tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Bad move. Last time I checked government employees who weren't authorized to read the freely-available documents weren't supposed to read the documents. Better hope the NSA doesn't datamine and find this and you out.
The NSA watches you poop.
- Thread starter Beef Supreme_sl
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
No, I'm just saying that having a certain job title does not automatically make you a hero. Take the recent firefighters in Arizona. 19 died. That's a horrible thing, and my heart sank when I read that headline for the first time. In addition to the 19 deaths, an entire community was destroyed as their families were probably well acquainted if not close. But the news articles automatically called them all heroes. It devalues the term. It's hero first, ask questions later. How do you know one of the dudes wasn't a firefighter just because he wanted to fuck his buddy's wife and he knows she likes firefighters? I also doubt the ones that died knew going into the fire that they'd likely be killed. Sure, many firefighters have thepotentialto be heroic, and some eventually are, but it is ACTIONS that make heroism, not a job title. The same is true of soldiers. So yes, many firefighters and soldiers, etc are heroic, but they aren't automatically heroes just because they have a job title, yet the media treats them as such. That's my point
This guy exposing a progressively more secretive government, knowing the kind of hypocrisy the US gov pulls in regards to ignoring the rights of international territory to reel someone in, that is a heroic act to me. Realistically he has 0 chance of getting asylum in any country that doesn't hate the US. And he likely didn't have much of a chance at all if it weren't for the Bolivian president's plane getting searched and pissing off an entire continent enough for one of them to say "you know what? Fuck you America. We're granting him asylum." If I were in the same position as him, with access to all this information, I'd have figured there is 0 chance of me escaping, no matter where I am. I'd probably value my own life over exposing that info. Most others would, too.
chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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Bro, I'm not a government employee. And the specific guidance was not to view any classified information on government systems and to maintain our commitment to safeguarding classified information. I'm good, but touched by your concern.
BoldW
Molten Core Raider
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Why don't you support our troops?
Don't forget that Snowden isn't just throwing everything he has at us. Personal information, design and infrastructure, he's keeping those out..he's keeping them "safe" but out of the public. He, wikileaks, and their lawyers are carefully choosing what they put out, redacting when needed, etc. Thismustbe a mark for him in your book, but keep in mind that it also means the very evidence we want to see "to prove behind a shadow of a doubt" is the stuff he's protecting. Allegedly.
chaos
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Yeah I never bought that. As if Snowden or Wikileaks have the operational insight to determine what should be released and what could do real harm. They don't. I think it is more likely that they are dragging it out so they can get maximum exposure. Whish isn't a bad strategy, if this is your plan you don't want to blow your whole load and then find out no one cares and next week your assassination is page 13 news while the nation focuses on Zimmerman.
iannis
Musty Nester
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Might be a more convincing argument if he wasn't cowering in a hole in Russia, and if that hadn't been his Plan A.
How do you think that Snowden is paying for political asylum? What currency is he using? Principled arguments about the responsibility of transparency in Representative Democracies? But he's being responsible about it?
Snowden is no hero. The issue he raises is legitimate. Both of these things can be true and can be concurrently true.
Edit: I 100% believe that Putin would do this for free, just for the lulz. I also believe Putin is not the man that he is by doing shit for free.
How do you think that Snowden is paying for political asylum? What currency is he using? Principled arguments about the responsibility of transparency in Representative Democracies? But he's being responsible about it?
Snowden is no hero. The issue he raises is legitimate. Both of these things can be true and can be concurrently true.
Edit: I 100% believe that Putin would do this for free, just for the lulz. I also believe Putin is not the man that he is by doing shit for free.
BoldW
Molten Core Raider
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I'd say assange and Wikilleaks have some experience in these matters. I'm pretty sure some of those wikileaks lawyers (or at least Assange's) are top-notch, with Security consultants in tow. It would do Snowden no good personally to say he's championing our privacy and then go release a bunch of PII or information that could do REAL harm (not just the ignored embarrassment of now) to our ability to fight terrorism and the like. It would destroy his whole Patriot claim. That all fits.
What doesn't fit is the dragging it out for maximum exposure BS. Time is of the essence here, and the US has effectively put him out of the picture while they can work to minimize the damage after speculating on what exactly that might be. So far it has been pretty much ignored. Blowing your load all over Washington would be the right thing to do for maximum exposure, not what he's been doing where the NSA stuff IS page 13 news.
What doesn't fit is the dragging it out for maximum exposure BS. Time is of the essence here, and the US has effectively put him out of the picture while they can work to minimize the damage after speculating on what exactly that might be. So far it has been pretty much ignored. Blowing your load all over Washington would be the right thing to do for maximum exposure, not what he's been doing where the NSA stuff IS page 13 news.
chaos
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If time was of the essence then he would have released more than one set of documents instead of talking about a bunch of shit that no one can verify. It's been like a month. Time is clearly NOT of the essence here.
You seem to have a whole lot of faith in Wikileaks and Assange to look our for our nation's best interest. That's just silly. They have their own concerns that are not necessarily our own, and couldn't possibly know what operations they are impacting by releasing classified information.
You seem to have a whole lot of faith in Wikileaks and Assange to look our for our nation's best interest. That's just silly. They have their own concerns that are not necessarily our own, and couldn't possibly know what operations they are impacting by releasing classified information.
BoldW
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The whole making sure only what needs to be released is released I imagine takes time. Plus, he kind of has his own concerns right now and can't just pull out his laptop and start sifting through documents. It's plausible, but you assign thoughts and actions to him that no one knows yet.
I couldn't care less, like Snowden, about Wikileaks. I have no faith in them as you put it, and said nothing near that. I just don't doubt that they have some heavy hitters, or at least connections to some, and have no evidence to tell me they're a bunch of rebellious high-school hipster activists sticking it to the man or whatever. Are they anything compared to the combined might of the US intelligence services? No, but that doesn't mean they're incompetent.
iannis
Musty Nester
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So... moral relativism, rationalizations, and a healthy dose of bullshit. Like I said. I understand what you mean.
His actions are not heroic. You do realize that he planned this, right? You do at least understand there is a self-serving fantasy fulfillment in the way he planned it. There were other ways to do this. They're not as flashy. I'd say they're not as effective, but what he's doing is completely ineffective, so basically any other plan would have been more effective. But nope. Plan A is "I'll just grab everything off the bosses desk and run for China". Well if that's not the mark of a heroic patriot I just don't know what world you live in.
His actions and the issue he represents are two separate things. Not every cop or firefighter is a hero just by virtue of their job description. This jackass damn sure isn't one just by virtue of his self-proclaimed "Hero and Patriot" job description.
He's seriously dumb as fuck. I'm not some super smart hacker guy.. but even -I- can come up with a better plan in 5 minutes than "lol, I'm gunna run and scream true american. Catch me if you can!"
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Send all documents to every single news company in the first ten minutes, then flee if you so desire.
That simple. Nobody was looking for him before he released what little he did. Nobody. He had plenty of time to draft an email and attach some power point slides. He "knows" what he has already because he picked the documents he put on his thumb drive. He "knows" which ones are safe to release already.
You can't be this stupid tad you just can't.
He took a job to look for anything, had a hard time finding anything useful, probably just dumped the first folder onto his thumb drive and fled the country. He is a moron. Plain and simple.
He could give us all infallible truth about who shot JFK tomorrow and he would still be a moron, it's not his message or the documents that can change that. He is a mouth breathing moron.
Yeah but contractors aren't normally "on-site" meaning they're remote in, meaning they're on a vpn.
Also, xp is capable of using encrypted sessions. I mean, they could have some hella-bad intranet site and it can use SSL or something else. Thats not too hard to imagine. And if they arethatbehind,jesus. You're starting to scare me.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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So he's a mouth breathing moron, yet he was able to undetectably hack into the NSA despite (as chaos tells us) Sysadmins having only restricted access?
Makes perfect sense.
Undetectably hack the dude who put his shit on his desk as he ran to the restroom bc of bad mexican at lunch?
If it is at all possible for one guy to hack all this, you're telling me he's the only one in the world that could do it?
The chinese could put together a team of 100 people to work on it for 5 years and nothing would be safe. But things are safe and I'm sure that kind of effort has been undertaken before.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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I never said I thought he was undected. I was merely pointing out the inconsistencies in a_skeleton_03's and Chaos' commentary on the guy and Iannis thinking he could come up with a better plan. I think he's a moderately smart guy who's in over his head and saw the shit that was going on and that nobody in Congress gave a shit.
And the sad reality is that while we're arguing about Snowden Congress continues to rubberstamp their illegal data collection activities. Thanks Feinstein!
Yeah I was just using it to further my point, and I need to be careful before I get lumped in with the 9/11 truthers.
chaos
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Government/military contractors are different. You aren't remoting in to view classified data in most cases, you are working on site. XP is of course capable of an encrypted connection, but was not capable of writing files encrypted with Bitlocker. These were files sitting on some server somewhere, he wasn't remoting in to get them. Also, the military and government have classified networks running parallel to the internet, so even if the files were at Meade it isn't like he would have had to "dial-in" to get them.