Snowden's victim

[Econoline]

More to the point, since he left he's maximized his chance of prison (and the length of his sentence) if he's ever caught and brought back--and I've got to think that, in the long run, the odds are against him with that.

[Big RR]

crackpot--if he's actually done that, you're right, but I haven't seen any proof.

econoline--my guess is he thinks he can just wait until the administration changes and the furor dies down. In another 5 years or so I doubt many will even have any idea who snowden is.

[Crackpot]

Look on the article on the previous page RR.

[Big RR]

I don't see anything about "state secrets", just a willingness to assist in their investigation of espionage activities where "appropriate and legal". He may well be offering more (I think a lot of people would when being pursued and facing a long prison term), but I don't know for certain.

[Crackpot]

He is offering methods to specifically stop US spying. How can you do that without revealing just how the US spies?

[Big RR]

Perhaps we're looking at different articles; the one I read (posted by Gob) said he offering to help Brazil's investigations?

[Econoline]

Interesting essay on the similarities--and differences--between Edward Snowden and Winston Smith:

Orwell in America

A medium ranking, 30 something year old man works on programmes concerned with gathering global information and using it in the interests of the state. Although he is an agency insider and enjoys the modest state privileges that derive from that, he comes to the conclusion that ‘The People’, in whose name he does these things, are not its beneficiaries but its victims, and that for all its talk of freedom and truth the state is intent on deceiving them. The man wants to admit his rebellious thoughts and reveal the deception but knows that by doing so he is going to make the rest of his life difficult, not to say short, and there will be no going back. He does it all the same. He has no accomplices, except his girlfriend. The world has yet to decide what will happen to him.

See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/12/orwell-in-a ... HcU3e.dpuf

[rubato]

Tech Person of the Year:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/colu ... y/4213953/

Whistleblower Edward Snowden is tech person of year
John Shinal, Special for USA TODAY 10:22 p.m. EST December 28, 2013
AP_NSA-Snowden

(Photo: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras via AP)
SHARE 1068 CONNECT 128 TWEET 82 COMMENTEMAILMORE

"They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

— Benjamin Franklin, for the Pennsylvania Assembly, in its reply to the governor, 1755.

SAN FRANCISCO — In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the American people, through their elected representatives in Washington, chose to exchange a significant amount of freedom for safety.

But until a lone information-technology contractor named Edward Snowden leaked a trove of National Security Agency documents to the media this summer, we didn't know just how much we'd surrendered.

Now that we do, our nation can have a healthy debate — out in the open, as a democracy should debate — about how good a bargain we got in that exchange.

For facilitating that debate, at great risk to his own personal liberty, Snowden is this column's technology person of the year for 2013.

While a long line of so-called leaders of the tech industry were repeating the smug mantra that "there is no privacy" — all while secretly cooperating with the NSA's surveillance program — Snowden risked prosecution and jail to give Americans the chance to choose for themselves whether it still matters in the digital age.

Secrecy has long been a favorite tool of totalitarian regimes that want to stifle internal political debate.

Secret courts were a staple of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, used to exile dissidents to Siberian gulags. ... "

For those who care about civil liberty.


yrs,
rubato

[Joe Guy]

The CIA, FBI and other government agencies should be required to publish detailed plans for catching criminals before they act on them.

It's our right to know as Americans.

[rubato]

The Guardian
Slate
and The Daily Beast
all have him as "Person of the Year"

And an Israeli online publication called +972 does too:

https://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2013/1 ... blication/

One of Israel’s best online publications – +972 Magazine – has for the first time chosen someone unconnected to Israeli/Palestinian issues as its “Person of the Year.”

That person is Edward Snowden.

The unusual move by this progressive, politically searing outlet in Israel is testament to just how strongly Snowden’s leaks have reverberated across political spectra. And as +972 Magazine revealed, it is also testament to just how critical Snowden’s leaks are when considering the very nature of the Internet itself, and what it may become.

I found this selection from its editors to be quite compelling:

As journalists, we are experiencing firsthand how the Internet has altered our profession, putting some of us out of work while creating new opportunities for others, ones that we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. A project like 972 Magazine could not have existed without the platforms provided by WordPress and Google, Facebook and Twitter.

But as much as we are aware of the significance of these massive changes, the small amount of attention we pay to the battle over the Internet is astonishing. Until we are faced with a specific problem – a website crashing, a webpage removed, a Facebook account hacked – we tend to take it all for granted.

Rather, we used to tend to take things for granted. That is, until a soft-spoken, geeky-looking computer specialist showed us how fragile the new freedoms provided by technology are and the degree to which the virtual universe is exposed to manipulation and abuse. He showed us how underdeveloped our thinking is on privacy and political participation in this virtual space. He showed us just how exposed we are in the face of power in this virtual world – more than we could have ever imagined, let alone agreed to, in our more physical existence.

This is the context in which Edward Snowden’s act needs to be understood. One had to have been especially naïve to think that the U.S. government was not spying on the German chancellor or the Israeli prime minister, as Snowden’s documents revealed. The more tech-savvy among us knew well that digital communications are traceable, though few ever imagined the scope of the NSA’s surveillance programs. But the story is not just your email, or the records of your phone calls stored on NSA servers and maybe shared with your own government. The issue at hand is the Internet, and what it will become: a force of freedom or the perfect machine for surveillance and control.

A force for freedom or the perfect machine for surveillance and control. These are the stakes, brilliantly articulated. Kudos to +972 Magazine for recognizing Snowden’s impact as a global one, and a critical one.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Apparently they were involved in some really seamy tactics; putting spyware into computers ordered by 'targets'

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/G ... 100684.php

German magazine reveals NSA hacker unit's tactics
Associated Press
Published 7:42 pm, Sunday, December 29, 2013

A German magazine described the operations of the National Security Agency's hacking unit Sunday, reporting that American spies intercept computer deliveries, exploit hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijack Microsoft's internal reporting system to spy on their targets.

Der Spiegel's revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is portrayed as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.

Citing internal NSA documents, the magazine reported Sunday that TAO's mission was "Getting the ungettable," and quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying that TAO had gathered "some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen."
High-tech spy gadgets

Der Spiegel said TAO had a catalog of high-tech gadgets for particularly hard-to-crack cases, including computer monitor cables specially modified to record what is being typed, USB sticks secretly fitted with radio transmitters to broadcast stolen data, and fake base stations intended to intercept mobile phone signals.

The NSA doesn't just rely on James Bond-style spy gear, the magazine said. Some of the attacks described by Der Spiegel exploit weaknesses in the architecture of the Internet to deliver malicious software to specific computers. Others take advantage of weaknesses in hardware or software distributed by some of the world's leading information technology companies, including Cisco Systems, Inc. and China's Huawei Technologies Ltd., the magazine reported.

Old-fashioned methods get a mention too. Der Spiegel said that if the NSA tracked a target ordering a new computer or other electronic accessories, TAO could tap its allies at the FBI and the CIA, intercept the hardware in transit, and take it to a secret workshop where it could be fitted with espionage software before being sent on its way.

Intercepting computer equipment in such a way is among the NSA's "most productive operations," and has helped harvest intelligence from around the world, one document cited by Der Spiegel stated. ... "

See link for more, and more interesting.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/12/s ... .html#more

The Washington Post‘s Barton Gellman gifts us with a year-end Snowden wrap-up:

Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.

For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.…

It is commonly said of Snowden that he broke an oath of secrecy, a turn of phrase that captures a sense of betrayal. NSA Director Keith B. Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., among many others, have used that formula. In his interview with The Post, Snowden noted matter-of-factly that Standard Form 312, the ­classified-information nondisclosure agreement, is a civil contract. He signed it, but he pledged his fealty elsewhere.

The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy. That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not.

People who accuse him of disloyalty, he said, mistake his purpose.

I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it....

Technology, of course, has enabled a great deal of consumer surveillance by private companies, as well. The difference with the NSA’s possession of the data, Snowden said, is that government has the power to take away life or freedom.

At the NSA, he said, “there are people in the office who joke about, ‘We put warheads on foreheads.’ Twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads.”…

Former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste away in Moscow as an alcoholic, like other “defectors.” To this, Snowden shrugged. He does not drink at all. Never has…

There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States. I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have not entered into any agreements with them. If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public.

[Big RR]

The CIA, FBI and other government agencies should be required to publish detailed plans for catching criminals before they act on them.

It's our right to know as Americans.

Just like every other person and agency, these agencies are subject to the rule of law, and must account for what they do. Otherwise why have any laws affecting their activities?

[Joe Guy]

The CIA, FBI and other government agencies should be required to publish detailed plans for catching criminals before they act on them.

It's our right to know as Americans.

Just like every other person and agency, these agencies are subject to the rule of law, and must account for what they do. Otherwise why have any laws affecting their activities?

I don't think anyone is saying those agencies shouldn't be accountable. I'm wondering how anyone expects an agency that works undercover to do its job if it is required to make everything they do public.

Is anyone really surprised that we spy on other countries?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Or that they spy on the USA - in fact, every country does its best to spy.

[oldr_n_wsr]

You know, with all the data they are supposedly collecting, they cannot possibly weed through it all to lfind a real threat. I am sure they have advanced programs to "filter" and let the "nothings" pass by (aka 99.9999% of calls/texts/emails/etc). But even with all that, the Boston bombing occured (even with a tip from the ruskies) and the Times Square missfire happened which was only stopped by an incompetant bomber and an alert citizen.

Too much info.
But one might be able tofilter out a few good investment tips.