there's something of a "tradition" of people who have exposed corruption / illegality in american power through the press. those people seem to form a separate group from spies who disappear or are caught. in particular, the latter group don't send things to the papers and don't try to provoke public discussion - instead they quietly ship data of to their paymasters.
do you think that "deepthroat" was a foreign-aided spy? because it seems to me that snowden is more similar to that than, say, the rosenbergs.
what motivation is there for snowden to make such a public fuss? why not simply disappear and move to russia?
Because if the goal is to get a global adversary to pull their punches, then the only way to do that is to foster an auto-immune disease and get the populace to attack it's own institutions.
I'm not defending the NSA. But I'm also not a Snowden apologist. His actions would have carried more weight had he not tried (and so far succeeded) to escape prosecution.
And "deepthroat" took great pains to stay hidden, was in a position to help himself stay hidden, and was still a suspect almost from the very start. He also never went to Russia or China.
Au contraire: I think the metaphor fits perfectly in both directions. That's why I chose it.
Ideally, your self-defense systems only attack those that are actual "invaders" but if something looks/smells/acts like an invader, it gets attacked as well, even if it's really not "harmful."
Believe me when I say I'm sympathetic to the argument that the security apparatus has started to attack "healthy tissue" (to extend the metaphor) but the alternative can't be no immune system.
It has to be better, more appropriate, more selective, and more effective.
To continue the metaphor, I believe both immune systems mentioned perform necessary functions. As a side note, the parts of said immune system responsible for investigating pollution and white collar crime could do with some strengthening.
However, states are better understood as highly symbiotic ecosystems. This is more pronounced in third world states, where the military , intelligence agencies and political leadership form distinct power blocks. In the US, some hypothetical power blocks are the military-industrial complex, the alliance of media companies pushing for maximal copyright combined with the regulatory apparatuses they've co-opted, and Fundamentalist Christians, and the various three letter agencies with their constellations of contractors.
> if the goal is to get a global adversary to pull their punches
And by 'pull their punches' you mean stop illegal abuses and basically setting up full Stasi apparatus? Frankly the KGB would be doing you a big favour in this case. It doesn't obviously serve Russian interests to put a spanner in the works of a program which is putting the US and Europe on the trail of a path blazed by the likes East Germany and North Korea.
By "pull their punches" I'm saying to roll-back their surveillance. SO yes.
But I think you're wrong in stating that is doesn't serve Russian interests. It most certainly DOES serve their interests if the NSA gets kneecapped by its own people.
The point I was making is that the NSA have lost the plot and are acting completely counter to US interests by this point. Far from trying to scale them back, any adversary's strategic interests were best served by sitting back with the popcorn while the NSA screwed up the societal infrastructure. And worse, the NSA may yet carry the day, which will embolden said adversaries in the knowledge that the systemic failure is unrecoverable. That's the clusterfuck here, not the public leak - Snowden just shined a light on it.
Snowden did a lot of things but I'd stop short of saying that the NSA has stifled American civil liberties in any meaningful sense.
What we have seen is the potential for abuse, but not any evidence of that actual abuse.
I'm a pragmatist. I don't believe that the people that work at the NSA have any interest in domestic affairs unless there is a real threat to the republic. Of course, that could change which is why we need to scale back their domestic surveillance. But I wouldn't expect miracles here.
tbh I think you're still missing the point here. It is highly unlikely that Snowden is the only person to have got his hands on that material. He's just shown up the flaw and at least some of the bad guys are highly likely to have it. The utter stupidity here is blindly following a 'collect everything' Pokemon strategy, which leaves you wide open to not only internal abuse from factions in intelligence, military, politics, business - but also organised crime and foreign actors. Even worse, that seems to be being stored in perpetuity thus causing a combinatorial explosion of those threat vectors. And if that wasn't bad enough, we learn of another multiplier where non-US countries were adding to that toxic heap of data. Great way to contribute to global stability. The individuals involved may mean well but you know what they say about the road to hell.
there's something of a "tradition" of people who have exposed corruption / illegality in american power through the press. those people seem to form a separate group from spies who disappear or are caught. in particular, the latter group don't send things to the papers and don't try to provoke public discussion - instead they quietly ship data of to their paymasters.
do you think that "deepthroat" was a foreign-aided spy? because it seems to me that snowden is more similar to that than, say, the rosenbergs.
what motivation is there for snowden to make such a public fuss? why not simply disappear and move to russia?