Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending into a light crowd of locals and tourists. He cocked his arm for a handshake, then turned his shoulder to indicate a path. Before long he had guided his visitor to a secure space out of public view.

During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.

Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

1. His mission is 'already accomplished'
"For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won," Snowden told The Washington Post's Barton Gellman in Moscow. "As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself."

CNN: 5 Takeaways from Edward Snowden's Washington Post Interview

Check out Barton Gellman on the CNN interview. CNN also has a good write-up of the top 5 points from the original interview, like the example listed above.



Interviewer: "Former CIA and NSA director Michael Haden says Snowden will waste away in Moscow, and turn into an alcoholic like every other defector."

Barton on Snowden: "As a matter of fact, he doesn't drink, he never has."

Barton on Snowden: "If he defected at all, it was from my government to its people."

Barton: "His concerns have been validated, by, for example, a Federal judge."

The NSA director said Snowden had the keys to the kingdom but its obvious he's backing off from releasing too much more my suspicious mind thinks perhaps some sort of negotiations are underway

I certainly hope he's not considering it all done ..but it does sound like it by his words in your link. (sigh)

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”

(op link)

Nawww.. tell me the damage done to United States National Security wasn't all just to start a public debate? No.. it can't have all been for nothing more... Well, I guess it could be. He just stated it, himself.

This is the tally I'm more closely following while sitting on the fence for thinking of him as a traitor I won't mind seen the hunters catch some day ...or a reluctant victim of circumstance trying to do the right thing.

The info is from Cryptome. They've been running a tally on this for quite awhile now, for those interested in keeping score and how many generations will wait to see it all.

24 December 2013. Add 2 pages to Washington Post. Tally now 799 pages (~1.4%) of reported 58,000. NSA head claims 200,000 (~.40% of that released).

That's the latest update with the estimate here for time at this rate, and using the lower 50,000+ number for docs in play right now.

13 December 2013. Add 26 pages to Trojkan (SVT). Tally now 797 pages (~1.4%) of reported 58,000. NSA head claims 200,000 (~.40% of that released). Australia press reports "up to 20,000 Aussie files."

Rate of release over 6 months, 132.8 pages per month, equals 436 months to release 58,000, or 36.3 years. Thus the period of release has decreased in the past month from 42 years.

Source

This is kind of a running feature they've had with new messages on a regular basis. Within that is also a chart showing by document count, which outlets have released and how many pages.

If this was all about 1% document release ..and seemingly the 1% we already knew about in things like PRISM but just hadn't seen proof of? Well.. This was just wrong, IMO. If it stops here. This was very wrong.

Sounds like he is going to run for office.

Eddie probably realized Moscow is nowhere to spend his winters.

Or, and most probably they got to him. He is talking in circles.

I thought we were going to get the big stuff. We knew most of his revelations.

reply to post by darkbake


I was going to do a thread on this darkbake, instead I will just add the uber-condensed version to yours.

With regards to Snowden not wanting to be the story, I can see his point but unfortunately he does not control the media. However, his intentions make me think twice.

Apparently he entrusted his 50,000+ documents with Greenwald and Poitras. By doing so he is no longer the source. Matter of fact, he is pretty much out of the picture. Greenwald and Poitras control the release of the documents. Sibel Edmonds does a good piece on the matter here:

www.boilingfrogspost.com...

One more bit of information for consideration. The owner of Pay Pal and E-bay, Pierre Omidyar, offered the two $250,000,000 for control of the cache via a new news corporation. They accepted. What could go wrong here?

So for Snowden to claim his mission is accomplished, what else is he supposed to say? Again Edmonds asks Snowden some good questions regarding the very issue here:

www.boilingfrogspost.com...

FTR, I have nothing against the man. I support his efforts if his efforts are as he says. It's the 'as he says' part I am unclear about.

www.youtube.com...

reply to post by ABNARTY

One more bit of information for consideration. The owner of Pay Pal and E-bay, Pierre Omidyar, offered the two $250,000,000 for control of the cache via a new news corporation. They accepted. What could go wrong here?

This right here… Seems to me it kinda looks like a tug of war for control now between controlling powers. Like the NSA started getting all up in peoples business and the other side is using their info against them.

Remember in the past Hoover had a huge, unchecked source of power by tapping people's calls and digging up dirt on politicians and prominent figures.

We may just be watching a feud from the outside point of view, not even close to fully grasping the entire picture.

reply to post by boncho


That's a good point.

From a business perspective, the guy has got the dirt on the government and competitors. He paid for the leverage. I wonder how many future pieces of legislation will go his way versus not go his way?

ABNARTY
reply to post by boncho

 

That's a good point.

From a business perspective, the guy has got the dirt on the government and competitors. He paid for the leverage. I wonder how many future pieces of legislation will go his way versus not go his way?

Not just about legislation. Which is long term. Think about anything some really nefarious stuff. Like a corporation getting their stock short sold on inside information, or lets say people are using data collected to crash deals that are just about to go through, funding competitors, etc.

Now all of a sudden the people on the receiving end have information showing that someone was behind it... What would they do with that info?

"Oh you tried to extort me? Okay, well, how's this for extortion?"

Just mulling thoughts around here...

reply to post by boncho


Totally dead on. Why else would he offer such an insane sum for a network start-up? It has little to do with the network and everything to do with leveraging every possible angle against anything or anybody possibly in his way. I guess the NSA wrote the playbook and this dude read it.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


In the article itself, the Post quotes an anonymous source who basically casts doubt on the claim that there was substantial damage done to national security. It's this one from the Post article:

Clapper has said repeatedly in public that the leaks did great damage, but in private he has taken a more nuanced stance. A review of early damage assessments in previous espionage cases, he said in one closed-door briefing this fall, found that dire forecasts of harm were seldom borne out. “People must communicate,” he said, according to one participant who described the confidential meeting on the condition of anonymity. “They will make mistakes, and we will exploit them.”

I would say that the greatest damage done was in terms of public and foreign view of the US. What we have is now a second president in a row that is not necessarily viewed favorably by the world at large, Bush being the first. That's not a good thing for the US but I tend to be more pragmatic about it and see it as falling under the old axiom, "you reap what you sow".

While you or I or many others on this site may have believed that such surveillance was already possibly true, there is a huge difference between people posting on a conspiracy theory forum (which can be relegated to the "tin foil hat" category by a good portion of the public) and actual evidence of wide scale surveillance. This is like Watergate on steroids. The public, both foreign and domestic, absolutely needed to know so that they could make informed decisions not only about their own interactions but in terms of democracy, itself. How can they do either if the views of wide scale surveillance are merely the suggestions of us tin foil hat wearers and a fictional tv show?

Actual evidence of it has had multiple ramifications and some not so good as I firmly believe that free speech, for many, has effectively been chilled. It also has called into question the information economy, itself, through those relationships between corporation and intelligence agency. Personally, I feel that this absolutely needed to be outed on both the corporate data collection side and the governmental side as we will see this information being used in a variety of ways in the very near future that we may really not like.