I'd agree with you but for the fact a lot of these congressmen voting or in special committee's that approve the funding/laws don't know what the hell they are signing half the time or are aware of the loop holes involved due to double talk by the NSA, CIA, etc.. heads. How do congressmen even know they are given all the information? If your told to rubber stamp it or you will be responsible for all these terrorist attacks what would you do? My point is there is enough blame to go around...
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Report: NSA Mulls Snowden Amnesty
- Thread starter CommanderFrank
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I'd agree with you but for the fact a lot of these congressmen voting or in special committee's that approve the funding/laws don't know what the hell they are signing half the time or are aware of the loop holes involved due to double talk by the NSA, CIA, etc.. heads. How do congressmen even know they are given all the information? If your told to rubber stamp it or you will be responsible for all these terrorist attacks what would you do? My point is there is enough blame to go around...
The top. The executive and legislative branches are filled with corrupt criminals who have consolidated their power to create seats of royalty.
Totally unrelated: heard much about Iceland lately? Any big news there the last few years?
I honestly feel like you described yourself here and then projected it onto someone else.You've worked that side of the fence far too long or something worse, pure delusion. You think it's mostly all okay because your superiors told you it was all okay...lol.
Yet, you still think it's all about catching bad guy "terrorists" and not just simply overreaching of power. Funny. No US citizens I know that understand a tenth of it want all this war and spying, so, it should be gone right, yet it isn't. One must wonder why.
On top of that they're (the GOV) attempting to build up their ability of being able to monitor and record most forms of communication 24/7/365, everywhere on the globe, given enough time of course. In my opinion it's a case of the elites versus the middle class and poor. This whole build up of militarizing the US Police and attempting to record all communications foreign and domestic isn't about terrorism at all, it's about power. It also causes fear among the people which causes some to go completely silent. Plus knowing/recording everyone's opinions that do speak out. In my opinion the elites truest enemy in their own minds is anyone that wants a more fair world. They want their scales to remain tipped in their favor, forever. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." G-O
By controlling the law/debt/currency/etc, the elites fundamentally control the masses in perpetuity. They want to monitor/record all forms of communications, so they know exactly what people are saying and save it to use against them at a later time. Guilty in private until made to be proven guilty in public. Plus the militarizing of the US police should worry all potential opposers to our current system. What do we have in government? Status quo. What do we need? (Non-Obama) Change. How will we get it ? We won't. Not with a brutal policing of the people we won't. Peanuts and kids kill more people than terrorism. ALL THIS SHIT is about controlling the people in the name of 'National Security'. You can't even have a peaceful protest anymore without even more corruption from the government.
A population in fear is a population that can be more easily controlled. The elites are too rich and they know we know it. And they're afraid we're coming for it, and they should be.
But all these cameras, data recording devices, and mics pointed at us sure does make them sleep better at night.Wait, have to go, there's a terrorist under my bed. Oops, it was the NSA.
Then how am I still alive?
The NSA is just a functionary organ of the government, it isn't the Legislative branch, it's not part of the Executive or the Judiciary. It falls under the DoD and the President is the Commander and Chief. But the DoD is not part of the Executive Branch of the gov.
Stiletto took my question literally and didn't read into it. I thank him for that as the question was meant as a way to move forward in a direction that brings us to where the problem is. Congress is a huge part of the problem as is the Executive Branch. But ultimate responsibility still lies with the people, it always has. We are the real power in this country. Some of you will laugh but it's still true. In perceived desperation some people believe they must go to extreme measures to make things change and this isn't true, in fact it often get's in the way. Just as Snowden had real options in front of him for pointing out what was wrong and making a difference so do we.
Each of our States posses great power that they frequently fail to properly exert. Mostly it's because the Feds take our money in taxes and us it against the States, if you don't do this this way we won't give you fed dollars for that, etc. We need to elect people to local and State Offices that will fight back and take the State's powers back from the Feds and chase the Feds back into their corner.
But our single biggest problem is the media. We don't even know what is really going on because the media is bought and paid for and only tell us what someone else is paying them to say. How can we make things right if we don't know what is happening. How do we get the media to give us an impartial picture and if you think we are powerless against the Federal Government then we sure have no power over the media.
Remember the media assault after Sandy Hook? Everyone crying that we have to do something as a nation to get control of all the guns. Nothing that was proposed at the national level couldn't have been done at the State level. In fact, many States went farther and passed even stronger laws then what Congress fought over and failed to pass. And that is exactly how it should be. It's a State Issue, the Feds have no authority to force background checks on individual sales that represent a regulation of interstate trade between individual citizens. It's not a power that has been granted to the Feds and by the 10th Amendment that means it's a State Power. We need more of this, we need more of the States standing up and doing for themselves and we also need our States to tell the Fed to back the fuck off.
If you want our country back then that is where it will have to start. That, and a true unbiased and free media.
The NSA is just a functionary organ of the government, it isn't the Legislative branch, it's not part of the Executive or the Judiciary. It falls under the DoD and the President is the Commander and Chief. But the DoD is not part of the Executive Branch of the gov.
Stiletto took my question literally and didn't read into it. I thank him for that as the question was meant as a way to move forward in a direction that brings us to where the problem is. Congress is a huge part of the problem as is the Executive Branch. But ultimate responsibility still lies with the people, it always has. We are the real power in this country. Some of you will laugh but it's still true. In perceived desperation some people believe they must go to extreme measures to make things change and this isn't true, in fact it often get's in the way. Just as Snowden had real options in front of him for pointing out what was wrong and making a difference so do we.
Each of our States posses great power that they frequently fail to properly exert. Mostly it's because the Feds take our money in taxes and us it against the States, if you don't do this this way we won't give you fed dollars for that, etc. We need to elect people to local and State Offices that will fight back and take the State's powers back from the Feds and chase the Feds back into their corner.
But our single biggest problem is the media. We don't even know what is really going on because the media is bought and paid for and only tell us what someone else is paying them to say. How can we make things right if we don't know what is happening. How do we get the media to give us an impartial picture and if you think we are powerless against the Federal Government then we sure have no power over the media.
Remember the media assault after Sandy Hook? Everyone crying that we have to do something as a nation to get control of all the guns. Nothing that was proposed at the national level couldn't have been done at the State level. In fact, many States went farther and passed even stronger laws then what Congress fought over and failed to pass. And that is exactly how it should be. It's a State Issue, the Feds have no authority to force background checks on individual sales that represent a regulation of interstate trade between individual citizens. It's not a power that has been granted to the Feds and by the 10th Amendment that means it's a State Power. We need more of this, we need more of the States standing up and doing for themselves and we also need our States to tell the Fed to back the fuck off.
If you want our country back then that is where it will have to start. That, and a true unbiased and free media.
Extreme measures were how this country was founded, and until a significant coalition of citizens demonstrates the desire AND the will to explore those measures again, we have zero power. Our power is limited by our willingness to exert our rights and, in the case of Snowden, to disregard laws or bureaucracy that we see as unjust.
You still don't buy my analysis of Snowden huh? You still don't get that he is false, that he didn't run away with all that data to save us, he did it to save himself cause he knew he was going to burn for what he had done. Edward Snowden has been a liar since the beginning and a loser all his life.
He lied about his military career, no one joins the army and four months later is jumping out of airplanes without ever finishing Basic Training.
No one works as a security guard on a University and claims to be an NSA Employee, he was just a private security contractor who worked for a private security company who had a contract to keep an eye on the language lab at the school.
No one works for Dell and claims to be an NSA Employee just because his company is provided work space inside an NSA facility so that it's cheaper and more convenient for both Dell and the Customer. He was a warranty tech, never even would have been given access or an account on the classified networks. So why in hell was he able to get his hands on anything at all except that he abused the trust placed in him and just stole it. And there is no reason for him to have worked there four years and decide to steal the data from the drives themselves except that he was curious, he wanted to learn the juicy secrets. He was like a janitor at a car dealership who get's curious about just how much the dealership really pays for cars so he starts stealing the data from their computers. Get this part straight, he didn't steal the data because he saw things going on that were wrong, he stole the data because he just decided to steal it.
Then he got his job at Booze Allen Hamilton, says he did it just to get to the good data and save us from the evil NSA. But he lied about his education to get the job. Booze Allen started asking questions about his schools, he lied some more and it bought him a little time, but come on, he knew they were going to find out, he couldn't bluff them like he thought. He stole all the data he could and ran and he didn't do it to save us like he says, he did it to save himself from an ignominious end, an embarrassing career destroying crash and burn to nowhere. He was in trouble, he realized he couldn't avoid it, so he looked at the news of Manning and decided he could be a Hero too.
So make sure you got Snowden figured out. Don't lose that perspective. And don't go thinking that Snowden has some really juicy shit in the rest of those documents and that he is going to parley them for an Amnesty deal cause that's not how it will happen either. Anything he has, they know already what it is. They have had more then enough time to figure that out. And he has it with him in Russia, which means it's already considered compromised information and a loss. They will never look at that information as if it can be saved, it's gone. He has no chips to bargain with and if he ever leaves Russia and goes to any country that will honor extradition for US Criminals, then he will get grabbed, given to the FBI, and be sent home to face trial.
Stiletto I don't dispute what you are saying about extreme measures, I only dispute that we haven't reached a point where they are warranted. At the time of the American Revolution the American peoples had no representation in British Government at all. We had no standing with British Law with which to address grievances. We are not anywhere near that level of helplessness yet.
You can cast aspersions about him all you like and none of them have any relevance to the veracity of the material he has released, dude. You and the rest of you loyal government supporters need to get past the mudslinging since that same government has openly admitted that what has been revealed is legitimate. The nature of Snowden's character is a non-issue. If zombie Adolf Hitler dropped this shit on us, it wouldn't matter.
Best to stick with the "you don't understand" angle because that's something you can argue. Snowden could rape kittens on Russia Today and the documents and policies would still be authentic.
His personal integrity isn't important when discussing facts. The information being delivered is what is important. Ted Bundy (if he wasn't dead) could have been the one exposing the NSA spying and it would still be just as relevant. I don't care who delivers the truth, as long as it's the truth.
Oppression/Control isn't manifested as the vast majority of our species time on earth. In today's world data is an extremely powerful and valuable asset, and for many companies your data is their most valuable asset. In 50 years we've gone from rotary phones to pocket sized personal computers (smartphones) that can pinpoint your location on the earth within 5 feet. In today's world you can control more people with broadcast media than you can with firearms.
Where I'm from doesn't matter on a global scale as other governments watch what the US does to its own people and mimics them. A domino effect. I also don't care if you know where I'm from as you're a nobody. Go work for the NSA and you'd know. You'd make a great employee = shitty American.
Look in the mirror sir. Seriously..
This post makes you look worse.
Yeah, like aliens! LOL. Like there is no such thing as Christian Extremists....rofl. I didn't know only one religion can have extremists at a time. Different motvies must be confusing from your bag of Doritos. Get an outside life man.
This back and forth nonsense about this guy/government...
I'm sick of hearing about all this bullshit from our POS government. Higher level agencies spying on everyone, to lower level ass clowns stealing my tax dollars in my county, to our military branches pissing money away, to cops abusing their badge and gun, yadda yadda.
To me all government employees (state and federal), regardless if your a politician/judge/cop/soldier/president/park ranger,etc, can shove it with all the unreal benefits/corruptions/financial waste.
I'm sick of hearing about all this bullshit from our POS government. Higher level agencies spying on everyone, to lower level ass clowns stealing my tax dollars in my county, to our military branches pissing money away, to cops abusing their badge and gun, yadda yadda.
To me all government employees (state and federal), regardless if your a politician/judge/cop/soldier/president/park ranger,etc, can shove it with all the unreal benefits/corruptions/financial waste.
Oh, plenty of people in states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and others would love to disagree with you.
The right to keep and bear arms? All but fucked over in a bunch of these communist states.
QED.
JayteeBates
[H]ard|Poof
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I look at this thread and I can't help but substitute Windows 8 for NSA and Heatlesssun for lcpiper.
13...
And I agree, the documents are authentic, I have never said they are not authentic. What I have been saying is that they do not mean what Snowden and the media are telling you that they mean. I have shown people time and again where the information on the documents do not show or prove or in many cases even suggest what they are reported to mean.
All of that get's ignored, no one will bother to look at what I have shown them and say, "Well if your right what about this.." No one will even give the argument a moments thought, instead they just ignore it cause it doesn't fit what they want to believe.
You would rather believe people who lie to you and misrepresent information to you because you want to believe it. You will question everything except that which is already proven false to you.
I can't prove to you any of those classified documents are false and I do believe they are true. But I can show you and have shown you where the media has misrepresented them and made false claims about them and you still will not acknowledge this ever, not one of you.
You claim it's Snowden's message that is important and not the messenger himself. But the messenger lies, and his trumpeters sign false notes but the song is too good to the ear ring hollow.
I coulda been a poet
And I agree, the documents are authentic, I have never said they are not authentic. What I have been saying is that they do not mean what Snowden and the media are telling you that they mean. I have shown people time and again where the information on the documents do not show or prove or in many cases even suggest what they are reported to mean.
All of that get's ignored, no one will bother to look at what I have shown them and say, "Well if your right what about this.." No one will even give the argument a moments thought, instead they just ignore it cause it doesn't fit what they want to believe.
You would rather believe people who lie to you and misrepresent information to you because you want to believe it. You will question everything except that which is already proven false to you.
I can't prove to you any of those classified documents are false and I do believe they are true. But I can show you and have shown you where the media has misrepresented them and made false claims about them and you still will not acknowledge this ever, not one of you.
You claim it's Snowden's message that is important and not the messenger himself. But the messenger lies, and his trumpeters sign false notes but the song is too good to the ear ring hollow.
I coulda been a poet
You keep ascribing the beliefs of the public to Snowden himself, as if his analysis has been the basis for the stories we've been seeing. It's not. At the very base, you should be blaming Glenn Greenwald, as he's been providing the journalistic context for the material. Additionally, everyone in the media and just about every pundit worth a damn has weighed in and given their take on the matter, and the lack of consensus demonstrates just how little Snowden's view actually makes a difference.
The issues at bar are the collection and archiving of various kinds of data, and Snowden's opinion of that being right or wrong is lost in the chaotic miasma of pure realization. You are giving him more importance and credit than most people discussing the matter, oddly enough, while simultaneously deriding him in numerous ways, including the repeated misspelling of his employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, in order to make a cheap alcohol gag. You can do better than that.
Rights are rights...and a house of cards. Remove or even touch one, and the stability of the whole is jeopardized.
They aren't nerds, they are thugs. The only reason they have as much information as they do is because they use bribery, coercion, and violence to force people to hand over information to them.
The ineptness of their security measures demonstrates as much. Someone who does not understand the principle of least user access is not a computer nerd.
If he did, he would have disappeared. Or worse. Oink.
JayteeBates, I am not heartless. I am just doing all I can to point people in the right direction. I am trying to open people's eyes to the real, known, and greater threat to our freedom then the one they have been sold on. I never said there wasn't a problem, I have been saying that the problem is the one right in front of your face.
I find it completely ironic that the media has sold you all such a grand lie that even with someone pointing a finger right at it you still can't see it.
Someone was doing some analogies earlier, I have one too.
If this were the move, the Matrix, and if the Government was represented as the machines, then the media would surely be the Matrix itself. "The lie pulled over your eyes ...."
You can't free yourself from the machines, until you free yourself from the Matrix first.
Sure, just like the FISA Court members who killed the earlier bulk collection program the NSA was running because it didn't have enough privacy safeguards. Those bodies were stinking for days. This is so foolish damicatz.
He wouldn't have disappeared and he wouldn't have been fired. He would have talk to his supervisor and his supervisor woulda said, "No man, it's all legal, this is how it all works..". And if Snowden either didn't believe him or believed there was still a Constitutional Issue he could have gone up to Corporate and Corporate would have told him the same thing and perhaps, if the people at Corporate thought that his feelings of Constitutionality were valid then they could have checked with the Attorney General's Office or send him to them. If he wasn't satisfied by the Attorney General's Office there are still other avenues but it is very likely that the Attorney General's Office would have begun an inquiry and from that point on it's not even Snowden making the noises anymore, it's people in the system taking a look in the mirror. I know many of you are too skeptical to believe this would ever come to a change, but there are more then enough examples of similar things to include the first shelved program.
What I keep seeing Stiletto is news stories on the subject and people making comments about how Snowden is a Hero, should receive a Nobel Peace Prize, should be remembered for the great service he has done us, etc etc, coupled with terrible comments about how the NSA has us all in chains, thugs who are no better then common organized criminals.
But unlike the many stories of shopkeepers killed or businesses burned to the ground because owners refuse to pay extortion money, and all that other Mafia history, after almost a year of Edward Snowden's legacy and intense scrutiny by the public, the media, privacy rights organizations and Congress itself, no one has even a single instance of anyone actually being harmed and actually having their actual privacy violated with the exception of that one guy who's brother was under surveillance and that chick screwed up and accessed his data improperly and her mistake was identified by an internal audit, she was punished, retrained, and continues.
I know most of you will say one is too much and it's right, even one shouldn't have happened. But even that one was not indicative of organization wide misuse and abuse of power leveraging their power to brutalize the rights and lives of our citizenry.
Stiletto did say it aptly;
and I would add, "and the potential for misuse and abuse of such data".
These issues were not new, they have been part of an ongoing process of balancing needs for security and needs for privacy. Snowden didn't really reveal anything that wasn't already known. It's still important to understand that the knowledge of exactly how our intelligence services actually conduct their operations is secret because if everyone knows about them then they don't work and it is important that they work. If any criminal or terrorist can gain entry into the US and then gain US Person's status and then under cover of that status become impervious to identification, able to create networks of other "protected people", communicate freely with whomever they wish for whatever purpose and we are powerless to see it. Well now this becomes future disasters in the making.
No matter how many times I have explained the difference between a US Person and a US Citizen I still wonder how many of you actually understand the difference and the import of that difference.
The fact that Edward Snowden was able to download the large parts of the NSA database (if not the whole thing) speaks volumes about their competence or lack thereof.
For fuck's sake, least privilege is something even community college teaches; in fact, it is one of the first concepts you learn in computer security courses. To allow someone unfettered access to everything with no accountability whatsoever is asking for it. Even if he needed access to those things to do his job, the sensitive nature of the materials should have made it mandatory that all access be pre-approved on a case by case basis and closely monitored on a daily, if not hourly basis.
This isn't even the first time the US government has made this mistake. They did the same thing with Bradley Manning; why would a low ranking enlisted need access to every single diplomatic communique in all parts of the world to do their job?
I assure you, nothing that Edward Snowden "leaked" is news to the Chinese or the Russians. Given the laughable state of security the US government has displayed, it is almost certain that the systems have already been compromised by one or both countries. All Edward Snowden's revelations have done is allow China and Russia to bitch about things they already know about without having to admit that they got the information from hacking.
I am in full understanding that there are rules in place on how to handle "US Persons" with regards to data collection. Regardless, the capability exists to breach the anonymity, if the individual has disregard for the rules. One might even argue that Snowden's breach demonstrates precisely that people work in the administration of government policy that will break the rules for their own purposes, though I should imagine from a security perspective, this is an accepted fact.
I understand that programs need to be kept secret from the rest of the world, but I disagree with the premise that the average citizen must be kept in the dark about what can be done to and taken from them. If you wish to have access to our privacy, obtain public opinion up front before you engage in such action. Snowden has given us this option, while FOIA continue to come back about all branches of government with numerous blank or blacked-out sections. I'll say this: "transparency" was an Obama promise that, on its face, is a good thing. He's done the opposite, the same as Bush did. If you want a bigger building, make bigger windows.
The fact that Edward Snowden was able to download the large parts of the NSA database (if not the whole thing) speaks volumes about their competence or lack thereof.
Well it does speak volumes, just not the volumes you ascribe to the theft.
The US Security policy is based on a "Trust Model", in we trusted that Snowden was not a criminal. That trust was misplaced and violated. Furthermore, if you are a US Citizen, that trust was placed in your name, ie , it was done for you as if you had done it.
It is a great irony is it not, that the guy who violated the trust placed in him, did so because he thought the organization who gave him their trust, untrustworthy.
What you fail to consider is that these "Trusted Employees" are not monitored like the movies used to portray the KGB watching their own personnel, ever watcher has a watcher type of thing. That isn't our system. Our system is based on trust and once in awhile it's proven misplaced and cause harm. It isn't the first time and probably won't be the last.
But isn't it telling that you seem to think it should be otherwise? You seem to think that the people with clearances are the ones who should be the most carefully watched. Well they are to a degree, they do have many restrictions on them others don't have, like I can't go to just any country I want. If I write a book I have to submit it for review before publishing, and most of these NSA guys go through several polygraphs and we all go through re-investigations at different times.
Think for a moment though, if you worked for people who truly monitored everything you did and placed no trust in you at all, would you be more or less likely to do the same to others?
Well it does speak volumes, just not the volumes you ascribe to the theft.
The US Security policy is based on a "Trust Model", in we trusted that Snowden was not a criminal. That trust was misplaced and violated. Furthermore, if you are a US Citizen, that trust was placed in your name, ie , it was done for you as if you had done it.
It is a great irony is it not, that the guy who violated the trust placed in him, did so because he thought the organization who gave him their trust, untrustworthy.
What you fail to consider is that these "Trusted Employees" are not monitored like the movies used to portray the KGB watching their own personnel, ever watcher has a watcher type of thing. That isn't our system. Our system is based on trust and once in awhile it's proven misplaced and cause harm. It isn't the first time and probably won't be the last.
But isn't it telling that you seem to think it should be otherwise? You seem to think that the people with clearances are the ones who should be the most carefully watched. Well they are to a degree, they do have many restrictions on them others don't have, like I can't go to just any country I want. If I write a book I have to submit it for review before publishing, and most of these NSA guys go through several polygraphs and we all go through re-investigations at different times.
Think for a moment though, if you worked for people who truly monitored everything you did and placed no trust in you at all, would you be more or less likely to do the same to others?
But Stiletto, you weren't kept in the dark. It was all talked about over 10 years ago, it was talked about, debated, protested, and decided on and it has been common knowledge and Congress, with approval of the Attorney General's Office passed the Patriot Act and that law was not a secret.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-275026.html
The date of this article is October 26, 2001.
Here is the opening paragraph;
It wasn't a secret, it wasn't under the table, it was right out in the open and it was passed into Law by Congress and the President and the Judiciary.
OK, so you know what makes someone a US Person. What about others here, do they know?
Some Doctor from India is hired by a US owned and operated Hospital, is he a US Person?
A student from France here going to University?
Is an American Citizen always considered a US Person?
Just questions for the crowd.
Come on, now. That has been amended and re-authorized multiple times, and this after so many provisions were set to expire. What is the point of sunsets for certain parts of a bill if you're just going to keep bringing them back over and over? If something is added on that is controversial, the only recourse any elected official has is to vote against the entire Patriot Act, and good luck getting enough people to do the same.
Do you apply the same argument to people "knowing" what was in ACA just because it was debated for months? These bills are made intentionally obtuse in order to obfuscate their purpose. Just look at the records of Congresses leading up to modern day. They get less and less efficient every time they change hands. Why? They're stuffing hundreds of bills into a single package, putting a lofty name on it, and launching offensives on anyone who questions them.
Now, I know we're in agreement as to the level of corruption within the houses including the White one, but not as to the reversal of what they've done. Well, if less legislation is passed by more corrupt politicians, by implication, wouldn't that legislation from recent years be the most onerous and vulnerable to abuse? Not to mention...if we're gonna try seriously to rout these bastards, they're going to go out fighting...and they've got their fingers on many buttons that they voted for themselves.
That's idiotic. You can't afford to "trust" your users with full access to the entire network; doing such is a recipe for disaster as was clearly demonstrated here. This is sound IT Security Practices 101.
And it isn't just the users themselves that you have to worry about; you have to take into account the potential consequences if their login credentials are compromised by an outside party and THAT is something you can't control, no matter how trustworthy your users are. Nothing that is connected to the internet is 100% hack proof; anyone with enough time and resources can pretty much break into anything. Security has to be focused on deterrence (making yourself a less inviting target by making it difficult to break in; works for common criminals who simply want computers to send spam or and will move on to easier targets; not so much for the NSA who faces targeted attacks) and mitigation (reducing the damage that can occur when something is compromised through least privilege and isolation) because prevention is a lost cause.
Invariably what happened is the same kind of bullshit that goes on in the corporate world all the time : Overpaid suits and bratty users who act like spoiled primadonnas don't want to be inconvenienced by a modicum of security so they force the IT department to implement lax security standards and a veritable free-for-all and then try to blame the IT department when shit hits the fan (even though the IT people warned the idiots that their security policy was idiotic to begin with).
Agreed Stiletto, we have real problems and our Gov is not what it should be. It's grown into a monster and it's unfortunate that the monster has lost so much respect for our people that it has bought the media and pays it to whistle the tunes they want to hear.
As for this Damicats;
Snowden wasn't given full access to the entire network in Japan. He was a Dell tech and someone brought him a Disk Storage Array or a Server, or maybe just a desktop that all too much source data saved off to it. If I had to make a guess, I would say it was the datastore for all the documents that they have linked up under Sharepoint. But the appliance itself must have had a problem and they brought it to him for warranty work and forgot to remove the hard drives first. And there it is, all that data sitting right on his work bench and no network security or account restrictions or even OS level security would stand in his way if he wanted to take it. And he did just that and had no clue what was on it until he did.
Now it was different in Hawaii under Booz Allen Hamilton, there he was hired as a systems guy, given higher clearance and access but he still didn't have authorized access to everything, but as a systems guy he did have power to do many things and again he did.
But the reality is that at any given time a person trusted with a clearance and access can do exactly this same thing. 99.99% would never dream of it. But every now and then, for one reason or another, someone decides to violate the trust placed in them and spills the beans.
Some for money
Some for ideology
Some believe they are crusaders
And he wasn't a US in Hawaii, he was a Systems Admin/Engineer, whatever.
Look, once an IT guy get's physical access to systems there is nothing stopping him. Now the Security folks are being told that the Cloud is the way to go and they are talking about centralizing all that stuff so that fewer IT Tech types have access to it all. It means they have fewer hands in the pot, but it doesn't really make the pot more secure.
Look, once an IT guy get's physical access to systems there is nothing stopping him. Now the Security folks are being told that the Cloud is the way to go and they are talking about centralizing all that stuff so that fewer IT Tech types have access to it all. It means they have fewer hands in the pot, but it doesn't really make the pot more secure.
Odd... I am a U.S. Citizen and a prior member of the Military Intelligence community... That being said, I'm not quite sure how to view Mr. Snowden's acts myself. I understand the reasons behind what he did, it's been clarified, and basically, he is a young idealist. I myself was one of those once and it hurt me a bit too, even up to my one-time chain of command withholding a promotion for a while. Oddly enough, when the commander was replaced, I was promoted immediately while I think he was shipped out of the country in disgrace without a clearance, but the point is, I too stand up for what I think is right.
I'm not sure that what Mr. Snowden did was wrong. I look at it as I try to reconcile what I think this country stands for, such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc., and I see these wonderful things used against its own citizens when it is politically expedient, and I wonder why. I can easily see why he did it, and I can agree with his reasons at times, but I also understand a bit from the I.T. side of things how some programs were necessary and how they would have needed to work in order for them to be effective, and I begin to see how people might have begun to lose track of "right" and "wrong" a bit when it was mixed with patriotism, loyalty, faith, and worse, under the teachings from a certain Stanley Milgram, under orders to do the work.
In short, while this is a possibly extreme correlation, the ones doing the work in the NSA and following orders were beginning to act a bit like the guards in the German Camps in WW2... look the other way when things were going slightly off-kilter, etc.
I also understand that there are blatant examples of people who tried to blow the whistle through proper channels and had their lives destroyed by it. Snowden already knew of these too.
I believe that the only way to blow the whistle with the current systems our government has in place was to basically do what this poor kid did. He did it rather well, i.e. he is still alive, and he was effective without hurting too many people.
However, I also understand what he put at risk, and how it has altered the U.S. s relations with other governments, that other people working in the Int. community have been hurt by it, etc. and I wish that could have been avoided as there are cases where the programs exposed could in some cases actually serve a very very useful purpose.
I keep saying to myself that 2 wrongs don't make a right, and it is hard for me to say the programs exposed, the amount of spying, etc. weren't so wrong that he didn't make the right decision. In other words, I don't know what else he read and has in his files, but I know it must be good as they are still scared of more of it coming out, that if I had known these things that I might have done what he did, considering my own duty to the United States and the people who are in it.
This whole topic is so very very gray and shrouded in secrecy that I am still unable to make a judgement call other than I am glad that he did what he did so far... Then again, I can't stand hypocrisy in government. I would be a poor politician, I think.
I'm not sure that what Mr. Snowden did was wrong. I look at it as I try to reconcile what I think this country stands for, such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc., and I see these wonderful things used against its own citizens when it is politically expedient, and I wonder why. I can easily see why he did it, and I can agree with his reasons at times, but I also understand a bit from the I.T. side of things how some programs were necessary and how they would have needed to work in order for them to be effective, and I begin to see how people might have begun to lose track of "right" and "wrong" a bit when it was mixed with patriotism, loyalty, faith, and worse, under the teachings from a certain Stanley Milgram, under orders to do the work.
In short, while this is a possibly extreme correlation, the ones doing the work in the NSA and following orders were beginning to act a bit like the guards in the German Camps in WW2... look the other way when things were going slightly off-kilter, etc.
I also understand that there are blatant examples of people who tried to blow the whistle through proper channels and had their lives destroyed by it. Snowden already knew of these too.
I believe that the only way to blow the whistle with the current systems our government has in place was to basically do what this poor kid did. He did it rather well, i.e. he is still alive, and he was effective without hurting too many people.
However, I also understand what he put at risk, and how it has altered the U.S. s relations with other governments, that other people working in the Int. community have been hurt by it, etc. and I wish that could have been avoided as there are cases where the programs exposed could in some cases actually serve a very very useful purpose.
I keep saying to myself that 2 wrongs don't make a right, and it is hard for me to say the programs exposed, the amount of spying, etc. weren't so wrong that he didn't make the right decision. In other words, I don't know what else he read and has in his files, but I know it must be good as they are still scared of more of it coming out, that if I had known these things that I might have done what he did, considering my own duty to the United States and the people who are in it.
This whole topic is so very very gray and shrouded in secrecy that I am still unable to make a judgement call other than I am glad that he did what he did so far... Then again, I can't stand hypocrisy in government. I would be a poor politician, I think.
Good post. You have great reasoning skills. Unlike some here.
I'm glad he did what he did too.