Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

Originally posted by ProfessorT
Edward Snowden is NOT an American hero. I sincerely hope the security services start extradition proceedings and take him back to the US where he can be placed in front of a judge to answer for his actions. The leak of the information to The Guardian was reckless and Mr Snowden should never have breached national security. PRISM is in place for the right reasons - to protect people.

I could not disagree with you more. Are you willing to give up your freedom for the illusion of security? I am not trying to be insulting, this is a personal decision, but this is an insecure world. The U.S. has created almost all of the threats we currently experience. How about we act with integrity at home and abroad as a means of increasing security.

reply to post by Sinfulknowledge


Yeah, that's a pretty disgusting thing to have happen in a country that prides itself on freedom.

The rank and file naysayers will come out of the woodwork with their boisterous objections that he broke "the law".

Well, what about the law?

Who is it that writes and enforces the law?

What about the Halliburton Loophole? That's law.

What about the Monsanto Loophole? That's law.

We see all the shenanigans that went down with the banking industry in the recent economic meltdown. What about the law then?

Or has it always been a discretionary thing?

That last question is rhetorical.

reply to post by Bilk22


Yes, Edward Snowden was extremely calm in that video. Like you, I always have the lurking suspicion of 'What are they up to now?' My interpretation was that his mental state must be like the meditation before committing honor suicide in medieval Asia. You meditate until you are divested of all earthly attachments and you are ready to jump. As he says, he wrestled with it for a long time. Finally, he was sure of his reasons and his risks and achieved a state of calm. That's my take. I want to believe (but then, I also wanted to believe that 'change we can believe in' campaign promise)

If it were a planned disclosure, it is likely to boomerang because the effect is to notify people that they have ALREADY convicted themselves of violating laws somewhere in their correspondence so they have nothing to lose. If you have already lost the game, why would you stay in it?

reply to post by Maluhia


Wow. Ed Snowden is 100% right in the actions that he took. What a brave thing to do. What a huge stand he took, giving up his comfy life to do what's right for his country. My faith in people has gone up a bit because of him. Maybe more and more people will be brave and follow his actions.

Originally posted by Sinfulknowledge
Edward is late to the show!
William Binney is a 32 year vet of the NSA, mathematician as well as the "best code breaker" the NSA ever had.
He has been exposing this much longer then Edward.
So the guy with 32 years experience and a phd gets no news flow but a guy with a GED and not even half the experience of William is all of a sudden the most credible whistle blower?

youtu.be...

Until Snowden showed up with 'the goods', William Binney was just an easy to discredit and disgruntled former employee... at least the government could play it off that way.

Snowden took that Top Secret power point with him, he had proof.

I notice a lot of folks think this is fishy and I agree.

Since the beginning I have figured this as an intentional leak. If that is true, it explains why this issue is only gaining traction now.
It serves to distract everyone from the IRS scandal.

What is intriguing to me are the implications of more to come.
A double cross would be sweet. To see him come out and say he was ordered to leak the info and this is all a ruse.

Originally posted by Maluhia
Just saw this tweet Snowden apparently sent -

He taunted Clapper in a tweet: “Clapper: leaks ‘literally gut-wrenching’ — ‘huge, grave damage’ — save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories. You’ll need it.”

This could get better!

www.nypost.com...

It was NOT Snowden who tweeted that, it was Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.

It might be considered a small error, but it's an error nonetheless, and it might cause problems later.

I think it was said early on that there was a lot of information to come out, and that this was just the start of it. It's hard to imagine how this could get bigger than it is already, but I have a few ideas.

I think there's a lot of things out there being gossiped about but might be about to be proven through leaks...

1. Leaks about the purpose of the new Utah facility
2. Release of evidence showing that the Obama admin targeted Romney and his campaign
3. Evidence that the NSA has "files" on foreign leaders and has used that information against them
4. Evidence that the corporations involved have received inside information on competitors for their own financial gain
5. Manipulation of information and mining of data to gather profitable information from foreign governments
6. Evidence of the targeting of specific groups of people - Occupy, Tea Party, Veterans, Militias, Journalists...

Originally posted by JayinAR
I notice a lot of folks think this is fishy and I agree.

I notice NOT a lot of folks like you who are trying to discredit this men and he is risking his life for you . Shame on you !

reply to post by Rocker2013

Release of evidence showing that the Obama admin targeted Romney and his campaign

I am trying to think of the ways that the standard Obamaphile/Obamapologist will try to rationalize that one, if it would turn out to be true.

Maybe the race card?

reply to post by xavi1000


Shame on me?
I will speculate all I want, buddy. If you don't like it, kindly shove off. This is a conspiracy board. I don't trust the government at all. I question everything they do. Even down to this. I am on the fence.

Originally posted by JayinAR
I notice a lot of folks think this is fishy and I agree.

You can add me to that list. How coincidental that he outed himself (from Hong Kong) at the same time the Chinese President is visiting the USA? Something about that is making me question all of this.

Originally posted by Bilk22

Originally posted by Maluhia
reply to post by bg_socalif

 

People like Snowden will have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives and nothing will have changed.

Probably true, but maybe a few more people will begin to realize what the heck is happening and make a bigger stink, this is not something that's happening to someone else - this is happening to all of us. Heck, I can dream...

You asked me to expand on my post, which I did. Now the more I think about it and the more I see Republicans come out in defense of this surveillance and calling on Snowden to be prosecuted, the more I'm convinced this was a setup. There is a good possibility this was a controlled release of information so that everyone gets conditioned to understand we are being watched.

Again I look at the video interview and I don't see a guy who just took on the most powerful force on the planet. He doesn't even look worried. Something isn't right here. Let's add, the guy is 29. If he has a masters at the very least, he's not doing what he did for very long. His claims of being in the positions he was in seem farfetched. I know IT is full of young guns, but I don't see him having the time in, to have moved up the food chain the way he said he did.

Has anyone done any homework on where he went to school? Anything on his background that can corroborate or verify he is at least a techie with a degree? With all the controversy this guy has created, one would think the media would be all over his background already. Heck, with the CT shooting, they knew where that kid bought his bubblegum, in a matter of a few hours. I'm not convinced this is what it appears to be. I guess time will tell when we see it play out further.

Star, Bilk. If he's a plant, it still though may entertain some unintended consequences
for the farmers. Maybe there is enough of the population now who have been ushered to
a large enough pain threshold to back out and say, "Forget the messenger, is the
message true?" If he is after all a plant he'll disappear dead or alive, and the Wurlitzer
will crank up the National Security jingle. I've got a feeling the longer this plays out the
less it will serve the farmers. Might have been a bad idea to run an OpEd for PRISM
by the media before the fan cranked up... we saw the 2x4 coming this time.

Originally posted by JayinAR
reply to post by xavi1000

 

Shame on me?

I will speculate all I want, buddy. If you don't like it, kindly shove off. This is a conspiracy board. I don't trust the government at all. I question everything they do. Even down to this. I am on the fence.

You are on the fence because you are safe from yours mom basement and this young man risked his life for truth and liberty. His life would never be the same .

Source SKY news via Yahoo news..."A native of North Carolina, Mr Snowden said he did not have a high school diploma and enlisted in the US Army in 2003 because he wanted to fight in Iraq.
He was discharged after breaking his legs in training and took a job as a security guard at an NSA facility in Maryland.
He later joined the CIA where he worked on IT security. He said he started becoming disillusioned during a stint in Geneva where he had access to classified documents.
"I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good," he was quoted as saying."

So supposedly the CIA will hire you without even finishing high school??????????????
That don't sound right to me.

uk.news.yahoo.com...

reply to post by xavi1000


Oh, are you gonna call me a basement dweller?

How mature. I remember my first time on the internet...

Hey, 2004 called. They want their rhetoric back.

This leak is actually convenient for the administration for a number of reasons.

Originally posted by Rocker2013

1. Leaks about the purpose of the new Utah facility

Would think that was pretty clear anyway...

2. Release of evidence showing that the Obama admin targeted Romney and his campaign

I don't doubt it. I suspect every incumbent has been tempted to use NSA and IRS against their foes.

3. Evidence that the NSA has "files" on foreign leaders and has used that information against them

Ok, stop the presses. I don't know how to tell you this, but that's been going on since I was in the Army. Or at least since I was in my final MOS in the Army, say about 1984-1990. I can say that because we used to get friggin' BOOKS on the people we were about to go 'visit'. Not just the locals we were going to be working with, if we were, but any gubmint official we might possibly encounter, and a few we probably wouldn't. And, man, these things were just AMAZING. All the stuff you'd want to know like how they tended to behave in certain circumstances, but all the other stuff too, like how they liked to run around in diapers and what not. It never said where the data came from, but you had to figure it was either agency or NSA info, occasionally run through a team of psychologists to give you leverage points to use in 'negotiations'.

4. Evidence that the corporations involved have received inside information on competitors for their own financial gain

Yep, that happens too. Only, it works both ways. If you are working for Northrup don't leave your computer in the hotel in Paris if you don't want DGSE going through it.

5. Manipulation of information and mining of data to gather profitable information from foreign governments

And you, buddy ro. Not only NSA, though, DIA and JSOC do it all the livelong day.

reply to post by Maluhia


www.wired.com...

gigaom.com...

He wasnt the first NSA whistleblower! Note the date of the links!

en.m.wikipedia.org...

In a press release issued by the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition on December 22, 2005, Tice explained the public aspect of his charges, stating that:"As a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) officer it is continually drilled into us that the very first law chiseled in the SIGINT equivalent of the Ten Commandments (USSID-18) is that Thou shall not spy on American persons without a court order from FISA. This law is continually drilled into each NSA intelligence officer throughout his or her career. The very people that lead the National Security Agency have violated this holy edict of SIGINT.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

en.m.wikipedia.org...(U.S._intelligence_official)

During interviews on Democracy Now! in April and May 2012[12] with elaboration in July 2012 at 2600's hacker conferenceHOPE[2] and a couple weeks later at DEF CON,[13] Binney reported that he estimates that the NSA (particularly through theStellar Wind project[14]) had intercepted 20 trillion communications "transactions" of Americans (such as phone calls, emails, and other forms of data but not including financial data). This includes most of the emails of US citizens. Binney discloses in sworn affidavit for Jewel v. NSA[15] that the agency was "purposefully violating the Constitution".

In July 2007, armed FBI agents raided the homes of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe, the same people who had filed the complaint with the DoD Inspector General in 2002.[27]Binney claims they pointed guns at his wife and himself. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union.[21] None of these people were charged with any crimes. In November 2007, there was a raid on Drake's residence. His computers, documents, and books were confiscated

In a 2011 New Yorker article, journalistJane Mayer wrote that Drake felt the NSA was committing serious crimes against the American people, on a level worse than what president Nixon had done in the 1970s. Drake reviewed the laws regarding disclosure of information, and decided that if he revealed unclassified information to a reporter, then the worst thing that would happen to him was probably that he would be fired

en.m.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Bedlam
reply to post by Bilk22

 

I've seen the agency hire oddly qualified people like that but usually NSA is picky.

Picky? Yes, but for a specific type of individual. A high school diploma, however, isn't one of them. The NSA will hire high school seniors to work full-time for them during the summer: www.nsa.gov...

So yes, they are picky but they are picky in looking for specific types of minds.

reply to post by JayinAR


You can laugh all day of you want , that doesn't change the fact that you are one of the reasons why people like Edward Snowden are so rare nowadays. Why should anyone bother like Edward to give you information for free who is important for you when your brainwashed and little brain cannot comprehend the importance of information.

We all know the American government is data-mining.

Obama came out last week and said so. He actually said it wasn't a major encroachment on freedoms, get over it! (I'm paraphrasing)

So it's been established that America is and has been spying on Americans in clear violation of the 4th Amendment. They are using the PAtriot Act as a way of getting around that.

Snowden is just confirming what we already knew.