There is no way this Snowden guy is on the level.

[Stinky The Clown]

So improbable is this guy's story that it defies belief.

[Whisp]

1. and attach that to ragin' Glenn Greenwad and it becomes more unbelievable. n/t

[ljm2002]

27. Perhaps you can provide some links...

...showing us other reports by Greenwald that have been shown to be factually inaccurate. That would support your argument that the mere presence of Greenwald makes the story more unbelievable.

Or perhaps you are just taking lame potshots with nothing to back it up.

[Whisp]

30. Greenwald always rags on Obama. He rips into him any chance he gets. that's not news.

Obama is stealing SS, Obama is killing death panel gramma's, Obama is worse than Booosh. etc., etc.,


and do your own searching, I'm not your school marm.

[ljm2002]

36. You may not be my "school marm"...

...but you are the one making assertions here, to wit: "and attach that to ragin' Glenn Greenwad and it becomes more unbelievable." So you are CLAIMING that Greenwald's mere presence in the story makes it suspect, without providing one shred of evidence that Greenwald has been inaccurate on this or any other story.

Yes Greenwald rags on Obama. Obama is the POTUS. Being ragged on from various quarters is part of the job description. Even IF Greenwald's motives are less than stellar (not a given), it does not mean his stories are inaccurate.

You, on the other hand, clearly have one agenda, which is to defend Obama from all the baddies out there who might criticize him. Especially if the criticism has any staying power.

By the way, I don't remember Greenwald commenting on death panels. Again, since you have made the assertion, perhaps you can provide a link?

[Whisp]

37. sure, here it is:

http://Idon'tgiveashitwhatGreenwadthinks.com

[ljm2002]

38. And there you have it...

...a tacit admission that your argument is content-free.

Thanks for playing.

[Whisp]

40. yes, it has been fun.

see you at the next Obama 'scandal', this one is about worn out, like all the rest.

Til then

[ljm2002]

45. Good try...

...well, not really, it's a pretty lame attempt at getting the last word.

Anyway. You might wish this "Obama 'scandal'" will go away, but I'm thinking not.

Also, I don't see it as an "Obama scandal". I see it as a "government scandal". It didn't start with Obama, and I perfectly well understand that he, like other Presidents before him, will often buy in to the programs in place when he takes office. I don't hate him for it and I don't revile him for it -- but the fact is, we're on his watch now so yes, when the administration is criticized for something, well at present that will be Obama's administration taking the heat. Just as it was Bush's administration before that, and Clinton's before that (and for the record, I have been critical of all of them at different times).

[Luminous Animal]

71. It's remarkable to me how much DU is looking like Free Republic these days.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. It's all very strange. I wonder if we'll ever know what really happened?

It could be a great made-for-TV movie.

[bluestate10]

3. His story has been described as "enhanced" by the man that blew the whistle on the Bush

Administration and it's warrant-less wiretap program.

[Smarmie Doofus]

35. "Enhanced" means basically true... doesn't it?

And if not, and he's making everything up, then he can't be prosecuted under the espionage act ( there's no espionage, just a fabricated story) or for illegal leaking.

So, lets just drop the whole thing.

[bluestate10]

53. Not in the real world. Enhanced means that the story has serious lying in it. nt

[loyalsister]

65. Enhanced data leaking

sort of like enhanced torture techniques. Material additions that distort the original goal.

[graham4anything]

4. and put Ron Paul's name in it, and well, it goes without saying

[leveymg]

5. Don't you think one of 15 federal IC agencies would mention that?

If there's a major inconsistency in his bio, we'd have heard about it by now from someone.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

6. Give it time

It's still very early. Lots more to be learned here about this guy. The little we know doesn't make any sense at all yet, which means we don't know nearly enough to understand this yet.

[leveymg]

7. What doesn't make sense to you?

That a comfortably overpaid techie with a security clearance who once contributed $250 to Ron Paul might actually acquire a sense of moral outrage and patriotic zeal sufficient for him to out a Universal Surveillance system being operated secretly by the government, putting himself on the run and an exile from the U.S. for the rest of his life?

Improbable, but nothing internally inconsistent that I can see.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

8. No, I was talking about his career trajectory,

from security guard at a CIA or NSA facility to an actual spy to a private contractor gig continuing with same, while there is no publicly available evidence of his receiving any sort of advanced education. The only education he appears to have actually received that is publicly known is sketchy, at best. But in that interview he doesn't sound like an uneducated yokel.
So, there's huge holes in that bio. I'm assuming they'll get filled in. As for your judgment on his motives, that's of course based on his own testimony. I'm slightly skeptical, just because having read whatever I could find on him, it's a very strange biography as far as we know so far.
The program itself is not the big, evil monster it's portrayed as either. Having gone through that a few times, it isn't even a big evil monster for foreigners, much less for US persons. His testimony as to what he could do, which is apparently a large part of the outrage, appears to be exaggerated. My antennae went up when he started puffin on about what he could do. I kind of doubt it. He sounded to me like someone trying to make himself look important and powerful. We shall see, but I was a developer for thirty years, now recently retired. In the old days mere programmers had all kinds of access, these days in large companies they have no access to production systems, except in emergencies as needed to fix bugs that incapacitate the systems they work on. Security for users is very restricted, to just what they need to do their jobs. He was a user. I doubt he had the powers he says he had.

[jeff47]

17. Well, he did decide to run to Hong Kong, thinking he'd get asylum there

That does show some lack of education.

It seems to me that he was the "IT Guy". The guy you call when the printer's busted.

As a result, he'd have physical access to systems, and root access to those system for the purpose of maintaining them - installing operating system updates and such. And so he probably thinks he'd be able to run any program on those systems, thus his claims about who he could spy on. Reality is going to be significantly different....if we ever hear about it.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

18. Good point about the root access.

That's an interesting detail. So yeah, I could see where he might get delusions of grandeur.

[HipChick]

23. I think he was the IT guy...he might have grabbed powerpoint slides that were sitting on

someones desk..

His background is not coming over as someone who had a clue around an operating system as of yet..

[Eddie Haskell]

57. I'm sorry, but with his CV he'd be lucky to get hired at Staples

[HipChick]

19. I doubt he had any system access..

He had access to Powerpoint slides...He's not even an IT person..in the strict sense..You can be an IT analyst and never touch a system...

[Benton D Struckcheon]

22. Depends on his job description, true.

Was he a system admin - therefore root access could be part of the job - or a systems analyst, in which case you might be right? I haven't been keeping up enough to know.

[Th1onein]

39. You have a problem with his bio? Why don't the NSA goons have the same problem?

Last edited Tue Jun 11, 2013, 07:32 PM - Edit history (1)

He's apparently leaked something important and being called a traitor by the PTB. Why would his bio make any difference? He had the goods and spilled the beans, and now has half the US intelligence forces trying to find him. That should give at least what he OUTED some credibility.

And I think that you need to read a little bit more and educate yourself a bit more, when it comes to the program that he outed. Remember, Clapper, himself, has a different definition of "collecting" than you or I do. He says that it's like having a library full of books, and he's only "collecting" when he opens one of them and reads them. That's not like any collection I've ever heard of. He has the LIBRARY, full of your and my communications, STORED. That should give you pause, in and of itself.

Your arguments hold no water at all.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

46. Huh???

It's metadata. Get a life.

[Th1onein]

47. Sorry, you're wrong. It's EVERYTHING. STORED.

And that archive is a threat to liberty. And, it's against the law. And, it's an abridgement of your rights. And, you should be very, very upset about it.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

48. No, that is simply not true

It's communication logs, and it's not clear even that all of them are gathered (I doubt it seriously) or what exactly the scope is yet. What we do know is that if the logs show something suspicious, THEN they need a warrant to go further than just the metadata.
More info is gathered about your movements if you go to a bank to withdraw money and the camera records you going in and out. That's not metadata, that's an image of you doing your business.
Further, just FYI, if you have an IP you can't actually narrow down the location of the IP address any further than the location of the ISP the computer is using. That's a pretty large area. In the case of the person who was caught trying to bomb the NY subway, all they knew from what the NSA gathered was that some computer located in Aurora CO had communicated with a known dropbox of Al Qaeda's principal bombmaker. Everything else was gathered via normal investigative procedure backed by warrants.

It's early days, don't jump to conclusions. There's a lot we don't know yet.

[Th1onein]

49. Nope. You're mistaken. Go forth.....educate thyself.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

50. OK, produce a cite. I'll wait. n/t

[Th1onein]

51. Go read DU. It's all here. I'm not doing your homework for you.

Hint: They've even admitted it now.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

54. Sorry, I've read up on this too. Ta-ta. n/t

[Th1onein]

68. Apparently not, or you would not still be ignorant of the facts. Ta-ta. nt

[randome]

11. After less than 90 days on the job? He sure didn't waste time agonizing over the morality of it!

Actually, after 0 days on the job since Greenwald says he and Snowden were talking in February.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[jeff47]

16. Actually, it was negative days on the job if you believe both Snowden and Greenwald. (nt)

[Luminous Animal]

70. Worked for the NSA for 4 years and an employee of various contractors.

[jeff47]

86. But his story is the programs he leaked were new to him when he started at Booz. (nt)

[Luminous Animal]

87. So? He was hired with NSA clearance.

[jeff47]

88. He started talking to someone a month before he learned about the program

The story doesn't add up.

He was talking to Greenwald at least a month before he went to work for Booz. How could he have been talking to Greenwald about a program he hadn't heard about yet?

[Luminous Animal]

90. Greenwald says he has thousands of documents with a dozen or more

newsworthy and that he had weeks to months of articles coming up. Prior to Booz Allen, Snowden has stated that he as been disturbed for years about what he saw during his 4 years of working for the NSA. So how do you know that it was these specific documents that he was talking to Greenwald about? He most likely accessed them during the course of their relationship.

[jeff47]

92. I "know" it because that's what Snowden said in his interview. (nt)

[Luminous Animal]

69. He worked for the NSA for 4 years and you know this. Really. I've lost all respect for

you. And, believe it or not, I had some.

[DevonRex]

10. Hell no. They'll neither confirm nor deny any part of what

he has said. To say one thing is wrong would indicate something else is right. To say he's totally full of shit would indicate someone else is responsible for the leak, which may or may not be valid in whole or in part.

Or he could be a total nutcase hacker who got one piece of information but then has made the rest up and people are playing along with him.

There is no value in doing anything but what has already been done. And said.

[FarCenter]

9. Damage assessment and control will determine exactly what Snowden did and didn't know

Then the intelligence community will assume that all that is compromised, and they will take steps to control damage. The fact that Guardian or WaPo held some stuff back, doesn't matter. Anything Snowden touched in his carreer at CIA and NSA is poisoned.

It will be a huge and very expensive job.

[moondust]

12. I like this part:

according to the Guardian, he stuffs pillows against the doors and "puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/edward-snowden-the-nsa-leaker-comes-forward.html

In his hotel room. Anonymously. In Hong Kong.

Paranoid flake.

[Th1onein]

13. The FBI has already visited his parents' hosue. Not too paranoid.

They are after him, no doubt about that. HOW important was he?

[moondust]

15. That's a given.

Even he knows they're going to be tracking him down.

But wearing a big hood and stacking pillows in his overseas hotel room so the all-powerful spy in the sky can't see his passwords? That's paranoid. Maybe he's watched Blade Runner too many times. ??

[Th1onein]

42. Maybe he was in a position to know more than you know. Ever thought of that?

I wouldn't make fun if I were you.

[muriel_volestrangler]

72. Or to guard against someone who has planted a few cameras in his room

having bribed the cleaner to give them access. It doesn't have to be 'Blade Runner'; webcams are installed for spying by non-professional people in real life, these days (think of those people who've been caught installing them in toilet cubicles).

[pnwmom]

29. Of course they're after him. He released classified files in a public spectacle. n/t

[HipChick]

20. Using an unsecured Hotel Wi-Fi

not so smart to me

[FarCenter]

24. Wouldn't matter, he has to use a VPN tunnel or encrypted messaging anyway.

Not only is the WiFi insecure, but the rest of the net is as well. So encryption has to be at the application level and extend to a trusted destination.

[LittleBlue]

21. That isn't paranoid in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is thick with Chinese and American intel. He's the US' most wanted man, not to mention foreign governments.

You really think that's paranoid under the circumstances?

[moondust]

28. I do.

To think somebody/anybody has installed cameras in all the hotel rooms in Hong Kong capable of zooming in on a laptop keyboard and picking up the keystrokes entered in an encrypted password box might seem believable in a James Bond thriller but it's a little far fetched in real life. He presumably registered at a random hotel before anybody knew who he was, so there would be no ostensible reason to spy on him. Frankly, if somebody wanted to do blanket spying on every guest in every hotel room in Hong Kong they would probably laugh at the idea of cameras and instead tap into the hotel's WiFi/broadband network and/or phone relay.

Personally, I would dismiss anything this seemingly paranoid/delusional guy SAYS and focus strictly on the documents in trying to figure out what is really going on and what, if anything, needs to be done about it.

[Th1onein]

44. Hey, he told his supervisors that he was going to take some time off and they IMMEDIATELY started

looking for him, even before the leak. Now, that should tell you what he's dealing with. I don't blame him for being paranoid. We have satellites that have a resolution of 5 to 6 inches. You've got to be kidding, he shouldn't be paranoid.

[morningfog]

14. He's level enough for Obama to react in a day.

[pnwmom]

31. Obama would have been insane NOT to react.

If we learned anything from Gore's lost candidacy, it's that you don't wait to react.

[ljm2002]

25. Why you're right!

In fact, that must be why everyone in the government got right up there and denied the reports based on Snowden's leaks.

Oh. Wait.

[tridim]

26. My new pet theory is that James O'Keefe is involved.

There are many similarities.

[HipChick]

34. That is not a reach...

This guy likes to brag...

I'm thinking he was bragging to someone who told him what it might be worth..

[Eddie Haskell]

60. How about Ian Brzezinski

He returned to the United States in 1995, and became Legislative Assistant for National Security Affairs to Senator William V. Roth. In 2000, he became a Senior Professional Staff Member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[1]

He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy in 2001–2005.

After leaving the Defense Department, Brzezinski became a Principal at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., providing policy and technical advice to U.S. combatant commands and foreign clients. He left Booz Allen Hamilton after five years, and now heads the Brzezinski Group, which provides similar services.

[Catherina]

32. Clapper: Leaks are "literally gut-wrenching", "huge, grave damage"

“For me, it is literally – not figuratively – literally gut-wrenching to see this happen because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities,” Clapper told NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/09/clapper-leaks-are-literally-gut-wrenching-leaker-being-sought/

You think they're all playing a game or something? What defies belief is what they're doing and how they're it.

[azurnoir]

33. well he's level enough for 8 Senators 5 of whom are Democrats to want an investigation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014506051

[babylonsister]

55. Or perhaps he's so "unlevel" that people are concerned about

how this happened in the first place.

[cali]

76. nope. at least not Senator Leahy who has been concerned about the NSA activity for years.

[longship]

41. I won't go that far, but something's screwy about this.

Too many questions about how a high school drop-out gets to such a level within a large nation's secret security infrastructure so quickly, and with apparently so few questions asked along the way.

That is the scandal within the non-scandal.

We knew about all the other stuff for years. It was all reported here on DU.

Now some people are shocked --I tell you, SHOCKED! -- that the USA is doing what we all here knew it was doing.

But how did this Snowden get access with so few credentials, so little formal education, and apparently so little vetting.

In the 1980's I had a DOD secret clearance. I have a mathematics and scientific background and am degreed with honors. I can state first hand that all such things are no trifle. Even with such a clearance you are only told what is necessary for your job. There are protections in place to keep it so, even within a single room with multiple workers one only shares what is allowed.

They are extremely paranoid about these things. (I have more than one amusing story.) If you have such a clearance there are checks and oversight. You don't get to go rogue or to look over others shoulders.

There's something fishy about this Snowden's story.

[HipChick]

43. Exactly...this has been my experience too, that's why this guy's story is very fishy

[LeftInTX]

56. I agree too

I also wonder how he got that FISA warrant?

Why would a contractor have a copy of it? There is no need for a contractor to have a copy of a warrant.

Did he somehow get into the judge's or Verizon's stuff?

[muriel_volestrangler]

74. Maybe his job was IT security for the computers on which they do their admin work

So he doesn't have access to the machines on which they store the data of all their targets; just the ones on which they prepare documents, store ones they've been sent, perhaps send internal mail, and so on. So he has access to a stored copy of the court documents, the presentation someone prepared on PRISM, and so on.

[alarimer]

58. This would be true of he were a government employee

But he is a contractor (or was at least) and their standards are likely to be more lax for the simple reason that they need bodies in order to get the cushy government contracts.

In fact, I think the most important lesson here is that these are jobs that should be done by government employees who are vetted and screened. Booz and company are in it to make money and because they know the right people, they are are not scrutinized at all. So they make shitloads of money for doing a crappy job.

[longship]

62. True, or possibly true. However...

That doesn't explain the rest of his putative résumé. Before Booz et al. How does he get those jobs without any credentials? And no education?

Something's funny about this.

I had to graduate with honors and be both a math and computer wizard to get my secure job. Nobody working there had much less. The first interview wasn't an easy one. The interview for the clearance was much more difficult. And that ignores the fact that the fucking FBI is going to check up on everything you put in your DOD Secret application and everything you say.

I assume that none of this happened to Snowden. Maybe this is the scandal within the non-scandal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

75. I doubt they thought you were 'secure' because of your academic qualifications

Your qualifications would have been relevant to the work you did; whether they trust you is from the background check - for which I've not seen anything that say Snowden would have had a problem (before this, of course). He'd been in the army, for instance - which is an indication another part of the government had basic trust in him to follow orders. The nearest we've seen to political activity is donating to Ron Paul - which happened after he'd started working with the NSA. So they saw him, certainly at the start, as someone who wouldn't cause problems.

I don't think that you should "assume that none of this happened to Snowden". I've seen nothing to indicate that. He seems to have started off as a physical security guard. That would probably involve some basic use of computers; if it was clear he understood computer use well, someone may have then thought it worth moving him into IT security. Not the person inventing new forms of secure communication, but the guy who keeps access list records, deals with problems when new access is needed, maybe keeps anti-virus protection up to date on a network, that kind of thing.

[Eddie Haskell]

61. His family probably had clearance

[longship]

63. Oh dear. You've never had to get a clearance, have you?

One doesn't inherit it.

In 1980, it took months and the FBI was involved. They even interviewed the neighbors from when I was in high school some 12 years previously.

But the whole company was military, although the big plant made large components of commercial jetliners to be shipped by rail to Washington for the commercial branch. The 747 Air Force One was assembled at the Wichita plant while I worked there. Now that was a big time hush hush project. It was on the flight line for a while but you didn't dare approach it. We all knew better.

One of the best things was the Space Shuttle Enterprise (the first one -- a mock-up) landed right across the street from my building on the back of its 747 transport (also modified in Wichita). We all knocked off work and stood beside it with hundreds of other Boeing employees and Air Forces people, basking in its awesomeness, no doubt dreaming of Star Trek. That was prior to the first shuttle launch but after the first Star Trek movie.

Lots of great stories of working there.

[Eddie Haskell]

66. My father was VP for a large defense contractor

My entire family was vetted, too. I worked for a defense contractor while in college and after graduation. I can't say that my father's clearance had anything to do with my jobs, but I can tell you I worked for major players in the Iran Contra Scandal. Maybe it helps a little.

http://eyreinternational.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/the-illegal-arms-trade-iraq-iran-war-1980-1988-part-4/

[longship]

67. Well my neighbors from 15 years earlier were interviewed by the FBI.

That's what it normally takes for such clearances. It's not like a job interview. They pour over your history, which you have to report in detail. Then they check it out. In detail! And that can involve FBI; they're the ones with jurisdiction.

It's not at all a trivial matter.

And I was working for a private company.

Boeing Military Airplane Company. Now gone, but at the time were the big military contractor under the Boeing label. There were secret projects all over the place. We called them black hole projects because once an employee got sucked into one of them they disappeared. You never saw them again. It's not like they wacked them or anything. They just probably all retire out of the project or are moved to another Boeing location. It's all hush-hush. Nobody paid it any attention because it was fairly common.

I worked with a couple of people who came out of such projects (so it was said) but one didn't talk about such things.

Having worked for years under that umbrella I am skeptical of Snowden's narrative.

[Eddie Haskell]

79. Yea, having the FBI go door to door asking questions

makes you the talk of the neigborhood

[longship]

82. Gees.

Ya don't get it, do ya?

Maybe there's a scandal within the scandal.

When they catch this guy he's likely going to prison for a long time. So maybe they didn't check this guy out very well. The fact that he blabbed and ran off to Hong Kong sure does indicate that he wasn't.

He doesn't seem to be qualified for the jobs he had. He has no education. Why give him a security clearance of any kind let alone one with access to such things as he has released?

Something sure is screwy here.

[Eddie Haskell]

84. No, I do get it.

I was talking about my family's experience. The FBI questioned our neighbors and for awhile that resulted in some funny stares. I agree that Snowden's story seems screwy. With his CV, he'd be lucky to get hired by Staples let alone the CIA. But if your family has already been vetted, I can see where the clearance process might have been easier. I think the broken leg story may be cover for special training. Something isn't right.

[longship]

85. That's what I was trying to say.

This doesn't make any sense at all to me. If I am deciding this guy doesn't get a job. I tell him, come back when you get some education and some experience.

[bowens43]

78. why would any of that matter? What he said is happening, is happening. The government has admitted i

[longship]

83. Well, in hindsight, this guy shouldn't have had access.

He certainly doesn't seem to have the qualifications for the jobs he had. And why give a guy with no education and a screwy resume a security clearance in the first place?

[Tseko]

52. After Bradley Manning, I find this very believable.

[Curmudgeoness]

59. Is it impossible for you to think

that there are a few people in this world who are willing to stand up for their principles to their detriment?

I don't know what to believe or not believe about him, but I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, there have been others in the past who have stood when the rest of the world sat.

[ozone_man]

64. Apparently so.

I agree. Give the man the benefit of the doubt. He sounds earnest. As he said, who would want to live in a society like that?

”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” - Ben Franklin

[Curmudgeoness]

94. I am really troubled by this.

I keep thinking that this guy had it all....great looking finance, six figure job without even a high school diploma, living in Hawaii. And he gave that all up. I can't imagine this being anything but principles...he had to look in the mirror every day. I could be wrong. But what would his purpose be then??? And then I am sure the NSA and other agencies will smear him and put out all sorts of doubts about him. That is to be expected as far as I am concerned. Do I or don't I believe it?????

Thanks for showing me that there is someone else out there who isn't ready to hang Snowden yet.

[sibelian]

73. I think he isn't even American.

I want to see his birth certificate.

[KansDem]

80. Touché...(nt)

[bowens43]

77. It doesnt matter, shoot the messenger

the message has been delivered and confirmed.

[piratefish08]

81. there you have it then. case closed.

[grantcart]

89. Something doesn't add up.

So he is a Ron Paul supporter and has a deep distrust in the US government and the entire US national security operation and he is able to get a high level job in that community without a high school diploma.

Hmmmm.

I give him credit for coming out and facing the music but whoever advised him to go to Hong Kong (Greenwald?) was giving him bad advice.

[DCBob]

91. IMO this guy is just a two bit hacker..

who had just enough brains and skill to hack his way into an NSA or CIA server and steal the documents. The rest he just made up to make the story more interesting and sensational.

[Bake]

93. If the story is BS, why is the Justice Dept preparing charges against him?

Some here are awfully quick to dismiss it.

Bake