evidence of the potential for abuse to qualify for whistleblower status. So far, no dice.

It's a good thing no one is advocating total openness!

How about if we discuss the oversight parts some more, specifically with reference to what badlat posted above:

The National Security Agency unlawfully gathered as many as tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-discontinued collection program, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

The 86-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, explains why the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court at the time ruled the collection method unconstitutional. The judge, John D. Bates, found that the government had “advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe.”

Illegal data collection is not abuse?

Telling the court you're doing one thing and then going and doing another is not abuse?

I'm in favor of legal data collection with effective oversight, but thanks to Snowden, we know that's not what has been happening.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

I doubt the really dangerous people were unaware of NSA capabilities before Snowden's revelations.

They can't use the capability to collect data on all of us? Boo hoo. I don't think all of the "wolves at the door" are overseas.

From an international perspective, I trust no one and no government. But domestic surveillance is not international, it's domestic.

You seem to sort of agree that all the wolves are not overseas:

I don't trust our government to do much right - and I definitely don't trust them to not misuse information or improperly expand precedent to increase their power, control and authority.

How do you propose to prevent it? Through proper channels, I'd guess, since you do not like the illegal route. Did you happen to notice how that went when it was tried?

Your comment about where the wolves are is spot on - they're everywhere. W/R/T bad actors being aware of our capabilities - there's a HUGE difference between understanding what's technically possible, and knowing how that technology has been put into operation, who it targets, and what's being done with the collections.

Would you want to give your opponents in a football game your playbooks before you met 'em on the field? In my angry opinion, that's what Snowden has done.

The way we collectively control our government is to first prevent them from having uncontrolled authority in the first place. Ooops - our bad - we screwed that up already. The only other mechanism we have is to address their enforcement actions when those actions appear to exceed the boundaries of authority that have been accepted by the voting populace.

So - do we want to continue to develop actionable intelligence to provide protections for the citizens and businesses of the country? Or, do we want to accept that bad people are going to continually try to do bad things? Or - do we want to reduce our desirability as a target to the point that nobody wants to cause us harm? I'd like the 3rd - but, given our hesitatingly accepted role as the big kid on the block, I don't know how we do that without accepting some other perhaps not as benevolent entity as that new big kid.

I don't know what the correct set of answers is to balance government's exercise of authority with the need for it to be somewhat intrusive to provide what we ask of it.

I don't think that doing what Snowden's done is the answer.

Which capabilities did he divulge the use of that concern you so much? Specifically, please. And what actionable intelligence have these programs yielded?

Re the bolded bit, actions that never appear would seem to be exempt from that kind of control. If we don't know about those enforcement actions, how are we to know they exceed the boundaries?

Since the only way to know appears to be illegal whistle blowers, I support them. Without them, that "only other mechanism" you spoke of does not exist and we are left with no mechanism for control.

Tom - I won't be as specific as you might like, but, sharing collection targets, what was collected how provides a roadmap that our adversaries can easily follow to communicate in a manner that's immune to those collection methods. Result? Those methods are no longer efficacious, and the budget and time spent developing them has been wasted. I also won't engage in conversations about the "yield" of the programs that were revealed by Snowden - as what they've yielded thus far isn't public knowledge, and really isn't pertinent to the discussion. Much intelligence is used like the actuarial data used to write insurance policies: Not individually actionable, but, when analyzed in aggregate, it can provide real data.

As you mentioned in your response to Mark - "effective oversight" may or may not be lacking. How do you personally have enough information to determine what constitutes effective oversight, much less whether or not the oversight that was exercised was effective? How does an IT guy like Snowden know? He's not an analyst, he's not an operator, he's not been briefed on the goals, intentions and limits of the programs such that he knows enough to make those kinds of determinations. He WAS briefed on the potential damages that an improper disclosure would cause, and chose to do so anyway.

I understand the guy's motivation, and I understand and empathize with the peripherally informed folks who think that he did something good. All this cheerleading for Snowden is completely ignoring the real damage and substantial costs his actions have incurred - and until those are publicly released, any determination that his actions ended up as a "net good" are just unfounded speculation.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

If the cover has all been blown away, what's the problem with discussing it?

"Trust us, there was terrible damage!"

Um, no, lost me at the first two words.

When a chief judge of the FISA court comes out and says the NSA told him one thing and did another thing that he found unconstitutional, that is evidence of a problem to me.

Snowden knew that what he was looking at and what the public was being told he might look at were different things and he wanted the public told. So he told us. And guess what? A lot of us don't see the need for all the metadata collection, the email and text collection, and all the other domestic data collection that has been going on. We feel that a government with that kind of power is more dangerous than any terrorist, especially when we know the agencies involved lie to the oversight court and just plain don't talk to Congressional overseers.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

If the cover has all been blown away, what's the problem with discussing it?

"Trust us, there was terrible damage!"

Um, no, lost me at the first two words.

When a chief judge of the FISA court comes out and says the NSA told him one thing and did another thing that he found unconstitutional, that is evidence of a problem to me.

Snowden knew that what he was looking at and what the public was being told he might look at were different things and he wanted the public told. So he told us. And guess what? A lot of us don't see the need for all the metadata collection, the email and text collection, and all the other domestic data collection that has been going on. We feel that a government with that kind of power is more dangerous than any terrorist, especially when we know the agencies involved lie to the oversight court and just plain don't talk to Congressional overseers.

So "A lot of us don't see the need" - is justification for a rogue like Snowden, no matter how well intended his actions were, to destroy capabilities and networks that took years and untold dollars to develop? To cause real harm to fragile relationships that will take a generation or more to repair?

Sorry Tom - transparency in government has limits - and Snowden violated those limits.

I understand your feelings w/r/t the government having too much power, and I can empathize with that. But - damaging its ability to protect citizens isn't the way to go about effecting a change in that balance.

I've said all I will say on this topic - you're entitled to your opinion, I'll respect it, but, will not agree with your interpretation of the circumstances that formed it.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

If damaging the ability of government to illegally collect data results in collateral damage to its ability to protect citizens, that's just like any other collateral damage. Too bad.

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

If damaging the ability of government to illegally collect data results in collateral damage to its ability to protect citizens, that's just like any other collateral damage. Too bad.

You set cars on fire in the 60s, didn't ya?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

If damaging the ability of government to illegally collect data results in collateral damage to its ability to protect citizens, that's just like any other collateral damage. Too bad.

You set cars on fire in the 60s, didn't ya?

Fuck! You guys were watching me with the magnifying glass and the Matchbox cars way back then??? h34r: