Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Edward Snowden and the Chinese Phoenix

photo phoenix.jpg

Previous Posts:
Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?
Author Naomi Wolf Becomes Snowden Truther

I think he's a Traitor, and he's committed crimes in effect by violating agreements due to the contracts he had.
. . . I’m deeply suspicious because he went to China. That’s not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.
I'm also concerned that he had help from inside the agency. Was there somebody else at NSA who had access to a lot of this stuff and passed it?
~ Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Fox News

I hope, I pray and I ask that you will not release any secrets that could constitute treason. I sense that you're under much stress [from] what I've read recently, and [ask] that you not succumb to that stress ... and make a bad decision.
. . . I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them. I love my son.
~ Lonnie Snowden, father of Edward Snowden, on Fox News

I feel for the guy, and for what his life is going to become. I pity him.
He's in for a world of hurt, for the rest of his life. I feel sorry for him. He's going to go through life not being able to trust anybody. And I think that in the end, it'll end badly for him -- one way or another, they'll get their hands on him. He's going to pay for it. He's doomed.
. . . I don't know if he has an arrangement with the Chinese government. If he doesn't, I would be worried that the Chinese may deport him to the United States to gain some concession in return. I'd be terrified of that, if I were him. Who would trust the Chinese government? He is utterly vulnerable and knows that there are a lot of people who really want to hurt him now. If I were him, I would at this point probably be having second thoughts. Asking myself "What did I do? What have I brought down upon my head? Did I really do this?"
The fact is, he can never come back home.
~ Christopher Boyce, jailed and convicted Spy known as "Falcon" in the book and movie "Falcon and the Snowman" in an interview with CNN



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Excerpts from Edward Snowden's Question and Answer via Guardian UK, Moderated by Glenn Greenwald, June 18, 2013

. . . I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

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Snowden: . . . the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

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Snowden: . . . the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target

All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

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Snowden: I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

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Snowden: More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

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Question: MonaHol
17 June 2013 4:37pm
Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.
Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:
I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.
Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Snowden : Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time.

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