Re:Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal
by rhino369 on Monday September 19, 2016 @02:55PM
(#12533787)
The NSA isn't an antiterrorism agency. It's a general purpose spy agency. If you thought that it only was collecting meta data for terrorists purposes, that's on you. That was never the purpose of the agency and I'm not really sure how anyone could believe it was. What did you think they were doing during the Cold War?
It's also common knowledge that allies spy on each. America's biggest counter-intelligence threat is actually Israel. They are spying on us all the time.
Re:Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal
by nickpsecurity on Monday September 19, 2016 @06:01PM
(#12535138)
You're missing the point of the comment. I know what NSA does and Im fine with collecting foreign intelligence. The point is they asked for broad powers, including over Americans, with secrecy and immunity. The stated reason for these was stopping terrorist threat. Actually, it was originally a USAP that nobody even agreed to that they said was about terrorism after initial leaks. They also said only collecting metadata and that it contained nothing that would worry people.
Such systematic deception of American people, Congress, courts, etc is a problem. That they were targeting Americans themselves while saying they werent is bigger. That two leaders committed perjury but dont get punished makes it worse.
This isnt some authorized action conducting itself ethically, effectively, and accountably. It's been opposite across the board. And the leakers are only reason we knew.
1. They kept promising it was just metadata they were collecting. Alexander got specific on all extra services they weren't collecting on. This was lies.
2. Another lies under oath to Congress about same thing.
3. They said it was just selective stuff to find terrorists. Snowden leaks revealed vast majority of this spying was on Europe, South America, and Asia with stuff like Dell PowerEdge servers terrorists probably aren't using. ;)
4. Americans assumed it was us and our allies versus the terrorist again with these tools for that. Instead, we find they were doing stuff like spying on Beligian industry taking down their telecoms in the process. Stuff like that, done in secret by groups with immunity, could really bite Americans in the ass as a whole and should be up for national, policy debate.
5. The NSA has been pushing INFOSEC recommendations to military, defense contractors, federal government, and rest of us for years. I pointed out most of it was EAL4+ or less, meaning it definitely get hacked by enemies. They knew this. Incompetence or evil (SIGINT)? Snowden leaks indicate it was them leaving backdoors in for themselves that our enemies might use against us as well. Did in a few cases I believe.
6. Similar to 5, they were believed to be helping us improve our security standards and cyberspace readiness. Instead, BULLRUN program aimed to subvert that as much as possible in ways that would damage us. The combo of 5 and 6 makes the NSA the 2nd greatest threat to American INFOSEC of them all right after American capitalism insistence on treating INFOSEC like a liability.
7. Prior to leaks, Alexander and others always explained they only collected on Americans when they had a court order. Nobody explained that FISA warrants are for "targeting criteria" run against all the data of all Americans they're already intercepting. On top of a court that virtually never rejects anything and doesn't imprison offenders.
So, these are 7 quick revelations from the leaks that should result in resistance from Americans, some job openings in government, and prosecution of specific individuals for actual crimes. Internal channels always squashed information like this since the problems were driven from top down by people who lie to Americans and Congress. US government also kept saying judicial system couldn't participate at all. Leaking to public is all that's left in such a situation. He certainly could've filtered the leaks themselves a bit but the domestic stuff would have to come out pretty much in full to back his assertions.