Seem like more like a platform for self aggrandizing quips than anything substantial. I guess it isn't surprising that Snowden and the Guardian are remaining vague, but we are pretty much no closer to the truth than day one.
I agree, he said a whole lot of beautiful nothing. He didn't really add any new information to the discussion.
The question I most wanted to see asked was a request to expand on the notion that he had the ability to wiretap anyone up to the president. When this came up he simply went on a philosophical rant about the nature of bureaucratic creep and how our constitutional rights should extend past our borders.
The first part of Snowden's response to that question:
>Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time.
So, he stands by what he said and expanded on the scope of his capabilities by addressing the claims that there are "systems" in place to prevent someone (such as himself) from grabbing domestic data. He details that there are "policy" protections --that he asserts are effectively no protection at all-- and "one very weak technical protection" that acts as a filter of some sort on incoming data. He goes on to describe the filter as "constantly out of date" and specifically configured to be as ineffective at its stated purpose as possible by letting us know that the configuration is "euphemistically referred to as the 'widest allowable aperture.'"
Really, I'm just retyping what Snowden has already said. It looks to me like he most certainly did expand on his claim.
Ok, I will be happy to break down that particular question if you want. His initial quote was as follows, emphasis added by me:
>"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email."
He doesn't say he has the capability, he says he has the authority. That is an important distinction.
>"Yes, I stand by it."
He doesn't waiver in his initial statement.
>"US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections"
While it might not be clear in the initial interview, I think most people would assume that this type of power isn't given to everyone so some type of policy protection was obvious. Snowden doesn't add anything new here because he doesn't give any details and his statement just raises more questions. The question that relates directly to his first statement is whether he really did have the authority to wiretap the president like he initially claimed? But I would also like to here more explanation of these policies. Was this an honor system? Was there any oversight? Did these things require a warrant or any approval?
>"(and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens)"
Part of the philosophical musings that I mentioned in my initial post.
>"and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time."
This is another vague and almost worthless statement. At this point and with this level of detail, we can only speculate on these "technical protections". It would seem to imply that there is a technical filter in place that prevents information about US citizens from ever entering the system. But the way Snowden dismisses it as soon as he brings it up makes it seem like it is useless. Some followups would have been helpful here. What does he mean that the filter is constantly out of date? What does "widest allowable aperture" mean? Who has the authority to "strip it out at any time"?
I don't think he provided anything new here outside of simply confirming that there were policy and technical limitations in place, something that would likely be assumed by most people.
> This is another vague and almost worthless statement. At this point and with this level of detail, we can only speculate on these "technical protections". It would seem to imply that there is a technical filter in place that prevents information about US citizens from ever entering the system. But the way Snowden dismisses it as soon as he brings it up makes it seem like it is useless. Some followups would have been helpful here. What does he mean that the filter is constantly out of date? What does "widest allowable aperture" mean? Who has the authority to "strip it out at any time"?
Snowden definitely needs to expand more on these things and talk about the technical aspects more specifically. It seems that Greenwald (who admitted he is very nontechnical) is guiding Snowden into dumbing down his technical descriptions (for whatever reason, maybe its to avoid declassifying stuff that would actually impact national security) and that is doing him a disservice.
Snowden seems to be exaggerating in the sense that he, a knowledgeable IT contractor employed to overlook the NSA infrastructure would be able to get the data he needs, bypassing the policy protections. I don't think he means that any "associate" level NSA agent without technical knowledge of the infrastructure can easily get any data he wants, even with the policy protections. This is just my interpretation, based on how I've seen other technical people exaggerate.
Well, by all accounts, he's going to let the documents do the "adding new information" for him. That's smart. He's not asking us to take his word that these are happening, and he's not hanging the believability of these charges on his honor, which is already being smeared across the media far and wide.
He's answering questions as to why, not what, which is great, since it gives people a more balanced view of who the man is behind these things, and serves as a counterbalance to the "omg high school dropout with a stripper girlfriend" smear stories that have been plastered all over the news lately.
From my reading I understand that the comment on being able to wiretap absolutely anyone was on the basis that he was a sysadmin. He had write access to databases of people who's communications were to be intercepted in full and could add arbitrary phones or emails to them.
Binney on the existence of this list: "what they do is take their target list, which is somewhere on the order of 500,000 to a million people. They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that’s what they record." [1]
This appears to be separate from the Main Core list of 8 million Americans "which contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security." [3]
Another Binney interview: "he [Snowden] had access to go in and put anything... If he knew their phone numbers or attributes, he could insert them into the target list which would be distributed worldwide." [2]
I don't think anyone reading your comment is sure of what you mean by vague and substantial. He has explicitly addressed every one of his harshest criticisms thus far in much clearer language than most of us are used to seeing in the media.
He answered harsh criticisms about his personality and motives, but added very little regarding NSA spying. It is all well and good that he is willing to die for America, thinks the media has focused on the wrong elements of the story and made fun of Cheney. But in regards to the subject of NSA spying, he spoke in vague terms that didn't add to the public's awareness. And that is pretty much all I care about hearing from him, not media criticism, his suggestions for Obama or how he thinks he exposed the largest suspicionless surveillance program ever.
I disagree, some key points were clarified. To wit -
1. Encryption works, but "endpoint security" is easily defeated.
2. "US Persons do enjoy ... one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time."
An "ingest point" appears to be the term for a preprocessor that parses raw data before sticking a normalized copy in a database. I believe this is talked about more in Boundless Informant papers.
3. American data is regularly collected "incidentally", and when between an American and a foreigner. "Americans' communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant."
4. Intelligence agencies (including GCHQ) have raw access to query NSA databases, and GHCQ is cited to have 5% of queries audited.
I made an effort earlier to try to write up a fully cited description of what we know about NSA activities. If you would find that useful, you can find it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5892755
Despite already blowing the whistle and turning unconstitutional domestic surveillance into a public discussion for the first time in, well, ever, to truly be useful to society he must accept your amorphous terms of disclosure for information that is likely forthcoming anyway.
My demands are quite morphous. As a person who is only of public interest due to leaking information about the NSA, I would perfer he clarify what exactly the NSA does. Good intentions about "public discussion" don't help if the public discussion he provoked is uninformed.
But do we really need more info? What will taht accomplish?
As far as I am concerned, this is the 100% solid concrete evidence that Eschelon exists - where for the last 30 years it was a "conspiracy theory" -- yet here it is, verified, in your face and glaring.
Now, what is the next step? What needs to happen is ACTION taken.
There is only one peaceful tool the citizenry has against the government at this point: civil disobedience via a tax holiday.
Nothing will happen unless people do the only thing they can do: refuse to provide funding to the government.
If the government can't even go after the criminal banks -- its laughable to think that anything is going to happen to the intelligence agencies: especially when the government is staffed by both THE BANKS and THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES!
Are you ignoring all the "meta-evidence": The smear campaign from people as crazy as Cheney? All the MSM focus to discredit? The actual lying under oath from Clapper against EXACTLY what was revealed by actual NSA documents?
Given that the source is "ONE" person is irrelevant.
Looking at your comment history, I find your judgment to be suspect.
Smear campaigns exist for a lot of people, in a variety of fields, for a variety of reasons. Individuals running for government office seem to always have smear campaigns run against them. I don't really read much into that, I'm curious why that is "strong meta evidence" to you.
As many people focus to lend credence to his story as try to discredit him. Again, run-of-the-mill behavior for something like this. As you can see on sites like this, he has a lot of support.
Someone lied under oath about things that are at best tangential to this story, if they relate at all.
We don't have any real, actual evidence at all, other than the artifacts generated by one guy.
He is the CURRENT HEAD of National Intelligence, directing a PUBLISHED budget of ~$50 BILLION dollars.
The things he lied about are the CORE of this story, not "tangential" -- He specifically stated that the NSA collects "nothing" on US citizens, NOTHING.
Given this statement by you, it is clear you're completely deluded.
> On August 5, 2010, Clapper was confirmed by the Senate in a unanimous vote.[5] Lawmakers approved his nomination after the Senate Intelligence Committee backed him with a 15-0 vote. During his testimony for the position, Director Clapper pledged to advance the DNI's authorities, exert tighter control over programming and budgeting, and provide oversight over the CIA's use of predator drones in Pakistan.
So why is your beef with the NSA/The intelligence gathering effort?
Amongst other things, I took the fact that the NSA can't break encryption from the Q&A - that they'll usually attack the endpoints rather than trying to brute-force it (or use secret NSA math orders of magnitude better than us peasants have). To me that's pretty significant.
> Amongst other things, I took the fact that the NSA can't break encryption from the Q&A - that they'll usually attack the endpoints rather than trying to brute-force it
That doesn't imply that they can't break encryption, it just means that usually they have faster/easier options.
True, but it does essentially mean that what the public considers to be "strong" crypto is not secretly broken by the NSA in such a way that they can decrypt communications in realtime or en masse.
> True, but it does essentially mean that what the public considers to be "strong" crypto is not secretly broken by the NSA in such a way that they can decrypt communications in realtime or en masse.
Or, at least, that they are monitoring enough data that if they had to decrypt all of it in realtime, it would overtax their computing resources, so that they minimize the burden by going after the cleartext at the source when they have the capacity to get at it that way.
I think every time he opens his mouth some shadowy characters in some windowless bunker stateside are ordering another round of illegally imported Cuban cigars and a particularly peaty single malt Scotch.
Given the creativity of conspiracy theories, I'm a little surprised nobody's yet suggested he's actually part of a US false flag operation.
The creativity bit was about the conspiracy theories of others, not things that he's said.
I do think that things he's said and things he's done actually undermine his stated cause. He started out by portraying himself as a conscience-driven individual who wants to expose what he believes are gross violations of civil liberties without becoming a focal point of the story.
He's now made himself the center of the story, has expanded his motivation to moral outrage at all forms of spying, etc. Add to this the various inaccuracies, melodramatic over-statements, tangents into matters entirely unrelated to civil liberties, and really, just the act of flight to begin with.
It seems to me that much of the time he does or says something he's moving perception away from somewhere on the the 'mildly ambivalent moral actor' end of the spectrum where he started and towards 'clueless opportunist'.
That's a terrible thing because, and I agree with you, a number of the things he says are not just extremely plausible but important matters of civic discourse.
I think he's doing a ridiculously good job for an individual taking on the largest military intelligence organization in the world without lawyers or paid political consultants.
I'm not sure how you would expect him to conduct this disclosure without the "act of flight" or "becoming a focal point of the story".
I suppose I'd expect him to conduct himself like, well, just about every other whistleblower before him. Just yesterday three high level NSA whistleblowers gave a joint interview to USA Today. All three still in the US and none in prison. One of them, William Binney, while being generally supportive of Snowden went as far as to call some of his actions traitorous.
When your natural support constituency starts saying things like that you have a serious (and, inexplicably, self-created) image problem. I believe this is an actual thing rather than, you know, you and me just shooting the shit on a nerd message board.
No doubt, but that's also why the concern that he may be turning himself from 'effective' to 'ineffectual' is so much greater.
I guess the simplest way I can put it is - I wish he'd stop taking his cues from journalists, however high-minded and well-intentioned and start working with a local lawyer specializing in human rights and civil liberties issues, yesterday.
I suppose that with the wikileaks precedent, he would assume they would have thrown him in solitary confinement, with no access to the press, which would defeat the purpose of his leaking the info.
Not to be a conspiracy-theory hipster, but I suggested this before we even knew who he was. I thought the timing was suspicious, how it completely erased the discussion of the completely-confirmed Verizon phone records business, and replaced with a whole load of doubt and speculation. The shittiness of the Powerpoints (supposedly for training but containing all the detail of "Illegal Surveillance for The Layman") and the choice of newspapers (Guardian and Washington Post? The hell? Someone trying to make the Post look good?) didn't encourage. Then this guy turns up with EFF and Tor stickers plastered all over his laptop, claiming he doesn't want to be the center of attention while making himself the center of attention, and the internet collectively creams their jeans.
Personally I think he's too over the top - a perfect caricature. I have met people who work the security services, and they are not the kind of people who put stickers on their laptops, EFF or otherwise. I additionally posit that if you worked for the NSA and really wanted to disclose secrets, and had the kind of access he is supposed to have had, you could have leaked much more specific, damaging things than this. His reluctance to reveal more detailed information about the NSA, even without proof, is fairly damning.
If I were him, and the cat were properly out of the bag now and there were talks of extra-judicial killings, and I was talking a big talk about dying for my country, I wouldn't be running my mouth about democracy. I'd be running my mouth about the damn NSA.
