The former NSA employee – a man in military service in the US for a decade – has revealed himself in an interview with The Guardian. “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things […] I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.” He did it out of a sense of civic duty. He’s in Hong Kong, and doesn’t expect to ever see home again. Poor guy.
Thom: He’s in Hong Kong, and doesn’t expect to ever see home again.
Must be Facebook/Google/Apple/whatever-company’s fault!
That guy’s got some serious balls. He has my respect.
Brass Balls is more like it, I salute you sir for standing up to the bastards.
Balls, certainly. Brains? I’m not so sure. Seems like this is one of the worst things he could do at the moment.
darknexus,
“Balls, certainly. Brains? I’m not so sure. Seems like this is one of the worst things he could do at the moment.”
It would have been dumb to think there wouldn’t be consequences, but if you read his statements he knew fully well what he was getting into. It just shows his dedication to principals is greater than his fear of the consequences.
Like Alfman said, it’s clear that the guy knew what he was doing. Chances are he had a good reason for already disclosing who he is as well. Never mind the fact that the government would eventually find out who he is; if a name is attributed to his leaks the public will be more likely to take notice, and the federal government would receive more public outcries in the future for whatever ways they intend to punish him (if they are able to get him). He is already in Hong Kong and trying to find out where he can seek political asylum, so the man clearly knows what he is doing.
His “crime” is basically embarrassing Obama and his administration, and calling him out on his lies, abuse of power, and approval of downright unconstitutional behavior. If anyone needs to be prosecuted and serve prison time, it is whoever was involved with granting the United States government such disturbingly strong powers in the first place; not the messenger, Edward Snowden.
In fact, spoken by the man himself, why he exposed his identity:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/intelligence-leaders-push-ba…
Edited 2013-06-10 06:31 UTC
Could go either way, really. Maybe he’s trying to ‘market’ himself as much as possible. Get as many eyes on him as he possibly can, and maintain that level of exposure. Not for fame or money, but safety. That way, any agency wanting to whack him will have to think twice.
I agree that Hong Kong isn’t exactly the safest place to make this announcement from, unless he’s already made some deal with China.
Edited 2013-06-10 04:24 UTC
Fixed it for you
– Gilboa
Worst thing for whom?
He individually is in a lot of trouble, but what he’s shown us is that we’re all in trouble with an unprecedented tool for tyranny operating in our midst. Few of us have any choice of escaping it, and ignoring it and letting it grow has an inevitable conclusion.
I think we’re at the point where everyone’s security is our own, and what Snowden did gives us a chance to have a clear discussion about what our governments should be doing, and get it right.
Yeah I hope he likes getting to live the rest of his life in hiding for fear he’ll get a “rendition ride” to some USA approved third world “holding area”, heck he’d be lucky if they sent him to Gitmo since they are still irked they haven’t been able to break Assange out.
I hope you guys across the pond are doing better than the USA because frankly its starting to feel more and more like Germany before the crazy Austrian showed up over here, you got massive unemployment, kids being buried alive in student loans only to get out of college to find the H1Bs have taken all the jobs or they have been offshored, and there is this whole undercurrent of nastiness being directed towards the illegals and away from the corps that hire them, and we don’t even have a party you can vote for that isn’t for more jack booted 1984 style control, its very surreal over here.
I’d urge everyone to watch this video by Naomi Wolf and see how much of what she names in pointing how how free societies become non-free has already happened or is under way in the USA. Also note that this little white middle class jewish girl is now on the watchlist because she talked about what constitutional rights people have at a lecture, scary huh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f0sBA61L0Y
For what? He ran *before* he released the documents.
In my book, this is called hit and run.
This of-course, assuming that he wasn’t granted a large sum of money from the Chinese government for spilling his guts – an act that not only dents his “I’m a martyr” image but also should place him in the wrong side of a firing squad.
BTW, I’m not even American so I don’t really care.
– Gilboa
Edited 2013-06-10 06:48 UTC
I am not an American as well and I think you should care. Like it or not, America still has large influence on the world, it is as simple as that.
I’m not American either, but I do care about this.
The fact is, the surveillance isn’t limited to Americans. Based on the information that’s leaked, it looks like they have been keeping track of people all over the world, including many Indians.
I should point out that I have some internal knowledge at how LEA DPI solutions work, and who they usually target.
Plus, I have a fairly good idea how many lives have been saved due to intelligence generated by such systems.
When I said I don’t care, I meant it literally – the debate, in my view is plain stupid.
In an age where people more-or-less lost all barriers when it comes to sharing personal information (Be that over Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc) the assumption that there such thing as “personal privacy” is amusing at best. The NSA is no better nor worse than any social network web-site selling user information to ad networks.
In my view, the question everybody should be asking is not whether the NSA should or should not be conducting mass scale DPI – but actually, how come the NSA *failed* to stop the terror attacks in 9/11 and the recent attacks in Boston.
– Gilboa
There is a monumental difference between “I, as individual, choose to give up some of my rights” versus “Let’s take away everyones rights”.
There is a monumental difference between “Here’s some data about me I’m voluntarily sharing with peers.” versus “Let’s collect, store, filter, analyze everyones data”.
I assume that you are aware that the “share” part includes all your webmails, VOIP logs and God knows what else, right?
– Gilboa
You know why you should care? because it allows those with access to that info to pretty much control the elections because in this day and age there is NOBODY who hasn’t done or said something on the Internet that could be used against them.
Don’t forget the way J. Edgar was able to control so much for so long is that ALL feared his files, even if you THOUGHT he might not have anything on you, would you REALLY risk everything to find out?
Think about how much control this will give them against anybody in politics, they have proof of what kind of porn you like, any affairs you may have had, which member of your family had a drug problem, with nothing but this data you could change the outcome of elections just by making sure some rag got info against you at the right time! And of course any “winner” that doesn’t want to play ball, and sign off on anything their little heart desires as far as budget or rule bending or whatever? well one little talk with him about how much dirt this gives them will smack that sucker in line, won’t it?
Remember we are talking about a country that nearly had a president impeached over getting oral sex, the info they have would give them more power and control than J Edgar ever had, I mean if they had a file on every video you had EVER watched, every thing you had EVER wrote, and everything you had EVER done, really how hard would it be to get you to go along with what they tell you to do?
Let me just say I have some knowledge about homeland security DPI systems (outside of the U.S) – how they are being used and why and non of them, to be best of the knowledge, was ever used to spy in Joe-Six-Pack.
Most people fear that the “government” will abuse the information it has about you (assuming it actually keeps a complete record about each and every citizen – something that I doubt, greatly) but care little about what Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Twitter/Myspace/etc are doing with the *same* (or actually, more) information.
You somehow assume that your future political opponents will have complete access to the NSA super-duper-secret vault, but won’t be able to bribe some stupid schmuck at your local social-web-site-operator-X and/or your ISP to get all the juicy details about you.
If you want real privacy, I would suggest you stop using electronic communications, period. Everything else, is more-or-less like using Tor to surf facebook…
As for J. Edgar Hoover – well, you more or less just proved why you *don’t* need the NSA super-secret DB to get all the dirt about more-or-less everyone….
– Gilboa
Edited 2013-06-11 13:05 UTC
Uhhh…you didn’t get the memo? If you don’t use FB you may be a terrorist and will be MORE likely to have a file made, that is how they think.
And J Edgar at least had to work on it, had to keep an eye out for whom he thought may have a chance in politics, and probably had to bluff more than once because somebody slipped through the cracks.
With this there is NO cracks, because they can simply go back through the records if you decide to run for office and they’ll have enough dirt to either bury you or make you their puppet. Again remember we are talking about the USA, not the EU where a mistress can show up to a head of state’s funeral and sit with the family and nobody cares, just finding your taste in porn isn’t vanilla enough or you told some off color jokes is enough in the USA to torpedo a career.
Actually, the point is mainly to monitor foreigners. Remember to spy on American citizens even the NSA needs some kind of formal warrant, but to spy on foreigners they need nothing, they can do so however they please.
This is the primary function of the system, to spy on foreigners. They gather more private data from Iran, Pakistan and even Germany than the US.
He has balls alright, but for how long once his fellow country men ship him off to Guantanamo where he’ll have no rights.
His balls will be the first thing he loses.
It is too bad he’ll likely never see his home again. Don’t be surprised if he “disappears” one day. I’m sure the NSA *frowns* on this sort of thing.
He knows he can’t stay in Hong Kong. That’s why he wants to go to Iceland.
The problem with Hong Kong is that it has an extradition treaty with the United States — signed just six months before the British left! All agreements entered into by Hong Kong on its own behalf remain in force until repealed.
The nice thing about Hong Kong, though, is that it gives him options.
He’s not in some third-world country, where he might be subject to extraordinary rendition. The CIA cannot take the risk of kidnapping him on Chinese soil.
Former Hong Kong government officials have publicly encouraged him to leave Hong Kong. Which means that he probably won’t be detained when he attempts to leave. (The Hong Kong government itself cannot make such a statement, but former government officials can be used to get the message out.)
Is Iceland really safe for him, though? They also have an extradition treaty. The Chinese probably wouldn’t want him. Russia, perhaps?
Edited 2013-06-10 16:36 UTC
In contrast to other leakers he was able to expose the corruption with further jepordising anyone’s privacy,money or safety.
Oh don’t you worry, as soon as they come up with the right spin he’ll have done all of those things.
Its hard for some people on the internet to understand this concept, but I care about truth rather than spin. It doesn’t matter to me what people say about what he’s done. And I bet it doesn’t matter to him either.
His life is over. Whistleblower laws won’t protect him. I suspect he will either get detained by China and milked for everything he knows, or have an accident and die very soon.
It’s hard to say. He needs to get to Switzerland. The leaking was already done. Exposing himself – my God, I haven’t seen role models like this in decades. What he and the others who are stepping up are doing is making it very hard to justify the things that are being done.
I don’t know, but it seems unlikely to me the NSA would do something out of either revenge or to “stop him”. What he did has already been done. He cannot really do anything else, except be one of those people willing to sacrifice for truth. If more people come forward, the whole government wiretapping, recording, hacking program is going to have tremendous heat on it. People will be on the side of the truth tellers.
I guess he must already know for sure that they know he was the one, so exposing himself is better than dying in silence.
Now the BIG question remains : with the informations leaked out (thanks to Manning or Snowden) what are WE going to do ? Now that we know how bad our “civilized” world is driven, is voting for another “patriot” still an option ? We all know they are molded in the same pattern, so I bet we should take another route.
Strange that Egypt, Tunisia and now Turkey are showing us the route :/
Kochise
No the US authorities will simply discredit him like they do any other whistleblower. He will be accused of providing vital national secrets to terrorists. In addition he will be probably accused of some sort of sexual perversion or rape. This is what happened to Scott Ritter, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.
The US government may also make some token effort to extradite Snowden to the USA. They won’t actually want him to come back because a trial would be too embarrassing.
Snowden isn’t that useful to the Chinese. They probably already know far more about the NSA than he does.
Except nobody believes or cares what China says about the NSA, but people will believe a former NSA employee.
But has anyone else noted his similarity in looks to one Gordon Freeman?
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
That’s where to get after learning about Manning’s traitorous behaviors, being a threat to your wonderful blessed motherland.
/sarcasm
I bet we’ll soon know some dirty shit the CIA has made in the past (Allende/Pinochet, …) or any “National Security” organization so far.
I’m the first flabbergasted by the size of the scandal. And you believed living in a “democratic” country ? Now you earned USSR, China and some other countries’ respect.
I ain’t gonna any further because it’s not going to be quite delicate and polite (you caged brainless cash cows).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4dTob8avQ
Kochise
Conservative pundits are no doubt frantically searching for any & all strawman arguments to that they can use to dismiss this controversy. Ya know, stuff like “See? The only people who are upset about this are the type of people who harbor an irrational, blind hatred for the US/its population and who will latch onto any excuse to bitch about us.”
And posts like yours make their jobs that much easier – congrats!
Edited 2013-06-10 19:05 UTC
Conservative pundits seeking a strawman? Hardly.
The government largely responsible for this entire mess is the “progressive” Obama. Now, the conservative side of the USA is overjoying in happiness. The entire Obama administration just showed themselves to be a monumental bag of hypocrisy.
The administration that denounced the abuses of PATRIOT act, promised to safeguard the right to privacy and restrict wire-trappings just did way worse and was doing it for quite some time already, in a scale that only radical paranoids ever took seriously.
It’s one thing to tell the world what to do, how to behave, it’s another thing to apply all of this to themselves.
Don’t worry, France ain’t any further in that matter of hypocrisy.
Kochise
This young man has integrity and courage for doing this.
He was very intelligent about it as well. He protected himself as best he could. He avoided outing individuals which could have harmed them. He focused on news sources that could not be impugned upon like Wiki-leaks and Assange were. He is not trying to remain anonymous and also not going for some sort of fame. He is not making a political statement by claiming to be a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian. He is just doing this because it is the right thing to do.
Good on him….good on him!
This guy probably had a pretty good idea that the NSA already knew who he was. In making his identity known to the world it makes it a lot harder to make him disappear without arousing suspicion.
The body of Alexander Litvinenko, that agonized for days until his final breath with coverage of the entire worldwide press for everybody to see, proves this theory to be quite wrong.
Anyway, i think that he will survive if he don’t know anything more.
US spy leaker Edward Snowden ‘missing’ in Hong Kong
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22850901
Well that was quick…
While I applaud this guy for speaking out, I also recognize that he will be a target for myriad charges. The problem with America is that its government, who claims to be for the people, by the people, will use any excuse necessary to denigrate those who speak out against unjust policies while continuing to protect the elites who are in power. Until the people have a chance to consider and vote for such powers are heard, then it’s all nothing more than clandestine politics as usual. I give this guy a major thumbs up for speaking out and hope he survives to continue his patriotism. If he does perchance succumb to an “accident” or other reprisal, then all true Americans should be asking why!!!!
Say, has anyone wondered yet how the Marathon bombers got past all this surveillance? Whilst reading Al Qaeda’s newsletters and shit?
Simple: The U.S. government apparently has “better” things to be doing like mass surveillance of its own citizens and getting drug busts instead of… oh, I don’t know… taking the Russian government seriously when it asks the FBI to seriously keep an eye on the to-be bombers for suspected terrorist activity.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/04/23/russia-contacted-…
The U.S. Government can’t even take one suspected terrorist seriously; I don’t know what exactly they expect to find with such obscene amounts of surveillance data. Never mind the fact the Boston Marathon bombers’ mother is seemingly no angel either–having been arrested for shoplifting in June 2012, for trying to steal about $2000 worth of clothes.
The government’s too busy filling the jails with drug offenders and secretly building a surveillance state to even care, it seems to me. But, they’ll just say, it’s all in the name of “security.”
Edited 2013-06-11 05:49 UTC
I’m American and while the news isn’t all that surprising to me, I’m thoroughly pissed about it because we’re no longer in the realm of speculation – our government IS doing this stuff. It IS reality. What makes me most angry is that there is nothing we can do about it. Swapping out elected officials won’t change anything. Voicing our outrage won’t change anything. Ultimately we have to accept that the country we think we live in and the one we actually do live in are not one in the same. Sadly, a lot of people would rather the illusion continue than to address what’s really going on behind the curtain.