1. How does Glenn Greenwald get his columns from Brazil to The Guardian? Some super-secure internet channel that he imagines no government in the world could hack? What e-mail accounts does he use? Something as plebeian as G-Mail? Some other industrial source that requires signing away far more privacy than even he has implied the NSA has taken with the permission of the FISA oversight process (Note: NOT that I trust the FISA process, it should be totally overhauled). How many of his fans who are going into spasmodic knee jerk whenever Greenwald crooks his little finger have breezily and routinely signed away access to their communications far surpassing what even he has revealed the NSA to be doing? ON THE BASIS OF CONTRACTS THAT EVEN COURTS WOULD SAY LEAVE THEM WITH NO PROTECTION? I've got the impression that a lot of them are doing so on blogs, with browsers, linked to e-mail accounts that combine all of those into one identifiable person (linked to their real names and addresses) making that available to whoever pays them for the information. I mean, haven't you noticed that your e-mail topics are often reflected in the ads you see on the side panel? Does Greenwald really trust the Brazilian government and.... wait, I'll have more of that in the fullness of time.
2. How stupid can Edward Snowden be to take it on the lam to Hong Kong, you know, controlled by that well known champion of freedom justice and personal privacy, the Chinese government and to then go to that other well known locus of the same, Russia? I mean take it on the lam WITH A LAPTOP WITH ALL OF HIS PURLOINED NSA GOODIES. Oh, yes, protected by "encryption", of whatever allegedly unbreakable character which Snowden is staking his faith in.
Let me ask you, would you like your most personal and imitate e-mails of interest to those governments sitting on a laptop in the airport limbo Snowden was in desperately waiting for some way to get out of it? You want your personal information dependent on the wiles of the waking Snowden to keep Russian (or Chinese) intelligence agencies from sneaking a download from it? Never mind the less than superhuman sleeping Snowden? You think he's more than a match for Russian intelligence which has access to everything he drinks and eats? And, don't forget, the only thing that kept the Russians from handing him over to the U.S. government was whatever the Russians saw in it for themselves. You think they wouldn't have used the information he had on his laptop as a bargaining chip with the guy who seems to have never known much in the way of personal discomfort before this caper, using the prospect of handing him over to the feds for indictment? If the Russians (or the Chinese) governments didn't have a vital interest in that information do you really believe it was secure on Snowden's laptop under those scenarios dependent on his wits, integrity and willingness to suffer whatever means the various governments he's placed himself in the hands of to force him to give them the key?
3. Did you really believe that your online communications were secure from, not only the United States goverenments but whatever governments through which that information has passed and been stored? I mean IT'S CALLED "THE WORLD WIDE WEB" FOR A REASON!
The information you put online goes all over creation, stored in servers and collected all over the place, THE PLACE BEING THE WORLD, most of which has no 4th Amendment or Bill of Rights
and even if they did have the equivalent no one in the world is going to make them really comply with it. ONLINE PRIVACY IS A MYTH, IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN, IT ALWAYS WILL BE. IF YOU DON'T WANT SOMEONE TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING AND DOING DON'T PUT IT ONLINE IN ANY FORM "ENCRYPTED" OR OTHERWISE.
Do I think Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing the leaks Snowden gave him? Of course not. Do I think Snowden should be prosecuted for treason? Of course not. Whatever else he may be found guilty of in a court of law, he's not guilty of treason. If he broke the law or violated anything he signed is for courts and judges to decide and I'm not a lawyer. Do I think he's some kind of hero? No, I think he's an irresponsible jerk. I think he's jealous of Bradley Manning, someone for whom I have far more sympathy who exposed some actually important information, revealing war crimes. I'd sign a free Bradley Manning petition interrupting my writing right now to do that. I would have to have a much better case made to me for Snowden than the one I've seen so far before I'd consider it.
Oh, and, just for the record, NO I'M NOT HAPPY THAT GOVERNMENTS VIOLATE PERSONAL PRIVACY BUT I'M NOT NAIVE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT THEY DON'T ALL DO IT ALL OF THE TIME AND SO DO CORPORATIONS SUCH AS THE ONES I SIGNED AWAY PRIVACY RIGHTS TO SO I CAN GET ONLINE AND POST THIS MESSAGE. I FIGURE KNOWING ABOUT THESE THINGS IS PART OF BEING A GROWN UP IN THE INTERNET ERA.
Yup. Pretty much.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Charlie Pierce, Greenwald went on Press the Meat (of one of those shows, and apparently by video, not live) and claimed the FISA court had issued a lengthy opinion declaring all the NSA programs unconstitutional and illegal, but the Obama Administration still refuses to release that opinion!
Well, maybe. Be nice if Greenwald could produce it, since he's so specific (it's 86 pages long) about it. If he has a copy, I want to read it. If he doesn't: he needs to shut up.
Some of the "geek" sites pointed out early on that Greenwald and WaPo had misrepresented what NSA was up to (and WaPo quietly issued a correction, without noting it was doing so. Pity I don't have that link now, but it was one of the legit "geek" sites). I presume they are still pointing that out, even though the MSM doesn't want to get into MEGO territory about what technical terms really mean, v. what Greenwald thinks they mean.
By which I mean: if the source of my information is mostly what Greenwald says on TeeVee or writes in the Guardian, it's not a terribly reliable source because he doesn't seem to know what he's looking at. Anymore, probably, than I would; then again, if I had information on computer systems and operations like the material Snowden gave Greenwald, I'd run it by someone who knew what those terms meant before I published information based on them. Greenwald is, like any reporter, interpreting what Snowden said and gave him. Problem is, Greenwald doesn't speak the language.
He's about as reliable as those "science reporters" who seem to never understand the studies they "report" on. Which generally means fitting them into a pre-exiting misconception that they got in some intro. courses in college while they majored in communications or "journalism'.
ReplyDeleteIf I could, I would pose those questions to Greenwald. I'm under the impression that the fact that all of our online communications go through all kinds of countries and so are accessible to all kinds of governments never occurred to him before. And if that's the case he is, as you say, out of his depth even more seriously than I'd be. And if it has, he's irresponsible to not point that out to his fans.
I'm not thrilled at the idea that the Putin regime could be squeezing Boy Snowden in ways he's not finding it in his interest to share with his good buddy, Glenn, and so not the rest of the world. All I can do is imagine how the KGB trained Vladimir Putin thinks and I somehow suspect he's not restraining himself in telling Snowden what the consequences of handing over the info might be. But, I guess you've got to remember a bit about the KGB to imagine that. Kids these days.
There was a report that Snowden's greatest concern in Russia, or Hong Kong, for that matter, was that his four computers would be taken away from him.
ReplyDeleteIt is a wildly implausible scenario that he has nothing on his laptops except computer games and personal data, or that Hong Kong and Russia (at least Russia) haven't copied everything he has on every computer he has.
Especially now that he's no longer in the airport.
And: yeah. I never forget Putin is still KGB. Not that it means anything to Snowden's generation. Or Greenwald, apparently.