N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets
nytimes.comWhat constitutes a "secret arrest", as mentioned in this article? Jose Padilla was arrested and initially held without notice to his family or attorney. Is that what this arrest is like? What proportion of the arrests in the US are "secret"? When the families of the prisoners are told, are they sometimes bound by court orders not to disclose the arrests?
I also wondered about that. Why would you "secretly" arrest anyone? And here I thought a critical component of due process is that we don't detain people without charging them with a crime, which is necessarily an open process.
But what do I know? I'm just a schmuck who happens to believe normal people can read and interpret the constitution on their own.
"Secret" arrests are fairly common, they are often used daily when you need to arrest a large group of people without them scattering.
Say you have 5 arrests warrants for members of a gang, you often can't arrest them all the once so here is where the "secret" comes into play when they are arrested and the arrest is maintained confidential for 24-48 hours depending on the jurisdiction.
This is done to prevent the rest from scattering into hiding as soon as the news of one or more of them getting arrested breaks, this also means they won't hold down somewhere and be ready for a fight, or even go and do something worse like take hostages in order to try to get out of dodge.
This also means that in some rights are withheld for the duration of the "gag order" like access to a phone or an attorney, however the police is not allowed to question or formally charge the subjects during that period either, so while there is some violation of rights it is not egregious.
This arrest happened in late August, it seems. Has SCOTUS set limits on how long prisoners can be held secretly?
Criminal justice gags are usually hours to days depending on the case.
The longer ones are usually to protect the arrestee if they are being put into protective custody / witness protection or are released as an informant.
Since this is national security related who knows, I don't even know if these cases have been brought up to the supreme court before.
Yes, unsurprisingly there is an enormous amount of case law on this topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
if its a computer access break-in FED law states 90 days notice..while not directly applying it would seem if someone was caught on illegal access after 90 days FEDs would have to let both the criminal know and theri lawyer so arrest would no longer be secret at thatpoint.
I guess, then, the real question is, what is a "non-secret" arrest? Do the police/FBI routinely release public information in the case of every arrest?
I think in a "non-secret" request you may contact an attorney or family member.
The Constitution is a piece of paper, and might influence certain parts of Government to some degree, the same as any other piece of paper. But the beliefs of the people are what really matters. And if the people don't actually entirely agree with the Constitution to the point that they're willing to fight for it and drag their representatives out of Government over it, it's as useless as any other piece of paper.
+1. Nice philosophies and platitudes are not power, and it does otherwise smart people a disservice to their rationality to confuse the two.
A piece of paper and its surrounding political philosophy may empowering in theory but is decidedly not in practice. At the end of it all, it is the threat of adverse action, hopefully through re-election or worst-case through violence, that keeps power in check. The majority is too unwilling or too ignorant to oust those that are given the power to strictly enforce the philosophy, and thus the Constitution is emasculated.
Have you ever tried to get a group of people to protest anything? Like seriously, the black lives matter are more effective, than people regarding the NSA, privacy, or encryption. Even though some of the stuff we know about the government is WAY scarier.
Not to downplay the NSA issues -- but it's a lot scarier for a black/brown person to realize their life can be ended when they get stopped for having a tail light out.
I do agree that people will think that way, but it's actually not scarier. Giving the government the power it has, implies the government can basically do what ever it want. It has secret courts, secret arrests, and secret police. That is way more horrifying than the very small risk of being shot - which the numbers don't even fully support that it's getting worse, unjustified, or even preventable. I recommend the Through the Wormhole episode: are we all bigots?).
That being said, I do think we whould always be wary of police and generally question the government. It's important we keep into perspective what's actually a threat and whats just unfortunate. Both should be improved, but one (the NSA) can prevent any sort of improvement, the police shooting rate seems to be more of an over reaction and mistake that almost everyone agrees should be fixed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-wormhole/...
I don't think you can say what is scarier for another person.
What's the difference than someone saying it is scarier? This reasoning "only people who are X can say what it's like to be X" makes no logical sense.
"Needles are scary."
Well, actually... no, I don't find needles scary.
To be scared is an emotional response, and you can't really tell pother people what their emotions are.
Yes. As these things go, every day existential threats generally trump threats to our liberty. I can't fault anyone for that.
The issue is more that there's an incredible amount of people who just don't care about the Constitution. Or pretty much anything else that isn't affecting them in a really direct way right that moment in time.
And so, in giving a democratic Government ridiculous amounts of power, we give it power to harm pretty much any minority it chooses, so long as it doesn't piss off too many other people.
I think you'll enjoy: The Myth of the Rule of Law...
While it's great to harp on the inconsistency of the body of law, the importance of rule of law is how powerful people equally get prosecuted and sentenced and cases are not determined by who can pay a bigger bribe to the judge. Both happen in the negative in, say, Hungary.
> the importance of rule of law is how powerful people equally get prosecuted and sentenced and cases are not determined by who can pay a bigger bribe to the judge
But the law is not equally applied in the US, though it's more often here a case of being powerful than being rich. See how General Petraeus was treated (for retaining eight notebooks full of "highly sensitive information" and giving them to his biographer/paramour) compared to Stephen Kim (who discussed one classified report about North Korea with a reporter): the former was fined, the latter was jailed.[0]
Now, Kim has since been released due to the outcry over the disparity of the sentences, so in this case the subversion of the rule of law coupled with public pressure ended up working out. But that is not an inspiring system. It did little for instance to help Jeffrey Sterling[1] (charged with espionage, in part for doing something that sounds a lot like what Hillary Clinton did with her emails).
This is to say nothing of things that have gone the other way, such as a complete lack of prosecution for those behind the 2008 financial crisis, retroactive telecom immunity, etc. The message that this sends is, "The rule of law applies to you unless you are close enough or important enough to whoever is in power." Which is not really the rule of law at all.
[0]https://theintercept.com/2015/03/03/petraeus-plea-deal-revea...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling#Con...
Think of essentially any major US-based scandal in the last twenty years involving extremely powerful individuals (presidents, billionaires etc.). I think it is highly likely that in each case, the most powerful people managed to avoid prosecution and sentencing unless the people they harmed were even more powerful than themselves.
More importantly, these powerful people effectively write the laws themselves - why break a law when you can simply cause whatever action you wish to take to become legal?
Torturing prisoners? Crashing the world's financial system? Spying on millions of Americans without any kind of warrant? Lying about the spying to congress? All no problem! Just make up a law and get it passed, or if you forgot to do that, get retroactive immunity granted or just ask the President to pardon you directly.
The only thing that matters is how much power (influence, force, money etc.) you can bring to bear and who your opponents are. Law is irrelevant. To put it in plainer terms: people who own nuclear weapons don't have to pay their parking tickets.
I've read over that, and while I found the majority of the article interesting, I found the conclusion jarring. Especially as a true Marxist would agree with many of the ideas throughout the article, but come to an entirely different conclusion - that the solution to law being imposed on society isn't to allow people to choose which entity they'll allow to impose on them, but to allow society to directly create its own order.
Of course, just as you might look like the article's Socrates for suggesting free markets of law, you'd look even more like him for suggesting that maybe some issues are best resolved through means other than markets or monopolies.
Then you haven't been paying attention to legal precedents set since the late 70's, and think that you can hide behind a devalued piece of paper that courts and politicians and LEO's have been shitting on for decades.
> But what do I know? I'm just a schmuck who happens to believe normal people can read and interpret the constitution on their own.
To be fair, what if two people did that and disagreed?
Deleted as I thought better than posting this retrospectively. Sorry.
> Of course, from the outside it looks like he was just some Bad Man. Even the prime minister went on the news to condemn him.
This is a lot of obfuscation. What happened here? How did they smear him?
> From the external actions of the characters who oversee the legal professionals who are drafted into service in these secret systems, they definitely have their own, uh, interpretation of law and ethics.
I am friends with some ex-IC guys; from their stories they appear closed in rank more than police, and are indoctrinated to the point that they see themselves as the paladins of American values and democracy. In reality, they are usually only upholding the interests of the powerful, where corporate interest and political value coincide, and those with real power know and reinforce this. To see this is too much cognitive dissonance for the ones that aren't secretly there just because they get off on the power.
The paranoia and the power trip are good at reinforcing the "us vs. everyone" mentality that we know is pretty dangerous psychologically.
The procedure involves jailing someone under a false name, at least on the paperwork. It isn't that unusual and is normally used in organized crime cases. The arrest is done under the guise of arresting a "material witness" rather than an accused criminal. Doing this bypasses various protections (lawyers, hearings etc) for a significant period of time. The use of false names is to protect the "witness" from intimidation. The suspect is then re-arrested on criminal charges while in custody once the need to keep him secret is over.
An infamous case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
It is legally an indefinite detention pending formal charges, but due to the nature of "indefinite," those charges never have to actually exist.
It performed under section 1021 of the original National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which has been upheld as constitutional by an appellate court, a ruling which the supreme court declined to subsequently hear.
This is not a detention under the NDAA. This case has nothing to do with the NDAA. Further, Obama's signing statement of that law stated that his Administration believed such provision to be unnecessary and unconstitutional:
"Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law."
Hedges v. Obama did not affirm the constitutionality of that law, but rather that that plaintiff did not have a sufficient interest in that provision in order to ensure that they would present the best case that can be made, which is important because US Court's follow precedent. If you'd like to read more, look for the constitutional requirement of Standing.
I'm guessing it just means the indictment is sealed, and maybe (but probably not) that the accused and their counsel are under some kind of gag order.
There's no statute or authority or even articles at ACLU or in law journals I can find that suggest that federal law enforcement can detain US citizens without counsel in "secret arrests", or, for that matter, suspend habeas.
Obviously: they can do that. But it's a very big deal when they do. They had to back off charges from Jose Padilla because of how they mishandled that case.
good start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
... under the NDAA "an American citizen can be detained forever without trial, while the allegations against you go uncontested because you have no right to see them"
The 2012 NDAA policy you're citing requires the detainee to be a member of Al Qaeda.
> The 2012 NDAA policy you're citing requires the detainee to be a member of Al Qaeda.
No, they don't either in principal (the application in the text is much broader than specifically al-Qaeda -- it includes al-Qaeda, the Taliban, "associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners", and other who commit a belligerent act against the US or its coalition partners that is seen to be "in aid to" those organizations), nor in practice, because the specific allegations justifying the detention need not be disclosed, nor even the specific detention publicly disclosed, and detentions under the act, while they permit trial by military tribunal, do not require any juridical process or access to counsel to be provided -- that's rather the point of indefinite detention -- there's essentially no practical boundary to their application (if some sympathetic third party becomes aware of the detention, its possible they might be the subject of habeas corpus proceedings, which would require some showing that there was reason to believe that the person was within the fairly broad scope in the text of the act, but that's by no means a certainty in any particular detention.)
You're responding to me as if I'm justifying the indefinite detention clause of the NDAA. I am not. I am saying it does not apply here, and none of the additional color you've provided changes that --- that there are other parties named in current live AUMF's doesn't make this doofus contractor a member of one of them.
You might also look at Obama's signing statement of the NDAA for more evidence for that argument.
> You're responding to me as if I'm justifying the indefinite detention clause of the NDAA. I am not.
No, I'm respodning to you as if you were making an inaccurate fact claim about the NDAA, which you were, whether you refer to what the act says on its face or, even moreso, what the practical result of the authority in the act is.
> I am saying it does not apply here
No, that's not what you said that I responded to. Had you said that, I would not have responded as I did. In any case, theft of secrets in aid of an enemy is a belligerent act, so (even if subsequent investigation ruled out that the acts were done in support of al-Qaeda), were the Administration to, in good faith, believe that the acts were carried out on behalf of or in aid of al-Qaeda, the act here would fall within the ambit of the bare text of the NDAA.
(It wouldn't fall within the requirements of PPD-14, but PPD-14 by its own terms addresses only executive policy on the applicability military custody requirement of Section 1022 of the NDAA, a requirement which applies to a subset of the population for which indefinite detention is authorized by Section 1021 of the NDAA.)
Note I am not saying that the administration treated this as a detention under the NDAA, merely that the concept that the NDAA could -- consistent with the text of the Act -- have been applied here is not at all farfetched.
From what reporting anywhere are you generating the notion that this guy stole secrets in the aid of Al Qaeda or some other enemy named in a current AUMF? You're dodging.
Again, also, please take a moment to read Obama's NDAA signing statement. He is still the President.
> From what reporting anywhere are you generating the notion that this guy stole secrets in the aid of Al Qaeda
I'm not. I'm saying if, at some stage of the investigation it was believed that he did, then even if that was later determined not to be true and regular criminal charges in the civilian justice system were determined to be appropriate, the NDAA detention provisions could have been applied at that earlier stage. Since the whole NDAA discussion was about what the "secret arrest" that preceded the publicly-revealed charges means, while I absolutely don't believe the NDAA was applied or that that was what was actually referred to, nevertheless, its not a categorically implausible interpretation.
> Again, also, please take a moment to read Obama's NDAA signing statement.
I have. If you'd like to make an argument about its specific relevance (as you have so far, notably, not done, despite vaguely waving your hand in its general direction), please feel free to do so.
The signing statement says basically two things of significance: (1) That Section 1021 authorizing indefinite detention is unnecessary and duplicative of the authority already existing in inherent executive powers and the 9/11 AUMF, and (2) That Section 1022, seeking to mandate military custody for certain of those detained under the power referred to in Section 1021 seeks to impose an inappropriate constraint on executive discretion as to how detainees are held, but that its text provides enough flexibly for a minimally-acceptable interpretation which preserves substantial executive discretion (which Obama that implemented as the executive interpretation through PPD-14, which I've referenced earlier, and which, in any case, is irrelevant since, whether or not 1021 could have applied in this case, its clear that 1022 -- and thus Obama's reservations about the NDAA beyond that it restates existing authority, and the interpretations in PPD-14 -- would not apply.)
This is a lot of text, but I'm not sure what the real argument is. It seems like you're saying, "sure, he's not helping Al Qaeda, but they could say he was".
Well, they could say he was a member of Al Qaeda, too. What couldn't they do? If we want to stipulate a lawless government, why bother mentioning the NDAA at all? They could just drone strike him.
The NDAA has nothing to do with this story. I don't know why you're so diligently trying to make the case that it does.
> It seems like you're saying, "sure, he's not helping Al Qaeda, but they could say he was".
Mostly, I'm saying that "sure, they may have determined now that is theft was not to aid al-Qaeda, but they may have initially believed it was for that purpose; an NDAA detention on that basis would be supported by the text of the NDAA -- and uncontradicted by any public executive policy -- and consistent with the 'secret arrest' description, and not inconsistent with a later determination that that status did not apply accompanied by a decision to pursue normal criminal charges in the civilian justice system."
(I did mention further upthread that the procedural nature of the NDAA detention also practically makes pretextual ascription of association with al-Qaeda or other groups covered within the NDAA a real risk, but that wasn't my primary contention.)
> The NDAA has nothing to do with this story.
I've actually explicitly said that that is most likely the case.
> I don't know why you're so diligently trying to make the case that it does.
I'm not. I only got into the NDAA because of your factually inaccurate description of its requirements in your overzealous attempt to support your equally factually incorrect claim that there is no statutory basis for federal law enforcement to detain U.S. citizens without counsel in "secret arrests".
Had you merely argued that the circumstances here made it appear unlikely that the statutory authority authorizing such detention would either be strictly applicable or invoked by the administration, the character of my response (if I even saw a point to responding) would have been very different.
I think you read a little bit too much into my original comment and have gone on tilt.
> The 2012 NDAA policy you're citing requires the detainee to be a member of Al Qaeda.
The "tilt" appears to have been caused by your lack of acknowledgement that the quoted statement was inaccurate. Distinct from this particular instance, "dragonwriter" is asserting that contrary to your statement, the NDAA is legally applicable to a wider class of people than just members of al Qaeda.
Do you agree that one may be subject to the NDAA without being (or being even accused of being) a "member of al Qaeda" and that there are cases where the NDAA can be used as basis to "detain US citizens without counsel"? If so, please correct the tilt by acknowledging the correction. If not, perhaps further explain your position?
You make the list of organizational affiliations that can subject a US citizen to the indefinite detention provision of the 2012 NDAA and then decide for yourself how misleading my use of the term "Al Qaeda" was.
And, no, I do not agree with your second paragraph.
Finally: this has nothing to do with the comment I made upthread. Jose Padilla is literally the motivating example for the 2012 NDAA provision!
Thanks for the response. I don't know enough about the issue to agree or disagree with you personally. I merely hoped I understood it well enough to explain why 'dragonwriter' reacted as he did. From the outside, including the Taliban and "associated forces" seems like an important addition, especially if ever applied by a future administration guided by the text of the law rather than the origin story.
You don't have to have a "lawless government" for a prosecutor to do something that seems wrong, but for which there is no penalty, if it would give him an advantage.
You just need ambitious, aggressive prosecutors.
According to the complaint the search happened August 29th so this has been ongoing for a while. Very curious.
Here's the criminal complaint. Check Paragraph 12, sounds like he just liked to take work home with him. I'm leaning on the side that this IS NOT ShadowBrokers.
https://lawfare.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2016/Mart...
EDIT: Yeah, Martin is not even being charged with unauthorized disclosure. Not ShadowBrokers, sorry to burst everyone's bubble.
Whilst trying to remain as politically neutral as possible, isn't this basically what Clinton did?
Whilst trying to remain as politically neutral as possible, this the kindest possible interpretation of one thing that Clinton did.
In the interests of neutrality, isn't this basically what the Bush administration did as well?
A little more context please? I think everyone is familiar with the FBI investigation of Clinton related to her handling of classified material that very recently occurred. We may be less familiar with a similar investigation that occurred 8-16 years ago...
Nobody has managed to find any documents that passed through Clinton's email server that were labeled as classified, let alone Top Secret.
(One or two documents had classified sections, which were labeled with small (c) marks. The document should have had big CLASSIFIED marks, but since it didn't, missing a (c) next to a paragraph is not an arrestable offense)
You are not being neutral by using the Clinton spin of "labeled as classified". The existence of markings is irrelevant. From the FBI statement:
110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified”
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-b...
I find the situation she engendered as ridiculous as everyone else, but the public report, at least as far as I could tell, did not differentiate sending and receiving of information. Ascribing criminal culpability to her is therefore unclear based on the public form of the report, and the lack of charges implies that it's unclear in the classified version of events as well.
I think people fault her because the server was setup, maintained and used on her authority. Since she created the unsafe situation, she's responsible.
Stop pushing this myth.
I want Hillary to win as much as the next reasonable person, but that doesn't mean she didn't mess up.
There were dozens of classified emails that were in fact classified at the time they were sent. Some of which were Top Secret. Some of which were even Special Access Programs.
Whether something is marked or not is actually irrelevant. Part of her responsibility and this contractor's responsibility under the clearance agreement is to identify classified content regardless of markings.
Point taken. You're correct on all points.
Discussing classified matters through an insecure method is a far cry from physically taking documents home, not least because it's clear the discussions were being undertaken as part of her official duties. Taking documents home is a lot more ambiguous as to intent.
> Discussing classified matters through an insecure method is a far cry from physically taking documents home
It is identical. He is being accused of moving classified information to unauthorised locations. She moved information to unauthorised locations. She literally had people send classified information to the basement of her home.
Plus I'd argue that sending classified information to an insecure server is a far bigger threat to national security. Even if he got robbed on the way home the overall scope is lower than if the server gets broken into by foreign entities.
>to an insecure server
Email is insecure regardless of who owns the server or where it's located. The government's own position is that emails in transit are postcards, not letters, and emails at rest are abandoned property, not personal papers and effects.
On the scale of how bad this is, plain old email on a private dedicated server is a 10/10, but plain old email on an @state.gov server would have been at least a 9/10. From an "endangering national security" perspective, we should be equally angry about everyone who used the official State email server for classified information.
It's not just information disclosure. Imagine the lulz to be had from the fact that the Security of State can't distinguish between an email from the President and any idiot who knows how to forge a FROM header.
Also, that time when it turned out that the State Department let the Russians have RCE on its email server for more than a year [1].
[1] http://gizmodo.com/state-dept-just-shut-off-part-of-email-sy...
Not sure what your argument is. Yes, all email is insecure. That's why it should have been transmitted over exactly zero email systems ever. Instead it was transmitted not only over email, but a remarkably insecure email whose existence was predicated by a desire to evade FOIA.
She's either remarkably inept, or remarkably shady (or both). I'm saying this all with the legitimate desire for her to win, and I'll be voting for her myself, but good lord at least be intellectually honest about what's happening.
The primary argument would be one of agency - while I agree that it was a terrible thing to have done, if she neither requested nor sent any (additional)* classified information from that system, it lacks the same kind of agency that a person explicitly taking classified data out of a secured location has.
* - additional here meaning that I wouldn't claim it to be deliberate to, say, reply to an email containing classified portions and leaving the classified portions in the reply.
Basically the difference between a bad thing happened and she did a bad thing.
I think it's fair to say a bad thing happened (secret documents through insecure channels) because she did a bad thing (setting up an insecure server linked to secure systems). There are multiple failures here and hers, especially considering her leadership[+] position, is one of them. Unfortunately you guys have a choice between two objectively bad candidates.
Good luck.
--
[+] You can't have trickly economics in only one direction.
> Nobody has managed to find any documents labeled as classified, let alone Top Secret.
Really? So you can just delete all the classification labels and send the document to a yahoo account. Look no labels, so it is fine? You better ask your friendly Security Officer about that (actually don't you'll be highly suspicious doing that).
She had 10 or so TS/SCI satellite images in there. Other people would go to jail for that...
She deliberately set up her own separate server, that wasn't an oops I slipped, one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email server. Then classified documents up to TS/SCI were found on that server. Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.
"So yeah, Jim, I just set up my own work email server at my house, just send work email there". "Oh, you found some satellite images there? You think you got me, however, see, classification markings are not there so it's fine"
> one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email server.
Have managed email servers. Can confirm. Would be more likely to arrive at Mordor on foot.
> Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.
Well, one kind of did, but we like him. He's one of us.
The "just send work email there" bit seems highly inaccurate. It seems pretty clear that the intention was for this server to be used for unclassified communication. You can't even send email from a classified to an unclassified network without clearly marking it as such.
Now clearly it is at best highly naive to think that a server handling the kind of volume of email that the Secretary of State would receive, much of it from people handling classified information, is going to be able to stay 100% free of classified contamination.
The existence of the email server to begin with blocked journalists attempts to investigate on State Department activities in Libya, and violated the FOIA Federal Law (a felony).
Partisan political actors are quick to redefine the problem as 'labeled as classified' and make claims about intentions, etc.
Spilling the beans on classified information is still illegal, even if it's not properly portion marked in big capital letters.
Yes, but the presence of three or so poorly marked emails among tens of thousands of them over four years does not do a great job of establishing intent - as opposed to this case, where the Booz employee was found with tons of presumably clearly marked classified documents.
Even the destruction of evidence is illegal. The State Department ordered her to return all emails, she had staff (incidentally without security clearance) delete tens of thousands of them.
The state department has recovered emails sent and received to her (for official functions) which she failed to turn over. This is in the FBI's report and also in the private lawsuit filed by the Republican group.
What's to say $FOREIGN_INFOSEC_ACTORS don't try to target employees like him? Maybe he did "take his work home" and a FSB operative stole it from his home or hacked his home computer?
I'm saying this as if this was Russia and he was a Russian infosec guy, I wouldn't put it past the NSA TAO to go do just that.
Yes, this is dangerous; people shouldn't be allowed to bring government secrets home with them... unless they are cabinet level officials?
Actually, this argument has some merit, as cabinet level officials probably have a security detail, and hence much less likely to be infiltrated than a random contractor (at least physically; electronically is another matter)
Exactly! They should go to jail as well, but well you can't win them all... Clinton should be in jail.
That would in fact be their job. Far more so than monitoring each of their fellow citizens for shits and giggles. And porn.
Sounds like is being made the fall guy for this.
So there have been at least three leaks from the NSA? That's ridiculous; they need some drastic changes and urgently.
People enforce all security physical and digital. If people don't believe in the mission there will be leaks.
The biggest change might simply be that they need to start doing unambiguous good or their workers will keep leaking stuff.
>The biggest change might simply be that they need to start doing unambiguous good or their workers will keep leaking stuff.
Didn't James Earl Jones address this idea in "Sneakers"?
"We're the US government: we don't do that sort of thing!"
MANY have said that its possible there was another NSA patsy covering for Snowden or definitely at least another spy.
http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-jul...
Many == Russia?
Want to see something really scary???
Here's his house: https://www.google.com/maps/place/7+Harvard+Rd,+Glen+Burnie,...
Not sure if you know this, but you can ask Google to blur a Street View address by filling out a form. I'd guess he did this himself versus any sort of conspiracy thing happening.
I gave it a shot and couldn't find the form. Before I got anywhere near it, Google Help seemed to suggest that the address to be blurred needed to be a violation of Google's policies or something.
just open Streetview and click "report a problem" at the very bottom right of the page.
Being a NSA contractor for his job, it is probably just standard practise to do that.
Whatever the reason, makes me wonder why would anyone try to do this. I mean, I know where it is - I can drive there and take a picture if I wanted to. But bluring out one particular house on a normal street is kind of like the story (I believe from one of the Sherlock Holmes books) about a guard telling the detective about all of the town, apart from one house, where he hid the body.
You have to show yourself, and this increases the chance of people reporting a strange man taking photos of a house.
Yes, it's not cryptographic-level security, but it raises the costs of an attack. In the real world, that matters.
Also consider that not all attacks are spy-vs-spy. This could be a case of 'keeping honest people honest', i.e.: making it sufficiently difficult to dissuade the majority of political activists and/or protesters. This is the same reason why padlocks are a thing.
> You have to show yourself, and this increases the chance of people reporting a strange man taking photos of a house.
In the year of pokemon go players everywhere? And even then, who cares about a person with a mobile phone? We're a good decade after anyone is a "strange man" when taking photos anywhere. You don't even have to show yourself. Just order a cab and go through that street without stopping.
> dissuade the majority of political activists and/or protesters
I'm not convinced. The only thing the blurring did was prove that this is the interesting house, rather than a name coincidence. What is that supposed to dissuade me from if I was already going to go there and do something potentially illegal?
It may or may not be effective, but I think this is the underlying principle.
Want to see something totally common: google image search for the address:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=4%20harvard%20road%...
Wow. The censorship is heavy.
I ask myself what I should be more upset about: that someone walked away with government hacking tools, or that our government knew about existing exploits in critical American company technologies and kept them a secret?
Understandable complaints, but isn't the latter just standard procedure in modern cyberwarfare? I think I would be more upset if America didn't have any offensive zero-day weapons to strike with. If we only had capability against foreign companies software, everyone would just buy American and be immune.
Would Americans be more or less secure in that world?
On account of (a) unjust governments being more likely to abuse power than just ones, (b) unjust governments are more dangerous than unjust actors and (c) the belief that just governments are plausible, I would say "more".
If you live under an unjust government, their curtailed power is a plus. If you live under a just government, your threat profile from unjust governments is decreased. The threat from unjust actors may increase, but that is a fair trade-off per (b).
This is what the USA has forgotten, and why they are such a disappointment to the rest of us. Unjust government can be as abusive as it likes. Just government gains its strength from justice alone and its acts of abuse are its first step towards its inevitable unjustice.
Additional: Abuse is seductive. Abuse from power is absolutely seductive.
This doesn't make any sense. You will have attack cyber weapons, but at the same time you risk that your enemies can use the same weapon against the infrastructure you are there to protect.
Collecting attack weapons, but letting your defense rot is a strategy which might work in computer games.
You seem to be implying they're doing something else?
Who do you mean with "they" and what is "something"?
I can't remember now. Spies and spying I think it was.
The NSA retaining zerodays and other exploits works if and only if they use their knowledge of the exploits to patch their own systems, which is unlikely enough, and that they share such patches with certain echelons of US corporate society.
Apparently they do it anyway.
More than this. They work with and infiltrate companies in order to insert vulnerabilities and backdoors in otherwise correctly designed products so that they can be exported and exploited overseas.
He didn't learn much from Hillary's case.... Always claim that you didn't know that there was any classified material and always bring your attorney along, even if it's a voluntary interrogation.
And make sure your attorney gets immunity, and make sure that the FBI promises to destroy your hardware once it's done with it!
With hammers?
Also make sure you are one of the most politically connected people on the planet and married to an ex POTUS.
Different set of rules.
This is why things like mandatory escrow and encryption backdoors are an horrible idea. However much the NSA would like us to use them.
DoJ press release:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/government-contractor-cha...
I understand curiosity of sensitive data. I think everyone wants to know more.
I also understand that some people think that no one should have this power and want to stop it. I wish that, if you feel this way, you renounce your citizenship and find another country that acts as you believe they should and just leave the other country alone, unless you feel they are threatening you or those you love and you must do something about it, and even then only if can do something to help in a way that won't hurt anyone now or in the future. Yes, I know it's not always that easy.
But, if you live in a country, through your taxes and your citizenship, you pay for and are recipient of the work of people whose job it is to protect us and all other citizens of your country. And if you didn't know how they defended you, you do now. It isn't always pretty, to say it lightly.
I don't want people to do bad things in the name of good or defense. It'd be better if every country had a large number of grown up boy scouts to protect that country in the most honorable way possible. But, we have what we have. Sure go ahead- expose it if you want, but the more you harm it, the more you'll end up with a group of people that are even more secretive and do things even worse to try to ensure that security. I really don't want that to happen. Things need to get better instead!
Many in the US say that we need to protect people from themselves, and then criticize or harm those trying to protect us. Why?
I used to be much more paranoid and just group people into the "trying to hurt me" bracket. But I grew up. I realized that almost everyone in the world I meet wants to do good or at least has a motivation to try to accomplish something they believe is right.
At some point is there an actual employee on the NSA side (maybe an HR rep.) asking the account manager on the Booz Allen Hamilton side: please stop sending us these guys/girls, they're just not working out, ok? ;-)
"Two officials said that some of the information the contractor is suspected of taking was dated."
So, only some of it. The rest was up to date then. And the old stuff is helpful for figuring out how they think.
If the accusation is true, nothing about this is related to whistleblowing. It's closer to sabotage and espionage.
After reading this article a second time, I noticed that it's crafted to suggest the suspect had stolen software. The evidence given in the article only admits the suspect had documents, some of them classified, at his home. To suggest that many computers and code was found at a programmers home is quite ridiculous. Late in the article, the F.B.I "suspects" that he may have stolen code. What this article lacks in evidence, it makes up in sensationalism.
here's an unsubstantiated claim that gave a great laugh:
> "For the N.S.A., which spent two years and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars repairing the damage done by Mr. Snowden, "
Wonders if this is Shadowbrokers...
>the highly classified “source code” developed by the agency to break into computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Sure sounds like a plausible candidate considering what Shadow Brokers were touting.
If I follow the news releases correctly, this arrest is not of Shadowbrokers but instead the trail from Shadowbrokers led back to a server(s) w/the NSA toolkit installed. Perhaps NSA followed those breadcrumbs back to this individual. Or: Shadowbrokers discovered actual NSA server and NSA is trying to scapegoat an individual in order to shed the appearance of operational ineptitude.
For purposes of discussion, let's say he did take the data to leak. I'm honestly curious as to the response. From everything out there, nothing he took had been used for anything beyond espionage and counter-espionage in the manner that any sane person assumed was happening. Finding a motive (unless he planned to sell it, which I haven't seen any indication of, and would wildly change the story) seems tough. Was he really just taking it to leak, being a radical transparency advocate? Why just this?
Embarrassing? You expect at some point that people will try to steal and leak secrets whether that's for money or moral conscience.
John Schindler (former NSA counterintelligence officer) called this back in August:
http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa...
This would explain how the Russians ended up with the source code for TAO's toys.
The article seems to be suggesting that the idea that there are KGB moles inside the NSA is, in and of itself, indicitative of the NSA's ultimate failure.
That's ludicrous. You'd be an idiot to ever suggest that the NSA wasn't penetrated at any given time somewhere by some foreign power's own spy agency. Design for the failure that's going to happen, not the perfection that never will.
He is one of the worst personalities on twitter. For someone who could perhaps add a lot to the discussion his contributions frequently boils down to "I know better than [you or some other person] and so I don't have to explain [some insulting thing he said about someone]."
Nature of the twitter beast. You can't actually educate or do much more than say, "read any of the 20 articles I've written on the subject" in 140 characters. And there are a lot of people who are very wrong about the sorts of things he talks about.
He knows his stuff. And he's dismissive and rude. The former forgives the latter, for me.
Whatever happened to the other "second Snowden" where it was reported DoJ was reluctant to prosecute?
http://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker...
"New Theft of Secrets", as if whistleblowing was a bad thing.
"he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments"
"different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft"
What's next, NYtimes, calling people "rats" for reporting a homicide?
Are you of the opinion that whistleblowing and espionage are the same thing?
It's one thing to call attention to warrantless wiretapping and unconstitutional practices. It's an entirely different thing to take and distribute the source code of a tool used to access foreign government systems. The former is illegal the latter is literally the reason why the NSA was created.
The article clearly implies that Snowden's actions were "theft"
Which they were. Also, espionage. Also, treason.
And — also — not whistleblowing, because nothing he has alleged is illegal.
> nothing he has alleged is illegal.
At least one surveillance program revealed by Snowden has been challenged in US courts and found to be illegal, whether any others revealed were illegal remains a disputed point.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadat...
> nothing ... is illegal
A federal court disagreed to that in 2015 [PDF]:
Stealing source code from the NSA is not whistleblowing.
Depends on what that source code does. What if it overloads electrical systems placed in orphanages in China where they grow hackers and burns down the building with the kids inside?
I would love to see the scrum meeting for this one.
I would love to see the unit tests!
>"New Theft of Secrets", as if whistleblowing was a bad thing.
Thats not whistleblowing.
they got him a month ago. gat'damn.
the US Government is playing a different game right now. Play time is over.
This dummy was caught red handed. Documents, hardware, etc.