Gellman also reports that Snowden says that he did try to work through the system at first.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Edward Snowden claims a "won position" in his own chess game
Edward Snowden appears in a garish front-page
picture in the Washington Post Christmas Eve, with the headline “I already won”. He has a silver laptop open with an
Electronic Frontier Foundation banner “I support online rights”. He reclines, his coat jacket retreated to
reveal a hairless forearm. Perhaps he
has already paid his price. How ironic!
Barton Gellman’s big story today in the Washington
Post is, “His leaks have fundamentally altered the U.S. government’s
relationships with its citizens, the rest of the world.” The link is here. That revealing photo was taken in
Russia.
Gellman talks about the PRISM program that developed
after 9/11, and how major tech companies had to share user communications with
government agencies. But the special
metadata analysis of NSA went even beyond what PRISM does, and apparently was
illegal within the US without FISA supervision. The NSA did not most of this
snooping overseas but apparently couldn’t resist doing so at home. And it’s dubious, given the experience of the
Bush years, that FISA provided much real supervision.
Gellman also reports that Snowden says that he did try to work through the system at first.
Gellman also reports that Snowden says that he did try to work through the system at first.
The Washington Times used the AP version of the
story here.
It appears that the NSA can triangulate with almost
any electronic communication made by anyone in the world, including
domestically. The mathematical process
ferrets out unusual patterns that could show terrorist activity. It works on a “degrees of separation”
concept. Is this process likely to stop
a catastrophic EMP attack plot if one ever develops? Probably so.
Could it catch an innocent civilian with unusual but legal and harmless
connections? As my own father would have
said, “Highly unlikely”, but, like so many things in life, “it can happen to
you.” The fear of the snooping could
have a big effect on the business models of social media, as has come out in
recent meetings at the White House between Obama and tech companies.
All the linear programming (hint: my first job in
1970, at RCA) and data collection in the world doesn’t change the fact that to
solve crimes and stop potential attacks, you have to interpret “human” behavior
ad hoc. Many clues are hidden in plain
sight, in social media available to all, without snooping. There’s a 2008 case involving a national security
employee where I still don’t think police fully understood the clues available
on Myspace and even Blogger (I’ve actually discussed it with them, can’t say more
here). You have to do more than collect metadata
and run it through supercomputers; you have to know about controversies and
understand how people behave.
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