Posted on 06/29/2013 8:08:28 AM PDT by yoe
In March 2013, when Edward Snowden sought a job with Booz Allen Hamilton at a National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, he signed the requisite classified-information agreements and would have been made well aware of the law regarding communications intelligence.
Section 798 of the United States Code makes it a federal crime if a person "knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States" any classified information concerning communication intelligence.
[snip] Before taking the job in Hawaii, Mr. Snowden was in contact with people who would later help arrange the publication of the material he purloined. Two of these individuals, filmmaker Laura Poitras and Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald, were on the Board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation that, among other things, funds WikiLeaks.
[snip] Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras also flew to Hong Kong. They were later joined by Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative who works closely with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. Mr. Snowden reportedly brought the misappropriated data to Hong Kong on four laptops and a thumb drive.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“I’m guessing he also got help within the NSA...”
That’s the important part of the story. The outside help he got from Wikileaks associated people may be interesting from the point of view of possible legal actions against them, but that he was getting that help doesn’t tell us much. Based on no knowledge of how things works, it surprises me that a guy could be applying for a job in March, get hired, and be in a position to access deeply secret stuff by early June. Even if he had the requisite clearances from his former employment, and even if he couldn’t do his technical maintenance work without access to the secrets, should he be trusted so soon by his employer not to appropriate the files? In other words, why wasn’t somebody watching him? I’d like to know who greased the skids for him to get the job.
There are thousands of Chinese spies in America, both in government and the private sector.
They do not “go public”. That is not the purpose of a spy; they simply bring information back to their handlers and you never know about them unless they are one of the very few that are caught.
Snowden going public tells us that he is not spying for another country. See my other post for what is going on. Note that Snowden may have been operating for wikileaks or he may be an independent whistleblower who simply chose to use wikileaks to go public. Snowden saw the treatment of William Binney and others and knew that he could not go public here in America, the stories would simply not be carried in the captive US press.
Those are the lamest excuses I’ve ever heard floated.
Skype.
The software that they install on your PC generates a public/private key pair and sends the public key back to Skype where they sign it creating digital certificate which verifies your identity. The private key never leaves your computer. The digital certificate with public key is available to anyone. The private key is very difficult to guess, probably beyond modern computers unless there is a specific flaw in the algorithm or backdoor in the software.
Thereafter every call is encrypted with a session key (essentially unbreakable AES 256) which is generated by the caller's software and shared securely using the public and private keys of the caller and callee. The caller's and callee's identities are verified at the same time. Even if the AES key is broken it only reveals that one session. That key is not escrowed or saved or made available to anyone other than the caller and callee (again with the caveat that there can be no flaws in the algorithm or backdoors in the SW).
.....there is evidence of exactly what you speak of and it is happening NOW and more and more each day. One small example: A relative of mine is involved in some litigation in San Bernardino, California. San Bernardino, one of many homes around the U.S. for starkly over-paid public employees, cannot pay it’s bills and is either in bankruptcy or headed there.
Anyway, they have reportedly had to shut down a sizeable percentage of their civil courts due to no money leaving the remaining courts grossly over-worked and under staffed. In our case, this means you get a very short time in front of a judge at hearings and proceedings and follow on hearings are set months down the road.
In breaks (lunch), courtroom employees were asking us dead serious questions about housing costs and living costs in Texas with one stating she was moving as soon as she could.
Another observation I made was that on a Sunday afternoon, Palm Springs/Desert Springs Streets were just deserted. You could hardly see one vehicle of any kind up and down six lane avenues. Hmmm???? Meanwhile, back home, we have traffic jams and construction projects on every corner.
No, a spy going public, then going back to the country they are spying for to deliver secrets to them.
That’s lame.
Theorize much?
D) Some conservatives will knee-jerk support the government, refusing to believe that strong spying capability is bad. Conservatives who oppose the revelations thus fall right into the trap the financial oligarchs set for them, and...
Yep, all of FR fell right into the trap /sarc
G) Of course the smart response is to simply make note of any factual information that comes out. Then research beyond that simple information to tie it to the financial oligarchy. Then publicly expose the financial oligarchy - and as much of their dastardly operations as possible - as far and wide as possible...
The catch is that the all-powerful oligarchy will have anticipated your pathetic attempts to out them and immediately crush you like a bug. Maybe ignore you. Or use any one of 1000 techniques to discredit you; one of the main ones being the planting of information in your name or associated with you that makes you look like a lunatic.
And treasonous.
Back in the day, anyone observed on a rooftop, near a firefight, holding something on their shoulder, would be ID’ed as a sniper and dealt with accordingly. Just another example of how today’s overly-cautious rules of engagement are getting our troops killed.
Someone in the 162nd—or a overhead Apache gunship—could have done everyone a big favor back in 2004.
While I welcome any conservatives to Texas, I do NOT relish the thought of a bunch of liberal Californians moving here and messing up our state just like they messed up theirs.
Wikileaks has that whiff of useful idiot... attractive - young - doing stuff waaaaay past their pay grades... As far as ‘help’ within NSA? Anyone who could pull this off has covered all tracks - 8 months - a year ago - maybe longer. I don’t know anything about this - just guessing.
The left loves flipping 'words' in political ways. You're using 'collaboration' in the traditional way... which we all understand. But leftists have made this into one of the new 'cool' words... and they're exploiting it politically...
You betcha. Ignoring the crimes of an outlaw government is treasonous to the people.
So William Binney is a traitor too ?
Never heard of him so that point was pointless. You are consistent that way.
Outlaw government not withstanding taking secrets to the ChiComs is still treason. If you don’t think so you’re on the wrong site.
You’re unable to search for things on the internet ?
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