dagblog - Comments for "Is Wikileaks the End of Snowden?"

There is strong evidence

NCD — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 20:31:14 +0000

There is strong evidence Snowden was duped by Russian intelligence, which, as we have seen, works closely with Wikileaks. Willingly or unwittingly. For both Wikileaks and Snowden.

The quantity and quality of his leaks go far beyond what was needed to highlight the issues you mention, which were and may still be legal. Anyway, the issue you raise were perhaps just the hook that snared the naive self righteous egomaniac Edward to go rogue. Everything Putin has said on this, see above, is standard Putinesque disinformation.

You can look up Snowden Russia, dupe, etc if you want. No US or Russian intelligence defector has ever NOT been compelled to divulge everything they know to the other side. Snowden is kept in an undisclosed location in Moscow certainly under tight FSB control.

The book I cited above, by an author/journalist with the UK Economist magazine, former Moscow bureau chief, writer on intelligence and his Snowden book, which is short and sells for only 99¢ at Amazon Kindle store, has a last chapter on the hypothesis of Snowden as a Russian dupe. I have nothing more to say on this.

The US was stopping planes

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 20:27:02 +0000

In reply to There is strong evidence

The US was stopping planes headed to South America, so Snowden really couldn't go no further. Anyway, I don't need Snowden to point out the possibilities of hurting individuals with mass surveillance - it was known at the time laws and directives were put into place to prevent just that, the ones that NSA, FBI, et al keep circumventing with impunity (even as other people who report on it go to jail)

Selective prosecution,

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:46:31 +0000

In reply to Nice try. Maybe "non-guilty

Selective prosecution, another problem with mass unauthoriized surveillance - there's dirt on everyone, but a few clever chaps with the dirt will decide who to charge - Muslims, blacks, in the old days gays, etc.

Nice try. Maybe "non-guilty

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 19:43:16 +0000

In reply to So guilty defendents are

Nice try. Maybe "non-guilty entrapped defendents are discovering too late how they were entrapped and how the government withheld evidence".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly...

https://news.vice.com/article/the-line-between-fbi-stings-and-entrapment...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolasmedinamora/did-the-fbi-transform-this-te...

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howtherefbicatedaterrorist/

Emptywheel describes how the assumptions used to track someone are faulty, and how if it's a Muslim male even a mistake will then keep them on their radar/eavsesdropping list for years later:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/15/the-inefficacy-of-big-brother-asso...

Etc, etc. Considering the continuing revelations of say black suspects in Chicago whisked secretly to a dark holding cell out of contact to family, lawyers, et al, I'm not sure why you trust a program that was designed to be secretive and cover its tracks so most suspects would never even know it had been used on them *NOR IN WHAT WAY*. Hard to counter false evidence if you don't even know which evidence was falsified. Plus *MOST PEOPLE GO TO JAIL FROM PLEA BARGAINS, NOT CONVICTIONS* - if they have a Kafkaesque case thrown at them that they can't even get their heads around because the threads are all secret, they might easily plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit *TO AVOID WORSE PENALTIES*. All the power is with the state, zero with the suspect. That's supposedly why we have a Constitution including a Bill of Rights.

So guilty defendents are

NCD — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 19:07:20 +0000

In reply to Ah, but they don't identify

So guilty defendents are trying to get a judge to toss incriminating evidence. Old story. Been around forever.

Not a reason to runoff with a million sensitive US and UK documents to the care of a political opponents/journalist killing tyrant, while shouting 'freedom'.

Ah, but they don't identify

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 17:24:06 +0000

In reply to Do you have the name and

Ah, but they don't identify where they've used the information - defendents don't even know they've been rickrolled...

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805

Do you have the name and

NCD — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 15:50:50 +0000

In reply to Yes, they've proven NSA and

Do you have the name and illegal conviction or even violation of rights of a single individual as the quote says don't exist? The name of a person who was harmed, threatened or blackmailed with the data collection ? "There was no contempt for judicial oversight, no systematic breaches of law at any level".

As he notes existed in the hundreds under J Edgar.

Yes, they've proven NSA and

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 07:59:55 +0000

In reply to It is possible that Vladimir

Yes, they've proven NSA and GCHQ committed grave breaches of the law, hiding activities, even bouncing things back and forth between them to circumvent the limits of foreign and domestic eavesdropping, and playing whack-a-mole with operations shut down by Congress or the IG only to spring up somewhere else under another name.

It's not personal like Hoover's FBI, but it's just as outrageous. It has ruined lives, even if it could be much worse in the hands of someone much more vindictive than either Bush or Obama. And it's huge, spidering into every nook and cranny of our modern digital lives, cross-correlating all the little pieces that they were told weren't to be cross-correlated, and forcing telcos and ISPs and HW/SW multinationals like Microsoft/Google/Apple to cooperate while giving them a National Security Letter so they can't even discuss the matter without committing a crime.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/eff-filings-show-phone-companies-participation-nsa-spying-no-state-secret

https://www.aclu.org/blog/mobile-phone-surveillance-numbers

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/surveillance-shocker-sprint-received-8-million-law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_Surveillance_Program

and pretty much a column a day over the years from www.emptywheel.net

It is possible that Vladimir

NCD — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:40:18 +0000

In reply to He's done. It will be

It is possible that Vladimir Putin is entirely sincere, if ineffective, when he says he wants no damage to be done to America as a result of Snowden's sojourn. It is all possible. But unlikely. At any rate I find it scandalous that Snowden's defenders are so blithe about his arrival and stay in Moscow. People who are so highly (and I would say unreasonably) suspicious of Western governments become bizarrely trusting where the interests and abilities of Vladimir Putin's regime are concerned.

From The Snowden Operation by Lucas.

Among the possibilities Lucas gives evidence for is that Snowden was a naive dupe of Russian intelligence. He notes Snowden revealed no single instance of a NSA crime against any individual:

Even if Russian intelligence is not involved, I cannot see the heroic virtues, in the Snowden affair which others have celebrated. Nobody has proved that the NSA or GCHQ committed grave and deliberate breaches of the law. In the big scandals of the 1960s, the FBI illegally bugged American citizens and tried to blackmail the government's political opponents. For example, it wanted to make Martin Luther King commit suicide, by threatening him with the exposure of his adultery. No comparable examples have been produced now, and I do not believe any will be. Nobody has produced individual victims of illegal NSA activity. There is no evidence of wilful, systematic breaches of the law by the NSA, or of contempt within its ranks, at any level, for judicial and legislative oversight. There is no modern counterpart of J Edgar Hoover, the brooding madman who brought the FBI to its darkest hour.

He's done. It will be

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 17:24:26 +0000

In reply to Is Wikileaks the End of Snowden?

He's done. It will be impossible to pardon a leaker with ties to Russia after this.