Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[Valmy]

There is the question someone asked on my Twitter tonight of how Daniel Ellsberg would be viewed had he leaked the Vietnam papers from a hotel in, say, East Berlin.

If an example like Bradley Manning had been around in the Vietnam War he might have.

[The Minsky Moment]

Great. So they can bury the case under personal attacks against the guy.

The case won't get buried; the ACLU is going to keep pushing at it.  Whatever other problems America has, lack of a strong civil society isn't one of them.

As for Snowden, his conduct speaks for itself.  Whether he is just an arrogant prick with delusions of grandeur or an outright traitor will be determined later should the Feds seek extradition.

[garbon]

That has to be some seriously weak argument.  It's probably safely in the Top 10 of the weakest arguments ever uttered on Languish.

I guess it must be since apparantly it falls of its own accord, without any need of a counter!

By your logic, a cop who shoots a mass murderer during the rampage is a hypocrite.  So, yeah.

No that is not my logic.  Some other logic is being employed there.
A cop who shoots a mass murderer is going his job of protecting the public.  Mass murderers OTOH do not protect the public.

Snowden's beef is that the government has arrogated to itself the unchecked discretion of deciding which private details will be kept private and which will be snooped upon.  He views this as an abuse of power.
But Snowden is doing the same thing.  He was entrusted with secrets he swore to keep.  And he has arrogating to himself the unchecked discretion of deciding which secrets he will actually keep and which to reveal to the world. 
Between the two, at least the government has a patina of legitimacy, since their decisions are directed and supervised by elected officials and take place within a framework of laws and theoretical checks and balances.  Snowden OTOH is just a rogue free agent with his own subjective moral sense as his only guide and check.
The fact that he is now revealing details about intelligence operations that do not affect the privacy rights of Americans (indeed perhaps the privacy rights of any individual at all) illustrates the potential danger of abuse of power that exists once one endorses the concept of each person with a security clearance being justified in deciding what secrets are worthy of staying secrets and which ones must be revealed for the sake of the common good.

The fact is that is Snowden was really what he says he is, and truly motivated by the desire to stop abuse and nothing else, he would have brought his evidence first to a sympathetic ear on one of the Intel committees before taking the extraordinary step of fleeing to the territory of his nation's most powerful strategic competitor and issuing press releases.

I wanted to say that I thought this was a very good post.

[Valmy]

The case won't get buried; the ACLU is going to keep pushing at it.  Whatever other problems America has, lack of a strong civil society isn't one of them.

And others.  But my concern is that their cause will get savaged by whatever people think of Snowden.

As for Snowden, his conduct speaks for itself.  Whether he is just an arrogant prick with delusions of grandeur or an outright traitor will be determined later should the Feds seek extradition.

So then it will the ACLU allying itself with delusional traitorous pricks.  So yes it could be a political tool to intimidate the opposition by focusing on Snowden's flaws.  So color me suspicious.

[11B4V]

Great. So they can bury the case under personal attacks against the guy.

It's not personal attacks, it merely highlights him as an example and indicative of the practices of the post-9/11 security-industrial complex, which has managed to pass out clearances like speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
Much like the metadata farming itself and the concept of determining what is "secret" and what isn't, it's a completely counter-intuitive approach.

Edward Snowden didn't need any high-tech gadgetry to make off with the NSA's surveillance secrets—all it took was a humble thumb drive

At my previous employer, you could be fired for bringing those in to work.  They were verboten, and the fire wall would shut your ass down the moment you plugged it in anyway.  You needed special permission to use one, and the thumb drive needed to be scrubbed by DOIT before you could use it, since they're packed with malware.

They still are at least where I work.

[Grey Fox]

We build shit that has so many ITAR loops everyone seems to get lost in them.

In my hand right now, I hold a thumb drive.

What do you want to know?

[derspiess]

We're not supposed to use them any more unless they're "officially authorized" ones, but I think we're pretty much on the honor system.

[Valmy]

I wanted to say that I thought this was a very good post.

I find it incredibly depressing.  I guess Minsky already has determined the Government is entirely within its rights to do this and the ACLU has no case.

That is kind of a gut punch to me.  But I sort of figured they had their legal ducks in a row and a political solution to protect our seemingly non-rights is probably needed.

[The Minsky Moment]

So then it will the ACLU allying itself with delusional traitorous pricks.  So yes it could be a political tool to intimidate the opposition by focusing on Snowden's flaws.  So color me suspicious.

The ACLU can take the heat; they've been accused of far worse.

I find it incredibly depressing.  I guess Minsky already has determined the Government is entirely within its rights to do this and the ACLU has no case.

??
I've stated a couple time that I think the metadata sweep probably exceeds the government's authority under FISA.

[garbon]

I wanted to say that I thought this was a very good post.

I find it incredibly depressing.  I guess Minsky already has determined the Government is entirely within its rights to do this and the ACLU has no case.

That is kind of a gut punch to me.  But I sort of figured they had their legal ducks in a row and a political solution to protect our seemingly non-rights is probably needed.

I don't see what the posted I quoted has to do with that.  The post I quoted just speaks to the hypocrisy of that drama queen Snowden and how he "doesn't want the story to be about him." Doesn't say anything as far as I can see about how the government was right to store all this data.

[AnchorClanker]

And there's CCTV in all sorts of private places that, with a warrant, the police can access.

Yes, but the NSA doesn't need a warrant for specific information. They apparently have a general wholesale warrant for everything.

Incorrect.

[AnchorClanker]

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

Maybe Canada is different, but here you can mail stuff without writing your name in the return address. Or you can use a P.O. box.

As for court orders, that goes against the stated MO. They are performing datamining on their entire databases, not just those where they've acquired warrants.

From what I have read, the data mining does not involve personal information but is rather numbers called, time and duration of call.  With that data evidence can then be provided to the Court in support of an order to actually view confidential information.

Correct.

[AnchorClanker]

29-year-old low-level IT administrator with no high school diploma earning $200k/yr.

Yeah, funny that - AN IT ADMIN.  *Not* an intelligence analyst.   

[AnchorClanker]

Despite being incorrect in his assertions (factually incorrect, as well as drawing incorrect conclusions), Snowden is a criminal.  He signed an oath, and breaking this oath will likely be 10 years per count... have fun in Terre Haute, buddy boy.   

Seriously, he's a clueless loser who has no idea of what he is 'whistleblowing' (I refuse to accord him this honor, as he is neither well-informed nor well-intentioned) - he's a putz who wants to feel important, and is using this as a vehicle to make himself a hero.

Even if what he claims was completely accurate and truthful (it's not) - he claims knowledge of things that he couldn't actually have done or had access to.  Unfortunately, the government will have to demonstrate this, not that this will quell the hysterics.

That's all I'm going to say.  The takeaway: he's an idiot, who freaked out about things he doesn't really understand, proceeded to run to China and freak out everybody else, and broke the law to boot.  There is no honor in peddling falsehoods, even if he really thinks what he is saying is true.

[Razgovory]

I take it that Ank isn't going to go rogue anytime soon then.