How have they been harmed? Please show us.
Exposing unconstitutional wiretapping and email hacking is horrible for Americans how?
I’d rather live in a riskier country than give up our fundamental rights. You?
By Noel Sheppard | June 24, 2013
One of the claims by many of Edward Snowden’s supporters is that what he revealed from the National Security Agency had little to no impact to national security.
According to former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey, nothing could be further from the truth.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday, Woolsey said Snowden has done “substantial” damage to national security.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: How much damage has Mr. Snowden done in your opinion to America’s national security?
JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Well, It’s a little hard to assess from outside, but I’d say substantial, because what is now being sent out to the terrorists as well as everybody else is how these programs generally operate. And so they know what to pay attention to, what general procedures to follow. It’s hard to sort of zero in on any one specific. But it’s very damaging when an opponent that you’re trying to get information from, as we try to get information from their communications, terrorist communications overseas, knows that you’re doing it and how generally you’re doing it. It helps them a lot. […]
KATHLEEN PARKER, WASHINGTON POST: I wanted to ask in terms of what has happened with Snowden, what is more damaging to the United States: what was actually revealed or the fact that he was able to secure this information and distribute it?
WOOLSEY: I suppose the substance because that’s what will help the terrorists keep us from connecting the dots. You remember after 9/11, everybody said the intelligence community didn’t connect the dots. Well, that’s part of what’s been going on with respect to particularly going after the terrorists here and foreign intelligence collection, and that, the way we were connecting them is now out there and is in the hands of the terrorists. And so they know a lot more about how to plan, how to use telephones and the like. And I think that’s the main problem.
“R. James Woolsey Jr., director of central intelligence during the Clinton administration, said Monday that the United States’ failure to deal strongly with Russia and President Vladimir Putin is setting an example for other countries in the Edward Snowden leak escapade.
“Hong Kong and Ecuador are learning from Russia, which is that if you insult the United States and don’t follow international norms with respect to it, nothing happens,” Mr. Woolsey said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And so they’re behaving appropriately. Nothing’s happening.”
Mr. Woolsey said Mr. Putin has been able to throw his weight around with essentially no consequences, or implied consequences, from the U.S.
“His general attitude is don’t be weak, and that’s fine, but he’s not really doing anything else except avoiding being weak, simply trying to throw his weight around with respect to the United States,” Mr. Woolsey said. “He’s not cooperating, really, on anything substantial, and there’s no risk in it for him. He doesn’t have anything negative happen when he behaves that way with us, so the kind of cooperative relationship we had from time to time in the past, say with [Mikhail] Gorbachev, is just not here … he’s almost impossible to work with.”
Mr. Snowden, a 30-year-old who had top-secret clearance and disclosed the government’s collection of phone records and a program that tracks some foreigners’ Internet activity, revealed his plans through a statement from WikiLeaks — founded by leaker Julian Assange — after reports he departed from Hong Kong bound for Moscow and then a new haven from American authorities seeking his arrest.
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino confirmed on Twitter that his government had received an asylum request from Mr. Snowden, who landed in Moscow on Sunday and planned to travel to South America through Cuba, The Associated Press reported, citing Russian news agencies.
Exposing the NSA wiretapping was just Snowden’s throwing a bone to those who otherwise would have been all over him for releasing national security secrets to Moscow and other enemy nations.
“Testifying before the full Senate Appropriations Committee with representatives from Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who is also commander of U.S. Cyber Command, shared his concern for the nation.
“Great harm has already been done by opening this up, and the consequence, I believe, is [that] our security is jeopardized,” Alexander said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” the general added, “that we will lose capabilities as a result of this, and that not only the United States, but those allies that we have helped, will no longer be as safe as they were two weeks ago.”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2013/intell-130614-afps01.htm
Look at the mountain, not the molehill. Most of what NSA does is spy on the bad guys and the facilities they have are worldwide and the data they collect is primarily and, IMHO, massively about non-USA citizens. The French get collected, the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the Germans. They get it all. The Good Guys and the Bad Guys are all collected to any depth that NSA chooses. The rules they follow are not limited by the US Constitution nor should they be. Those rules only limit collection on US citizens and they are certainly worth scrutinizing. Yes, Snowden may have done us a favor in that area. But Rogers is talking about the 99% of the NSA business that is focused on the foreign threat and the collection of data about communications not involving US citizens.
We really don't know at this point what Snowden has divulged about the broad range of NSA programs and the related capabilities and methods. Those program directly affect National Security. They detect ship movements, troop movements, planning by our enemies, terrorist communications in Yemen, you name it. But Rogers probably does know what information about the NSA capabilities that have been given to the Russians. He is worth listening to. He is probably right.