Kevin Drum asks a good question:
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?
If Snowden was what’s called a “white hat” hacker in the industry, which means someone on the “good guys” team who does security analysis or “ethical hacking”, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve worked with “white hat” hacker types before, and Snowden fits the profile. There’s an anti-social and obsessive aspect to the ones I’ve met. They had done poorly in school, didn’t do too well working a day job, they believe some strange things, but they have the ability to focus obsessively on the minutiae of security. These guys end up employed in positions of great responsibility. One individual I knew dressed like Neo in the Matrix. I considered him essentially unemployable based on his system administration failures, but he ended up working for a major bank as a white hat. I don’t bank there.
If I had to guess about why someone like Snowden, or my former co-worker, were hired by big organizations and given the keys to the kingdom, I’d say that the management employing them were actually attracted by whatever anti-social or rebellious traits those guys showed. If you’re a mid-level bureaucrat at some bank or the NSA, and you are essentially clueless about hacking, the “use someone who thinks like a crook to catch a crook” logic probably sounds pretty good. If Snowden had something of a bad boy past, that would actually be a good recommendation under that (dubious) theory.
Drum also mentions another key frustration of this story: the release of information is coming out in little bits and pieces. For example, the Post’s revelation of a few more PRISM slides over the weekend was odd considering that they had the whole slide deck since the start of the story. My guess is that Gellman has other sources who are verifying the content of the slides before they’re published, but that’s just a guess.
By the way, Betty’s right: relying on Wikileaks is dumb. Assange could fuck up a ham sandwich, and if you want evidence for that, the story of how he hired the Icelandic Augustus Gloop, who informed for the FBI, is worth a read.
ranchandsyrup
Most signs point to “asshat”. Minority view: “douchehat”.
catclub
The most productive thing to come out of this would be repealing the Espionage Act.
I may start yelling it in honor of ‘Pass the Damn Bill’.
schrodinger's cat
MSM hacks are clueless about how intertoobz work, case in point, WashPo’s Samuelson, whose idiotic op-ed you linked to this morning. May be that is one of the reasons why there is so much confusion about what Snowden actually did at Booz.
West of the Cascades
For someone who did the country a service by getting a conversation going about how much the legal-on-paper (paper which you’re not allowed to see) security apparatus sucks, Snowden seems like a colossal dick destined to end up (probably justly) in a US prison … or trapped forever in the transit lounge at the Moscow airport.
I wonder how many US security officials have flown into Moscow and are now also “in transit” looking to have a word with him? Anyone know what we’re talking about in terms of physical layout? I assume there’s a hotel in the transit area, but even then I guess he gets some knocks on his door.
Tone in DC
@West of the Cascades:
I figure those officials are already there. My inner Ian Fleming sez they are keeping a low profile, as Vlad and his guys have been know to be… interesting to deal with.
Soonergrunt
@West of the Cascades: Supposedly there are several hotels in the transit area, some of them are very nice, according to NPR.
@mistermix, top: careful, now. The hamsters will bite.
FlipYrWhig
So he was a white hat hacker who had a sudden road-to-Damascus moment whereupon he decided that hacking was too powerful to be left to governments? This is like a sped up time lapse version of the evolution of techno-libertarianism.
MikeJ
Elsewhere on teh interwebs an idiot was telling me that suspending the passport of someone with an arrest warrant is a violation of human rights.
Jewish Steel
Is this where I can call Snowden my manic pixie dreamleaker?
geg6
@West of the Cascades:
My understanding is that there is a hotel in the transit area. I imagine it’s currently filled with guys in black suits, Ray Bans, and skinny ties who offer to buy young Edward drinks in the lounge and who have varying accents. Young Edward hasn’t exactly shown an ability to discern who is trustworthy and who is not, so I’m guessing the guys in dark suits and sunglasses are having a field day.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve been told that libertarianism is a big thing in the computer techie culture. Not completely sure why, but if it’s true, I can’t say I’m too surprised.
Yatsuno
@Jewish Steel: Only if you have your towel.
Jewish Steel
@Yatsuno: Obama stole my towel.
Marc
Do you think they even think about it that much? I assume they’re just hiring from a limited pool of qualified applicants, most of whom come from a geek/hacker culture that’s gone septic with libertarianism and martyr fantasies.
gelfling545
A lot of people in a lot of places have been lecturing the populace for focusing on Snowden’s character rather than his deeds. I admit that I think it was a good thing that he got talk restarted on the whole NSA issue. Where his character comes in. I finally realized, is that he may know a lot of sensitive stuff. Some of it really is a matter of national security. The fact that he planned out his exploits (well, not exactly planned) like a spy novel and seems a bit bewildered on what to do next does raise cause for concern that the longer he is camping at the Russian airport the more desperate he will become. With all types of information in his hands and few good choices he may make some really bad decisions. Already he has been, at least, indiscreet. When someone performs an action such as his we are dependent on his/her integrity & intelligence and the more Snowden looks like a deer in the headlights, the less confident I feel that he possesses either of those traits in a great enough strength to control the tiger he’s trying to ride.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: oh yeah, it’s The Thing. Probably because both techies and libertarians tap the same pool of socially maladroit dudes who think they’re beyond the rest of the peons, and that other people don’t get them because they’re jealous of their superiority.
Mnemosyne
@Tone in DC:
I have to say, the whole “disappearance in the Moscow Airport” thing worries me more than a little, and I am a vocal non-fan of Snowden. The Russian security folks are not to be fucked with, and they would have no compunction about getting as much information out of Snowden as they can in whatever way they can and then dumping him back on the Americans for prosecution.
dollared
So MM, love you, but you’ve got absolutely no facts behind the speculation in this post. Maybe he just ran the knowledge management system? Maybe he was a UI tester? Black hat, white hat, whatever. Call us when you have some facts.
MikeJ
@Chris:
Libertarianism is almost always presented as being “logical” where and accepting one premise is supposed to make you swallow the whole thing.
Add to it that the pitch usually includes “you’re smarter than the rest of the sheeple”, something which for certain narrow definitions of smarter is often true. Then tell them that this philosophy not only accepts but encourages preying on the weaker, but weaker has been defined in such a way that the techies are better.
Teddy's Person
Here’s an AP reporter’s experience looking for Snowden in the Moscow Airport.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
We ought to watch extrapolating about a group from one (or a few). Snowden is self selected. He’s not exactly the best example of hacker/Computer Person/Security person. There are a lot of people that handle classified information, and almost all of them do not pull a Snowden.
Ted & Hellen
The predominant hatred at BJ for Snowden, Assange, Greenwald, Manning, Aaron Swartz, and anyone else who kicks sand on the polished shoes of the Obama Federal Government is utterly bizarre.
RareSanity
Whether or not he would be considered a white hat or not, I think, depends on your perspective. You’d have to draw a line between what he did before he decided to purposely gather information to leak, and then what he did after he decided.
I think the white hat/black hat distinction comes from your purpose for trying to access information of which you are not authorized…and what you do with that information, if successful.
Some of tactics of various government intelligence gathering agencies, definitely cause the differences between “good guys” and “bad guys”, to be murky at best.
For example, finding a vulnerability in Facebook which allows the NSA to secretly monitor any and all communications of a user, then exploiting that vulnerability for illegal information gathering is black hat all the way. The fact that you’re doing for the government, the “perceived” good guys, doesn’t change that. However, being a 16 year old kid that finds the same vulnerability, then reports it to Facebook…then after allowing Facebook to correct the problem, releases the information publicly, is the act of a white hat.
I’d say there’s a possibility that Snowden could have been a black hat (working for Booz/NSA) turned white hat (working against Booz/NSA).
FlipYrWhig
@MikeJ: For similar reasons, the same pool supplies followers of the men’s rights and pickup artist “cultures.”
Origuy
@geg6:
I’m imagining young women, slender and impossibly beautiful, with excellent English and other skills.
Eric U.
the problem with this story has always been that Snowden had a lot more info than just the troublesome stuff about spying on American citizens. And he and GG don’t seem to be able to tell the difference, but the Chinese and Russians certainly can. Now he has gotten himself into a vulnerable position and I have to wonder at what point he is going to wish he was tied up naked on a mattress in a U.S. military prison blasted by Bon Jovi songs at high volumes
ranchandsyrup
@MikeJ: Saw an article about Ephemerisle up on the Delta in NorCal. Milton Friedman’s grandson (i think) heads up a seasteading institute and they’re trying to make a glibertarian paradise on houseboats. Lots of Silicon Valley techies give it a go. nplusonemag.com/seasteading
Ted & Hellen
@dollared:
Standard BJ FP’er OP.
This blog is a train wreck I can’t take my eyes off of.
schrodinger's cat
@Origuy: Honey trap?
Barry
One thing to remember is that the contractor is billing out people, very likely at cost-plus. This means that they have strong incentives to hire warm bodies, pay them lavishly (or say that they are…), to inflate their bills.
mistermix
@dollared: Speculation – on a blog? Say it isn’t so.
MikeJ
@FlipYrWhig: Certainly so on the PUAs. There’s a compulsive need for there to be rules and a system, and if there is a system it can be exploited. And of course is also related to not really understanding that other people also have agency.
It would be interesting to run the false belief test on some of them and see if they;re as developed as the average seven month old.
Trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Putin could use him as a trained pet monkey and there’s not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Wouldn’t put it past him.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
@MikeJ:
Did socialism, or the radical left more generally, fill the same niche in previous generations? Cause it sounds a lot like the cliche of the sixties student radicals – the cool radical ideology, the belief that said ideology was self-evident, scientifically provable Truth, the niche appeal to socially “maladroit” nerds by saying “you’re not wrong, it’s all of society that’s wrong, you’re just smarter than them all.” Is it just another instance of “it’s always projection,” or am I right that libertarianism/Objectivism’s actually replaced left wing radicalism as the fashionably rebellious ideology?
Origuy
@schrodinger’s cat: Back during the Cold War, I worked for a now-defunct computer company that did a lot of work for the DOD, NSA, DOE, and other TLAs. Every so often we’d get a memo about honey traps (not using those words.) I didn’t do spook stuff, but I was single and presumably unblackmailable. I always wondered how I could get a beautiful Russian spy to seduce me and pump me for the internals of our FORTRAN compiler.
Bostondreams
@Ted & Hellen:
Because whenever Soonergrunt posts about Manning, the hatred just drips from his words for sure. Like yours concerning the Obama Administration or, you know, this blog.
Andrey
FWIW, while libertarians are almost certainly present in greater ratios among techies than among the general population, liberals still greatly outnumber them, and are also present in greater ratios than among the general population. That’s been my experience, at least.
eemom
I’ve been gone for a while so maybe this was covered already, but Glennzie’s saying he has newer and groovier scandalicious spyshit to unload with the 4th of July fireworks.
politico.com/story/2013/07/glenn-greenwald-nsa-leak-edward-snowden-93648.html
sheeyit, he’s even smiling.
Mnemosyne
@Origuy:
One of G’s former co-workers defected from (I think) Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. It was pretty difficult for her to manage it, because she worked in a vacuum tube factory as an engineer and the Czech government was terrified that their advanced vacuum-tube technology would be handed over to the US.
The US guys who debriefed her pretty much laughed at her “inside information” and showed her a transistor radio. She still got asylum, though.
Hoodie
No offense, but this is stupid if you’re attempting to compare the NSA with your local bank branch. NSA managers are career sigint people. NSA invented this shit and have been at it for decades. Snowden is a babe in the woods.
Boots Day
The fact that Kevin Drum doesn’t even know their name points up how little blowback has accrued to Booz Allen Hamilton for all of this. It’s not like Snowden was a long-term employee who went bad; he was apparently planning this since before he was hired.
Someone really should be asking questions about the competence of the people we’re entrusting our security to. But Booz Allen is such an entrenched part of the Old Boy National Security Network that no one will ever hold them responsible for any of this.
Elie
@gelfling545:
BINGO
That is one of the reasons why his character matters… he is very shaky and we have no idea what he has — maybe HE has no idea what he has either…
What I find both appalling and fascinating is that GG has not gone to ground but seems to be lapping up the excitement and preparing for the next release – as though damaging this country or the potential for it is a good thing. He is very scary right along side the shakiness of Snowden.
Teddy's Person
@eemom: See, I don’t get this. If you have something important to say, just say it. If you don’t have your duck in a row yet, just keep your mouth shut. He’s teasing this like it’s the new fall TV schedule.
Cacti
@Bostondreams:
Or rape or homicide victims.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of anyone who has Timmeh’s expressed approval that hasn’t been accused or convicted of a crime.
James Hare
Snowden is not a white hat now if he ever was one before. I don’t understand this strange kind of ethics people are relying on that says “I like the ends, so the means must be okay.” If Snowden had gone full black hat I would have more respect for him. At least then he wouldn’t have violated any agreements he made as a condition of employment. As a data center worker I have to take those types of agreement seriously — if I don’t I can be sued and in some cases prosecuted. I don’t see any reason I should pat Snowden on the back for his terribly unprofessional actions. IT work is hard enough without jackholes like Snowden giving the higher-ups even more reason to be concerned about every move we make. I also fail to see why I should be grateful to Snowden for this moronic “conversation” we’re supposedly having about surveillance.
To all the SnowdenBots — what good has come of his disclosures? What changes in government policy are more forthcoming today than they were the day before Snowden made his disclosures? How has the national conversation changed in good ways since Snowden made his disclosures?
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: my answer would be no, with the limited exception of faux-left horndogs who used rage against the machine as a pose to nail naive hippie chicks. The outcasts who made the left are more like LGBTQI people and slackers and sensitive types, while the outcasts who made the right are sullen individualists seething at being disrespected by people who ought to be beneath them.
Elie
@Boots Day:
I wouldn’t be my sweet bippie on that, bro. I think that they are just focusing on securing the fugitive first. I am absolutely confident that they will because my sense is that the US is going to put a hard press on folks and countries to get that done — esp before he gets a chance to further rat out our interests in those four laptops of his (rumored) or otherwise makes himself available to the Russians.
Cacti
@James Hare:
It’s a hallmark of brogressive politics.
Corner Stone
The easy corollary to why we don’t know this exact answer yet is pretty simple.
It’s a lot more fun to talk about the PRC or Moscow airport or Assange pissing off Ecuador.
For fuck’s sake, we’ve seen like 4 of the 41 slides that are said to exist. Maybe like less than 10% overall.
No one knows exactly what he did for the NSA. And no one, even those in power, can tell us exactly what he took!
And yet, here we all are at BJ, bravely and derisively declaring this all a “nothingburger” and yawning because real worldly people like us all knew all these known knowns. Yawn, burger, known.
Maybe we could stop talking “about” Snowden and start talking about what the fuck was going on? Both with the NSA and with our fucking government.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: I didn’t think Glenn Greenwald even had the facial muscles requisite for smiling.
schrodinger's cat
@Origuy: Tinker, Tailor, programmer?
Pococurante
Not in my experience. Just the opposite perception actually.
The Snowdens are hired by people who are holding their nose. Consultancies don’t care – in their view life stops after the next billing cycle and the professional management who hire them are mainly interested only in a fig leaf, someone to blame before they hire in the next of of consultants from the same firm.
Professional IT management is no different than other forms of Big Company portfolio – it tends to get clogged up over time by people who, like that monolithic 1%er that gets tossed around here, claim to believe that technical people are another form of ditchdigger. It is a form of insecurity.
Paraphrased:
“My past technical skills and early career achievements arm me to understand what these more assertive hands-on types are telling me, but unlike them I am focused on real business needs. And of course political realities. And when it goes south I just tell my pet consultancies to ‘fire with prejudice’ (um no simply re-assign) those sub-employees who Caused The Problem.”
Bad things happen as in all things Life. So we see the increasing trend to relegate the doers to a consulting class. With which we doers are completely comfortable. Gigs come and go but in the end the job security is better for the doers than it is for the professional management class. And the latter know it, which is why they close ranks more quickly than doers.
Economists call the the Exit or Voice decision. Economists being much like professional management often push Exit. Doers choose both, because it is after all a false choice. Those who choose just Voice are simply the next wave of disengaged Doers waiting to happen.
And that in a nutshell is why management regardless of portfolio poop their own patio then shift blame.
Today’s Corporate World is just a shell game. Individuals work for their own best interests, and most of the time (Game Theory proofs notwithstanding) cooperative gameplay is a sucker’s game.
@Marc: Exactly. Never ascribe to intent what can otherwise be explained as laziness, ignorance, and willful stupidity….
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Over the past few months we’ve had dozens if not hundreds of discussions about what the NSA appears to have been doing, how it was approved, how that approval seems insufficient, how it might be changed, what laws could be passed to deal with surveillance, privacy, etc., etc., etc. There’s no way to say that hasn’t been happening here.
Citizen_X
@Mnemosyne:
Operatives from Peavey Amplification just about had her ready to defect when some of Marshall’s dreaded agents kidnapped her and took her off to a secret (but exceedingly loud) site in the Balkans.
schrodinger's cat
@Pococurante:
Thank you, in economics, the assumption is that everyone is working towards a Nash equilibrium, another assertion without any proof.
lamh35
Ok, I fully admit to baiting and trolling Corner Stone and the usual GG-bots on BJ with this one:
Glenn Greenwald Goes On ‘Fox & Friends’ (VIDEO)
And when criticized for going on Faux News, the anti-thesis to real journalism, GG’s retort, ” Hey, Obama did it too”. And Obama was also, rightly IMHO, criticized for “legitamizing Faux News”. Tell me again, how NOT obsesses with Obama GG is?
Elie
@Pococurante:
Robert Sneddon
@Mnemosyne: About them there vacuum tubes… A friend of mine was in the USAF, spent a lot of time Up North in the sorts of establishments where They Had Truly Found Paradise and one of her jobs was to keep track of the very expensive and highly specialised “tubes” that drove the big radars to make sure none of them ended up in a diplomatic bag heading for Moscow. This was in the 1980s. Today still if you want a lot of power at high frequencies then tubes are still a go-to technology.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: If that was the case then why wouldn’t we know the answer to Kevin Drum’s “good question” ?
mdblanche
@Soonergrunt: How much money does Snowden have left in his bank account? I’m guessing those nice hotels aren’t free.
@Chris: It’s an industry full of white guys with an over-inflated sense of their own talent and a conviction that their successes are entirely of their own making, which was built off of government-designed and funded infrastructure. Sounds like a magnet for libertarians to me.
Corner Stone
@Robert Sneddon: I thought it was “All ball bearings nowadays!” ?
ChrisNYC
@Corner Stone: Umm couldn’t Snowden tell us? I don’t find him particularly credible but he surely can give the American people more than, “Yeah so I kicked ass and took names and I could read the POTUS’ emails and 200K and the Aloha-f’ing state baby.”
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC: Why hasn’t Congress or the NSA or anyone else told us?
Eric U.
the part of this story that seems to be lost in all the obsessing about Snowden is that apparently Booz Allen will set up a system just like the NSA’s for any government. Of course, this might mean that they screw up everything the same for everyone, but it seems like we should be a little concerned about that.
JerryN
@Chris: I’ve been doing software development for 30 some odd years and there has been a pretty large contingent of libertarians (much larger than in the general public) in the business for at least that long. I suspect that’s true of a lot of engineering and technology businesses.
Haydnseek
@Citizen_X: They were only one step ahead of the ultra high-end audio companies, like Krell and Audio Research. They aren’t the only amp/preamp manufacturers that charge spectacular prices for gear utilizing what many consider to be a laughably obsolete technology. Until they hear it.
Pococurante
@schrodinger’s cat: @Elie:
Agreed. I’m still in an interesting run since the 1980s and why I use this nym from Voltaire’s Candide.
What I’ve seen is why I decided in 1989 I could never vote for a Republican again. Political parties are by definition a reflection of personality types, and a two party system is destined to crash from one extreme to the other. Like “Peace”, political balance is actually the aberration.
@Eric U.: Agreed. The media shift is unconscionable. Daily Show has been having a field day on this smoke screen.
@JerryN: Engineers in my experience truly believe the world is reducible to simply rules. Once they have mastered real world rules in their specialty they believe it grants them insight into human behavior. Despite of their younger life experience to the contrary.
Because in the end Engineers desire “logic”, i.e. a fully self-contained world where they can sort out ambiguity.
This personality trait is why so many religious fundamentalists also are engineers. The two world views actually dovetail nicely.
azlib
@Chris:
As a techie, yes, liberatrianism has a strong presence in the tech world. Snowden does sound more and more like a “white hat” hired by the NSA and later Booz Allen. He has all the characteristic naivitee about how the real world actually works for a 29 year old libertarian. I have managed folks like him and while they can be very creative and passionate about what they do, they are a royal pain to steer in the right direction.
muddy
@Cassidy: Also mocking PTSD and calling people who have been in the military “Killer”.
Violet
@Boots Day:
Yes, this. Exactly. They don’t seem to be scrutinizing their hires very well. I doubt they’ve got a lot of incentive to do so, since, if something like this happens, they just claim innocence and nothing happens to them.
If contractors were help liable for things their employees do, that might change things.
Haydnseek
@Robert Sneddon: Their resistance to EMP is a nice bonus. The Soviet air force back in the day used tubes in many aircraft, long after transistors had taken over with everyone else.
Pococurante
@JerryN: Engineers in my experience truly believe the world is reducible to simply rules. Once they have mastered real world rules in their specialty they believe it grants them insight into human behavior. Despite their younger life experience to the contrary.
Because in the end Engineers desire “logic”, i.e. a fully self-contained world where they can sort out ambiguity.
This personality trait is why so many religious fundamentalists also are engineers. The two world views actually dovetail nicely.
ChrisNYC
@Corner Stone: Cornerstone. Do yourself a favor and think.
You WANT the NSA, the former employer of a person, a soon-to-be defendant on serious charges, to be disclosing the guy’s records, his duties with them, what he knew about the data and what not? This is a lunatic plan and you should extricate yourself immediately from the kneejerk supposed “anti-authoritarian” anti government rabbit hole you’ve dug for yourself here.
Even putting aside the possibility of serious and intentional disinformation on the part of the NSA, we really don’t want the federal government saying, “Hey let’s look at Eddie’s personnel file — come on — we’ll post it on Gawker!”
Joey Giraud
@dollared:
I think it’s great that the people here fill in these incomplete stories with their own fantasies about how the world works.
Quite revealing.
Hal
@eemom:
This illustrates my fundamental issue with the way GG is going about this story. If you really want to have a serious discussion on the security state, why not release all of this information all at once? Drips and drabs are great for clicks, but damn, dragging this shit out week after week is like nails on a chalkboard. If his ultimate goal is to expose what he calls dark, deceitful and possibly illegal goings on, then get the fuck on with it.
Tone in DC
@Origuy:
LULz.
How Unskinny Bop of you, dude.
muddy
@Origuy: I worked for a gov’t contractor in the 80’s. We got the same warnings, about people being really interested in your work and charming you at a bar or wev. It had been my experience that most people would have been bored to tears with this tech info, so the honeypots would really stand out. They’d have had to send a male honeypot for me.
They also really knew how to stretch the work too. One time I finished a 100 hour task in 30 hours, and I got in trouble for it. Said they will expect us all to do that! Well, why doncha? They sent me to train on something unrelated for 80 hours and charged it to the task. It was apparently considered really thrifty to only go 10% over.
gogol's wife
@James Hare:
All that’s happened is that Obama has been tarred with the “spying President” brush, as if he invented spying. That was the objective from the beginning, at least on the part of Greenwald and the media.
Botsplainer
White hat, black hat, they’re all part of the same asshole apparatus in the private sector, one side creating problems for the other side to fix.
Often, I think they work for the same company since so many antivirus programs seem to have an initial spin as malware.
Fuck ’em all – I still have a dream that one day, a spetznatz commando group crashes into a thieving hacker boiler room in Byelorussia and machine guns every greasy faced hacker in the room into hamburger, taking viral video of the glorious event as a discouragement to others. The sobs in dorkland would be epic.
Soonergrunt
@Bostondreams: Yes, because when I say things like “I think the deserves a fair trial and if convicted he shouldn’t spend a day longer in prison than absolutely necessary for justice” and “I think the Judge didn’t give him enough credit for the mistreatment he suffered in the Quantico Brig” I’m just dripping with hatred for Manning.
Socoolsofresh
Ah, another post, another reasoned discussion on what should be considered the limits to surveillance. Oh wait, just more baseless speculation on Snowden’s character! Maybe he liked to torture animals as a child! It makes sense, I’ve heard that there are other people who have worked in the tech industry who have tortured animals as children so I’ll just paint a broad swath and say most tech people are animal torturers.
Forum Transmitted Disease
CEH here. Hope he’s not a white hat, that could fuck up my job prospects pretty good.
Chris
@Pococurante:
I think that’s kind of a recent development. “Democrat” and “Republican” didn’t used to be well-defined ideological movements like, say, “Communist” or “Socialist” or “Christian-Democrat” over in Europe – they were loose coalitions of regional party machines which were brought together by circumstances and often disagreed amongst themselves. Not much in common between Catholic immigrants in New York City and rural WASPs in Alabama, but both of them would have been Democrats. A lot in common between a Ku Klux Klan chapter in the South and a Ku Klux Klan chapter in the North, but one would probably have supported Democrats and the other Republicans.
TL/DR – I’m not sure “the two party system” is at fault. There’s always been polarization, but it’s only recently that ideological and partisan divides have become the same thing.
Violet
@Pococurante:
Do you have any data to back up this claim? The engineers of my acquaintance are not religious fundamentalists. I live in a red state, so would think I’d have a good pool of fundies around. Are you talking engineers in general–electrical, mechanical, etc.–or just systems engineers–the computer geek types?
gogol's wife
@Soonergrunt:
I think he was being sarcastic and disagreeing with T&H, not agreeing.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Pococurante: Was with you until this. Never met a fundie on a job, and I’ve been doing this a long time.
Botsplainer
@Eric U.:
I hear you have to pay extra for that kind of action in most places.
Botsplainer
@Origuy:
You shoulda pretended to be married. Then, when they threatened to out you, you would just laugh and laugh.
Socoolsofresh
Someone told me once that if a guy has a girlfriend who is a pole dancer, he is more likely to be a whistleblower!
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC: Sigh. Put down your anti-cornerstone jihad for a second. You sound like a fucking clown.
We have been told many things by our government, and they have alluded to much more.
Either he’s the office services guy making fax runs, or he has a position and a title we can use to evaluate claims.
According to every single motherfucker here at BJ, the PRC and the KGB have already sucked him dry. So clearly they know what his title was.
Why can’t we? Why don’t we?
Soonergrunt
@mdblanche: No idea. $200K/yr could go a long way, though.
EconWatcher
I have a somewhat different reaction to this story, especially because Snowden was apparently making comfortably in the six digits.
We’ve been shovelling money into the national security apparatus since 9-11, and the intelligence agencies have notoriously little transparency over how they spend their money, so you can only imagine how many boondoggles and lollygaggers we must be funding. Snowden looks like Exhibit A.
MattR
@Violet: @Forum Transmitted Disease: Agree with both of you. I can kinda see the point that both groups are looking for rules to create order out of disorder, but the engineers I know alse need the comfort of knowing those rules are correct. Faith just doesn’t cut it.
Joey Giraud
@Pococurante:
*This* is an example of why I keep coming back to read. Every so often, a really smart post that helps me feel there are others who see things too. ( as well as a few points I hadn’t considered )
You might enjoy Venket’s “Gervais Principle” of corporate management; a set of essays using “The Office” as a case study.
A minor quibble with your mention of the famous “Never attribute to malice…” It’s a rule of thumb, not a law of physics. It’s corellary is that incompetence is a great place to hide malice.
Hal
@Socoolsofresh:
You clearly haven’t read any posts in this thread, but that’s ok. The only thing people should say is that GG is a national treasure, and Snowden should have his face carved into Mount Rushmore.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
She was working on consumer-grade radios. So, yeah, not quite as valuable as someone working on defense applications.
eemom
@Hal:
“If you really want to have a serious discussion on the security state, why not release all of this information all at once? Drips and drabs are great for clicks, but damn, dragging this shit out week after week is like nails on a chalkboard. If his ultimate goal is to expose what he calls dark, deceitful and possibly illegal goings on, then get the fuck on with it.”
There’s your problem right there, those “ifs.”
GG’s ultimate and only goal is the promotion of GG. For all the gallant pixels who give their lives every day, the truth is that simple.
Socoolsofresh
If only they released Snowden’s Netflix queue, then I think we could really gain some valuable insight into why he leaked that information.
Joey Giraud
@JerryN:
I’ve found far fewer Libertarians in real engineering then in IT.
I suspect it’s the science thing.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
He probably did. He is, after all, just another asshole Paulite libertarian, just like his buddy Greenwald.
Baud
@Socoolsofresh:
THAT would be an awesome Open Thread topic.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: You are on fire today,FYW.
ChrisNYC
@Corner Stone: We actually have not been told a lot about Snowden by our government. We have the Booz Allen statement. We have confirmation as to the CIA guard thing in Europe. If you’re asserting more disclosures from the government, along the lines of what Drum’s talking about, you better offer some links.
Also, you’re of course changing the argument again. Your favorite dodge. Drum’s questions were not about “what was his title”? They go much further:
But, ok, you’re fine with, you hope that the government, who has filed charges against Snowden, releases a bunch of information on him. Better yet, let’s have the showboat hacks in Congress do it. Gohmert! We can crowd source the prosecution. Perfect. No freedomy Stasi KGB problem there.
Mnemosyne
@EconWatcher:
This, and also what Violet and others said about using private contractors for stuff this sensitive. But I guess we can’t have that conversation until we settle the burning question of Edward Snowden: Superhero or World’s Greatest Patriot?
Joey Giraud
@Hal:
Because “drips and drabs” keeps the conversation going in these here “United States of Amnesia”
Really, it’s just marketing. Basic stuff.
LAC
@James Hare: Well, you know, conversating is much more fun than doing things like voting or being politically active on something apparently sooooooooooo freaking upsetting that pigs are flying, and dogs and cats are living in sin.
Socoolsofresh
Is Snowden more of a Star Trek or a Star Wars fan? If only we knew, then I think we could really begin to understand.
Mnemosyne
@Socoolsofresh:
Yes, because finding out what information he had access to that he brought with him to China and Russia is exactly like looking at his Netflix queue.
Try not to be even more of an idiot than you usually are.
Joey Giraud
@Violet:
As a failed scientist who ended up in engineering, I can verify that a religious fundamentalist *can* be a good engineer, as engineering requires less hard curiosity then real science.
But a religious physics researcher? A chicken with teeth.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
I think they did, and figured out he didn’t have shit that they didn’t already know. This is why he gets no love – they don’t want a young man that the state will have to support for the next 50 years, particularly when the young man handed them nothing of value. They owed Philby and Burgess and Maclean, so they got a little status, a little freedom, and a lifetime supply of vodka for excessive drinking – Snowden hasn’t done them a solid, so he doesn’t get shit.
Its a nothingburger, straight out of “Burn After Reading”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
One of the reasons that a lot of people in the “computer techie culture” don’t have much in the way of a liberal arts education. That is, they are specialists, and they don’t have the broader perspective that a well rounded liberal arts education affords.
The trend toward libertarianism means they don’t fucking get that the evil state is the one that spurred on computer innovation, and then the internet itself. Ma Bell flat out told DoD that the idea of computers exchanging information over phone lines was just ridiculous, so DoD told DARPA to look into it.
And here we are, using the fruits of that research. A market created by government action.
Joey Giraud
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I did, a lifetime employee at a defense contractor. He was intellectually honest and had no trouble admitting his beliefs had no factual basis but he kept them for indefensible emotional reasons.
I had a lot of respect for him.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
The dude has the taint of Original Trek dork all over him.
Joey Giraud
@EconWatcher:
Agreed, even though there’s also a steady stream of quieter stories about waste, fraud and abuse.
Imagination is still a requirement.
LAC
@ChrisNYC: stop jihading corner stone! Put down your jihader and stop jihading already, ya jihading jerk, ya…
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Really? I see him as more of a TNG guy. Probably fapped to Deanna Troi.
Joey Giraud
@MattR:
It’s more that the existence of clear rules allows you to separate your work from your faith.
Real science requires a willingness to discard rules. Engineering much less so.
Pococurante
@MattR: @Joey Giraud: @Forum Transmitted Disease: Yup. That’s the problem with apocrypha.
@Chris: Fair points all. I was speaking fully temporal to the two party system I’ve experience since 1975 to today and my life experience is solely American in this context.
@Violet: Not a lot since it is a personal observation of mine. Since you responded with personal (apocryphal) – doing the same . I’m the son of an engineer from a family of engineers and doctors. They’re mostly physical or theoretical types. I’m unusual as I’m technology. I’m in North Texas, as red and bible belt as one can get.
Anyway I agree it bears looking into. For what it is worth, and I know this will get a few folks going, the question has been asked sort of in reverse. Why are engineers over represented among fundamentalists. Yes, I’m hand waving. :) But “why are so many terrorists engineers” is the second top query per Google. I’m open to teasing that out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joey Giraud:
Engineering, for the most part, functions in a Newtonian world.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
The vibe I’m getting from this is that it’s kind of like One Percenter culture; they’ve mastered one set of skills, are enormously impressed with themselves for having done so, and think it totally proves that they’re smarter, better, harder working or whatever than the great unwashed masses, because those silly unwashed masses went and learned other skills.
The DOD/DARPA history behind their field is just another symptom of a broader trend in society – we’ve been living in the shadow of big government for so long that we simply take its benefits for granted, don’t even realize they’re there or what makes them possible anymore, and, in many cases, actually attribute it to the “market engine” or God knows what.
@Botsplainer:
I have him pegged as part of the Libertarian Firefly Fans Who Are Firefly Fans Because It’s Libertarian brigade, but I’m open to being proven wrong.
Baud
@Joey Giraud:
Huh?
Joey Giraud
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think there’s any way for us to really know that.
So why not let the spooks worry about that? Keep your eyes on the most important thing; violations of Constitutional principles.
floridafrog
@forum transmitted disease – Unfortunately, I have. After 30 plus years in engineering I have met a good number of fundies in the business – most of them structural engineers. I have not thought of it in this light before but their field does require an absolute minimum of uncertainty and adherence to rules and codes is pretty strict.
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC: Good Christ. Learn to read you boring Lil Cujo.
MattR
@Baud: I think he is saying that with real science you have to be willing to question assumptions to form new hypotheses to test whereas an engineer is more concerned with a set of rules or a process that they can repeat over and over that covers all conditions.
(EDIT: And I should probably not be posting right before I run out the door when I won’t be able to respond. To the vet we go.)
ChrisNYC
So there’s this:
Bolivia’s foreign minister says the plane bringing President Evo Morales home from Russia was rerouted to Austria after France and Portugal refused to let it to cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board.
David Choquehuanca has denied that Snowden was on the plane, saying “we don’t know who invented this lie, but we want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales.”
Baud
For the love of God:
ETA:
@ChrisNYC:
Beat me by THAT much.
Joey Giraud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Heh..
Yeah, mostly, although relativity played a bit of a role in the GPS system, and we all know quantum explains transistors, but in general you’re right.
I wonder if there are enough fundie Christians in higher physics to do a little survey about how they square Christian determinism with quantum indeterminacy.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
Far better to fap to her (she is, to be fair, inherently fapworthy) than to fap to the Gorn, like TOS Trekkies do….
ChrisNYC
@Corner Stone: It’s ok CS. Everyone knows you get pissy when you lose.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC: Yawn. Known. Burger.
ChrisNYC
@Baud: It’s interesting because they asked Putin about this today — Morales picking up Snowden — and Putin said “I don’t know anything about his traveling with a diplomatic delegation.” Which, please, Putin doesn’t know what’s up in the Moscow airport?
Joey Giraud
@Baud:
I’ll try a different formulation..
Hard science research requires a level of critical thinking that isn’t required for engineering. Engineers can get real work done just by sticking to rules and exercising judgment.
Joey Giraud
@MattR:
You said it better then me.
Botsplainer
@ChrisNYC:
At this point, I vote that somebody place a bottle of whiskey and a pistol with a single round in Snowden’s Novotel room. Wait a half hour, and shove Greenwald inside as well.
Then turn on the hidden cameras for the fun.
Socoolsofresh
Was Snowden’s last phone an Android or an IPhone? I once heard a guy say Ron Paul once and he owned a Galaxy, so with that I’m pretty sure I can speculate that Snowden was a Blackberry user.
MikeJ
@Joey Giraud: A physicist, a mathematician and an engineer were each asked to establish the volume of a red rubber ball.
The physicist immersed the ball in a beaker full of water and measured the volume of the displaced fluid. The mathematician measured the diameter and calculated a triple integral. The engineer looked it up in his Red Rubber Ball Volume Table.
Baud
@ChrisNYC:
Next time I go to the airport:
“Ladies and gentlemen, please do not joke about bombs or Snowden sightings. The TSA takes those jokes seriously.”
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Who was the dude with the fapping program in the holodeck, that program featuring Troi?
mdblanche
@Baud: Scientists who discard the rules make the discoveries that change how we understand the world. Engineers who discard the rules make bridges that fall down.
@ChrisNYC: I’m guessing those asylum requests Snowden made to France and Portugal were a waste of his time then.
Mnemosyne
@Joey Giraud:
As I’ve said approximately a bajillion times, if this means that the FISA process gets looked at, then I’m happy. So far, though, 90 percent (at least) of what Snowden seems to have is information about the US spying on foreign governments, not US citizens. I, for one, don’t find spying on foreign governments to be a violation of any Constitutional principles since the Constitution doesn’t apply to non-US citizens living in foreign countries, but at least a few people here seem to disagree with me and think the true horror is that the US spies on foreign countries.
Interestingly, one of the people who seems to be most horrified at US spying on foreign countries is … Edward Snowden. He said during one of his many interviews that the incident that turned him was how the CIA treated a Swiss banker when Snowden was based in Switzerland.
Baud
@Joey Giraud:
Ok.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
He’s clearly an Android user by choice. It is less functional and buggier, but you can customize it to do tasks that are stupid and useless. It fits his personality and lack of character perfectly.
Joey Giraud
@MikeJ:
How do I express a real world laugh here without any chance of it being considered snark?
I suppose it’s an old joke, new to me… :)
mai naem
A small part of me feels bad for Snowden. I really do think he’s just young and dumb It’s like the Hong Kong lawyer who said that Snowden was just a kid who preferred Pepsi to wine. Whoever did a background check on him for the NSA and Booz Hamilton should be more than just fired. My hypothesis is that Snowden probably had some pangs of conscience about the spying and started emailing GG and GG massaged his ego and managed to get a lot of info and at the same time probably egged him on to go on this little adventure which has ruined his life. My guess is he’ll commit suicide at some point. Maybe not in Moscow, maybe once they get him back here and he ends up in prison with no computer. Whoever advised him to go Hong Kong deserves to be in a Chinese labor camp. How fucking stupid can one be? And then Russia? Really? WTF?
ChrisNYC
@Baud: True enough. An Austrian reporter for some TV station (ORF TV?) has apparently tweeted that Snowden is in Vienna.
Gotta love the person who tweeted with the #Snowden hashtag: I genuinely don’t have an opinion on #Snowden.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer:
THAT was Lieutenant Barkley, played by Dwight Schulz, and he became a recurring character.
Holo Troi: “I am the goddess of empathy…”
Troi: “Muzzle it!”
Bob In Portland
@James Hare: Not that I think he’s a white hat either, but what are his ends? To let Russia, China and Germany know that we spy on them? I actually think Putin is on to him (and when I say on to him, knowing that he isn’t the moral creature he claims to be). He’s certainly anti-Obama, and considering his history in intelligence which goes back a lot farther than Obama’s Presidency, it’s a little peculiar that he is focusing on the Administration, since he should know that Obama has no real control over the intelligence community.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be an agent for someone else, maybe Germany, whose job is to screw with the US. After all, there’s probably a reason why we’re spying on them and they’re undoubtedly spying on us.
Hal
@Botsplainer:
Ensign Barclay.
EDIT: Oops, Lieutenant.
mai naem
@Botsplainer: Actually he comes across more like an Iphone user – the kind of person who’ll stand in line all night in the freezing winter because they have to replace their perfectly good current phone with an even more expensive phone which has a second camera because OMG how can one have a phone without two cameras! Also too, he can do a “keep up with a Joneses” with his equally stupid friends.
Joey Giraud
@Mnemosyne:
Fair enough. I agree that spying on other countries isn’t a Constitutional issue and done within reason is almost neccesary.
We should probably find out all of what was released before concluding that the info isn’t relevant to domestic spying.
But I doubt there will ever be an authoritative, trustworthy summary for us to point to. At some point, the issue will become so clouded and murky that we’ll all give up.
Me too, I’m not a crusader of any kind. I just think those principles are easy to forget, and we’re going in a bad direction.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Like oh….I don’t know…growing food?
Someone linked to a cartoon that illustrated Galt’s Gulch after the end of the novel, where the supermen were all pulling weeds out of the fields and not liking it at all.
Baud
@ChrisNYC:
This whole Snowden saga is CRAZY. It’s beyond Hollywood. The only sobering fact is that I don’t see any way this doesn’t end in tragedy for him. He’s going to be returned to the U.S. at some point, and tried, and convicted.
Mnemosyne
@ChrisNYC:
Snowden probably should have checked this list before deciding on his flight plan.
Socoolsofresh
Sometimes, the really important questions are not being asked. Namely, what is Snowden’s go-to meal for breakfast in the morning? Libertarians are notoriously famous for being oatmeal eaters, but since some say he has a bit of a messianic complex, I’d go with cream of wheat.
MikeBoyScout
Because it would be unblogerific not to speculate…
why should anyone believe Snowden or GG are pulling the strings here?
Is there anything we know about these guys that would make them foolproof from being led down the garden path like a puppet on a string?
We aren’t ever going to know because there is no penalty for being “erroneous”.
What was Snowden’s job? Nobody knows..by design.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hal:
You’ve got the correct spelling of the name, though. Pointed ears for you!
Bob In Portland
@EconWatcher:
We’ve been shovelling money into national security since 1947.
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
I always figured that Picard was the only person on the ship that didn’t use the holodeck as a personal fap extravaganza center.
They’d have been lined up 20 deep to fap, even during red alerts.
AHH onna Droid
Augustus Goof.
Dunno about white hats-my impression online is that there are plenty of non idjits-but knowing so many who got it jobs that pay much better than mine, I’d say youre spot on about the ignorance of those doing the hiring. Havibg seen this process first hand, I blame the elevation of HR to hiring manager. The so xalled experts are easily gamed by those without scruples.
Elie
@Joey Giraud:
I can agree with you on everything you just laid down.. (sorry have been off the thread for a bit so trying to catch up)
ranchandsyrup
Snowden tried to fade into Bolivian?
muddy
@Botsplainer: I always wondered why you couldn’t close your eyes and walk into the wall in there, couldn’t you feel in your feet that you were going in circles?. And who mopped the black walls with red grid afterwards?
Chris
@ranchandsyrup:
For a moment there, I thought he was in trouble!
Joey Giraud
@Elie:
That’s nice to read. On the last few threads on this matter, I might have thought we wouldn’t agree, but then I was mostly attacking the undue attention given to Snowden, who’s pretty trivial in the big picture.
Elie
@Joey Giraud:
agree
ranchandsyrup
@Chris: Mike Tyson tried to do it. He just ended up with a face tattoo.
the Conster
@MikeBoyScout
I have concluded that if anyone thinks that anything Snowden or Glenn Greenwald had access to, or think they know, is important or in anyway a threat to the real players in the intelligence world, I’ve got a bridge to sell. They’re just clowns participating in their own sad clown show with a supporting cast of pathetic idiots whose ODS has predisposed them towards something – anything – anyone – that gives them that feeling of justification, importance, insideryness and superiority. It’s comical until you feel dirty for laughing at them, and then decency requires you to look away.
Botsplainer
@muddy:
Imagine how an efficiency report would look for the fap-addicted.
Botsplainer
@muddy:
Imagine how an efficiency report would look for the fap-addicted.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@James Hare:
Thread is dead, and BJ avoids hard questions these days anyway… but I’m more curious as to why this “logic” applies to Snowden, but not to Aaron Swartz?
Swartz, another kid who violated ‘agreements’ for personal principle, had very few defenders among the left. And (unlike Snowden) didn’t endanger anybody.
Somehow the left has evolved into a subculture where it’s cool to betray one’s own country, but god forbid should you violate JSTOR’s imaginary rights to IP they didn’t create.
These past few months have really forced me to reassess my politics.
PopeRatzo
@James Hare:
At least can you understand that the ends and the means are two different discussions?
We’ve pretty much dealt with Snowden, ad nauseum. He’s a jerk and an attention-whore and was mean to an ex-girlfriend. Next case.
But we have barely scratched the surface on dealing with the new information we now have in hand. We have a government who thinks spying on allies is a smart foreign policy. We have a surveillance state that the Stazi could only dream about. And it’s all running through private corporations, who also have other clients besides the beloved government.
You think the data that Booz Allen is mining is going to somehow stay segregated from the sleazy spying they’re doing for their corporate clients? If they come across some information that gives one of their big corporate clients any benefit, now we’ve got the NSA apparatus spying on us for Exxon, or the Koch Brothers, or who knows who else.
And the fact that this stuff is all going turbo under a president who swore he was going to be the most transparent president in history and he ends up ramping up whistleblower prosecutions and Espionage Act cases like never before is shameful. How is that not a betrayal?
I don’t like fighting with the loyalists here, because they are almost all good people who have good hearts. But I’m afraid I’m starting to hear some of that “Oh, he doesn’t mean to do these things” or “He really wants to change” or “He can’t help it” stuff about Obama that sometimes ends up with “I fell down some stairs” or “I walked into a door”.
MikeJ
@Jockey Full of Malbec: Aaron Schwarz stole other people’s property so now I care about Chappaquiddick.
Joey Giraud
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
Reassess your politics, but don’t forget to question the categories too.
There’s a whole lot more then just liberals and conservatives. Combinations of positions and beliefs that will just amaze you. ( like an old buddy who owns a gay porn store while voting Republican and hating Obama with a white hot passion )
all cats are not black after midnight. Endless variety. – Heinlien.
Elie
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
Its complex these days for sure. Look around the world. The “order” is in flux all over and all stock answers may not apply…
Run with the dogs or stay up under the porch….
Corner Stone
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
You really, absolutely, need to find the threads here discussing this topic.
The exact same fucking assholes were all up and over punishing Aaron as they are punishing Snowden.
I think you are way off base on this one. BJ authoritarians rode Aaron hard, non freakin stop.
RandomMonster
Can someone point to a list of just what Snowden has revealed? So far it seems like it’s one Powerpoint deck that has been misinterpreted in all sorts of ways. Industry had to step in and clarify a lot of this, and (maybe it’s just me) but in the end it didn’t seem to tell us a lot more about the FISA process than was known years ago.
Honestly, I really want an assessment of what actual secrets have been revealed before I start speculating about Snowden’s importance in the NSA or Booz Allen.
AnonPhenom
Yes,yes,yes. That’s all very interesting.
But what kind of kitchen countertops did Snowden have?
Elie
@Corner Stone:
Still have to have your resentment and rage.
We have complex and difficult things to reconcile, CS. Its not hard black and white like you want.
Please — thread the needle for me for how you reconcile being a patriot and wanting the best for your country and yet wanting the truth out and for honest move towards good change? You characterized ME as calling you and others unpatriotic — yet you never offered a coherent argument about how to look at Snowden’s releases about our international spying and how to square that with any recognition of the need for that — you made it all black and white —
Snowden as you and many others recognize, is the sideshow to an important discussion, but also he is important in defining for those of you on the libertarian end, for marking the boundary between your affiliation with our country — or not.
To reveal who I am — I am a Black woman born to Black American parents– my father’s family has been in this country as slaves and freemen since the late 1700s. Members of my family shed their blood in wars for this country and also fought for our most important freedoms in the 1960s. I love this country and its a love that is bourn out of knowing it violated my people in everyway — but has redeemed itself — not perfectly, but working to be better –enough for me to commit to its principles and its future. My loyalty is fierce because our sacrifices were huge… a sacrifice and commitment I am willing to make for future generations of my people and all Americans. Yes, America is an idea — but it is also a deep commitment for me. It is not an intellectual exercise for me to talk about patriotism. It is patriotism with memory of stripes and of Jim Crow and years – YEARS of injustice.
So for a white boy with everything his way, throws his ignorant shit on the sacrifice of generations of my family and our commitment – and in GGs case, grins through his betrayal of this country’s interests that might hurt us — I have nothing but the deepest contempt for them. I will not apologize for that and I ask YOU to thread the needle of how you balance your love of this country and its dream with the need to do the right things and advocate for righteous actions without wishing HARM on it. You tell me how you do not celebrate our humiliations and just being wrong…
Mnemosyne
@RandomMonster:
I don’t know that there’s a list, but the South China Morning Post published a series of interviews with Snowden where he talked about targets in China that he knew about, including Chinese telecom companies.
The SCMP seems to have a policy of only allowing you to look at a certain number of articles before you have to subscribe, but you should be able to do a search from their homepage if that link doesn’t work anymore.
ETA: The Guardian has also published several articles detailing Snowden’s allegations about UK and US spying at the G-8 conference and on the European Union. Again, very few revelations regarding domestic spying in the US, but a whole lot of allegations about US spying overseas.
scott
More amateur speculative psychoanalysis of the guy along with incuriosity about what our leaders are up to. Cool!
White Trash Liberal
Late to another Snowden thread (sigh)
The federal government has privatized/subsidized the spy game. Just as the bond agencies polished subprime mortgage turds, the process of obtaining and utilizing clearance has been corrupted.
Doesn’t matter what Snowden did, he had no business getting top secret clearance. The federal government needs to get out of the mindset of contracting out our security while maintaining a rigid and authoritarian approach to defending a flawed approach.
The collection and storage of data isn’t going away. It needs to be effectively regulated before someone less benign than the current POTUS decides to exploit this awful corrupt process even further.
The loss of privacy is the loss of autonomy and free will. Yet the very agencies responsible for crafting the boundaries of our privacy are shrouded in secrecy. Even the FICO score methodology is confidential, and the adjustments to credit scores and how they can be accessed are killing employment.
I am not interested on hating or praising Obama. I am sick of the fucking line in the sand. All the god damned intramural “who’s more pure” fighting is rooted in making one side admit it is all about Obama.
It’s the fucking system put in place as we cede our way of life to Orthodox Capitalism. That’s what’s wrong.
the Conster
@scott:
This! Because BJ is where all the kool kidz who really know what’s at the deep dark heart of what goes on in intelligence worldwide hang to share and ratfuck the deepest State secrets that your heroes know about! LMAO. Clown.
Socoolsofresh
But seriously though, Snowden, 2 Pac or Biggie fan? Until people start asking the hard questions, nothing constructive is going to come out of this.
Bstick
@Corner Stone: good Christ with all the time you seem to have come up with better insults.
accidentalfission
Snowden didn’t have to be a “hacker.” He was a sysadmin. He had the root password. You can’t be a sys admin unless you have the root password. That means access to every file in every directory on the system.
The president isn’t gonna be a sys admin. The head of the CIA isn’t gonna be a sys admin. Some 20 or 30 yr old Comp Sci graduate is going to be a sys admin. Who knows what’s going to be done with that kind of access?
That’s what Snowden was trying to tell us. You idiots yelling “Traitor,” listen up. He didn’t sell any secrets. He didn’t profit. He put himself in great danger. He exposed a far greater crime than he committed.