from Hacker News

On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

by nceqs3 on 9/6/23, 1:57 AM with 219 comments

by bandrami on 9/6/23, 4:08 AM
The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.
by kome on 9/6/23, 9:23 AM
This really feels like CIA NSA propaganda. As if nothing wrong happened. What the hell.
The character assassination of Snowden&co in the anglophone sphere is absurd, and probably manufactured. But this didn't quite happen in other languages.
Assange trials are just mind-blowing and worrisome, and yet the simple truth is here: who told the truth is in jail, and who committed war crimes is outside.
by kome on 9/6/23, 9:46 AM
This post tries to convey that analyzing metadata is no big deal. It is big deal: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 9/6/23, 12:10 PM
I urge everyone interested to read the intel report and tell me what about it is false or inaccurate.
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_...
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r...
> “The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.” (p. 16)
> “As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18)
> “Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” (p. 20)
by jll29 on 9/6/23, 11:24 PM
> Ledgett's answer is confirmed by a comprehensive listing of the tasks of the NSA in the Strategic Mission List from January 2007. It was published by The New York Times in November 2013, but got hardly any attention, despite the fact that it clearly contradicts the claims by Snowden and Greenwald that the NSA has just one single goal: collect all digital communications from all over the world.
If you look at the document, it indeed lists more than half a dozen goals, not just one. For example, supporting industrial espionage is mentioned (expressed as preventing "surprises" in the area of technology - wonderful euphemism!), which is not terrorism-related at all.
But the part that worried Snowden is actually reflected in the strategy document, even using the same wording as Snowden: MASTERING the Internet/cyberspace. That _does_ have a ring of total control and exhaustive gathering.
by tptacek on 9/6/23, 2:54 AM
I still haven't gotten my head around the valorization of Bill Binney, who does not appear to have been an opponent of dragnet surveillance, as he's so often portrayed, but rather of inefficient and poorly managed dragnet surveillance. ThinThread, the system he designed and left NSA over when they didn't pursue it, still left it up to NSA to determine which data to make available, and still presumed NSA would collect the same raw data.
Maybe someone more familiar with ThinThread can make a case for how that system would be acceptable to us where Trailblazer (its competing design, in the narrative one tends to read here) wasn't.
by gonzo41 on 9/6/23, 7:15 AM
On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations - the NSA celebrates the hard lesson they learnt about compartmenting their internal networks. No other lessons were learnt. Infect it seems like the real pivot was just to get Internet companies to pick up the ball on dragnet suverliance so they could feed of those instead of doing it themselves.
by AequitasOmnibus on 9/6/23, 4:08 AM
10 years on, Snowden remains arguably the most important whistleblower in the US after Daniel Ellsberg. The fact that the government pursued Snowden and effectively drove him into exile in an unfriendly country shows how serious the revelations were, and exposes the dangers of an unchecked government.
I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Snowden single-handedly changed public perception against the NSA and the domestic branch of the war on terror. And yet, what shocks me to this day is how feckless the Congressional and Administrative responses were to public outcry. The government bet on the scandal blowing over, and for the most part it was right. Snowden's whistleblowing should have led to widespread changes in the law and in agency policies - and in a healthy democratic society that would have been the result. Instead, he'll never be able to return to the US because DOJ has made him tantamount to Public Enemy No. 1.
by hackandthink on 9/6/23, 3:25 AM
This reads like NSA Public Relations.
Snowden was no whistleblower, NSA did some overcollection but anyway their mission is great and yeah some safeguards had to be improved.
And Keith Alexander is a reliable source.
by ramraj07 on 9/6/23, 12:54 PM
My knowledge of him comes primarily from news articles and the Citizen Four documentary (which I highly recommend) but my perception is that whatever his intentions were I'm amazed at how smartly he did everything. He literally fought the US government and got the best case scenario anyone can practically hope for which is that he's alive and not in Guantanamo.
by abhinai on 9/6/23, 4:06 AM
The post says 7 comments but I can only see two. What's going on?
by neilv on 9/6/23, 5:28 AM
What's the etymology of the term "Snowden revelations"?
People seem to really like that term, and it makes sense. But someone has to have said it first. I don't recall hearing "revelations" used much before then, other than for the book of the Christian New Testament. (Is some of the appeal of the term to allude to an almost biblical impact, or saintly/savior aura around Snowden?)