Posted on 01/19/2014 4:19:19 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Does adding the phone records of all Americans help or hurt that mission? The answer depends on how they use that info. Pulling up someone's records based on formal documented suspicions is one thing. But making a large haystack much bigger by adding lots of hay along with a possible needle is just dumb. The other problem is abuse of the data. If Snowden can walk off with a million documents then the data can be abused by any other insider.
I also believe you are correct and as ETL said what makes the media splash here is the misdirection, away from the fact that Snowden stole EVERY THING, not just what NSA does, but method and means - and names ...
It is one thing to say NSA collects meta data, texts, etc, and another to reveal how they do it - using X-band radar with double double-ganger sideband attachments, running Wake-me-when-its-over code through a supercomputer made by IBM in Austin, contract number 132YG, under the direction of Harry Houdini who lives at 1255 Noonehome Lane, Alexandra VA - see attached file for the other names involved in the effort - that is what the Russians, the Chinese, and AQ got, while the media focuses only on the sound bite goodness.
Method and means are a totally different kettle of fish that a simple seeming announcement of the abridgment of some putative Constitutional right. Method and means are the secret, not the action which has long been known and assumed - or should be. Revealing method and means gets people dead: our neighbors, cousins, and children, who, involved in this sort of work and are NOT going to talk about to anyone - they will just have ‘accidents’, curtsy of Snowden’s theft.
Most here seem to miss the point of what Snowden actually did. They are seemingly all hot about their so called Constitutional rights (which BTW have been declared by SCOTUS to be “mere privileges which can be revoked at any given time”). They fall for the intended misdirection, while missing the point. Instead, they fault those like Woolsey and Rodgers who have (or had) access to Eyes Only clearances (way above TS {code word}, which is a light year above mere Top Secret) and slam Snowden for a traitor, instead of praising Snowden for a hero.
There is no way Snowden, a pasty faced, lowly contract Admin, got what he did on his own - when I was at NSA in the 60s there were so many checks that even those who had the proper clearances had trouble getting all the data they theoretically had access to, and even then they were looked at hard. There is no doubt he had help - either internally from some other mole or externally from the Russians and/or the Chinese.
We no longer live in a country that is relatively safe or even in one that is risker, but in one that is now totally vulnerable to any outside enemy who choses to take advantage of Snowden’s theft. G_d help us.
My thoughts FWIW.
If terrorists know that they cannot feel free to communicate in the US because they might be listened to it cuts back drastically on plans they may make here.
if they know they can operate freely here because the NSA is cutting back we are more unsafe.
If I heard egrarious stories of US citizens suffering from the tapping I might feel differently but so far there are no such stories. The wiretap system is being used largely for.the security reasons I mentioned above.
The first problem with that theory is that the NSA was not listening interactively just collecting, then processing way after the fact. The second problem is that some non-stupid terrorists will switch to untraceable communications. Third problem is that even if the NSA could tap all communications in real time they would not be able to process all the data quickly enough to detect threats.
If you want to claim that terrorists might be deterred by a powerful NSA that's a potentially valid claim but a NSA capable of that type of deterrence is not in our long run interests. It doesn't mater if US citizens were harmed by this or not, the potential harm far outweighs any potential benefits.
I agree with that. I suspect that most Freepers have no idea about the levels of "Compartmentalization" that are involved in managing NSA programs. The idea that Snowden was cleared for access on a large number of NSA programs seems to me to be very, very unlikely. No clearance on a program means no access to that programs data.
Something went seriously wrong to allow him the broad access to NSA data that he apparently managed to get.
Thus, the need for "collecting" which you are against. If a threat is located, the NSA can go back and trace past related data and widen the net.
that's a potentially valid claim but a NSA capable of that type of deterrence is not in our long run interests
And another massive attack on US soil would be much less in our long run interests. And that will happen if surveillance is lessened. Terrorists feeling free to communicate in the US because they know those controls are gone? That's an invitation to devastation.
According to the Wikipedia, in 2007, the CIA stationed him in Geneva, where he was responsible for maintaining network security. He would have been 24.
In 2009, he left the CIA to go to work for Dell in an NSA facility in Japan. He stayed with Dell until early last year, when he took a pay cut to join Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, a job which afforded him better access to NSA information.
That malware probably came from Russian or Chinese agents masquerading as "friendly" hackers.
In short, Snowden (like Manning) is a treasonous tool who ought to be hanged.
That's very likely true. He is such an advertisement for getting a college education, isn't he? Almost up there with Jobs and Gates.
I found an article how snowden traveled. He got a temporary travel pass from Ecuador. It was obtained in London with the help of Julian Assange. Correa called the pass an “error”.
What’s up with these emotional responses? We oppose Putin because he’s a dictator who murders his own people and is hostile to us, whether we agree with him about homosexuality or not. Religion for the Putin regime is just a political tool. A guy who laments the fall of the USSR and thinks Stalin should be honored with statutes isn’t a big fan of you or your way of life.
You guys need to calm it down and stop slinging accusations and insults.
“Lol..you’ve got issues that spam trolling Freepublic isn’t going to solve”
You’re the troll. Just because you’re inlove with Putin doesn’t mean that the rest of FR agrees with you. Not one of your posts in this thread have even been rational.
He’s not the only one.
There are FReepers who are not really FReepers.
It is not that Snowden had clearance to “a large number” of NSA programs, it is that he took EVERY THING - meaning he had access to EVERY NSA program ... no way, Jose. There were cases were even the Director himself was shut out on need to know basis. This is why Snowden is such a huge prize for the Ruskies, comparable to what they did to Britain in the 50s and 60s ... maybe even bigger.
Like some one said: “ ... what he deserves ... well, let’s just say I’d go Medieval on him.”
PEOPLE magazine rules! What’s that have to do with anything? Bear with me. I was at the worst run Safeway store in the country the other day. The express line was long and I counted the number of magazines by the checkstand. 17, every single one of them including the women’s fashion mags was focused on personalities.
49rs vs Seattle game on the tube now. Focus of the network sports commentariat? Personalities.
Back to FR. The effect of the country’s obsession with personalities is such that people can’t see the forest for the trees. Sarah Palin observed immediately when the Snowden affair was disclosed that this was not about Snowden. She was right. Talk favorably about Russia’s laws against the propagation of pederasty, that were passed by the Russian parliament and the FR “patriots” will accuse you of being in love with Putin. They don’t even know the name of the Russian parliament. Focus on personalities, Snowden or Putin, because you’re incapable of thinking and talking about ideas, and it’s all about ideas and only about ideas.
Actually I'm very doubtful that this is true. But it could be. What is your source?
But I didn't say that Snowden had clearance for a large number of programs. I believe just the opposite. The way NSA works it is just not possible that they would have cleared someone like Snowden on a huge number of codeword programs. But if he did, as you state, get all or even a large share of the info on NSA programs I have assume he had help. NSA is the world expert on security. Bar none. So something went seriously wrong here.
Only if they use that single issue as a justification for claiming Putin is a good guy, someone to be admired, ignoring all the other seriously troubling things about him and his regime, such as their long history of supporting and arming America's enemies (which some here, somehow, don't seem to know continues to this day), or the thuggish way in which he runs the country, how he "silences" or "eliminates" his political opposition in and outside of Russia. His admiration of Stalin. His proclaiming that the "collapse" of the murderous communist Soviet Union was the "worst geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century". What on earth is so difficult to understand here? Are you guys so simplistic that a single issue like the condemnation of homosexuality is cause enough to ignore all these other things? As I pointed out earlier, Stalin, Mao and Saddam Hussein, were anti-gay too, as were many otherwise despicable people throughout history, including nearly all Mafia and street gang leaders.
>>>His proclaiming that the “collapse” of the murderous communist Soviet Union was the “worst geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century”. <<<
Why are you always picking this frase out of context?
What the hell is “out of context” about your boy Putin proclaiming that the COLLAPSE of the mass murdering communist Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”?? You claimed on that other thread that the ‘collapse’ of the SU was bad for the US in various ways, as if that somehow explained or rationalized Putin’s comments. Putin obviously didn’t and doesn’t give a crap that the US lost some status as a result of the Soviet Union collapsing.
I realize that not all of you are defenders of Putin to the same degree, but you are one that is CONSISTENTLY there to argue on his behalf, no matter what the issue. All it seems you do on this site is post favorable pieces on Russia and Putin. If this was my site, I’ll kick all of you the hell off of here. We don’t need scum like you poisoning the minds of younger freepers or those that just don’t know much about Putin or Russia.
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