Re:Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK
by eeeuo on Sunday July 22, 2018 @12:59AM
(#17585355)
> Isn't it also naive to think China and Russia weren't fully aware of the NSA's capabilities?
The latest Mueller indictment suggests no.
I believe that the NSA's domestic surveillance programs were an egregious mistake. However, I do not think that "awful countries" implemented domestic surveillance programs because they read the PRISM documents. Nor does it explain why Snowden leaked details of activities that were not illegal and fully within the mandate of the NSA.
But otherwise for 99% of it the only one it was new and valuable to was the public.
As good as the FBI/IC is at counter-intelligence if Snowden can do this stuff I'm sure a highly trained spy recruited by any top tier agency could get similar access.
Also notably Snowden did not leak the really sensitive TAO stuff, which was well compartmentalized. He mostly leaked spreadsheets for the 'middle management' in NSA. I'm sure he only revealed a small portion of their top-teir capabilities. And the stuff he did leak was almost always very vague, often just a few bullet points in a spreadsheet was all we had to work with...