Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/nyt-snowden-was-hacker-nsa

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

115 84 13 years ago

jgrahamc4• 13 years ago

This whole affair gives me an odd vibe. For reasons I can't figure out, I feel like everyone is holding back information. Obviously the government is, but it sure seems as if the journalists reporting this story have also declined to tell us everything they know. Maybe there's good reason for this. But I wish I knew what it was.

Perhaps it's that the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes. It makes sense for The Guardian/Glenn Greenwald to put out just enough information to cause a ruckus while keeping everything else to themselves.

eightyone4• 13 years ago

You obviously aren't familiar with Glenn Greenwald. He's been extremely critical of the Obama administration on a variety of issues. What your claiming makes zero sense. There is a reason why Edward Snowden sought out Greenwald.

jgrahamc4• 13 years ago

That's true. Could you elaborate?

PS I think you are reading something I didn't write.

I'm claiming that it makes sense for The Guardian/Greenwald to hold back because they can drip feed information that creates a long running 'scandal'. That has two effects: it keeps The Guardian itself in the news and it prolongs the story.

Perhaps you think that I am equating Obama as a "Democrat" and The Guardian's notion of "Left Wing" as the same thing. I am not.

For example, The Daily Telegraph did a similar thing with revelations about MP's expenses in the UK. They had all the information but over a period of days let out different bits of information. This is the sort of thing newspapers will do, and, for The Guardian, Snowden's leaks are a massive story. They'll milk it as much as they can.

walshemj4• 13 years ago

That's what I thought why not talk to a more experienced Journalist such as Duncan Campbell that covers the security area.

Does sound like Snowden was shopping for a journalist who "wanted to believe" to borrow a line.

andyjohnson02• 13 years ago

I didn't downvote you but I'm not sure how the "editorial slant" of the Guardian is significant. Would you be happier if the revelations had come from a right-wing newspaper with a libertarian opposition to government surveillance? Or a 100% non-slanted media outlet? What difference would this make?

And since you used the word, what do you think the Guardian's "agenda" is?

DanBC3• 13 years ago

I didn't downvote you.

Perhaps it's that the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes. It makes sense for The Guardian/Glenn Greenwald to put out just enough information to cause a ruckus while keeping everything else to themselves.

You say that this paragraph means "The Grauniad has some juicy information. They drip this out, because that keeps people buying their paper. It keeps the story alive."

I agree with that.

But reading the paragraph quoted it starts "the information is in the hands of a 'left wing' newspaper which has a specific agenda/editorial slant and is using the information for those purposes." - which makes it sound like the paper is drip-feeding the information to push a left-wing agenda, not to increase sales.

davidw• 13 years ago

Speaking of slants and agendas, motherjones.com has all the subtlety of mises.org in theirs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you can pretty much guess either one's opinion on any given topic without having to bother reading the actual article.

I'd prefer to see neither one here, but I suppose that ship has sailed - and the site holed below the waterline with all the politics and 'outrage stories' we're seeing lately.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

The joys of information asymmetry. I have a feeling that Glenn is playing a long game here. Also with Snowden in Limbo I suppose he just sits and waits for a good timing.

Zirro• 13 years ago

"Profiles describe him as secretive, fascinated with computers, and with knowledge of things like Tor (a peer-to-peer network for maintaining anonymity for computer communications)."

Doesn't that describe most of us on HN? ;-)

hnha• 13 years ago

and that's a great example why data retention is bad.

swombat• 13 years ago

Money quotes:

an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.

Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets. They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system.

So basically he was a professional hacker. That takes a fair bit of intelligence, knowledge and experience, and is a fair bit beyond the job of a sysadmin, which is what everyone was assuming based on the title.

I guess it made sense. Unless you're Dr Evil, you probably won't call your hired mobsters "assassins" either, instead you might call them something neutral like "Situation Specialists"...

walshemj4• 13 years ago

No if you where a TLA why would you use job titles that gave anything away about what the persons job was.

And how does one go from "Infrastructure Analyst" to being a government hacker looking at job postings for Infrastructure Analysts seems to indicate that it is a posh word for systems administrator.

mncolinlee• 13 years ago

No one hires hackers using normal job postings and titles. They show up at DefCon and Black Hat Briefings and then schmooze in t-shirts and blue jeans.

Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM

greyman• 13 years ago

Yes I see it the same way. Still, I don't understand what the article wants to deduce or imply from that.

tripzilch2• 13 years ago

Unless you're Dr Evil, you probably won't call your hired mobsters "assassins" either, instead you might call them something neutral like "Situation Specialists"...

Private Security Contractors.

Amadou2• 13 years ago

So basically he was a professional hacker.

Which explains why Obama called him a hacker last week. Everybody (well some bodies) thought Obama was using language to trivialize the leaks since none of the leaks involved Snowden doing any hacking. Turns out Obama just accidentally revealed more about Snowden than we realized.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/obama-edward-snowde...

nodata2• 13 years ago

I find it very interesting that there is only one photo of Snowden, and that nobody has seen him.

panacea• 13 years ago

That photo is a still from a video interview he had with The Guardian.

nodata2• 13 years ago

But always _that_ photo. Never a different photo. Seems odd to me.

DanBC3• 13 years ago

I kind of hope that it's making SV types realise that some people just don't appear online.

I guess there's a bell curve. At one end are the extremely privacy conscious with no-online presence and at the other are the people plugged into everything. Do start-ups want to grab the hump of the curve? Or do they want to target the careful users at the lower end?

sigkill• 13 years ago

Coincidentally, since mid-May I've been on an online scrubbing spree. Any post/photo/comment I might have made under my "real" handle, I'm trying to delete it. 13 year old me was way stupid if I see what I've written online over the course of the past 15 odd years. Of course, I'm just trying to reduce my google-footprint, it's not like the data has gone forever.

[Sites such as Hacker News don't allow you to edit, much less delete comments once a certain time has elapsed].

jyap• 13 years ago

Yeah, I can answer that. Here in Hawaii they showed interviews with his neighbours (since he worked here).

Here, quick Google search found this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nsa-leaker-edward-s...

and this:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/girlfriends-blog-...

mtgx• 13 years ago

It was the right "strategy". If they would've released everything in one day, we'd probably already be on to the next thing by now, and the whole scandal would've lasted a week. They've done you a favor doing it like this.

quackerhacker• 13 years ago

I agree mtgx. Snowden has stated before that he's wanted to keep the focus on PRISM and not himself, although I'm sure the media has a hand in focusing on him, and not on what he has risked his life and livelihood to reveal.

brown9-22• 13 years ago

Is it the responsibility of a newspaper to create a long-running scandal, or to report on the news/truth?

I'm confused by people that say the motives of someone like Snowden or an institution like The Guardian are irrelevant yet then laud The Guardian for having a clear motive.

JunkDNA• 13 years ago

I have to admit I've been increasingly concerned that something about this is not adding up as well. I can't precisely put my finger on it. The link to wikileaks gives me pause and the more recent stuff about foreign spying which, while politically incorrect, is kind of the NSA's primary sigint job. The most recent PRISM slide release also seems to suggest a narrower and more targeted US role than was let on initially.

mr_spothawk• 13 years ago

I speculate that the reason his Ecuador papers were revoked has more to do with Ecuador's dirty laundry than Snowden's. It's my view that this is the largest existential threat to the US Security Apparatus (e.g. Booz, et al. ) that has ever existed. Under that level, I could imagine they are pulling out all their stops.

grey-area3• 13 years ago

The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind?

Frankly, I don't think any of these questions matter, and the speculation without evidence is not useful. We should be discussing the leaks, not Snowden's motivation in leaking, his background, his girlfriend, how much he understands of what he leaked etc. The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government.

What's more, Snowden apparently thought the entire set of slides should be revealed to the world. I'd like to know what changed his mind.

Snowden gave the documents to journalists so that they could fact-check, start asking questions, and release what they thought was appropriate. According to Greenwald he specifically mentioned that he didn't want to dump all this data, and I can see good reasons why he wouldn't want to - there are probably things in the documents that would be very damaging (and not just to reputations) if released, some documents have been redacted before release, and they require explanation and context - none of that comes with a simple dump of the documents.

There are also sound tactical reasons for allowing the administration to tangle itself in its own lies, and to prevent the story simply being buried so I completely understand why they do this. Of course the newspapers and journalists involved have their own opinions, but trying to reduce those opinions to left wing or libertarian or whatever other labels you care to apply does nothing to elucidate how they have affected the presentation of the information. On the contrary, it just allows people to dismiss the information without bothering to address its implications. Greenwald for example has been labelled extreme left-wing, libertarian, extreme right-wing and everything in between, but I think he's really interested in privacy and surveillance, not joining the left-wing or right-wing club and hating the other side. The Guardian has not pursued an agenda here that I can discern aside from trying to sell more newspapers or get more hits - they've printed stories from all over the political spectrum, and they are not the only newspaper releasing stories - the most important recent leak of 4 slides was from the Washington Post, which is also in possession of this material, papers in Hong Kong and Germany have also been given some information. Snowden was also interviewed in Hong Kong by veteran diplomatic reporter Ewan MacAskill[1] who seemed impressed with his credentials and honesty so he's not completely opaque. I'd recommend any who haven't to watch this interview with the Guardian editors explaining the process in a bit more detail[2].

I find the disturbing allegations of unregulated, widespread, and deep surveillance used for economic and political ends far more important than Snowden's role in all of this, and I think he'd agree with that. While it's tempting to get obsessed with Snowden, his character, his job, why he leaked etc, and create grand conspiracy theories surrounding it, it's more healthy to discuss the facts we do know and their implications for how we use the internet. More information will come to light in time, and the information we do know raises serious questions about just how far state surveillance should be allowed to go.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz...

alan_cx• 13 years ago

You kinda sounds like you agree with Snowden's message, appreciate his risk, but then want him just left to hang out to dry? Surely this bloke deserves protection? If he is forgotten while people deal with the allegations, he'll rot.

I do agree that the issues are important, but the life of one human being, especially the one who made the debate possible, has to be as important. If publishing personal stuff protects, and at the moment it seems that keeping him in in the public eye is probably helping keep him alive, then so be it.

Also, freedom is partly about how we treat individuals in the extreme. The US reaction to this says a lot.

jaggederest4• 13 years ago

In the world as it exists today, whistleblowers against the US virtually forfeit their lives. He's a dead man walking, and by talking about him instead of the larger issues you give leverage to ignore the larger issues.

This is always the way it works - ad hominem, discredit the person, imprison/kill him as an example, roll cute summary stories in the press about what a deranged maniac he was, and the populace forgets all about the larger issues once the human interest drama is wrapped up.

So please, accept that he's thoroughly and truly fucked, and try to make the incredible orwellian surveillance state they've built the focus.

grey-area3• 13 years ago

I certainly don't want him to be left isolated, but I disagree that speculating about him or his motives keeps him safe.

I think it becomes far easier to demonise him, spread confusion about his motives, and engage in baseless smears of his character or competence, if we allow speculative articles like this one to direct the debate.

ryusage• 13 years ago

Consider this: the whole point of his huge sacrifice was to get people to talk about the information he revealed. If we expend too much of our energy talking about him and the way he got the information to us, rather than the information itself, then doesn't that just make his sacrifice kind of a waste? People don't have infinite attention and energy for these discussions.

dllthomas5• 13 years ago

"The motivation of a source in journalism is not really important, what is important is discovering the truth about what is happening in the world and our true relations with our government."

I agree with the second part, but the motivation of a source can be important to those aims. When we're dealing with an incomplete picture, sometimes a carefully filtered one can be more misleading than a randomly populated one even if the former has fewer dots. Understanding why those dots appear lets us correct somewhat for agenda (but of course, we have to be careful not to be correcting for the wrong agenda or things may only get more distorted...).

dllthomas5• 13 years ago

Of course I meant even if the latter has fewer dots. That a sparser picture can be more misleading shouldn't come as any surprise.

reeses• 13 years ago

What is interesting about the article, in its barely-informed conjecture, is the "revelation" that NSA employs people who focus on attacking infrastructure, and that Mr. Snowden may have been one of these people. Instead of destroying his credibility, identifying his role as more active than "a sysadmin" would add credence.

Right now (it's even the top comment on the article) the focus is on his being a "high school dropout with no degrees or credentials," which has been established to be incorrect. "Hacker who was housebound with mono for a year and worked for the NSA as a cyber-sniper-scout," is more difficult to dismiss.

(Off topic: your first link wants me to see,"emacscankill," to which I wish to say: yes, but there's no default keybinding.)

DanBC3• 13 years ago

What was Edward Snowden's job when he worked for Booz Hamilton as a contractor to the NSA?

We don't know. That's the nature of jobs with security clearances doing work for Secret Government Spy Agencies.

The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I'd certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind? Did he actively search out vulnerabilities in other networks that NSA could exploit? Did he do this only at Booz Hamilton, or did he have basically the same job previously when he worked directly for the NSA? Exactly how much does he know about the NSA programs he's been revealing to the world?

There are two issues here.

1) How can we organize effective oversight of secret spy agencies?

2) How can we trust whistleblowers? How knowledgeable are those whistleblowers?

For 1) we have to create strong law. We then give a small independant group oversight powers. We then have to trust the spies, and the people overseeing them, to obey the law. We have to be careful about crafting the laws, because these people want to push the boundaries of what they can do.

For 2) I guess we just have to accept that people tend not to whistleblow unless they feel strongly about something. He's been called a traitor for revealing this much. Imagine what happens if he reveals even more.

Or, at the very least, I'd like to know why I can't know.

There are several guesses we can make here. i: The slides reveal information that put people's lives at risk. ii: The slides reveal information that give too much information to the enemy; or cut off information to the US. iii: The slides are not particularly relevant to the prism story. iv: The slides contradict the prism story, and giving the whole context ruins the story, and the journalists are sensationalising scumbags. v:etc.

HarrietJones• 13 years ago

The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I can understand that governments may have shadowy departments doing illegal things we don't know about, but the whole scope of Prism seems to be too wide. When people talk about it, they describe computer systems I couldn't even begin to imagine, let alone design.

Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

Add to this the emphasis by all parties on Snowden and his shenanigans, and I'm just left confused.

Amadou2• 13 years ago

Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year. I just don't believe it's technically possible.

That's because it is not possible. The $20M/year number is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg for one little program that seems to be more like the GUI on top of the data from all the other programs. The NSA alone has a budget on the order of $10B/year - the entire (american) "intelligence-industrial complex" is estimated to be around $50B/year.

mpyne3• 13 years ago

Somehow, the US government is spying on every piece of internet traffic for the grad sum of $20M a year.

PRISM is nowhere near 'spying on all traffic', which is how NSA was able to do it for $20M a year.

brown9-22• 13 years ago

I do find it baffling that Greenwald hasn't written an article detailing his relationship with Snowden, the timeline of when they began communicating and when Snowden started at BAH, if they are in contact still, etc., at least to dispel any questions people would raise about it.

I suspect Greenwald would say he hasn't done this because he thinks that Snowden isn't important to "the story", yet he still happily tweets snarky things about Snowden and what other journalists write/think:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351910567210004480 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/351453433989054464

joshdance• 13 years ago

Snowden is the red herring. It is more interesting for news cycles to talk about a person. What he does, what he likes. It is hard to talk about "the government". There is no one person to interview, we can't find out what food "the government" likes etc. We should be focusing on the leaks and the systems that allowed the surveillance to happen.

Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up

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