Edward Snowden is not a "whistle blower" in the sense that no government abuse was uncovered. Full stop.

Secondly, I can't remember what the second thing was ...

Oh, yeah ... with regard to the collection of telephony meta data, the contents of phone calls are only being listened to after an appropriate search warrant has been produced and this has happened extremely infrequently.

From what Snowden (and other sources) have revealed (to date) it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide if there has been an abuse of power.

NSA is not simply collecting meta data - it's demanding and getting at least some access to full communications as well. The sheer size of the Utah facility indicates storage of more than just meta data. Network providers store more than just meta data, and NSA demands and gets access to their files.

This is bumping 1st Amendment protections pretty hard by chilling speech, press and association. Likewise 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Have lines been crossed?

I'm not one of those sorts who claims 1st and 4th rights are absolute, and courts have never held this view. In practice, the US Constitution is every bit as "unwritten" as the British Constitution. The US Constitution isn't just the little pamphlet that fits in your back pocket, its all the arguments and decisions about real world law handed down over the last 250 years or so. The Constitution is ultimately what the Supreme Court interprets, and the Court can change it's mind.

What troubles me is the lack of independent oversight of NSA, combined new practices not covered by precedents. Lack of oversight is what leads to abuse. Prevention is better than remedial treatment.

Good government means making hard calls.
Obama's blue ribbon panel gave a thoughtful and balanced set of NSA reforms. Every one of them should be adopted.

Signals Intelligence is important. It played a decisive roll in the Battle of Midway. It was decisive in defeating the German U boat threat. That said, the power has to be controlled to meet new threats and new technologies.

It seems that you are making the big leap that so many others are in equating the collection of telephony metadata to the content of phone calls.

Snowden uncovered no unfettered government abuse of power, as far as I can tell. And, since you didn't highlight any, you must agree.

Yes, I see Snowden as a whistleblower. His motivation seems to be to attract the attention of a referee.He didn't so much reveal as to further confirm certain practices. These practices raise serious concerns to many people.

1) NSA treats all forms of electronic communications as publicly broadcast information, like radio waves. This would in fact be NSA's best constitutional defense - US citizens should have no reasonable expectation that communication over commercial electronic networks is private. This is very much an open Constitutional Question that the Supremes probably wish would go away.

2) NSA enlists the "cooperation" of network providers to obtain raw data. It seems likely this cooperation is coerced.

3) There is virtually no direct judicial oversight of this data collection/storage/analysis process. NSA, an insular, secret agency mostly polices itself.

4) NSA works to undermine encryption protocols to make surveillance easier.

5) Our allies cooperate with NSA, there is a lot of data sharing in all directions.

6) NSA is using network (link) analysis to establish suspicion by association. If somebody is secretly put on say, a no fly list, this becomes guilt and punishment by association. The person so identified will only find out when/he she tries to board an airplane.

Foreign governments have found it politically expedient to be shocked. Congress has found it politically expedient to be shocked.

So, you see Snowden as a whistleblower, then?

What unfettered government abuse of power did he expose?

Well, Snowden's "document dump" appeared pretty indiscriminate to me and his actions before the public release, and since, do not, I think, betray an understanding of the geopolitical implications of his disclosures.

Whitfield Diffie

That was the cryptologist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie

Snowden was pretty discriminating in terms of what he released. It has serious political implications, both geopolitical and national, but what I've seen is mostly making politicians nervous, because they have to publicly acknowledge what they have privately known all along, or at strongly suspected.

NSA collects huge amounts of data, and it has a very broad interpretation of what constitutes the public:private boundary. Congress has known this, but has chosen to sit on it. The Supreme more or less the same. Who was the intended audience for those leaked Power Point Slides? The gossipy cables? My first guess would be government officials and politicians, at home and abroad. The guys generating and using the important secrets don't need this marginal crap.

A dirty little secret among intelligence analysts is that highly restricted, compartmentalized information (and analysis based on such info) is frequently very unreliable, simply because it's narrowly vetted by a small community of specialists subject to group think. By its nature, it cannot benefit from the wisdom of crowds that free form public debate produces. I heard a very fine public talk on this subject by a senior cryptologist a few years ago.

So, there is a tension here. Some secrets are vital, like codes, or real time operational plans.
Some are just a form of politeness. Snowden seems to have been aware of it, and factored it into his data dump. History may judge him kindly, or not. I'm conflicted, but not in a panic. We could certainly use a better outlet for whistle blowers, but I'm not sure what that would be.

To be more accurate, "WE'ALL" elected Obama....

Yea, I do have to own up to my responsibility for the mess we have..

Michale

Liz speaks to facts..

A country that is not able to have any secrets is a country that will last exactly one day..

We elect our leaders so they can make decisions based on information we cannot and don't want to know..

Ya'all elected Obama..

Now ya'all don't trust him to do the right thing??

For the record, I made the exact same argument during the Bush Administration....

Michale

Heh. Imagine ... me having trouble posting comments. When have I not ... :)

Having trouble posting comments?

-CW

Snowden's actions have done far more damage than you may think.

From a geopolitical point of view, his indiscriminate disclosures have seriously disrupted and impeded President Obama's ability to effectively execute foreign policy and conduct international relations, with wide-ranging and long-lasting negative impacts.

A lot of well informed sources suggest Snowden used just a root password and a thumb drive. Having worked (back in the Reagan days)for a contractor very much like Booz Allen, I shake my head and I can't say I'm completely surprised. I saw a lot of classified material floating around various facilities, poorly guarded and poorly audited. Much, if not most of the stuff I saw didn't deserve to be classified, which made it all the harder to secure the genuinely sensitive nuggets.

This was all back in the day before the Internet As We Know It, when the smallest portable data storage was a 3.5 floppy. "Oopsies" were pretty common, you're wearing your badge, the security folks know you, and you'd walk through a checkpoint with a floppy you forgot was in your pocket. You only find out when you get back home and change clothes. Very Loosey Goosey, because everybody is basically on autopilot.

I doubt the culture has changed much, even if storage and transmission technology has.

Bottom line, nobody should be surprised about NSA programs like PRISM, given open source info about the Utah Data Center capabilities. Snowden has embarrassed US national security much more than he has compromised it.

I'm not sure where Snowden falls on the hero-traitor scale, but he was definitely a whistle-blower, and those that argue otherwise are just baffling to me.

I've always equated whistle-blowing with exposing government wrongdoing and abuse of power.

Where were the Assanges and Snowdens of the world during the Bush administration. There, I guess that is what really sticks in my craw, I fully admit.

Hay, yer talking to a guy who can go to the beach on Xmas day in shorts and a tank top!! :D

But like I said, low 30s is just too cold, even for me..

Unless there is snow to play in, that kind of cold is just useless...

My oldest son is up in Alaska and it's actually warmer there then it is here in FL.. :D

Michale

I dunno. They used the excuse "we're keeping this stuff private in respect to the Kennedy family." Until Teddy Kennedy personally spoke out and said "the family's fine with releasing anything you've got."

That was back in the 1990s, but they still haven't released the material. Makes you wonder...

But then the JFK assassination is the motherlode of conspiracy theories...

:-)

TheStig [13] -

I saw an interview with an ex-Obama CIA guy, or maybe NSC guy, and he stated unequivocally: "Snowden could easily have done this alone, and we have absolutely no proof he had any help at all."

He also stated that they had no idea of what Snowden took. They knew what he had access to, but not what he took. This, to me, speaks of a root user (or "superuser") at work.

Michale [14] -

Nobody's denying he had help once he got to Hong Kong. It's obvious, as you say. But by that point, his passport had been revoked by the US (with no court proceeding whatsoever). What the pols (I heard even DiFi was expounding this, so I can't pin it all on the GOP) were suggesting this Sunday is that he had Russian (?) help BEFORE he started downloading files.

That's a cat of a different color, as I believe you'll agree.

TheStig [15] -

Exactly.

Michale [16] -

Aha! You do agree! Man, I love it when these things work out before I even comment...

:-)

Americulchie [17] -

OK, that sounds like a fascinating book, I will check it out. Did he have anything to do with the Yamamoto targeting?

I'm not sure where Snowden falls on the hero-traitor scale, but he was definitely a whistle-blower, and those that argue otherwise are just baffling to me.

[19] -

Ah, but he may pop up in Sochi...

Heh.

LizM -

Goodness gracious! You and Michale are in agreement?

OK, I have to sit down now.

Heh.

Michale -

You may be right. I think Satan's having a snowball fight right now...

Heh.

As for the weather, I went out today in a T-shirt and shorts. Chew on that, all you non-Californians.

Heh. We have to get the value out here of our overpriced rents and mortgages SOMEhow...

:-)

-CW

Oh don't get me started!! :D

I have to close my shop tomorrow and Fri because of temps in the high 20s...

Brrrrrrr... That's cold.. Even for me! :D

Michale

I do believe that Hell hath froze over.. :D

Again! Chalk it up to climate change ...

Suffice it to say Snowden
bit off more than the rat knew.

That goes without saying, as much as I hate to use that phrase. :)

I am making a distinction between general intellectual knowledge and specific details about specific programs..

For me, personally, Snowden's "revelations" weren't anything surprising... But that's because of my background in the field..

It's one thing to say, "Oh the government listens in on phone calls" and it's quite another to be confronted with factual evidence of the VOLUME of calls and data the government accesses...

Put another way...

If you were back in the 50s, it would be one thing to know, intellectually, that the government performs wiretaps, complete with sweaty guys in white t-shirts chomping on cigars and having their ears pressed to old style headphones.....

It would be quite a different thing to find them in YOUR basement..

:D

In other words, the Left deluded themselves into thinking that Obama was not as bad as Bush...

Snowden smashed that delusion to smithereens...

Liz,

I'm completely with Michale on this one.

I do believe that Hell hath froze over.. :D

Michale

So, what you are saying, then, is that what Snowden has disclosed was common knowledge?

I'm completely with Michale on this one. I just wanted to say that because it gives me a warm feeling all over ... :)

Because, it's such a rarity, you know ...

Snowden's villainy doesn't come from confirming what rational people intellectually know...

It comes from giving specifics about specific programs and allowing our enemies to develop effective counter-measures..

Michale

While possible, there isn't any evidence to support such a claim as absolute...

But there is no doubt in my mind that the FSB saw a "target of opportunity" and facilitated Snowden's flight from HK to Moscow...

To deny Russia was involved in Snowden's escape from HK is to deny reality..

The claim that Snowden was working for Russia all along is not supported by any evidence.

By the same token, it cannot be ruled out either.. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence..

Michale

Snowden was helped by Russia at some point, but the important question is whether that help began before or after his arrival in Hong Kong. In plain language, was Snowden a Russian operative while he was working at NSA?

Getting from Hong Kong to Russia while the ENTIRE WORLD'S attention is focused on Snowden??

No way he could do that on his own..

Sure he planned. But NO plan survives contact with the enemy..

He had help. No two ways about it..

And the only entity capable of bringing competent help to bear on the fly is a government entity..

The fact that Snowden ended up in Russia is a pretty good indicator of which government entity we are talking about...

Michale

"I believe this is how he said he got the access, simply by getting a root user password."

Wow!

The principle of "close enough for government work" applied to critical data base security?

Or did NSA just give out root user passwords as Cracker Jack prizes?

Any way you slice it, it looks like passing yourself off as a genius to NSA might not be as hard as you might first imagine.

I'm guessing that the still classified records in the JFK assassination will not reveal any secrets that shed light on what happened on November 22, 1963 - before, during or (most importantly to my mind) after the assassination.

Two things. (1) the accusations of communist ties were about as ugly, back then, as being accused of being an Al Qaeda sympathizer would be today. (2) Hoover had the goods on everybody, up to and including JFK. Very few people in Washington would stand up to him in anything he wanted. Keep this in mind.

[2] -

You're probably right, it's a stretch to link Snowden with MLK in any way. But the subject was on my mind, after the Sunday shows.

TheStig [3] -

Exactly. And the civil rights movement was called communist by the FBI for years.

[4] -

Technically, if he had root access to their system, he had unlocked the candy store. He could access anything. I don't know all the technical details, but I believe this is how he said he got the access, simply by getting a root user password.

Americulchie [5] -

I still think it is a travesty that there is a building in DC named for Hoover. But I've heard their lease is up and the FBI headquarters may be moving. Hope they have the good sense to pick a better name for their next building.

LizM [6] -

See, there, we agree. You just made the same defense as I made in my first response to you, above.

[8] -

I don't believe every conspiracy theory, but then again I don't believe everything the government tells me either. There are still classified records on the JFK assassination. Why? What possible reason could they have for still keeping secrets, 50 years later? That sort of thing still makes me wonder what the feds knew about all sorts of issues.

-CW

Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I don't like to be the first one anymore to broach the subject of the King and Kennedy assassinations and question the official story.

My view on this is that anyone who has studied those assassinations and who also maintains a high regard for the truth understands that the official story on these events leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to the truth of the matter.

I would also say that, over the years, any honest attempt to reveal the truth of these events is automatically labeled and promptly dismissed as a conspiracy theory. That is quite a convenient, if not well conceived, circumstance for those who would work to hide the truth.

And, I would have to disagree with the assertion that ... it just takes too many "in the know" to make any conspiracy work .... While I agree that is true in the majority of conspiracy theories (which is why it is so easy to label all conspiracy theorist as kooks and cranks) it is not necessarily a truism if the conspiracy is hatched at the very top echelon of a power structure by very few people who are in a position to orchestrate the actions of others who become merely unwitting players in the conspiracy.

There has never been a convincing explanation for why Snowden, a junior analyst, with middling to dubious educational credentials was granted so much access to classified material.

You raise a very salient point ... and a very good question about Booze Allen Hamilton.

One might think that one of the reforms of these NSA programs might involve ensuring that a person in Snowden's position - non-government employee and junior analyst, at that - would not have the kind of access he persists in saying he had.

We might also take it a step or two further and ask why are there so many contractors working for the government, especially for agencies like the CIA and NSA. There are many factors involved in the answer to this question. Fodder for another full on column, in fact!

My understanding is that JFK couldn't afford to be weighed down with the "soft on communism" moniker as that would have very negatively impacted his progressive agenda, foreign and domestic.

And, then there was Hoover and the havoc that the FBI director could wreak on Kennedy and his administration.

The only point I wanted to make is that RFK approved the wiretapping of Dr. King not because he wanted to do it but because he "had" to do it.

I also see the point that Chris is making in view of the Snowden disclosures but linking abuse of power by the Attorney General's office in the Kennedy administration to the potential for government abuse in what Snowden disclosed is a bridge too far for me.

There has never been a convincing explanation for why Snowden, a junior analyst, with middling to dubious educational credentials was granted so much access to classified material. Was he really an IT genius (as some accounts would have it) or just a competent hacker/self promoting BSer given the keys to the candy store? Does NSA not understand compartmentalization? Oversight? Vetting?

Why is Booze Allen Hamilton still getting government contracts? Well, I have to admit, I think I know the answer to that one. Connections.

People tend to forget that JFK took a very hardline against communism. In the '60s, civil rights activists were tarred with being closeted communists or at best communist sympathizers. RFK was covering his brothers political flank. JFK had a question about MLK's deep affiliations, and he took a hard line approach to find the answer.

The impact of Snowden's NSA disclosures will be debated and argued for a very long time, undoubtedly. I would suggest that, while Snowden may have accelerated the process of reviewing NSA practices, there were enough checks and balances in place that the surveillance programs he exposed, along with any continuing abuses, would have come to light, in some fashion or other.

I have a hard time viewing Snowden as anything more than a thief, first and foremost, and a defector, in the final analysis. So, while it is good to reflect on how the US government and FBI viewed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I wouldn't go so far as to suggest any linkage whatsoever with the Snowden affair.

But it wasn't until 1962 that surveillance of King would be ratcheted up -- which was approved personally by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. By November of 1963, all of King's phones -- both at home and at the S.C.L.C.'s offices -- would be wiretapped.

Do you know the reasons behind Attorney General Kennedy's acquiescence to the wiretapping of Dr. King and why he felt compelled to take that action?

I don't know a lot about it but I think it may be worth a column in and of itself.