Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations

[nawghtyhare]

http://listverse.com/2013/06/27/10-people-who-blew-the-whistle-on-the-us-government/

 

[nawghtyhare]

http://listverse.com/2013/06/27/10-people-who-blew-the-whistle-on-the-us-government/

 

[fresh out dabox]

i cant believe dude only had a ged, he was employed with this agencey. most people have more qualifications than him and still cant land a govt job., talk about racial discrimination. 

 

[SORIANOTRON]

i cant believe dude only had a ged, he was employed with this agencey. most people have more qualifications than him and still cant land a govt job., talk about racial discrimination. 

just because he "only" has a GED doesn't mean he isnt brilliant....probably has genius level IQ or in the ballpark.....


dont let the media fool you.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

i cant believe dude only had a ged, he was employed with this agencey. most people have more qualifications than him and still cant land a govt job., talk about racial discrimination. 

just because he "only" has a GED doesn't mean he isnt brilliant....probably has genius level IQ or in the ballpark.....


dont let the media fool you.

"If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen **** Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school."

- Eric Snowden

 

[teamjordan79]

Oh nah I know exactly why its not being covered properly. And I know why they're painting him the way they are, I called it right when the story broke.

I just dislike that at least here where I know we have plenty of like minded individuals, this isn't a bigger thread.

With the "children of the internet", the ones raised on 56k modems and AOL chats, we have known about the governments surveillance for a looong time. Now it's out in the open as fact and not a conspiracy.

I'm upset this has been enough of an event to have parliament members and others around the world coming out and asking questions yet our own countrymen either don't care or don't mind. Its like this isn't even happening right now. Its mind boggling.

My BIGGEST issue has been and still is, why was this a secret? I keep seeing "if you're not hiding anything, why worry?" and the fact that that logic is applied to us and not the ones spying is very troubling.

word. but i dunno if you did it knowingly or subconsciously but this is a prime example of how we have been programmed to associate the word "conspiracy" with fiction. Conspiracy is not the opposite of "fact" and means a secret plan to carry out an illegal or harmful act, in which case this is evidence of a conspiracy.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

Solely subconscious. Good catch, repped when I have more to give.

The indoctrination does not cease

 

[currensy]

bump

 

[sundoobie]

http://listverse.com/2013/06/27/10-people-who-blew-the-whistle-on-the-us-government/

Great Read. Thanks man!

To summarize..

• CIA allowed the traffickers to ship large amounts of drugs into the country because the profits were being used to fund the Reagan-supported Contras
• Crack cocaine epidemic of the ’80s
• Nixon Administration’s illegal attempts to spy on political opponents at the Watergate Hotel, as well as a widespread spying and sabotage ring meant to help Nixon win re-election.
• lied about its actions and involvement in the Vietnam War through four consecutive presidential administrations.
• Trailblazer, a $1.2 billion dollar NSA program that infringed on people’s right to privacy.
• Favoritism to Halliburton (Cheney) and granted them a contract to rebuild the oilfield facilities in Iraq.
• FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley Minneapolis field office knew Zacarias Moussaoui (one of the 9/11 conspirators) had paid eight thousand dollars in cash for Boeing 747 flying lessons and was planning a suicide hijacking... the bureau deliberately thwarted efforts which may have stopped the September 11 tragedy.
• collateral murder” that showed US air crew laughing after killing dozens of people (including reporters and civilians) in an air strike.
• US Soldiers committed horrific acts of torture on Iraqi prisoners, and despite hundreds of filed complaints, authorities never investigated.
• US defense contractor DynCorp was involved in child trafficking.
• The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications—faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications.
• US intelligence agencies are especially curious about the goings on of journalists. Tice says he personally witnessed communications channels of journalists being recorded 24/7
• NSA even conducted unconstitutional domestic spying on judges, military officials, members of congress
• warrantless mass surveillance programs conducted by the US and British governments
• US Public Health Service teamed up with the Tuskegee Institute to study the long term effects of syphilis on the human body. They contacted a group of 600 poor, African American men

^ And that's just what the public knows. Imagine what we don't know? In one sense... the US did what it had to to be where it's at! Are we as citizens of this country not enjoying the fruits of all the evil this country has done? However it's just mind baffling to realize how dirty and corrupt America and it's history truly is!

All we can do as pawns is to educate ourselves from 'independent' sources and not be brainwashed to think one way or another especially when it comes to Politics.

Information = Power!

 

[gllahone84]

These Luciferians created the crack epidemic and destroyed a generation of minorities, and this was done not too long after the advancements of the civil rights movement.

How sick is that? 

 

[captnaj phd]

These Luciferians created the crack epidemic and destroyed a generation of minorities, and this was done not too long after the advancements of the civil rights movement.

How sick is that? 

Me and my girl were just talking about this the other day...the backward progression for certain subsets of the population (crack just being one of the destroyers) in the last 40 years has been, in a word,

.

It's insane how good a job they did...those ripples might continue for a couple of generations.

 

[gllahone84]

Seriously...this dude Freeway Rick man...I swear he was in on that ****.

In any interview he does, I always sense that he's not really telling the truth about discovering the method to cook up crack.

I don't buy what he's selling. 

He claims to have had connections with some South Americans...

What about the stories of helicopters flying over South Central LA and just dropping off bags of cocaine on unsuspecting civilians? 

 

[legendairy stinson]

Seriously...this dude Freeway Rick man...I swear he was in on that ****.

In any interview he does, I always sense that he's not really telling the truth about discovering the method to cook up crack.

I don't buy what he's selling. 

He claims to have had connections with some South Americans...

What about the stories of helicopters flying over South Central LA and just dropping off bags of cocaine on unsuspecting civilians? 

I heard him talking about this on Joe Rogan's podcast a while ago. I think his South American connect worked with the CIA allegedly or something like that I don't really remember.

 

[jthagreat]

These Luciferians created the crack epidemic and destroyed a generation of minorities, and this was done not too long after the advancements of the civil rights movement.

How sick is that? 

Ive known this for some time now, but it amazes me folks be on that "get over it tip, its been long enough" when it comes to segregation/unequal pay/etc

the opportunities are not the same...and there is a lot to overcome.

 

[rillo561]

Rick "connect" was CIA.

 

[nawghtyhare]

idk about yall but a big booty will always distract me---no matter whats going on

Bruh what the hell are u talking about????
Perfect example of how dumb Americans can be

 

[meek meals]

posting to read through later

 

[brainwashed21]

Yo, when did we start voting people into the government, so they could start running their own agendas? As soon as they get in a position of power, they stop representing the citizens, their state, and their country.. It's all of a sudden about them doing what they want, nd they don't have to tell anyone about it,. We literally voting people into secrecy, because once things come out in the public eye, it's )):7 us cause we aren't suppose to know anything... What???? These are regular people just like us, but they hide behind our constitution for a couple of years, nd wash their hands at the end of their terms, with a bunch of money.. While we're left in a s)-3 hole.. Snowden let us know what was going on, what been going on for a couple of years.. He should be supported by us, not left for the government to eat up. They could lie to us, but we can't lie to them.. Without us they have no power. I wonder when will the government realize its reached to deep into our personal individual rights, and we are starting to get real uncomfortable..

 

[zapatohead408]

^ I'd say it started as early as the 19th century in the U.S. as long as there's interest and money, power involved theres always a secret agenda. Back then it was about industrializing the U.S and people attempting to monopolize industries, today it's about controlling the people.

1984 is a trip, and I see it happening everyday.

 

[ryda421]

 

[rell826]

Quite the hypocrite

[h1]Under Snowden Screen Name, 2009 Post Berated Leaks[/h1][h6]By SCOTT SHANE[/h6]
Just four years before Edward J. Snowden set off an international firestorm by disclosing highly classified National Security Agency documents, someone using his screen name expressed outrage at government officials who leaked information to the news media, telling a friend in an Internet chat that leakers “should be shot,” according to chat logs made public on Wednesday.

“They’re just like WikiLeaks,” Mr. Snowden — or someone identified as him from his screen name, “TheTrueHOOHA,” and other details — wrote in January 2009 about an article in The New York Times on secret exchanges between Israel and the United States about Iran’s nuclear program.

His unidentified interlocutor replied, “They’re just reporting, dude.”

But TheTrueHOOHA was not mollified. “They’re reporting classified” material, he wrote, suggesting that both the leak and the article were dangerous to national security. “Those people should be shot” in their private parts.

The chats were hosted on the server of the technology news Web site Ars Technica, which reported on them in an article. The discussion of leaks was among many comments that Ars Technica attributed to Mr. Snowden after obtaining them from other users of #arsificial, a public Internet Relay Chat channel. Other comments show a young American enjoying life in Switzerland — amazed by the high prices, remarking on what he believes is the racism and classism of some of the Swiss, reveling in his own stock market successes.

While Joe Mullin, the reporter who wrote the Ars Technica article, said there was no absolute proof that the user was Mr. Snowden, Mr. Snowden used the screen name TheTrueHOOHA on public Web forums where he posted photographs that clearly depicted him. In addition, the user’s reports from Switzerland between 2007 and 2009 appear to closely match the timing of Mr. Snowden’s service in Geneva as a C.I.A. technician under State Department cover.

“Snowden would soon move into a four-bedroom apartment covered by the agency. He’d blow off parking tickets, citing diplomatic immunity,” Ars Technica reported, summarizing many of the chats. “He’d travel the continent. He befriended an Estonian rock star (‘the funniest part is he’s a SUPER NERD’), raced motorcycles in Italy, took in the Muslim call to prayer from his Sarajevo hotel room, and formed opinions about the food and the women in Bosnia, in Romania, in Spain.”

While the #arsificial channel does not log and preserve such chats, the users had automatically recorded the chats on their own computers and volunteered to share them with the Web site, according to Mr. Mullin.

Mr. Mullin said that a number of longtime users of #arsificial sent in their chat logs, which from their formatting, time stamps and other technical details appeared to be authentic. In addition, he said, some of the logs were thousands of pages in length, and the material from TheTrueHOOHA was only a tiny fraction of that, scattered through material from other users, so it appeared highly unlikely that the material was fabricated. The other users asked to remain anonymous, and Ars Technica substituted “User” with a number for their actual screen names, Mr. Mullin said.

Mr. Snowden’s casual and profane, but apparently strongly felt, condemnation of leaks is an intriguing clue to his political evolution. He is now believed to be in a transit lounge at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, hiding from American prosecutors who have charged him with espionage and theft of government property for leaking the N.S.A. material. Ecuadorean officials have provided him with refugee travel documents, since his United States passport has been revoked, and he has applied for asylum in Ecuador and other countries.

After leaving his C.I.A. job in Geneva in 2009, Mr. Snowden, 30, held a series of high-tech jobs for contractors working for the N.S.A., the huge electronic eavesdropping agency based at Fort Meade, Md. After working in Japan and in the Fort Meade area for the computer company Dell, he moved to Hawaii last year, working in N.S.A. posts first for Dell and then for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he left after three months and surfaced in Hong Kong, providing N.S.A. surveillance documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

The Guardian reported that Mr. Snowden said in an interview that his disenchantment with American intelligence efforts began with his work for the C.I.A. in Switzerland.

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” he told the newspaper. “I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

He told The Guardian that while in Switzerland, he even considered for the first time exposing government secrets. But the 2009 chat logs suggest a man who still accepted the conventional government view of leaks or was hiding his doubts.

As two unidentified users defended the Times article as legitimate journalism, the user calling himself TheTrueHOOHA criticized The Times for what he called a “history” of revealing damaging secrets.

Remarking on the article, which reported that the Bush administration had refused an Israeli request for bunker-buster bombs to use against Iran but was working on covert efforts to foil the nuclear program, TheTrueHOOHA suggested that the report would harm a very expensive program.

“I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars they just completely blew,” he wrote.

When another user tried to calm him down, he declared that the Times journalists “are the same people who blew the whole ‘we could listen to Osama’s cellphone’ thing — the same people who screwed us on wiretapping,” apparently a reference to a 2005 article disclosing the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping in the United States without warrants.

He wrote that the material was “classified for a reason,” and that the reason was “not because ‘oh we hope our citizens don’t find out,’ ” but to keep Iran from finding out and foiling the covert efforts.

Mr. Mullin, the technology policy editor at Ars Technica, based in San Francisco, said the chat logs suggested that Mr. Snowden “really had a change of heart” about the national security arena and the ethics of leaks. “There’s no evidence in these logs that he’s thinking about leaking something himself,” he said.

Apart from that, he said, the logs give a glimpse of Mr. Snowden’s personality. “He comes across as someone who’s extremely smart and likes to argue, who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Mullin said.

Mr. Mullin said Ars Technica published in his article the most revealing of the comments by Mr. Snowden, whose total comments might add up to dozens of pages, much of it the equivalent of barroom banter.

“We think we included the best stuff,” he said, and Ars Technica has no intention of publishing the complete chat logs.

 

[wawawowee]

Quite the hypocrite

[h1]Under Snowden Screen Name, 2009 Post Berated Leaks[/h1][h6]By SCOTT SHANE[/h6]
Just four years before Edward J. Snowden set off an international firestorm by disclosing highly classified National Security Agency documents, someone using his screen name expressed outrage at government officials who leaked information to the news media, telling a friend in an Internet chat that leakers “should be shot,” according to chat logs made public on Wednesday.

“They’re just like WikiLeaks,” Mr. Snowden — or someone identified as him from his screen name, “TheTrueHOOHA,” and other details — wrote in January 2009 about an article in The New York Times on secret exchanges between Israel and the United States about Iran’s nuclear program.

His unidentified interlocutor replied, “They’re just reporting, dude.”

But TheTrueHOOHA was not mollified. “They’re reporting classified” material, he wrote, suggesting that both the leak and the article were dangerous to national security. “Those people should be shot” in their private parts.

The chats were hosted on the server of the technology news Web site Ars Technica, which reported on them in an article. The discussion of leaks was among many comments that Ars Technica attributed to Mr. Snowden after obtaining them from other users of #arsificial, a public Internet Relay Chat channel. Other comments show a young American enjoying life in Switzerland — amazed by the high prices, remarking on what he believes is the racism and classism of some of the Swiss, reveling in his own stock market successes.

While Joe Mullin, the reporter who wrote the Ars Technica article, said there was no absolute proof that the user was Mr. Snowden, Mr. Snowden used the screen name TheTrueHOOHA on public Web forums where he posted photographs that clearly depicted him. In addition, the user’s reports from Switzerland between 2007 and 2009 appear to closely match the timing of Mr. Snowden’s service in Geneva as a C.I.A. technician under State Department cover.

“Snowden would soon move into a four-bedroom apartment covered by the agency. He’d blow off parking tickets, citing diplomatic immunity,” Ars Technica reported, summarizing many of the chats. “He’d travel the continent. He befriended an Estonian rock star (‘the funniest part is he’s a SUPER NERD’), raced motorcycles in Italy, took in the Muslim call to prayer from his Sarajevo hotel room, and formed opinions about the food and the women in Bosnia, in Romania, in Spain.”

While the #arsificial channel does not log and preserve such chats, the users had automatically recorded the chats on their own computers and volunteered to share them with the Web site, according to Mr. Mullin.

Mr. Mullin said that a number of longtime users of #arsificial sent in their chat logs, which from their formatting, time stamps and other technical details appeared to be authentic. In addition, he said, some of the logs were thousands of pages in length, and the material from TheTrueHOOHA was only a tiny fraction of that, scattered through material from other users, so it appeared highly unlikely that the material was fabricated. The other users asked to remain anonymous, and Ars Technica substituted “User” with a number for their actual screen names, Mr. Mullin said.

Mr. Snowden’s casual and profane, but apparently strongly felt, condemnation of leaks is an intriguing clue to his political evolution. He is now believed to be in a transit lounge at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, hiding from American prosecutors who have charged him with espionage and theft of government property for leaking the N.S.A. material. Ecuadorean officials have provided him with refugee travel documents, since his United States passport has been revoked, and he has applied for asylum in Ecuador and other countries.

After leaving his C.I.A. job in Geneva in 2009, Mr. Snowden, 30, held a series of high-tech jobs for contractors working for the N.S.A., the huge electronic eavesdropping agency based at Fort Meade, Md. After working in Japan and in the Fort Meade area for the computer company Dell, he moved to Hawaii last year, working in N.S.A. posts first for Dell and then for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he left after three months and surfaced in Hong Kong, providing N.S.A. surveillance documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

The Guardian reported that Mr. Snowden said in an interview that his disenchantment with American intelligence efforts began with his work for the C.I.A. in Switzerland.

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” he told the newspaper. “I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

He told The Guardian that while in Switzerland, he even considered for the first time exposing government secrets. But the 2009 chat logs suggest a man who still accepted the conventional government view of leaks or was hiding his doubts.

As two unidentified users defended the Times article as legitimate journalism, the user calling himself TheTrueHOOHA criticized The Times for what he called a “history” of revealing damaging secrets.

Remarking on the article, which reported that the Bush administration had refused an Israeli request for bunker-buster bombs to use against Iran but was working on covert efforts to foil the nuclear program, TheTrueHOOHA suggested that the report would harm a very expensive program.

“I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars they just completely blew,” he wrote.

When another user tried to calm him down, he declared that the Times journalists “are the same people who blew the whole ‘we could listen to Osama’s cellphone’ thing — the same people who screwed us on wiretapping,” apparently a reference to a 2005 article disclosing the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping in the United States without warrants.

He wrote that the material was “classified for a reason,” and that the reason was “not because ‘oh we hope our citizens don’t find out,’ ” but to keep Iran from finding out and foiling the covert efforts.

Mr. Mullin, the technology policy editor at Ars Technica, based in San Francisco, said the chat logs suggested that Mr. Snowden “really had a change of heart” about the national security arena and the ethics of leaks. “There’s no evidence in these logs that he’s thinking about leaking something himself,” he said.

Apart from that, he said, the logs give a glimpse of Mr. Snowden’s personality. “He comes across as someone who’s extremely smart and likes to argue, who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Mullin said.

Mr. Mullin said Ars Technica published in his article the most revealing of the comments by Mr. Snowden, whose total comments might add up to dozens of pages, much of it the equivalent of barroom banter.

“We think we included the best stuff,” he said, and Ars Technica has no intention of publishing the complete chat logs.

Typical character assassination attempt going on against Snowden.

Other countries kill or  extrajudicially imprison opponents of the government but here in the US we like to assassinate their character first. Why make it bloody if it doesn't have to be?

 

[wawawowee]

Yo, when did we start voting people into the government, so they could start running their own agendas? As soon as they get in a position of power, they stop representing the citizens, their state, and their country.. It's all of a sudden about them doing what they want, nd they don't have to tell anyone about it,. We literally voting people into secrecy, because once things come out in the public eye, it's )):7 us cause we aren't suppose to know anything... What???? These are regular people just like us, but they hide behind our constitution for a couple of years, nd wash their hands at the end of their terms, with a bunch of money.. While we're left in a s)-3 hole.. Snowden let us know what was going on, what been going on for a couple of years.. He should be supported by us, not left for the government to eat up. They could lie to us, but we can't lie to them.. Without us they have no power. I wonder when will the government realize its reached to deep into our personal individual rights, and we are starting to get real uncomfortable..

Every moron and self centered ******* across America has the right to vote and it's evident why goons and idiots are voted into office left and right. Many of the people voting have very little if anything to lose by making the electoral choices that they do. In fact, many vote based solely on selfish motives and not what's good for the nation as a whole.

A republic is only as good as its populace. Our government is a reflection of our society. Many people in our society have abrogated their duties as citizens; mainly that of being well informed on public affairs in order to keep a check on elected officials.

 

[ninjallamafromhell]

A republic is only as good as its populace. Our government is a reflection of our society. Many people in our society have abrogated their duties as citizens; mainly that of being well informed on public affairs in order to keep a check on elected officials.

We have a winner!

 

[twoonesicks]

pretty sure snowden and that julian assange guy are agent provocateurs. if they were actual whistle blowers leaking something that mattered they would be taken down in an instant........we'd hear of some "suicide" or something. what exactly did he "reveal" that anyone with half a brain didnt already know? the government has been reading every email and listening to every phone call for years.

this is just another distraction and they will use it to justify taking out whistleblowers with a drone strike or whatever. this snowden dude was hand picked by the CIA and hes out there trotting around the globe safely.
 

all for show ladies and gents