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Comment by bloaf | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what I would have done if I were in Snowden's shoes. I've seen something that is personally troubling, ambiguously legal, and possibly abused by analysts without oversight. That something is ostensibly the recording of phone calls and other electronic communications without warrant. The abuses could simply be employees viewing communications without instructions (e.g. for voyeuristic purposes or personal gain.)

If those assumptions are correct, then I can't help but think that I would have taken a few phone calls with me on my way out. A few mp3s featuring Dick Cheney and his family would make quite a point if released now for example.

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> If those assumptions are correct, then I can't help but think that I would have taken a few phone calls with me on my way out. A few mp3s featuring Dick Cheney and his family would make quite a point if released now for example.

He obviously has more than he has shared (and has shared to the Guardian and Washington Post more than we have been privy to). The fun thing is that the Feds have a high certainty of what he has and can't say or even use it as evidence lest they do the leaking for him.

Yes, I wonder about that too. Greenwald seems to be very eager to tell us that Snowden has more than has been released. The implication is that the rest of the information is too dangerous to release.

Apart from the two immediate questions: "Does that information actually exist?" and "Why is it too dangerous?" We must ask ourselves why Snowden isn't forthcoming with some less sensitive proof to bolster his claims. It presumably would have been possible for him to have foreseen the reluctance news organizations had to publish the information. Why not have something more along the lines of a proof-of-concept to dispel the doubt that comes with incomplete information? Having a recording of some peoples' phone records would be just that kind of proof (provided he couldn't have reasonably gotten their records any other way.)

Revealing such a recording would enable the government to prosecute him for "targeting" such information without a warrant. Of course he has bigger worries than whether they try to tack on such a trumped up charge...

> The implication is that the rest of the information is too dangerous to release.

Is it? I thought the implication was that Guardian will publish further stories on it and drag it out rather than dump it all at once.

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