Snowden, Meet Godwin: British Ambassador Says Leaks Would Have Helped Hitler
from the and-would-have-allowed-Cuba-to-fall-to-Castro...-oh,-wait dept
Where do you go when the assertions that Snowden's leaks will cause grave damage and irreparable harm to national security still fail to unite the world against the former NSA contractor? It appears you head to alternate realities where Snowden leaks documents during the early 1940s, thus dooming Britain to cowering at the feet of Hitler.
If Edward Snowden had been around during World War II, Adolf Hitler would have been able to score victories against the United Kingdom, according to the British ambassador to the U.S.Westmacott's comments follow a long line of detractors, who have claimed Snowden's leaks have turned the US (and other Five Eyes partners) into terrorists' playgrounds, when not trawling through history in an attempt to compare leaks spread worldwide by journalists to the selling of sensitive documents to unfriendly nations. That's when they're not suggesting Snowden's residence in Russia will inevitably turn him into an alcoholic.
In remarks at The Ripon Society commemorating the U.S. and British alliance, Ambassador Peter Westmacott said leaks like Snowden's would have allowed the Nazis to overrun allied forces in the Battle of the Atlantic and gain the upper hand...
"[T]here are moments ... when it is absolutely essential that intelligence operations in defense of our national security remain secret," he added. "These things are important. It's not frivolous and it is not hiding things."
"It is actually necessary for our national security to ensure that our real secrets remain secret."
This sort of claim is another in a long line of NSA/GCHQ defenders deploying fear in hopes of regaining the supposed higher ground. But there's only so long these tactics can remain effective in a dearth of terrorist activity, and it appears to have passed that shelf date quite some time ago. You can only point to attacks you haven't prevented as evidence that you're needed for so long before the public starts granting you the same level of trustworthiness reserved for those who claim to know the exact date the world will end.
Westmacott also mixes his metaphors by using military operations to condemn the leaking of documents detailing lots of untargeted surveillance. His fears mirror those of the Defense Department, which seems to believe Snowden is holding onto thousands of military intelligence documents and has based its damage assessment on the theory that a) he actually has these and b) they will be (or have been) released.
The ambassador would do well to remember that not nearly as many citizens are sold on the "War of Terror" as they were on actions taken during World War II. There's something much less tangible about a threat that is constantly referred to but rarely cohesively materializes. It's become so much of an abstraction here in the US that the FBI has had to craft its own "terrorist plots" from scratch just so its Counterterrorism wing (the larger of the two -- the other being "Law Enforcement") has something to do.
Cleared of all its Godwin-trappings, Westmacott's ultimate point is hardly any better. His extended anecdote -- involving the cracking of German U-boat codes in 1940-41 -- bears little resemblance to what has actually been revealed by Snowden's leaks. Much of what's been uncovered deals with the domestic surveillance performed by many countries as well as a concerted effort to undermine secured communications of any sort. There has been nothing released to date that details intelligence efforts directed at military foes.
That the oft-alluded-to enemy ("terrorists") use the same communication tools as the rest of the public (phones, internet, etc.) has been used as leverage to allow multiple intelligence agencies to gather communications and data from everybody, supposedly in hopes of ferreting out the terrorists among us. But nothing here covers encrypted military communications, not even those of the US or our allies. Westmacott says some secrets must remain secret, and without a doubt, many still do. To try to pitch the leaked documents as somehow being the equivalent of "allowing" Nazi Germany to "win" is more than disingenuous, it's a distortion of what's actually been leaked.
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Filed Under: ed snowden, godwin's law, hitler, peter westmacott, surveillance, uk
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The First Word
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Citizen. Please insert head into ass.
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To Ambassador Peter Westmacott
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Efficient use of Resources
I am not aware of any backlash from the British people for the counter intelligence efforts that took place in England during WWII. There is now, and due a great deal to the technology that lets them listen to everyone, so they do.
It is extremely inefficient. If they actually had some intelligence (not disparaging their mental acuity, yet) about some plot or another, and used that to get the damn warrant, and then only listened to 'them', and only followed 6 or 3 or 1 degree of separation if there was an actual reason to, and stopped when leads are dead instead of making shit up, to protect the children (AKA budget, power achieved, 5 year plan to get more power) we would not be complaining now, and they would not need so many resources. They might even be able to find the right haystack to search for their fictitious needles.
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so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
Snowden leaked details of US operations in China while he was in Hong Kong. Even Greenwald thought that was too much. Greenwald said he nonethless understood that Snowden had "a need to ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China."
My Q is, if he had to "ingratiate himself" to the Chinese, why wouldn't he have to ingratiate himself to the Russians?
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Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
He went to Hong Kong under very different circumstances.
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Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
If you're going to criticise part of the story, at least familiarise yourself with the rest of it first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the_United_States
Snowden left the US to go to Hong Kong, claiming intent to stay there until forced to leave. While there, US authorities tried to get Hong Kong authorities to detain him on their behalf. They refused, and Snowden managed to go to Russia, intending to travel on to his intended asylum destination of Iceland. But, the US authorities revoked his passport, leaving him stranded in Russia.
In other words, he ingratiated himself to his potential captors and potential asylum hosts, but didn't feel the need to do the same to an intended pit stop. Is this really hard to understand?
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Re: Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
The Russians didn't even seem to want him, but any chance to piss off the Americans is worth exploiting.
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Re: Re: Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
If you bothered to read the full story (I know, facts are something you're scared of), Iceland specifically have a rule that says that refugee status can only be applied for within Iceland, which is why he couldn't get asylum from Hong Kong. If they wouldn't consider his application from outside of Iceland in the first place, why would they break their own rules to give his that status from Russia? Snowden chose Iceland, they had no particular prior relationship with him, and would not have one unless he applied for asylum within the country. They had no reason to intervene unless they wanted to make a specific point, and it appears they didn't have one to make and thus remained neutral.
"The story sort of falls apart because"
...because the facts of the matter don't fit your preferred narrative so you make shit up again. I know, it's you, so who's surprised...
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Re: Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
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Re: so unless the US is actually at war it's anything goes?
and the corollary:
Anything goes as long as we are at "war".
So there you have the rational for endless war, with the added benefit of endless dividends.
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We're not the good guys. We're the bad guys that are after even badder guys.
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Re:
Nope. The bad guys that are after everybody under the pretense that this somehow is supposed to help against purportedly badder guys.
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He got it wrong
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The problem here is Snowden never really had access to the meaty stuff, else they would have been going absolutely bat shit insane. He had access to training manual level junk. Hardly end of the world, no agents dead on the streets, no imminent threat of NYC falling into the crust of the earth type events.
The real thing wrong here, is that they are all breaking their own laws in an effort to catch everything. There are no real life events being trotted out before the public to demonstrate the need of such levels of spying. There is no string of events showing a line of successes resulting from the gathering of this data and thereby justifying it's necessity. It doesn't exist or it would long ago been used to show how well these spying outfits are and how effective they've been. All you hear are the chirping of crickets and rassle dazzle voices with nothing behind it showing any value whatever. Yet these same governments that are screaming about overspending are not batting an eyeball at billions being spent. Like over the years that just might add up to real money.
What I've learned so far is they haven't anything to really justify the breaking of laws to do all this. Nada. This is why they have to resort to these sorts of make believe because it sounds more interesting than the real life fact they haven't accomplished much of anything for all the money down the drain.
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Re: Comment 12
To the contrary much has been accomplished for all that money - the governments of the Western World have established the infrastructure, methods and techniques to enable the control of their populations. Anyone, or anything, that threatens to disrupt or destabilize that control is considered a terrorist threat. Our governments truly are afraid - of us.
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You know what else would've helped Hitler?
Therefore, computers and the Internet are evil.
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Re: You know what else would've helped Hitler?
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Re: You know what else would've helped Hitler?
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Insults to idiots
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Good thing the good guys won so we can listen to these bullshits
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Re:
Source Churchill second world war history
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these politicians seem to be moving more and more towards a bubble of isolation that separates them from being able to come to rational decisions.
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And what if Snowden were a German?
What they always forget is that if some important German person had just leaked information about the deathcamps, gassing, military plans and general misconducts, then the governments of the world might have been faster in responding, which would have saved many lives.
It always depends on the viewpoint and right now you are actually starting to look like the bad guys in our viewpoint, slowly catching up to a certain German leader.
Yes I just compared them to Hitlers government... but he started it.
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So this is what lickspittle means
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I suppose if the Nazis had been using SSL instead of Enigma, they might have been eager to learn that the code was not secure.
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Agreed. And it is actually necessary for any democracy to ensure that the only secrets the government keeps are those that are really vital to national security. And it is actually necessary for any democracy to ensure that the definition and limits of the term 'national security' are defined as narrowly and clearly as possible. And it is actually necessary for any democracy that the government refrain from lying about national security (or anything else).
If we were capable of managing that, we wouldn't need Snowden to resurrect Hitler in some bizarre ritual or whatever he's being accused of now.
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If a Snowden had been around in 1940
It might have helped ending World War II sooner.
What Westmacott does not understand is that "good" and "bad" are not distinguished by flag colors but deeds.
Political systems thrive on predictability of cause and effect. For example, capitalism works best by turning human greed into a reliably exploitable, scalable, mostly unmitigated and generally available resource. The advertising industry keeps it running.
Fascism works best by turning human cowardice into a reliably exploitable, scalable, mostly unmitigated and generally available resource. The propaganda industry keeps it running. Terrorism is currently the most effective motivator.
Snowdens are disruptive. Money and fearmongering do not work reliably on them. They have to be eradicated and vilified.
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WWII
Today, our military and police are run wholly by either power hungry psychopaths or useless petty do-nothing dip-shits. Well, there is nothing useful for our police and military to do, so they simply try to increase their personal power even when that means doing atrocious shit.
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Yes. There are. But the key word in that statement is "moments": transitory moments where very small, very limited, very specific pieces of information need to be kept temporarily secret because they provide operational details of ongoing or imminent military actions, e.g,. "we're going to attack at these coordinates at this time on this day next week".
I don't think any reasonable person has too much of a problem with that, provided, of course, once the events-of-the-moment have passed, that total disclosure is made.
The problem...or rather, the problems are...that this limited-scope limited-duration idea of secrets has expanded to become "everything, all the time, forever" and that is simply unacceptable in any form of government other than a totalitarian dictatorship.
If the price of "winning the war" against a fascist empire is to turn one's own nation into a fascist empire, can one actually claim to have "won"?
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Re:
Sure, as long as it never actually was about "liberty vs fascism" but rather "us vs them".
If you cheer your football team on, you are not cheering for "Rooney vs Lahm" but "UK vs Germany", uh wait, "England vs Germany" (actually interesting that the UK does not compete as one nation). "Liberty" and "Fascism" are just team players here. Once you impatriate one, it doesn't matter which country he has been born in. The important thing is the colors of the tricot, not the color of his skin or heart.
And to be fair: Fascism nowadays converses perfectly well in the Queen's English and is a welcome guest in highest circles of society.
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Re: Re:
Not really, since the UK is not one nation.
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"'GCHQ spying would have prevented the extinction of the dinosaurs' Theresa May said in a statement earlier today."
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Our politicians are meta-terrorists
But to me, these people are scarier than terrorists. At a statistical level, I am much more likely to have my 4th amendment being violated, get harassed at the airport, or get labeled a trouble-maker and put on some "watch list" for my rabble-rousing ideas than I am to be directly (or even indirectly) harmed by a terrorist.
And so the terrorists have won, because they have recruited the most powerful leaders in the world to terrorize their own citizens on their behalf. It's not exactly the same kind of terrorism, mind you. But it is much more pervasive and insidious. And the amount of time, money, resources, and attention we've wasted on it makes the impacts of actual terrorist events like 9/11 look like a rounding error.
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Re:
Does "silencing the press, detaining political activists without trial, and arresting any suspected individuals without a warrant." ring any bell?
Too bad mainland UK does not have any Gandhi around.
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Ambassador Peter Westmacott: the human equivilant of crap
Ambassador Peter Westmacott, a worthless piece of crap who is bad for democracy, and seems very unhappy he couldn't have lived in the German police state that Hitler or Stalin had envisioned.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140228/15025026393/you-know-who-else-collected-metadata-stasi.sh tml
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Ah, do we never learn...
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Somewhere in Britain, a village is missing its idiot.
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Ambassador Peter Westmacot : secret nazi sympathizer, and Hitler supporter by his own arguments
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It is hard to believe
WWII 'Axis' powers were well defined enemies. Today's 'terrorist' is a relative term used to leverage fear for 'carte blanche' governmental purposes....as we now know is being used for good, bad and evil. So, his statement is blurring the truth by not comparing 'apples to apples'.
It isn't hard to believe when one child is 'caught with their hand in the parent's cookie jar' to make irrational statements to focus blame on the child who informed the parent.
Invoking Hitler.....only backs the case of who the worse child really is.
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Proper leak allegory
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Re: Proper leak allegory
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Re:
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Getting public opinion against these could quite likely have shortened the war and saved millions of lives
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Ambassador Peter Westmacott has a major Hitler fetish.
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Our own government are meta-terrorists
But to me, these "meta-terrorists" are scarier than terrorists. At a statistical level, I am much more likely to have my 4th amendment being violated, get harassed at the airport, or get labeled a trouble-maker and put on some "watch list" for my rabble-rousing ideas than I am to be directly (or even indirectly) harmed by a terrorist.
And so the terrorists have won, because they have recruited the most powerful leaders in the world to terrorize their own citizens on their behalf. It's not exactly the same kind of terrorism, mind you. But it is much more pervasive and insidious. And the amount of time, money, resources, and attention we've wasted on it makes the impacts of actual terrorist events like 9/11 look like a rounding error.
I wish our leaders would learn about processing events but then letting them go. Tit for tat in iterated prisoners' dilemma tells us that we're better off not holding a grudge. If someone wrongs you, let them know and yes even punish them, but then forgive and move on. If you continue to cling to the hurt and live your life as if you expect it again, first it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and second you are making a choice to hang onto the negativity.
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Re: Our own government are meta-terrorists
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Re:
In the 3rd Reich, it was actually the Gestapo, the "Geheime Staats-Polizei" (Secret State Police) which did what the NSA and the GCHQ do nowadays.
But they don't actually do everything the Gestapo did by themselves, they need help by the FBI and the CIA for things like warrantless detention and torture).
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He knows what he is talking about.
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