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plk
Premium Member
join:2002-04-20
united state

plk to LanDroid2

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Re: Upcoming Snowden bombshell

About the only real bombshell left is evidence of tapping and tracking senators and maybe some blackmail. Insider trading etc Maybe some reporters to boot.

jvmorris
I Am The Man Who Was Not There.
MVM
join:2001-04-03
Reston, VA

jvmorris

MVM

said by plk:

About the only real bombshell left is evidence of tapping and tracking senators and maybe some blackmail. Insider trading etc Maybe some reporters to boot.

Or perhaps a certain President who suddenly reversed his position on the relative tradeoff between privacy and national security? I mean it's not like something similar hasn't been done in the past, lest we forget. And I daresay that would be considered a bombshell.
jvmorris

jvmorris

MVM

Just to follow up a bit on my immediately preceding post, it really was true long ago and far away that there was almost a Prime Directive at the NSA "Thou shalt not spy on American citizens without a Court order." I know some people won't believe that and I'm not going to waste time trying to convince them that this statement is true. Some of the former NSA employees who have 'gone public' have commented on this also.

I do not know definitively when this paradigm became to change, but I have been assured that it was underway pre-9/11. Indeed, even some of Hayden's public statements seem to point to this conclusion.

Now, the old philosophy was widely and firmly held throughout NSA ranks and it was obvious that it would become necessary to either eliminate or neutralize such employees, especially those in the decision-making hierarchy. This is a slow process, especially when you don't want to make it crystal-clear what's being done. At the higher levels, people start being criticized regarding their performance, they start getting adverse performance reviews, performance bonuses that had been common no longer occur, job responsibilities get redefined, your position is reorganized out of existence (you're still there but you've got no meaningful responsibilities anymore), your staff disappears, you're quietly encouraged to retire or maybe transfer out to a more tranquil position in another Agency. New people are brought in and assigned responsibilities for things that used to be yours*; low-level employees no longer hear about any Prime Directive. New legal opinions are drafted and promulgated (often by people who would never have been allowed close to NSA previously). And slowly but surely, the entire Agency changes.

Someday, someone will write a book about this transition -- it's just not going to be me.

* Somewhat interestingly, Thomas Drake was one of these 'new blood' hires; he reported for work on 9/11.

Boooost
@24.190.184.x

Boooost to plk

Anon

to plk
said by plk:

About the only real bombshell left is evidence of tapping and tracking senators and maybe some blackmail.

That's a good possibility. I'll bet on the NSA hacking election machines and changing the outcome of elections. (Why do you think Rove was so sure about Ohio?)
LanDroid2
join:2004-12-20
Cincinnati, OH

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quote:
The man who helped bring about the most significant leak in American intelligence history is to reveal names of US citizens targeted by their own government in what he promises will be the "biggest" revelation from nearly 2m classified files.

..."One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, 'Who have been the NSA's specific targets?'," (Greenwald) said. "Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we'd regard as terrorists? What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer."

»www.realclearpolitics.co ··· 747.html
Looks like some of you have been on the right track, should be a very interesting list...
nony
Premium Member
join:2012-11-17
New York, NY

3 edits

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said by jvmorris:

Now, the old philosophy was widely and firmly held throughout NSA ranks and it was obvious that it would become necessary to either eliminate or neutralize such employees, especially those in the decision-making hierarchy.

Perhaps "obvious" that something would give...
»www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/f ··· -program
»www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/f ··· secrets/

But the White House also needs to stop leaking about Afghanistan -
»www.washingtonpost.com/w ··· ory.html

Link Logger
MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB

Link Logger to LanDroid2

MVM

to LanDroid2
From the realclearpolitics.com article
quote:
Greenwald, who is promoting his book No Place To Hide and is trailed by a documentary crew wherever he goes, was speaking in a boutique hotel near Harvard, where he was to appear with Noam Chomsky, the octogenarian leftist academic.

"One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, 'Who have been the NSA's specific targets?'," he said.

"Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we'd regard as terrorists?

What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer."

Greenwald said the names would be published via The Intercept, a website funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder and chairman of eBay. Greenwald left The Guardian, which published most of the Snowden revelations, last autumn to work for Omidyar.
In case you ever doubted news is about making money.

Now lets say for fun that those are almost 2 million Americans as no doubt my name would be on that list (if it included non-Americans, but then again if they didn't check me out then they really wouldn't be doing their job), that would be like half of one percent of the US population, and then of course how many of those received more then the first pass look (or were looked at in regards to investigating someone else, ie connections). The NSA isn't looking like the big scary monster everyone has been told it is, so they will need to dress this news up in a big way to get folks attention (wonder how much ads are selling for this broadcast).

If this is the big news, then the real information and objectives are still happily chugging along behind the smoke screen.

Blake

NotAGoodIdea
@50.170.133.x

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Anon

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It was probably underway about somewhere near the times that PGP was released, the WWW or AOL became a household name, OKC's FBI office was bombed, or when the Berlin wall fell. Take your pick, they're all good target dates to start such a shift, motive-wise.
NotAGoodIdea

NotAGoodIdea to LanDroid2

Anon

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"The Stasi Records Act of 1991" and Gerd Gies' resignation comes to mind. There was hell to pay when those records were released, from a personal point-of-view. Brothers, wives, sons, lifelong friends. Something like 99% of the country was being watched by 40%? I mean it was literally a prison/police state.

Heck, reading an article subtitled "An evaluation of the Stasi Records Act of 1991 with reference to the South African experience" and man, the quotes in bold are kind of creepy in a Cassandra-sort-of-way.
NotAGoodIdea

NotAGoodIdea to Link Logger

Anon

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Control the right 1000 men and women, and you control the country...

jvmorris
I Am The Man Who Was Not There.
MVM
join:2001-04-03
Reston, VA

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This one? »www.csvr.org.za/index.ph ··· nce.html .

Oh, this is interesting.

Now, if someone with a bit more time than me would care to file a petition on that WhiteHouse.gov website requesting the US Government to pass a law similar in scope to the Stasi Records Act of 1991 (before the apologists get to emasculate it), I'd sign it, as I suspect would lots of other people. And it would need to come from the people, not the House Intelligence Committee.

What's that line from "Alice's Restaurant"? Oh, yeah, . . .

"One person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
They won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
They may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
Singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
Organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
Fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
Walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
. . . .
If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
For another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired."

»www.lyricsmode.com/lyric ··· ant.html