Tag: ed snowden

How Ed Snowden helped Russia get a good choke hold on its own online dissidents.

‘Inadvertently.’  How droll. How abso-[expletive deleted]-lute-ly droll.

Let me set the scene: Russia – which has comfortably settled back into the patterns of bureaucratic autocracy that has more or less been its operating methodology for a millennium – has a problem.  It’s that pesky Internet, which was created by those pesky Americans, and our pesky stubborn insistence that people have rights and needs that trumps the State’s. Worse, an American’s instinctive response to foreigners insisting the we shut up on the Internet traditionally involves a bodily function, a rope and directions on how do the former upon the latter. You can do that, when all the servers are on your soil. Sooo…

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, this was intolerable. In his mind the solution was simple: force the platforms — Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple among them — to locate their servers on Russian soil so Russian authorities could control them.

The challenge was how to do it.

Continue reading How Ed Snowden helped Russia get a good choke hold on its own online dissidents.

British Sunday Times reports that Russians, Chinese have cracked Ed Snowden’s files.

Good job, you [expletive deleted] son of a [expletive deleted].

Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have reportedly decrypted files of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor and leaker Edward Snowden, and have identified British and U.S. secret agents.

MI6, the U.K.’s secret intelligence service, has withdrawn agents from overseas operations in hostile countries, according to a report in the Sunday Times of London, citing U.K. government officials and Western intelligence agencies.

Continue reading British Sunday Times reports that Russians, Chinese have cracked Ed Snowden’s files.

Ed Snowden continues anti-American attacks, Part CIX.

Shocking news, people: the NSA wants to go after foreign hackers.  The nerve of them.  The absolute nerve.

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the NSA sought permission to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

And, gee: can’t imagine why Ed Snowden might be ready to throw up protective ink for Russi… err, foreign hackers. Can’t imagine that at all. A mystery of the ages, that.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane

Ed Snowden should have read more Kipling. Or *any* Kipling, really.

Because I read this…

…and I immediately thought of this poem by Rudyard Kipling. Continue reading Ed Snowden should have read more Kipling. Or *any* Kipling, really.

Of COURSE Ed Snowden’s heist was an espionage operation.

This should surprise nobody:

Edward Snowden‘s massive misappropriations of classified documents from the inner sanctum of U.S. intelligence is mainly presented by the media as a whistleblowing story. In this narrative—designed by Mr. Snowden himself—he is portrayed as a disgruntled contractor for the National Security Agency, acting alone, who heroically exposed the evils of government surveillance beginning in 2013.

The other way of looking at it—based on the number and nature of documents Mr. Snowden took, and the dates when they were taken—is that only a handful of the secrets had anything to do with domestic surveillance by the government and most were of primary value to an espionage operation.

Continue reading Of COURSE Ed Snowden’s heist was an espionage operation.

Ed Snowden barks on cue at Vladimir Putin’s trained seal show.

I gotta agree with Rick Wilson: ‘officially?’

 

I would have said ‘officially’ when Ed Snowden sought and got asylum in Russia: participating in this particular agitprop exercise is so expected as to be barely worth mentioning. Moral of the story, folks: if the Activist Left is enthusiastically part of something, look at it three times before endorsing it yourself. Then don’t endorse it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Now you know.

Tweet of the Day, I Don’t Often Agree With @Bennyjohnson… edition

…but I agree with him on this:

They kill journalists and whistle-blowers over there. Hell, Russia used to have slave labor camps. Ever notice how nobody ever seemed to prosecute, Nuremberg-style, all those people who ran ’em? Amazing how the post-Soviets always seem to get a pass on this stuff.

Moe Lane

Calling the 72 hour rule on the Mike Rogers / Ed Snowden / NSA / FSB thing.

Basically, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R) – with Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D) sitting right there, and not protesting – intimated that Ed Snowden may have been assisted by foreign intelligence agencies when he stole classified information. This will probably be a big topic of conversation this morning:

The Michigan Republican added that there are still “certain questions that we have to get answered” about who helped Snowden remove data from the NSA and later make it public in newspapers in the United States and Britain.

“He was stealing information that had to do with how we operate overseas to collect information to keep Americans safe…. And some of the things he did were beyond his technical capabilities” — a fact which Rogers said “raises more questions. How he arranged travel before he left. How he was ready to go, he had a go bag, if you will.”

Rogers added that he believes “there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB (Russian security service) agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence….I don’t think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the FSB.”

Continue reading Calling the 72 hour rule on the Mike Rogers / Ed Snowden / NSA / FSB thing.

Ed Snowden defects to Russia.

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MOSCOW — National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year and left a Moscow airport Thursday to formally enter the country’s territory, according to his lawyer.

Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s legal representative, told RT, a Russian television network, that the papers issued by the Russian Immigration Service allow him to live, work and travel in Russia for a year.

So, if there was anything that the NSA knew that you didn’t want the Russians to know… yeah, that ship may or may not have sailed. I’d snark about that more, except that I don’t actually think that any of this was or is funny.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: You may safely assume that I am not taking seriously any suggestion that Ed Snowden’s adventures in Russia will be over within the year. Certainly Russian intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies intend for Snowden to have a nice, long visit…

Of *course* Ed Snowden needs a lawyer.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) The man keeps publicly committing acts of espionage against the USA: what he needs right now is somebody who can do the first job of a lawyer… which is to tell his or her client to shut up, early and often. And he especially needs a lawyer, because things aren’t working out otherwise for either Ed Snowden OR Glenn Greenwald.

…Snowden’s argument isn’t doing particularly well in the court of public opinion, which seems more inclined to the government’s view that Snowden is a fugitive from criminal justice and therefore subject to various authorities of law enforcement. Several supporters organized rallies on July 4 in cities around the US, but total turnout was around 3,000. The biggest rally, in Washington DC, weighed in at an estimated 400.

Yeah, turns out that the American people may not be particularly thrilled at the thought that somebody might feel entitled to burn the NSA’s foreign operations in the service of a fringe transnational fantasy ideology.  Go figure. Continue reading Of *course* Ed Snowden needs a lawyer.