US Officials Realizing That Snowden May Have Copied Info On Almost Everything The NSA Does
from the that-might-explain-the-freakout dept
If it seemed slightly ridiculous to watch the feds completely freak out over the whole Edward Snowden situation, perhaps this tidbit from an article concerning US officials retracing Snowden's steps through the NSA's computer system helps explain why they're so spooked:"They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has," said one former government official, referring to the NSA, where Snowden worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton while in the NSA's Hawaii facility. "Everyone's nervous about what the next thing will be, what will be exposed."Of course, as Glenn Greenwald has noted in the past, and is quoted in the same article as saying, so far, Snowden has been quite careful about what he's released:
"I know that he has in his possession thousands of documents, which, if published, would impose crippling damage on the United States' surveillance capabilities and systems around the world," Greenwald told CNN. "He has never done any of that."Of course, any system that relies on security through obscurity is only as good as it can maintain that obscurity. Perhaps, next time, the NSA will recognize that the best security actually comes via transparency.
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Filed Under: ed snowden, edward snowden, nsa, nsa surveillance
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Ha ha...
Ha... HA... HAHAHAHAHA!
*gasp*
*looks at the words again*
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
50 years of secrecy culture upended by one whistleblower while they're in power? We have a LOT of work to do before that happens...
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LOL, haven't read anything that funny in a long time.
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Roads, police, judges and schools is what you say taxes are used for but in reality it is worthless things like the NSA. Maybe the "terrorists" and supposesd enemies of the U.S. would not even exist if we did not bomb their countries and spy on them. The NSA is a waste of time, money and is a criminal organization and likely does much more damage to real national security than good.
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Or, NSA wants you to believe now know all they do.
At the very least, besides monitoring the entire public, NSA sweeps up news of tech for industrial espionage besides insider stock trades, information to blackmail whoever they wish to, and to keep track of any real leaks, such as Michael Hastings appears to have gotten.
Here's brief game theory analysis: if I'm wrong and NSA is aboveboard, it's harmless, at worst I'm a kook, laugh all you want; no up side but may prevent getting worse. On other hand, if you're wrong about not just scope (commercial fronts such as Google) but its true purposes, then you're letting it grow and gain power; there's still no up side (it's gov't, after all, necessary at best), but the down side is we all lose everything, forever. The only rational attitude toward gov't is constant vigilance against its inherent evil.
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Security
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It's not only the US that must be after him. If I were the American Govt I'd drop the charges and have the guy under heavy protection INSIDE my borders. You know, once he has nothing left to lose why not join forces with another country to get protection and survivability if my own country is chasing me with murderous instincts???
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Re: Security
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If Snowden was able to collect this much information, who else may have had this kind of access?
What if Snowden isn't the first person to collect such data?
And if others have, in fact, collected such information before Snowden, what might they have done with it?
For example, among the revelations I've seen in the past week are claims that China (in particular) and Russia have been heavily hacked (with some fairly specific examples. Yet there doesn't seem to be the sort of outrage (or at least I haven't seen it) one might expect from such revelations. Which makes one wonder if they hadn't already been passed much of the information coming to light.
These are questions we couldn't ask until now, because before Snowden we had no realistic measure of how much information there was to collect.
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"crippling damage on the United States"?
But this notion Greenwald puts out actually supports my belief that it's a limited hangout psyop. -- Once you get that notion, it's difficult to shake, just try. -- If were true that he's actually IN Russia with "crippling damage on the United States", then the Rooskis would grab him for certain, short of it starting a nuclear war.
Personally I doubt Greenwald knows it's a psyop, but it's fair to speculate that Snowden could be unwitting too. The trillion dollar spying industry isn't left to chance. So until see something from Snowden that I DIDN'T know years ago, I'm firm that it's a psyop.
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It's no secret, pretty much everyone knows it. The question is which ones and to what extent. Is it just Windows? Is it every microsoft product? Does OSX have them too? Does every operating system made in the last ten years have crippling backdoors hidden in every kernel? Is Plan 9 the only safe operating system to use because it's so complex that not even the NSA would be willing to touch it?
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Take it as you will
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5 6029
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Re: Security
I feel MUCH safer from terrorists having competent geniuses like that protecting me!
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If he's a threat to the USG, it's because they are giving him no other choice in the matter by backing him into a corner like this.
Thing is though, after how they've treated other whistleblowers, even if they did drop all the charges and promised immunity from prosecution he'd still have to be pretty foolish to come back, so the US is pretty screwed no matter what here.
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Hmmm.. was all he said when I asked, "what makes you think the NSA has any idea how to conduct cyber DEFENSE."
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like Manning' leaks
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That's the way I would have done it, personally.
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Snowden making his name public was likely a stop-gap measure to prevent himself from being black-bagged in the middle of the night.
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Re: Re: Security
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Re: Take it as you will
"God Bless America!" "All Hail Authority!"
.. is there a new anthem I should start learning the words to?
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Re: Re: Security
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They've made sure that Snowden will never again set foot in the US under his own power. In fact Snowden has been forced into dealing with those that oppose the US simply by their actions of seeking to extradite him on spy charges. They have removed choice from the possibles.
I still am not hearing anything from the executive branch nor much from congress over coming clean. It will take that in order to restore the faith of American citizens in their government which by now has hit a record low.
More pressure will be coming in the following months as other countries put together past evidence with what they now know and draw conclusions from that. Privacy is not a guarantee in the US as it can be and has been suspended by acts of congress. In other countries in Europe this privacy is a guaranteed right and they view this as criminal actions against them. This will lead to those countries calling the US a rogue, police state, nation; with some justification.
The fallout comes later as these other countries realize that the major corporations enabling all this spying are mostly US corporations and they will seek their own alternatives including a different configuration of internet.
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NAAAAAAAAAAAAA! It was too unrealistic.
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Re: Take it as you will
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Re: Re: Take it as you will
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Pleasing symmetry
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Re: Re: Security
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It's called "Principle of least privilege"
You only give enough access to people so that they can do their jobs and you certainly don't give the cook access to the accounting system and check book.
Really has nothing to do with Security through Obscurity. That would be if I tried to keep the NSA from reading my mail by using a no name provider or throwing up a my own mail server (or keep them from tracking my calls by using a burn phone).
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That is the dumbest thing I think I have ever read.
Do have any idea what this agency is tasked with?
You don't even know all of your boyfriends secrets but you think you should know all of them on the agency that is tasked with Security of our Nation.
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The Russian Government
What would you do/ have done with Snowden when he's in your possession? The so called transition zone is nonsense at this level of the game of power.
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The best part is yet to come
1. Stop having so much stuff lying around waiting to be copied.
2. Perhaps there ought to be a lot fewer people with that kind of access to this stuff-you know, like internal security classifications that nobody but God himself and Adm. Alexander can get.
My father worked at the Pentagon in the 60's, (military, and actually pretty high security classification)and he told me that biggest joke was that "classified' made sure that the paperwork got passed around twice as fast-and everyone had a copy.
Seems that nothing has changed in 50 years.
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The NSA's job is not (purely) defense. It is offense. Its objective is to exploit holes in the security of its targets to collect signal intelligence. Revealing those exploits ahead of time would be counter-productive.
That said, where the NSA is involved in less offensively oriented activities, it has been surprisingly open. See, e.g., the open source Accumulo database.
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beware of burglaries
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Re: Or, NSA wants you to believe now know all they do.
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Re: Re: Re: Security
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Re: It's called "Principle of least privilege"
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Re: Re: It's called "Principle of least privilege"
Analysts don't need to know how you got the information (through what authority...), they only need to analyse the information and perhaps request more information. Similarly, those gathering the information should not know how it is analyzed.
There needs to be separation of duties. That is the problem. Auditors in the real world force companies to do this all the time in order to prevent 1 person from having unfettered access to too many pieces of the puzzle. One would think the NSA would understand this.
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