CITIZENFOUR

[John Young]

This John Young corrects a data point: 97% of some 59,000
Snowden documents have not been released or even less
percentage if the DoD count of 1.7 million is used. This confirms
that those documents which have been released are misleading
by omission, so cherry-picked and dramatized that understanding
of them is most likely false, biased, distorted, more like narrative
fiction (spy stories, breaking news) than credible evidence. It
certainly confirms that media-legal fiction is the intention of the
distributors, publicity and legal teams rather than allow full
access for widely-based, for ordinary and specialized readers
to assay the collection through a free public access methodology.
(Greenwald's book states that at one point he and Poitras
considered setting up a public web for that purpose, maybe
apochryphal to gloss the slow drip method adopted.)

Perhaps the full access will come about after sacred cow
of profitability and celebrity has been milked, or it may be
that full access has been granted in confidence to skilled
readers in the black arts of comsec, infosec and natsec.

To date, there has been slim pickings of technologically
useful material short-shrifted in favor of lurid civil liberties
scandals which the spies can easily massage into messages
of of course we do that. Except for a tranche of techno
material covered by Jacob Appelbaum at 30C3, nearly
all the rest is simple-minded promotional material with
dollops of legal shenanigans of the sort Greenwald and
journalists can handle comfortably.

A few days ago Bruce Schneier blogged that he had
been cut off from access to the Snowden material
and Matthew Green said he had been shown only a
few documents for comment. WaPo has had a techie
advising Barton Gellman. That's pretty much it for
coverage of technical material needed to devise
countermeasures, that is, virtually none at all.

Hoopla has prevailed in news coverage and books, mostly
of it valorizing journalists and even Snowden in stock journalist
source noble cariacture, and it looks as though Poitras
and Hollywood will continue the practice. What an
ethical shame, what criminality of monetization ($250M and
rising) placed above public protection. Snowden is being
degraded as a poster child for this venality and ambition.
Trapped in a bubble of media, legal and diplomatic fanfare.
A fate suffered by Assange, Manning and a slew of others
some paraded from forum to forum as entourage for the
Snowden-streaming video circus acts like that hosted
by The New Yorker at the NY Film Festival and now
Poitras melodramatic confabulation positioning Greenwald
as Machiavelli to the Prince Edward of Snowden.

At 07:27 PM 10/24/2014, you wrote:
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>Hello,
>
>John, for some reason your name reminds me of someone who I think was
>the ninth person to walk on the moon?  Same John Young? (long shot I
>know) Just kidding though - you are the founder of Cryptome, right?
>
>Anyway, It's not my intent here to ruffle any feathers (on this
>thread), but I did want to suggest (and I'm sure someone has already
>thought of this) that people be able to search for their names or IDs
>in (searchable) databases of leaked info.
>
>I think this came up in a thread on twitter some while back actually...
>https://twitter.com/AnonyOdinn/status/344585372216487937
>
>(That twitter thread was from a discussion in mid-2013[!] which
>referenced MainCore and also (different than MainCore) a 'list of
>targets' that Greenwald had mentioned, but regardless of if it's
>MainCore or Greenwald's 'list of targets' or other such thing, I think
>searchability is really important, which of course implies that really
>all the data should be made available in some kind of format to allow
>keyword searches.)
>
>- -Odinn
>
>
>John Young wrote:
> > Thanks for the comments.
> >
> > Screenshots most welcome. cryptome[at]earthlink.net or pointers.
> >
> > Greenwald's mercenary greed is why only 97% of Snowden docs have
> > been released. His and cohorts criminal behavior puts citizens in
> > harms way to protect the natsec apparatus including natsec media.
> >
> >
> > At 02:58 PM 10/24/2014, you wrote:
> >> Saw this last night - an obvious must-watch for all CPunks. I
> >> think it was probably the most important documentary film of all
> >> time. As Roger Ebert said, "it’s as if Daniel Ellsberg had a
> >> friend with a movie camera who filmed his disclosure of the
> >> Pentagon Papers every step of the way. Or if the Watergate
> >> burglars had taken along a filmmaker who shot their crimes and
> >> the cover-up that followed. Except that the issues
> >> “Citizenfour” deals with are, arguably, a thousand times more
> >> potent than Vietnam or Watergate." Truly, this is the Snowden
> >> story we have been waiting for since 2013.
> >>
> >> The main revelation of the film, however, is what an incredible
> >> boob Glenn Greenwald is. I had some idea of this after seeing him
> >> give an extremely disappointing talk earlier this year, but I
> >> don't think I quite understood how useless this guy really is.
> >> He's constantly asking the wrong questions, displays a technical
> >> ineptness (to the point of deliberate ignorance) that obviously
> >> hampers the journalism, and at very step shows a very clear
> >> desire to keep the document cache to himself for careerist
> >> purposes. At one point Ewen MacAskill brings up the idea of there
> >> being a Wikileaks-esque document explorer, and Ed says that this
> >> would be the best outcome for the documents, and Greenwald
> >> quickly dismisses the idea to talk about his publishing schedule.
> >> I still have immense respect for him, but I found it very
> >> frustrating and quite cringey to watch him treat the whole event
> >> in news-cycle terms, while everybody around him is obviously
> >> thinking in historical context. For instance, there is a moment
> >> when they are prepping for Ed's first on-camera interview and he
> >> asks the reporters how much background he should give about
> >> himself, and they give different answers. Poitras asks for as
> >> much detail as possible, and Greenwald basically says that isn't
> >> important, just be short so we get a good soundbite.
> >>
> >> More importantly, I think the film also misses an opportunity to
> >> talk about power. This is something Edward himself has addressed,
> >> but it isn't really covered in Greenwald's reporting or books,
> >> and the only time it's mentioned in the film is when Jacob
> >> Appelbaum, while speaking before a European council of some sort,
> >> quite astutely comments that surveillance and control are one and
> >> the same. I think the film should probably have spent another
> >> hour or so investigating, naming and confronting those who profit
> >> from that control. Other than a few choice C-SPAN snippets, the
> >> enemy is completely faceless, which plays well for the pervading
> >> sense paranoia which envelops the film, but also leaves many
> >> questions unasked. Perhaps that's left as an exercise for the
> >> viewer, but I think the general take-away message from both the
> >> reporting and to a slightly lesser extent the film is that any
> >> "solution" will be token reform of policy and not dismantlement
> >> of power structures.
> >>
> >> Also, very nice of the Russian government to let Ed have his
> >> girlfriend back. I didn't know that had happened, and it gives a
> >> rather unexpected happy ending to a film which otherwise made me
> >> want to cry desperately.
> >>
> >> Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what you lot thought of
> >> it. (JY, you should throw a torrent up ASAP! I'm sure people will
> >> be screenshotting and analyzing all of the new document shots the
> >> film contains.)
> >>
> >> R
> >
>
>- --
>http://abis.io ~
>"a protocol concept to enable decentralization
>and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
>https://keybase.io/odinn
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