I started watching the Snowden (2016) movie the other day, and got to the point about explanation of XKEYSCORE. The whole time I was thinking “how quaint, that this was such a shockingly abusive system at the time”. We’ve crossed the threshold long ago. We’re so far gone that it’s just taken for granted that we’re always being watched, everywhere. I stopped watching the film because it was really bumming me out. There’s nothing we can do about it and it’s so very sad.
"Ten Years After the Patriot Act, a Look at Three of the Most Dangerous Provisions Affecting Ordinary Americans" | Electronic Frontier Foundation (2011) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/ten-years-later-look-three-scariest-provisions-usa-patriot-act :
Similar experience in a town in Madrid's metropolitan area.
Electricty went down (something kind of frequent). My UPS kept PC up, and alarm system with sim and small UPS mantained wifi up for an hour or so.
Scary moments started when people I was in a call with in Portugal texted 'Grid is out'. Later no phone signal nor data.
At first, it might seem people running towards supermarkets an overreaction on being without TikTok for a couple of hours, but you have to live how scary it is to experience this in Europe's current political status to know 60 million people (plus industry) in three countries are out of the grid.
If you see Snowden's film (this might not be the most trustworthy source) it is exactly how CIA's agent describes the feasable attack towards these countries. Again, not a valid source, but I'd love to understand if that could be feasable.
No particular reason. I was watching the Snowden film for the first time, and at the same time fixing some bugs in secure document viewer code that required me to test it on large zip files (ideally containing PDFs). I just happened across this repo from a DDG search.
You can see the ongoing work here: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox
I would think waaaay more people have heard of Snowden than of RMS. If a movie about RMS will get made, than in the shape of a crowdfunded community project.
From 2013: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/investigators-looking-at-how-snowden-gained-access-at-nsa/2013/06/10/83b4841a-d209-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html
> Investigators also need to determine whether anyone else was involved in disclosing the information to reporters, officials said.
> Officials questioned some of Snowden’s assertions in his interview with the Guardian, saying that several of his claims seemed exaggerated. Among them were assertions that he could order wiretaps on anyone from “a federal judge to even the president.”
> “When he said he had access to every CIA station around the world, he’s lying,” said a former senior agency official, who added that information is so closely compartmented that only a handful of top-ranking executives at the agency could access it.
> Current and former administration officials were flummoxed by Snowden’s claim that he was authorized to access the orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
It seems very reasonable to believe he never actually got these type of air-gapped files, he just thought he did and also confused intelligence officials. It's also worth pointing out that he himself has been incredibly coy about how he actually got data out of the secure facility (I seem to remember the movie portraying a Rubik's cube).
I was of the opinion until a few months ago that he was a solo actor until that conversation I had with that IT guy. He said the US Gov response to the Snowden leaks was not a hardening of the classification systems, but a doubling down on background checks and training on foreign agents. Especially seeing how Russia has acted the last few years, I an now more open to the idea than I was before.
Yes. I2P is designed with P2P in mind. The default Java I2P client already comes with a bundled BitTorrent client, there is also a BitTorrent client called "Vuze" and is used by some non-anonymous users to help seeding a torrent across the clearnet and I2P simultaneously. Because of the nature of I2P, don't expect great speed. No seeder is "usual", 10 KiB/s is "normal" and 50 KiB/s with only 3 or 5 seeders is "good", overall, it feels as if it's still the early 2000s, but when you get used to it and adopt a "download and forget, come back in 3 days" mentality, it's not actually that bad. The fastest download I've ever seen was the movie Snowden, 20+ seeders and over 200 KiB/s+...
The kind of "journalist" Luke Harding is was brutally exposed by Aaron Mate by simply repeatedly asking him for evidence for his claims when Harding was flogging a conspiracy theory book. Nothing more than that reduced him to powder.
It's an amazing thing to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ikf1uZli4g
I have no idea how this guy Harding is employed by the guardian, or indeed anyone or ever was. Obviously not a competent journalist, what he is... I'd never heard of Mate before seeing this, Mate just gives him rope and let's him do it to himself. That's the guy the Guardian had doing hatchet jobs on Assange when he was getting more death threats every day than every guardian journalist ever put together has received. [1]
[1] I have no evidence of this. But it seems a lot more plausible than the Guardian's hatchet jobs. Where is Alan Rusbridger nowadays? He was editor back then. Ah, wikipedia says principal of an Oxford college. When not appearing in cameo perfomances of movie versions of Luke Harding's hatchet jobs on Snowden. Must be where he thinks he's best speaking truth to power nowadays. He may be right.
Criticisms were/are made against NSA surveillances and in the case where government tried to silence such criticism (Snowden), opinions that support Snowden's actions were made and published, even made into books and movies, without repercussion. Bloggers that support Edward Snowden did not disappear. Movie directors and screenwriters are not made pariah by their industry or sent to Guantanamo.
This sort of whataboutism does not surprise me but it's getting tiring when made repeatedly in disguise of intelligent discourse. It's dishonest because the difference is blatant.
"He [Snowden] said that the Rubik’s cube was put in for the film and he wouldn’t be divulging how he smuggled out information. However, he added, everyone in the office did have a Rubik’s cube. “So they were floating around and coming in and out all the time,” he said."
> “First of all, I just wanted to say that none of us know [how it happened],” Stone said at the Q&A, when asked about how they came up with it. “[Snowden]’s the only one who knows, and one day he may reveal it. And number two, it was his idea — it was a suggestion that we responded to and ran with.”
I'd imagine they would have done forensics if he was caught with an sd card at a checkpoint, but I'm not sure one would set off a metal detector in the first place. It's more likely a security org would epoxy the sd and usb slots on computers with confidential data, or have audits for any usb devices the hosts encounter.
Between the Snowden movie based on reports and articles written about his actions, the upcoming Amazon original starring Adam Driver on the Senate investigations into CIA torture programs (which if my timing is correct, the full report isn't even ten years old yet), and now this...does anyone else feel this strange surreal sense of...surrealness when Hollywood movies come out mere years after noteworthy news events?
Not to say "too soon" but, well I guess in a way I am?
I'm hoping they've implemented some form of localized EMP that you have to pass through now to leave, because large storage is so incredibly small now that it would be impossible to discern it from articles of clothing.
The "hard" part is really just getting the data off the computer in the first place, which is probably why they don't allow bringing in technology anymore.
I wonder how much of a micro computer could be smuggled in one or two parts at a time, stored in articles of clothing, with the intent of simply saving data to a micro SD card which would be the only thing you need to smuggle back out. You would need to be able to assemble the device without soldering.
I guess the easiest would be to build a digital camera to record the screen or photos instead of trying to plug into the computers themselves which probably have robust host intrustion detection and prevention. Or perhaps if you could just record the digital output of the computer before it reaches the monitor. That could be prevented with some form of HDCP though, I think.
This all sounds kind of like a science fiction movie (or In the Line of Fire or that Snowden movie) but it's an interesting thought exercise in any case.
Agree with the article's criticism of the heavy focus on Brittany Kaiser. It felt like the filmmakers were trying to put her into Snowden or Assange type circumstances, and then use those circumstances to manufacture credibility and heighten suspense. I have difficulty with the scene about a news article breaking that mentions her. Shes groaning about her career being over, but you can tell shes really excited to be in the spotlight. Assange comes off equally self-centered in the Poitras documentary, but in that case the magnitude of circumstances had already been established, along with his central role in those circumstances. The filmmakers behind 'Great Hack' never reached those levels of clarity regarding involvement, and as a result their decision to use Kaiser as primary subject felt misleading.
> My only point is that having a substantial amount of faith in anyone, when the stakes are high, is folly.
Because he has credibility due to his track record. That's the basis of how networking works. The authors of software such as TLS, Whonix, Tor, Tails, Debian, all have a certain amount of credibility within their peers as well as the general public.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, credibility can be abused; as a matter of fact, he did abuse his credibility. Snowden broke his credibility to the NSA (and US government), but for a greater good of both the people of the USA as well as the international community. The price he paid? He lost his well paid job, he lost seeing his family and friends, he lost the luxury life in the USA, his house and any and all of his assets, and a substantial part of the USA hates him (tho a more vast, significant part in the world, is thankful). Ie. his credibility with the rest of the world has substantially increased.
Now, you may think he may abuse his credibility, and it'd be a great plot for a movie, but that doesn't make it realistic. And why? Isn't the same true for any programmer on Zcash, Bitcoin, Etherium, and anything else? If you claim you cannot trust anyone, how can you live with yourself? Are you sure that's air you're breathing? Are you sure the color white is white? You'll end up with a full blown paranoid psychosis if you go with that line of reasoning (speaking from personal experience as well here). My point is that, at the very basic level, we need to trust and take some basics for granted (and, all of us do).
So what we need from you, is some kind of facts (not theory) as to why we cannot trust Snowden. The fact, as far as I can tell, contradict what you wrote: Snowden hasn't acted in the past based on financial gains. For example, he didn't sell NSA information to media or foreign agencies. Instead, his actions were solely based on moral grounds plus personal survival (hence he ended up in Russia).
I'd like to end my post that, yes, people who are psychopaths would very well end up doing something you described. I have no indication Snowden is a psychopath; tho I'm not sure about those he worked for at the CIA and NSA.
> His motives? He worked happily for the CIA from 2007 - 2009. Then he worked for Booz Allen Hamilton/NSA from 2009 to 2013. That's seven years of employment in the security-industrial complex. Was he playing the long game then?
Your question is answered in depth in the documentary, in the movie, and in various interviews (written, as well as videos). Imagine someone who's patriotic at heart, who picks up signs where he's starting to doubt the things he's doing are patriotic (e.g. on the longer term, or in their specific targets). That's Snowden in a nutshell.
You're also seemingly unaware Snowden attempted to disclose the information before.
Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread HN user sig links to an article where he admits he did join "Booz Allen to gather evidence of surveillance".
> I don't think the question is security but privacy
Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG. The latter depends on the former, and GPG is very much related to security just as well.
> Documentaries like autobiographies are often a vehicle for revisionist history.
And often they're not. They're used to tell one side of the story. The other one's the US government's take on the matter.
> In regards to [2], Hollyood is not really considered a good source of historical accuracy.
Not a statement of much, if any, value.
It wasn't the sole source I stated. If you'd have a look on Wikipedia article, you could learn how the movie was made (research-wise there's quite some details). If you'd have seen both docu and move you'd know how close the movie is to the docu (although also dramatised as mentioned in the movie itself, btw).
He didn't receive any money for the movie Snowden (it was donated to The Guardian instead) [1]. He didn't sell any of the NSA data. He doesn't have a track record of profiting, apart from working (like we all do) and receiving some donations.
So the claim that Snowden is a proponent of Zcash because he has invested in it has no merit. There is zero proof for such statement, and his track record doesn't suggest it either.
> Yeah sure, people believe what they want to believe. Or we could just accept that until 2013 he was just another wheel in the giant machinery that is the NSA and that his morals changed - for whatever reason.
His motives and how he ultimately ended up leaking information is well documented in the 2014 documentary Citizenfour [1] and the 2016 movie Snowden [2].
> But he was with the bad guys.
Are there shades of grey or nuances or is the NSA the root of all evil? Its impossible to care about security as NSA employee? Teaching US civilians how to use GPG means you're trying to protect civilians against the NSA? The world isn't black and white.
Watching the Edward Snowden is pretty eye opening about this kind of stuff. I was going to buy an Alexa devise, but thankfully watched the movie first and now I know I won't...
Could you be more specific about how he's "warped the narrative" in this piece? I feel like I've done my due diligence on this topic and I felt like it was both well written and made a pretty compelling point.
Further, the places where Gladwell departs from the message board orthodoxy on Snowden aren't at all out of step with what other reporters who covered him had to say. For instance: read Fred Kaplan's review of the Snowden movie, which recaps many of the points Gladwell made here, but is far more acidic.
Well, maybe one take-away from the Snowden movie - in case it's actually accurate - is that by recruiting traditional freedom-loving hackers there will be more potential whistleblowers in the future.
Another disparate thought:
The NSA we've seen so far appears to have been infinite reach, but with very limited analysis capability. E.g. they have have an army of humans trying to make sense of the mountains of data. Just imagine their capabilities when they have applied (already, perhaps) deep learning to this data feed. This is scary shit.
Suddenly they will have a very deep profile on every connected individal on earth (like 75% by now?).
After watching the film snowden there is a part in the film. Which goes that he was scared of a new leader been elected and flicking a switch. It looks like Teresa May flicked that switch and she wasn't even elected.
Oliver Stone was on The Late Show last week, and he said that he's a storyteller not a historian, and that he couldn't tell the whole story in a two hour movie and make it entertaining without taking some liberties. However, he also said that Snowden saw the movie and approved of its overall accuracy, accounting for Stone's needs to make a movie.
"Snowden" was more story like, Citizen four more documentary like. Knowing that going in will help keep things in perspective. For me, I liked Citizen Four more, but think people should see both.
I don't know about criminal punishment. It's a complicated issue. It is extremely problematic that journalists can play an active role in disseminating state secrets and absolve themselves of responsibility. Also: the Washington Post clearly crossed the line from advocate for the US public interest to... something else... in their choices of what to public from the Snowden cache.
I'm not here to argue that the Post wasn't hypocritical. They clearly were.
I'm just saying:
* Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the Post's argument. We can despise the Post's Editorial Page editors as much as Greenwald wants us to and still reach the conclusion that the editorial is valid (though incomplete).
* Greenwald is so eager to cast aspersions at journalists who disagree with him that he roped Fred Kaplan into his piece, despite his having nothing (that I know of) to do with the Post's handling of Snowden. Simply because Kaplan is also a journalist, Greenwald believes he's not entitled to correct the record on Oliver Stone's terribly flawed movie.
Greenwald makes an important point and then sabotages it with over-the-top emotional appeals.
He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.
But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. quelle horreur.
The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.
The Post can be cowardly and still correct.
Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the
sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?
Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.
What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.
We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data than "courage" or even best intentions to come to a conclusion.
There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with "bravery".
> Mr. Snowden is not a patriot. He is not a whistleblower. He is a criminal.
Quite a statement! It's obviously not black and white. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think the conversation needs to be inclusive, frank and factual. And this statement from our representatives shows a major problem. They don't want conversation, they want sound bites.
As an aside, I saw the movie last night and highly recommend it to anyone unsure or not aware of what happened. It seems to be accurate enough to portray the essence of his experiences and decision making process.
Just saw the prescreening of snowden movie with online live event with movie cast and snowden post movie, and this was exactly what was depicted in the movie and in the event talk.
It will be interesting to see the reception that Oliver Stone's film Snowden[0] will receive when released later this week. Anecdotally, most of my friends never seemed to care as much as I do and certainly care less now.
I was fortunate enough to get to see an early screening of Snowden. I thought it was great-- following the facts, but telling a compelling and human story. Some of the people I saw it with
People that found themselves wondering why they should care about Snowden and the programs he disclosed will find their answer in this movie.
I expected to see a full on campaign against it, this NYT piece is mild. It spins up some conspiracy with russian involvement, yawn but even it can't to deny: The movie is good. It's riveting-- just as a movie-- and the subject matter is of importance to all of us. I can't see anyone being bored by it, and I think even the most hard core of the tech people will forgive the one or two "movie-computers" moments in it. :)
It's opening a couple days before its full release (the 16th?) at something like 800 theaters (on the 14th? I believe). I would recommend going to see it on the 14.
What precautions can one take against their sysadmin? I can't think of many places that have stricter security policies than 3-letter agencies, still Snowden got away with a USB stick (man, can't wait to see the movie - I wonder if he really passed the USB stick out using the rubik's cube as in the movie trailer).
The thing is that that you can't do much against someone who has root access for a living.
There are other ways to make a point, especially when you're prepared to get fired. Damaging everyone else is selfish and stupid.
Snowden was a favorite to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival at an early Out of Competition slot. Stone himself requested an early slot. In the end he didn't get it, so this is a hint that the movie lacks something.
On the other side Laura Poitras new Assange documentary "Risk" screens in the Quinzaine (Directors fortnight) competition.
On its surface, the movie appears to be praising Snowden. I am convinced it is intentionally shitty and is deliberately overly praiseful of Snowden so that viewers will find it annoying. The net result is that people leave with a negative opinion of Snowden the person. It just looks so over-the-top terrible from the trailer alone.
I'm sure the nerds here will find ample opportunities to tear this movie apart, but keep in mind that the "average American" (a) doesn't know much about Snowden, other than "he stole secrets and hid in commie Russia, so he must've been working for them", and (b) just believes what the government says. To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood. Maybe this movie will make the average American think more about the issue, and it might even cause some to change their views about Snowden. If it does, this movie has served its purpose, and kudos to Stone.
Snowden demonstrates the way NSA and the British equivalent operate on demand* at the documentary film 'Snowden'. You should really skim through it at least, you will be surprised to what their finite budget can do.
* they collect bulk data, then develop the tools to sort them out
I've read a couple of articles in the past that linked Facebook and Google to CIA and that's a fair thought given the business that they're in. Of course the NSA and the CIA would like to have access to their data (and most probably they do in one way or another).
That said, doesn't take anything away from Facebook as a service. Facebook adds extreme value to your social life connects you with people that you don't see daily, lets you know about birthdays, events, comments and what not. It's excellent at what it does IMHO and if used properly is really what web-2.0 is all about. I can say that if Zuckerberg didn't invent Facebook in ~ 2004, it would have been invented by now, by someone else because that was what people needed badly to stay connected.
Facebook is just a tool. If you are in the intel business or you are a possible target (e.g. prominent figure of some sort) and fairly young to understand how the internet works, you use FB for PR and nothing else. Maybe not even that.
Every social network can be used for data mining from intelligence agencies. Do most people care? No. Why? Because they don't see any kind of real threat. It doesn't interfere with their lives. The HN crowd is composed mostly by hackers. It's natural for us to see where all this might go wrong, because that's what we do and it's natural for others not to care until the shit hits the fan.
I'm eagerly waiting for her Snowden related movie/documentary.
I saw her new Snowden film last night. I loved it and highly recommend seeing it. It's an awesome behind the scenes look at how things went down. I really enjoyed seeing more footage of Snowden as I've been keeping up on pretty much every article that has came out since this whole thing broke.
> Until the public realize that they are themselves the target of those cyber security war activities by their own government, those revelations can not be damaging enough
This is entirely true. Us plebes have been caught in the middle. And the surveillance programs are not just about cyber warfare. The NSA/DHS use them for other things as well (handing off to CIA/FBI/DEA, building profiles of people, social manipulation, etc). But this article from firstlook IS about cyber warfare.
The leaked document itself says "U.S. Strategic Command - Joint Function Component Command - Network Warfare".
> Today the new Snowden movie is all over the news, while practically nobody seems to care bout those revelations you claim being really damaging
Isn't that argumentum ad populum? The news media coverage of the Snowden revelations has been horrendous, limited and misleading through and through. In fact the Snowden movie being in the news is a great example of how the public is disconnected with what's going on. It's not a "Snowden documentary" or a "Snowden lecture" or a "Snowden document analysis". It's a short hour and change person story with a bleached narrative devoid of the content of the actual documents.
Somewhat sad to see the cyber security war narrative becoming the top voted comment on hackernews.
Until the public realize that they are themselves the target of those cyber security war activities by their own government, those revelations can not be damaging enough.
Just to support the point: Today the new Snowden movie is all over the news, while practically nobody seems to care bout those revelations you claim being really damaging.
Hacker Cinema
53 comments on Hacker News
I started watching the Snowden (2016) movie the other day, and got to the point about explanation of XKEYSCORE. The whole time I was thinking “how quaint, that this was such a shockingly abusive system at the time”. We’ve crossed the threshold long ago. We’re so far gone that it’s just taken for granted that we’re always being watched, everywhere. I stopped watching the film because it was really bumming me out. There’s nothing we can do about it and it’s so very sad.
Is this a Bush administration in disguise?
"Ten Years After the Patriot Act, a Look at Three of the Most Dangerous Provisions Affecting Ordinary Americans" | Electronic Frontier Foundation (2011) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/ten-years-later-look-three-scariest-provisions-usa-patriot-act :
> 0.8% [True Positive Rate]
And zero accountability.
Snowden (film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_(film)
During the Obama administration, there was a surveillance reform near-candidate who was appropriately angry about surveillance abuse.
Similar experience in a town in Madrid's metropolitan area.
Electricty went down (something kind of frequent). My UPS kept PC up, and alarm system with sim and small UPS mantained wifi up for an hour or so.
Scary moments started when people I was in a call with in Portugal texted 'Grid is out'. Later no phone signal nor data.
At first, it might seem people running towards supermarkets an overreaction on being without TikTok for a couple of hours, but you have to live how scary it is to experience this in Europe's current political status to know 60 million people (plus industry) in three countries are out of the grid.
If you see Snowden's film (this might not be the most trustworthy source) it is exactly how CIA's agent describes the feasable attack towards these countries. Again, not a valid source, but I'd love to understand if that could be feasable.
> So it's already happened. It's why Snowden is in Russia, instead of living his life in the US.
As i remember from American movies: _You have a right_: to remain silent.
No particular reason. I was watching the Snowden film for the first time, and at the same time fixing some bugs in secure document viewer code that required me to test it on large zip files (ideally containing PDFs). I just happened across this repo from a DDG search.
You can see the ongoing work here: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox
I would think waaaay more people have heard of Snowden than of RMS. If a movie about RMS will get made, than in the shape of a crowdfunded community project.
I mean, there are multiple Snowden films. I guess it depends on if you need it to be Oppenheimer levels of budget to be "blockbuster" or not.
From 2013: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/investigators-looking-at-how-snowden-gained-access-at-nsa/2013/06/10/83b4841a-d209-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html
> Investigators also need to determine whether anyone else was involved in disclosing the information to reporters, officials said.
> Officials questioned some of Snowden’s assertions in his interview with the Guardian, saying that several of his claims seemed exaggerated. Among them were assertions that he could order wiretaps on anyone from “a federal judge to even the president.”
> “When he said he had access to every CIA station around the world, he’s lying,” said a former senior agency official, who added that information is so closely compartmented that only a handful of top-ranking executives at the agency could access it.
> Current and former administration officials were flummoxed by Snowden’s claim that he was authorized to access the orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
It seems very reasonable to believe he never actually got these type of air-gapped files, he just thought he did and also confused intelligence officials. It's also worth pointing out that he himself has been incredibly coy about how he actually got data out of the secure facility (I seem to remember the movie portraying a Rubik's cube).
I was of the opinion until a few months ago that he was a solo actor until that conversation I had with that IT guy. He said the US Gov response to the Snowden leaks was not a hardening of the classification systems, but a doubling down on background checks and training on foreign agents. Especially seeing how Russia has acted the last few years, I an now more open to the idea than I was before.
Snowden is a pretty good movie (though it takes some artistic liberties).
Enemy of the State - though an all pervasive surveillance state fortunately remains fiction (tongue firmly in cheek).
Watch the movie "Snowden" if you're actually in disbelief and not disinformation.
> Bittorrent over I2P
Yes. I2P is designed with P2P in mind. The default Java I2P client already comes with a bundled BitTorrent client, there is also a BitTorrent client called "Vuze" and is used by some non-anonymous users to help seeding a torrent across the clearnet and I2P simultaneously. Because of the nature of I2P, don't expect great speed. No seeder is "usual", 10 KiB/s is "normal" and 50 KiB/s with only 3 or 5 seeders is "good", overall, it feels as if it's still the early 2000s, but when you get used to it and adopt a "download and forget, come back in 3 days" mentality, it's not actually that bad. The fastest download I've ever seen was the movie Snowden, 20+ seeders and over 200 KiB/s+...
The kind of "journalist" Luke Harding is was brutally exposed by Aaron Mate by simply repeatedly asking him for evidence for his claims when Harding was flogging a conspiracy theory book. Nothing more than that reduced him to powder.
It's an amazing thing to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ikf1uZli4g
I have no idea how this guy Harding is employed by the guardian, or indeed anyone or ever was. Obviously not a competent journalist, what he is... I'd never heard of Mate before seeing this, Mate just gives him rope and let's him do it to himself. That's the guy the Guardian had doing hatchet jobs on Assange when he was getting more death threats every day than every guardian journalist ever put together has received. [1]
[1] I have no evidence of this. But it seems a lot more plausible than the Guardian's hatchet jobs. Where is Alan Rusbridger nowadays? He was editor back then. Ah, wikipedia says principal of an Oxford college. When not appearing in cameo perfomances of movie versions of Luke Harding's hatchet jobs on Snowden. Must be where he thinks he's best speaking truth to power nowadays. He may be right.
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them" --Einstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_(film)
https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/why-the-movie-snowden-will-make-you-put-a-piece-of-tape-on-your-webcam.html
Criticisms were/are made against NSA surveillances and in the case where government tried to silence such criticism (Snowden), opinions that support Snowden's actions were made and published, even made into books and movies, without repercussion. Bloggers that support Edward Snowden did not disappear. Movie directors and screenwriters are not made pariah by their industry or sent to Guantanamo.
This sort of whataboutism does not surprise me but it's getting tiring when made repeatedly in disguise of intelligent discourse. It's dishonest because the difference is blatant.
You...don't know much about intelligence agencies, do you?
Time to watch...let's see..."Scandal", "Snowden", Canadian TV show "Intelligence", Shooter...those are just the "fictional" accounts.
Some more context...
"He [Snowden] said that the Rubik’s cube was put in for the film and he wouldn’t be divulging how he smuggled out information. However, he added, everyone in the office did have a Rubik’s cube. “So they were floating around and coming in and out all the time,” he said."
https://heavy.com/entertainment/2016/09/snowden-rubiks-cube-what-really-happened-how-did-he-to-smuggle-out-information-security-guard-movie-accurate/
To me he's at least suggesting a similar glaring shortfall in CIA processes that let him smuggle it out.
Snowden did suggest that scene in the movie, but didn't say he'd actually smuggled anything like that.
https://www.vulture.com/2016/09/edward-snowden-snowden-rubiks-cube.html
> “First of all, I just wanted to say that none of us know [how it happened],” Stone said at the Q&A, when asked about how they came up with it. “[Snowden]’s the only one who knows, and one day he may reveal it. And number two, it was his idea — it was a suggestion that we responded to and ran with.”
I'd imagine they would have done forensics if he was caught with an sd card at a checkpoint, but I'm not sure one would set off a metal detector in the first place. It's more likely a security org would epoxy the sd and usb slots on computers with confidential data, or have audits for any usb devices the hosts encounter.
Between the Snowden movie based on reports and articles written about his actions, the upcoming Amazon original starring Adam Driver on the Senate investigations into CIA torture programs (which if my timing is correct, the full report isn't even ten years old yet), and now this...does anyone else feel this strange surreal sense of...surrealness when Hollywood movies come out mere years after noteworthy news events?
Not to say "too soon" but, well I guess in a way I am?
Just curious.
I'm hoping they've implemented some form of localized EMP that you have to pass through now to leave, because large storage is so incredibly small now that it would be impossible to discern it from articles of clothing.
The "hard" part is really just getting the data off the computer in the first place, which is probably why they don't allow bringing in technology anymore.
I wonder how much of a micro computer could be smuggled in one or two parts at a time, stored in articles of clothing, with the intent of simply saving data to a micro SD card which would be the only thing you need to smuggle back out. You would need to be able to assemble the device without soldering.
I guess the easiest would be to build a digital camera to record the screen or photos instead of trying to plug into the computers themselves which probably have robust host intrustion detection and prevention. Or perhaps if you could just record the digital output of the computer before it reaches the monitor. That could be prevented with some form of HDCP though, I think.
This all sounds kind of like a science fiction movie (or In the Line of Fire or that Snowden movie) but it's an interesting thought exercise in any case.
Agree with the article's criticism of the heavy focus on Brittany Kaiser. It felt like the filmmakers were trying to put her into Snowden or Assange type circumstances, and then use those circumstances to manufacture credibility and heighten suspense. I have difficulty with the scene about a news article breaking that mentions her. Shes groaning about her career being over, but you can tell shes really excited to be in the spotlight. Assange comes off equally self-centered in the Poitras documentary, but in that case the magnitude of circumstances had already been established, along with his central role in those circumstances. The filmmakers behind 'Great Hack' never reached those levels of clarity regarding involvement, and as a result their decision to use Kaiser as primary subject felt misleading.
> My only point is that having a substantial amount of faith in anyone, when the stakes are high, is folly.
Because he has credibility due to his track record. That's the basis of how networking works. The authors of software such as TLS, Whonix, Tor, Tails, Debian, all have a certain amount of credibility within their peers as well as the general public.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, credibility can be abused; as a matter of fact, he did abuse his credibility. Snowden broke his credibility to the NSA (and US government), but for a greater good of both the people of the USA as well as the international community. The price he paid? He lost his well paid job, he lost seeing his family and friends, he lost the luxury life in the USA, his house and any and all of his assets, and a substantial part of the USA hates him (tho a more vast, significant part in the world, is thankful). Ie. his credibility with the rest of the world has substantially increased.
Now, you may think he may abuse his credibility, and it'd be a great plot for a movie, but that doesn't make it realistic. And why? Isn't the same true for any programmer on Zcash, Bitcoin, Etherium, and anything else? If you claim you cannot trust anyone, how can you live with yourself? Are you sure that's air you're breathing? Are you sure the color white is white? You'll end up with a full blown paranoid psychosis if you go with that line of reasoning (speaking from personal experience as well here). My point is that, at the very basic level, we need to trust and take some basics for granted (and, all of us do).
So what we need from you, is some kind of facts (not theory) as to why we cannot trust Snowden. The fact, as far as I can tell, contradict what you wrote: Snowden hasn't acted in the past based on financial gains. For example, he didn't sell NSA information to media or foreign agencies. Instead, his actions were solely based on moral grounds plus personal survival (hence he ended up in Russia).
I'd like to end my post that, yes, people who are psychopaths would very well end up doing something you described. I have no indication Snowden is a psychopath; tho I'm not sure about those he worked for at the CIA and NSA.
> His motives? He worked happily for the CIA from 2007 - 2009. Then he worked for Booz Allen Hamilton/NSA from 2009 to 2013. That's seven years of employment in the security-industrial complex. Was he playing the long game then?
Your question is answered in depth in the documentary, in the movie, and in various interviews (written, as well as videos). Imagine someone who's patriotic at heart, who picks up signs where he's starting to doubt the things he's doing are patriotic (e.g. on the longer term, or in their specific targets). That's Snowden in a nutshell.
You're also seemingly unaware Snowden attempted to disclose the information before.
Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread HN user sig links to an article where he admits he did join "Booz Allen to gather evidence of surveillance".
> I don't think the question is security but privacy
Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG. The latter depends on the former, and GPG is very much related to security just as well.
> Documentaries like autobiographies are often a vehicle for revisionist history.
And often they're not. They're used to tell one side of the story. The other one's the US government's take on the matter.
> In regards to [2], Hollyood is not really considered a good source of historical accuracy.
Not a statement of much, if any, value.
It wasn't the sole source I stated. If you'd have a look on Wikipedia article, you could learn how the movie was made (research-wise there's quite some details). If you'd have seen both docu and move you'd know how close the movie is to the docu (although also dramatised as mentioned in the movie itself, btw).
Its different because Snowden has credibility.
He didn't receive any money for the movie Snowden (it was donated to The Guardian instead) [1]. He didn't sell any of the NSA data. He doesn't have a track record of profiting, apart from working (like we all do) and receiving some donations.
So the claim that Snowden is a proponent of Zcash because he has invested in it has no merit. There is zero proof for such statement, and his track record doesn't suggest it either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_(film)
> Yeah sure, people believe what they want to believe. Or we could just accept that until 2013 he was just another wheel in the giant machinery that is the NSA and that his morals changed - for whatever reason.
His motives and how he ultimately ended up leaking information is well documented in the 2014 documentary Citizenfour [1] and the 2016 movie Snowden [2].
> But he was with the bad guys.
Are there shades of grey or nuances or is the NSA the root of all evil? Its impossible to care about security as NSA employee? Teaching US civilians how to use GPG means you're trying to protect civilians against the NSA? The world isn't black and white.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_(film)
Watching the Edward Snowden is pretty eye opening about this kind of stuff. I was going to buy an Alexa devise, but thankfully watched the movie first and now I know I won't...
If they made a movie about Snowden, they will surely made a movie about this.
Could you be more specific about how he's "warped the narrative" in this piece? I feel like I've done my due diligence on this topic and I felt like it was both well written and made a pretty compelling point.
Further, the places where Gladwell departs from the message board orthodoxy on Snowden aren't at all out of step with what other reporters who covered him had to say. For instance: read Fred Kaplan's review of the Snowden movie, which recaps many of the points Gladwell made here, but is far more acidic.
Well, maybe one take-away from the Snowden movie - in case it's actually accurate - is that by recruiting traditional freedom-loving hackers there will be more potential whistleblowers in the future.
Another disparate thought:
The NSA we've seen so far appears to have been infinite reach, but with very limited analysis capability. E.g. they have have an army of humans trying to make sense of the mountains of data. Just imagine their capabilities when they have applied (already, perhaps) deep learning to this data feed. This is scary shit.
Suddenly they will have a very deep profile on every connected individal on earth (like 75% by now?).
After watching the film snowden there is a part in the film. Which goes that he was scared of a new leader been elected and flicking a switch. It looks like Teresa May flicked that switch and she wasn't even elected.
Also, here's Oliver Stone's "Snowden" movie (open with Transmission or similar):
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:beb9b342be059a38a54bd1b3ec0cb6448ee07740&dn=Snowden.2016.HDRip.XviD.AC3-EVO&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969
Oliver Stone was on The Late Show last week, and he said that he's a storyteller not a historian, and that he couldn't tell the whole story in a two hour movie and make it entertaining without taking some liberties. However, he also said that Snowden saw the movie and approved of its overall accuracy, accounting for Stone's needs to make a movie.
"Snowden" was more story like, Citizen four more documentary like. Knowing that going in will help keep things in perspective. For me, I liked Citizen Four more, but think people should see both.
With bezos in charge, all the people responsible for publishing the articles are probably long gone. No way for the post to "turn them over"
Non linear digression - snowden the movie was way better then the rotten tomatoes review.
I don't know about criminal punishment. It's a complicated issue. It is extremely problematic that journalists can play an active role in disseminating state secrets and absolve themselves of responsibility. Also: the Washington Post clearly crossed the line from advocate for the US public interest to... something else... in their choices of what to public from the Snowden cache.
I'm not here to argue that the Post wasn't hypocritical. They clearly were.
I'm just saying:
* Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the Post's argument. We can despise the Post's Editorial Page editors as much as Greenwald wants us to and still reach the conclusion that the editorial is valid (though incomplete).
* Greenwald is so eager to cast aspersions at journalists who disagree with him that he roped Fred Kaplan into his piece, despite his having nothing (that I know of) to do with the Post's handling of Snowden. Simply because Kaplan is also a journalist, Greenwald believes he's not entitled to correct the record on Oliver Stone's terribly flawed movie.
Greenwald makes an important point and then sabotages it with over-the-top emotional appeals.
He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.
But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. quelle horreur.
The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.
The Post can be cowardly and still correct.
Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?
Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.
What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.
We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data than "courage" or even best intentions to come to a conclusion.
There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with "bravery".
Snowden http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/
> Mr. Snowden is not a patriot. He is not a whistleblower. He is a criminal.
Quite a statement! It's obviously not black and white. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think the conversation needs to be inclusive, frank and factual. And this statement from our representatives shows a major problem. They don't want conversation, they want sound bites.
As an aside, I saw the movie last night and highly recommend it to anyone unsure or not aware of what happened. It seems to be accurate enough to portray the essence of his experiences and decision making process.
Just saw the prescreening of snowden movie with online live event with movie cast and snowden post movie, and this was exactly what was depicted in the movie and in the event talk.
It will be interesting to see the reception that Oliver Stone's film Snowden[0] will receive when released later this week. Anecdotally, most of my friends never seemed to care as much as I do and certainly care less now.
0: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/
I was fortunate enough to get to see an early screening of Snowden. I thought it was great-- following the facts, but telling a compelling and human story. Some of the people I saw it with
People that found themselves wondering why they should care about Snowden and the programs he disclosed will find their answer in this movie.
I expected to see a full on campaign against it, this NYT piece is mild. It spins up some conspiracy with russian involvement, yawn but even it can't to deny: The movie is good. It's riveting-- just as a movie-- and the subject matter is of importance to all of us. I can't see anyone being bored by it, and I think even the most hard core of the tech people will forgive the one or two "movie-computers" moments in it. :)
It's opening a couple days before its full release (the 16th?) at something like 800 theaters (on the 14th? I believe). I would recommend going to see it on the 14.
What precautions can one take against their sysadmin? I can't think of many places that have stricter security policies than 3-letter agencies, still Snowden got away with a USB stick (man, can't wait to see the movie - I wonder if he really passed the USB stick out using the rubik's cube as in the movie trailer).
The thing is that that you can't do much against someone who has root access for a living.
There are other ways to make a point, especially when you're prepared to get fired. Damaging everyone else is selfish and stupid.
Snowden was a favorite to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival at an early Out of Competition slot. Stone himself requested an early slot. In the end he didn't get it, so this is a hint that the movie lacks something.
On the other side Laura Poitras new Assange documentary "Risk" screens in the Quinzaine (Directors fortnight) competition.
On its surface, the movie appears to be praising Snowden. I am convinced it is intentionally shitty and is deliberately overly praiseful of Snowden so that viewers will find it annoying. The net result is that people leave with a negative opinion of Snowden the person. It just looks so over-the-top terrible from the trailer alone.
I'm sure the nerds here will find ample opportunities to tear this movie apart, but keep in mind that the "average American" (a) doesn't know much about Snowden, other than "he stole secrets and hid in commie Russia, so he must've been working for them", and (b) just believes what the government says. To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood. Maybe this movie will make the average American think more about the issue, and it might even cause some to change their views about Snowden. If it does, this movie has served its purpose, and kudos to Stone.
Snowden demonstrates the way NSA and the British equivalent operate on demand* at the documentary film 'Snowden'. You should really skim through it at least, you will be surprised to what their finite budget can do.
* they collect bulk data, then develop the tools to sort them out
Can we fix the URL without the Google redirect? It should go to:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitras-on-finding-edward-snowden-obama-s-tainted-legacy-and-oliver-stone-s-snowden-film.html
I saw the film last night, and it is incredibly well done. It's crazy to see the actual events unfold right there in the room with Snowden. Go see it.
I've read a couple of articles in the past that linked Facebook and Google to CIA and that's a fair thought given the business that they're in. Of course the NSA and the CIA would like to have access to their data (and most probably they do in one way or another).
That said, doesn't take anything away from Facebook as a service. Facebook adds extreme value to your social life connects you with people that you don't see daily, lets you know about birthdays, events, comments and what not. It's excellent at what it does IMHO and if used properly is really what web-2.0 is all about. I can say that if Zuckerberg didn't invent Facebook in ~ 2004, it would have been invented by now, by someone else because that was what people needed badly to stay connected.
Facebook is just a tool. If you are in the intel business or you are a possible target (e.g. prominent figure of some sort) and fairly young to understand how the internet works, you use FB for PR and nothing else. Maybe not even that.
Every social network can be used for data mining from intelligence agencies. Do most people care? No. Why? Because they don't see any kind of real threat. It doesn't interfere with their lives. The HN crowd is composed mostly by hackers. It's natural for us to see where all this might go wrong, because that's what we do and it's natural for others not to care until the shit hits the fan.
I'm eagerly waiting for her Snowden related movie/documentary.
I saw her new Snowden film last night. I loved it and highly recommend seeing it. It's an awesome behind the scenes look at how things went down. I really enjoyed seeing more footage of Snowden as I've been keeping up on pretty much every article that has came out since this whole thing broke.
> Until the public realize that they are themselves the target of those cyber security war activities by their own government, those revelations can not be damaging enough
This is entirely true. Us plebes have been caught in the middle. And the surveillance programs are not just about cyber warfare. The NSA/DHS use them for other things as well (handing off to CIA/FBI/DEA, building profiles of people, social manipulation, etc). But this article from firstlook IS about cyber warfare.
The leaked document itself says "U.S. Strategic Command - Joint Function Component Command - Network Warfare".
> Today the new Snowden movie is all over the news, while practically nobody seems to care bout those revelations you claim being really damaging
Isn't that argumentum ad populum? The news media coverage of the Snowden revelations has been horrendous, limited and misleading through and through. In fact the Snowden movie being in the news is a great example of how the public is disconnected with what's going on. It's not a "Snowden documentary" or a "Snowden lecture" or a "Snowden document analysis". It's a short hour and change person story with a bleached narrative devoid of the content of the actual documents.
Somewhat sad to see the cyber security war narrative becoming the top voted comment on hackernews.
Until the public realize that they are themselves the target of those cyber security war activities by their own government, those revelations can not be damaging enough.
Just to support the point: Today the new Snowden movie is all over the news, while practically nobody seems to care bout those revelations you claim being really damaging.
I just hope at this point that we don't see a high-budget movie starring Justin Timberlake or Jesse Eisenberg playing Snowden.