Assange Journalism

[Steve Kinney]

On 11/28/18 11:40 PM, juan wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2018 19:37:59 -0500
> Steve Kinney <admin at pilobilus.net> wrote:

>> If we ask what specific domestic surveillance activities had already
>> caused the most controversy, and had the biggest potential for blowback
>> if exposed to full public view, "the first two Snowden releases"
>> provides a pretty good answer:  Bulk surveillance of U.S. telephone and
>> Internet traffic.

[...]

>> Programs that large will eventually become public knowledge. 
> 
> 	more like, they had been public knowledge for years...

Not at all.  Spook Watchers and political dissidents knew about them,
through bits and pieces of hard data and well informed speculation.  The
broader general public had moderately paranoid suspicions, but it was
all conveniently deniable until The Snowden Affair.

Ed himself modeled the desired public reaction perfectly, almost as if
coached in advance:  "Grave concern" with just a slight touch of
outrage, in a context assuming that "the government should" obey the law.

>> During and after the initial releases from the Snowden Saga, the
>> intelligence community won nearly every battle over who can break what
>> laws, when, etc. without consequences.  
> 
> 	yes, but that's not "because of snowden" is it? I mean, not meaning to sound like a broken record but the US is a fascist cesspool and has always been. "COINTELPRO"
> 	
> 	the 'intelligence community' which is obviously just an arm of the United Rogue States gets to do whatever they want because that's what being the state means - unrestrained power. 
> 
> 
>> The Snowden Affair removed many
>> potential liabilities by establishing that "we are allowed to do this,
>> that and the other thing."
> 
> 
> 	I don't see the causal link there. There were the leaks, and then the govt kept doing whatever the fuck they want. The events may be 'correlated' but that can be all. 

Precedents set and settled by the Snowden Affair:

- Bulk surveillance of 'private' U.S. communication is legal

- Breaking into the computers of Congressional staff during an
investigation of IC criminal conduct is not prosecuted

- Lying under oath during Congressional hearings is not prosecuted.

... all in the name of National Security.


>> Available biographical information, and his extraordinary access to
>> numerous "sensitive compartments", indicates his job was most likely
>> senior IT administrator and troubleshooter at facilities handling
>> classified communications and databases.
> 
> 
> 	That's a possibility. Snowden on the other hand says he was a 'senior analyst' or something like that. 

Could be.  Doesn't matter much though...

>> Then again, available biographical information indicates that the guy
>> with the "pencil neck geek" physique volunteered for and was accepted
>> for training for Special Forces while before he completed Basic Training
>> - which does not happen.  He then supposedly received a medical
>> discharge after breaking both legs in a training accident, which again
>> does not happen except where the such injuries qualify as disabling.
> 
> 	I remembered only one broken leg =P  - Regardless, I don't think the story is too implausible. And if it's made up, I'm not sure for what purpose? 

Not so much implausible as impossible:  Violations of policy and
procedure, because recruit Snowden was so special... why?

>> That's why I call Snowden an International Man Of Mystery rather than
>> any other title:  Not only is he a living legend, what we can see of
>> that life looks like a "legend" in the sense of an intelligence
>> officer's fake back story related to a particular assignment.
> 
> 	But that means snowden is still 'assigned'? 

Unless his legend really is true, which seems very unlikely to me,
probably so.


>> Why did Snowden pick attorney and political commentator Glenn Greenwald
>> to hand his documents off to, instead of a journalist? 
> 
> 	greenawald IS a journo =P 

He's an attorney by trade, Progressive political policy advocate by
vocation.  As far as I know, he has never been employed by any news
organization, and has never gathered information in the field or written
a published report.  My one item published at Global Research makes me
more of a "journalist" than him, LOL.

>> Why not contact
>> John Young, Sibel Edmonds, an old timer like Daniel Ellsberg - 
> 
> 	not sure if choosing greenwald was particularly bad (at least without hindsight). Then again, snowden could and should have simply dumped everything so...
> 
> 
> 
>> or ANYONE
>> with applicable knowledge and experience?  Did he fail to look into the
>> history of leaks like the one he was considering, and available venues
>> for same - or was he directed to specific people spotted, recruited and
>> handled by the same employer who spotted, developed and handled him?
>>
>> I doubt that we will never know.
>>
>>
>>>> "By his own account, Snowden often discussed perceived Agency wrongdoing
>>>> with his co-workers, which suggests that he should have been profiled
>>>> and flagged as a potential leaker by the NSA’s internal surveillance
>>>> process."
>>>
>>>
>>> 	Maybe...not? I assume that people working in such criminal organizations are a 'tight knit' mafia. They don't really suspect each other. They are all american heroes fulliling their divine role : making the world safe for goldman sachs and raytheon. 
>>
>> Snowden said:
>>
>> “When you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis and you
>> recognize that some of these things are actually abuses, and when you
>> talk about them in a place like this, were this is the normal state of
>> business, people tend not to take them very seriously and move on from
>> them. But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up and
>> you feel compelled to talk about it, and the more you talk about it, the
>> more you’re ignored, the more you’re told it’s not a problem...”
> 
> 	well, that suggests he wasn't suspected, simply ignored. It doesn't sound unlikely. 

In the wake of the Manning scandal, someone with Snowden's apparent
all-access back stage pass would not likely be ignored, if as he said he
had a habit of talking about what his employers were doing as "abuses".
 Especially not when the Insider Threat program was new and, itself, a
topic of concern at the activities Snowden worked for.

Still, I agree he might have been ignored.  "Military intelligence is a
contradiction in terms."

> 	OK here we go :
> 
> 	http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html
> 
> 	"Research by Spiegel reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. "
> 
> 	So according to the spiegel themselves they did get information from snowden docs. 

[...]

>> Clueless mainstream journalists and the public at large have "assumed"
>> that these documents somehow came from Ed Snowden.  
> 
> 	and that's more or less the spiegel says too. 

Ya got me there, I'm gonna have to do some digging one of these days to
check whether I do recall correctly about some of those docs' content
indicating they were dated after Snowden's exile.  Not being a
'journalist' myself, I rarely keep detailed notes and often discard them
after use when I do.

:o)



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