Snowden: Why hasn’t DNI Clapper been punished for lying to Congress?
washingtonpost.comOf course Clapper isn't going to be punished. Holder was held in contempt of Congress for stonewalling on Fast and Furious, but since pursuit of his punishment would require action from an Obama political appointee, nothing will happen.
No one went to jail for the Wall Street fiasco.
No one was fired for being wrong about WMDs in Iraq.
We still don't know anything about Benghazi while some poor sap who published a video rots in jail as a scapegoat... no one will suffer consequences.
No one in this administration will cooperate in determining the origins, extent, and details of the IRS attack on conservative political groups.
The list of government protecting its own goes on forever.
Why is anyone surprised that things are the same for this particular scandal? Particularly with this administration that gets a lot of political cover from the press?
Each house of Congress has inherent contempt powers and can jail people, in the Capitol if necessary. They haven't exercised that power since 1934, these days they refer contemptors to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. The older power still remains though and is on very firm Constitutional grounds (though for a cabinet official there are issues of executive privilege).
More generally it's hard to take Congressional complaints of executive overreaching seriously when Congress refuses to utilize any of the many tools at its disposal.
Thing is, though, I don't think Clapper would fit into this slot. Unlike other examples, he testified, the only problem is that he lied in it.
Our Founding Fathers were very careful to separate executive and legislative powers, very much different and in reaction to the Westminster parliamentary system they had after all rebelled against. So I don't see the Congress having the power to go beyond jailing someone to force them to testify (their being the nation's Grand Inquisitor is part of our small 'c' constitution if not explicitly in the written one).
If you want to see Clapper clapped in irons, elect a non-Democratic Party President with a spine, and hope he doesn't get a pardon before then.
There have been several cases over the years of punitive contempt (as opposed to contempt to compel testimony) by Congress. In fact, in early US history it was most often used to punish bribery attempts.
Any member of Congress that starts putting Administration personnel in jail will be committing political suicide.
When you work in a body with a 13% public approval rating, you'd think there would be little effect political suicide could have.
More seriously: I think it'd be a wild-card maneuver, but I honestly don't know that it would be political suicide. Some people are angry at Congress for being ineffective. Some people are angry at the administration for failing to check the powers it has been given along lines of "decency" and restraint. I don't think those people would be sad to see Congress start using its authority as a non-executive branch.
Who cares what the public thinks? They'll worry over how their party and the opposing party will react to it. There's probably a reason it hasn't been done in almost 100 years. It would be political suicide because they would likely be shunned amongst their own peers.
When you're in theater, you don't kick the other actors off the stage. The others might do the same to you.
Never mind the press going crazy over the silly headlines they'll be able to craft regardless of the actual situation.
>No one went to jail for the Wall Street fiasco.
Minor correction: One person did to go jail[1].
[1]http://www.propublica.org/article/the-rise-of-corporate-impu...
I'm frequently not on Snowden's side (and Clapper being wrong doesn't necessarily make Snowden right), but he's completely on point here. Clapper directly lied to Congress under oath. He needs some kind of censure.
Oh, great. I'm very curious. I am honestly very interested to hear what you feel Snowden has done wrong?
I had always assumed that for everyone except those with something to lose (e.g. politicians, bureaucrats) that Snowden 's actions were seen in high regard.
I think perhaps you've been consuming only media that mirrors your own viewpoint. Many people are upset that Snowden "violated his oath," that he took it upon himself to effectively dismantle programs he disagreed with (even if the program was indeed out of line), and that he fled from the consequences of his actions.
If you believe public opinion polling, a majority of Americans don't like what he did and think he should return to face trial: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-most-think-edward-snowden-s...
Fleeing the consequences of his actions is akin to ducking after disagreeing with an irrational person. Right or wrong, they're about to hit you. You don't have to stand there and take it.
If he had faced the consequences of his actions, he wouldn't be around right now to continue this discussion.
You don't have to stand there and take it, but sometimes it is better if you do. You don't know that he wouldn't be around right now. I happen to think that he would still be around, but certainly his life would be more difficult. But I also think he'd be more "popular".
Interesting trade-off: living in exile but invited to video conference at every big name event and helping direct the course of the national security discussion, or in solitary confinement in Guantanamo but more "popular"
I'd say Snowden made the right choice.
While I think the "solitary confinement in Guantanamo" assumption is probably off-base, certainly he'd be in a tough situation somewhere, and he probably did make the right choice. I definitely wouldn't have had anywhere near the courage he has shown in his whistleblowing, let alone the courage it would take to face the punishment.
Nonetheless, I'll expand on what I meant by "popular"; in the mainstream his flight is seen as evidence of guilt, and the particular countries to which he fled cast even more of a shadow on his intentions. Lots of people I've talked to think he must be an enemy because he fled. Martyrdom is always terrible for the martyr but often better for the martyr's ideology than the alternative. You're definitely right that he's having a continued impact on the discussion, and perhaps that does make his exile a net positive for his ideology. But the people I know who think he's a traitor who betrayed his country before seeking asylum with its enemies don't tend to listen to what he has to say.
Remind those people what happened to Chelsea Manning. She was tortured for months.
(I understand your point, though.)
Bear in mind another point - believing Snowden needs to stand trial doesn't necessarily presume a belief that he's guilty, or should be punished, either. Americans also tend to believe the justice system works as advertised.
As a matter of order, people should only stand trial if the government legitimately believes them guilty and the government believes it can prove this to a jury.
Trials aren't for finding out facts or uncovering the truth. They are the formal processes that a government must do after deciding that a citizen deserves punishment to actually effect their decision.
minor edits
This was be one of the easiest trials the government has ever had to put on though. Snowden admitted what he did himself, after all.
I for one feel he should not be punished under whistleblower laws, but I would be open to a proper trial. I would like to see that discussion in open court, not a secret tribunal where the outcome is only reported by the government doing the prosecution.
Which is why I think he should not return to face trial, because I think there's no way he'll ever get a fair and open trial in the US.
According to that poll, a majority of people also disapprove of what he did. But yes, very true.
I am not American, so perhaps it is that the rest of the world sees this differently than American's do.
Regarding Snowden fleeing, if you disagree with his choice then give this interview a read[1], it is with the whistleblower for the Pentagon papers. The opinion is that if Snowden didn't flee in today's climate then he likely would have ended up in isolation or Guantanamo.
As an outsider to the US it is interesting to observe that American's (on average) have a high distrust of their government, yet follow quite closely the US government's line. (Please note this is not intended to inflame, but it is an honest observation from an outsider that has observed many American's and is intended for you to reflect upon).
[1] http://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/daniel_ellsberg_edward_snowd...
> The opinion is that if Snowden didn't flee in today's climate then he likely would have ended up in isolation or Guantanamo.
That's his opinion, and it's unfounded IMHO. Actual terrorists are increasingly and deliberately put on public trial in New York, and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning got his (now her) trial as well.
Manning was held in effective solitary confinement for 9 months.
Which had a lot to do with being in a military prison where joking with the guards about killing yourself actually could result in being placed in a Prevention of Suicide status. In any event, even with that Manning was transferred away from solitary in the first half of her detention and finished the trial outside of solitary (and thereby set the precedent for how later activist spies should be treated).
> I had always assumed that for everyone except those with something to lose (e.g. politicians, bureaucrats) that Snowden 's actions were seen in high regard.
I imagine this is entirely a function of your social circle. The polls conducted this year have been marginally in favor of his prosecution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentary_on_Edward_Snowden's_.... It's a deeply divisive issue for Americans, though it breaks along the usual lines (age, etc).
My dad, for example, who is very liberal on most things, is no fan of Snowden. Especially among the older generation who grew up during the Cold War, nothing Snowden revealed rises to the level of invasiveness that would be cause for alarm.
Most of the people I know simply do not care about surveillance. They're in the ideological majority, they don't have controversial opinions, and they (rightly) believe the government has no interest in using the fruits surveillance against them. They certainly don't sympathize with the ideas of hypothetical political dissidents that might be hypothetically suppressed using surveillance.
My Dad is the same way, so a few months after first discussing Snowden I decided to write a little satire about living in communist Russia.
It was fairly short, probably 3 pages of dark humor, however he got the point and in now at the very least understands why this is important. I think many Americans (especially those who grew up in the cold war) do not realize how serious this is.
There was a campaign to white wash all the information, NPR, CNN, Fox, they really did not cover the story in a clear cut manner. The fact the government denied everything, and there was an abundance of information shut a lot of people down and out of the conversation.
That being said, every (older - 40+) person I talk to think Snowden was bad, until I ask the question, "Why did we fight the cold war?" You cannot spend decades battling Nazism/Communism only to accept the same practices a decade later. It's pathetic. Often after a clear explanation of what the NSA (or what we know the NSA) actually does, quickly changes their minds.
All they really need is an explanation.
Well I'm younger and I still think what Snowden did was bad. Moreover, I think you're going a bit far by saying that these are "the same practices" that we fought against in the cold war. I would argue that we don't have nearly the grievances that those living under late 20th century communism did.
My big two are: 1. Food and goods shortages requiring long lines. 2. Extreme restrictions on freedom to travel. (You must have your papers to go to the next town, state, etc.) Overall my biggest issue is that communism sought to convert the entire world and that it was intrusive into its citizen's daily lives.
My big issues with Snowden: 1. Most of this was strongly suspected/known. See the Wired article from 2 years before about the Utah data center. 2. If he did this on principle why not face the consequences of his actions. This has been a principle of resistance for years. 3. The documentation he leaked went beyond the scope of potential constitutional violations into tradecraft and technique. He turned over a treasure trove of information to foreign spy services.
>> I decided to write a little satire about living in communist Russia.
Is that public anywhere? I'd be interested in reading and potentially passing it on to a few people I know.
That's odd, I grew up on the tail end of the Cold War and it seems to me that much of Snowden's accusations of the antics of the US government is up there with the propaganda from the US government itself as to why the Soviet Union was bad.
For a generation that grew up with something like East Berlin and the Berlin Wall thinking that government surveillance isn't bad makes me wonder what level does one have to get to before it's considered bad for the people.
For those that did not live through or remember the Soviet Union collapse and the fall of the Berlin Wall leading to German unification I can understand. It's hard for current generations to understand how truly awful WWII was for the human race as a whole, they simply cannot relate.
Out of curiosity, what do your dad and the other people you mention think about Daniel Ellsberg? His case seems similar, and history seems to have mostly smiled upon his actions. But of course he stayed in the country and stood trial...
> They certainly don't sympathize with the ideas of hypothetical political dissidents that might be hypothetically suppressed using surveillance.
Like Martin Luther King?
> Oh, great. I'm very curious. I am honestly very interested to hear what you feel Snowden has done wrong?
Oh jeez, not this shit again. It's not even relevant to the topic of the OP this time.
That is to say, here comes another giant pointless derail that will distract from the actual topic at hand.
I apologize, and you are spot on.
Clapper lied under oath, he has received no retribution for his lie, and the US population doesn't give a shit. Kinda makes one loose faith in the system, doesn't it?
I feel he was right to disclose the illegal collection of phone records. However, he was wrong to disclose pretty much everything else that he did. He disclosed details of activities that weren't illegal and has hurt the NSAs ability to do its job on behalf of the United States.
That is the Government line. But, I believe it is a false argument (i.e. propaganda). Schneier (popular on here) spells is out clearly, https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/michael_hayde...
I disagree (mildly) with his first point that operationally the US is affected. Because it's been a long held assumption that the US had extensive spying programs in place. Snowden simply provided the evidence. So, if you had something to hide from the NSA you were already hiding it as best as you could. Maybe, now a few more attack vectors have been revealed and hiding/encryption practices will be updated.
As far as I can tell, Clapper was asked about a classified program during an open session of Congress. Confronted with a conflict between his oath to tell the truth and his obligation to preserve the secrecy of the program, he chose the latter and corrected his testimony later in private. Maybe I'm misconstruing what happened, but, if not, why is this controversial?
The legitimate response in such a situation is to officially dodge the question. It doesn't even have to be public since they're given the questions in advance and have veto power. But Clapper went before Congress explicitly allowing them to ask him about this program and knowingly lied about it.
What's unfortunate is that it's not controversial. It seems Clapper has the backing of a pretty big group in Congress.
According to the article, ODNI's attorney was given the question in advance, but it wasn't passed on to Clapper, so he improvised. Maybe the attorney's just covering for him, but that's what it says.
> The legitimate response in such a situation is to officially dodge the question.
That is absolutely, 100% not the case. Dodging the question, for this particular question is as much a leak of classified information as giving up the answer directly.
This is by the same principle used by hacktivists called the "warrant canary", which they think they invented: But the same thing happened to a CIA director (Helms?) in the 1970s and he did the same thing because the same principle applied back then too.
That's actually not 100% right. He did correct his testimony, but he said he testified in error essentially because, under the strain of coming up with an unclassified answer, he forgot about the collections authorized under the Patriot Act.
You can read the letter: http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2013-0...
Because he lied during testimony in front of Congress without any consequences?
There were ways to answer the question without jeopardizing a classified program. It has been done before and will be done again.
Congressional testimony is just political kabuki. No one involved wants the truth they just want the show. It reminds me of pro wrestling without the steroids.
So more reason to go to the bottom of this.
Why does it take Snowden to ask this question? Since when is blatant perjury before Congress not a punishable offense? I guess if you perjure yourself over drug use in baseball that's a lot more important.
In the article, they mention that several senators wrote a letter to the president asking for his removal on this basis, but I agree: it seems strange that there have been no charges.
The short answer: because his written response, and the committee's acceptance of his written response, absolved him of any criminal wrongdoing caused by his testimony.
A little known fact: under UCC and UNCITRAL, you have 72 hours to modify any contracts you make in court via private correspondence. With 3 days to receive, and 3 days to send a response (and one day for a Sunday) tacked on. If the other party goes silent afterwards (as the committee did), clapper can use that silence as tacit acquiescence to his modified statements. In this case, the senate committee accepted that "least untruthful" was considered sufficient reason to make false public statements. Clapper brought that private agreement public via the press, and now it's nicely cemented in stone, as a valid process that anyone else can use in case they're ever caught lying to congress.
Someone really should be teaching Ed Snowden contract and trade law. I bet he'd pick it up rather quickly, and it'd make his current situation easier to deal with.
There is some good reporting here by the Washington Post about the circumstances of Clapper's testimony to Congress. Readers here who know my comments know that I'm not fully happy with how Snowden chose to disclose information from inside NSA, and particularly not about his travel to China (Hong Kong) and Russia, but I think Snowden raises a fair point here. There is some genuine difference of opinion among Americans about how Clapper's statement to Congress should be characterized (whether "lie" or "erroneous statement") and plenty of us who agree with another comment here posted before mine that two wrongs don't make a right. Every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy.
I think Congress is unsure about how to proceed on this issue because not all members of Congress are of one mind about what is best for the country in administration of NSA. I categorically reject the assertion that Congress is still moving forward slowly to change NSA oversight because "NSA has Congress by the balls." Nope. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.
The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scanda...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_d...
“I salute Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”
Pelosi added that she has always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140317/07441526589/nancy-...
> Every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy.
> I think Congress is unsure about how to proceed on this issue because not all members of Congress are of one mind about what is best for the country in administration of NSA.
> The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.
None of these points should be controversial, but oh well.
Let me add a few others:
1) Every nation should protect their citizens against intelligence gathering from outsiders. 2) Intelligence-gathering must be subject of the rule of law. 3) Military forces must be under democratic control.
Surely, neither of those are controversial either?
No, not even in the U.S. where all 3 conditions are in effect (unless you mean to quibble about oligarchy vs. democracy, in which case that's a whole 'nother level of argument).
I guess you could argue the definition of "protect", but sabotaging security standards and hording security vulnerabilities is not it.
And if the rule of law require says every citizen is protected against warrant-less searches, you can not "steal" personal information about those citizens when it rest in care of a service provider.
But I take it that what is controversial is not that every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy. The controversy how an intelligence-gathering agency may behave.
They aren't. They wouldn't even be controversial at the EFF.
The controversy stems from cost/benefit judgements on individual spy programs AND from the fact that Clapper perjured himself in front of congress and the american people. The latter is a far more clearcut issue than the former, and it's what we were talking about before the lawyer came in and changed the subject.
Has there been any cost/benefit analysis on any of the spy programs that Snowden's leaks have revealed? It doesn't look like it to me. For instance, it should also be uncontroversial that universal surveillance only ends up with an intimidated, fearful citizenry, and a total lack of innovation, but oh well. For those reasons alone, we should probably start out against universal or dragnet surveillance.
Wait, I don't understand how you can simultaneously believe that the NSA has actually built an apparatus of universal surveillance and that universal surveillance leads to an intimidated citizenry and total lack of innovation.
Which is it? Is the NSA restrained in their surveillance, or does surveillance not actually ruin innovation?
I agree on the first two, but I have a hard time believing that anyone in national office possesses any personal integrity. Perhaps maybe one or two, but that's it.
Politics in the security state selects for the kind of politician at the national level who is bought-in to the rightness and necessity of the security state, early in their careers, long before the people choose among them. It doesn't have to be powered by blackmail, assassination, or other exotic methods 99.99% of the time to be effective. It's the water they swim in. They hardly notice.
All the possible "radicalism" ends up at one end of the scale: PRISM, NDAA, and "least untruthful" causing barely a ripple.
The statement "Every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy." is true, but it's true at every scale. Suppose someone spilled ALL the beans, and the US had to start over in deciding what's secret and what isn't, going forward. How long would it take to accumulate our current trove of secrets, and what does that say about the necessity of most of them?
Two things to point out here...
1. Rumors and innuendo are not the same as hard evidence. While some politicians may survive a controversy, in most cases reputation-damaging information has a negative effect on a political career (especially if it's indisputable evidence). "Nobody wants a scandal". Furthermore, what an old enemy might leak to the press is a far cry from what might be uncovered through comprehensive digital surveillance. Having access to raw, captured Internet traffic is a game-changer.
2. If the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence don't feel that they are getting completely accurate and inclusive information from the NSA, why wouldn't they feel vulnerable? Who could know the truth if the NSA doesn't give straight information to the very people who are supposed to be overseeing their work?
Every national government in the civilized world needs an intelligence-gathering agency that can operate with some degree of operational secrecy.
What is the basis for this assertion? What would happen to a nation that didn't have that?
It would lose wars, basically. Now, this matters less than it used to in this age of the nuclear bomb, but knowing what other nations are doing and planning is still useful in trade and technology. Knowing more about the market than others means you get better deals and China isn't the only nation doing industrial espionage.
Terrorism? It's a pretty pedestrian intelligence agency whose primary aim is to prevent terrorism. The NSA is stuffed full of paranoid people with information addiction. They don't care about terrorism; they just want all the world's secrets. An intelligence guy is just as likely to respect other's privacy as a security researcher is to accept other people reading his files. It's in their nature not to.
China isn't the only nation doing industrial espionage.
Yeah, this is a common argument, the intelligence arms race. It's just...we had the nuclear arms race, which we eventually realized was folly and really could only result in negative impact to humanity, so we started moving towards disarmament...only to start the cycle over again with digital information gathering, which is a lot easier to hide than a nuclear weapons program (and weaves itself into the fabric of citizens' private lives, in that sense it's much more sinister).
Who has the fortitude to step up and lead us (by example) towards a healthier geopolitical climate? Collaboration, not paranoid xenophobic competition. It saddens me (but doesn't surprise me) that my country is driving full speed in the opposite direction.
> It's just...we had the nuclear arms race, which we eventually realized was folly and really could only result in negative impact to humanity, so we started moving towards disarmament
We have not started moving toward disarmament. Just ask Iran and North Korea.
If anything, what happened to Libya and Ukraine after they gave up existing nuclear weapons will hurt nuclear non-proliferation even further. And that's not even to get into the possibility of a Russia generally hostile to the West, which is the best possible thing that could have happened to U.S. nuclear weapons labs.
Russia isn't hostile to the west. It's easy to think that everything a foreign country does is about "us". Putin needs an external enemy and a national narrative to support him. It's all domestic policy. We're just annoying background noise. What Putin wants is to stay in charge of his kleptocracy for as long as possible. He doesn't give a shit about the US.
It's the Russian equivalent of American currency disputes with China. While there is truth to the claims of an undervalued yuan it's really overblown. It's about identity politics and feelings. China just happened to be a convenient target.
To the downvoter: Do you think Putin just now found out he is homophobic? That his claims that NGOs with foreign ties are foreign agents aiming to destabilize the country are real? No, it's all theater, scaremongering and scapegoating.
> He doesn't give a shit about the US.
I didn't say hostile to the U.S. I said hostile to the West. That doesn't mean cutting off contact or anything so silly, but let's not act like Russia has not long been at odds with the general foreign policy of the West.
Even post-Cold War, it dates back to stuff like Bosnia and Kosovo. Remember reading the "TIL" about that singer who used to be in the British armed forces and claimed to have avoided WWIII by not attacking Russian troops at an airport in the Balkans during Bosnia?
The way Russia views it, the West has certainly been antagonistic towards them, between the NATO expansion, possible construction of missile shields in east Europe, intervention against their Serbian brothers in Bosnia and then Kosovo, open talk of friendship between the U.S. and Georgia, the difference in perception over what was authorized in the Libyan intervention, and later the EU trying to influence Ukraine away from Russia.
You are certainly right that there are domestical political reasons for Putin to play up an external enemy, but his behavior is certainly consistent with, at best, an antipathy towards the West. Sure, they'll play along in international politics as it becomes convenient to them, but the USSR did that too.
It would lose wars, basically
How do we know this? This strikes me as an assertion without evidence. Are there examples?
It also strikes me that the secrecy more often gets used to conceal career-ending mistakes and cost overruns, at least in the USA.
Has anybody done an honest assessment of secrecy?
Nazi Germany and Japan partly lost WW2 because the Americans and the British broke their codes. Particularly the Japanese. Had the axis known their codes were broken they would have made new ones. Intelligence gathering would have been worthless without secrecy in this case.
To be honest I don't really know too much about this. I've read Cryptonomicon, and that's basically it. But it would be hard to dispute that signals intelligence is useful in war and that secrecy is necessary for SIGINT to work.
We won pretty handedly in Afghanistan and Iraq and we had bad intelligence. We were flat out wrong about a number of things, yet we prevailed..
I think equating it to war fighting is a little naive and an over simplification. There is strategic and tactical war intelligence and there are real historical examples of them making the difference, no disputing that. But today, especially for the United States and most other g7 type nations, it's a communication channel for things that it's unpopular to communicate, don't under estimate this. Could any military in the world practice without the modern intelligence gathering that all these nations have? Also regarding any negotiation for anything, knowing when the other side is bluffing or telling the truth is huge, it's everything. Those powerful nations routinely ask/demand other nations to do things, stop doing things, etc.. Information is incredibly powerful in those discussions and these aren't commonly war related things.
Whether or not we need it, I don't know, I seriously doubt it would change the results of most wars though. Another world war? It could be decisive but with the global economy I think just about every body capable for world warring has too much invested and to risk to let that happen.
It's tough to dispute that this stuff is useful while in a major war, but I think the relevant question here is whether you need to have it all in place ahead of time, or whether you can spin it up on demand, as it were.
In any case, SIGINT certainly helped a great deal, but what really won the war for the allies was the roughly order of magnitude difference between the size of the economy of the United States and those of the countries it was fighting.
The US didn't have that much of an effect. By D-day, Germany was already running out of people to feed the meat grinder. The Soviet Union, Britain and France basically won the war in Europe. I'm grateful for not being born in the Soviet Union and all, but won the war, the US didn't. Also, the US is about 2.5 times as big as Japan and 4 times as big as Germany today. I don't know what the historical data is, but "order of magnitude" sounds way unrealistic.
I think it would be very hard to spin up on demand. There's not a catalogue of talented SIGINTs lying around. These people need to be found and hired. A whole organization as big as Google would have to be built overnight. It would be a nightmare. Not to mention that this organization would be starting from scratch while its counterparts might have taps into American society already.
Don't forget that the US extensively supplied the Soviets and other allies for some time before officially entering the war. They mostly used their own weapons, but a huge amount of Soviet logistical support was American trucks and trains.
As for the disparity in GDP, an order of magnitude is a bit of an exaggeration for Germany, only slightly for Japan at the beginning of the war and not at all by the end. Wikipedia has figures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Worl...
The US's advantage in the long term became enormous because it was so far removed from the fighting. Germany and Japan's economies were mostly flat, while the US's nearly doubled in that time period. By the end of the war, the economic disparity was almost 5x over Germany and over 10x for Japan. Even in 1941, the disparity between the US and Japan was well over 5x, which makes one wonder WTF they were thinking.
I knew there were some supplies coming from the US, but was it really of a war-winning magnitude? I would like to know.
GDP is not really that good a measure of a nation's war-fighting ability. Only some types of production is useful for near-total war. A nation needs solid institutions, natural resources, logistics, roads, factories and heavy equipment. The service sector goes out the window, ditto with all luxury/entertainment production and the construction business. The European Coal and Steel Community didn't focus on those two because they were good indicators of GDP, but because they were good indicators of war capabilities.
As for what the Japanese were thinking? That they were the natural rulers of the world and everyone else should tremble before them. Everyone else were worthless barbarians in their opinion.
Well, just scroll down a bit and see military production numbers on that Wikipedia page. The US produced over 100,000 tanks compared to German's 67,000 and Japan's 3,700 (although the Soviet Union slightly outweighs the US here), 250,000 artillery pieces compared to 160,000 for Germany and 13,350 for Japan (the USSR once again outweighs the US here, with over 500,000), about 2.7 million machine guns compared to about a million total for Germany and Japan combined, and then the real kicker: 2.4 million military trucks, compared to 345,000 for Germany, 166,000 for Japan, and 197,000 for the USSR. Hit up the page on Lend-Lease, and it claims that American trucks made up about 2/3rds of the total truck transport for the Red Army, in addition to 2,000 train locomotives provided (no clue about how that relates to the total though).
You're right, of course, that GDP isn't by itself a good measure of war-fighting ability, but I think the US did as good a job as anyone at throwing the entire country behind that particular war.
As for war-winning magnitude, it's always hard to say, of course. On the one hand, it's hard to imagine Germany properly conquering a space as vast as the USSR. On the other hand, they sure came close to taking a lot of important places, like Moscow and Leningrad. Logistics is what wins wars, and the Soviets needed it even more than usual with their massive relocation of industry away from the invasion, and of Siberian military forces toward it.
In any case, Stalin seems to have thought that the American contribution was essential:
"Without American production the United Nations [the Allies] could never have won the war."
Well, he said it. Who knows what he really thought. I wouldn't necessarily put a lot of stock in his stated opinion on the matter, but I thought it was an interesting quote anyway.
Thanks, that was really interesting. I had no idea that the American production assistance was so great.
Is Russia planning to invade the Ukraine? What are their plans? Are the "protests" in the Ukraine Russian-backed or not? Do they have greater plans to push out west, or are Russia's plans legitimate in the region?
These questions can be answered with good-old fashioned spying, and nothing else. Russia is not going to give us their gameplan on a silver platter.
And when we do learn Russia's gameplan, it would be best if we kept that fact secret. We can't have Russia knowing that we know their gameplan during the negotiation process.
It would be ...gasp... Following its own and iteration law.
Narrowly regarding "But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless.":
First, there is a tremendous difference between (having already been exposed) choosing to run in the face of that difficulty (possibly not showing sufficient shame, to be sure, but dealing with what is effectively a sunk cost) and choosing to take (or postpone taking) that blow in the first place.
Second, even if there are congresspersons who wouldn't comply in the face of blackmail, are there enough or are they insufficiently identifiable that they can't simply be avoided?
Note that I'm not saying that I think blackmail of many in congress by the NSA is hugely likely, I'm just not sure your reasoning is sound.
I am not so sure. Taking a scandal you're in and spinning it or making the most of it is not a guaranteed success. I don't think politicians willingly put themselves into such situations, they just survive them sometimes.
As for your examples, the fact that politicians use drugs or have sex is no surprise to anyone, for example, but what if it was exposed that Berry secretly supported something that his constituency disagreed with? That's real political damage that's harder to survive.
I do think it's kinda far fetched that everyone is sufficiently intimidated that no one says anything.
I doubt that the public lives full of dirt are the problem. If the dirt is out there, it's not a problem. It's the Larry Craigs of the Senate and House that are the problem. Dirt swept into the closet is the problem.
Also, how do you explain Jane Harman? Google "jane harman alberto gonzalez" for details.
So are you saying the agencies should be "rogue" and completely independent from Congress?
No. A diligent search of my previous comments on HN will remind readers that I participated in the Restore the Fourth public protests in Minneapolis last summer,[1] and in general I support effective civilian oversight by elected officials of all intelligence and covert action operations of the United States government.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5991375#up_5992149
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071480#up_7072301
Yes, his comment is just a winded way of saying ends justifies means.
This is the answer, whether you agree with it or not: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/dishonor-in-high-places-s...
I'm surprised by the amount of anti-Snowden sentiment in the WaPo comments.
Consider WaPo's chief readership: people interested in domestic/foreign policy probably living in the DMV area and associated with the federal government.
Among those types, what Snowden did was considered, at BEST, a warranted discussion but highly unprofessional and a breach of trust. (whether you agree with that or not, but that represents their core interests in serving the federal government)
See "Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda":
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...
Also see people actually having an opposing point of view. Not everything has to be parallel construction, false flag operations and conspiracy.
Yeah but come on, it's happening.
There's a difference between it happening, and it happening so often that it can be taken for granted. The CIA trying to plant microphones into stray cats hoping they'd wander within earshot of Soviet dignitaries happened too.
The truth is, it isn't known, the scale of these operations, and you can assume everything is full of spooks or not. But the more reasonable assumption, absent evidence to the contrary, is that it's likely not a conspiracy. Particularly when you're describing points of view which a lot of Americans actually do hold.
Although then I suppose you could suggest that the reason Americans believe certain things, or even the appearance of that belief, is the result of propaganda but, again - who knows?
But some things are. So some comments, probably the best, most convincing ones, the ones with the most time and effort spent on them, are sockpuppets from the American military.
There's no "parallel construction" or "false flags" here. There's just propaganda. All governments use propaganda. Governments have always used propaganda. If you think propaganda isn't a large part of your day-to-day life you're just unable to see it.
>So some comments, probably the best, most convincing ones, the ones with the most time and effort spent on them, are sockpuppets from the American military.
This appears to assume that it's all but impossible to legitimately hold the opposing point of view, or be able to articulate it, without there being a script involved?
It's a non-falsifiable hypothesis. How can I prove your comment isn't some subtle form of propaganda? Maybe mine is. Maybe this forum is mostly shills, spooks and sockpuppets anyway. Maybe dang is a covert NSA operative. He did 'borrow' someone's account, after all. Can't prove he isn't.
>All governments use propaganda. Governments have always used propaganda. If you think propaganda isn't a large part of your day-to-day life you're just unable to see it.
If you think you see it everywhere, I would submit the government might have far more control over you than you believe.
>This appears to assume that it's all but impossible to legitimately hold the opposing point of view, or be able to articulate it, without there being a script involved?
You're reading a lot into "probably."
I'd expect that someone whose day job is to comment on forums to be better at writing comments than someone who only comments on forums as a hobby. That seems how it is in most professions.
It seems like without explicitly defining our experimental terms, the reverse (there are literally zero sockpuppet comments on the linked page) is equally unfalsifiable. Personally, if I were talking to a friend about what comments we've written on the Internet, and she mentioned writing a comment on that page, I'd take it as a virtual certainty that that particular comment was not written by a sockpuppet, so I don't think my belief is unfalsifiable.
>If you think you see it everywhere, I would submit the government might have far more control over you than you believe.
...no, I see propaganda pretty much everywhere. Less so now that I live outside a major city, but when I did there'd be propaganda all over the place.
You might be seeing propaganda as too narrow a term. Propaganda is just government advertising, sometimes related explicitly to supporting politicians but more often related to rather mundane things. "See something, say something" is propaganda. Ads on the bus or on bus stops about the risks of jaywalking are propaganda. Highways have maybe one propaganda sign every 50 miles, on average (this might be an East Coast thing). "Click it or ticket" was propaganda (and beautiful propaganda at that).
And that's just considering only things explicitly put up by the government. Bumper stickers are propaganda for political parties. You can go to the more government-dominated metro stations in DC and see propaganda advertisements from Boeing, Raytheon, Palantir, etc., aimed at politicians. Activist and advocacy groups produce propaganda full-time.
I suggest checking out the PropagandaPosters subreddit. There's great propaganda from World War II or the Cold War (from all over the world), but also a large amount of modern propaganda.
I'm personally sick and tired of Snowden opponents being immediately written off as "shills" and "sock-puppets".
It's like the terrorism shield all the politicians stand behind.
Don't agree with me? You're a terrorist.
Don't think Snowden is a hero? You're a sock puppet.
Accusations of being a sock puppet would hold a lot less water if people on the same side of the argument hadn't actually hired sock puppets.
If you don't want anyone advancing your argument to be labeled a sock puppet, don't hire sock puppets to advance your argument.
I was kind of surprised at that as well. Then I noticed it was the same few people who seem to be very upset. It isn't too unreasonable for a vocal minority to waste their time on something like that.
I'm even more surprised by all the anti-Snowden comments here on HN.
Why? Reasonable people aren't allowed to disagree anymore?
Oh, these are just your taxpayer dollars at work...
Yep, it's likely they have some "public opinion making" going on. After all psychology teaches us that people look to other people first to find out what to think and do. These guys spoiled the Internet.
I suspect that it is 'opinion shaping'
NEVER READ THE COMMENTS.
Because he has congress by the balls.
Impossible... Congress has no balls.
To make this more than mere snark, seriously, committees of the size of Congress are nearly entirely structurally incapable of taking serious stands of this nature. That's not sarcasm, it's a real structural problem with committees, and despite how we often refer to it in humor, it's a fully real thing, not a joke. This is why the US still needs an executive branch, which is structured in such a way that it can take a stand, potentially very quickly.
I thought OP was implying that he had dirt on anyone who would try to reprimand him. Everyone hesitates in a surveillance state.
That is exactly what I was implying maybe it was unclear.
You don't need dirt on all of congress (though I wouldn't be surprised if they had it on most of them) just key players committee leaders etc.
Hell the stuff doesn't even have to be illegal to be useful, illicit affairs have brought down presidents before.
For all the size of both houses of US Congress, they are essentially run by a handful of people.
Answer: Because the United States is an Oligarchy.
It seems HN didn't like your comment. Maybe a citation is needed:
I think it's more that it is flippant and doesn't really advance the conversation in any meaningful way. You could post that comment on every story that touches on politics.
...that asks a question about why a powerful person wasn't prosecuted, or why the polled will of the people wasn't followed and the opinion of a few wealthy people was enshrined as law. Otherwise it wouldn't be relevant.
In this thread, it's the talking around in circles about "what the American people think about Snowden" and whether the speaker lives in a tech bubble or not that's irrelevant. We already know statistically that what people outside of the top 10% think has absolutely no relevance to policy.
You are correct! Now, off to your waterboarding for leaking that truth.