It’s crazy to me how much weight the intelligence agencies seem to put on polygraph tests. Some enterprising huckster should sell them on some high-dollar phrenology gear.
How much weight do you think they put in polygraphs? The bulk of the work polygraphs do is encouraging people to admit past deeds. Things a person has done in the past are rarely disqualifying. Hiding them is. The polygraph encourages the candidate to be forthcoming.
It's not just the polygraph they are facing, but the background investigation as well. How well do you can lie in front of an investigator (with or without a polygraph) when you know they have been talking to past associates/neighbors/friends?
And what is your goal in lying? Getting one over on the stupid military complex. Maybe, just maybe, they aren't as stupid as you think they are.
It's difficult to reconcile the image of Snowden the idealistic whistleblower with Snowden the right-wing Islamophobic security-state cheerleader who wanted leakers to be shot in the balls, from just a couple of years earlier.
At least one of these is a manufactured persona, and I don't know which.
Why? Can't a person who is naturally prone to fervent dedication change from one ideology to another? I mean, for reference, look at a billion examples of religious converts, or for perhaps a better analogy to Snowden, look at /r/atheism.
I suspect part of the answer is in the first image :
> That was intentionally incendiary[...]. Don't take it personally. :D [...] I just wanted to be clear. I'm not really an ugly american. I just play one on the intarwebs [sic].
A played-up personality on one side, and five years of changing beliefs, make this less of a contradiction IMO. Considering the decision to leak may also have triggered him to re-evaluate some of his other views, in a "What else was I lied to about?"/"What else was I wrong about?" sort of way. I don't see any reason why both couldn't be a true reflection of his views at the time.
I don't see a disconnect. For one, people will overlook that he at least made an effort to whistle blow responsibly (& I've yet to see evidence that he failed in that effort). He didn't pass off his information to wikileaks
I might think it's more plausible since I myself have gone from wildly left wing youth to libertarian left adult. Recognizing that faith in state is as bogus as faith in religion has great impact on one's political opinions
& sometimes I like to dial things up on the internet too
You are called a right-winger if you like or dislike this statement.
As for the latter points, it's perfectly pleasurable for someone to go in idealistic/extreme thinking NSA is totally good and leakers are totally bad. Once hired he gets hit with reality which is more in the middle. The lack of imagination-reality correspondence is interpreted as a signal that there are systemic problems (as basically the opposites are true) and he thus undermines the bad system.
These are when he already is employed at the CIA. The posts he is talking about are from before he got his security clearance, which was apparently in 2005. The positions appear very libertarian, but not racist or misogynistic. So these are probably things that he continued to post after his pondering, and that he has also outgrown.
Quote: "Their most effective features were combined by a young Mark Zuckerberg into a site called FaceMash, which later became Facebook".
Except this is not quite true. Zucky did FaceMash as a joke in campus. And he took quite the heat from Uni headmaster for it. And while later when he made "The Facebook" (yeah it had "the" in early days) probably took some lessons into it from FaceMash, it definitely did not evolved from it.
I don't share the sympathies of him being a hero. I'd wait until seeing all the information before making a judgment:
There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]
There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.
There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.
In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.
He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.
The leaks themselves:
He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.
In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.
It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.
Yes. Those are the questions I'd like to see asked. Right now, it is the convenient talking points that Snowden already seems to have a reply for.
Can you really compare yourself to Daniel Ellsberg, when you take a job with the aim of leaking everything you get your hands on (without being able to vet it)?
Why did Snowden download the entirety of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia What abuses of the constitution did he expect to find in a secure data sharing platform? Were these potential abuses of the constitution worth it to leak its ~255,000 user accounts to a journalist who made his boyfriend travel through customs with an undecrypted USB-stick, thereby globally exposing it?
Why did Snowden steal the passwords from his colleagues and clients to do the leaking? Had he already found documents with abuses of the constitution using this method before? And what about the first time he did this? Was this day-to-day exposure to material that required whistleblowing? Or was this an elaborate hunt for material that could eventually, in part, amount to whistle-blowing-worthy, thereby partly justifying your strange snooping behavior?
Snowden fled to Hong Kong (China) -> Russia -> South-America, and then makes it sound like the US put him in Russian exile.
Then, instead of facing justice in the US, he knew, that by handing over unvetted documents to security-unaware journalists, they would end up in the hands of other security agencies. The damage would be akin to having a administrator-level Russian-China spy embedded in the US IC, leaking everything out. So don't make the damage about "some papers published something about 0.001% of the leaks that was of public interest and of no harm".
About the extract in question: I really believe that if Snowden could have deleted all his old moronic internet posts, he would have. He could not figure it out. Talks about writing an easy script, but then goes on to bloviate about some Southpark "the internet should be a place where people can make mistakes" moral.
> I could put together one tiny little script — not even a real program — and all of my posts would be gone in under an hour. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to do. Trust me, I considered it.
And his girlfriend is still suspicious as hell, given that she visited China and Hongkong for months, before meeting up Snowden by 8'ing all the desk jockey looking men on Hotornot.
Instead of attacking the content of the leaks or his claimed motives you are mainly attacking his character.
It should be obvious that he planned to take the data. Taking it without a plan would be a good way for him to fail to accomplish anything. The main detraction I can see is that he leaked without regard to content, even considering he may not have had time to look over what he had taken (e.g. there is some top level stuff about drones that probably could have been redacted with a quick scan of the documents).
He likely avoided commenting on improvements to remain apolitical; if he had not, it would be more ammunition for character assassination. Other countries may be doing roughly the same but most people's issue is not with the fact spying was occurring but that it was largely turned inward.[1] You do not know he would throw away the whole system. As previously mentioned, he likely had no time to figure out what documents were what and the impact of their release would be.
In any case, he was acting as if he expected his own government to completely ignore the protections it had built in to defend its citizens. That some of the domestic programs he exposed were since cancelled due to public outrage is telling.
---
[1]: Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring. We repeatedly see little in the way of domestic terrorism but because inward spying is so much easier to do it seems to make up a disproportionate amount of the information generated; information that is likely not representative of real threats.
[+] [-] stallmanite|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronharnly|6 years ago|reply
1. Cognitive capacities or traits are often centered in particular regions of the brain.
2. The degree of expression or strength of those capacities is correlated with the size of the region.
3. Those size differences can be detected from the outer surface of the skull.
Only the third is false. (The first two are true to varying degrees for particular capacities or traits, of course...)
[+] [-] LanceH|6 years ago|reply
It's not just the polygraph they are facing, but the background investigation as well. How well do you can lie in front of an investigator (with or without a polygraph) when you know they have been talking to past associates/neighbors/friends?
And what is your goal in lying? Getting one over on the stupid military complex. Maybe, just maybe, they aren't as stupid as you think they are.
[+] [-] GhettoMaestro|6 years ago|reply
FWIW, if you are honest, they really don't hold much against you. This is someone who had legal run-ins in my younger years.
[+] [-] user982|6 years ago|reply
It's difficult to reconcile the image of Snowden the idealistic whistleblower with Snowden the right-wing Islamophobic security-state cheerleader who wanted leakers to be shot in the balls, from just a couple of years earlier.
At least one of these is a manufactured persona, and I don't know which.
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
Why? Can't a person who is naturally prone to fervent dedication change from one ideology to another? I mean, for reference, look at a billion examples of religious converts, or for perhaps a better analogy to Snowden, look at /r/atheism.
[+] [-] stordoff|6 years ago|reply
> That was intentionally incendiary[...]. Don't take it personally. :D [...] I just wanted to be clear. I'm not really an ugly american. I just play one on the intarwebs [sic].
A played-up personality on one side, and five years of changing beliefs, make this less of a contradiction IMO. Considering the decision to leak may also have triggered him to re-evaluate some of his other views, in a "What else was I lied to about?"/"What else was I wrong about?" sort of way. I don't see any reason why both couldn't be a true reflection of his views at the time.
[+] [-] __s|6 years ago|reply
I might think it's more plausible since I myself have gone from wildly left wing youth to libertarian left adult. Recognizing that faith in state is as bogus as faith in religion has great impact on one's political opinions
& sometimes I like to dial things up on the internet too
[+] [-] domnomnom|6 years ago|reply
You are called a right-winger if you like or dislike this statement.
As for the latter points, it's perfectly pleasurable for someone to go in idealistic/extreme thinking NSA is totally good and leakers are totally bad. Once hired he gets hit with reality which is more in the middle. The lack of imagination-reality correspondence is interpreted as a signal that there are systemic problems (as basically the opposites are true) and he thus undermines the bad system.
[+] [-] Throw_Away_5472|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unnouinceput|6 years ago|reply
Except this is not quite true. Zucky did FaceMash as a joke in campus. And he took quite the heat from Uni headmaster for it. And while later when he made "The Facebook" (yeah it had "the" in early days) probably took some lessons into it from FaceMash, it definitely did not evolved from it.
[+] [-] no_opinions|6 years ago|reply
There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]
There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.
There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.
In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.
He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.
The leaks themselves:
He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.
In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.
It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.
[1] https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hps...
[+] [-] bowcoy|6 years ago|reply
Can you really compare yourself to Daniel Ellsberg, when you take a job with the aim of leaking everything you get your hands on (without being able to vet it)?
Why did Snowden download the entirety of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia What abuses of the constitution did he expect to find in a secure data sharing platform? Were these potential abuses of the constitution worth it to leak its ~255,000 user accounts to a journalist who made his boyfriend travel through customs with an undecrypted USB-stick, thereby globally exposing it?
Why did Snowden steal the passwords from his colleagues and clients to do the leaking? Had he already found documents with abuses of the constitution using this method before? And what about the first time he did this? Was this day-to-day exposure to material that required whistleblowing? Or was this an elaborate hunt for material that could eventually, in part, amount to whistle-blowing-worthy, thereby partly justifying your strange snooping behavior?
Snowden fled to Hong Kong (China) -> Russia -> South-America, and then makes it sound like the US put him in Russian exile.
Then, instead of facing justice in the US, he knew, that by handing over unvetted documents to security-unaware journalists, they would end up in the hands of other security agencies. The damage would be akin to having a administrator-level Russian-China spy embedded in the US IC, leaking everything out. So don't make the damage about "some papers published something about 0.001% of the leaks that was of public interest and of no harm".
About the extract in question: I really believe that if Snowden could have deleted all his old moronic internet posts, he would have. He could not figure it out. Talks about writing an easy script, but then goes on to bloviate about some Southpark "the internet should be a place where people can make mistakes" moral.
> I could put together one tiny little script — not even a real program — and all of my posts would be gone in under an hour. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to do. Trust me, I considered it.
And his girlfriend is still suspicious as hell, given that she visited China and Hongkong for months, before meeting up Snowden by 8'ing all the desk jockey looking men on Hotornot.
[+] [-] jigglesniggle|6 years ago|reply
It should be obvious that he planned to take the data. Taking it without a plan would be a good way for him to fail to accomplish anything. The main detraction I can see is that he leaked without regard to content, even considering he may not have had time to look over what he had taken (e.g. there is some top level stuff about drones that probably could have been redacted with a quick scan of the documents).
He likely avoided commenting on improvements to remain apolitical; if he had not, it would be more ammunition for character assassination. Other countries may be doing roughly the same but most people's issue is not with the fact spying was occurring but that it was largely turned inward.[1] You do not know he would throw away the whole system. As previously mentioned, he likely had no time to figure out what documents were what and the impact of their release would be.
In any case, he was acting as if he expected his own government to completely ignore the protections it had built in to defend its citizens. That some of the domestic programs he exposed were since cancelled due to public outrage is telling.
---
[1]: Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring. We repeatedly see little in the way of domestic terrorism but because inward spying is so much easier to do it seems to make up a disproportionate amount of the information generated; information that is likely not representative of real threats.