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Government whistleblowers also have to strongly consider attempting to run things up the pole internally first in a Snowden-type situation. You may be allowed to skip internal procedures for whistleblowing if you have a good reason for believing internal reporting channels are compromised or ineffective. You’d still have to report it to some government entity that could hold the NSA accountable (like sending the info to members of Congress or your agency’s Office of Inspector General) rather than run straight to the news media.
Running straight to the media first like Snowden did generally strips you of whistleblower protections. Especially if its not even something illegal in the first place (like spying on Angela Merkel).
Biggest Snowden disclosures which would have been supposed to receive whistleblower protections (unsanctioned / illegal NSA activity):
- Domestic phone record metadata collection (actually was approved by FISA/FISC courts under section 215 but federal courts determined the program exceeded the authority granted by 215)
- PRISM program (was authorized under section 702 and received annual certifications from FISC, ostensibly focused only on foreign spying but scope of collection ability included all domestic content as well)
- XKeyscore (authorized under Executive Order 13333 and FISA, similar concerns as PRISM)
Neither XKeyscore or PRISM were ever determined to “systemically” exceed their legal authority, but disclosure of these programs did lead many politicians to work towards better oversight of NSA activities given their “shocking” (at the time) scope of collection.
Biggest Snowden disclosures which were clearly not eligible for whistleblower protection because there was no doubt it was legal:
- Spying on Angela Merkel and other foreign leaders (of course we spy on other nations, duh. That’s what spying is.)
- Lots of operational details and techniques used for legitimate spying. Tailored Access Operations, Quantum Insert, ANT catalog, BULLRUN, MYSTIC, SOMALGET, Dishfire and Prefer, DEWSWEEPER, SECONDGET, etc.
- Economic Espionage: Spying on Petrobras, Belgacom, Trade Negotiation surveillance, IMF, World Bank, German economic targets (variety of industries), French Ministry of Economy, Mexican energy sector, EU trade negotiations
Nobody thought any of these exceeded the NSA’s authority. Spying on other nations is generally considered fair game.
The most iffy disclosure (hard to tell if program was entirely legal) never got much followup. These were details on the MUSCULAR program, which siphoned data going between Google and Yahoo datacenters outside of the USA (but obviously still would have ended up “spying” on many Americans).
> Especially if its not even something illegal in the first place (like spying on Angela Merkel).
There's a good chance that this was illegal according to German law, and depending on the exact details on how it was done, there's also a good chance that it could be considered as being under German jurisdiction.
Think about it in the opposite direction: if a German citizen had wiretapped the USA president's mobile phone, the USA would probably consider that act as being under USA jurisdiction, and illegal according to USA laws, even if said German citizen had never set foot outside Germany.
That's the reason "some might find [this] distasteful". They're breaking other country's laws, in a way which would also break USA law if the situation was reversed (so they can't even say that the other country's laws are bad and wrong), and hiding behind "[it] is very much legal" (in the USA), even though that argument would not be accepted by the USA if the situation was reversed.
Whether or not something is illegal is in the eye of the beholder and IIUC, Title 50 Section 36 explicitly makes espionage legal [1] (when done by the US against other people).
[1]: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title50/cha...
A nation state ignoring other nation state’s laws during espionage happens all of the time. Every country has a CIA/NSA equivalent that constantly breaks other’s laws.
This extends to many operations. Lookup “diplomatic immunity” to see how this concept even extends to people in country.
Except that US allies spy on the USA, constantly, and it very much is accepted by the USA! This is expected, accepted, and happens all the time.
Head of French National Intelligence admits to spying on the USA: https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar...
“The French intelligence services know full well that all countries, whether or not they are allies in the fight against terrorism, spy on each other all the time,” he said.
“The Americans spy on French commercial and industrial interests, and we do the same to them because it’s in the national interest to protect our companies.”
“There was nothing of any real surprise in this report,” he added. “No one is fooled.”
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intellig...
Germany has also admitted to spying on the White House specifically, along with surveilling “telephone and fax numbers as well as email accounts belonging to American companies like Lockheed Martin, the space agency NASA, the organization Human Rights Watch, universities in several U.S. states and military facilities like the U.S. Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency,” and phone lines “at the U.S. Treasury Department and the State Department”
> There's a good chance that this was illegal according to German law, and depending on the exact details on how it was done, there's also a good chance that it could be considered as being under German jurisdiction.
This is an absolutely absurd argument against spying. Should no one ever spy on Russia or North Korea just because they make a law against it? Only spy if you’ve declared war on them? How do you see this working in the real world? As written, it holds no water and would need to be steel-manned beyond recognition to approach anything reasonable.
It's not an argument against spying. It's an argument against saying that spying "is not illegal". When you're spying on Russia or North Korea, you are breaking Russian or North Korean law, and you can't avoid that by saying "but my own country's laws say otherwise". There are many cases in which breaking laws can be justified (the canonical example being breaking segregation laws in the USA some time ago), spying on Russia and North Korea might be one of these cases; but you're still breaking the law.
Secondly, Stating spying Merkel and tapping her phone was legal is simplfying the issue greatly. It may be allowed by US law yet as was stated at the time, observing German Law on German soil may still mean it was an illegal act. As it was found in the investigation into the spying scandal that there were US spys working on German soil, it was therefore illegal. Therefore some think it exceeded the NSA's authority, which is nil in Germany. This also refers to spying on other nations being fair game, not following a countries law on their soil does not make it fair game, it makes it an illegal act.
In regards to the many operational details leaked, the focus of that was to determine if or not their methods of spying are legitimate. These tools and procedures can on the surface have legal methods yet still be used in illegal methods, so it isn't as simple as saying they didn't think they exceeded the NSA's authority.
This is very false though. NSA absolutely has at least SOME authority to spy on Germany. Not just by American law but also Germany has provided the NSA with office space for up to 1,800 NSA employees to work in the town of Bad Aibling. Over the past two decades, the BND has helped the NSA spy on a variety of European targets, including German ones.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-german-bnd-...
> not following a countries law on their soil does not make it fair game, it makes it an illegal act.
This makes no sense. That would mean any country, including Russia and North Korea, could make the NSA’s routine, intended activites “illegal” simply by passing a law saying “its illegal to spy on us”. What then? Every form of spying by any country is suddenly illegal?
Spying in some settings is absolutely illegal, no matter the country you are spying on, whether it be North Korea, Russia, or Fiji. It goes against their Sovereignity. Some forms outside of war is always illegal, satelite imagery, cyber hacking... etc. If the US would prosecute it such as the 7 hackers from China they indicted, then the other country rightfully can prosecute in American spys.
Permanent global disharmony, mass delusion, misallocation of resources, unnecessary suffering, etc?
Actually, I suspect (our) nature would find a way anyways regardless of this one relatively trivial rule. The pursuit of suboptimal outcomes is hardwired into our culture, we demand it.
I’m not able to find any court ruling which said this. PRISM still operates today. I believe some investigations found that there were “some” violations of section 702 but nothing systemic enough to warrant curtailing the program.
I mean, I personally think it’s unlawful. But I don’t think it was ever legally determined to be.
I strongly doubt the US will curtail any plans whether they are found unlawful or not. Possibly one of the reasons so many have significant disdain for the US government and their activities.
> Spying on other nations is generally considered fair game
Perhaps the most damning thing Snowden revealed is how this excuse is used for domestic spying. Britain's GCHQ, for example, is also not supposed to spy domestically. How did they 'sidestep' that issue? They told NSA exactly what they wanted, NSA listened to those communications for GCHQ, and handed the records over [1]. That way it's not "violating the law", it's just "intelligence sharing". And of course GCHQ returned the favor to NSA by doing the same in reverse.
Saying Snowden compromised foreign spying efforts is disingenious, when those spying efforts were inseparable from foreign spying.
[1] https://www.channel4.com/news/intercept-text-messages-spy-ns...
I’d argue this heavily depends on scope and context of discussion. For what you’re talking about, it’s a reasonable take. But for things like spying on foreign leaders and ANT Catalog and Tailored Access Operations — there’s not really much domestic angle there, so those elements wouldn’t be disingenuous to represent as “compromising foreign spying efforts”.
There’s certainly a concern that TAO techniques could be turned inwards, but what we know about it suggests that its been consistently outward-focused for the past 25 years.
> What he revealed is that intelligence agencies are acting in bad faith and they completely trample on the civil liberties and freedoms they are supposed to protect.
I agree with this. I just also think his disclosures went beyond this and that discussions about Snowden are incomplete if we limit ourselves to acknowledging only acknowledge the disclosures which include a domestic angle.
> Perhaps the most damning thing Snowden revealed is how this excuse is used for domestic spying…(etc)
I agree that this type of “i spy on your citizens, you spy on mine” information-sharing became much more widely known due to Snowden but I knew about Five Eyes/ECHELON back when I was in middle school before 9/11 or the PATRIOT act. The ACLU had this from year 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000711031525/http://www.aclu.o...
“Illegal” domestic spying via Five Eyes was published in books at least as early as 1998 - https://books.google.com/books/about/Live_by_the_Sword.html?...
The biggest difference pre/post Snowden wasnt so much the knowledge that these illegal things were happening — but that in less than a year, people’s responses to me talking about the known realities of domestic surveillance switched from “okay Mr. crazy person” to “well yeah, duh”.
No?
> "As a legal matter, during his time with NSA, Edward Snowden did not use whistleblower procedures under either law or regulation to raise his objections to U.S. intelligence activities, and thus, is not considered a whistleblower under current law.” (p. 18)
> "The Committee further found no evidence that Snowden attempted to communicate concerns about the legality or morality of intelligence activities to any officials, senior or otherwise, during his time at either CIA or NSA.” (p. 16)
https://intelligence.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Snowden_report_...
Of course, this just tells me we can't trust other countries tech at face value, which is something politicians refuse to acknowledge.
The supermicro thing never made it out of niche tech circles into mainsteam news/politicians comments, so I don’t count that (doubly so after it was reasonably debunked).
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/new-bloomberg-report...
https://www.servethehome.com/bloomberg-reports-china-infiltr...
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2021/02/12/supermicro_bloomb...