We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Trust us, we’re the Security Services Oh noez, the Russians and Chinese have both “managed to crack files leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden“… and the evidence for this is… well just trust us, we’re the Security Services, would we lie to you?
Indeed can they provide some evidence the Russians and the Chinese even got access to these files, given that Snowden did not actually take them with him to Russia?
Yeah right. Prove it or it did not happen. After all, if the information has been blown to enemies as claimed, what possible need is there to keep any of this secret?
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
The only time they reveal anything whatsoever is because it suits their game. They’re spooks after all, so of course they’re lying. They would not even reveal they know the files were accessed if it was true as even that reveals sources and methods.
So yes, of course the story is a politically calculated plant, repeated faithfully by a supine media. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a fool or the target audience, but I repeat myself.
After all, if the information has been blown to enemies as claimed, what possible need is there to keep any of this secret?
The reason is FYTW: F*** You, That’s Why.
That’s why: F*** Them.
If the UK has time to “move their spies” it is hardly a crisis is it?. Even if it were true. More likely part of the “those evil whistleblowing traitors” narrative that they are trying to push.
After all they are spying on our every move for our own good dont’cha know.
Snowden didn’t leak any “files”, just documents. You can’t “crack” a document. These people clearly have an extraordinarily low opinion of our intelligence. But perhaps it’s justified.
Snowden is a bona fide hero and history will judge him as such.
Snowden is a traitor, in the sense that Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor.
Even if their claims are true, they made their bed. Let them lie (in both senses) in it. As JohnW says, Snowden is a hero. The NSA and GCHQ are traitors.
The US has enemies besides Russia and China, and releasing anything confirms it’s legit, and not some kind of fake. What you’re suggesting would be totally boneheaded and nothing any intelligence professional would ever do. (Which makes me a bit surprised that Obama hasn’t already, to be fair…)
Oh, and to be clear, I’m generally pro-Snowden, and I’m certainly not a fan of the various tricks intel agencies use to violate our privacy. But they’re not moustachio-twirling James Bond villains, they’re generally decent folks who go too far in the pursuit of genuinely good things.
Sooooo…. a few things that hit me….
Last week it is revealed that China has been stealing data from US government systems for at least a year (probably more). We saw quite a few stories about the US government being worried that CIA covers could be blown by these leaks. However, it JUST SO HAPPENS to be the documents that Snowden filched about 3 years ago were the ones that had CURRENT MI6 (and others) spy information? And the Chi-Chi’s managed to crack said encrypted files just this week in a massive coincidence? Tell me another one O masters….
Not only that, if spies are being “pulled out” wouldn’t that act alone tell you who the spies are? You would think the Kremlin would notice a bunch of their mistresses and low level functionaries all moving away around the same time.
Some of the files he released were encrypted. They were supposed to be an insurance policy against assassination.
Hopefully not. Von Stauffenberg wanted to keep the apparatus of the Nazi state intact and just replace a few people at the top with well-bred army officers.
It is ‘some kind of fake’ of the, er, fake kind. And moreover as it would seem to pertain to Russia and China and not other enemies, so what would some corroborating information matter if the Russians and Chinese already know? Here is the chance to prove what a terrible fellow Snowden is. But of course, they will not, because they cannot.
And swallowing this concoction is something only someone totally boneheaded would do, so… I cannot imagine anyone who is not already a reflexive security state supporter actually being convinced by this, which makes me conclude the authors of this unsubstantiated claim are the boneheads.
Every time I see people I generally respect post another link on FB with a byline saying something like ‘Told you he was a traitor!’, I rush to open the link with the hope of finally seeing the proof of the terrible things Snowden’s leaks have caused to some good or just innocent people. And every time it turns out to be another regurgitation of the same old accusations with no material evidence whatsoever. To be fair, in all such cases I say to myself: ‘Well, if there is such evidence, it is probably of a kind that unfortunately cannot be made public, and so if the accusations are true, we will never know for sure’. Now it looks like the geniuses at these security agencies didn’t even have the brains to maintain that benefit of the doubt they were enjoying, and decided to release a totally unconvincing “evidence” in the hope that the general public is even stupider than they are. Oh well, as Laird says, they may yet prove to be correct.
Wouldn’t revealing evidence that the Russians and Chinese have got into files that we would prefer they hadn’t got into involve risking letting them know how we know they’ve got into the files ?
Then they would have kept their mouths shut and said nothing. Assuming it is true, then obviously the Russians and Chinese know how they did it and moreover ‘our’ side is saying “they cracked the encryption” (which as amusing considering that would require both the Russians and Chinese to have all the files, which are probably just OpenOffice docs on a thumb drive somewhere in Brazil). So… what exactly is it that ‘we’ would be keeping from the other side? That is what makes this so daft. If there was a secret to keep they would have kept it… secret… not put out this press release (because that is what it is).
More to the point: If we can’t be entrusted to know any of the information about agency X’s case against person Y, then why are we expected to repudiate person Y in the court of public opinion, or try him in an actual court? Why the expectation of three minutes hate if officially we aren’t supposed to know what he’s guilty of?
And as for actual judicial action: Doesn’t a secret trial with secret evidence contradict the entire notion of a court of law?
I tend to have a very limited view of secrecy’s utility anyway, especially in the defense of a free society.
Hollywood would have you believe that there is some vast undercover Manhattan project type secret world out there, vastly more important and powerful than the mundane forces which everyone knows about. It isn’t true. Aside from a few tricks and details (which will become known to an enemy shortly after they are used to any great effect), what you see is pretty much what we have.
This idea of competent supermen employed by some secret agency with vast powers (constantly under siege by other similar enemy agencies, where ‘our’ victory depends on us never knowing about it) doesn’t just distort our ideas of how to handle information and justice (and war). It also promotes a false sense of security!
Happy 800th Magna Carta Day!
As for conspiracies, I like one I read about in a book, where the government is fostering belief in conspiracy theories. It doesn’t matter which one you believe, so long as you believe something is in control. If you realised that the world is even more chaotic and out-of-control than you had thought, that would cause riots and panic!
So keep on believing your CIA-approved conspiracies!!!
Perry – there’s a difference between
(a) the Russians and Chinese finding out THAT we know they know X, and
(b) the Russians and Chinese finding out HOW we know they know X
Thus for example, if enemy has found out about agent W, and we move agent W from his post so as to protect him, then making public these facts (that the enemy knows about our agent) may do us no harm at all – ie if the enemy has found out about agent W, they can probably spot that he’s no longer in place, and deduce from that that we know that they know about him.
But that’s quite different from offering evidence to the public that we know they know – because that might reveal how we know they know. eg maybe we have another agent Y in their office who tells us such things. What proof can we offer to the public that we know they know ? Oh by the way chaps, we have an agent, Mr Chen, in Red Army Military Intelligence and here’s his report saying that they’ve found out about Abdul in Damascus from Snowden’s files ?
Thus “That is what makes this so daft. If there was a secret to keep they would have kept it… secret… not put out this press release” confuses two quite different secrets – that we know they know and how we know they know.
I tend to have a very limited view of secrecy’s utility anyway, especially in the defense of a free society
So, just as a for instance, if the Germans had found out that we were cracking their Enigma messages, cos we had primitive computers, and that one little change had locked us out of their U boat messages for several months in 1942, it really wouldn’t have mattered much ?
To return to the real world. Until the global triumph of truth, justice and the American way, there really are nasty people and nasty states out there (I’m afraid people who say they can’t see any difference between the nastiness of the American and British governments, and the nastiness of the Russian and North Korean governments aren’t worth wasting breath on.)
Free societies don’t have too many secrets that need to be kept secret, and being free, they aren’t very good at keeping them. But amongst the secrets that are worth keeping are some of the things our governments knows about nasty people and nasty states, and almost all of the things about how our governments know such things. Because enemy ignorance on these points makes it much easier and much cheaper to protect us against them.
If you don’t think we have any secrets that are valuable to enemies, why did the Soviet Union expend so much effort trying to discover them ?
What proof can we offer to the public that we know they know ? Oh by the way chaps, we have an agent, Mr Chen, in Red Army Military Intelligence and here’s his report saying that they’ve found out about Abdul in Damascus from Snowden’s files ?
I meant to add that of course Perry wouldn’t accept this as proof either – it’s just what the government says. So it’s even harder to conceive of what the government could offer that
(a) Perry would accept as proof and
(b) wouldn’t reveal exactly how we know
I note with interest that this story came on the heels of the story of the German prosecutors not finding any evidence of the NSA spying on Merkel (and the sub-story that Snowden is full of shite and/or a KGB plant). It makes me wonder which is true?
What we have in the White House is the most ignorant and incompetent individual to have ever held the office of President. He does not understand that reality is real. He does not understand the nature of human life and human society. And most importantly he does not understand the nature and purpose of government. And with the apparent belief in his own infallibility he is clearly in the failure mode.
It’s not at all surprising that the United States Government is in the failure mode.
“Until the global triumph of truth, justice and the American way, there really are nasty people and nasty states out there (I’m afraid people who say they can’t see any difference between the nastiness of the American and British governments, and the nastiness of the Russian and North Korean governments aren’t worth wasting breath on.”
Bullshit
Shitholes like Russia (as it is now) and North Korea are far less of a danger than the antics of our own scum who are looking to put us all under the thumb of tyranny. Short of nuclear war Russia has NO chance of taking over the West–and not even then. NK –even if it fired one of its crappy little missiles , would cease to exist about 10 minutes later.
Our own scum gave up truth and justice some decades ago. The American/Western Way now consists of ever-growing statism, socialism and tyranny. The bastards have NO excuse for mass spying. None. They are doing it because they want control of the population.
I agree. But stories like this aren’t cooked up by the decent-minded intelligence officers who believe they are doing a good thing (and usually with good reason, when you look a their work individually, without putting the aggregate picture together).
Stories like this are cooked up by the politically minded senior management, ever hungry for greater powers, and their PR lackeys: people like Charles Farr and Lord Carlisle. And those people most certainly are mustachio-twirling James Bond villains, out to destroy every last vestige of our privacy.
And thus you deftly prove this is drivel. Moreover the mere fact not only did they make it public that they are (allegedly) pulling out agents who are spying on the Russians and Chinese means they are letting the other side know they know, which means they can deduce how they figured it out. We cannot, but the Russians and Chinese could.
Which is why the whole story is preposterous. The only way to not risk revealing their sources is to say nothing rather than make an unsubstantiated press release.
Indeed. Our own security services are the tool by which our own governments pose an incomparably greater threat to us than Russia or China.
Moreover the mere fact not only did they make it public that they are (allegedly) pulling out agents who are spying on the Russians and Chinese means they are letting the other side know they know, which means they can deduce how they figured it out
It is obvious to the meanest understanding*, that there are plenty of ways of knowing THAT something has happened, without knowing HOW it has happened. To take a simple example, when someone leaks government secrets, the government institutes a leak enquiry, to find out how the leak happened, and who did the leaking. The government knows THAT there has been a leak, by reading its secrets in the newspaper. It doesn’t know HOW the leak happened until its leak enquiry is successful. Which it sometimes never is.
Which illustrates that when one has a bee in one’s bonnet, one can come up with a lot of nonsense to avoid admitting – even to oneself – the bleedin’ obvious.
* the meanest understandings which have not disabled themselves with paranoia.
Yes Lee, but it still boils down to “trust me, we’re the security services”… If they were worried about sources, they would say nothing, there really is no escaping that. Once you admit you know something, the other side can start deducing how from that datum.
And thus the evidence suggests this is a laughable political ploy deployed against the true target… domestic opponents of the security state.
Most of us have no problem accepting that government department are inept and inefficient in equal measure, with their effectiveness based mostly on mass rather than finesse. Yet when spooks are involves suddenly people act as if suddenly the IQ of the people involved is 50 points higher. Yet reading the history of the UK’s security services in the Cold War, it is hard not to be struck by how they were a net deficit (i.e. by and large they were of more use to the Soviets than us) and given what I know of the public sector, I am sceptical to see subtle ploys amidst what looks to me very clearly like a crass domestic political operation.
Lee:
I invite you to explore the difference between the US Government attempting to spy on Russia, China and North Korea, and the US Government spying on the electronic communications of all US citizens, and, as if that was not enough, every other person in the world.
You can see the difference, can’t you?
There are four copies of the Magna Carta.
Astraya has one.
I’m all for keeping a close watch on our own intelligence services (if for no other reason than they are a natural breeding ground for coups). That does not mean that we put away realistic threat analysis. This week, ISIS published Pam Geller’s home address and hash tagged that message #goforth. You too can have that treatment for the mere “price” of drawing a cartoon and being open about your transgressive behavior. Compared to that intelligence operation, the NSA threat to my freedom is less pressing by any reasonable measure.
I am all for having intelligence services, provided they are bound hand and foot.
And by any reasonable measure, I could not disagree more.
John K : I invite you to explore the difference between the US Government attempting to spy on Russia, China and North Korea, and the US Government spying on the electronic communications of all US citizens, and, as if that was not enough, every other person in the world.
You can see the difference, can’t you?
Yes, I can. What’s your point ? And whatever your point is, how does it relate to any of the points I have made ?
Because CLEARLY those orchestrated military attacks, by grass roots “religion of peace” protesters in Benghazi, were the result of an independent video on the web……or something.
But, “…at THIS point…”?
How did that “Charge of the Light Brigade” thingy go?
Can we hear more about the “innocent” Lusitania’s ships manifest?
Lee:
Because you can make a comment like this:
When there are indeed nasty states and terrorists out there, how about not spending untold sums of money creating a surveillance empire unique in history? How about not surveilling every citizen of the United States? If you truly think the NSA security empire is for the benefit of ISIS and Putin I suggest you are badly mistaken.
“Free societies don’t have too many secrets that need to be kept secret, and being free, they aren’t very good at keeping them.”
On that much we can agree. But the problem in the west generally, and the US specifically, is that we classify far too much stuff which shouldn’t be, and retain even legitimate classifications for far too long. This is almost always for entirely political reasons, to avoid embarrassment by the government or powerful individuals within it.
The truth is that we have long ceased to be a “free society” in much but name. The Snowden revelations forcefully rubbed people’s noses in that sad fact, many for the first time ever. So at the end of the day, even if those leaks did compromise a few arguably appropriate activities or effective assets (which point I do not concede; I take Perry’s side of that argument), that’s not too high a price to pay. My only fear is that the passage of the distressingly weak “USA Freedom Act” will lull most people back to sleep, and allow our government to return to business at the old stand.
C’mon guys – the spooks have a PR department just like every other bit of the public sector.
They propagandise their own as much as they hogwash us. Sigh… if I had £1 for every time I’d heard “we’ve detected and stopped X attacks” – but we can’t tell you about them … cos it’s secret.
This looks like distraction tactics – whoever was inside the US Gubmint systems got *everything* on *every* government employee…. now that is embarrassing BIG TIME.
The goons kiting the story took several iterations to actually get their story straight (more here).
A little O/T, but the Onion has nicely captured the current state of the health of the US. Too good not to link, but too true to be truly funny.
Glenn Greenwald summarized it pretty well:
That’s a really, really hard thing to get right even if you’re genuinely trying to act in the best interests of your country. Clever people can piece important secrets together from information you’d expect shouldn’t be classified. When I was dealing with that kind of data there were always warnings about how we needed to keep this or that particular seemingly-innocuous thing classified, because in conjunction with this other thing that we couldn’t hide potential enemies would be able to figure out something we really didn’t want them to know. The impulse to err on the side of secrecy is one born of hard lessons.
That said, domestic spying for the purpose of state security is a really short, steep, and slippery slope. Once a government has leverage on pretty much everybody all it takes is the right kind of clever, ruthless bastard to take the helm of your security agencies and you’re living in North Korea.
Wired Magazine certainly doesn’t believe that Snowden had anything to do with the Russians and Chinese getting access to NSA files. “I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they’ve penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside. After all, the NSA has been a prime target for decades.” Makes perfect sense to me.
Here’s a worrying thought- what if he’s still working for the NSA? Maybe the files are false, designed to mislead? In the world of spies, such operations are not impossible.