| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American." |
| 2013-06-12 |
| Surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has spoken for the first time since blowing his own cover in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post. The ex-CIA analyst has been holed up in secret locations in Hong Kong since fleeing Hawaii ahead of highly sensitive leaks revealing details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance of its citizens. Snowden's actions have been both praised and condemned globally. But he told Post reporter Lana Lam: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American." Today, he reveals: |
| Posted by:Winky Sproing5899 |
| #13 .oh and by the way, the girlfriend, his taste in women says so much about him! Sure does, NoMoreBS. She sure is a hottie |
| Posted by: tipper 2013-06-12 22:26 |
| #12 Old Spook - didn't they (NSA) have those blanket FISA warrants for - network connection records (is that the same as pen register)? Or did they collect more data than those warrants would cover (do they cover names or just numbers & times)? Without names those data would hardly seem to be covered by reasonable expectation of privacy, since they 'belong' to the company, not me. IANAL and have no intel experience, and am just trying to make the non-sensical make sense. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2013-06-12 21:13 |
| #11 OldSppok sums up my view as well, and he's right: the data collected potentially violates the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments. The test is whether one had a *reasonable expectation of privacy* of a given piece of information. And certainly Prism has a chilling effect on activities protected by the 1st amendment. That is, now that its existence has been confirmed. Random legal commentary: much to the dismay of LEOs, Justice Scalia has consistently been a real hardass about when there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for 4th amendment purposes. For example, he opined that a guy brought up on drug charges had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the heat from the lamps he used to grow marijuana in his attic, so that infrared photographs police used to bust him should be inadmissible. His rulings have long irritated law and order types, but abuses of power like Prism is exactly the kind of thing he worries about. He usually writes the dissent, but I bet his stock with the other 8 just went through the roof. Not that it will matter, at this point. |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2013-06-12 21:03 |
| #10 Good to know, OS. Thnx |
| Posted by: badanov 2013-06-12 21:02 |
| #9 Glenmore, wrong. What number I call (or email, or chat, or SMS, or text, etc), and when I do that is not allowed to be collected without a warrant or probable cause. Its established legally as "generally prohibited" under wiretap law. Look up the term "Pen Register". And 18 USC as well as plenty fo case law marks it as illegal excpet within certain narrow cases defined in the law and court case precedents. The reason I know that is I have had to work under those strictures, and to report inadvertent violations of those laws - it was very serious, very strict and procedures to insure the destruction of such data were thorough (degaussing then destruction in flame were done). It was a serious career-ending move to not report an incident, and if it was deliberate, you'd possibly end up in fed PMITA prison. Not to be flippant about it, but there is a world of difference between this Snowden's leak, however moronic he is, and Manning (who destroyed a lot of sources, and got allies killed, some in fairly gruesome manner) |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2013-06-12 20:58 |
| #8 in a manner that violates protection against Old Spook, if all the gov't was collecting was phone numbers and times of connection, that data is not 'yours, the individuals', but belongs to the various third party companies, and is not protected by the various Amendments, at least if I understand correctly. That said, there has to be more to this story than has appeared - it just doesn't make sense. If Snowden's motive was to make the information public, he could have done so without WaPo or Guardian, through any number of internet sites, where it would have gone viral and reached way more people. And why his initial demand that the whole slide deck be released? What is in those slides that even the Guardian was not willing to print? And what did/does Snowden have beyond what was in the slides - presumably the Chinese have all of it now in any case. Was he a Chinese agent from the start and is this all just cover? I have so many questions that will never be answered. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2013-06-12 19:17 |
| #7 Enuf defaming of Private Manning. You might be surprised to learn he was rather handy on he brass pole as well. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-06-12 17:49 |
| #6 At least he had the guts to go public, and bear repercussions personally. Unlike that little POS Manning, who go people killed. Aside from that, any competent enemy would have already figured such a system exists, and would have long ago emplace countermeasures against it, Teh tools to do so have been out there since the 1990's, thanks to public key cryptography, and simply good attention to decent counter-surveillance basics. That's why raises such huge questions for me about this - apparently they are not only collecting, but retaining large amounts of infromation in a manner that violates protection against probable cause (4th amendment), and violates individual due process (5th and 14th amendments) as well as casting a shadow on 1st amendment suppression by intimidation. I dont condemn this guy, but neither do I praise him. There has to have been a better way to go about this, unless things have truly become dire in the SCIF world. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2013-06-12 17:24 |
| #5 Forgive moi for wandering slightly OT, but doesn't the name "Eric Snowden" sound like a member of the British royal family? |
| Posted by: Dopey Sinatra9196 2013-06-12 16:15 |
| #4 Well, NoMoreBS, Chinese are (more or less) the only ones who not only can tell USG to go and stuff it---but will do it for fun. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-06-12 14:49 |
| #3 His choice of safe haven was Hong Kong, and after a video debut, now speaks from there through a Chinese newspaper and will trust their judicial system, deciding not to leave there after all? Does anyone else wonder how long he will be missing from public view, speaking through the newspaper and how much time he will spend being debriefed, pumped as dry as a Death Valley well, and eventually traded to us for some ChiCom agents? How amazingly stupid he must be, and one wonders if his departure from the Agency and brief sojourn at BAH was merely another in a long line of failures that had him skipping out just ahead of eomthing? Just wondering....oh and by the way, the girlfriend, his taste in women says so much about him! |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2013-06-12 14:40 |
| #2 Anyone notice how the Washington narrative now appears to be drifting toward....evil, money grubbing CONTRACTORS ! The "targeting" disclosures should be very interesting. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-06-12 13:05 |
| #1 A news show last night said: 1) He worked for the CIA for some time. 2) He quit and worked for Booz Allen for 3 months His revelations come from 3 months with Booz. 3) Booz Allen was recently purchased by The Caryle Group (yes them) |
| Posted by: 3dc 2013-06-12 12:50 |