Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Bark louder, little dog.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Edward Snowden, Global Thinker

Edward Snowden, Global Thinker

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(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)

From the traitorous comsymps at Foreign Policy:

Edward Snowden, who has become the public face of an international debate over surveillance, tops the list of Foreign Policy‘s Global Thinkers for 2013. The former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence operations has been living in Russia since June and is currently wanted by U.S. law enforcement authorities and faces charges in federal court. In lieu of attending a reception in Washington on Wednesday for this year’s Global Thinkers, Snowden sent the following statement:

It’s an honor to address you tonight. I apologize for being unable to attend in person, but I’ve been having a bit of passport trouble. Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras also regrettably could not accept their invitations. As it turns out, revealing matters of “legitimate concern” nowadays puts you on the list for more than “Global Thinker” awards.

2013 has been an important year for civil society. As we look back on the events of the past year and their implications for the state of surveillance within the United States and around the world, I suspect we will remember this year less for the changes in policies that are sure to come, than for changing our minds. In a single year, people from Indonesia to Indianapolis have come to realize that dragnet surveillance is not a mark of progress, but a problem to be solved…

NSA Director Keith Alexander came in second, if that’s any comfort:

… The surveillance state Alexander has built, it seems, is here to stay, and its next move may be to take over the security of major companies threatened by cyberattack. As Alexander, who is supposed to retire in 2014, said recently, “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”…

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  1. 1.

    Redshift

    In other news, now that Republicans lost the Virginia elections, Star Scientific has settled their tax dispute with Virginia, and will pay nearly a million dollars in back taxes. Just in case anyone was under the illusion that their “gifts” to McDonnell and Cuccinelli weren’t pure corruption.

  2. 2.

    Betty Cracker

    Kevin Drum had a couple of posts on the recommendations of the panel the Obama admin appointed to evaluate NSA operations. The first hinted at some hopeful developments. The second was “meh, never mind.” I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

  3. 3.

    Tommy

    I spent years working for some of the largest DoD contractors. My dad, high levels within the DoD. Now my father’s security clearance is off the chart. Me, I didn’t have one. But I knew fucked up shit was happening. When Snowden put out those documents I was like, “yeah that is happening.” Just confirmed what I figured was happening.

    My father laughed.

  4. 4.

    Citizen_X

    its next move may be to take over the security of major companies threatened by cyberattack.

    So, does this mean Anonymous is going to end up on the terrorist lists? Seriously.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’m not sure I’d call Snowden a “thinker”.

    Glenzilla is pretty much about riding the gravy train, though.

  10. 10.

    mapaghimagsik

    @Citizen_X:

    Yes, that is the current thinking, they usually get lumped into ‘hacktivists’. And to up the ante of fear they added Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Tommy:

    Anyone who has read James Bamford knew about the capabilities of the NSA three decades ago.

    It’s amazing that the vermin of the Village are so shocked, shocked that this is going on. They’ve known about it for decades, too, if they were paying the slightest amount of attention.

    The issue is when and if the capabilities are used, and who is the target. The hoovering is not cool, but one wonders how much good it does when there is so much damn data to sift through to get anything meaningful out of it.

  13. 13.

    Tommy

    @Citizen_X: I think it was 2001. My ad agency was hired to “babysit” this tech geek. The best of the best about info security. He wanted the best. Did it all, like the first firewall software. He often said all kinds of “bizarre” stuff and we were supposed to moderate him. Funny thing, everything he said was accurate.

  14. 14.

    Culture of Truth

    No doubt Snowden’s disclosures sparked debate, but I don’t really see him as a great global thinker. But FP is getting attention, it’s rather like the awards equivalent of click baiting.

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Betty Cracker: Pie-Dough Recipe
    2 cups unbleached sifted all-purpose flour
    1 stick of butter (kept in the freezer for a few hours before making the dough)
    2 tbsp vodka
    4 tbsp ice-cold water
    2 tsp sugar
    1 tsp salt
    First I cut the stick of butter into small pieces; I then added all the ingredients to my food processor. Slowly adding the water and then the vodka till the dough came together. Wrap it in plastic wrap till you are ready to work with it.

  25. 25.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    FP obviously sees cyber security/surveillance as the issue of 2013.

    Which is IMHO a mite strange for a foreign policy journal, considering, say, Syria, Egypt, or even drones.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I see your point, but the revelations in the popular press have made what everyone knew was going on in your face, prompting a lot of bad feelings from allies, neutrals, and potential adversaries alike.

    So, for a journal like Foreign Policy, yes, it’s a big deal.

    While Obama may be personally popular, no one has forgotten that the Dark Lord controlled the NSA monster for eight years and used it indiscriminately against just about the entire planet, save for the deserting coward’s ranch and his hideaway in the Grand Tetons.

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @FlipYrWhig: That is my take as well. Snowden at number one as a symbol of the issue – I can buy that along with the others making the list, but Kerry and, for example, Li Keqiang, IMO, deserve higher billing.

  30. 30.

    Anoniminous

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The issue is when and if the capabilities are used, and who is the target. The hoovering is not cool, but one wonders how much good it does when there is so much damn data to sift through to get anything meaningful out of it.

    A reason the NSA, et. al., are hoovering up all the data they can is they don’t know who and sometimes what they are looking for. The idea is when they get enough data it will turn into Information.

  34. 34.

    handsmile

    The NSA surveillance review panel appointed by the White House is scheduled to deliver its final report of findings and recommendations on Sunday. Leaks about the review’s recommendations were published today in the NYT and WSJ: “NSA review to leave spying programs largely unchanged, reports say” (links to each paper within the article):

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/nsa-review-to-leave-spying-programs-largely-unchanged-reports-say

    For a (very) long, but exceptionally well-reported, read on the subject, this article by Ryan Lizza from the current New Yorker: “State of Deception: Why won’t the President rein in the intelligence community?”:

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

    And related to Foreign Policy’s recognition of Snowden, more than 500 of the world’s leading authors (e.g., Atwood, DeLillo, McEwan, Roy) have signed a petition condemning the scale of state surveillance:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/surveillance-theft-worlds-leading-authors

    Evidently quite a few well-informed people (in government, private industry, non-profit institutions, public intellectuals) consider this matter to be rather more than a “nothingburger” or a mere vanity project.

  37. 37.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Villago Delenda Est: @Omnes Omnibus: I guess that’s true: revelations of surveillance making international relations more complicated. And that _has_ been one of the focal points of the Greenwald/Snowden stories. I don’t think it’s the most interesting part of the G/S stories by a long shot: that would be the part about indiscriminate spying on your own citizenry (to the degree that it was happening in the first place, for the debate on which see Blogosphere, The, August 2013-present). Seems to me like the biggest foreign policy issue of the past year (from a US standpoint) was how to stand up for the rights of ordinary people stuck living in oppression and crisis without getting stuck in a full-scale war. But I’m not a professional diplomacy-talkin’ guy.

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Cassidy: I think the majority position is “Oh, right. Who was that again?” Which is the majority position on pretty much everyone not named Obama or Kardashian.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @handsmile:

    Well, one reason Obama won’t rein them in is that if he did, and, heaven forefend, something happened, he’d be blasted by the Rethuds for being “soft on terrorism” at a minimum, and a facilitator of it by default, most likely, given the entire “Kenyan Muslim Socialist Atheist Usurper” meme so popular with the wingnuts.

    It’s not like if he does nothing to rein them in and something happens, they won’t do it anyway, but this is one of those heads I win, tails you lose situations.

  42. 42.

    Thomas

    @Cassidy: Depends on the bubble. It’s certainly not a minority position among the Obama uber alles crowd. It will only become a majority position among them when President Christie is elected.

  43. 43.

    Eric U.

    it turns out the phone metadata thing has only resulted in one prosecution, and that is somewhat questionable. So they probably should stop doing it.

    I have to say that I think Snowden should be prosecuted. Maybe pardoned later, I dunno.

  46. 46.

    NR

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Well, one reason Obama won’t rein them in is that if he did, and, heaven forefend, something happened, he’d be blasted by the Rethuds for being “soft on terrorism” at a minimum, and a facilitator of it by default, most likely, given the entire “Kenyan Muslim Socialist Atheist Usurper” meme so popular with the wingnuts.

    His oath says “Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” not “Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States unless doing so means my political enemies will say mean things about me.”

  47. 47.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Eric U.:

    What needs to happen is to analyze the efficacy of the NSA’s capabilities in terms of actually preventing terrorist attacks, or at least gleaning evidence to prosecute and convict terrorists.

    Right now, it seems spotty at best, and one wonders if resources are being squandered on methods that won’t pay off in terms of actual enhancement of security or in bringing those responsible to justice.

    The US has gone down this SIGINT road for decades now as a “bang for the buck” method, while HUMINT, tedious, boring, and takes forever to build a network that can be so very fragile and break easily, is much more reliable and much more insightful into actually gleaning intentions.

  48. 48.

    David Koch

    Conflict of Interest.

    Foreign Policy magazine is owned by WaPo. Snowden has leaked exclusive stories to WaPo.

    So they’re cross promoting. Typical Beltway self-promoting, corrupt, circle-jerk.

    Obviously the top global thinkers of the last year have been Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Javad Zarif, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Pope Francis.

    Honorable Mention: Walter White and Saul Berenson.

  49. 49.

    Redshift

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The hoovering is not cool, but one wonders how much good it does when there is so much damn data to sift through to get anything meaningful out of it.

    I learned a lot about “minimization procedures” during the Bush warrantless wiretapping scandal. Basically, if you’re doing any kind of legal wiretapping, it’s impossible not to hear a lot of stuff that isn’t relevant to the case, so the parties negotiate with the judge about the procedures they’re required to use to throw stuff out before anyone looks at it, and they’re not allowed to just conduct a fishing expedition, or it becomes unusable as evidence.

    Consequently, I get that there could be ways to sift through a lot of data potentially relevant to diffuse threats for intelligence purposes without wholesale violating people’s rights. The thing some of the revelations have made clear is that the NSA expends almost no effort on doing so, or on protecting information that should be off-limits from internal bad actors.

    Arguably, that’s not surprising, since the only thing they ordinarily get in trouble for is not finding threats. But it’s the lack of any such requirements being imposed on them that make the broad collection unacceptable.

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @Eric U.: That’s been one question that hasn’t received enough attention: What does this massive data gathering and processing expenditure buy us? Would we be better off investing those billions in, say, traffic safety improvements? Probably! The same could be said of the much of our defense assets, of course.

  51. 51.

    Botsplainer

    @handsmile:

    Atwood

    Wrote pure dreck. Clearly knew nothing about the US, having centered her Great White Protestant Male revolution around the Boston area, and had the ignorance to think that somehow Texas would want to be free of that.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @NR:

    Um, every President has always taken political considerations into account when making policy decisions. Obama is no different. One of the reasons he’s been reluctant to rein in things under his immediate control is that I think he feels Congress should take a greater role in oversight, and they’ve basically ceded their own Constitutional role in that to the executive, which undermines the balance of power scheme that is central to the healthy functioning of the Constitution.

  57. 57.

    burnspbesq

    @NR:

    If I had to guess, I’d guess that your views on the interpretation and application of the Fourth Amendment are pretty far outside the mainstream of contemporary legal thought.

  58. 58.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Villago Delenda Est: NR likes to put on the mantle of One Last Properly Indignant Guy. If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention, and if you’re outraged, well, not as much as he is!

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Villago Delenda Est: Hence, the importance of legislation like the USA Freedom Act -something that puts limits on executive power and marks an attempt by Congress to take back some of its authority.

  63. 63.

    handsmile

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I agree just about entirely with your reply, and that answer is explored in some detail in the NYer article. If you have the time/interest this weekend, I strongly recommend it.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yes, that’s one of the more comprehensive legislative proposals now circulating. Of course, there’s the small matter of assuming the good faith of James Sensenbrenner. (One of the countless ways I’m nothing like Nelson Mandela.)

  66. 66.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sounds like a much better way to go about addressing the big constitutional questions about executive power, inter-branch dynamics, and such. At a certain point you have to move from “Shit Sucks And Shit!” to “How do we pass the ‘Un-suck Some Shit Act of 2014’?”

  68. 68.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @handsmile: Sensenbrenner (or Tex as he hates to be called) was one of the architects of the Patriot Act. I see his willingness to get in on the changes as a sign that the worm has turned. OTOH, Tex, being a worm himself, could be acting in bad faith; I’d never put it past him.

  69. 69.

    David Koch

    MSNBC(BREAKING): the country is commemorating the one year anniversary of the Newtown massacre with another school shooting, this time in Colorado.

  73. 73.

    Belafon

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    @Redshift:

    They don’t really get a whole lot out of a large amount of data unless they have a reason to look at a particular piece. In a number of cases, it’s after an event, where there able to get a name or number, that they can go back and look at the connections to that data point. Then they are able to do something about it.

    It’s the same thing that has happened with the images the USPS has been taking of letters. In and of themselves, the outside of the envelopes mean nearly nothing. But, as in the case of when they caught that woman in Texas sending ricin, they used the envelop to figure out when and where it was sent from based on the images surrounding the one she sent.

  75. 75.

    Trollhattan

    @David Koch:

    Scheisse.

    Shooter Dead, Student Critically Injured, At Colorado High School
    by Scott Neuman

    December 13, 2013 4:08 PM A student armed with a shotgun killed himself after opening fire at a Colorado high school, wounding two fellow students, police said Friday.

    Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said the armed student entered the school and said he was looking for a specific teacher. Robinson said another student confronted the gunman and then was shot.

    He said police later found another student inside the school whose injuries were considered minor.

    The shooting took place at Arapahoe High School, located about 8 miles from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where 13 people were killed in a massacre in 1999.
    The Associated Press quotes a hospital spokesman as saying the wounded student was taken into surgery.

  76. 76.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Omnes Omnibus: It makes some sense, though, even to a Republican: he could be figuring, “Hey, the point of all this stuff was to sniff out terrorists, not to pester ordinary rule-abiding people going about their daily business.” He might still believe that suspected terrorists deserve little protection and zero civil liberties — views that would be anathema to the ACLU or Greenwald — but believe the edifice he built was being used too indiscriminately on the right, good, moral people who weren’t supposed to be being intimidated.

  78. 78.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Belafon:

    When it’s explained that way, it’s a whole lot less sinister than it’s portrayed.

    But of course, right now, this ni*CLANG* is reading your email.

    Right.

  79. 79.

    Redshift

    @handsmile:

    Of course, there’s the small matter of assuming the good faith of James Sensenbrenner. (One of the countless ways I’m nothing like Nelson Mandela.)

    Mandela forgave his enemies; that doesn’t mean he assumed their good faith from that point forward.

    The day Mandela died, one of the commentator segments they kept repeating on BBC World Service kept going on about how part of his greatness was letting go of the past and looking forward. Um, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, anyone? The great thing that South Africa accomplished was to move forward without either requiring everyone to be punished or requiring everyone to agree to forget the past.

  80. 80.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @FlipYrWhig:

    but believe the edifice he built was being used too indiscriminately on the right, good, moral people who weren’t supposed to be being intimidated.

    Like NRA members shooting up schools, for example.

  81. 81.

    handsmile

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s that OTOH part that keeps me suspicious of Tex’s motives. His voting record unmistakably identifies him as a mud-crawler.

    (and btw, one of the things I admire about you is the velocity of your brain-fingers interaction)

  83. 83.

    Belafon

    @Villago Delenda Est: And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have a debate about how much data we collect, but it doesn’t take very much data to make a general search impossible. Imagine having the phone call lists the NSA is trying to collect and trying to figure out who is in a polygamist relationship. Now, take the same lists after you find out that Bill Henrickson has multiple wives. It would then be a lot easier to find others.

  84. 84.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Belafon:

    Well, you see, so much of this has to do with context.

    When the Dark Lord was doing it, he was directing it against Muslim monsters and various LIEbral traitors.

    However, obviously the ni*CLANG* is doing it to determine where the gunz are for confiscation.

  86. 86.

    handsmile

    @Redshift:

    An excellent point, thanks. Now there is one less of the countless ways in which I am nothing like Mandela.

    Acknowledging the essential role played by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission could not be seamlessly tailored into the immaculate Hero’s mantle fashioned by so much of the western media upon Mandela’s death.

  87. 87.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Belafon: That’s also why the building of massive databases of raw stuff isn’t the same thing as peeping or eavesdropping. It may still be bad, or feel like a violation of privacy, but there’s a difference in kind, I think, albeit one whose precise difference is difficult to pin down.

  88. 88.

    Belafon

    @FlipYrWhig: The one point that the massive data collection gets you in trouble with would be guilt-by-association. Just because I have called Bill Henrickson multiple times doesn’t mean I am a polygamist. I might just be trying to get my new product into his hardware store. But, considering how new this type of collection is, we don’t really know yet what kind of issues it will bring.

  89. 89.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Belafon: But a lot of conventional police work does that kind of thing. Lists of “known associates” and so forth when you have a suspect. Knocking on neighbors’ doors when you have a crime scene.

    The notion that everything you do is being secretly logged somewhere is creepy. The notion that everything everyone does is being secretly logged somewhere is also creepy. The notion that the log is so vast that no one can even read it without a narrowly chosen starting point is… well, still kind of dystopian and creepy, but less menacing. It becomes a bit like Steven Wright’s actual-size map with the scale 1 mile = 1 mile.

  90. 90.

    Carolinus

    @chopper:

    I haven’t seen any polls regarding “snowden: global thinker, or traitor?” care to share?

    Why not both? Though maybe not “Global Thinker”, but instead “Eastern Thinker” or “Anti-Angloshpere Thinker”.

    He’s enabled two egomaniacs, both with massive grudges against their country, to finally have the ability to damage Western global power/influence and western alliances, while propping up and providing a constant stream of propaganda victories to all their adversaries. None of the Western countries are about to unilaterally disarm their intelligence services and leave their counterparts at such a massive advantage, so all these libertarian anarchists will achieve in the end is some meaningless window dressing reforms, weakening of western cooperation and power, and probably most immediately, a severe internal crackdown on future insider-threats / double-agents like Snowden.

  91. 91.

    Tommy

    @Carolinus: For me it is a clear question. If I knew, through MY JOB, that our government was wiretapping your phone. Tracking your Internet access, would I have the balls to make that public? Commit a crime to state the obvious that this is wrong. Honestly, not sure I would. Like to think I would, but then again I might have just kept cashing that paycheck.

    It is so easy to say I would have done this or I would have done that. But Snowden did do it, and it took a brass pair.

  92. 92.

    Captain C

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    the Dark Lord controlled the NSA monster for eight years and used it indiscriminately against just about the entire planet, save for the deserting coward’s ranch and his hideaway in the Grand Tetons.

    I wouldn’t be too sure about the ranch being exempt.

  93. 93.

    Sebastian Dangerfield

    @NR: A-yep, and, given that he’s not running for anything ever again, why should he give a shit.

  94. 94.

    Cervantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    That’s been one question that hasn’t received enough attention: What does this massive data gathering and processing expenditure buy us? Would we be better off investing those billions in, say, traffic safety improvements? Probably! The same could be said of the much of our defense assets, of course.

    1. Why do these questions not receive enough attention?

    2. Is there anything to be done about it?

    3. Did Edward Snowden attempt to answer (1) or (2)?

  96. 96.

    Cervantes

    @NR: Looks like you Obots are the ones in the bubble.

    What is the relationship you see between these two sets?

    {supporters of Obama} and {people who want Snowden tarred and feathered}

  98. 98.

    Cervantes

    @handsmile:

    Of course, there’s the small matter of assuming the good faith of James Sensenbrenner. (One of the countless ways I’m nothing like Nelson Mandela.)

    In your defense: Mandela did not assume good faith on the part of his adversaries, either. What he did was to forgive bad faith.

  100. 100.

    A Humble Lurker

    @Cervantes:
    If he was really as indignant as he says he is, wouldn’t he be so busy doing something about it he’d have no time to bitch on a blog?

    Not saying you have to be doing something to be indignant, by the way.

  102. 102.

    Cervantes

    @A Humble Lurker:

    If he was really as indignant as he says he is, wouldn’t he be so busy doing something about it he’d have no time to bitch on a blog?

    Commenting here is all he or she does? Perhaps, but to assume so seems to me uncharitable.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Also, NR has “form”

    Again, I wouldn’t know. I don’t pay as much attention as perhaps you do, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. (In fact, it never was.) But thanks for the clue.

  103. 103.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cervantes: I’ve only seen the commenter in ACA and National Security threads ( which, in and of itself means nothing -everyone has his or her own interests), I have only seen criticisms of Obama, Democrats, “Obots” from the commenter. I don’t mind a spirited disagreement with others; it’s part of what makes this blog fun, OTOH, when someone’s commentary is entirely one note, I doubt either the person’s value to the conversation. This is entirely my view and others may well disagree with it.

  105. 105.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cervantes: For me, the individual long ago passed a threshold that causes me to generally ignore him/her. A comment like either of those coming from someone else would be a different thing. I don’t use the pie filter, but there are a few people who I find so disingenuous that I scroll quickly passed their comment the majority of the time. Others, I may find annoying or frustrating, but worth my attention. NR is a scroll passed person.

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