James Clapper: Yes, Snowden Emailed NSA Lawyer, But Not About His Concerns
from the so-there's-that... dept
Earlier today, we noted that NBC had confirmed that Snowden had raised some of his concerns to people within the intelligence community. In response, James Clapper's office (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) has nowreleased what they claim is the only email Snowden sent to the NSA's legal team. The email was sent just about a month before Snowden went to Hong Kong, and, as ODNI notes, does not address the issues related to Snowden's whistleblowing concerns:There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.Of course, it's worth noting that for all the talk of "proper channels" it's actually not so easy. In fact, the person that he would have gone to has already noted he would have told Snowden to shut up, and was completely insulting about Snowden. So it's not as if there really were legitimate channels. And Snowden already knew that going through the full whistleblowing process would get him labeled as a troublemaker.
That said, it does sound as though Snowden may have slightly exaggerated his claims concerning his conversation with the NSA's lawyers.
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Filed Under: ed snowden, james clapper, odni, whistleblowing
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Only if you take them at their word that that email was the only one he sent, and/or he didn't try and bring his concerns to light via other channels, like personal discussions, and given the credibility and honesty shown so far by the NSA and it's defenders, yeah, I think I'll still be giving Snowden the benefit of the doubt here, 'sole email sent' or not.
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Snowden's e-mail is a sneaky way of asking if EOs can override the Constitution and they replied that they cannot, even though in practice they do it all the time.
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Frankly, this looks a bit like a "purloined letter" plot here. Snowden did not report his concerns, there is just this single crumpled unimportant email.
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After all, can't make the boss angry by doing something like that, they might revoke all those juicy 'exclusives', better to just repeat whatever the government tells them to and keep an empty smile on their faces and they do so. /s
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So far, every time Snowden has spoken he's told the truth.
So far, every time the NSA has spoken it's lied.
So I think it's probably best to presume that both of those things are still true in this instance.
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There is no question: one wants to believe, desperately, the guys who are still holding the strings and guns.
And the one guilty for ripping off the blends from the players and ruining the enjoyment of the morality play has cowardly fled to Moscow and won't crawl back out of his hole after we blocked all the exits.
Yeah, one wants to believe those wearing the "good guys" costumes, but their scaly hides looking out of the holes bad Ed ripped make that uncomfortably hard.
Let's not focus on that.
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Organization exposed for lying says....
If you can believe anything any Government Official says about Snowden then... forget that... I would like to know who actually believes them?
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NSA: I don't understand what you mean by email?
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Taking bets...
If I was about to blow some shit up with leaks like his, I'd want as much paper trail as I could proving that I attempted to do the right thing. I bet the correspondence is out there and it just hasn't been revealed to the public yet.
If yes, the government is gonna have egg on their face again...
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Re: Taking bets...
The government WILL suppress everything that will be favorable to Snowden.
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Re: Re: Taking bets...
You mean like they've successfully suppressed all the Snowden leaks to date?
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It may be difficult to find
You have to be realistic. The NSA email servers must have hundreds of thousands of emails going through them each day. Who could possibly have a system that would be able to capture, archive, catalog, and ultimately allow searching on such a vast amount of electronic communication?
You can't expect them to be able to just search for his emails and find them all.
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Re: It may be difficult to find
I think I just saw a pig flying, yep a police helicopter indeed!
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After all, having a system in place to search other peoples' emails is useful for spying, but if their own emails were able to be searched through, well, things might get a titch awkward if they ever found themselves with some real oversight.
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These are people who know computer systems inside and out. The only way they "loose" is if someone intentionally made it go away.
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"Fire! Fire!"
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Teeing it up
Any chance Snowden was smart enough to make sure the documents he took and gave to Greenwald included the emails he sent before he left?
Any chance those emails are going to be leaked in the near future to show that the NSA is covering it up again?
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Actually the question is closely related to his concerns, as it is establishing the precedence of the constitution, statutes etc. in governing NSA activities.
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James Clapper - the epitome of integrity
Who's to say that this information just isn't some more "untruthful answers?"
Sorry Clapperhead - your integrity went out the window and I can only assume that anything further out of your office MUST, to a degree, contain some form of bullshit.
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Nope. Not buying it, but judging by how good the NSAs 'checks and balance' procedures are in place, it wouldn't surprise me if this is all they could find.
My money is that emails are in the spam folders of the people he sent them to.
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He said, she said
We'll see what he has to say about this. It's far too soon to start repeating the company line and determine that he exaggerated.
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Re: He said, she said
Though it's more like cheering against the concession stands in their valiant fight against a lone food inspector.
"Our vermin is properly husbanded and groomed. The photographs of rats in the soup are taken out of context and we have policies in place that don't allow roaches access to the keys of our cupboards without being convinced of a good reason. Yes, we are looking forward to installing back walls to our cupboards eventually but this is pending until we get more funding, and it has never shown to be a problem in practice. We are all professionals."
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there was nothing to blow the whistle about
"So it's a bit unreasonable for the NSA to fault Snowden for failing to raise concerns internally. If the NSA's programs are legal, as the NSA brass claims, then there was nothing to blow the whistle about."
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Corrupt an attachment, what will the majority of people think, computer error "its not working"
Change a phrase or sentence or two, maybe in a large body of text, subtlely so that the author may not know unless they made a copy, thats offcourse its securely stored offline, and that the saintly agents arent using all that info about you to calculate whether you've ever mentioned, talked or bought anything that might require a "tech saviness" mindset.........a fucking drop in the ocean of possibilities with these very real ingredients, and no say in the matter.........representation my ass
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We the people lost control of the government quite a while ago, so no, the government is no longer of the people. But we can get it back.
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Known Liar
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For all the talk about proper channels and things Snowden could have done to change the system, why has nothing been done to date with the information everyone has now?
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You are not being fair. Several bills have been drafted and a whole lot of extortion and bribery had to be invested to have them watered down to the degree of supporting the opposite and/or have them defeated.
In unrelated news, the NSA needs more money for its patriotic work.
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So far all creditability rests with Snowden.
That's really sad when you consider one individual has more creditability than the entire government that is against him.
Given how much these branches like to cherry pick their examples, I have to wonder just how many more there are of Snowden emails, not being revealed because they are far more damaging. Snowden hinted that he didn't try just one time.
The USG has long ago lost it's creditability on this. So far I see nothing that lends any possibility of truthfulness to the government's side.
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It's a trap!
He gave the NSA just enough rope to hang themselves and they just did exactly that with this press release and their claim that that's all there is. The next move is to simply publish the correspondence. Game. Set. Match.
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Wrong Question, Mr Clapper!
Not enough, we have since learned. And if the man in charge of the NSA decides to ignore even requests brought to him in public by the US Senate, how much credit do you think we should give to his claims that concerns of a low-level consultant were followed up adequately?
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Re: Wrong Question, Mr Clapper!
In unrelated news, the horses on our premises have not done enough to clear the paddocks of horsecrap. They are pointing to procedural difficulties and ask for more hay in order to find a resolution to the problem.
They reject any accusation of dragging their hooves and invite all the neigh-sayers to delve into matters themselves and form their balanced opinion.
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They apparently have even less regard for the citizens that put them in office - nothing but pure contempt there. Eventually it's going to backfire on the Government. Should be interesting.
Unfortunately, with all of the big money involved in sustaining it (and thus preserving their cash cows), it's unlikely to end anytime soon. Trying to stop it is like trying to control the Gulf Stream by throwing a rock into it. Many ripples for a few seconds, then no indication it ever happened.
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Osama bin Laden
We are getting close to where Americans yearn to show him how it is done right, using only their hands.
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All this based on Clapper's claims? "We suppress information as we want but trust us, this is all we got" Clapper? This is my LOL of the day. Thanks for the laugh. And the blind confidence in the NSA.
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Lawyers not providing America with adequate results
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or...(drum roll)... the NSA lied again.
Wuddya think the chances of that might be?
Let's see, Snowden has been caught in lies.... ummm, never.
NSA has been caught in lies..... every time it opens its collective mouth.
I assume that this shot in the dark at Snowden's integrity will, within a week or two, be shown to be 100% standard government issue NSA Bullshit... once again.
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