New Details About NSA's Exhaustive Search of Edward Snowden's Emails 200
An anonymous reader points out this Vice story with new information about the NSA's search of Edward Snowden's emails. Last year, the National Security Agency (NSA) reviewed all of Edward Snowden's available emails in addition to interviewing NSA employees and contractors in order to determine if he had ever raised concerns internally about the agency's vast surveillance programs. According to court documents the government filed in federal court September 12, NSA officials were unable to find any evidence Snowden ever had.
In a sworn declaration, David Sherman, the NSA's associate director for policy and records, said the agency launched a "comprehensive" investigation after journalists began to write about top-secret NSA spy programs upon obtaining documents Snowden leaked to them. The investigation included searches of any records where emails Snowden sent raising concerns about NSA programs "would be expected to be found within the agency." Sherman, who has worked for the NSA since 1985, is a "original classification authority," which means he can classify documents as "top-secret" and process, review, and redact records the agency releases in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In his declaration, Sherman detailed steps he said agency officials took to track down any emails Snowden wrote that contained evidence he'd raised concerns inside the agency. Sherman said the NSA searched sent, received, deleted emails from Snowden's account and emails "obtained by restoring back-up tapes." He noted that NSA officials reviewed written reports and notes from interviews with "NSA affiliates" with whom the agency spoke during its investigation.
In a sworn declaration, David Sherman, the NSA's associate director for policy and records, said the agency launched a "comprehensive" investigation after journalists began to write about top-secret NSA spy programs upon obtaining documents Snowden leaked to them. The investigation included searches of any records where emails Snowden sent raising concerns about NSA programs "would be expected to be found within the agency." Sherman, who has worked for the NSA since 1985, is a "original classification authority," which means he can classify documents as "top-secret" and process, review, and redact records the agency releases in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In his declaration, Sherman detailed steps he said agency officials took to track down any emails Snowden wrote that contained evidence he'd raised concerns inside the agency. Sherman said the NSA searched sent, received, deleted emails from Snowden's account and emails "obtained by restoring back-up tapes." He noted that NSA officials reviewed written reports and notes from interviews with "NSA affiliates" with whom the agency spoke during its investigation.
NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
dude authorized to lie to your face declares they didn't find anything
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dude authorized to lie to your face declares they didn't find anything
So what if he really didn't find anything? Why should someone be obligated to report a crime to the criminals before reporting it to the public? Car analogy: You see someone stealing your car, and call the police. The police arrive and arrest the thief. When the case goes to court, the judge throws the case out, because you didn't try to negotiate with the thief before calling the police.
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is a sworn declaration, and if it's a sworn declaration then it must be true because it's not like anyone has been caught lying under oath on this topic is it!
Honestly, sworn declarations on this topic and the lack of punishment for breaching their oath when swearing the truth means you might as well read "Sworn declaration" as "In a conversation with his mate Dave down the pub".
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is a sworn declaration, and if it's a sworn declaration then it must be true because it's not like anyone has been caught lying under oath on this topic is it!
;-) SEVERAL TIMES, and to CONGRESS no less. I think the NSA has gotten so in the habit of lying that they probably don't even know how to tell the truth anymore. Their employees would require extensive training to be reintroduced to concepts like "truth," "honesty" and "transparency."
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Assad is our enemy. He has always been our enemy. ISIS are our friends.
ISIS are our enemies. They have always been our enemies. Assad is our friend.
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Yah. When we started attacking ISIS (ISIL, IS, whatever), my first thought was "we're helping the rebels fight Assad, and we're helping Assad fight the rebels" (for varying values of "rebel"), since anything we do to ISIS helps Assad and allows him to bring more force to bear on the other rebels that we're helping....
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It's called a stalemate an it is the ideal outcome for a war between two of your enemies.
For example Iran/Iraq of the 1980s was a wonderful war. We aren't beyond holding our noses and helping the losers continue to fight the good fight. We won't help them win, we will help them not lose.
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is a sworn declaration, and if it's a sworn declaration then it must be true because it's not like anyone has been caught lying under oath on this topic is it!
Honestly, sworn declarations on this topic and the lack of punishment for breaching their oath when swearing the truth means you might as well read "Sworn declaration" as "In a conversation with his mate Dave down the pub".
Actually, I'd say its worse than that. I can't remember a statement that the NSA has ever made publicly that wasn't a lie. By that fact alone I'd say this "declaration" is evidence that Snowden was truthful.
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"We didn't spy on Congressional office holders, or their staffers. We don't conduct mass surveillance. We track only metadata. Our Agency leadership has been exceptionally truthful at all times, under every circumstance. We have never lied about these things in general public statements or in sworn testimony. Edward Snowden is a bad man, a liar and a dangerous enemy of the people of this country."
Thank you! (Score:2)
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Let me know when the IRS can put you in Gitmo for 13 years without a charge.
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Let me know when the IRS can put you in Gitmo for 13 years without a charge.
They can't literally put you in Guantanamo Bay, but they can fuck you pretty hard.
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've no idea because personally I'm not American and hence not affected by the IRS' actions so nor do I particularly give a shit what they have or haven't lied about.
The IRS may be a bigger threat to liberty in the US than the NSA, but it's certainly a non-entity in terms of dangers to liberty for the whole of the rest of the world compared to the NSA which is a real genuine threat for those of us not living in America yet still having our data stolen and our privacy invaded.
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We don't care that the NSA spies on you. That's what we pay them for, you fuzzy little foreigner.
We do care that the NSA spies on us. We care even more if they build a file on every person in the government and become a shadow government.
I want to see the NSA files on congress, the members of the federal courts and the last 50 years of executive branches and candidates. I don't want them to stop snooping on members of government, I just want the information made public.
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Just do a search on "IRS lies to congress". PLENTY of citations there. Here's [thehill.com] just [investors.com] a [cato.org] few. [wnd.com]
Just to be pedantic, organizations don't lie, people do, though I know there is a great tendency to personify organizations. The IRS didn't lie to Congress, people in the IRS lied to Congress. Likewise, the NSA didn't lie in (fill in an occurrence here), people belonging to the NSA lied. At times, multiple high-ranking personnel of such organization, even the heads, may have even ordered such lies to occur. Labeling these situations as "ThreeLetterAgency lied" is designed to imply that all personnel of
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Excuse me, but when people represent coporations and institutions, they do indeed make such entities lie. Especially, since they, as people, are not held personally responsible?
Only within the concept of Personification [wikipedia.org], namely treating something that isn't a person as if it is. An organization is not a person, even if it is comprised of people, and can therefore not make decisions, rather the people within it make decisions. The purpose of personification is to apply an attribute to the collective, namely in this case, for the speaker to imply that since some at the IRS and NSA lie, everyone at the IRS and NSA are liars which is clearly not the case. Or do you really believe o
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Funny)
If an NSA representative told me it was daytime outside and my watch said 12 noon, I would still walk outside to confirm it for myself.
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:4, Funny)
If an NSA representative told me it was daytime outside and my watch said 12 noon, I would still walk outside to confirm it for myself.
Oh, like any of us have been outside.
Re:NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who do you trust: the traitor or the patriot?
The one sacrificing the Constitution to his personal gains and job interests, or the one sacrificing his personal gains and job interests to the Constitution?
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Has anyone tried asking the liars whether they're lying? I'm sure they'd be honest about it this time.
But the liar paradox will cause Norman to short circuit [youtube.com].
Re: NSA scorecard on on truth? (Score:5, Funny)
Next week they'll claim they have an email from Edward Snowden proving that he hates mom and apple pie, and is working for ISIS.
"Wait, did ISIS even exist before Snowden left?" asks a reporter.
"We suspect it was him that founded them," replies the NSA.
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agreed.. and p.s. the government IS (and has been) bankrupt.. it just isn't yet entirely insolvent.
The US government can print it's own currency. Therefore it cannot go bankrupt. It can choose not to pay it's obligations (which would be foolish), but it cannot run out of money.
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no, an entity that can and does meet its debt payments is not bankrupt, by definition.
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The problem with a conspiracy theorist is that all available evidence will be viewed in whatever way is possible to support their beliefs, and any evidence that contradicts it will be dismissed as fabricated or lies. The result is that it is not possible to have a real discussion or debate with them since the purpose of such interactions can never occur given that their beliefs can never be changed. I am not sure what the true story is in regards to what Snowden did or did not complain about, but Ready, F
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The problem with a conspiracy theorist is that all available evidence will be viewed in whatever way is possible to support their beliefs, and any evidence that contradicts it will be dismissed as fabricated or lies. The result is that it is not possible to have a real discussion or debate with them since the purpose of such interactions can never occur given that their beliefs can never be changed. I am not sure what the true story is in regards to what Snowden did or did not complain about, but Ready, Fire, and maybe then think about Aim, is the wrong way to debate it, and makes the presenter look foolish.
Good points. Personally, it does not matter to me whether or not Mr. Snowden tried to raise concerns internally before going to the press. That's because I do not expect that he would have gotten much traction internally, and likely would have made himself suspicious to his superiors in the process. He certainly could not have had the impact he has had by going through the chain of command. He has done more of a public service than he could have by reporting internally.
Who fucking cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're sounding more and more like 5 year old's complaining to their parents.
Have some fucking accountability. Jesus.
Re:Who fucking cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who fucking cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... that sounds like something I read on my Kindle once, but I went to check and I can't find it...!
Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far, the NSA has lied (at first) about each and every little thing Snowden has leaked.
I guess on this one though, we are supposed to take them at their word.
Re:Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is a very dangerous game for the NSA to play. Presumably Snowden, being an intelligent guy, kept copies of those emails he said he wrote and will be able to produce them one day. Maybe he is still hoping to return to the US for a trial where he will enter them as evidence, or maybe he will just give up on the US entirely and put them out to defend his reputation.
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It is a very dangerous game for the NSA to play. Presumably Snowden, being an intelligent guy, kept copies of those emails he said he wrote and will be able to produce them one day.
And how would he prove they are real?
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Assuming he is an intelligent man, and also assuming he knows that cover-up and concealment is a matter of course at the NSA, I presume he would have sent them securely from an outside network, perhaps through a network he hoped the NSA couldn't touch. Or better yet, he left the evidence hidden in plain sight, somewhere within the NSA where he could point to it later. If I was Snowden, I'd be paranoid as heck when covering my own behind. He had to have known they would lie about anything that made him lo
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hardly: If he sent mails about these issues, then he would be complaining in good faith, and would have sent them on the standard internal network.
If he had sent emails alleging impropriety from secure external system, then that would
a) probably count as leaking confidential info (sending confidential info on an external service)
b) raise every red flag in the organisation and probably result in him being fired (why are you trying to keep external records of this secret matter???)
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Yup. Maybe. But it also doesn't sound like Snowden is naive either, and he was willing to risk doing all of those things you mentioned and more. He still had his job when he took confidential info from the NSA, and he has taken his risk of getting 'fired' to a whole new level.
It may not have happened right away, but he must have at some point knew a cover up would have been the result, and if he was clever enough to evade the NSA with all that data, he was also clever enough to leave some insurance behin
Re:Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Snowden seems organized, thoughtful and intelligent. He did openly state that he challenged anyone in the NSA to deny he tried to use the internal systems first to seek resolution. He can likely reveal his efforts rather easily and publicly. However propaganda doesn't require honesty on behalf of the NSA to be successful.
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Who are you going to believe, Snowden or the NSA? Keep in mind that one has been caught red handed lying to Congress and the media over and over and over again.
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Who are you going to believe, Snowden or the NSA? Keep in mind that one has been caught red handed lying to Congress and the media over and over and over again.
While the other violated his NDAs and is now wanted for treason.
At least the NSA can be voted out of office.
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"At least the NSA can be voted out of office." Explain how.
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"At least the NSA can be voted out of office." Explain how.
Congress funds the NSA. All you need to do is vote for representatives that will cut the funding.
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And how would he prove they are real?
Email headers :)
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It's the exact game he and journalists have been playing with them for a while now. Release some information, wait for official to make statements, release the next bit of information that showed they lied.
It's been hilarious to see people lose really, really badly at this.
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At this point, you can pretty much take them at the opposite of their word.
For example, if they say "We didn't find any evidence that Snowden raised concerns about our program", then this really means "We found evidence that Snowden raised concerns about our program." You can also add the following implied section onto that statement: "We want to cover up the fact that he raised concerns, though, because it doesn't fit the narrative we'd like to build of Snowden as a traitor to the US who should have voice
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I'll say that I doubt Snowden raised holy hell on an ongoing basis within the halls of the NSA. For one thing, he's tech support; it wasn't his job.
But he already said he didn't believe there was a viable whistle blower process, a fact corroborated by recent history. I wouldn't expect there to be some emial trail of disaffection.
Also, why email? I think you might be an idiot to put these concerns into email in the first place. My first instinct would be to go to some boss, and tell him to his face. Unless N
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Good point. With a normal organization, it's a good idea to put any objections in writing and in a form that can be tracked by both you and your managers, such as within e-mail messages. This way, if you say "Project A would violate these laws" and your manager says "Continue with Project A anyway", he can't later blame you for not bringing this to his attention.
The NSA is anything but a normal organization. There are enough people who have worked for the NSA and have tried to say "Project A would violat
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Gen. Zinni has appeared on both Fox and CNN, talking about ISIL (and I did agree with his remarks about them being murdering psychopaths, but so is Henry Kissi
What the meaning of the words 'concerns' is? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/s... [wired.com]
".... the NSA released a statement and a copy of the only email it says it found from Snowden.
That email, the agency says, asked a question about legal authority and hierarchy but did not raise any concerns."
Now its just about FIOA requests finding more or wondering what was held back as as the gov felt it "did not raise any concerns"....
From no emails to one email found back to none under a definition of what "identify" is going to find?
The other option is to only look for a few narrow legal terms that would constitute a formal complaint and not find one.
Not reliable (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry. These folks lied to congress. They did it for years. They scanned emails of senators and then lied about it. They lied about the scope, detail, retention and duration of their program, for years, to both congress and the American public.
They have no credibility. I don't care if he is a 20 star general and is pinky-swearing it. I can't trust them. Trust is earned. Distrust is earned. They bought only distrust. They have not earned back one percent of one percent of the trust they have destroyed.
I don't care what noises come out of the mouth of the sock-puppet. It isn't capable of speaking trustworthy words.
Re:Not reliable (Score:5, Informative)
The NSA is (theoretically) in a position where it cannot tell us what it has done for us. There may be all sorts of things the NSA has done to protect our nation. Publicly disclosing those actions could wreck their whole mission. We should consider, as IT professionals, that we're in a similar boat. We can't always tell the customer/client exactly what is going on, and even if we do tell them they're unlikely to fully understand. We definitely don't tell our customer's competitors what we are doing.
The real issue with the NSA is this: who is the customer?
TLA without accountability makes declarations (Score:2)
They should be required by law to start all declarations with : "Taking into account we can lie without any consequence, ..."
Or, a more colloquial : "On this week's 'shit we just make up' : ..."
Moot point... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thank you. This point is the only really important one. What they were doing may not have even been illegal, which is the whole problem. A rogue agency would have been easy to correct in comparison to an entire government which had overstepped it's bounds.
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Bullshit. What they have doing has always been illegal -- any plain reading of the Constitution shows it. The issue is that people in power (possibly including the Supreme Court) refuse to acknowledge the law, not that it doesn't exist!
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Let's not fight over technicalities of law. You and I appear to be on the same side and want the same thing. The people in charge are wrong whether it is technically legal or not.
This is the guy who decides? (Score:3)
If this guy gets to decide what's classified, then could he have decided that the Snowden "concern" email is classified and therefore he doesn't have to admit its existence?
Re:This is the guy who decides? (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget the tinfoil hat.
Obviously, any email discussing the existence and raising concern about highly classified programs will be also classified as such. Most likely these emails would be removed or redacted to before any review of the email could take place. I am pretty certain emails shouldn't contain highly classified information, hence the people reviewing the emails will most likely not have the security clearance to review highly classified materials. Assuming they are classified as such, not only do they not have to admit of their existence, they are not allowed to admit it.
I am really not a fan on conspiracy theories, nor do I prone propagating them. On the contrary.
Although this might sound like one, for me it feels more like standard procedures and due process that turned out to be quite convenient.
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This guy can even classify himself and *Pouf* disappear in thin air. Like Keyser Söze. Or a ninja. Or WMDs.
Have they Denied? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is essentially the "I do not recall" equivalent of paperwork investigations.
The essential question here is whether the NSA can conclusively deny that Snowden never raised concerns at the agency. Since if he did raise concerns, he probably would have raised them to people personally, a document search is not nessesarily going to uncover whether he did.
What will uncover this conclusively is a simple interview of NSA and affiliate company employees and especially supervisors who worked with Snowden. But since such a set of interviews would either a) reveal that he did raise concerns, b) involve people having to sign their names to untruths, or most unlikely c) reveal he really raised nothing, then I think it's easier for the NSA to just pretend that a half-assed email server word search constitutes an appropriate investigation.
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Agreed. He's an outside contractor working for the NSA. I think for a man in his position that's more of a water cooler kind of conversation, so he can use nuance and visual queues to establish casual concern. There's no way he's going to put his objections into writing where all of that is lost. He likely would have been fired, investigated, had his family members interrogated, and all of his credit cards would have mysteriously stopped working.
So I suppose the end result is the same, except that we probab
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Misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a simple misdirection, common in many types of argument. Whether or not Mr. Snowden attempted to bring problems to anyone's attention is immaterial to the main problem, which is that the NSA was exhibiting this behavior in the first place.
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Actually, there's a deeper issue.
If Snowden can show that he applied due diligence by going through the channels to discuss his concerns and was ignored or he felt threatened, he can still try to use whistle-blowing as a defense.
Otherwise, he may have had legitimate concerns, but bypassed normal procedures and just ran off with the stash and caused them to be made public, which is a federal offense, whistle-blower or not.
Snowden certainly should have covered his ass by retaining email messages to/from super
Re:Misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Snowden doesn't need a defense, because he'd be an utter moron to ever willingly come back to NSA jurisdiction again.
Aside from that, Snowden knew damn well that "going through the channels" directly results in the NSA ruining your life and burying whatever you were trying to be a whistleblower about. How did he know this? Simple, by learning about what happened to the last few people who tried to be whistleblowers using the "channels!"
In other words, the "official channels" don't work, so trying to say Snowden is guilty because he didn't use them is specious. Any court that accepts such an argument is of the "Kangaroo" or "Star Chamber" variety.
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If the NSA says they can't find the emails and Snowden produces them, it's game over for the NSA.
Really, by that logic it should have been "game over" for the NSA a long time ago. NSA official lying under oath is nothing new. The US has no credibility at this point.
Meanwhile the world burns (Score:4, Insightful)
The NSA, with apparent approval from our gov't, spies on its own citizens with impunity, and let seem to be caught flat-footed by events unfolding the Middle East and Ukraine (at least from what I have heard on the radio)
The president twiddles his thumbs while our allies cry out for help.
What in three hells happened to our country?
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The NSA, with apparent approval from our gov't, spies on its own citizens with impunity, and let seem to be caught flat-footed by events unfolding the Middle East and Ukraine (at least from what I have heard on the radio)
The president twiddles his thumbs while our allies cry out for help.
What in three hells happened to our country?
Corporations bought it. And helping Ukraine and stopping the ISIS doesn't help bring profits to the shareholders.
Well, until it causes problems with oil, then suddenly we'll see a big need to go take them bad dudes down.
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issue | Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's make this about Snowden.
After all, if he didn't raise concerns, then how could they have possibly known there were any issues.
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Re:issue | Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, for starters, they could have listened to the last several whistleblowers (e.g. Binney and Drake) who did try to use "official channels" instead of marginalizing them and ruining their lives.
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Emails restored (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong Channel (Score:2)
vice news (Score:2)
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Because William Binney and Thomas Drake (Score:5, Informative)
In 2001, William Binney [wikipedia.org], an NSA investigator, began blowing the whistle on NSA warrantless surveillance. He went through official channels to his superiors, then to Congress, then to the major media. He was harrassed and prosecuted by the government, and ignored and maginalized by the major media. He has kept at it for the past thirteen years.
In 2010, Thomas Drake [wikipedia.org] started blowing the whistle. He was also prosecuted, harrassed, ignored, and marginalized.
In 2011, Ron Wyden [wikipedia.org] began warning the public about the secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, as loudly as he could without violating his clearance to be on the Intelligence Committee. The major media ignored him.
In 2013, when Snowden released his docs, the major media finally started listening to Binney, Drake, and Wyden. The establishment's treatment of Binney, Drake, and Wyden is why Snowden had to follow the path he did.
The President of the United States has said that these programs should change. Programs that Binney, Drake, and Wyden tried to warn us about through official channels. Programs that we still would not know about if Snowden had gone through official channels.
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Yup. At work they went through training to explain to employees that it was safe to point out problems to management. It basically accomplished nothing except for legal butt-covering, because everybody knows that if you have to tell somebody that it is safe to confide in you, it probably isn't.
They backup their email in tapes? (Score:2)
Sherman, who has worked for the NSA since 1985, said the NSA searched deleted emails from Snowden's account and emails "obtained by restoring back-up tapes" and says the techy nerd he asked to do this, the one who would be raked over coals and fired if it was found out he deleted incriminating evidence, promised that these were really all the emails that Snowden sent.
Oh, David David David... Let me try to explain this one to you: You're trusting the people in charge of the system to tell you if they tampered with the system. You can't trust them. Which is why you fired 90% of that group a little while ago.
Also, they're using tape for their email backup? I mean, I know that for bulk data, tape actually becomes cost effective at some point. But email? Is that odd?
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LTO 6 tapes will hold 2.5 TB uncompressed for $50 a pop.. So yes it is very cost effective backup media.
Also in your typical office the email system will be one of the larger consumers of storage.
Lois Lerner (Score:3)
Now if only someone would exhaustively search out HER e-mails.
Snowden probably took copies with him (Score:2)
Add One More "least untruth" (Score:4, Insightful)
In response to a FOIA request a ProPublica journalist filed for just this kind of information last year, the NSA told him they couldn't do those kind of searches [propublica.org] that they apparently just did. Well, dang...it's a good thing that they figured out they could, I mean gosh...if they'd just got it squared away last year then we'd have known a lot earlier how clean their hands were in all this.
Misdirection of a different sort (Score:2)
Aside from the other thread arguing that they were still guilty of unethical behavior whether anyone criticized them for it or not, there's another potential bit of misdirection here:
What if Snowden's means of raising concerns had nothing to do with e-mail and he only used verbal or hard-copy means, and the NSA knows it?
Surely a credible source! (Score:2)
Those are the same people who've lied about surveillance from the beginning. I'm *sure* that they wouldn't be lying this time!
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Perhaps actually reading into the subject at hand, and thinking about what you say might help with you getting a clearer picture. One mans weasel traitor is another mans whistleblower. Name a whistleblower the intelligence apparatus in the US hasn't condemned?
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We see this differently I suppose. I'll trust the interpretation of Ellesberg over your Telecom insight. If you think lying to Congress, and propaganda campaigns to ensure enough fear/support of this surveillance. You might be alright with the lying and the slight of hand three card monty word games they play, but I personally am not. If you've been aware of all of this for 15 years and the best you can say about it, is that it embarrassed the US government, then you have apparently decided that it is all
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Wait.... if you acknowledge that the NSA is a serious internal threat that is out of control.... Why don't you think that Edward Snowden (and all the other whistle-blowers) are doing it in an effort to... you know... exert some control on the organization?
I mean, if you're wise to the NSA, then why are you believing the tale their spinning about him being a spy?
a traitor than has and will cause good people to die
Can you name one instance of someone dying because of Snowden's leaks?
Or even an official citing that someone ACTUALLY died? (as opposed to your ex
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