"I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. Any real-world situation involves multiple adversaries, and it's important to keep all of them in mind when designing a security system."
Schneier's topic sentence for that paragraph could serve as my one-sentence evaluation of Snowden's deeds so far--he hasn't thought things through sufficiently. A longer commentary on Snowden
is an Australian's words voicing some of my misgivings about Snowden's plan for revealing secrets and his aims and his methods.
I wish Snowden a long and healthy life (but I would like him back here in the United States to stand trial). I hope that the most sensitive secrets that he is in a position to disclose stay undisclosed, but I wouldn't bet that that will happen, whether Snowden is alive or dead. There are "multiple adversaries," for sure, and it's not clear that they all have the same incentives in this situation.
The fact that there isn't a guarantee that the U.S won't kill Snowden or put him in a hole forever and ignore his rights as a citizen is a testament to the degradation of the rule of law in the U.S.
When Ellsberg was arrested for leaking the Pentagon papers (to no less than 17 different newspapers), he was released on recognizance and allowed to speak to the media. His charges were eventually dropped because the FBI had used an illegal wiretap on him. Today, the FBI would get a rubber-stamped wiretap, and he would be thrown in a hole forever like Bradley Manning. Ellsberg wrote an editorial in the Washington Post saying that fleeing the country was the right choice.
Naomi Wolf has argued that the first step to an authoritarian state is to conjure a terrifying internal and external enemy, such as "terrorists". Cameron Stewart seems to have bought into this idea of an eternal enemy in stating, "[US citizens] are willing to pay that price to maintain security in the era of terrorism."
An era implies a distinct period of history with a particular feature or characteristic: it has a beginning and an end. As Bruce Fein (of the American Freedom Agenda) noted, "there will be no defined end"... to terrorism, in part due to the expansion of the definition of terrorism itself.
Looking from high above, spying is an act of distrust. Distrust divides. I believe humanity should seek to unify its nations; we have much untapped potential, and spying will only delay us from reaching the stars.
People seem to forget that at present time humanity has no backup.
I'm sure a summation of "he hasn't thought things through" is a bit unfair. I'm sure he thought long and hard about everything he did and I think we should be glad that he took the steps he did. Let's face it, there's no way of really protecting yourself if you openly take the action he's taken. You're a target for somebody, somewhere.
I don't quite understand why you would want him back in the states for trial. It has been said that these matters are above the DOJ and therefore held in a secret court. Is that really fair? Do you honestly believe that the US would allow for a fair and open trial?(lets say something as televised as Trayvon Martin case)
It's pretty unfair to criticize some speculation of how the system might work.
It might release the documents to selected people who may be required to use their judgement on what to release. It may require cooperation from several individuals to decrypt. It may be enough of a bluff for someone to think twice
Maybe a script could be set to release a random subset of the documents and delete another random subset, i.e.
if snowden_has_not_logged_in_for_7_days():
for doc in documents:
if random.choice([True, False]):
release(doc)
else:
permanently_delete(doc)
Then all parties have something to lose (either undesired leak of some document, or losing the chance to learn the contents of a document) if Snowden dies.
The comments on the source point out the same mechanism that aims to keep the US from killing him could also been seen as incentivizing the US protecting him from people who want everything released right away.
"But Snowden’s case is actually a kind of reverse dead man’s switch, says John Prados, senior research fellow for the National Security Archive and author of several books on secret wars of the CIA. [...] “In the dead man switch, my positive control is necessary in order to prevent the eventuality [of an explosion],” Prados said. “In Snowden’s information strategy, he distributed sets of the information in such a fashion that if he is taken, then other people will move to release information. In other words, his positive control of the system is not required to make the eventuality happen. In fact, it’s his negative control that applies."
I'm really surprised it was implemented like that, I think using an actual, digital "dead man's switch" would have made more sense. Why not have 100 servers around the world running jobs to email out documents to 100 journalists at all times if an env variable isn't reset every few weeks? Then if he disappears or is killed, a few weeks later the jobs complete and email out the information?
The problem with a positive control system is that he's being watched, intensively. So how do you reset that env variable without someone seeing you do it and thus discovering the server? Once they know the servers, they just need to take them out and the deadman's switch is neutralized.
If he had a way to do one-way broadcasts, like over the radio, where any snoopers could not discover the receivers then it would make more sense to do a positive control system. But there really isn't a mechanism for that on the internet. Even if he posted to usenet, given enough time, a sufficiently motivated nation-state adversary could probably trace through enough usenet servers to figure out what clients were looking for those reset messages.
> Why not have 100 servers around the world running jobs to email out documents to 100 journalists at all times if an env variable isn't reset every few weeks?
Because if your adversary is monitoring all the telecoms networks and/or is reasonably capable of backdooring your laptop, you can assume that they'll be able to impersonate you to your digital lockers (and/or know where they are, because you are in regular contact with them).
I must be missing something. This is exactly how a dead man's switch works. On a train, if the driver stops actively hitting the switch ("negative control"), the train assumes he's dead and stops.
A positive dead man switch is too sensitive to rubber hose cryptanalysis (also known in Russia as thermorectal cryptanalysis, mediated by a soldering iron).
" ‘Snowden won’t disclose more docs, I have thousands’ – Greenwald"
"Edward Snowden is unlikely to make new revelations since “he doesn’t want to end up in a cage like Bradley Manning”, said The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, adding that he himself decides what to publish from the thousands of leaked documents.
> I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released
The unstated assumption is that these documents would be particularly interesting to foreign governments. That's probably wrong.
What we've seen so far is merely evidence of actions that were long assumed to be taking place anyway. Other governments likely have their own evidence already.
These documents are important to the public, but they're of minimal value to an enemy. His intent was never malicious, so it's extremely unlikely that he's carrying the names of agents or other sensitive information of that sort.
>These documents are important to the public, but they're of minimal value to an enemy.
I think at least some other nations would like to know what the documents contain, not because of the data itself, but because it could clue them into what kind of capabilities our intelligence departments have. It's one thing to know that the NSA is spying on its own citizens, but it's an entirely different thing to know that they can intercept and decipher X and Y forms of communications but may not yet be able or feel the need to monitor form Z.
Imagine if Snowden had deployed a bunch of redundant crawlers of various news sites likely to cover him and quote him directly when he speaks. Their activity would be nearly undetectable in the traffic of the NYTimes, CNN, etc. He could come up with a bunch of seemingly innocent control phrases which he would use in soundbite quotes during press conferences, etc. He would say a phrase, the media would quote him, and the crawlers would identify this "control transmission" from Snowden and take action. Some phrases would be dead man's switches in that one of them would have to be observed every couple of weeks or documents would be released via mechanisms difficult to trace back to the server (Tor?). Other phrases would trigger incremental leaks to allow proof that he is still powerful and in control. "Tomorrow, I'm going to release a _mightily spectacular revelation_!"
Maybe there should be two levels of dead man's switching -- incremental leaks if a phrase isn't reported in, say, two weeks and a major release if no phrase reported in three months. This way, he figuratively would have multiple units of currency with which to bargain. Let's say he was thrown in jail. If he only could threaten to release a single, big bundle of secrets via a dead man's switch, all his bargaining power would disappear should a government call his bluff and keep in jail until after the switch fired. However, if he could threaten incremental releases and show that, when given full freedom, the releases stop, he would have power for quite some time.
How would one acquire the use of, say, 50 servers in various datacenters owned by various providers without leaving traces or implicit fingerprints (multi-year prepayment being the big one I am thinking of)?
Schneier has an excellent point there. Right now Snowden is in the eyes and minds of a lot of somewhat concerned and maybe even angry people. If he'd encounter and unexpected sudden end to his life, he'd become the modern equivalent to a martyr. From the standpoint of his adversaries this would probably be much less than desirable as it would turn up the heat even more than it is already, documents or no documents. In fact, he'd probably have much less facetime on the news if they'd just let him be in the first place. Almost makes me wonder what else is going on that's not in the news so much right now?
> "Almost makes me wonder what else is going on that's not in the news so much right now?"
Given that the other big story in the media is somehow a slightly-more-than-pedestrian summer heatwave in the US and UK, it seems rather unlikely anyone needs a story as big as Snowden to bury something else.
It must be pretty uncomfortable to be in the position where your death may cause trouble that may play out as a big advantage to some entities out there.
I think this dead man's switch is deterrent against being taken into custody. If the US tries to incarcerate him, then the switch will trip and more secret documents will be leaked. Though maybe the US doesn't care.
I wonder how badly the US wants him at this point?
The US government is not monolithic. It's not difficult to imagine that factions or individuals within the intelligence community could act in certain circumstances without official sanction.
One reason could be to scare future whistleblowers "Leak government information - you're dead to us. Literally."
Of course doing it now would be incredibly stupid of the US government, as everyone will point to them, but then again they've already done some incredibly stupid things, so who knows.
> I think this dead man's switch is deterrent against being taken into custody.
Quite the contrary, taking him into custody is always in the best interest of the US. Snowden could be targeted with the intention of purposefully triggering the release of the documents, so the US would need to protect him.
However if he remains alive then the threat continues as well, at least until he expresses desire to not release the documents. So since he's alive then the US will want to keep control of him until the threat is neutralized.
Either way the US needs to take control of the situation, unless they can ensure the "dead man's switch" doesn't get triggered after Snowden dies.
It seems to have worked well so far. There haven't been any actions taken against him that might cause additional damage to the U.S. either through released documents or bad PR.
I fully agree with the 1st comment on the post itself:
vladimir • July 18, 2013 8:57 AM
If he has a switch like this. That is not only protect him from being killed by US authorities but motivate the same authorities to protect him from all other threats.
This should provide enough incentive for the same spy agencies to make sure nothing happens to him.
I'm very curious as to how this works at a basic level. Perhaps a 'positive-control' system in which he has to send a signal to some clandestine web service every 24 hours to prevent the keys from being released? Does he have an Arduino board strapped to his chest detecting his pulse? Or has he simply entrusted some mechanism to somebody else, who can determine whether the keys should be released depending on the nuances of the situation in which he is harmed/killed?
I guess you could just use the wikipedia API. Just try changing "is" to "was" in the first sentence and see what happens.
Complicated technical measures expose the data to risk of decryption prior to possible activation (by the NSA or someone else). Just printing the keys and giving to trusted people would be far less risky.
This play is straight out of the wikileaks playbook that they used almost verbatim when the us was making a lot of noise about assange. It appeared to be effective, in that US intelligence took the threat seriously and were concerned about the ramifications of what might be included. One element of that was the belief that those docs included some kind of "kill shot" class leak that would pretty much sink Bank of America.
There were certainly elements of truth to all of these things - there was a document cache, it was encrypted, people did have split keys, it probably did include elements of what was revealed as the robosigning scandal.
But from hearing discussion about it the subject, I think that US Intelligence now more or less holds the opinion that it was a bluff. Nothing of significant harm was included in the unreleased documents, though I think that's informed speculation and not some kind of confirmed fact.
All of a sudden after Snowden was getting helped by wikileaks and he was under a lot of pressure, the revelation of a similar encrypted cache of documents distributed widely was given to a lot of news agencies, and has regularly come up at opportune times in friendly media outlets.
I haven't been told this by anyone, but I'm pretty sure the intelligence community isn't buying it. Reports by greenwald were somewhat inconsistent with idea that there is a large cache of even more damning documents left. He's been travelling internationally, was staying in hong kong where many services operate openly, and presumably under pressure from a variety of security services and states as he tries to escape moscow and secure a safe place to live. It is hard to keep secret keys and documents secure under the best of conditions, and those are about the worst conditions possible.
The only reasonable thing to assume here is that it's all burned - everything snowden walked away with is or will be in the hands of foreign states and anything particularly damning will likely end up in the press sooner or later.
So if you believe that, that there is no way to unring this bell, the last thing you're going to do is spend any time being concerned about a dead man's crypto cache.
If you're willing to do enough horse trading to close the entire european airspace to a single individual, you're pissed and you're gonna do whatever it is you want to do. That's not going to include killing him, simply because the cost is high and the benefit is low. But they are clearly going to exert an inhuman amount of resources into making him regret being born.
And that's absolutely unrelated to Mr. Snowden. That's all for the effect it will have on anyone having similar thoughts. I think he's awesome and did Americans and the world a great favor, and that's he's really brave. And yet after seeing this go down if I was ever in a position to consider doing something like this there is no fucking way I'd ever think I could handle this kind of heat. Not a chance, no question.
My guess is that Snowden has quite an elaborate contingency system in place and has not actually revealed how it all works. Schneier seems to be speculating based on a Wired article, based on nontechnical explanations by Greenwald, based on (probably limited) information provided by Snowden.
Snowden noted Russia and China have an "open door" policy. Although they might like the raw data, I don't think that either would want to Snowden expire under their protection. That would make them look quite unappealing to anyone considering being a "walk in" informant in the future.
So for the time being, Snowden is the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs and for everyone involved is worth much more alive. But once he's in a small South American country, things might change.
This also assumes that this is information that Snowden wouldn't release anyway and that someone cares about. True or not, the perception by those who believe that he jeopardized national security is almost certainly that he's likely to leak whatever he can.
If he really things this is what's going to keep him safe, he's over playing his hand.
Furthermore, I think he's deluding himself if he thinks he's actually going to be targeted for assassination by the US. I'm no Obama fan, but it's a little far fetched. Shoved in jail, maybe. Killed to silence him? Nah.. that's a strategy ironically more likely to be employed by the countries he's seeking asylum status from.
The US has a substantially worse history of assassinations over the last century than any of the countries he's seeking asylum from except Russia (assuming you count the Soviet period). Even more so if considering assassinations on foreign soil.
From the comments (yeah, I know, WTF and I doing reading comments on the internet???):
Also, considering the fact that the NSA appears to broadcast such critical data to just about anyone with a clearance, it can be assured that they don't care at all about foreign governments learning about them. They are primarily concerned about their real enemy, US citizens, and tangentially concerned about the non-US public (Manning's revelation that the US would no longer be able to support its oppressive allies lead to the Arab spring).
"I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. "
This may not be automated -- he may have simply given copies/keys & instructions to several trusted friends, who will watch the news for info about his death.
They would then make the decision to release or not release, either independently or in concert, depending on how he set it up.
Maybe his 'dead man's switch' is just his lawyers. Doesn't solve the problems, but it sounds a lot more likely than some of the ideas being discussed here.
"The thought of paying someone I was forced to fire because he (or she) is incompetent burns me up inside."
It was your decision to hire him, and it was your mistake that you are remedying by firing him. Incompetence is subjective. If your interview process makes it clear that your employees must live in constant fear of termination if they aren't ramping up fast enough for you, on your product with your technical debt and your team's shitty architecture choices ("fire fast" and "with little notice", you wrote), you'll find that your candidate pool vanishes.
[+] [-] tokenadult|12 years ago|reply
"I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. Any real-world situation involves multiple adversaries, and it's important to keep all of them in mind when designing a security system."
Schneier's topic sentence for that paragraph could serve as my one-sentence evaluation of Snowden's deeds so far--he hasn't thought things through sufficiently. A longer commentary on Snowden
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/some-secrets-b...
is an Australian's words voicing some of my misgivings about Snowden's plan for revealing secrets and his aims and his methods.
I wish Snowden a long and healthy life (but I would like him back here in the United States to stand trial). I hope that the most sensitive secrets that he is in a position to disclose stay undisclosed, but I wouldn't bet that that will happen, whether Snowden is alive or dead. There are "multiple adversaries," for sure, and it's not clear that they all have the same incentives in this situation.
[+] [-] fsck--off|12 years ago|reply
When Ellsberg was arrested for leaking the Pentagon papers (to no less than 17 different newspapers), he was released on recognizance and allowed to speak to the media. His charges were eventually dropped because the FBI had used an illegal wiretap on him. Today, the FBI would get a rubber-stamped wiretap, and he would be thrown in a hole forever like Bradley Manning. Ellsberg wrote an editorial in the Washington Post saying that fleeing the country was the right choice.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-07/opinions/40427...
[+] [-] thangalin|12 years ago|reply
An era implies a distinct period of history with a particular feature or characteristic: it has a beginning and an end. As Bruce Fein (of the American Freedom Agenda) noted, "there will be no defined end"... to terrorism, in part due to the expansion of the definition of terrorism itself.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-...
Looking from high above, spying is an act of distrust. Distrust divides. I believe humanity should seek to unify its nations; we have much untapped potential, and spying will only delay us from reaching the stars.
People seem to forget that at present time humanity has no backup.
[+] [-] aidos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deathhand|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lectrick|12 years ago|reply
Why? This is like a married person saying "I hope that the affairs my spouse has had stay secret." Which, I suppose, some would agree with...
[+] [-] foobarqux|12 years ago|reply
It might release the documents to selected people who may be required to use their judgement on what to release. It may require cooperation from several individuals to decrypt. It may be enough of a bluff for someone to think twice
[+] [-] finnw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnachbaur|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windexh8er|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyosity|12 years ago|reply
"But Snowden’s case is actually a kind of reverse dead man’s switch, says John Prados, senior research fellow for the National Security Archive and author of several books on secret wars of the CIA. [...] “In the dead man switch, my positive control is necessary in order to prevent the eventuality [of an explosion],” Prados said. “In Snowden’s information strategy, he distributed sets of the information in such a fashion that if he is taken, then other people will move to release information. In other words, his positive control of the system is not required to make the eventuality happen. In fact, it’s his negative control that applies."
I'm really surprised it was implemented like that, I think using an actual, digital "dead man's switch" would have made more sense. Why not have 100 servers around the world running jobs to email out documents to 100 journalists at all times if an env variable isn't reset every few weeks? Then if he disappears or is killed, a few weeks later the jobs complete and email out the information?
[+] [-] Amadou|12 years ago|reply
If he had a way to do one-way broadcasts, like over the radio, where any snoopers could not discover the receivers then it would make more sense to do a positive control system. But there really isn't a mechanism for that on the internet. Even if he posted to usenet, given enough time, a sufficiently motivated nation-state adversary could probably trace through enough usenet servers to figure out what clients were looking for those reset messages.
[+] [-] btilly|12 years ago|reply
Therefore the version that he did is safer for him.
[+] [-] joezydeco|12 years ago|reply
What if Putin decides to cut the wifi at Moscow airport? Is that an 'apocalypse' situation or not?
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|12 years ago|reply
Because people are smarter than computers.
[+] [-] jbert|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mseebach|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|12 years ago|reply
In other words: If you know how to stop the distribution, wouldn't there be feasible ways to make you stop it?
1: https://xkcd.com/538/
[+] [-] pygy_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e3pi|12 years ago|reply
" ‘Snowden won’t disclose more docs, I have thousands’ – Greenwald"
"Edward Snowden is unlikely to make new revelations since “he doesn’t want to end up in a cage like Bradley Manning”, said The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, adding that he himself decides what to publish from the thousands of leaked documents.
...
http://rt.com/news/snowden-leaks-guardian-greenwald-264/
[+] [-] TillE|12 years ago|reply
The unstated assumption is that these documents would be particularly interesting to foreign governments. That's probably wrong.
What we've seen so far is merely evidence of actions that were long assumed to be taking place anyway. Other governments likely have their own evidence already.
These documents are important to the public, but they're of minimal value to an enemy. His intent was never malicious, so it's extremely unlikely that he's carrying the names of agents or other sensitive information of that sort.
[+] [-] jbigelow76|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|12 years ago|reply
They don't need to be. If they'll hurt the US government then they're of benefit to anyone who opposes that government.
Come to think of it, they'd probably be of political benefit to anyone who opposed the NSA, even within the US.
[+] [-] ShabbyDoo|12 years ago|reply
Maybe there should be two levels of dead man's switching -- incremental leaks if a phrase isn't reported in, say, two weeks and a major release if no phrase reported in three months. This way, he figuratively would have multiple units of currency with which to bargain. Let's say he was thrown in jail. If he only could threaten to release a single, big bundle of secrets via a dead man's switch, all his bargaining power would disappear should a government call his bluff and keep in jail until after the switch fired. However, if he could threaten incremental releases and show that, when given full freedom, the releases stop, he would have power for quite some time.
How would one acquire the use of, say, 50 servers in various datacenters owned by various providers without leaving traces or implicit fingerprints (multi-year prepayment being the big one I am thinking of)?
[+] [-] skriticos2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roc|12 years ago|reply
Given that the other big story in the media is somehow a slightly-more-than-pedestrian summer heatwave in the US and UK, it seems rather unlikely anyone needs a story as big as Snowden to bury something else.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus|12 years ago|reply
I think this dead man's switch is deterrent against being taken into custody. If the US tries to incarcerate him, then the switch will trip and more secret documents will be leaked. Though maybe the US doesn't care.
I wonder how badly the US wants him at this point?
[+] [-] legutierr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
Of course doing it now would be incredibly stupid of the US government, as everyone will point to them, but then again they've already done some incredibly stupid things, so who knows.
[+] [-] ihsw|12 years ago|reply
Quite the contrary, taking him into custody is always in the best interest of the US. Snowden could be targeted with the intention of purposefully triggering the release of the documents, so the US would need to protect him.
However if he remains alive then the threat continues as well, at least until he expresses desire to not release the documents. So since he's alive then the US will want to keep control of him until the threat is neutralized.
Either way the US needs to take control of the situation, unless they can ensure the "dead man's switch" doesn't get triggered after Snowden dies.
[+] [-] Osiris|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcamillion|12 years ago|reply
vladimir • July 18, 2013 8:57 AM If he has a switch like this. That is not only protect him from being killed by US authorities but motivate the same authorities to protect him from all other threats.
This should provide enough incentive for the same spy agencies to make sure nothing happens to him.
[+] [-] zwtaylor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7952|12 years ago|reply
Complicated technical measures expose the data to risk of decryption prior to possible activation (by the NSA or someone else). Just printing the keys and giving to trusted people would be far less risky.
[+] [-] saalweachter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|12 years ago|reply
There were certainly elements of truth to all of these things - there was a document cache, it was encrypted, people did have split keys, it probably did include elements of what was revealed as the robosigning scandal.
But from hearing discussion about it the subject, I think that US Intelligence now more or less holds the opinion that it was a bluff. Nothing of significant harm was included in the unreleased documents, though I think that's informed speculation and not some kind of confirmed fact.
All of a sudden after Snowden was getting helped by wikileaks and he was under a lot of pressure, the revelation of a similar encrypted cache of documents distributed widely was given to a lot of news agencies, and has regularly come up at opportune times in friendly media outlets.
I haven't been told this by anyone, but I'm pretty sure the intelligence community isn't buying it. Reports by greenwald were somewhat inconsistent with idea that there is a large cache of even more damning documents left. He's been travelling internationally, was staying in hong kong where many services operate openly, and presumably under pressure from a variety of security services and states as he tries to escape moscow and secure a safe place to live. It is hard to keep secret keys and documents secure under the best of conditions, and those are about the worst conditions possible.
The only reasonable thing to assume here is that it's all burned - everything snowden walked away with is or will be in the hands of foreign states and anything particularly damning will likely end up in the press sooner or later.
So if you believe that, that there is no way to unring this bell, the last thing you're going to do is spend any time being concerned about a dead man's crypto cache.
If you're willing to do enough horse trading to close the entire european airspace to a single individual, you're pissed and you're gonna do whatever it is you want to do. That's not going to include killing him, simply because the cost is high and the benefit is low. But they are clearly going to exert an inhuman amount of resources into making him regret being born.
And that's absolutely unrelated to Mr. Snowden. That's all for the effect it will have on anyone having similar thoughts. I think he's awesome and did Americans and the world a great favor, and that's he's really brave. And yet after seeing this go down if I was ever in a position to consider doing something like this there is no fucking way I'd ever think I could handle this kind of heat. Not a chance, no question.
Problem solved.
[+] [-] marshray|12 years ago|reply
Snowden noted Russia and China have an "open door" policy. Although they might like the raw data, I don't think that either would want to Snowden expire under their protection. That would make them look quite unappealing to anyone considering being a "walk in" informant in the future.
So for the time being, Snowden is the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs and for everyone involved is worth much more alive. But once he's in a small South American country, things might change.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] digz|12 years ago|reply
If he really things this is what's going to keep him safe, he's over playing his hand.
Furthermore, I think he's deluding himself if he thinks he's actually going to be targeted for assassination by the US. I'm no Obama fan, but it's a little far fetched. Shoved in jail, maybe. Killed to silence him? Nah.. that's a strategy ironically more likely to be employed by the countries he's seeking asylum status from.
[+] [-] vidarh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigiain|12 years ago|reply
Also, considering the fact that the NSA appears to broadcast such critical data to just about anyone with a clearance, it can be assured that they don't care at all about foreign governments learning about them. They are primarily concerned about their real enemy, US citizens, and tangentially concerned about the non-US public (Manning's revelation that the US would no longer be able to support its oppressive allies lead to the Arab spring).
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davidrudder|12 years ago|reply
Not that Schneier's advocating anything....
[+] [-] chiph|12 years ago|reply
They would then make the decision to release or not release, either independently or in concert, depending on how he set it up.
[+] [-] nathantotten|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustingetz|12 years ago|reply
It was your decision to hire him, and it was your mistake that you are remedying by firing him. Incompetence is subjective. If your interview process makes it clear that your employees must live in constant fear of termination if they aren't ramping up fast enough for you, on your product with your technical debt and your team's shitty architecture choices ("fire fast" and "with little notice", you wrote), you'll find that your candidate pool vanishes.
[+] [-] kepano|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikevm|12 years ago|reply
> I want a dead man's switch that deletes all my porn.