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His lack of education is relevant because when you have at least some understanding of the depth of complex systems, it becomes very hard to imagine that a self-taught person has enough knowledge to speak competently about multiple such systems.

No it isn't. I know plenty of self-taught people who are highly skilled and understand very complex systems. In this field more than probably any other, there's less reliance on "paper" credentials and formal education and people routinely achieve high knowledge/skill levels without all the formality.

As far as I'm concerned, his high-school education, or lack thereof, is a total red herring.

    His lack of education is relevant because when you have at least some understanding of the depth of complex systems, it becomes very hard to imagine that a self-taught person has enough knowledge to speak competently about multiple such systems.

This is so wrong it's not even funny. If Peter Norvig can say "One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree" [1], then surely you can admit that your statement is wrong.

[1]: http://norvig.com/21-days.html

I'm sorry that you understood my statement to be of the form "no such person exists, such that..." when in fact I was expressing a conclusion about the typical (perhaps stereotyped) person with this background.

The point is that whether a typical person understands that kind of system is irrelevant. He's already highly atypical by virtue of working for the NSA and being a whistle-blower.

You are cleverly trying to shrink the domain of known and relevant information down to only that set of things which boost Snowden's credibility.

Not really. I'm just saying that some of the things that some people interpret as damaging his credibility, don't. At least in my opinion. His education, for example.

We also know about the NSA's operations from their open source projects like selinux and Accumulo. And given that context, it absolutely damaged his credibility when he suggests that there is some list of assets that he could read.

I'm fairly familiar with both SELinux and Accumulo, and I'm failing to see the connection. Keep in mind, an organization like the NSA is (presumably) fairly large, and probably very bureaucratic and probably had a hodge-podge of different rules, processes, procedures, etc. spread around. That the NSA can produce high-quality software products like SELinux or Accumulo, and still make a mistake in terms of how they grant security access (if there even was a mistake) seem like orthogonal issues to me.

His lack of education is relevant because when you have at least some understanding of the depth of complex systems, it becomes very hard to imagine that a self-taught person has enough knowledge to speak competently about multiple such systems.

I think you have to admit, if you've dealt with enough such people, that they are the exception -- the mean and floor of that population's technical capacity is lower than of the educated population, in my experience.

This is not my experience, and let me tell you why I think it's so.

First up - I was self-taught up to the time I went to (a humble) college, and proceeded to learn little, and instead wrote compilers and won programming competitions in my spare time; college was just a means to a piece of paper. I ended up working on the Delphi compiler at Borland before the tools division got sold; and am currently working for a financial software startup. Why did I go to a humble college? Because I had difficulties in what you might call high school, because all I was interested in was CS, and that was not a subject available to study.

Second, my experience is that all the best developers I've worked with got started in programming outside an academic context.

Thirdly, a hypothesis about selection; all the developers I've worked with who didn't have a formal CS education were very good, and one in particular was outstanding. I believe that having succeeded despite the lack of a certificate from an authority, they must have been better than the average drone. And they often had soft skills that made them yet more effective that semi-autistic logicians.

Now, I don't know where you're coming from, but the gist I'm getting from what you write is that you have a lot of ego wrapped up in credentials, for some reason. Maybe you were a grad student, maybe you still are. My industry experience is in contradiction to your own.

He was earning 200k right? You think they pay morons that type of money?

His education is completely irrelevant. His body odour (if he has it) is irrelevant. The size of his nose is irrelevant. if he was an axe murderer is irrelevant.

What is relevant is are those documents real. Since the government is not saying they are fake, clearly they are real.

That is what you should be talking about.

Having worked in the realm of government contracting, they often hire people who can get things done but don't necessarily have the appropriate depth of knowledge to make the kinds of claims that he is in fact making. He may have plenty of expertise in various areas but that doesn't make him an expert in the types of things he is leaking. Domain knowledge typically lags behind technical knowledge in this field - it's one of the hallmarks of IT that you can work in any specialized domain without knowledge of the specialty itself. It seems to me that your argument is just as baseless as an argument to the effect that he was incompetent, which the OP is not making.

While I'm behind whistleblowers in general, and I agree with the linked article that completely irrelevant information is being used to smear Snowden, I do find a number of things suspicious. We know practically nothing about this guy, and it's not so easy to tease out true facts from what's currently available.

(W.r.t. his interview with the Guardian reporter in Hong Kong,) I'd say his articulateness attests to a level of intelligence that goes WAY beyond the "people who can get things done but don't necessarily have the appropriate depth of knowledge" stereotype.

He comes across as a person who asks questions, a person with genuine curiosity. In fact, I'd say that his lack of high school diploma is actually a positive attribute in light of the fact that he was able to do his job enough to get paid $200k, i.e., the skills to perform his job came out of somewhere, didn't they? Without formal education, it shows that he picked them up himself. (On the other hand, the most robotic, unquestioning, confirming do-anything-for-social-glory types are almost always the "well-educated"; they perceive that they have a lot to lose by asking questions and have excelled at playing the hierarchical authority structure game, i.e., doing what pleases parents, teachers, professors, etc; in return for good grades and appreciation, which ultimately builds up to being the boss' pet in return for a good bonus).

The question isn't the authenticity of that document, it is the interpretation of that document. The only people who have seen the full presentation and are speaking about their interpretation are people who may not have the expertise to interpret it properly. That is where people can start to question Snowden's intellect or education.

You are right in some things but lack the proper balance. Because...

Do we know what clearance he had?

Yes, he was a sysadmin. But, at what level?

And again, the fact that he did not have an "education" but was granted a $180K job speaks for itself on his professional capabilities.

So, balance is needed. Yes, on the two plates of the scale.

Elsewhere it's been put forward that his actual salary was $122k.

You are making my point -- we know nothing, very little, and what is known has numerous large red flags. Those flags would be obvious to most HN readers in another context, but emotions are high on this one -- it presses all of this crowd's persecution triggers.

In regards to his salary, isn't it possible that the 122k is his base salary? Perhaps he gets significant bonuses, stock options, etc. to the point where he and others would round up to "around 200K." It sounds like they are just doing whatever they can to put anything he says into the tiniest amount of doubt. Why would he lie about that? 122k is still a good salary for a sys admin,and I'm sure it would still impress most of the general public.

For how little we know, you seem to "know" a whole lot about what is and isn't possible. Seemingly without any actual experience in large scale corporate or government systems.

Care to provide a citation for that?

You're painting the people involved as dishonest, which may or may not be true. But to assess that, the source of alternative information to be considered. And "elsewhere" is not a good source.

The lack of importance of a degree in the technology sector has been discussed ad nauseum on HN long before this news even surfaced. I'm not sure why his lack of one would be considered a red flag all of a sudden.

I know and have worked with people with little formal education that are brilliant and extremely competent.

I didn't really expect to see such a statement about the necessity of community education and the impossibility of self-education on HN. You don't need to learn in a formal group setting in order to understand complex systems.

This bit about someone self-taught being incapable of understanding "at least some of the depth" of complex strikes me as elitist wishful thinking.

I don't think it serves anyone to think the worst of Snowden while at the same time thinking the best of the NSA. In both cases the reality is likely more towards the middle.

Does he have really have a lack of education? He is reportedly a high school dropout, but that says nothing at all about his education. He could be one of the most educated people out there, for all we know.