In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent (also double secret agent) is an employee of a secret intelligence service, whose primary purpose is to spy on a different target organization, but who, in fact, is a member of the target organization.

In other words, if Snowden worked for the NSA and spied on China or Russia, but at the same time was passing information over to China or Russia, he would then be a double agent. That's why it's so fishy when he repeatedly says that he specifically used to work on Chinese targets (for example: [1]), chose to flee the US and go to China, and his 3rd leak in the news was giving a Chinese newspaper a list of all of Chinese computers that had been targeted by the NSA[2].

That doesn't mean he's a double-agent, but it certainly raises some eyebrows...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVwAodrjZMY#t=7m16s

[2] http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-sn...

Nonetheless, the Metadata debate remains important, so I'll continue to bring it up. I've read through the rest of these threads, and they're all "Snowden's a hero!!!" without even touching upon the debate that he's brought up.

EDIT: Its as if this "metadata collection" is the most evil thing in the world ever done. Good gosh. Its still hugely ironic to me that Snowden fled to the state with the "Great Firewall of China" literally spying on every Chinese blogger with police powers that make those guys _literally_ disappear if they say the wrong things...

While over here in the US, this forum gets their panties in a twist over metadata collection.

I am happy that we all hold the US to a higher standard, but I still hold my point: to take down a Swatter, the Police will need access to metatdata.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-...

Snowden explicitly collected how the US was spying on China, went to China, and then "publicly" gave out those details. I think he was expecting the Chinese Government to take him in and protect him after the big reveal.

For whatever reason, China didn't want him. Probably because China has enough issues with their own whistle blowers. Or maybe China already knew the information Snowden had, so they didn't value him at all.

Russia apparently values Snowden very much. They like him if only because he serves as an anti-US rallying cry.

Wild speculations aside, you might want to consider the revelations on their own merits rather than a ham-fisted smear against the source. The fact remains that they have been confirmed as true and are therefore not some kind of black propaganda.

More worrying in some ways is that it seems he got everything using wget and further that there was no audit trail to understand what he got. If we believe as we are told that he was a relatively low level external contractor, that means internal security is non-existent and you can guarantee that any other competent agency also has everything (at least confirming part of your China theory above).

Fair enough. I'm more interested in the political implications anyway.

So what do we do about Swatters? Metadata collection seems to be the only useful tool against them.

Actually, I don't believe that the local police are taking advantage of their resources. I think better organization needs to be done around the metadata that is collected so that it is better distributed between the police officers in the case of a swatting incident.

But actually _having_ metadata is a necessary first step to beginning any swatting investigation. Or do you not think that the first step is figuring out the phone number that the Swatter called from?

Next: I'm not entirely sure that Swatting will ever be stopped. Nonetheless, I'd like to punish those who are swatting, and I think that if they are removed from society... that is one step towards fixing the problem.

If a swatter gets caught and his criminal record is updated such that everyone knows he is a swatter, then society will benefit from it overall.

Also, bull!@#!. _CHINA_ prevented the US from traveling after he got to Hong Kong. If the US had its way, then Snowden would be in jail right now.

CHINA prevented him from traveling after he got to Hong Kong. The US had very little power over the whole issue at that point.

There are other parties at play here.

China had an extremely important role with Snowden. They didn't care about the "passport", they were buying time looking for some other country to take him in.

I guess Russia took him in after that (Snowden didn't want to go to Russia. So I doubt that Snowden is a Russian spy... but if he knew what was good for him, he probably was forced to give some of his secrets to the Russians under the table.)