Even if he reivewd each document, it's crazy to believe Snowden, someone with zero intelligence, military, or diplomatic experience could accurate determine what was illegal, "need to know," or "safe."
Snowden has misinterpreted some of the few documents that were widely released. For example, he thought direct data collection from facebook to mean the NSA had a direct access to facebook servers. When in fact it just meant the NSA would get the data from facebook, rather than listening to snooping on telecom links, or as they called it "indirect" access.
If he can't get even basic details right, how the hell can you trust him to know when a file would expose a source?
Would you trust your DBA to judge which of your files were okay to be posted on the internet? I sure as fuck wouldn't. One of mine quit last month because he was afraid of Ebola. He did good work though . . .
Which might have made sense as a defense if Snowden was talking about MUSCULAR... but he was talking about PRISM, and by your logic (saying he had IC expertise and wasn't simply a sysadmin) he should have known better than to confuse "direct access to Facebook" with "data directly from Facebook's servers".
> Even if he reivewd each document, it's crazy to believe Snowden, someone with zero intelligence, military, or diplomatic experience could accurate determine what was illegal, "need to know," or "safe."
Why is that crazy to believe? I think it's crazier to believe that the only people who should be given the official authority to decide which secrets to keep are those who are directly and strongly incentivized to keep secrets about atrocious programs like those which Snowden has leaked.
Because he doesn't know what he is looking at. He doesn't know what he doesn't know. He doesn't know what has been said to foreign diplomats.
>I think it's crazier to believe that the only people who should be given the official authority to decide which secrets to keep are those who are directly and strongly incentivized to keep secrets about atrocious programs like those which Snowden has leaked.
I would be behind an independent group to review this sort of stuff. But it can't be one political dood who thinks he is doing the right thing.
How do you construct an "independent group"? Who chooses the people in this group? If it's the government choosing, then it's not independent. If people can choose for themselves to review this sort of stuff, well, that's what Snowden did.
What is your scheme to ensure that all of the people who need to review (which should be millions, right?) are able to fairly review, without also exposing the stuff which should not be seen by ISIS to that review?
Snowden "chose for himself" just as much as John Walker "chose for himself" to figure out U.S. Navy anti-submarine doctrine during the 80s and pass it to the Russians.
Snowden has misinterpreted some of the few documents that were widely released. For example, he thought direct data collection from facebook to mean the NSA had a direct access to facebook servers. When in fact it just meant the NSA would get the data from facebook, rather than listening to snooping on telecom links, or as they called it "indirect" access.
If he can't get even basic details right, how the hell can you trust him to know when a file would expose a source?
Would you trust your DBA to judge which of your files were okay to be posted on the internet? I sure as fuck wouldn't. One of mine quit last month because he was afraid of Ebola. He did good work though . . .