Whoa! Snowden has now turned over archives of “thousands” of documents

[dkf]

WASHINGTON — The source had instructed his media contacts to come to Hong Kong, visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel, and ask — loudly — for directions to another part of the hotel. If all seemed well, the source would walk past holding a Rubik’s Cube.

So three people — Glenn Greenwald, a civil-liberties writer who recently moved his blog to The Guardian; Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who specializes in surveillance; and Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian reporter — flew from New York to Hong Kong about 12 days ago. They followed the directions. A man with a Rubik’s Cube appeared.

It was Edward J. Snowden, who looked even younger than his 29 years — an appearance, Mr. Greenwald recalled in an interview from Hong Kong on Monday, that shocked him because he had been expecting, given the classified surveillance programs the man had access to, someone far more senior. Mr. Snowden has now turned over archives of “thousands” of documents, according to Mr. Greenwald, and “dozens” are newsworthy.

Mr. Snowden’s ability to burrow deep into America’s national security apparatus and emerge clutching some of its most closely guarded secrets is partly a story of the post-Sept. 11 era, when the government’s expanding surveillance Leviathan and complex computer systems have given network specialists with technical skills tremendous power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/us/how-edward-j-snowden-orchestrated-a-blockbuster-story.html?smid=tw-nytmedia&seid=auto&_r=1&

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Good. Daniel Ellsberg turned over 7000 pages.

[ProSense]

2. Oversell?

Mr. Snowden has now turned over archives of “thousands” of documents, according to Mr. Greenwald, and “dozens” are newsworthy.

Hope the "dozens" are more "newsworthy" than what has been released thus far.


"Most significant" leak in history, and likely one of the dumbest.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022987178

[BrotherIvan]

10. Why do you keep pimping your own post in every thread?

It's odd.

[Luminous Animal]

15. That's how she rolls.

I recommend letting it go lest you find your self in a labyrinth of one self-referenced blue link after another until you end up forgetting how you got there.

[JDPriestly]

16. Certain DUers posts look like I would imagine NSA research

papers to look.

I used to have a couple of jobs in which I did research. (Not of the NSA or similar types) There is only one person on DU whose posts look like legal or corporate research due to the many, many citations or references to other sources.

It is quite a noticeable thing. A lot of work and study goes into those posts, and knowing what it is like to do that kind of work, I wonder if only one person is preparing them.

Oh, well. We will never know. But I think it is kind of funny. And the posts are always, always fanatically pro-Obama. What a hoot. Looks professional to me. Makes me think of my days doing various kinds of research.

[demwing]

28. "looks" professional.

But dig deeper. Most of Prosense's references are to her own posts, and while it looks professional, it's really just masturbatory, and seems designed to inundate readers with endless piles of worthless data.

[BrotherIvan]

30. I think I'm going to start pimping this post of hers

Wherein she outs that the NSA is not only NOT collecting skeins of meaningless data as the BOrG likes to argue, but is in fact sharing (or selling) it with other governments. I wonder why she hasn't made this into a post?

The Blue Link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2985752

[DisgustipatedinCA]

3. Great news. If there's more democracy-killing behavior at NSA, we all need to know about it.

It might not be great news for the spy state fans here, but who cares.

[TheRightIsWrong]

4. This Guy

These "secrets" are not some of the most closely guarded. If they were, the leak would be coming from someone way higher up. I was truly under the impression that this was public knowledge. Have people just woken up? If so, Edward Snowden should be hailed as an alarm clock, not a hero.

[JDPriestly]

17. I had no idea that the scope of this kind of program is so broad.

This is an incredibly broad program that will encompass the communications of anyone who has friends or business associates overseas (maybe even in the US). It is very troubling and may well be unconstitutional. In fact, I suspect that it is.

[TheRightIsWrong]

22. I'm with you

I would lean towards its unconstitutional. But the fact that it's nothing new is where my frustration comes from. What's even more troubling to me is that it seems the "free press" is acting like this is a new story and it isn't. I remain convinced if what had happened to the AP never would've been found out, they would've continued to turn a blind eye to what our govt. has been doing since at least 2005.

[JDPriestly]

23. I assumed that the program was limited to cases in which

the government had probable cause and needed a pen register. I really never imagined that their program would be so broad. It is quite shocking to me. This program may have begun before 2005. It could go back a long way. But the speed of our computers would make it far more efficient and dangerous.

People don't understand what this program could mean to our political system and individual privacy. Have you ever filled out an application for a loan that was insured by the government or applied for a government job or gone through the low-level security check required to get a license for a profession? Have you ever applied to be in the military or requested VA medical care? Some of those forms ask for a lot of information. With today's computers all that information could be correlated and used to create quite a profile of an individual who was completely innocent. I don't know if that is what they are doing, but it would not be difficult for them to do it.

Some of the information we submit to the government like our IRS forms may be private and inaccessible even in programs like this, but then . . . . ? I really don't know because most of us have "nothing to hide" or so we think, but when I remember the experiences told to me by people who lived through WWII in Germany, I wonder whether we might all have things that we would rather our government did not scrutinize. Think about the books that you read, what you borrow from the library, what you download on your Nook, the things you access on the internet just for a laugh.

For example, I recently read in an old classic book by Gibbons entitled The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire about the religion of a Germanic tribe in the late Roman Empire. It was written long ago. I bought it in college and lost most of the volumes.

So I googled the term I didn't know -- the aryan religion. I wanted to know what it was. Well of course that word has more than one meaning. The religion was the religion of, I believe the Gothic tribes according to Gibbons. Now that word could put me on someone's list. But the person who might put me on the list would never know that I read the book in this very old history of the Roman Empire -- a classic book. So that is the danger of this kind of program. It will collect all kinds of data and identify all kinds of harmless, useless information and target absolutely innocent people.

[Life Long Dem]

5. Well, so far all I've seen has been a repeat of 2006

[Autumn]

6. Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

rec

[yodermon]

7. I love this reporting, from the article:

quote: "Somewhere along the way, he acquired a top-secret clearance"

Nothing like precision reporting, eh NYT?

[OilemFirchen]

8. So "civil-liberties writer" Greenwald

has "dozens" of "newsworthy" documents about this heinous Constitutional violation and he's chosen to... what?

Put the fuck up or shut the fuck up.

[Luminous Animal]

14. He's going to. What's the hurry. He took 1 day off in a month.

[TheRightIsWrong]

9. A Rubik's Cube?

I've never seen anyone more starved for attention than this guy. Everything he's done to this point suggests that. If his sole mission was to inform the american people of this, then why not just release the documents to Greenwald and remain anonymous? That wasn't enough for Mr. Snowden apparently. He needed to be the face of this non story and he's gotten his wish.

[JDPriestly]

18. Why? Because if he had remained anonymous many people

would accuse him of being a sneaky guy. I think the guy is sincere and has a rather clean spirit. I really don't think he has a big ego at all. He talks very calmly and his demeanor and expressions are just quiet and quite sane.

I think he may be the real deal. I am sure that he has lots of faults as do we all, but I don't think he is a sicko. I think he was genuinely appalled when he put two and two together and realized just how intrusive the program that he was involved in was.

[sigmasix]

25. more evidence exists that he violated a sacred oath

Even though he doesnt like the fact that Obama is the commander in chief, it doesnt give him the right to violate his oathes. So this snowden character was able to collect enough shit to stick to a wall if Greenwald throws it during other shit storms. The guy "outed" a known program and alluded to his personal case of Obama derangment syndrome- which makes him a pal with every other Obama demonizer. Snowden claims to know where all our operatives are, yet he fled to china- America's leading competitor in the technology intelligence field. Many of his DU apologists allow thier disregard for the lives of Americans endangered by the real threat of chinese access to our plans and lists of agents. Luddites and extreme right wing media dollars do a great job at destruction and the radicalization of any nitwit with a control issue, to include a supposition that ANY Information exchange technology in the hands of our fellow americans will be used to strip you of your rights, dignity and self. This, the latest round of ODS is a little different because the right wing woo woo people are working overtime to get other Obama woo groups from the tin foil hat wearers tied together with hemp to the racist that wants his country back from the black guy- in the hopes that all the nuts will squeel at the same time, thus increasing moral and legal manufactured "outrage" over this nonesense. This whole"Obama is spying on everyone all the time" woo is no different from the other ODS attacks we've had to see through to find animus for this POTUS at it's core. I know there are some that would prefer to have the latest Obama woo given complete attention and significance. When Snowden's defenders claim that china is a haven for freedom and praise his "logical" choice as if it werent proof of intending harm to the unitied states, should his unsecured classified documents fall into thier hands. Is everyone at "Crazy-mixed-up Obama did it University" really dumb enough to believe that real Americans cant see contrived "journalism" and attempts to subvert America's saftey. Havent you teabaggers figured it out yet? We see you for the opportunistic narccicistic anti American cynics that you are. The only way you'll get the attention you want is through some sort of mass observance that all teabaggers could do at a certain time, on a certain day to gather the attention of the world to your brand of freedumb. Some sort of true act of importance- something that'll really show that teabaggers have commitment to thier version of America and thier system of truth.
Psss...I hear Jim Jones had a great plan for the true believers- Also a great way for teabaggers to test for loyalty too!

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. 'a sacred oath'? How ironic that you talk like that, and then end up disparaging 'true believers'

If you call any oath you think Snowden took (and I don't see that a contractor would necessarily have to take an oath - it's possible he did, but, since you take about evidence for the oath, please provide it) 'sacred', then you yourself are deep in 'true believer' territory.

And, by the way, since you hid it in a wall-of-text rant, it's very rude to calls DUers 'teabaggers'.

Your argument is dumb; if you think the program was already known, then all your outrage about Snowden exposing it is faux.

[SoapBox]

19. Ditto.

[Tanuki]

26. OMG!

[img][/img]

[Life Long Dem]

11. Rubik’s Cube?

In the movie Duplicity.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135487/synopsis

We are then taken five years later. Ray is holding a mini Rubiks cube key chain and walks into a department store, where he spots Claire. He walks up to say hi and Claire pretends to know him, until she finally admits that she doesnt remember him. He asks if she is going to play it that way, meaning pretending not to know him. He tells her he is bad with names, a B or a B+ with faces, but he has traditionally been good with remembering people hes slept with. He knocks her bag over by accident, and the same Rubiks cube key chain falls out. They get real and realize they were each others contacts.

In the movie Ray mentions a "drop".

[dkf]

12. Oh my...fascinating.

[JDPriestly]

20. Rubik's cubes are the toys of nerds. Snowden is a nerd.

That is why he was entrusted with the information he apparently had. I don't think he is a fraud. Obama has virtually admitted that the allegations are true. I could be wrong, but I don't think he is a fraud.

Oh, and it is very likely that Rubik's cubes are pretty easy to get in Hong Kong. Maybe he bought it in the hotel. Maybe he brought it along because he likes to move something around with his hands when he is bored. It isn't a big deal. If you say look for the guy in the red sweater, there could be several such people. A Rubik's cube is sort of passe and not likely to be held out by more than one person.

So I wouldn't place too much importance on the Rubik's cube. I have one in my office which was left there by one of my children.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. I'll get excited if they reveal what we already know about the Bush Crime Family...

I wouldn't be surprised though to hear it's all anti-liberal/anti-Hillary crap at this point.

Maybe with something negative about Greenpeace tossed in.

[clayton72]

21. I'm just wondering if this is a Karl Rove / Dick Cheney joint production

Maybe I'm just getting paranoid that EVERYTHING that ever happens is to make Obama look bad so that history sees Bush as not being quite so terrible. Obama campaigned on shutting this stuff down, but has failed to do so. Must be a good reason for continuing it because he is going to wind up owning it. But one can't help but notice that the Republicans thought all this was fine until Obama took office. Oh, NOW it's a terrible abuse of power with a Democrat tapping their phones and reading their emails. AND he hasn't let any major terrorist attacks happen on his watch... The NERVE of that fellow!

[TheRightIsWrong]

24. Its ridiculous

When they were shitting on our 4th amendment rights how were they ever suppose to predict that a black guy/democrat (depending on the republican) would become president? Because they weren't just fine with this stuff they LOVED IT. It was overwhelming support because "it kept us safe." I thought for republicans it went Holy Bible first, Patriot Act second when it comes to holy doctrines. What happened? An election made their policies become unconstitutional? I didn't know you could major in Revisionists History, but they obviously have.

[MADem]

27. What will be the upshot of all this? Automated, robot sys admins?

They are the weakest link...! From the Big Finish in the OP link:

John Schindler, a former N.S.A. counterintelligence officer and now a professor at the Naval War College, said that in the post-Sept. 11 age, the computer “systems administrators” had access to enormous amounts of classified information.

“They can be a critical security gap because they see everything,” he said. “They’re like code clerks were in the 20th century. If a smart systems administrator went rogue, you’d be in trouble.”