Posted on 06/15/2015 11:48:43 AM PDT by Mozilla
In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious charges of criminality and abuse. I’ve been one of the public faces of what may be called the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding on this debate.
No American ally was rocked harder by Snowden’s allegations than Germany, which has endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening in on senior German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. Although these stories included a good deal of bunkum from the start, they caused a firestorm in Germany, particularly the alleged spying on Merkel, which was termed Handygate by the media.
In response, Germany tasked Federal prosecutors with looking into the matter and, they if determined there was sufficient evidence, to press charges against NSA for breaking stringent German privacy laws. The investigation, led by Harald Range, Germany’s attorney general, has been slow and diligent, examining all possible evidence about NSA spying on Germany. Here Snowden’s purloined information would play a key role.
However, the matter has become politically fraught. In the first place, senior German security officials were circumspect about the case, since Berlin is heavily dependent on NSA for intelligence on vital matters like terrorism. Worse, follow-on Snowden revelations showed that the BND, German’s foreign intelligence service, and NSA are close partners, and the BND has itself been spying on EU neighbor states that are friendly to Germany such as Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
To top it off, last month’s major hack of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, turns out to have been the work of Russians, apparently state-sponsored. In reality, the major spy threats to Germany are not NSA, but Russians and Chinese, as I’ve been saying for some time — and, to be fair, so have German security officials, though they got drowned out in the public hysteria over Snowden.
Now we learn that Range’s prosecutors are dropping their year-long Handygate inquiry, for want of hard evidence. Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe aren’t saying much, beyond that they simply don’t have evidence of spying that would stand up in court. Back in December, Attorney General Range offered a warning about the dubious nature of much of the “evidence” against NSA:
The document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database. There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel’s phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped.
Got that? That’s the polite, legalistic way of saying the Snowden claims are backed by faked NSA documents, as has been clear for some time to anybody who understands counterintelligence and the SIGINT system. This should surprise no one, since using fake or doctored Western intelligence documents to embarrass democracies is a venerable tradition for Russian intelligence — the proper espionage term is Active Measures — and since Snowden’s been in Moscow for the last two years and shows no signs of going anywhere else anytime soon, two and two can be added together here.
To make matters worse for Snowden’s fans, a report about the Handygate inquiry being dropped in the magazine Der Spiegel, which has been a key player in the Snowden Operation, includes the painful truth. While some have clamored to get Snowden out of Moscow to testify before prosecutors, Berlin understood how politically tricky that would be. Moreover, prosecutors determined that Ed simply didn’t have much to say.
As a prosecutor explained, Snowden provided “no evidence that he has his own knowledge” (keine Hinweise dafür, dass er über eigene Kenntnisse verfügt). In other words, Ed doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. This is not news to anybody who understands how NSA and the Allied SIGINT system actually work.
Snowden was an IT guy, not a SIGINT analyst, and in his final position he was working as a contracted infrastructure analyst for NSA’s Information Assurance arm, i.e. the Agency’s defensive side, which protects classified U.S. communications networks. Snowden was never a SIGINTer, working on the intelligence collection side of the house, and he doesn’t seem to understand how that complex system, built over decades, actually functions.
This is why Snowden has made so many odd, contradictory, and even outlandish statements over the past couple years about SIGINT, which have caused those who actually understand how NSA works to scratch their heads … Ed doesn’t know any better.
It’s been obvious for some time to insiders that, for reasons we still don’t fully understand, Snowden decided to steal something like 1.7 million classified documents from NSA servers through internal hacks. About 900,000 of those documents came from the Pentagon and have nothing to do with intelligence matters.
There’s no way Snowden could have read more than a tiny fraction of what he stole, nobody has that much time, and it’s clear now that Ed, an IT guy and a thief, who was never any sort of “spy” as he portrays himself, would not have understood all those NSA documents he made off with anyway.
Snowden’s been living under the protection of Putin’s Federal Security Service now for two years, functioning as a pawn of Russian intelligence. When his secret relationship with the Kremlin started remains an open question, but that he has one now can only be denied by the foolish (witness the weak lies told by his supporters about Ed’s FSB ties), since when you defect, you wind up in the care of that country’s security service. That’s how it works in America, and I don’t hear anybody seriously suggesting that Putin’s Kremlin is more liberal in these matters than the FBI or CIA.
In light of these revelations from Germany, it’s worth pondering whether Ed was always just a pawn, a talking head, for others with agendas to harm Western security. As we’re now in the Cold War 2.0 with Russia that I warned you about after Putin’s theft of Crimea, this seems like a more than academic question.
For two years now, I’ve been trying to inform the public about what’s really going on behind the Snowden Operation, using my understanding of how the SpyWar actually functions, and I’ve gotten a lot of grief for it from Ed’s hardcore fans. News out of Germany can’t help but lead me to point out that, well … I told you so.
If he turned himself in publically he would not be assassinated...stop being silly.
Then with no warrant did the NSA spy on US citizens domestically or not?
With no search warrant based upon probable cause, does the NSA collect the contents of our emails, internet searches, text messaging and metadata?
Its a simple question.
Before you say they don’t, you might check out their self styled “Domestic surveillance directorate”. They are hiring.
https://nsa.gov1.info/jobs/index.html
How is he a traitor?
Who did he betray? He released information to the American people about how their own government was spying on everyone.
He is a whistle-blower who should get A MEDAL for this
He moved to Russia because the US government was trying to screw him over - he should have been granted total protection under the whistle-blower laws, which are effectively worthless
I can’t think of one single actual whistle-blower who has been protected and not prosecuted- and I have a sneaking suspicion there is some fraud and waste in the federal government.
You’re right. We should give him a medal, then shoot him after he’s pinned it on.
He’s a traitor. He’s playing the ‘American People Should Know’ card, but this is the same one they played with the Pentagon Papers thing.
If you use a big enough gun, you can just stack Bergdahl and Snowden up and save some money.
a) because he wasn't involved in SIGINT, he cannot corroborate anything in the docs alleging the Chancellor's phone was listened upon;
b) some of the documents appear to have been FSB fakes designed to cause as much trouble between the US and Germany as possible;
I've long suspected Snowden was a tool stupid enough to be taken in by the FSB masquerading as "ethical hackers."
“If he turned himself in publically he would not be assassinated...stop being silly.”
Of course not, if he turned himself into the very criminals he caught, he would be locked away incommunicado in a cell at Quantico, until a secret tribunal under NDAA could sentence him to life in prison.
That’s a free society! I laugh at those who say he cannot be a hero unless he commits -virtual- suicide, by walking in to be arrested and thrown into solitary for life. I hope he is having a great afternoon.
Snowden stole 1.7 million classified documents from NSA servers through internal hacks. That would get you tailed and tracked. He must have felt it was worth the effort to live out his days in socialist Russia. Also that he planned the leaks for months and was able to leak it out slowly to reporters must have angered the NSA and so they want him prosecuted to the full extent. That Russia is housing him is a sore spot for the U.S.
I find it interesting that his story about the U.S. spying on other countries and especially Germany is not stacking up in a court of law as the evidence and proof is not there.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged him with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. His passport was also revoked and so after he was able to live in a Moscow airport, he was granted asylum in Russia and lives in a undisclosed location with his girlfriend.
I don’t think the guy was bright enough to understand the consequences of what he was doing and what it meant for him and nationals ecurity. He seems to have figure he would just be a hero of some sort. But this article claims a lot of what he was saying was bunk and 900,000 of the documents he stole were not intelligence related. So the guy didn’t know what he was doing just wanted to expose the NSA any way he could.
“, but this is the same one they played with the Pentagon Papers thing.”
Pentagon Papers didn’t expose domestic treason in direct defiance of the 4th amendment.
I’m sure your buddy Putin is giving him all the Vodka and hookers he can handle when he’s not handing over secrets. You Snowden defenders are delusional. Stop wasting your time with him and go back to studying Building 7 and Area 51.
Any phone call you make abroad, or receive from abroad, any package or mail, etc., that crosses the border (including you laptop) is fair game-- the courts have held (again, for decades) that the government needs no warrant to listen in, record, copy or seize any such conversations or materials.
The only 4th Amendment issue arises when, on the basis of lawful intel gathering, the Feds want to listen in on or read your domestic phones calls or emails. They still need a warrant from the FISA courts in such cases.
A more interesting possibility is that the Feds are deliberately routing data traffic across the border so they can do what they want with no warrant.
An article by an apologist for the surveillance state attacking Snowden. How novel.
Pure spin, bs, and wishful thinking
Yeah that is him. John Schindler, a retired NSA spook, was a Naval War College professor who briefly went incognito after screenshots of (what appear to be) his penis leaked onto the Internet. While he has since reappeared to Twitter he has refused to comment on the mysterious emails, sent to the Naval War College by an unnamed blogger, that prompted the school to place him on leave, and under official investigation.
Sorry, he isn’t my buddy and this isn’t about Putin. Im glad Snowden found a place that the criminals collecting all of our electronic communications cannot reach him?
Do you deny they collect our electronic communications? Do you deny they spy on us domestically? They have a directorate with THAT very concept in the title.
Or do you think that Stasi crap is legal and acceptable in America?
You just wrote ‘you hope he’s having a great afternoon’...do you even read what you write?
The guy stole millions of documents without bothering to read 99.9% of them. Couldn’t he just steal the documents about the NSA spying, and then release them through something called, the Internet, instead of going to Russia.
Suppose some of those secrets he stole get people killed...would he still be your hero? I’m guessing, yes.
Pen trace was used in specific cases. Now it is used on every single call every American makes. It is not the same as what was once a limited law enforcement tool.
Now it is Dept of Defense spying on the American people. (NSA is DOD)
This is a fine examination of how personal metadata can get by watching the British using it against Paul Revere and the Colonists.
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
No matter how you slice it, it is a violation of the intent of the 4th amendment. They are capturing and storing the contents of every single electronic communication in America. (of course they only access it after consulting with a secret court for permission now)
Does this not bother you at all? Or are you one of those safety and security types?
I hope he has a great afternoon. And releasing it in the internet would have had him instantly fingered, and then its into the cooler, for life.
Im saving my anger for the Americans who are LITERALLY putting Stasi data collection to shame, not for the man who exposed them at great personal cost.
Go lick a boot.
“possibility is that the Feds are deliberately routing data traffic across the border so they can do what they want with no warrant.”
...
Court decisions blessing the idea the Government does not need a warrant for information that we have "no expectation of privacy" regarding and/or utilizing the Third Party Doctrine were horrible pre-9/11 & are no better now.
Any phone call you make abroad, or receive from abroad, any package or mail, etc., that crosses the border (including you laptop) is fair game-- the courts have held (again, for decades) that the government needs no warrant to listen in, record, copy or seize any such conversations or materials.
The feds take photos to track all our domestic mail, too. The courts have said the same thing about our financial records, and the trash we put out, as well. Among other info captured pre & post 9/11 without warrants.
The only 4th Amendment issue arises when, on the basis of lawful intel gathering, the Feds want to listen in on or read your domestic phones calls or emails. They still need a warrant from the FISA courts in such cases.
And we all know the FISA Court to be such a guardian of liberty
. A more interesting possibility is that the Feds are deliberately routing data traffic across the border so they can do what they want with no warrant.
Well, we also know they hack & sabotage Americans' computers, hack private databases, capture our emails, texts & Internet search queries, monitor the communications of Congress & other lovely things.
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