10 Years After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learned? (theregister.com) 139
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The world got a first glimpse into the US government's far-reaching surveillance of American citizens' communications -- namely, their Verizon telephone calls -- 10 years ago this week when Edward Snowden's initial leaks hit the press. [...] In the decade since then, "reformers have made real progress advancing the bipartisan notion that Americans' liberty and security are not mutually exclusive," [US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)] said. "That has delivered tangible results: in 2015 Congress ended bulk collection of Americans' phone records by passing the USA Freedom Act." This bill sought to end the daily snooping into American's phone calls by forcing telcos to collect the records and make the Feds apply for the information.
That same month, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the NSA's phone-records surveillance program was unlawful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program, which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just days after Snowden disclosed its existence. "Once it was pushed out into open court, and the court was able to hear from two sides and not just one, the court held that the program was illegal," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology project, told The Register. The Freedom Act also required the federal government to declassify and release "significant" opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and authorized the appointment of independent amici -- friends of the court intended to provide an outside perspective. The FISC was established in 1978 under the FISA -- the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. And prior to the Freedom Act, this top-secret court only heard the government's perspective on things, like why the FBI and NSA should be allowed to scoop up private communications.
"To its credit, the government has engaged in reforms, and there's more transparency now that, on the one hand, has helped build back some trust that was lost, but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told The Register. Wyden also pointed to the sunsetting of the "deeply flawed surveillance law," Section 215 of the Patriot Act, as another win for privacy and civil liberties. That law expired in March 2020 after Congress did not reauthorize it. "For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records (Call Detail Records or CDR) documenting who a person called and for how long they called them -- more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships," Electronic Frontier Foundation's Matthew Guariglia, Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker said. James Clapper, the former US Director of National Intelligence, "stated publicly that the Snowden disclosures accelerated by seven years the adoption of commercial encryption," Wizner said. "At the individual level, and at the corporate level, we are more secure."
"And at the corporate level, what the Snowden revelations taught big tech was that even as the government was knocking on the front door, with legal orders to turn over customer data, it was breaking in the backdoor," Wizner added. "Government was hacking those companies, finding the few points in their global networks where data passed unencrypted, and siphoning it off." "If you ask the government -- if you caught them in a room, and they were talking off the record -- they would say the biggest impact for us from the Snowden disclosures is that it made big tech companies less cooperative," he continued. "I regard that as a feature, not a bug."
The real issue that the Snowden leaks revealed is that America's "ordinary system of checks and balances doesn't work very well for secret national security programs," Wizner said. "Ten years have gone by," since the first Snowden disclosures, "and we don't know what other kinds of rights-violating activities have been taking place in secret, and I don't trust our traditional oversight systems, courts and the Congress, to ferret those out," Wizner said. "When you're dealing with secret programs in a democracy, it almost always requires insiders who are willing to risk their livelihoods and their freedom to bring the information to the public."
That same month, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the NSA's phone-records surveillance program was unlawful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program, which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just days after Snowden disclosed its existence. "Once it was pushed out into open court, and the court was able to hear from two sides and not just one, the court held that the program was illegal," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology project, told The Register. The Freedom Act also required the federal government to declassify and release "significant" opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and authorized the appointment of independent amici -- friends of the court intended to provide an outside perspective. The FISC was established in 1978 under the FISA -- the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. And prior to the Freedom Act, this top-secret court only heard the government's perspective on things, like why the FBI and NSA should be allowed to scoop up private communications.
"To its credit, the government has engaged in reforms, and there's more transparency now that, on the one hand, has helped build back some trust that was lost, but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told The Register. Wyden also pointed to the sunsetting of the "deeply flawed surveillance law," Section 215 of the Patriot Act, as another win for privacy and civil liberties. That law expired in March 2020 after Congress did not reauthorize it. "For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records (Call Detail Records or CDR) documenting who a person called and for how long they called them -- more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships," Electronic Frontier Foundation's Matthew Guariglia, Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker said. James Clapper, the former US Director of National Intelligence, "stated publicly that the Snowden disclosures accelerated by seven years the adoption of commercial encryption," Wizner said. "At the individual level, and at the corporate level, we are more secure."
"And at the corporate level, what the Snowden revelations taught big tech was that even as the government was knocking on the front door, with legal orders to turn over customer data, it was breaking in the backdoor," Wizner added. "Government was hacking those companies, finding the few points in their global networks where data passed unencrypted, and siphoning it off." "If you ask the government -- if you caught them in a room, and they were talking off the record -- they would say the biggest impact for us from the Snowden disclosures is that it made big tech companies less cooperative," he continued. "I regard that as a feature, not a bug."
The real issue that the Snowden leaks revealed is that America's "ordinary system of checks and balances doesn't work very well for secret national security programs," Wizner said. "Ten years have gone by," since the first Snowden disclosures, "and we don't know what other kinds of rights-violating activities have been taking place in secret, and I don't trust our traditional oversight systems, courts and the Congress, to ferret those out," Wizner said. "When you're dealing with secret programs in a democracy, it almost always requires insiders who are willing to risk their livelihoods and their freedom to bring the information to the public."
Frontline: United States of Secrets (Score:5, Informative)
Frontline did what I consider to be a good documentary on the Snowden leaks, titled United States of Secrets. They interviewed a lot of primary sources. It's available free to view online without ads (caveat: I have uBlock Origin on all the time...).
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/united-states-of-secrets/ [pbs.org]
Nothing has been learned. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the government is still operating with impunity. The same people are still being voted in. Nothing has changed. The only thing that has changed is complaining about China's potential to spy to shift people's eyes elsewhere.
Re: Nothing has been learned. (Score:3)
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Can they hold back from using it for I. E. Industrial espionage? Who knows.
Gee, does anyone use Internet explorer any more?
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Have to upvote this for it's painful reality
Re:Nothing has been learned. (Score:4, Insightful)
An honest government is something that its people must perpetually fight for. Dishonest people love government positions and government positions tend to make honest people become dishonest. Holding them accountable is hard and if people don't constantly put effort into doing it, then it doesn't happen.
We can't really blame people for this. There is a lot going on in their lives including a lot of struggles and pains that are more acute than government spying. They have more immediate concerns. So, if they aren't feeling the pain in a direct and identifiable way, then they don't care about it, and are content to let it fester (sometimes while telling themselves false narratives about how it isn't really there).
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Couldn't agree more. People have a lot of mental tricks to avoid distress and the little lies we tell ourselves every day can form so subconsciously that we don't even know why we think / feel the way we do about things.
One one hand, it's not unreasonable. We can't solve some problems and have to prioritize our energy into useful places. On the other hand, the views we form to soothe the cognitive dissonance creates traps that can be exploited
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Indeed. But while we cannot blame people, causally there are only two options: People keep their government honest or everything slowly goes to hell. That is pretty much what is going on in the US.
We learned nothing could be changed (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, we have learned that nothing could be changed, so don't expect anything is going to change.
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Au contraire. Things are changing for the worse. Stay asleep at the wheel, and that surveillance-fascism, with a bit of religious fanaticism thrown in, is not very far away.
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What are you talking about?
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But we have learned, and important lessons at that:
1. Whistleblowers are despicable traitors who hate America.
2. Freedom of speech is a Russian plot to brainwash the US populace.
3. The government is not spying, it's protecting democracy.
Re: Nothing has been learned. (Score:2)
Re: Nothing has been learned. (Score:2)
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
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The FCC's privacy rules were also enacted in 2016. Perhaps that could be indirectly attributed to Snowden, if only partially.
Re:Nothing has been learned. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think hoping that the government doesn't spy on you is foolish. You have to secure everything on the assumption that someone with government level resources is trying to hack it.
That was one of the biggest changes post-Snowden. Encryption became the default because it greatly increases the cost of collecting bulk data. While NSA/GCHQ hacking may still be possible, the hope is that it forces them target their efforts, not simply spy on everyone and save it all in vast databases.
Much more effort was put into securing supply chains and building trust into hardware.
People also started paying attention to legal jurisdictions a lot more, particularly the ones outside FIVEEYES and other alliances. Moving data to, and routing traffic through those locations became important.
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"People also started paying attention to legal jurisdictions a lot more, particularly the ones outside FIVEEYES and other alliances."
Interesting. So when Snowden revealed that even the good guys are spying your take was to start housing and routing your data through the places already known to be even more untrustworthy?
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We know that FIVEEYES and various other groups exist. We also know that some countries have stronger and better enforced rules against that sort of thing than others. Additionally, adding extra jurisdictions makes it legally more difficult to obtain data, and more risk to hack it since that's an attack on a supposedly friendly country.
Obviously none of that is a substitute for encryption and other measures, but what was very clear from the Snowden leaks was that a lot of surveillance was opportunistic bulk
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The biggest takes I had from the Snowden leaks were actually the international agreements to bypass domestic legal issues. Simply send the data to another jurisdiction and request it back. Encryption is worthless if the keys are in the hands of a third party. End-to-End is the only way.
I don't think he told us anything (Score:3, Insightful)
And if it doesn't change how you vote, it doesn't matter.
Re: I don't think he told us anything (Score:5, Funny)
Named the backup server Snowden.
Re:I don't think he told us anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Until those leaks there was speculation about the NSA and GCHQ, but a lot of it was written off as paranoia.
The photos of NSA employees installing undetectable, unremovable malware in Cisco hardware intercepted during shipping is a good example. We know it was possible, but few people took it seriously until Snowden showed us the hard proof.
It certainly affected European companies, who had to move data and services away from the US.
Not long after, Google started encrypting email sent between servers, because it was known that the NSA intercepted it that way. They also started their push for all websites to use HTTPS, and to protect certificates against the kind of hijacking that the NSA was doing.
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Not long after, Google started encrypting email sent between servers, because it was known that the NSA intercepted it that way.
And it gave people better fee-fees despite the fact that Google is a member of PRISM and surely just giving the feds all your decrypted email anyway.
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There's not much you can do about legal requests for data, but that's not what encrypting data between email servers was for. That was to stop it being harvested in bulk by tapping the trunk connections between Google datacentres.
At least with PRISM they have to target certain accounts or individuals, and go through courts. I'm not happy about it either, but that's way better than scooping up everything from everyone all the time.
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There's not much you can do about legal requests for data, but that's not what encrypting data between email servers was for. That was to stop it being harvested in bulk by tapping the trunk connections between Google datacentres.
The only entity doing that was the government.
At least with PRISM they have to target certain accounts or individuals, and go through courts.
AhahAHAhAHahAH
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Why target certain accounts or individuals when you can just target the certs and continue harvesting in bulk?
Zero trust and true end-to-end encryption is the only way.
Re: I don't think he told us anything (Score:2)
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Until those leaks there was speculation about the NSA and GCHQ, but a lot of it was written off as paranoia.
The photos of NSA employees installing undetectable, unremovable malware in Cisco hardware intercepted during shipping is a good example. We know it was possible, but few people took it seriously until Snowden showed us the hard proof.
It certainly affected European companies, who had to move data and services away from the US.
Not long after, Google started encrypting email sent between servers, because it was known that the NSA intercepted it that way. They also started their push for all websites to use HTTPS, and to protect certificates against the kind of hijacking that the NSA was doing.
We are fortunate indeed comrade, that no other countries do this. Da, only the Ameriskansi, who if you care to read the real truth, is the exact cause of all evil, past present and future.
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Oh China, France, and many other countries do this too, I'm sure.
The issue is legal jurisdiction. If you are a Dutch company and the UK hacks you, there isn't much you can do about it. That actually happened. Snowden revealed that GCHQ had stolen the private encryption keys used by a Dutch company that supplied all of Europe and beyond.
If you are a Dutch company and you find out that the Dutch government hacked you, at least you can sue them, and there will likely be some damaging controversy over who autho
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Oh China, France, and many other countries do this too, I'm sure.
The issue is legal jurisdiction. If you are a Dutch company and the UK hacks you, there isn't much you can do about it. That actually happened. Snowden revealed that GCHQ had stolen the private encryption keys used by a Dutch company that supplied all of Europe and beyond.
If you are a Dutch company and you find out that the Dutch government hacked you, at least you can sue them, and there will likely be some damaging controversy over who authorized something that could cause huge damage to Dutch citizens and Dutch businesses.
Of course most/all countries do this sort of thing. It isn't whataboutism, just a pragmatic understanding that if something is possible, it will happen.
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"It certainly affected European companies, who had to move data and services away from the US."
Yes, China jumped right in to exploit the optics.
"Google started encrypting email sent between servers, because it was known that the NSA intercepted it that way. They also started their push for all websites to use HTTPS, and to protect certificates against the kind of hijacking that the NSA was doing."
This was all misdirection. https is fundamentally flawed and depends on a trust model, a model that government a
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People cared. People cared a great deal. The response was that congress passed a bill that blessed these violations of our rights and claimed it was to 'stop it.'
At no point did anyone of note run on a platform of massive reform and gutting the deep state snowden exposed... oh wait, yes someone did and people elected him President but his entire presidency was plagued by obstruction and false allegations driven by the entrenched powers pissed at his victory and given false credibility by the intelligence ag
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And if you changed how you voted then what difference would that make? Really both sides accept this, voting in the system doesn't matter in the end it just gives people a perception they have some say.
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Why bother voting if they don't change anything like this? :(
Dont be the good guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Glenn's a loser (Score:1, Insightful)
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His timing and destination remain suspicious. (Score:1)
The NSA's invasions of privacy were already known to the public going back to before the turn of the century, but Snowden (with very obvious help) weaponized it against th
Re:His timing and destination remain suspicious. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I earlier saw Snowden had run to Russia, I just rolled my eyes.
That makes sense. I'd roll my eyes too, if my head were totally up my own asshole, because I'd rather see the inside of my head than the inside of my ass.
Snowden flew to Russia with the intent of evading authorities in Hong Kong and making a connecting flight. But the US terminated his passport while he was on the way there. He literally could not leave.
You cannot reasonably believe both that Snowden was a hapless fuck and a genius playing 4D chess at the same time.
The NSA's invasions of privacy were already known to the public going back to before the turn of the century, but Snowden (with very obvious help) weaponized it against the United States while running into the arms of what was already one of the least free, least rights-respecting regimes on the planet.
None of the big three actually respect rights when they are inconvenient. Get that into your head immediately.
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Snowden - should have stay and faced the consequences. That is all there is to it. You fall in line, work how you can thru the system, or you break the rules and face the music.
When you break the rules and flee the country - you're a traitor!
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Snowden - should have stay and faced the consequences.
Snowden should have been crucified so that you could feel better about The System? What level of bootlickery is that?
When you break the rules and flee the country - you're a traitor!
No, you're a traitor. Snowden did what he did to let us know the government was breaking the law. You're willfully spreading propaganda constructed by the internal enemies of our country who would destroy what we have of democracy.
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Snowden - should have stay and faced the consequences.
Snowden should have been crucified so that you could feel better about The System? What level of bootlickery is that?
When you break the rules and flee the country - you're a traitor!
No, you're a traitor. Snowden did what he did to let us know the government was breaking the law. You're willfully spreading propaganda constructed by the internal enemies of our country who would destroy what we have of democracy.
Snowden was under no obligation to surrender his life to the US criminal prosecution system.
But the brutal truth is: that's the only reason martyrs are ever effective -- they're crucified when they didn't have to be.
If Snowden had stayed and become the lamb, then yeah, his life would have been forfeit. At best he'd be in prison until he died or some future President pardoned him. But it would have forced the issues to be our problem, in our system, with our ACLU/EFF/etc. friends of the court, our Congressi
Re:His timing and destination remain suspicious. (Score:4, Insightful)
False. There is no obligation to stick around and fall on your sword after doing the right thing. That is ridiculous. Failing to fall on his sword after exposing executive level treason does not magically make *him* the traitor.
If he is a traitor it is for having been complicit in and aided the enemies within our government who perpetrated these crimes but since the crimes were ongoing and rampant most would consider his disclosures somewhat mitigating.
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Next to the objective facts of what he actually did, your analysis of his intentions is way more convincing.
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It's definitely not a coincidence, you are correct.
You're just wrong on the facts about all the rest of it. Read any contemporaneous reports or any of the summary books.
I don't know who told you these conspiracy theories but they're making you look bad.
Load up on research. It's not even difficult. Reading is fundamental.
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Methinks you're new to this.
Re: His timing and destination remain suspicious. (Score:2)
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The US grounded his flight and stranded him there. No that isn't a coincidence.
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He acted like a Russian spy every single moment up to that point, but really he was a conscientious whistleblower...who had zero faith in any other American but himself. Much like a Russian spy. And conveniently did everything he conceivably could to serve the purposes of the Kremlin at the time, and ended up in Kremlin control because we forced him to. Like every Russian spy ever says.
T
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"So it's not that he's a Russian spy, it's that it was an American conspiracy to make him look like a Russian spy."
You are seriously going to try to discredit the notion of a conspiracy by virtue of being a conspiracy when talking about Edward fucking Snowden??!? The idea that the people Edward Snowden just revealed were actively engaged in domestic and international conspiracies by the assload being subjected to a conspiracy by the same people to mitigate the damage. Nah, that's not plausible. Give me a br
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But the US terminated his passport while he was on the way there. He literally could not leave.
lol. Imagine considering the passport system the one inviolable institution on this planet. It is managed and respected with absolute integrity and is ALWAYS respected (unless you are in the armed forces of the USA, in which case your ID card allows you to bypass all of those systems).
Yeah, Snowden was stuck there. There was absolutely no way around. Everyone always has to respect all of the laws made by various countries and agreed to Internationally. Russia ALWAYS respects what the USA says in relation t
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Yeah, Snowden was stuck there. There was absolutely no way around.
Snowden was an international person of interest arriving in a highly policed country. Work it out.
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Why don't you work out that the other countries didn't HAVE to play the game defined by the USA. Rules about passports are sovereign rules. The sovereign entity can, and does, violate those rules at will.
The argument is that Snowden didn't have a choice. With that, most of us are in agreement. What others disagree with is that the countries involved did have a choice, which your narrative seems to ignore.
You know what's funny about serial downmodders? (Score:2)
My serial downvoters ensure that I have to keep posting to make more karma in order to keep my bonus. The parent comment was downmodded as part of a three pack. So I've got to post enough to get at least three upmods just to cancel that guy out...
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I could have stopped reading at your name. It fully expresses your comment all by itself.
After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learned? (Score:5, Interesting)
10 Years After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learned?
Well, one thing I learned and that rather surprised me, because of it being rather contradictory, is that the freedom loving anti government people who are constantly on guard against government surveillance aimed at taking away their money, their religion, their rights and their guns want the guy who exposed the 'deep state' like surveillance activities of the US government to be executed as a traitor.
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They've been force-fed the red pill and just want to go back to eating fake steak.
Re: After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learn (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly this! Cos he "ran for Russia"!!?! Which he obviously did not do: The US govt grounded Snowden in Moscow by revoking his passport.
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That's a silly line to take. The US government didn't take Snowden to Russia. He escaped to there via Hong Kong.
Re: After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learn (Score:5, Informative)
That's a silly line to take. The US government didn't take Snowden to Russia. He escaped to there via Hong Kong.
The US government terminated his passport while he was on the way to a Russian airport to take a connecting flight. He could not then get on that subsequent flight. The US government literally forced Snowden to stay in Russia. And you are literally spreading their propaganda for them. How useful of you.
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Do they? Last I checked they elected the first person to come along they didn't was connected to the deep state [Trump] and have watched him be attacked continually by the same deep state ever since.
What I find interesting is that so many who recognize Snowden as a hero now claim the same deep state he exposed is a conspiracy theory and Russian propaganda for no better reason than the deep state now has a partisan affiliation [because on party was infiltrated by MAGA, leaving only one fully corrupt wing to
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That did not actually surprise me. These people are not rational and have no capability for understanding how things actually work. Remember when after January 6th, many of them claimed even here nothing illegal had happened? _That_ is the level of extreme non-understanding these people operate on.
that americans are sheep (Score:3, Insightful)
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There are Americans who are the good guys and supporting the American notion of liberty and freedom is still what defines a good guy. Sadly that isn't the notion running America these days.
lest we forget (Score:3)
Snowden remains vilified to the current day, trapped in a Russia he cannot leave. Ironically, the current administration characterises him as pro Russian or at least a Russian sympathizer, when it was the US government pressuring allies to refuse him entry that trapped him there.
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Of course he CAN leave, Putin (AFAIK) hasn't restricted him.
The problem is that as far as I know, the US has an open indictment against him and has shown a willingness to compel extradition from any country he dares to visit.
He probably could safely go to China, esp now that Putin and Xi are better buddies. but China may not want the headache right now.
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
This is from 2015, EIGHT YEARS AGO.
The US has not indicated any less hunger to prosecute him since then.
US government out of control (Score:2)
Snowdon just confirmed what many people suspected: The US government is out of control. Spying on its own populace, torture and rendition, secret courts, and more.
In a decent world, Snowdon would be a hero: bringing illegal government activities to public attention. Instead, some comments call him a traitor. He fled to Russia, because in US custody he would be held in solitary confinement until he went nuts (Manning), or possibly tortured, or possibly he would just be "helped" to commit suicide (Epstein).
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Sad but true. The US is sliding into totalitarianisms and there seems to be no way to prevent that.
We learned about Q (Score:2)
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Lesson learned: encrypt everything (Score:5, Insightful)
The general public learned nothing because they knew nothing to start with. However, many developers learned that you must encrypt your data if you don't want it to be consumed en masse. HTTP sites are basically non-existent now which is a huge improvement and encryption for chat applications is commonplace.
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The general public learned nothing because they knew nothing to start with. However, many developers learned that you must encrypt your data if you don't want it to be consumed en masse.
NEVER FORGET QWEST [wikipedia.org]. (Anyone who didn't know that seven years before the Snowden "revelations" is a toolbag.)
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Now if we could encrypt other online communication types like e-mails by default.
People take my rants more seriously now. Thanks Ed (Score:2)
It has become an accepted fact that the US cryptographic standards (because that's the domain I work in - other countries do it too) have back doors and we know some of them but there may be more.
So when I explain my designs and point to specific suspect constructions, people believe me whereas before they thought it was tin foil hat nonsense. In defiance of FIPS140-2, we never put in the CRNGT because it lower entropy of data from a random number generator. Why is that in FIPS 140-2 and not in SP800-90 (th
Government secrets are evil. period. (Score:2)
A government that is not fully open and transparent is an evil government.
Hiding things behind "National Security" and byzantine layers of classification is done by people who know they are doing wrong things that the public would not stand for if it was done in the open.
Keeping things secret from "the enemy" is an act of paranoia. Civilized societies should trade with all and be peaceful. A country with enemies is a country that has lost its way.
Who are Switzerland enemies? Who are Costa Rica's enemie
Doesn't Snowden leak three times a day? (Score:2)
sheeple (Score:2)
Learned that people are pretty much sheep (not learned, confirmed... happened again sometimes around 2021).
The people know it, the gov know it, the 3/4 letter agencies know it. They can do whatever the f they want, and you won't do anything. You will go to your elections and vote for them again, and again, because what else you gonna do? huh?
They are doing it right now, dunno what... but they are doing something that sheep will be outraged about in 10 years time when they find out. Same thing going to happe
Ronald Reagan (Score:2)
âoeThe 9 most terrifying words in the English language are âoeI'm from the government, and I'm here to helpâ - Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
Re:Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:4, Insightful)
Edward Snowden is a an American Hero. It's an absolute disgrace that we've forced him to live in exile.
Re: Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:1)
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Putin's top political opponent is in prison for getting poisoned by the KGB, and exposing actual corruption. Protesting the war in Ukraine results in 20 year prison sentences.
I protested the war in Iraq and nobody gave a shit, least of all the CIA. If they spied on me they kept if fucking quiet and I didn't see a prison cell until I got caught up in the war on drugs.
America isn't perfect.. but if you think we are bad, you should be vocally fucking opposed to Russia.
And yet Snowden isn't... so I wonder if th
Re: Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:5, Interesting)
The FBI would track protesters in the USA, not the CIA, if the divisions among their responsibilities worked right. Too often they do not, and the Department of Homeland Security was designed to break that segregation. They've been an immense source of bureaucracy and managerial expense with very few concrete results.
Mr. Snowden is left in place by Russia because he provides a political coup, an opportunity to point at how terrible the Americans are. He's got very solid grounds for his claims, which has provided him some precarious protection. I'm concerned that he will be extradited to the US to sweeten some other deal.
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"if the divisions among their responsibilities worked right"
That is a pretty big "if", the CIA doesn't even bother showing up for congressional oversight half the time so I highly doubt they are staying within statutory bounds.
Re: Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:4, Insightful)
America isn't perfect.. but if you think we are bad, you should be vocally fucking opposed to Russia.
And yet Snowden isn't...
He's not exactly in a place where he can be openly critical of Russia. Maybe if we protected whistleblowers, like we pretend we want to, and didn't betray them, then he would have the freedom to speak out against Russia.
Yeah, I support America over Russia, despite our flaws, because I can actually speak my truth without fear of our national government.
Says the Anonymous Coward. Give me a break. You might be free to speak "your truth", whatever that's supposed to mean, but you're not necessarily free to speak actual truth, as Snowden discovered.
Re: Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:2)
Snowden had the choice of either spending the rest of his life in a US jail, or living as a free man in Russia. Can you blame him for choosing Russia?
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"America isn't perfect.. but if you think we are bad, you should be vocally fucking opposed to Russia."
How bad Russia is or isn't, even in relative terms is completely irrelevant. Nobody thinks Russians have real rights, least of all the Russians.
Our government doesn't get a pass on shitting on our Constitution because someone else is worse. Edward Snowden spoke out, the Constitution is extremely clear on speech. The fact there are laws which conflict with that is a disgrace. The fact our courts have sold o
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Sorry you are a nobody, I am sure their are plenty of nobodies in Russia that are opposed to Putin that are not in jail. What you are doing is cherry picking your examples.
Nobody was saying Russia is good, the statement "You realize you sound very much like a Russian this way" implies they think that Russia is bad as well otherwise it wouldn't be a argument at all.
I think most people here think Russia is worse, however that does not invalidate pointing out similarities that we should be trying to stop. If s
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Re: Do the math - Russia is a shithole (Score:2)
Yet you forget Donald Trump and Bill Gates were among his clients. Yes they crossed the political spectrum but that happens in the good old boy network. Fortunately the good old boy network is collapsing. It is transforming I to white christian male network hard.
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"Snowden is pretty much a traitor to America and nothing else."
Bullshit. The CIA/NSA/Bush/Obama, those are the traitors. Any time our executive intentionally violates the Constitutional rights of The People, they declare themselves to be the enemy, every party who participated or stood by should face a militia firing squad.
"Snowden lives in Russia while saying nothing about the lack of freedom, the abundance of fascism.."
Are you really blaming Snowden for the failure of the 1st amendment to protect him from
Re: we also learned that (Score:5, Informative)
Snowden did in now way "run to adversaries" (you imply Russia, I believe?): his passport was revoked while in transit to Latin America. It's the US who grounded Snowden in Moskow. Repeatedly: as someone posted above, the US even made EU complicit by making it ground and search a presidential plane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So no, Snowden didn't choose for Russia. The US put him there, convently changing perception and telling from your naive comment, that worked.
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He criticizes his own country but shuts his mouth about the real authoritarian government.
If you don't think America's government is really authoritarian then you are provably not paying attention.
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+1 Insightful, and no asshats it doesn't mean anything that you can name places which are worse.
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Welcome to my world, friend. Criticizing the US government, capitalism, or cryptocurrency is a quick road to downmodsville — no matter how cogent the criticism. And because your comment was in support of mine, it was that much more likely to catch a downmod.
Most people quickly learn to let me swing in the wind, and catch the downmods.
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"He criticizes his own country but shuts his mouth about the real authoritarian government."
What else was he supposed to do when the 1st amendment failed?
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Since you're not posting from the Libertarian Paradise of the Congo would you care to explain why?
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http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.o... [ibiblio.org]
Wow. Thank you for posting that. I knew about Groklaw but hadn't followed what happened to it.
That final post is... heartfelt, almost heartbreaking. Incredibly sincere, vulnerable writing. Worth being preserved and re-read for years.