omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

"we've changed our passwords"

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/sunday_shows_what_you_missed/

Booz Allen Hamilton still needs to get a return-on-investment: After Profits, Defense Contractor Faces the Pitfalls of Cybersecurity

WASHINGTON — When the United Arab Emirates wanted to create its own version of the National Security Agency, it turned to Booz Allen Hamilton to replicate the world’s largest and most powerful spy agency in the sands of Abu Dhabi.

It was a natural choice: The chief architect of Booz Allen’s cyberstrategy is Mike McConnell, who once led the N.S.A. and pushed the United States into a new era of big data espionage. It was Mr. McConnell who won the blessing of the American intelligence agencies to bolster the Persian Gulf sheikdom, which helps track the Iranians.

“They are teaching everything,” one Arab official familiar with the effort said. “Data mining, Web surveillance, all sorts of digital intelligence collection.”

Yet as Booz Allen profits handsomely from its worldwide expansion, Mr. McConnell and other executives of the government contractor — which sells itself as the gold standard in protecting classified computer systems and boasts that half its 25,000 employees have Top Secret clearances — have a lot of questions to answer.

The blowback from this is going to suck.

@russian_market 20m

BOARDING IS OVER. SNOWDEN DIDN'T SHOW UP. POOR CNN & BCC JOURNALISTS WHO ARE FLYING TO CUBA NOW....HASTA LA VISTA!

Twitter is hilarious now. Reporters ON THE PLANE tweeting Snowden ISN'T on the plane. Plane already on its way to Havana...

awesome

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/statuses/349106511257161729

and Aeroflot isn't even serving drinks!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/24/edward-snowden-booked-on-plane-from-moscow-to-havana-live-coverage

Maybe Rihanna took his place?

xp Lol

I enjoy seeing the entire state-media complex being turned into Dean Wormer by one guy.

Snowdenplane is really fucking funny

Now it's REALLY becoming a "Catch-22" reference.

"Tweet him! Tweet him! Tweet the bombardier!"

http://www.diena.lv/uploads/thumbnails/705x457/article/1402/14013333/5225298_ORIGINAL_1371888009.jpg.jpg

like something out of blade runner

@Conor Friedersdorf
How could Snowden go to Cuba, a country where untried prisoners on hunger strikes are force fed with -- oh, wait, it's us doing that.

The intermediary told Mr. Snowden Friday night that the government could not predict what Hong Kong’s independent judiciary would do, but that serving jail time while awaiting trial was a possibility. The intermediary also said that the Hong Kong government would welcome Mr. Snowden’s departure, Mr. Ho and the person who insisted on anonymity said. Both declined to identify the intermediary.

The Hong Kong government said that it would not interfere with Mr. Snowden’s departure and even provided unobtrusive police protection for him as he went through the airport, both of them said.

But, Mr. Ho said, Mr. Snowden went through the same security and immigration channels as most passengers at the airport, rather than a special channel usually used for people involved in highly political cases — a sign that the Hong Kong government wanted to minimize its involvement in Mr. Snowden’s departure.

At the same time, the Hong Kong government’s encouragement for Mr. Snowden to leave, instead of a suggestion that he stay and fight any return to the United States, had persuaded him that staying was risky because the Hong Kong government might not be on his side. “He would not like to fight with the Hong Kong government, with the Chinese government and the U.S. government” against him, Mr. Ho said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/snowden-departure-from-hong-kong.html?_r=0

So of course Snowden wasn’t on that plane. He couldn’t have been. If he’d disappeared into Cuba the Snowden story would be over and all that would be left is the NSA story. And that’s not the plan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/24/wonkbook-does-edward-snowden-even-exist/?hpid=z3

Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas

Doesn't really make me feel great about either Snowden or Booz Allen's hiring practices:

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/snowden-says-he-took-job-with-contractor-to?ref=fpblg

i mean afaic if dude was capable of using his skills and experience to get into a position to expose these programs, and if he set out to do so deliberately from the start, that's another notch for his temperate subversion in my book.

that said, i think this collective desire to lionize leakers as Great Heroes of The People is completely misguided. i'm glad he did what he did, and i'm glad he had the foresight to figure out how to do it more effectively than manning's indiscriminate document dump.

Leakers are necessary in a security state. I'm glad someone is willing to push some of these secrets out into the light.

ends/means etc

MLK said there are just laws and unjust laws. i think the info snowden made avaiable had little reason to be classified and that the public is better off than it was 2 weeks ago

Sure, which is why I value the info more than Snowden

the sheer number of documents that get classified every year is kind of stunning.

for me the issue isn't every leaker being a hero so much as the obama admin's reaction to leakers being horrifyingly over-the-top and frankly kind of tyrannical.

i do pretty much regard snowden as a hero, though.

snowden's a cool dude but i'm probably a bit more defensive of him than i would be ideally, given the mud-slinging attempts against him etc. i mean ideally the guy wouldn't be chraged w/ espionage

yeah agreeing w/ JD as per yoosh

You guys are in my cabinet iirc

can i be seward?

I call dibs on Salmon P. Chase.

I want to be Secrtareies of Fart

http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/784386973.jpg

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/demonizing-edward-snowden-which-side-are-you-on.html#entry-more

way more in favor of demonizing Assange tbh

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/poll-edward-snowden

speaking of balls

“Those people should be shot in the balls,” Snowden said of leakers in a January 2009 chat. Snowden had logged into an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server associated with Ars Technica, a popular tech news site. While Ars itself didn’t log the conversations, multiple participants in the discussions kept logs of the chats and provided them to the technology site.

At this point, Snowden’s evolution into a fierce critic of the national security establishment was in its early stages. Snowden was incensed at the New York Times, which had described secret negotiations between the United States and Israel over how best to deal with Iran’s suspected nuclear program.
“Are they TRYING to start a war? Jesus christ. They’re like wikileaks.” Snowden wrote. “You don’t put that s— in the NEWSPAPER.”

“They have a HISTORY of this s—,” he continued, making liberal use of capital letters and profanity. “These are the same people who blew the whole ‘we could listen to osama’s cell phone’ thing. The same people who screwed us on wiretapping. Over and over and over again.”
He said he enjoyed “ethical reporting.” But “VIOLATING NATIONAL SECURITY? no. That s— is classified for a reason. It’s not because ‘oh we hope our citizens don’t find out.’ It’s because ‘this s— won’t work if iran knows what we’re doing.’”

“I am so angry right now. This is completely unbelievable.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/26/four-years-ago-ed-snowden-thought-leakers-should-be-shot/

snowden... otm?

disappointed the post didn't include "-in-the-balls" at the end of the URL there

he evolved

you might someday xp

‏@chrislhayes
Quite an ideological journey for Ed Snowden … This seems to make the act of conscience motivation *more* credible

agree tbh

I see a significant difference between the leaks Snowden was describing in 2009 and this one

well and as has been discussed doc dump vs. targeted release are v diff imo

it's been mentioned over and over, but i'm not sure what the "terrorists" learned from the nsa leak. that they're trying to monitor their phone calls and internet usage? that doesn't strike me as a huge blow to national security.

whereas leaking "secret negotiations between the United States and Israel over how best to deal with Iran’s suspected nuclear program" seems a bit more consequential.

in other words hurting otm

Im confused as to why nobody has talked to him in the last couple days.. if hes just chillin in an airport how come nobody has seen him?

other day one of the reporters who was stuck on the flight to cuba landed back in moscow and chatted with a customs guy who said he sees him all the time

probably bs, but lol

used to think they should be shot in the balls, now he thinks they will be shot in the balls

BREAKING: Snowden found crying in Sheremetyevo Airport, shot in balls

are we really surprised that a guy who worked at the cia and then the nsa once felt that way?

what snowden leaked poses zero threat to national security; it poses a threat to the obama admin's ability to keep a lid on policies they know the public would be creeped out by.

In 2009 Snowden prob thought the gold standard was for pussies, too. But Snowden isn't the story, or he shouldn't be. Who cares what some 29 year old chatted about when he was 24? Either we care about NSA's harvesting data on billions of daily phone calls or we don't care. Snowden's faded opinions are irrelevant.

As Sen. Wyden keeps saying, no one has made a case that we couldn't achieve the same ends through less intrusive means. And yes, slippery slopes do apply here.

right

the plurality of american/english journalists with any national security remit are complaisant dicksucks who will personalize/psychologize this ephemera like it has any consequence to the material disclosed