Snowden Job: The Fable That Edward Snowden Is Just A Whistleblowing Patriot
I care deeply and passionately about protecting and preserving our civil liberties, and I'm opposed to government surveillance without probable cause.
However, Edward Snowden is not a man who should be pardoned. He's a whistleblower, but he went further than that.
Edward Jay Epstein has a piece in the WSJ, "The Fable of Edward Snowden: As he seeks a pardon, the NSA thief has told multiple lies about what he stole and his dealings with Russian intelligence":
Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a "whistleblower" seeking to expose the overreach of NSA's information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden's chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.Mr. Snowden's theft of America's most closely guarded communication secrets occurred in May 2013, according to the criminal complaint filed against him by federal prosecutors the following month. At the time Mr. Snowden was a 29-year-old technologist working as an analyst-in-training for the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton at the regional base of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Oahu, Hawaii. On May 20, only some six weeks after his job there began, he failed to show up for work, emailing his supervisor that he was at the hospital being tested for epilepsy.
This excuse was untrue. Mr. Snowden was not even in Hawaii. He was in Hong Kong. He had flown there with a cache of secret data that he had stolen from the NSA.
This was not the only lie Mr. Snowden told. As became clear during my investigation over the past three years, nearly every element of the narrative Mr. Snowden has provided, which reached its final iteration in Oliver Stone's 2016 movie, "Snowden," is demonstrably false.
... But even just taking into account the material that Mr. Snowden handed over to journalists, the December House report concluded that he compromised "secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states." These were, the report said, "merely the tip of the iceberg."
The Pentagon's investigation during 2013 and 2014 employed hundreds of military-intelligence officers, working around the clock, to review all 1.5 million documents. Most had nothing to do with domestic surveillance or whistle blowing. They were mainly military secrets, as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on March 6, 2014.
It was not the quantity of Mr. Snowden's theft but the quality that was most telling. Mr. Snowden's theft put documents at risk that could reveal the NSA's Level 3 tool kit--a reference to documents containing the NSA's most-important sources and methods. Since the agency was created in 1952, Russia and other adversary nations had been trying to penetrate its Level-3 secrets without great success.
Read the House Select Committee on Intelligence report -- surprisingly riveting stuff detailing all of Snowden's lies, from those about his background to how he was motivated to steal the documents by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's testimony to Congress -- which didn't occur till eight months after he started downloading the documents.
via @DrEades
Golly... So you're saying an enormous and quintessentially useless administrative apparatus, perhaps the largest and least-accountable collection of self-interested enterprises ever seen in Western Civ, has decided that Snowden is bad news. For them.
Well, we should certainly take that into consideration.
Crid at December 31, 2016 11:34 PM
Snowden made us aware of billions of felonies committed against us on a daily basis, by our own employees.
He has done more good for our country than all of his detractors put together ever will, and shame on you for disparaging him.
I really thought better than that of you, Amy. How disappointing.
-jcr
John C. Randolph at December 31, 2016 11:37 PM
Shit fuck, Amy
Crid at December 31, 2016 11:41 PM
Why is it these days that the comments section is always smarter than the actual articles?
Terry at December 31, 2016 11:41 PM
Only two trolls on this? Oh, well. The night is young.
FrankB at December 31, 2016 11:45 PM
Im not sure what I think of Snowden. However I do know what I think of the NSA.
Hard to know who to root against here.
But looking on the bright side: The Russians are on Obamas shit list right now, so no chance of a pardon.
Isab at January 1, 2017 12:08 AM
> Oh, well.
When the revolution comes and the shitwads have blades at their throats and their backs against the wall, those who've deployed sarcasm without articulating [A.] the targets of their disdain or [B.] the reasoning of their righteousness will be the first ones to be cast so brutally from the Citadel.
And no one, of any political persuasion, will give a flying fuck.
Crid at January 1, 2017 12:45 AM
Everybody does this apparently: comment on the function of an agency they cannot see operate, motivated largely by offense that said agency doesn't report to them. Is there any way to second-check the dire news?
You don't know where 14 SSBNs are operating or their target coverage. Mad about that, too? Or is invisibility actually an asset?
Hey. Somebody is operating to keep large events from happening in the USA, and it's not the TSA.
Don't be insane and claim the NSA is both evil and incompetent at the same time.
The Snowden thing is too important for anybody to tell the truth. He's this decade's WMD rhetoric.
Radwaste at January 1, 2017 1:57 AM
And not for the first time, you intentions are largely unreadable. And otherwise flatly wrong.
Yeah, sure: The NSA is both evil and incompetent. "At the same time," if that makes it clearer for you.
There's no reason the faults would be exclusive, and every reason they'd travel as a pair.
I don't want the NSA to report to me: I want them to disperse (after giving us our money back: Every motherfucking dime; Every goddamn penny).
Crid at January 1, 2017 2:47 AM
You don't even know what they do. I say that with confidence because you don't know what I do, even though I have told you. Your own ideas rule.
Got any idea with the CIA and FBI do? Probably not, but that doesn't matter either.
Radwaste at January 1, 2017 3:29 AM
A SysAdmin my brother knows told him politicians like to use NSA style data mining techniques to search for hot women to bang. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the future of sexual scandals.
People don't care about the NSA right now but they sure will when it's the local police looking to charge you with something---anything or a well connected divorce lawyer looking to score big for his client. Maybe the IRS digging deep into your pockets might give people a wake up call. But it wont.
Snowden was a nobody, a lowly sysadmin who took data he didn't know how to interpret. That's partly why the NSA hates him. Imagine if the janitor spilled the beans about your job.
Ppen at January 1, 2017 4:01 AM
Thanks for the heads up on the NSA meta-data collection.
The rest? you're a traitor, and you should be subject to the traitor's end: hung by the neck until dead.
Wait...you thought Putin gave Snowden asylum because Vlad's a nice fellow?
*snicker*
I R A Darth Aggie at January 1, 2017 6:12 AM
My reading of the article is that he had been talking to the reporters 3 months or so BEFORE he took the job. He took the job specifically to STEAL data.
He stayed 6 weeks to make sure he got a BUNCH of data. (Was there something specific he knew before the job that he wanted to document?)
That's not a "whistleblower" seeking to expose the overreach of NSA's information gathering" based on years of getting more and more worried about overreach.
Opportunistic thief is more fitting IMO. (Unless this stuff was common knowledge among techs not even working at the NSA.)
Bob in Texas at January 1, 2017 6:29 AM
The problem is, he was part whistleblower, which I'm for, but he was also more. He didn't just take key documents that showed what the NSA was doing:
Most had nothing to do with domestic surveillance or whistle blowing. They were mainly military secrets,
Amy Alkon at January 1, 2017 7:00 AM
>Radwaste
>Got any idea with the CIA and FBI do? Probably >not, but that doesn't matter either.
We know what they were created to do, but both of them seem to have suffered from mission creep.
Regarding Snowden, he has pissed off so many important agencies that I don't expect to ever have a clear and unbiased account of what he did and why. We know it was important to him, because he has knowingly made himself a fugitive for life.
kenmce at January 1, 2017 7:21 AM
Or, could this possibly be yet another instance of liberals not caring about peoples intentions, but what political party is being seen as in power?
After all Snowden "blew the whistle" on a Bush era program.
But now that its clear Obama has no intention of pardoning him, liberals who want to see him pardoned and praised for exposing Bush for violating civil rights (funny how no liberal thinks Obama violated civil rights), yet dont want Trump do be seen as having done anything 'good' need a valid excuse to change their minds without being exposed as the hypocrites they always are
lujlp at January 1, 2017 10:08 AM
> He didn't just take key
> documents that showed what
> the NSA was doing
Why for the love of Fuck would you trust this assessment?
Crid at January 1, 2017 12:14 PM
> I say that with confidence
> because you don't know
> what I do
Well, it's more that I don't care, but it's great the way the centrality of your own circumstances instills confidence in your worldview.
Crid at January 1, 2017 12:19 PM
It's hard to understand anyone who can't see the tremendous gift this man gave to our country. His generation and those that succeed it are unlikely to bless us with another such figure. If your mentality admires the fearmongering and self-serving technocracies so much more than it admires genuine heroes, you probably don't deserve the heroes.
And you won't get any more of them.
Crid at January 1, 2017 12:34 PM
That second admires was supposed to be "ignores."
I regret the error tremendously, because it's become apparent that SOME PEOPLE ARE OUT OF THEIR MOTHERFUCKING MINDS and can't intuit.
Crid at January 1, 2017 2:18 PM
SHIT FUCK, Amy.
Crid at January 1, 2017 2:19 PM
You're taking that House Select Committee smear job at face value? This
hardly qualifies as some unbiased third party assessment.
Some detailed debunking, leading with:
"Honestly, if this is the best that the House Intel Committee can put
together to smear Snowden, they must have found nothing bad. I mean,
it's the stupidest stuff: like that he once got into a dispute with his
boss over some software updates at work and (*gasp*) emailed someone
higher up the chain, for which he got reprimanded"
Lots more at:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160915/17000035532/house-intel-committee-says-snowdens-not-whistleblower-cause-he-once-emailed-his-bosss-boss.shtml
Followup with still more detailed info at Techdirt.com, see:
articles/20160916/16594835541/house-intelligence-committees-list-snowdens-lies-almost-entirely-false.shtml
(Full URL of this shortened in order to avoid posting two URLs in one post)
Ron at January 1, 2017 3:35 PM
Okay, I speed-read my own comment wrong.
The point is, Barton Gellman is Barton Gellman and you are not.
It's just so freaky to see Amy get this one (Snowden) wrong. As with Islam, it feels like she doesn't want to learn anything that can't be comprehended, and enthused about, by an 8th-grade reader.
There are
at work in our species, okay? You need to be fractally suspicious of those who'd seek eagerly to command your loyalty…...ON YOUR OWN DIME.
Snowden never asked you for a goddamn penny.
But the NSA is taking your money whether you want them to have it or not. And do you know who they're watching when they spend that money?
Why yes, Amy... That's right!
Crid at January 1, 2017 4:31 PM
The full Gellman list.
A personal favorite.
Crid at January 1, 2017 4:33 PM
Thanks for all that Crid. Great links. Good C-span interview. Ordering that book on Cheney. I continue to be impressed with your breadth and ability to call people out on bullshit.
Abersouth at January 1, 2017 6:03 PM
Angler is a great book and you won't be disappointed. There's some fascinating stuff in there... Including a jaw-dropping anecdote about Condi and Rumsfeld. The book's a pleasantly breezy read, perhaps because it was composed from a series of newspaper pieces.
Crid at January 1, 2017 7:55 PM
> Opportunistic thief is more
> fitting IMO.
???
How exactly can you imagine he benefited from this "thievery"? And hadn't he paid as much for that information as has any taxpayer?
To cast away every friend you ever had without even a whisper of a goodbye... Including your family and (for a time) your longtime girlfriend... To surrender any future and economic opportunity in 21st century telecom despite the most intimate expertise... To survive momentarily at the whim of a twitching, essentially psychopathic dictator with the largest security & military complex the world has ever known pining for your scalp evermore...
Quite a "thief."
Crid at January 1, 2017 8:02 PM
Edward Snowden was active on Ars Technica for many years. He posted as TheTrueHOOHA. It's worth reading his posts to get a direct perspective on his thinking and personality.
Honestly I don't think that Snowden acted primarily on a political motive. Rather it's likely that he wanted to fulfill the fantasy that he'd developed of himself as an elite spy, genius, and architect of the US cybersecurity strategy.
The same grandiosity that you see in his public statements carries out in his writing online. He's preoccupied w/ promoting his intellectual and professional status, and tends to make all sorts of exaggerated and implausible claims about his experiences and accomplishments.
But his politics are all over the place. You can find posts where he advocates murdering whistle blowers and reporters who divulge sensitive information, and then others where he's posing as a freedom fighter against the corporate hegemon. None of it is very coherent, just strident and melodramatic.
Snowden probably would have pulled something like this with whatever information he could have gotten his hands on. The press picked up on the information about PRISM, but he also released another 1.5 MM pages of documents that had nothing to do with domestic spying. It's questionable whether he really understood what he'd taken.
snow bunny at January 2, 2017 10:26 AM
> Snowden probably would have pulled
> something like this with whatever
> information he could have gotten
> his hands on. The press picked up
> on the information about PRISM, but
> he also released another 1.5 MM pages
> of documents that had nothing to do
> with domestic spying. It's
> questionable whether he really
> understood what he'd taken.
The beauty of our moment is that this is entirely irrelevant.
We've no need to judge his motives in some delicate calculation; nor need we —the adults— need to chart his emotional interiors with some 7th-grader's Jungian mechanics (You're sooo immature, Eddie!)
He brought us important, game-changing information about how our tax dollars are being used to threaten us without regard to the intentions or specifics of our laws and policies. Merely to see the shitheel Clapper so roundly (if inconsequentially) humiliated would have made it worthwhile.
This isn't just weird, it's tragic. There's this popular idea that even though you've never been in someone else's circumstance, and even though you've never had their personality, it's impossible that they could make any choices that you aren't fully equipped to appreciate and critique. You know everything you need to know, because you're the perfect judge of everyone else's (meager) worth.This is PRECISELY the problem brought to public affairs by the fascination with technocracy. Servants and agents in the public sphere are judged like football stars or movies stars.
After all, you read the Ars Technica article on your Iphone while in line at the bank.
Or you read TMZ on you Android in the doctor's office.
This is the arrogance that made the Obamanoids presume they could give everyone free healthcare: We'll have some schlub put up a website.
Crid at January 2, 2017 1:23 PM
Crid, this is one case where you are speaking from ignorance. To put it bluntly, you don't know what the fuck really went on. Do I? I have more of an idea than you do. You'll have to take my word for it. I know that chaps your ass, but whatever.
Snowden: yes, he has a Messiah complex. Yes, he did steal some information that uncovered major abuses in the federal government's security apparatus. For that, we should thank him. He also exposed a bunch of information that put a lot of our undercover operatives in danger, and made it possible for Russia to develop more effective countermeasures against our weapons, which they are building now. The technological advantage that we've enjoyed against Russia since WWII is no longer a given, thanks in part to Snowden.
The NSA? They've committed abuses, no doubt. The people responsible ought to be punished. There's no evidence that I'm aware of that they have been. For that, you can blame the bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of the universal-surveillance state. However, consider this: There has been no 9/11-scale terrorist attack in the United States since, well, 9/11. The NSA has a lot to do with that.
All that said, if I were President, I'd be tempted to pardon Snowden. Why? Well, at this point, whatever damage he is going to do is already done. A pardon would expose his persecution complex and deny him the fame he craves. And it would put him in a no-win situation: either he continues to hide out in Russia like a coward, or he comes back to the U.S., gets a job with some far-left activist organization, and then the American public gets to see what a dickhead he really is.
Cousin Dave at January 3, 2017 7:19 AM
I say:
You say: We understand each other perfectly.Crid at January 3, 2017 10:08 AM
"He also exposed a bunch of information that put a lot of our undercover operatives in danger, and made it possible for Russia to develop more effective countermeasures against our weapons, which they are building now. The technological advantage that we've enjoyed against Russia since WWII is no longer a given, thanks in part to Snowden."
This is what they claim, but here is my question.
I kmow from my days in DOD that classified information is highly compartmentalized.
I could be working on a new Army weapons system and have access to top secret documents on that system, but the Air Force, Navy, and my congress critter would never see them.
So how is it that a list of foreign operatives, and classified data on weapons systems was even in the NSA data base to begin with? Huh?
Weren't they supposed to be monitering phone calls, and collecting metadata on them? Admittedly a list of target phone numbers might indirectly lead back to some operatives, but the weapons system claim is just crazy.
Isab at January 3, 2017 10:33 AM
Isab, see https://twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/816496830439690240
Crid at January 3, 2017 8:21 PM
Also, follow these two:
They've actually both been a little too quiet since election day. It bugs me to think they might be waiting to see which way the wind blows.Crid at January 3, 2017 8:25 PM
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