Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower

Re:Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower by linkregister on Monday December 12, 2016 @06:14PM (#13162977)

I think it's a mistake to assume:

1. That the Juniper Netscreen backdoor was the work of NSA. Even Bruce Schneier doesn't conjecture that it was NSA in his blog post on the topic.

2. That Edward Snowden had access to all documents of public interest, such as the Dual_EC vulnerability injection or malware specifics. Edward Snowden said that he worked with journalists to leak the documents with the most public interest.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower by tptacek on Monday December 12, 2016 @06:23PM (#13163045)

1. I didn't say that the Netscreen backdoor was NSA (I don't think it was).

2. I believe you are wrong about Dual_EC's representation in the Snowden document cache, and believe that because of some particularly trustworthy secondhand sources that told me so. However: that's actually not the complaint I have; rather: putting more attention on VPN concentrators as implant targets would have been beneficial no matter what the technical details were.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower by linkregister on Monday December 12, 2016 @06:49PM (#13163214)

I still assert that it's likely that Snowden didn't have that information. I do not have access to the original Snowden documents so I can't verify whether they are included in the document cache or not.

I'm confused as to why you brought up the Netscreen backdooring as an omission, then admit that you don't think it was NSA. Are you saying that the Netscreen backdoor was known by the NSA as an adversarial nation's work? Please clarify.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower by tptacek on Monday December 12, 2016 @07:13PM (#13163359)

I don't think anyone thinks Snowden knew he had that information --- that's part of the problem. But I know people who are in position to know who assert directly that his leaks included that material.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower by linkregister on Monday December 12, 2016 @07:36PM (#13163471)

Ok, I didn't fully understand your point. You disagree with the "dump all docs on Greenwald and hope for the best" method of leaking, as does the author of the article (and I do).

Thanks for responding.

[ Parent | on HN ]