cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5196551

A decade after Snowden exposed NSA’s mass surveillance in cooperation with the British GCHQ, only about 1 percent of the documents have been published, but three major facts can finally be revealed thanks to a doctoral thesis in applied cryptography by Jacob Appelbaum.

  • bemenaker@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    When Snowden published information about the government surveiling it’s own citizens, which you should have known since the patriot act, he was being a hero. Until then people wanted to keep their head in the sand and deny that the government was going to use the patriot act the way those of us who protested it said they would.

    When Snowden published stuff about the government spying on foreign assets, he became a traitor to our country. We spy on other people? NO FUCKING SHIT, that’s what it’s call intelligence agencies. He did immense damage to national security and the safety of the free world.

    People have argued, well maybe we shouldn’t be spying at all, well maybe ,but for now EVERYONE does it, and it’s part of avoiding major wars. Sure, I would rather live in a star Trek universe, but for now we don’t, and this didn’t help that. Every country spies on each other.

    But it was never ok to spy on our own citizens, and that needs to prevented in the future. Remember that the next time something like the patriot act comes up.

    • TH1NKTHRICE
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Without access to classified information, how can a distinction be made between “foreign assets” and US citizens that are suspected of working as “foreign assets”?

      • bemenaker@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        What snowden released went well beyond that. He gave up critical information used against countries like Russia. He exposed way more than just the spying on US citizens. He gave out secrets of how we conduct intelligence gathering on our adversaries, that we need to be gathering intelligence on. Operations that were 100% not on US soil, (which the NSA and CIA aren’t even allowed to operate on, though the Patriot Act somewhat redefined that), and operations that were 100% not involving US citizens, (which most intelligence gathering doesn’t.

          • bemenaker@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s been a while so I may not remember all the details correctly. Originally Snowden met glen Griswold in Hong Kong to give him the data he dumped. After that the news about spying on Americans was published, which again, if you didn’t have your head up your ass you knew was happening. A few months later more information was published about how the NSA and CIA were doing their jobs and spying on other countries. I don’t remember for sure if there was a second meeting with Snowden or if all that came from the first data hand over. Snowden took a job at the NSA, where they, SPY ON OTHER COUNTRIES. I fully support the release initial information being published, too many people were sucking the ra ra patriotism dick to realize their liberties were being trounced. That’s why us crazy lefty liberals were against the patriot act. We knew this was going to be the result, since we read the damn bill. It was spelled out in the bill.but everyone said it wouldn’t happen.