Wacky Snowden Haters Pile On The Bandwagon Claiming Snowden Is Somehow To Blame For Russia In Crimea
from the wtf dept
So, over the weekend, the NSA's chief external propagandist, Rep. Mike Rogers, made the ridiculous claim that Ed Snowden was somehow to blame for Russia's aggressive actions against Ukraine. It would appear that the usual crew of Snowden haters (who never seem to have any evidence beyond "hunches") have gleefully jumped onto that bandwagon, insisting that Snowden must be helping the Russians evade NSA surveillance. Based simply on (unproven) claims that the US intelligence community was somewhat taken by surprise by Russian moves in Crimea and Ukraine, folks like Joshua Foust and John Schindler -- both of whom have been leading the anti-Snowden conspiracy theories since about 3 seconds after Snowden was revealed -- are claiming that it's somehow obvious that Snowden must be working with the Russians to reveal the NSA's surveillance capabilities and how to get around them. Because apparently, Russian intelligence is so incompetent that they couldn't figure things out without the help of an American.At best, these two seem guilty of quite an extreme form of confirmation bias. At worst, they seem to be pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories, based on absolutely nothing. The idea that Vladimir Putin and the FSB had to wait until Ed Snowden was effectively handed to them by the Americans pulling his passport (seems like Foust and Schindler conveniently forget that part...) in order to hide their plans to annex Crimea and get aggressive towards Ukraine seems positively unbelievable. However, it does show the extreme lengths some are willing to go to in order to smear Snowden based on no proof at all.
Update: Meanwhile, it appears that plenty of folks who actually work in intelligence say that Snowden has nothing to do with the events in Crimea.
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Filed Under: crimea, ed snowden, john schindler, joshua foust, mike rogers, russia, ukrain
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Snowden has always referred to himself as "Ed" starting in that video interview he did with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. Since it appears that he, personally, goes by Ed, we've always followed suit.
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Maybe calling him Comrade Edward Josephavitch Snowdeniski is next.
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Re: Faith that Snowden speaks truthfully
Remember also that the first disclosures came out before his name was revealed, with his consent, by the journalists working on the project. If he wanted to defect and use this document dump as a parting shot, the way in which he released the material without a long term haven prepared seems like a very roundabout way to defect while maintaining deniability.
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Yes, sort of like how Obama gets blamed for stuff that happened before he was even nominated for, let alone elected, president.
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Like the Nobel Peace Prize?
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a) his love of eavesdropping and three-letter agencies and his contempt for the constitution, oversight and whistleblowers
b) his basically unchanged adoption of Romneycare
Or, in short, for being
a) Bush
b) "Rethuglican"
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Fear the demon-god Edward Snowden!
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NSA Overreach is the Real Culprit
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Re: NSA Overreach is the Real Culprit
More like NATO's overreach. Gorbachev got promised that they'd stay off the Eastern block. He failed to get this in binding writing. Now the Ukraine was going NATO, cutting off Russia's access to the Black Sea.
Putin did not support Yanukovich out of love and vice versa. The alternatives were worse, and now he's dealing with them.
If the CIA were doing actual intelligence work rather than having their ears up everyone's ass, that would not have been all that hard to understand.
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________________
That's what I was saying. The intelligence agencies are too overloaded with irrelevant data to spend time analyzing the data that matters.
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Re: Re: NSA Overreach is the Real Culprit
Go look at a map, Russia has sovereignty over the east coast of the sea of Azov, and the east coat of the black sea from Crimea down to Georgia. It is a case of the wanted to keep the port facilities that they have built in Crimea.
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Malaysia Flight 370
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\WingNutDaily
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So if they're going to blame Snowden for the russians being able to 'evade their surveillance'(as opposed to simply realizing that russian intelligence isn't as stupid as they think they are), are they also going to blame him for Bin Laden as well?
After all, Bin Laden, as well as pretty much every major terrorist group has been going low tech for years, specifically to avoid agencies like the NSA, so unless they're going to claim that the terrorist groups can see the future, then obviously Snowden wasn't required for them to know how the spying agencies were going about their work, and how best to avoid them.
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First Snowden says he doesn't have any documents in Russia. He gave them all to Greenwald. Snowden hasn't released any info as it has been hand picked by Greenwald to reveal. (with now the NYT and Washington Post adding to it). Greenwald has verified this and in addition said that Snowden didn't want all the documents released, especially those that would harm others. He wanted the misdeeds of these spying agencies revealed.
The steady drip of documents coming out, has been far more effective than the Wikileaks releases or the Manning document dump. The slow continual release has kept public attention on them, not allowing them to fade off into non-interest.
Those that have come out against Snowden have had about as much creditability as the agencies themselves. To hear a politician say it's because of Snowden tells you where the dishonesty is. Everything that has been released has proven truthful. Nothing in response to those leaks have proven to be truthful when they defend them. To me it just paints them all with the same brush. One you can't not believe.
Oh, and thank you TD for fixing that error message on posting. I had quit trying this morning.
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i bet he set a virtual trip-wire so that he revoked his own passport ! ! !
he's the most diabolical spy since boris badinoff ! ! !
shit, the fucking spooks apologists should be thanking snowden, now, whenever shit goes down, they just point and screech (khan-like) S-N-N-N-O-O-O-W-W-W-D-E-E-E-N-N-N ! !!
its their get-out-of-jail-free card...
in other news, anon poster is either clueless or a bot...
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Almost right. If it weren't for Snowden, you'd be able to believe living in a non-fascist country.
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It's not Snowden's fault.
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@20
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@all above
the only way the system will fix itself is if you start dismantling all this IP law....it is now what is driving all the spying...
you wont fix it so you are all doomed....
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Don't believe me, check your history books! The Brits lost, while those of us who remember our true history know that Russia lost that conflict and was thrown from the Crimea for ever.
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Naval Logic
The Crimea is to Russia what Louisiana is to the United States, the gateway to the great river. In 1862, the American (Massachusetts) General Benjamin F. Butler landed in Louisiana with an invasion force, after the Navy, under Admiral Farragut, had obliterated the defensive forts at the mouth of the Mississippi, and the local elements of the Confederate Navy.
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During the Second World War, the Germans enjoyed a monopoly of sea power in the Baltic up to the day of the surrender. They had gotten all the way up to the gates of Leningrad, or Petrograd, and, as they retreated, they took away all the ships, and destroyed all the port installations. The Russians would capture a port and find that they couldn't do much of anything with it for a couple of years.
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