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Comment by pvnick | Hacker News Reader

That was such a refreshing article. I've been saying it for a while now, I'm hopeful that we're going to see some very positive reforms in 2014 or 2015, as well as an eventual hero's welcome for Snowden. It takes a while for such a massive shift in public opinion, but it's inevitable. The reason it's taking so long is just a knowledge gab with the people that aren't as well-informed and don't know the magnitude of the abuses. As people learn the full scope of what's been revealed they tend to be (for the most part) outraged. I look forward to a couple decades from now, when I can tell my kids about how us folks who were paying attention were all vindicated when the NSA reforms were enacted and Snowden was given a full pardon.

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It's unfair to characterize people who disagree with you as being uninformed. A lot of people who don't like Snowden's actions know as much about the situation as you do. They've just drawn different conclusions. The gap here is one of personal philosophy and opinion, not one of knowledge.

I''m not entirely sure why Snowden is getting so much personal credit. I remember watching an episode of Frontline on PBS that discussed “Room 641A” [1]. A few quotes from the cited wikipedia page, emphasis added:

”[the room] is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore 'the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic.”

”[the program] was originally broadcast on May 15, 2007. It was also featured on PBS's NOW on March 14, 2008. The room was also covered in the PBS Nova episode 'The Spy Factory'.”

I admittedly watch more PBS than the average person. I was talking about Room 641A and concept of the NSA directly siphoning every call, email, text and url sent from the AT&T Pacific data center several years ago. Snowden’s revelations were news and he provided theretofore unnknown details. But they weren't completely out of the blue.

People knew that the NSA was collecting data on an unprecedented scale before Edward Snowden. These programs aren’t new, they didn’t start last year. Snowden unquestioningly gets credit for coming forward, he deserves praise for taking such a risk. It’s clear that he provided us with a paper trail and evidence that no one had in May of 2007. But our knowledge of the NSA’s activities is not “entirely because of information provided to journalists by Edward Snowden” as the NYT OpEd alleges. People had the knowledge years ago. The outrage is recent.

We'll see if the future holds substantive policy reforms or presidential pardons. Cautious optimism never hurts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

You're absolutely correct, Snowden receives personal credit because he's taken on great personal risk to share the information he's shared.

Let's not underestimate the value of a singular face to focus sentiment vs. a room.

Mark Klein was the ATT tech who exposed room 614A.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein

In the same way, one day, when someone will discover life on other planets or something similar, there will be people telling us, that people knew that life exists outside of the Earth. Evidence is one crucial point that is necessary to be able to distinguish tattle from facts. Knowledge without evidence is just a possibility.

An in my very amateur opinion, Mr. Snowden receives the personal credit simply because he has provided the world with evidence of that previously "known" activity.

"It's unfair to characterize people who disagree with you as being uninformed. A lot of people who don't like Snowden's actions know as much about the situation as you do."

True, but the point the parent comment is making is that as people learn more, more people will support what Snowden did / want NSA reforms. I think it's clear that will happen but we'll see what public opinion does over time.

Anecdotal I can say that members of my family (the type that barely use a computer) had only a vague notion of the NSA's domestic spying until the Snowden stories broke through the everyday media noise.

You're underestimating the importance of that paper trail. Knowing that they could have such a capability is not the same thing as knowing that they are actively exercising it, laid out in helpfully blunt Powerpoint. Yes, if you were paying attention, the signs were there. But even well-informed tech people have been taken aback by the breadth and sheer gall of the NSA's snooping. Snowden isn't the only NSA whistleblower, but he is the most important. He deserves the personal credit he's received.

As for the article, I'm thankful. If my relatives won't listen to me, maybe they'll listen to the New York Times editorial board.

>>>>> Knowing that they could have such a capability is not the same thing as knowing that they are actively exercising it.

I hope you don't give your government that much credit and really are not that naive. Considering the NSA and CIA's history, why would think anything other than they were actively using technologies to eavesdrop on the general population?

Conspiracy nuts have been screaming this from the rooftops for years and suddenly because of Snowden they're finally listening? Sure he deserves credit for the evidence he's released, but this is not something new by any stretch of the imagination.

Conspiracy nuts have been screaming this from the rooftops for years and suddenly because of Snowden [people are] finally listening?

Yes. For example, they were called "conspiracy nuts" before.

conspiracy nuts have been screaming all sorts of stuff from the rooftops for years.

if i say 'twenty' every time, eventually i'll correctly predict the outcome of a d20. this doesn't make me good at doing so, nor does it mean that you should have listened.

Yeah, but it's been well documented for many, many years:

http://www.mega.nu/cm/cm1.html

This site lists articles going back to 1982 about the NSA domestic spying programs. A whois lookup on the site puts the information on the site around 1997. It's fascinating to me people seemed to have no idea, yet the information had been out there for years and years.

I liken it to Jose Canseco. For so many years he was telling people guys in the MLB were all juicing. He got blacklisted and people hazed the crap out of him for the mere suggestion. A few years after his book came out, every player he named was confirmed as a steroid user.

Pretty much the same thing in my mind. . .

... but really it's always been more than just conspiracy nuts saying this.

It's essentially been common opinion in the tech community for decades that the NSA looked like they were building the capability for mass surveillance, and that in all likelihood was probably doing it.

Snowden provided a greater degree of proof, but anybody that was really surprised by what was going on wasn't really paying attention...

Conspiracy nuts have been screaming this from the rooftops for years and suddenly because of Snowden they're finally listening? ... but this is not something new by any stretch of the imagination.

Those of us paying attention knew something was going on, yes. For my part, I believed that there was much more spying going on than they were letting on. It seemed clear that the FISA court was a rubber stamp, and the refusal to release exact numbers of wiretaps approved pointed to them hiding a surprisingly large number.

However, the revelation that there was, in effect, just the one giant umbrella wiretap authorization, came as a big surprise to me. I never dreamed that the extent could be that great.

Before Snowden, it went something like this:

"we are only spying on terrorists and military targets."

"The postal secret will never be violated. Mail and emails by extension are safe forms of communication."

"A warrant is needed to listen in on a telephone call. Telephone call is a safe form of communication."

"Building a database on the citizens political affiliation is illegal, and ground for political dismissal of officials."

"The ISP, email provider and telephone company is only a common carrier. They are not allowed to watch."

"Warrants and subpenas are directed at individual. Collective punishment is wrong, illegal, and something only other countries do."

"The government job is to protect people. If the government know of a serious vulnerability in society, they will inform people in order to protect them."

"Only criminals breaks into computer systems."

knowing that the US government could lie on all those points is not the same as knowing that they are. Tinfoil hat was define as such because they thought the government lied on those points, based on the fact that the government could do it.

These kind of thing changes your worldview. It's like math, you either prove it or it remain a hypothesis even after the 1.0000x10^1.000.000 repetition.

That snooping at a room at AT&T became part of a lawsuit that threatened to reveal more about the wiretapping program but it was squashed by congress, including Obama, when they voted to give AT&T and other telecoms that broke the law at Bush's behest retroactive immunity.

Not sure what your point is as to how that relates to Snowden.

The point is Snowden's revelations made headlines, and Room 641A didn't. The lionization of Snowden is baffling when it was already well-known.

Personally I disagree with the parent quite strongly -- the recent revelations made it quite clear that the NSA's data hoovering is making the State Department into a frivolous formality. Diplomacy is irrelevant when you already know the internal political structure of your allies/adversaries, and it takes 'real politik' to the extreme (like playing a game of poker with the cards revealed to a powerful few). The loss of privacy in diplomatic correspondence is a far greater blow to the peace of the world than the revelation of your torrid love affairs or your weak financial integrity.

It didn't make the headlines Snowden's leaks have generated but it was news and anyone interested in civil liberties at the time knew about it when it came out, I know I did and any follower of Greenwald before he became "mainstream" knew about it (even if it was a little bit later). I don't know what your complain is here. The fact that this specific part of the leaks was known doesn't diminish what Snowden did one bit. If anything it increases it's importance.

Exactly. I think just about everyone knew that "the government" spies on people. It has divisions dedicated to that exact purpose. This was public knowledge.

But, much like war, when people are fully informed, that tacit acceptance goes south. When people realize that "some unelected, uanccountable government employee has access to my phone calls and my emails including the ones to my (lover/bookie/doctor)", or put another way, "The government spies on ME" that is a much more powerful thought than just "Eh, the government spies on people".

> The lionization of Snowden is baffling when it was already well-known.

It's because Snowden made for a good messiah. Better PR trumps good journalism.

Really? You think the lionization doesn't come from the incredible personal risk he took to bring forward incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing on a massive scale by very powerful people?

You ask that as if it wasn't what I said.

> The lionization of Snowden is baffling when it was already well-known.

No it wasn't. It was well suspected by a few. Snowden provided hard evidence which each and everyone could see. To many, if not most ordinary americans, that is a huge difference.

You've made friendly comments about my comments here on HN before, so I'll make a friendly comment here about yours. I have noticed that you consistently view Snowden as a hero, but I respectfully disagree. It would take more electrons than the margins of one HN comment could contain (and more time than I have with my work responsibilities today) to explain how I think Edward Snowden could have revealed the same key facts more responsibly, but even though I largely agree that it's good for the public to know more about what NSA was doing and how NSA was characterizing what it was doing to Congress, I don't think Snowden engaged in responsible disclosure ("whistle-blowing"). I think Snowden over the last year has been just as sincerely but ultimately mistakenly misguided as Kim Philby[1] was in the 1960s. Snowden appears to think that he has made the world and his native country a better place on a net basis, and he may even be right about what will happen to his native country as a result of his disclosures, but I think he is mistaken about what the overall course of his actions has done for the world as a whole. That's all I have time to say about this at the moment, but I want to put that out there as an American who has lived under real tyranny[2] before and has observed how tyranny is overcome by people power.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24803131

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720

I just have to say that I very strongly dislike this type of comment.

First, you disagree with the poster, and proceed to make a few claims "I don't think Snowden engaged in responsible disclosure", [Snowden was] "ultimately mistakenly misguided", and "mistaken about what the overall course of his actions has done for the world as a whole."

After those claims though, you bow out with "That's all I have time to say about this at the moment" (and of course you lead the comment with a similar "It would take ...more time than I have with my work responsibilities today"

You took enough time to write a 1335 character comment, but not a single bit of it was about backing up or explaining the logic behind a single one of your claims. If you don't have time to get into a discussion, don't, and don't expect others to respect such a one-directional attempt at conversation.

Now, I will make a small try at explaining why I think you are wrong.

"I don't think Snowden engaged in responsible disclosure"

I think Snowden did the best he could given the restrictions he was under. He took the data over a certain amount of time, and given the amount of documents it is infeasible that he could purge truly sensitive information withing a decent timeframe, therefore he did the next best thing, which was to contact respectable news outlets and give them the documents on the condition that they use their resources to do what he could not. He gave all documents up (minus a supposed insurance file) and sought political asylum, a respected political tradition since the days of Hammurabi. I really can't fathom any better course of action for the situation, but if you would like to suggest one please go ahead.

""mistaken about what the overall course of his actions has done for the world as a whole."

I'm not sure, but to me this seems like it might allude to a claim that the revelations have made the US/World weaker. That simply isn't true. The weaknesses are already there, we the public are simply just learning about them. Could that create a political weakness? Yes indeed, but that is irrelevant because it was the NSA and other powers that be that actually performed the acts that created that weakness, not Snowden and not the public.

On your link about Kim, I also have a strong suspicion, hopefully an unfounded one, that you may have fallen into the trap that "journalists" like Joushua Foust have fallen into, in which they all but outright claim "ze Russians" have some nefarious hand in Snowdens cookie jar. Before doing this, please remember that it was never Snowden's intention to seek Asylum in Russia and was headed for Latin America when matters out of his control put him in a spot with limited options.

I sincerely hope you elaborate more, because as a non-American I feel that the world will now have a chance to become a much better place and Snowden did remarkable thing, which apart from giving a sort of CV you don't address.

I think that E. Snowden was in a position to judge which path is right. I trust that he knows better than you, me and probably others what would have happened if he tried to go public without ever leaving the USA.

You don't have time for one specific example?

This is the cowards approach. Take the time and rebuttal properly, or don't reply at all. Just because you're "e-popular" on HN doesn't give you a free pass for weak arguments.

I agree. Saying "well, I can tell you for a fact that you are wrong, but I don't have time right now" is a very poor form of debate. Hopefully he elaborates soon, as I think he's a very intelligent poster!

A proper rebuttal would probably warrant at least something of blog post length, if not an actual essay.

If you try to make some shorter reply in this audience then it would simply be hyperanalyzed to find every little chink on the armor of the logical argument (and failing that, simply to start making emotional appeals that ignore logic completely).

It's pretty funny when the "chilling effect" applies in the opposite direction IMHO; it's something I've also struggled with IRT the Snowden Saga.

I appreciate your nuanced opinion, which I've tried to fully understand as you've posted about it in the past. It stands in contrast to my admittedly hardline position. I do uncompromisingly see Snowden as a hero. While you consider America's actions in the context of other governments such as Russia and China and how they spy on their citizens, I want America to lead the way, to be role model so to speak for the rest of the world. When America treats people well, it benefits everyone; conversely, when America acts hypocritically, when we spy on or torture innocents, every despot on the planet sees that and can say "Well America does it," and have firm ground to stand on. That's why we need people like Snowden, to keep the American government in line, because historically that's how we have world peace. And also, to be a little more selfish, because I live here.

> every despot on the planet sees that and can say "Well America does it," and have firm ground to stand on. That's why we need people like Snowden, to keep the American government in line...

Whether styled as a despot or not, when it comes to the exercise and maintenance of power, nobody is ever saying anything remotely like 'well America does it' - it's just irrelevant. It's never a moral question, but one of what power can be assumed (both at home and abroad). That's the interesting thing about Snowden - he just acted and took the upper hand. (And even more so that he further consolidated by maintaining it, despite huge efforts to bring him down a peg or two.)

I am not American and I will second this. A lot of American policies and operating procedures tends to get pushed onto other democracies since 'that is the way we do things at home'. Your horrible patents system is one of them. If the US tightens up their regulations on citizen surveillance and privacy, the citizens of other democracies DO get a boost.

My guess is that you work at Palantir or other natsec startup. That's all I have time to say at the moment.*

*Isn't it cool to make this kind of outlandish comments without any kind of proof to back them up?

Other members have already pointed out that you haven't stated any specifics, so I won't repeat that.

I'm curious as to why you felt that Snowden hasn't strengthened what you call "people power"? Do you really think there was any way he could have alerted Americans and the rest of the world to the scale of government spying by being "responsible"? This when senior government officials thought nothing of lying outright to lawmakers and judges - people who are supposed to act as a check on government power? I'd really like to hear what you feel might have been a more responsible version.

I also did read your linked comment about living under the Taiwanese dictatorship. You say:

>> I assumed that all my postal mail, domestic or foreign, was read by the ruling party's secret police as part of the delivery process

Decades later we have democratic governments around the world doing the same - reading and storing all our electronic communications - instead of dictatorships. And we know this thanks to Snowden.

The NSA is spying unnecessarily. More people die in DUIs in the US each year than in terrorism since 2001 (since ever possibly?) but we don't routinely monitor text messages for signs of drunkenness or even mandate breathalyzers as you leave the bar. The point is that we have dedicated billions of dollars and trashed civil liberties of Americans over terrorism. Well, I want to know we are spying on the appropriate people and making gains from our losses. Let's not even talk about Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, drones, etc. I mean we could go on for hours discussing how 9/11 was our own political mistake from the 80's come to bite us back.

Sure, I don't have a right to know what compounds are in secret paints on our stealth fighters or how many nucs are kept in our subs... but I am certain that I have the right to know that I am secure in my communications domestic AND ABROAD from the US gov't unless a narrow warrant has been issued under evidence-support suspicion of wrong-doing. If you believe that this is not the case, then you would happily sell America to the tyrants under the guise of security.

The argument that "X happens more frequently than terrorism, and we don't do Y to stop that" is a bit weak.

Take a look at what happened during 9/11: - stock market (DJIA) dropped 20% - all airline transportation ceased for days - a huge negative impact on economic activity

In other words, 3000 deaths due to DUIs is not the same as 3000 deaths due to terrorism. The very definition of terrorism is a disruption of the normal functioning of society.

Now I'm certainly not arguing that the USGOV has been justified in all that has happened since 9/11. However, I am saying that your argument makes no sense.

I agree and it is something of a strawman that I put up, but my other points stand.

BTW, I read the Australian article and it doesn't tackle the real issue. I don't care if the NSA is spying on foreign citizens, I care if the NSA has even gathered one iota of data about me, when there is no suspicion that I specifically have done anything wrong. You have a J.D., so you can appreciate how controversial even something like a DUI checkpoint has been in the US. I would rather let criminals go free then let even one innocent man end up in jail. The mandate of our constitution demands the most liberal interpretation of civil liberties. For Americans, this kind of data collection should be illegal. I don't care if people want to call Snowden a hero or not, but he did the 'right' thing and nothing you or your suggested article present are satisfying arguments:

1. They don't address spying on Americans, specifically.

2. They don't present specific evidence of how this intelligence saved specific lives.

The recent New York District Court decision on ACLU v. NSA presents evidence pertaining to 2, at least as far as the phone metadata collection program is concerned.

I read your profile. One reaction was that because of your experiences, you might have already been desensitized to having your rights violated in such a manner. It was more of a shock to us who didn't expect our google searches to be monitored, but now we are all also becoming desensitized.

I believe that trust is a necessary part of any life power structure, and that privacy is a part of that trust. The rights granted by those in power to those below are levers that help the system continue to work in service of the whole. The five eyes privacy violations are an unbalancing act which screws with human power in the event that something goes wrong and we have to repair or restructure the executive organ of our planet. Giving up privacy in this manner is giving up future self control in conditions that cannot be predicted. We should maintain ability to overthrow power structure at any time, we just shouldn't want to (or worse, need to without knowing we need to). I'm not giving up the levers of a system i've amplified with authority over my self. Having all actions of my life known by that system is giving up levers.

Why do you like that theaustralian article so much when it supports lines like "you can't have 100 per cent security as well as 100 per cent privacy in the digital age" and "NSA chief Keith Alexander revealed that the NSA programs leaked by Snowden had helped thwart more than 50 terror plots"?

> Why do you like that theaustralian article so much when it supports lines like "you can't have 100 per cent security as well as 100 per cent privacy in the digital age" and "NSA chief Keith Alexander revealed that the NSA programs leaked by Snowden had helped thwart more than 50 terror plots"?

What's incorrect about either line?

Here's a good article on the "54 attacks" line, which was actually cited in the "likely unconstitutional" ruling: http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-...

The Obama 100%/100% thing is correct but privacy is a right. The line is not an excuse to take my privacy away without asking me. You can't drop my percentage without giving me opportunity to dissent or without my knowing about it. To do this is to make decisions about me and for me that reduce my power, it means i'm not free and becoming less free.

The article is good but it doesn't dismantle the argument either, it clarifies it. That's nice and all, but ProPublica makes as many guesses about what possibly could be done using only non-phone metadata sources as NSA makes guesses about the absolute need for it.

Remember that the U.S. Intelligence Community "could have" been tipped off to 9/11 beforehand, but it didn't happen. ProPublica saying that FBI "could have" caught an email or that a magical court order to divulge U.S. phone numbers calling al-Shabab in Somalia "could have" found Basaaly Moalin in San Diego is pure speculation too, and doesn't exactly jive well with the historical evidence that the Intelligence Community finds it difficult to identify plots beforehand.

As far as your opportunity to dissent, you've had it and continue to have it. Unless you think every governmental action should be put to mass referendum then you go through your elected representative. After all the phone metadata program was specifically baked into public law several times over in the past decade, and it was done so by our representatives. It didn't simply appear out of nowhere.

If the alternative to tyranny turns out to be illiberal democracy (where many of the same things that people hate about tyrannical systems take place- unrestricted government spying, torture, government corruption, breakdown of rule of law, militarism), then what's the point?

I think it's far more important to figure out how to prevent liberal democracies from turning into illiberal democracies, and how to reverse such changes, than to try and topple tyrannical systems as things stand right now. The inertia afforded to democracies by the idea that they enjoy a moral legitimacy that no other form of government possesses makes fixing a broken democracy a lot harder than turning a broken dictatorship into a democracy. We also have far more successful examples of the latter than the former.

Didn't read the article (blocked by the Great Firewall), but here's a year-ender from Gwynne Dyer. He says... "[Instead of] a list of events, a year-end piece should be a first draft of history that tries to identify where the flow of events is really taking us. By that standard, Snowden comes first."

http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=5&i=10887

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