I think system administrators would take exception to your claim they don't help build anything.

Also, Congressional report prepared by whom? Can't take a report by the fox guarding the hen house seriously.

I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were. It's a minor point, but speaks to Mr. Snowden's reportedly inflated self-importance.

It's up to all of us to take this report, and news reports and autobiographies, as seriously as you think they deserve. This provides background information not commonly known and is a valuable counter balance to Mr. Snowden's account. How seriously should we take an autobiography written by the person who perpetrated such (in)famous actions?

There is "selective reporting" on all sides, it's up to us to take it all in and form our own opinions. For example: read the report, note Mr. Snowden's length of service at each job, his age and experience, and consider how likely it was that he was a "senior advisor" or a more junior system administrator.

I understand this may be a lost cause, but I'm simply advocating for balance on this issue.

>I was a system administrator with similar responsibilities for several years, and it was quite clear who the system architects were and who the maintainers were

Both groups would have been necessary to build the a long term system.

Beyond that, I don't see how his status while working for the intelligence sector is very important, and I've never gotten the impression Snowden was trying to boast about how achievements there.

Amazon page blurb aside, I don't understand why this question comes up so often.

Even during the initial revelations, people who wanted to downplay the topic regularly pointed out that Snowden was "just a system administrator, not an intelligence agent" and attempted to debate whether he worked directly for the government or only for a contractor. It baffled me, because that doesn't even seem relevant to his claims.

The "government employee" issue would only matter if the authenticity of the leaks was disputed; the various PRISM and XKEYSCORE slideshows were never even challenged, so who cares? And "only a system administrator" sounds backwards to anyone who actually knows what sysadmins do. Dismissing him as a maintainer instead of an architect is a weird sideshow, since his role was mostly important as an answer to the question "how did he get undetected access to so many different files?"

It's a tactic to undermine an opponent. They want to classify him as a minor part of the machine, hoping to discredit his revelations in the process ("why would you listen to anyone with that little of experience and importance"). It's a reverse appeal to authority.

It coming up again of again when Snowden is discussed is part of either controlled or natural occurring propaganda, a talking point of the regime. The one bringing it into this thread is a new throwaway account, go figure. One way or another, directly or indirectly, you are seeing the "controlling public discussions" part of what intelligence agencies do in action here :)

That's an excellent point. Using the "only a sys admin" example was pretty weak. I just chose it quickly as one example of his trustworthiness level from the report. A better example would be that Mr. Snowden claims he began collecting files after James Clapper's testimony, but in fact he began 8 months earlier (third point in the Executive Summary, page iii).

My main takeaway form the report is that Mr. Snowden was misleading/dishonest about elements of his past and motivations. Read the report for other examples of his misrepresentations, mainly that he never reported his suspected abuse of government programs via established internal process and he took and shared material on much more than the programs he was concerned about.

The discussion of the programs themselves is certainly much bigger. I view these programs as the nuclear weapons of our age. It was inevitable that they would be created (with similar capabilities in the hands of other governments and corporations), and there is always the risk of misuse. While the US Government is not the ideal owner of these tools, I generally trust the USG more than other countries and corporations.

The problem with intelligence agencies is that you rarely hear of their successes, and almost always hear of their failures.

> A better example would be that Mr. Snowden claims he began collecting files after James Clapper's testimony, but in fact he began 8 months earlier (third point in the Executive Summary, page iii).

His claim was that testimony was the "breaking point" on the decision to leak, not download files, and soon after he agreed to publicly be named the source.

>mainly that he never reported his suspected abuse of government programs via established internal process and he took and shared material on much more than the programs he was concerned about.

It's his word vs theirs on whether he raised the issue before deciding to leak. And he knew there was a ton of unrelated data in what he leaked, that was why he privately gave it to reporters and didn't publicly post it.

As far as I know, none of the documents leaked by Mr Snowden have been found untrustworthy or fabricated. Digging in his past for inconsistencies and speculating about his motivation seem little more then a weak attempt at character assassination. What exactly are your goals in this discussion?

You have, at this point in time, only three comments on HN, all related to Snowden, and are obviously using a throwaway account. You are also advocating heavily that the report, prepared by intelligence agencies in the US government, should be given credence, while you have developed none yourself. Really hard not to imagine you as a disinformation account created by a three letter organization.

It's really hard to take that report seriously. It basically reads as FUD against snowden. This is what CIA and NSA agents are trained to do professionally.

Snowden was a lowly SharePoint administrator. Nobody has ever denied that. Snowden himself said that he got that job to have easy access to the documents. He never touched the actual systems described in the documents.

Hm... while I think that the report is generally correct, it also comtains a clear bias in some sections. It was written by people on the inside, after all. Also, some of the character background was sourced from journalistic articles. I would have hoped that such a report had better sources for things that should be part of government records.

Why would any non US citizen care about what the Congress has to say about it ? They don't care about any of us in the slightest.

Thanks, I didn't realize that such a report exists. Although I remain skeptical about some things on both sides, I'm glad to understand the official position better.