NSA Releases Over 800 Pages Of New Snowden Documents

Megalith

Megalith

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Did Snowden, in fact, repeatedly attempt to raise his concerns inside the NSA about its surveillance of US citizens while the agency did nothing? New documents shed quite a bit of light into that.

Hundreds of internal NSA documents, declassified and released to VICE News in response to our long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, reveal now for the first time that not only was the truth about the "single email" more complex and nuanced than the NSA disclosed to the public, but that Snowden had a face-to-face interaction with one of the people involved in responding to that email. The documents, made up of emails, talking points, and various records — many of them heavily redacted — contain insight into the NSA's interaction with the media, new details about Snowden's work, and an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the efforts by the NSA, the White House, and US Senator Dianne Feinstein to discredit Snowden.
 
just going to put this out there. my ship has posters of this guy all over the place talking about how he is a spy and a traitor. sometimes i wonder about my life choices.
 
Man, I don't know how to word it in Google, but everything that Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and (I think) Jacob Appelbaum Jeremy Scahill released they cleared it with the NSA before they went public back then. They approached the NSA and asked if there was any issue with them publishing this material. The NSA allowed it.

I normally try to provide proof of my claims, but I can't figure out how to word this without getting noise.

EDIT: Interesting that Pierre Omidyar doesn't show up as associated people when you Google these characters, since he financed much of their work.
 
captaindiptoad said:
just going to put this out there. my ship has posters of this guy all over the place talking about how he is a spy and a traitor. sometimes i wonder about my life choices.
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There wouldn't be whistle blower protection laws if they didn't need to be protected. Snowden wasn't the first NSA whistleblower, but he was the first to get away with it.
 
Unless I am hallucinating, post 3 in this thread was originally a comment that harshly criticized Snowden. I don't remember which forum member it was who posted it. Strange that it's completely gone now. Do mods delete stuff like that?
captaindiptoad said:
just going to put this out there. my ship has posters of this guy all over the place talking about how he is a spy and a traitor. sometimes i wonder about my life choices.
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I take it this might be a US military unit? (Of course you don't have to answer that if you prefer not to or cannot.)
 
the_servicer said:
Unless I am hallucinating, post 3 in this thread was originally a comment that harshly criticized Snowden. I don't remember which forum member it was who posted it. Strange that it's completely gone now. Do mods delete stuff like that?

I take it this might be a US military unit? (Of course you don't have to answer that if you prefer not to or cannot.)
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Yes, the mods can and do delete posts whenever they feel like it.
 
A traitor for doing something that really needed to be done in a situation that didn't need to exist (the illegal monitoring of US citizens and others around the world) and shouldn't have been done in the first place (yes, that does make sense as stated)?

Personally, I don't see it, and for every single person working in any security service in the US that willingly does things for any reason and knows it to be an illegal act or action is someone I'd call an actual traitor but that's just me.

<I can see this thing snowballing out of proportion quite fast indeed...>
 
You know for a second there I thought the story title said 'NASA' releases..... and I was like "Wow, how did NASA get all that info..lol
 
Some people call him a traitor. A Traitor to who? Who was he betraying?
 
KazeoHin said:
Some people call him a traitor. A Traitor to who? Who was he betraying?
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Very good question. Did he somehow betray those that were doing unlawful actions? How is that being a "traitor". Sounds like those that wanted him to be quiet are traitors more than anyone.
 
KazeoHin said:
Some people call him a traitor. A Traitor to who? Who was he betraying?
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What he did was irresponsible, and has put very sensitive information in the hands of those that would like nothing more than to bring very real physical harm to the US and its military.

I don't agree with what he did at all, and even less with how he did it, but at the very least, he could've blown the whistle without releasing all that information, especially when he himself didn't know all that it contained. That is treasonous.
 
Mut1ny said:
betray those that were doing unlawful actions? How is that being a "traitor". Sounds like those that wanted him to be quiet are traitors more than anyone.
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I tend to agree, but those same people may also feel intense pressure from the public to do everything possible to prevent terror attacks. The pressure on politicians to ignore civil liberties says something about how cowardly and fearful many people are.
 
westrock2000 said:
There wouldn't be whistle blower protection laws if they didn't need to be protected. Snowden wasn't the first NSA whistleblower, but he was the first to get away with it.
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Whistleblower protections do not apply to 99% of people who apply for it, whom everyone would think they apply to. The CIA, NSA, and corporate America have lobbied both SCOTUS and Congress to make whistleblower protected status all but impossible to achieve IRL.

Snowden, love him or hate him, is not a whistleblower legally speaking. Not even in the same galaxy. Whistleblower protections do not and never could have applied to him.
 
potency said:
What he did was irresponsible, and has put very sensitive information in the hands of those that would like nothing more than to bring very real physical harm to the US and its military.

I don't agree with what he did at all, and even less with how he did it, but at the very least, he could've blown the whistle without releasing all that information, especially when he himself didn't know all that it contained. That is treasonous.
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What information released by Snowden has made harming the US and its military easier?
 
KazeoHin said:
What information released by Snowden has made harming the US and its military easier?
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C'mon now, there's no way for us to ever know that, unless we got one of the bad guys to switch sides, which will pretty much never happen. Terrorists proudly take responsibility for the harm they cause, but even they aren't dumb enough to reveal how they went about it under our noses.
 
potency said:
What he did was irresponsible, and has put very sensitive information in the hands of those that would like nothing more than to bring very real physical harm to the US and its military.
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Who, precisely, 'cause he a) turned over everything he got from his time at the NSA to reporters (as stated even Snowden himself wasn't aware of every single document in the collection) and b) did so because he felt it was more responsible to turn the information over to journalists who would, given time, do the research necessary and also to self-redact anything that could directly be harmful to any person or persons by name or post or other specific info.

He stirred up a hornet's nest that needed to be kicked a few times.

As for irresponsible, that's your opinion because I for one think anybody that does such actions (works for the security sector/etc) that willingly continues to do things that they know are suspect or flat out illegal is what I'd call a traitor first and foremost.

We know enough now because of what Snowden did to understand that what was happening over the past 15 years or so (and probably longer, obviously) is highly suspect and pretty much definitively illegal by any measure of the law on so many levels it's not even funny and yet it continues to this day.

Somebody has to draw a god damned line at some point and say "Ok, that's enough of this, we're better than this and this has to stop, now."

Snowden did that, and I for one appreciate his sacrifice (which is most certainly was).
 
potency said:
C'mon now, there's no way for us to ever know that, unless we got one of the bad guys to switch sides, which will pretty much never happen. Terrorists proudly take responsibility for the harm they cause, but even they aren't dumb enough to reveal how they went about it under our noses.
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Well, ALL of the documents Snowden released are readily available (that's kind of part of the whole 'leak' thing), so I'm pretty sure one could easily google-search what information was harmful or potentially harmful.

Of which, none was. None of the Snowden documents revealed any military information, and the consequences of the information leak were all domestic. You are buying into the narrative that 'the government' and 'the people' are inherently separate things: Despite the practical data showing otherwise in recent years: The government of the USA IS the people. If the offices and associations paid by the people are directly infringing the constitutional rights of the people, they no longer represent the people and thus are no longer (morally and constitutionally speaking) part of the government.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"
 
{NG}Fidel said:
Snowden is a fucking hero. Has more balls to defend freedom than most others would.
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f7FdEdG.jpg
 
the_servicer said:
Unless I am hallucinating, post 3 in this thread was originally a comment that harshly criticized Snowden. I don't remember which forum member it was who posted it. Strange that it's completely gone now. Do mods delete stuff like that?
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I deleted it because it wasn't on point about the article. I didn't want to sound trollish talking about Snowden at the beginning of the discussions but nothing about the article.

The mods did not delete my post. Just want to clarify it so they don't get mistaken for censorship because of me.
 
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The government is made up of people, and there are people who never learned morality or become corrupt from the opportunities a position of power can hold. A lot of us would probably be disgusted by things the Government does that are not public (we are already disgusted by various things they do that are public...). Unless humanity somehow evolves (aka. the concept of New Types in the Gundam universe, haha), there will always be some form of corruption. It's kind of an "of course" moment that they would discredit and demonize Snowden because their butts are kinda-sorta on the line. If only more morally sound, decent, kind, caring, considerate, intelligent, reasonable people would seek positions of power, we would potentially be better off as a nation because there would be more checks to balance the bad apples.
 
"Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say."
--Snowden

 
Scottw said:
The government is made up of people, and there are people who never learned morality or become corrupt from the opportunities a position of power can hold. A lot of us would probably be disgusted by things the Government does that are not public (we are already disgusted by various things they do that are public...). Unless humanity somehow evolves (aka. the concept of New Types in the Gundam universe, haha), there will always be some form of corruption. It's kind of an "of course" moment that they would discredit and demonize Snowden because their butts are kinda-sorta on the line. If only more morally sound, decent, kind, caring, considerate, intelligent, reasonable people would seek positions of power, we would potentially be better off as a nation because there would be more checks to balance the bad apples.
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The people who refuse to stab people in the back get stabbed in the back by the people who do not refuse such an opportunity..
 
Scottw said:
The government is made up of people, and there are people who never learned morality or become corrupt from the opportunities a position of power can hold. A lot of us would probably be disgusted by things the Government does that are not public (we are already disgusted by various things they do that are public...). Unless humanity somehow evolves (aka. the concept of New Types in the Gundam universe, haha), there will always be some form of corruption. It's kind of an "of course" moment that they would discredit and demonize Snowden because their butts are kinda-sorta on the line. If only more morally sound, decent, kind, caring, considerate, intelligent, reasonable people would seek positions of power, we would potentially be better off as a nation because there would be more checks to balance the bad apples.
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Agree and also feel that I think many people do go in with good morals. I wonder how many get corrupted or just plain beaten by bad bosses. You see it all the time, a good hard worker goes bad after a boss just grinds that devotion out of them. I would imagine a similar thing happens everywhere. There may not be a way to fix it (easily). In a for-profit company, bad practices eventually can cause the company to go out of business. Our government is not really in such a squishy position that can change like such. A big part also is just people themselves. Not unlike my defeatist attitude I just put forth, people saying there isnt anything we can do so whatever, are also part of the problem. It takes a lot of energy to move a large object, and people need to do more than debate on forums to make such a movement (not picking on anyone here of course) happen.
 
tetris42 said:
Obedience.
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Yeah he betrayed the Establishment and their 'agenda'. No one else.

They want to make a example of him so no one else steps out of line and exposes them.

All this surveillance is nothing to do with stopping terrorism. It's all about looking for future dissent in the general populations of the West.

The last thing they want is a situation like Eastern Europe in the early 90's when enough people finally woke up one morning and thought "F*ck this sh*t! I've had enough!"

The want to weed out the future political agitators. They have run the numbers and checked the future geo-politcal, resource and economic models. They know it's going to get a whole lot worse for us and they will do all they can to hold onto what they took.
 
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mullet said:
Theory = Snowden should taken his questions/griefs up the chain of command.

Reality = If he would have done that, the NSA would have run him over with a dump truck.
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I find it funny when a government power like the NSA is doing something illegal, and I don't mean stealing a pen you used to sign a check with, I am talking constitutional illegal. And people suggest he take up his issue with this with the very people committing and probably ordered the illegal actions? Is this not like walking up to the guy robbing your house and asking him whats going on? Because I don't know about you, but I would think I would probably end up shot....In both situations.
 
Snowden and Manning are heroes.

The simple truth is that the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, put more people in danger by conducting state matters exclusively through unsecured, unencrypted, privately owned servers, located in her own home in Chappaquiddick.

The servers were hacked by Guccifer, they were hacked by the Russians at least 5 times, and the Russians have at least 20,000 emails which they are considering if they will release or not.

According to Congress, the servers were subject to hacking attempts by China, South Korea, and Germany. (Which means they were hacked, let's not kid ourselves)

She and her state department used those servers to subvert FOIA and the Federal Public Records Act.

She and her servers are the subject of 2 FBI criminal investigations, and 39 FOIA case investigations.

Perhaps worse, she proved conclusively to our allies that the United States Government is not to be trusted with their secure data.

She remains free, while Manning and Snowden are either behind bars or a fugitive for life.

The FBI is set to interrogate her after the CA and NJ primaries conclude this week. Let's see if America has two justice systems, one for the nobility, and one for the commoners.

18 USC 793 (f)
"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document. . .relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer, Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. "



Quoting HRC,
"As much as I've been investigated, you know, why would I ever want to use email?"

 
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BlueFireIce said:
I find it funny when a government power like the NSA is doing something illegal, and I don't mean stealing a pen you used to sign a check with, I am talking constitutional illegal. And people suggest he take up his issue with this with the very people committing and probably ordered the illegal actions? Is this not like walking up to the guy robbing your house and asking him whats going on? Because I don't know about you, but I would think I would probably end up shot....In both situations.
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Reminds me of the CIA's cocaine and weapons smuggling committed during Iran-Contra by the Reagan administration with VP Bush. There is an CSPAN piece where FBI director John Deutch is confronted by LAPD narcotics investigator, Michael Rupert. Deutch tells Rupert to report it to his superiors in the LAPD.

Rupert responded with something like, "I did Mr. Director. And they tried to kill me for it.".



In the end, the CIA cleared the DEA, and the DEA cleared the CIA. Roflmbo.

Which led to this,
 
BlueFireIce said:
I find it funny when a government power like the NSA is doing something illegal, and I don't mean stealing a pen you used to sign a check with, I am talking constitutional illegal. And people suggest he take up his issue with this with the very people committing and probably ordered the illegal actions? Is this not like walking up to the guy robbing your house and asking him whats going on? Because I don't know about you, but I would think I would probably end up shot....In both situations.
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And that is the first reason why Sowden is not a whistleblower legally.

See the first hurdle you must pass to be a whistleblower....the activity you publicly expose MUST prove criminal wrong doing on the part of your employer. The most insane amazing thing about all the Snowden revelations (so far), is that all of it was authorized and legal. All of it. No US Code law was broken. The NSA was very careful to do things "not-illegal", sleazy as hell and tremendously unethical sure-but "not illegal". Against the spirit of the constitution I'd say so-but all of it falls within commonly ruled national security law.

No criminal wrongdoing=not a whistleblower. He blew the lid off policy and top secret activities.
 
Skripka said:
And that is the first reason why Sowden is not a whistleblower legally.

See the first hurdle you must pass to be a whistleblower....the activity you publicly expose MUST prove criminal wrong doing on the part of your employer. The most insane amazing thing about all the Snowden revelations (so far), is that all of it was authorized and legal. All of it. No US Code law was broken. The NSA was very careful to do things "not-illegal", sleazy as hell and tremendously unethical sure-but "not illegal". Against the spirit of the constitution I'd say so-but all of it falls within commonly ruled national security law.

No criminal wrongdoing=not a whistleblower. He blew the lid off policy and top secret activities.
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The government and the President have always claimed what they do is not illegal, what a shocker. When the one breaking the rules is also the one making the rules and then also in charge of the courts that define and enforce those laws it is no wonder the government never does anything wrong.

Not disagreeing with you that they can twist it to be "legal", only that government satisfying its own courts it did nothing wrong is a very, very low bar.
 
Skripka said:
The most insane amazing thing about all the Snowden revelations (so far), is that all of it was authorized and legal. All of it. No US Code law was broken. The NSA was very careful to do things "not-illegal", sleazy as hell and tremendously unethical sure-but "not illegal". Against the spirit of the constitution I'd say so-but all of it falls within commonly ruled national security law.
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Actually, it was illegal and Bush's super-duper-secret-order telling the NSA to do basically anything they can (or want, or were technologically able to accomplish) was not legal by any stretch of the term given the laws on the books at the time the order was put into action (late 2001 just after the 9-11-2001 fiasco).

Just because the NSA was "following orders" doesn't mean it wasn't an illegal action to begin with - Presidential directives and orders don't necessarily hold the weight of law until they've been overlooked by a legal body and the White House Counsel doesn't have that kind of power either. That whole "I/we was/were just following orders..." bullshit doesn't fucking fly with me and most anyone else in the face of an illegal action being ordered to be done.
 
westrock2000 said:
There wouldn't be whistle blower protection laws if they didn't need to be protected. Snowden wasn't the first NSA whistle blower, but he was the first to get away with it.
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I don't think he has gotten away with anything yet. As far as I know, if the FBI ever get's their hands on him he's going into a pair of cuffs followed shortly by a cell awaiting trial.

Now to the article.

It's confusing to me, or I am not that sharp today, but there is an important difference between talking about something before you commit treason and after. Obviously this article spends a lot of time talking about things that happened after Snowden flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong and started releasing information. That isn't whistle blowing, that is treason.

Now, they are also saying in this article that Snowden did try to express concerns about problems but several things bother me. First, if Showden wasn't assigned to a position where he worked with data from these programs, then he wasn't read on to them. It means his knowledge and the basis for any complaint are very circumspect. How do you respond to someone in your organization who is making noises about a program that he isn't supposed to know about and hasn't been properly briefed on?

Then you have the only alternative, that he was involved with and correctly read on to this program and was voicing his concerns. This is a very important difference because it means he was "legally involved and had intimate knowledge of" these programs. In this case, his superiors are listening to his problems with it and supposedly telling him his concerns are misplaced, that the programs are legal. It also looks like someone was talking about it but that is what's supposed to happen when someone makes a complaint. This shows that they reviewed the issue. just because someone doesn't think it's right, that alone is not reason to stop a program. It might be cause for another look, but it doesn't mean that, if they aren't convinced, that it's cause for him to run off the reservation, and release great amounts of classified information that has nothing at all to do with his complaints, which he has in fact done.

But this does make me pause, because previously the reporting has made no claims that Snowden actually made proper complaints within proper channels which is by the way, legal Whistle Blower actions. Being a Whistle Blower is not doing what Snowden did. It's doing what William Binney did. This brings something else to light and I want to stress this. So many of you have said that if Snowden had done things the right way they would have buried him somewhere, locked him up in a dark cell. If Snowden did try to do things properly the same way Binney did, then what does that say about this concept? Sort of throws it in the garbage where it belongs don't it.

As for protecting Whistle-blowers, you protect a Whistle blower when he does things the right way. You protect him because he called attention to a problem and deserves that protection. But the Whistle blower has to do it the right way, not commit crimes along the way. This article might be based on proof that Snowden did try and do things the right way, but it's also proof that doing things the right way doesn't land you in a dark cell or a grave as a result. We'll see what happens to Ed Snowden in the long run for an example of what doing it the wrong way accomplishes. This story still isn't over.
 
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BlueFireIce said:
I find it funny when a government power like the NSA is doing something illegal, and I don't mean stealing a pen you used to sign a check with, I am talking constitutional illegal. And people suggest he take up his issue with this with the very people committing and probably ordered the illegal actions? Is this not like walking up to the guy robbing your house and asking him whats going on? Because I don't know about you, but I would think I would probably end up shot....In both situations.
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Except that hasn't happened. William Binney wasn't killed and if this article is correct, and as they are saying, Ed Snowden also raised issues, he wasn't shot either. I think your premise is false by this obvious evidence to the contrary.
 
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