Snowden: I Probably Wouldn't Have Revealed Quite As Much As Reporters Did

from the journalism-choices dept

People who have followed the Snowden story closely know that he gave all of the documents over to a small group of reporters, and then got rid of his own copies, telling the reporters to make their own choices about what to reveal and what to keep secret. He also claimed that he had gone through the files he had to make sure that he wasn't handing over any really damaging stuff -- but of what he was giving them he wanted the reporters to make their own journalistic choices about what to report on. And yet, some people (often those in the "string up Snowden" cabal) keep insisting that Snowden himself is directing the various reports and deciding what reports should reveal what information. However, over the weekend in an interview with the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Snowden actually notes that he probably would have been "more conservative" in choosing what to reveal:

Snowden, who worked with the journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Bart Gellman to bring highly classified materials about N.S.A. surveillance programs to the public eye, also responded to a Mayer question that he summarized by saying, “do I agree with all of the stories that the journalists have presented?”

“I don’t,” he went on. “I would draw those lines a little differently, and I think much more conservatively than some of the journalists have,” without naming which reporters’ stories he disagreed with.

In earlier stories, Snowden has more or less admitted that part of the reason he went to trusted journalists like those three above was that he was too close to the story and the NSA himself to make fair, journalistic decisions on which of the documents deserved to be public. Otherwise, he could have just dumped all of the documents publicly. It appears to reinforce the idea that -- contrary to the claims of some -- Snowden was exceptionally careful in getting this information out there, not even trusting his own judgment to make the final calls on what should and should not be released.

Filed Under: ed snowden, revelations

Ex-MI6 Deputy Chief: 'Serious Actors' Already Knew About NSA's Techniques Before Snowden

from the no-harm,-no-foul dept

One of the key issues in the debate surrounding Snowden's leaks is whether they might be threatening our security by letting the bad people know what the NSA and GCHQ are up to. Nigel Inkster, former deputy chief of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, doesn't think so:

"I sense that those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didn't know already or could have inferred."

Al-Qaida leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan had been "in the dark" for some time -- in the sense that they had not used any form of electronic media that would "illuminate" their whereabouts, Inkster said. He was referring to counter measures they had taken to avoid detection by western intelligence agencies.

Other "serious actors" were equally aware of the risks to their own security from NSA and GCHQ eavesdroppers, he said.

That's an important point, since it means that all the undoubted benefits of disclosing some information about the massive surveillance being conducted -- for example, further important revelations of widespread NSA abuse of its powers -- are not undermined by any countervailing damage. It supports the view that the leaks so far have been made in a responsible way, and suggests that continuing to do so would be in the public interest. It also underlines why we should celebrate Snowden as a whisteblower who has performed a valuable service, not as a "traitor", since nothing of value was passed to the enemy.

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Filed Under: ed snowden, gchq, nsa, nsa surveillance, revelations, surveillance, terrorists, uk

Former State Dept. Official, Expert On Extremism Says US Terror Alert Is 'Crazy Pants'

from the ridiculous dept

We've already discussed just how bizarre it is that the US's big terror alert and embassy evacuation has already involved revealing details of how the government figured out what Al Qaeda is up to. It appears that plenty of experts in these fields are completely mystified as to the government's actions here, both in their reaction to the threats and then revealing the specific way they found out about it (at the same time they're defending secrecy is needed over their data collection methods).

“It’s crazy pants – you can quote me,” said Will McCants, a former State Department adviser on government extremism who this month joins the Brookings Saban Center as the director of its project on U.S. relations with the Islamic world.

“We just showed our hand, so now they’re obviously going to change their position on when and where” to attack, said Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst who was part of the team that hunted Osama bin Laden for years.

“It’s not completely random, but most people are, like, ‘Whaaat?’ ” said Aaron Zelin, who researches militants for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and blogs about them at Jihadology.net

But, really, there's a bigger issue here, highlighted by this simple tweet from Cathal Garvey:

The narrative beggars belief. Same month NSA mass surveillance enters public scrutiny, Al Qaida leadership suddenly start emailing plots.

Of course, now it's come out that it wasn't "email" that the US found out about, but a conference call between various Al Qaeda leadership, but that doesn't really change very much. In many ways, it makes the story even more bizarre. We've already heard from Pentagon-friendly reporters claims that the terrorists were changing how they communicate after the Snowden revelations -- and yet suddenly they all jump onto a conference call that the US government can easily monitor? Really?

Filed Under: hype, revelations, terror alert, threats

Why Yes, We Have Learned A Lot About The NSA's Surveillance Programs

from the alternative-pleading dept

It was fairly amazing in the wake of the initial leaks on NSA surveillance efforts that we saw folks in DC -- including many in the press -- try to claim that it was (a) no big deal and (b) everyone knew it was going on anyway. Soon after this came out, Steve Worona pointed out that many of the arguments appeared to be the equivalent of alternative pleading, in which people (normally) lawyers try to plead things that are clearly contradictory. In this case, Worona noted the alternative pleading went this way, demonstrating the ridiculousness of the attempted "defense" of the program:

• There is no massive secret NSA surveillance program.
• And everyone has known all about it for years; it's no big deal.
• And revealing it would be a major threat to national security.

In fact, to this day, we still see plenty of people making these kinds of arguments -- a Rep. Mike Rogers' specialty. However, as we've seen, while many people have suspected that this kind of extensive program was going on, they were often mocked or brushed aside as conspiracy theorists. However, as more and more evidence has come out, it's served to confirm that these programs do exist, that they go beyond what "everyone has known" and that they don't appear to reveal anything that is a major threat to national security.

Roger Cohen, at the NY Times, has a really good rundown of things we would not know about if it weren't for these leaks:

We would not know how the N.S.A., through its Prism and other programs, has become, in the words of my colleagues James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “the virtual landlord of the digital assets of Americans and foreigners alike.” We would not know how it has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or videos of citizens across the world; nor how it has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; nor how through requests to the compliant and secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (F.I.S.A.) it has been able to bend nine U.S. Internet companies to its demands for access to clients’ digital information.

We would not be debating whether the United States really should have turned surveillance into big business, offering data-mining contracts to the likes of Booz Allen and, in the process, high-level security clearance to myriad folk who probably should not have it. We would not have a serious debate at last between Europeans, with their more stringent views on privacy, and Americans about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.

We would not have legislation to bolster privacy safeguards and require more oversight introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Nor would we have a letter from two Democrats to the N.S.A. director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, saying that a government fact sheet about surveillance abroad “contains an inaccurate statement” (and where does that assertion leave Alexander’s claims of the effectiveness and necessity of Prism?).

Indeed, and that's really only scratching the surface, because more and more info keeps coming out, both directly from the leaks, but also from the responses to those leaks. Tim Lee, over at the Washington Post has tried to put together a list of everything we now know about the surveillance efforts, which is already out of date, given additional leaks and additional statements, but it's a good starting point.

The clear point is that we're learning some very valuable things in terms of the level of government overreach with these programs, and how they've been used to expand the plain reading of the laws that are supposed to protect us, such that the government is basically making a total mockery of those laws. But one thing we cannot say is that these revelations are "nothing new" or that everyone knew about them all along.

Filed Under: nsa, nsa surveillance, revelations