A Conversation with Edward Snowden (Part 1)

Which brings us to the very intent of the 2nd Amendment, unfortunately too many have already been exposed to the virus of a tyrannical government… and now an entire generation has been infected, it is only a matter of time before they come to take our guns since we’ve forgotten what they’re for. The frog is in the pot and the water is boiling

Wow you really don’t get it at all he handed data to people that know nothing about securing data and he could have gone through and censored the names of agents like a professional and handed the data over but know he recklessly gave unsecured data to people that know nothing about securing data.

The CIA and NSA have given proper Intel it’s not their fault if the government used it poorly or manipulate what the data means to suit their objectives the data they have gained from internet spying and spys on the ground has been invaluable.

I hope youre not that blind. Spies we’re used to sabotage and get information. Not save lives. It’s just that the work they did went hand in hand with it. Whatever reason we have now for spies and infiltrators is certainly not of good heart intentions lol. Although having eyes everywhere makes it easy to control some things.

Like terrorists don’t already know that.

Most of the information released had nothing to do with terrorist activity. You should perhaps, actually read some of the wires.

It’s honorable of you to care about lives but you haven’t mentioned one yet. You’ve merely suggested it. Please a little more substance if you’re to be taken for anything other than a tool.

Oh really? “They won’t tell us because it’s classified”? Then please explain how serving field agent Valerie Plame managed to get “outed”. Not be Snowden, that’s for sure.

It says that you are a credulous idiot who will believe anything the heads of intelligence agencies tell you, without evidence.

More hot air repeated from propaganda sources. Greenwald, Poitras, and the news agencies that handled the documents where very careful to not jeopardize any one. You are getting your facts mixed up with an unrelated case. You have no credibility.

go home kid, you lost.

The greater good is a lie. Hitler killed millions for the greater good. Stalin killed millions for the greater good. Mao ect ect ect. Every dictator or aggressive military power has killed or broken the rules in the name of the greater good. The greater good can be compared to “good intentions” there is a reason they pave the road to hell.

”Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” B.F.

There is no evidence of that. None whatever. If there is, point to it, or STFU. BTW: You keep pointing to the John Oliver interview with Snowden as some sort of “evidence” that his revelations hurt people. But anyone who watches that interview can clearly see that Oliver is simply asking about this repeated accusation, not offering evidence to support it. That accusation has been made ONLY by the heads of some intelligence agencies, who have never presented a single bit of evidence to support it, and by credulous idiots who repeat it. We also know for a fact (thanks to Snowden) that these agency heads are liars.

I’m a proponent of healthy Big Brother paranoia, but please don’t let an inaccurate view of history fuel your fire to unwarranted heights:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/

Absolutely no evidence has been produced by anyone, anywhere, at any time, that any US field agent or US-aligned human intelligence asset was “outed” or harmed in any way (let alone “killed”) by Snowden’s revelations. All that exists are some accusations by few US intelligence agency head, which some credulous idiots and pundits repeat. Given how much these agency people have lied to us about practically everything — including the substance of the Snowden revelations, which they have also tried to deny are factual — I’m suprised *anyone* believes a thing they say.

Dude either way. The agent signed up for the risk. He dies before an innocent citizen’s rights are violated. End of story. NO agent of any nation is innocent, ours or the “enemies”.

No agents have died in vain. It technically doesn’t matter ‘what they want’, though. I imagine they also don’t want to die in general.

If agents have died, as a handful of propagandists seem to claim, that implies that the enemy found out about them because of leaked information. If that’s the case, why would the government *continue* to hide information about that incident from the American public? The damage has been done already, and it gives them very strong ammunition against leaking information.

These claims are being manufactured whole cloth by organizations which were designed with information warfare in mind. I would not so readily take them at their word.

As for Snowden not verifying data he leaked– Snowden didn’t have time to verify the data, otherwise he probably would have. It’s not like there was an alternative. If he kept it longer, it most likely would have ended up in the hands of Russia.

He didn’t just give it to some random person on the street with *no* concept of securing data, as you claim. These were respected journalists who have dealt with sensitive information before. I seem to recall him giving them other specific instructions on how to secure the data. They also physically destroyed the disks.

Pros: Potentially stem the desire to leak sensitive data by proving that it has consequences, and provide a sound basis for pursuing Snowden and other leakers so vigorously.

Cons: Potentially validate a choice made by some terrorist yahoos.

Gee, that’s a tough choice.

It would not have been a simple task for them at all. You’re just making up stuff now. Mission Impossible is not realistic. Plus, you don’t think our own agencies were perched Dikembe Mutombo style on top of anyone holding the data?

You’re right. They’ll probably lay down their arms because they aren’t 100% certain that they ‘killed the right one.’

Several points on that:

1. Do you seriously think they spend ANY time trying to verify that they killed the ‘correct’ person? I genuinely cannot imagine these bloodthirsty zealots murdering someone based off a news article and then sitting back and doing some investigative research into who that person really was. As if gleaning a name from an article would not be enough for them. Again, you are just manufacturing talking points to try to support your existing position.

2. Even IF they spent, say, an entire WEEK trying to figure out if they killed the right person, that wouldn’t counter the propaganda value to the US.

3. This is STILL all hypothetical. There is no proof of any deaths being caused. Which leads to…

4. While it is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that the US would decline to use asset losses to argue against Snowden and leaks in general, it is still slightly plausible. What is not likely in the least is that terrorist groups like IS would decline to parade that person’s corpse around. This is a culture that loves to announce “look at us, we got one! We outsmarted those pigs!” If the leaks ended up in people getting killed by terrorists, there is no possible way that they wouldn’t turn it into propaganda.

It’s also a tactical error to kill a bunch of noncombatants. These are not people who are thinking logically about things. Go look at some of their propaganda. E.g. this video doing exactly as I described:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/11/isil-video-killing/24747995/

Other spy agencies do keep track of who comes into there country you know it’s not like they didn’t know he was in Hong Kong and then all of a sudden reporters known for leaking information come to visit him so it’s not hard for them to know who got the data and just steal it from them and copy it and put it back.

Actually it is easy because you got to sleep sometime and everyone makes mistakes so it would be a simple task against news reporters.

You do realize that China has the best agents when it comes to cracking through secure data it wouldn’t be a issue at all for them and it would be worth it to know the names of all the US agents in China.

Considering that the Chinese regularly break past our best cyber security you are underestimating their talents plus with the recent breakthroughs in quantum computing it would be only a matter of time before all encryption is obsolete.

http://www.gizmag.com/silicon-quantum-computer/39711/

They wouldn’t even need to break in the hotel would give any government agents access to any of the rooms and they have plenty of chemicals that can knock a person out with no issues at all hell they could vent it into his room while he was sleeping and just walk right in and get the data.

Nope he was a known NSA worker who just randomly enters in a Chinese supervised area that sets of red lights and they would have investigated it also it wouldn’t be hard at all for them to clear out a floor in order to vent in a gas and plenty of hotels have cameras in rooms.

This is Hong Kong remember not the USA different laws you know and the Chinese care little about the privacy of it’s citizens or visitors.

Again, Homeland is one of my favorite shows, but that is not an accurate depiction of what happens in real life.

In the last few posts, you have made several assertions, clearly based on zero research as usual, and I will attempt to address each:

1. “NSA agents with that much clearance rarely go to Hong Kong”

He had the same clearance as anyone that has Top Secret level clearance– which is to say about 1 million people. He also wasn’t “an NSA agent.” He was a contractor. Further, I’d like to see your source for claiming that none of those people travel regularly.

2. “Airport security would have reported that he had a laptop and thumb drives”

It is highly unlikely that airport security would flag someone based on a laptop now that virtually everyone has a laptop, and certainly most travelers have one. I’d like to see your source for this. I’d also like to see your source for the claim that the Chinese know every contractor with the US government and their clearance level.

3. “It was a safe bet he had top secret information on him.”

No. No it wasn’t. He broke protocol in having that information with him. The safe bet is to assume he DIDN’T have any information of value on him. You don’t risk causing a severe international incident based off of the wild assumption that everyone is breaking protocol.

4. “You wouldn’t know they were gassing the room if you were asleep”

That glosses over:

a.) they need to know you’re asleep
b.) the person who is gassed will absolutely know that something happened when they were asleep due to the lingering effects of the anasthetic
c.) this whole situation being ridiculous to the extreme

Please provide any evidence that this ever happens.

5. “China has different laws” and “China doesn’t care about the privacy of citizens or visitors”

Yes it does have different laws. Have you bothered to look them up? In any case, there are several issues with this claim. First off, Hong Kong, being a former British territory, has separate laws than the rest of mainland China. Secondly, you don’t seem to be making the distinction between privacy with regard to business owners and privacy with regard to the Chinese government. People in Hong Kong have their privacy protected by Article 14 of their Bill of Rights Ordinance. If you have people that work in your own house, you can’t even record them there without a good reason. See http://www.hkhrm.org.hk/english/law/eng_boro1.html and http://www.pcpd.org.hk/english/publications/files/DH_e.pdf Recording every one of your guests without reason in areas where they were likely to undress, have sex, etc. would be overwhelmingly illegal.

6. “Quantum computing, etc. etc.”

Again, this is beyond the scope of the argument because it is a theoretical technology and had absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the Snowden affair. Regardless, did you bother to read the article you linked to?

“This usually means that a quantum algorithm must be run several times in succession to confirm that the solution is correct. So, in practice, classical computers will probably be faster and more practical than quantum computers for day-to-day operations, and quantum computers will only come in useful where massive parallelism is involved.”

Essentially, code-breaking problems are largely the kind of problem that requires traditional logic to solve. Quantum computing is useful for a few other reasons, for example multidimensional non-convex problems where the traditional approach tends to get hung up at one point, the randomness can nudge the computer out of an endless loop.

1. (Regarding travel) Typically the burden of proof on a claim lies with arguments that are counter to the typical(which is that people in general take vacations,) but I will indulge you here. Each quotation is a separate person:

https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=22326#post206207

“I have traveled to Russia, China and other places. Plan accordingly, report to your bosses as needed and you are okay.”

“Travel to China, report it to your security dept (FSO), most likely not a problem, I had a Top Secret for 30 years, enjoy yourself, I had a great time (vacation) in China, just abide by the reporting requirements.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/work-employment/2080498-security-clearance-dont-talk-foreigners.html

“I hold a Secret clearance and have a foreign relative who married into the family and I have traveled a few times to other nations, including overseas. I was never given a hard time about any of it, provided I documented everything thoroughly – all the info about my foreign relative, where I went overseas and when, etc.”

“After your clearance is granted, you must report any new relationships with foreign nationals to your security officer, as well as any foreign travel. Plenty of people with clearance travel all over the world. The most important factor is that you honestly report what is required and follow all security protocol.”

“Go ahead and talk to foreigners and have fun, heck, I even married a foreigner while having my TS SCI in the military, and went on to obtain my TS in the fed gov. I know more foreigners than Americans, and have traveled extensively and still do.”

2. (Regarding carrying laptops through an airport) There is no possible way that this information would be public if it were true, however, as I mentioned, since virtually everyone has electronic devices nowadays(and in particular those wealthy enough to travel), it is exceedingly unlikely that this would raise red flags.

3. (Regarding the assumption that he had TS data) Yes. Yes it is a wild assumption. As I proved in #1, these people take vacations just like everyone else. Possibly more than the average Joe, since they have salaries that can support it. Once again, Snowden was not an NSA employee. He was a contractor with TS clearance. There is absolutely 0 proof that these people routinely experience Mission Impossible-style raids as you describe. Please provide evidence of this.

4. A) This special ops team sure is lugging around a lot of gear.
B) Have you ever been put under for surgery or some other medical procedure? There’s a reason that you can’t drive afterwards. It’s entirely different than waking up groggy.
C) Technically, this wouldn’t be data recovery, it would be espionage. I would also take issue with your equating the risk assessment of this contrived Hollywood-style operation with the development of an mobile camera hide.

5. Again, provide a shred of evidence. If a customer or employee found one, the hotel would be very susceptible to lawsuit from anyone who’d stayed or worked there in the past. It would endanger their ability to retain future customers. This would be a silly and illegal business practice. As such the burden of proof lies with you in proving that this is commonplace.

No. I am calling bullshit. You have swam so far away from your initial position that you aren’t even in the same ocean that you started. I’m not even sure what claim your ‘proof enough’ is supposed to be validating. Here is the chain of arguments:

You: “Given that a NSA agent with high level clearance shows up in your country with a laptop and thumb drives which airport security would have noticed and reported in it was a safe bet he had top secret information on him.”

Me: “He was a contractor. Further, I’d like to see your source for claiming that none of those people travel regularly.”

You: “Show me the data that proves otherwise.”

Me: (links to data that proves otherwise)

You: “This part here is proof enough of not being allow to visit China without clearance.”

You just tried to make a lateral move to a different argument. That’s not how this works. The argument you’re switching too isn’t even a solid one, either, which I am reluctant to mention because now you are going to completely ignore the original premise.

Please quote me where I ever said that clearance wasn’t necessary. I never made that claim. You are deflecting because you were proven wrong.

Your first argument was that top secret security clearance holders DO NOT take vacations with any sort of regularity.

My counter-argument was that they do. I provided links to prove this.

Informing a superior to mitigate risk has nothing to do with falsifying or verifying the argument that they don’t take vacations, nor does it attest to vacation frequency.

I (genuinely) don’t mean this to sound like an insult, but I would suggest reading up on some basic debating concepts, core philosophical logic concepts, or scientific logic concepts.

Am I debating with an AI? Are you stuck in an infinite loop? What’s going on here?

It would appear that you are the person that is having a hard time grasping. Or perhaps it’s just that you’re grasping at straws at this point.

I explicitly stated that I never disagreed with the fact that they need clearance (more technically they “should get” clearance– they aren’t breaking laws by not, but it makes life easier for everyone.)

I then stated that the fact that they need clearance has no bearing on the fact that they DO take vacations, contrary to your original claim.

Is your argument that they are talking about clearance and not going on vacations? That is nonsensical, if so. The discussions I linked are between people asking if they need clearance because they want to take vacations and people saying that vacations are absolutely fine if they get clearance, and that they take vacations all the time.

You can glean multiple pieces of information from this discussion. Each piece is independent from the others.
1.) People with top secret security clearance should inform their supervisors of any vacations they plan to take.
2.) Vacationing abroad is not frowned upon, given you are transparent about it.
3.) Vacationing abroad is not particularly uncommon.

I was using points 2 and 3 to counter your explicit assumption that people with top secret security clearances rarely take vacations, and as such are a massive red flag warranting an operation of abundantly comical over-the-toppedness.

In response, you are arguing point 1. You can perhaps see why I suggested a debate or logic book– it doesn’t make sense why you would argue as you did. Before you respond with the same thing a third time, let me be crystal clear: I am not saying I don’t understand what you are arguing. I am saying that it doesn’t logically follow.

False. Unequivocally. You are once again just fabricating information. I am quoting from those sources here:

“Traveling to another country and interacting with the local populace, is NOT looked at negatively unless you are routinely heading to Pakistan, North Korea or Iran.”

The fact of the matter is that TRAVEL alone is not a problem. People in those links even mention having taken several trips there. Developing foreign contacts is a different story. If, while overseas, you are found to be talking with, say, a prominent businessman who has ties to an anti-American organization, you could risk losing your clearance, though even then it’s not necessarily guaranteed. There will be an investigation though. There has to be a reason for them to deny you travel to a location.

I’ll give you a real life example of how and why they might deny travel to China:

http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/08-00312.h1.pdf

Here, an applicant for Top Secret clearance was almost denied because he had dealings with, and owned 1.5% of the stock of a Chinese company. It goes without saying that he also had several Chinese contacts as a result. In exchange for being able to obtain his Top Secret clearance, he signed an agreement to surrender his share of the company without compensation, to sever communication with those contacts, and to agree not to travel to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The key concept here is that had he not had a stake in a Chinese company, he would not be prevented from traveling to China.

Again, traveling to China is not a risk, because you don’t take any sensitive information with you, and your superiors are informed, so they can look into it if need be. They just don’t want you making nice with other governments or anti-US organizations. Having sensitive data on a home computer is by far more of a risk than simply traveling abroad without that data. That is why when you claim that simply entering a country is a red flag, large enough to warrant a (hypothetical) MASSIVE operation, is so ridiculous .

Again, you are making up fake information. Give me a source that says they they are denied clearance. I provided a source that proves they aren’t. I also gave evidence from an authoritative source regarding in what instances they would deny access to travel. As I mentioned before, they cannot deny you the right to travel, provided you’ve done nothing wrong. Here is the reason that they request to know if you plan to travel abroad:

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2013/05/29/foreign-travel-travel-reporting/

“This advance notification allows ample time for the FSO to engage the Cognizant Security Authority (i.e., the entity with whom you are engaged in classified work) and obtain any special safety, security, or counterintelligence briefing materials which may be appropriate for your trip. Your security officer will incorporate this material, if any, into the travel safety and security briefing you are going to receive prior to your travel.”

Here is an example of the form they request that you fill out. Note that this form is a “report” and not a “request.”

http://www.monterey.army.mil/DPTMS/inc/POM%20154%20Report%20of%20Foreign%20Travel.pdf

I will give you a another piece of evidence, though I really don’t need to:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070521152248AAU0MJN

“But a secret, top secret, Q clearance, or top secret SBI clearance does not prevent the holder from traveling in foreign countries.

Heck, i traveled all over asia on personal trips with a top secret SBI clearance.”

I have now provided quite a lot of evidence. You have done nothing but fabricate information to argue your point. If you wish to continue this discussion, it is your intellectual responsibility to do research.

Yes, because every time one of the nearly 1 MILLION people with top secret clearance take a vacation, they are immediately raided by a special operations team out of a movie.

Russian spetsnaz security forces used a fentanyl-based gas to incapacitate people rapidly so it’s safe to say the Chinese has access to such a gas.

Use in a controlled situation like this it’s hardly dangerous at all and no you wouldn’t know if they were gassing the room while you slept.

Again, you’ve been watching too much Mission Impossible. With so many eyes on the data, no country in their right mind is going to be able to assemble and send a spec ops team to grab heavily encrypted drives from a locked hotel safe(I’m assuming it was put away– personally I would have locked it to myself) in a double-locked room *hoping* that the owner is asleep and the noise of the disc cloning hardware they lugged along wont wake them. Cloning data is limited to the block transfer rate of the drive. They would have to sit there for quite a while to actually accomplish this. You are fabricating this stuff, man.

The funny thing is that when it comes to all the data they collected they didn’t violate any of your rights because all those online sites own and control your data because you agreed to the terms of service.

Problem is that those companies willingly gave the NSA access to that data so if you want to blame anyone blame the companies for agreeing to give access to that data and the reason for the vast amount of the data collected is because the computer program that goes through all the data is just being systemic as a program like the one they use doesn’t view age as invalidating the data due to the fact a terrorist can steal anyone’s identity.

Actually he could for one he would know what to look for because he knows how the agency works and 2 he had plenty of down time when he was waiting for Russia to let him stay more then enough time to properly censor the files that could be released.

That doesn’t mean that he still didn’t have the data on him as a bargaining chip for the Russians as they aren’t exactly known for helping people out without a price.