I wonder if that's a line even Snowden wouldn't cross. It risks those tools falling into the "wrong hands", and is the most extreme way he could be said to be aiding terrorists by alerting them of our intelligence capabilities (which he is already accused of.)
Its not new news that Google was contracted to build the search engine[1].
"Google was also contracted to provide the search technology and servers which makes up “Intellipedia”, a massive, incredibly secure database through which over 100,000 United States spies and intelligence professionals from 16 government agencies share information. And the NSA has purchased numerous servers from Google, utilizing their search technology to analyze and organize massive amounts of secure data all over the world."
At this point I think it safe to assume its the exact same code Google used in 2010, just a bit dumber, since Googles search engine only learns by being used, and since there are far fewer using it, it learns slower.
The claim that wordpress.com-hosted blog makes isn't sourced. To further stretch its credibility, it also goes on to describe how Google was actually funded by secret CIA seed money and implies a Bilderberg Group controlling interest of Google.
So it is news, to those of us who haven't read this blog that makes an unsourced claim.
Besides, from the Greenwald docs, we've seen that Intelipedia is simply a giant Wikimedia instance, nothing fancy.
Why wouldn't Snowden cross that line, given all the other ones he crossed? I mean, blowing PRISM by itself was far more than "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities", so he's already crossed the Rubicon on that topic.
How was exposing PRISM worse? I'll admit to being biased in his favor, and somewhat ignorant of what exactly was disclosed and how it could help the enemy, so I welcome some input on that. My starting position is that I don't see how knowing that, say, Yahoo is tapped, has changed the bad guys' day-to-day operations to the degree that you could reasonably say Snowden significantly aided them. Or even if it did, it falls under the category of 'merely' "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities" which we both agree was a "line Snowden crossed."
Anyway, however damaging it was, my point is that some slides with a bunch of code names, "data-sharing partners", hints at legal justifications and the bureaucracy set up to carry this out, and maybe some high-level descriptions of how the systems work, is a lot different than releasing the actual code that does it, private keys to the servers involved, etc.
It's not like graph theory and data mining are elite subjects only NSA knows, so some high-level descriptions aren't going to help the bad guys much. Handing over complete source code would.
Revealing the existence isn't anywhere the same as revealing the guts of its operations, which for all we know could allow compromise or direct access.
PRISM is bad enough in US hands, but can you imagine if Oceania/Arstotzka got their hands on the data? (irrelevant countries as to not have to argue that)
I'd be more interested in seeing all the open source software it uses, as I'm sure it does and whether it has funded open source software development which I am not sure of but I can imagine happening indirectly and whether the programmers were aware or not which I imagine not happening.
Comments
Glenn Greenwald has a lot of Powerpoint slides. Am I the only one who wants to see the source code for ICREACH, and all the other ALLCAPS projects?
I wonder if that's a line even Snowden wouldn't cross. It risks those tools falling into the "wrong hands", and is the most extreme way he could be said to be aiding terrorists by alerting them of our intelligence capabilities (which he is already accused of.)
Its not new news that Google was contracted to build the search engine[1].
"Google was also contracted to provide the search technology and servers which makes up “Intellipedia”, a massive, incredibly secure database through which over 100,000 United States spies and intelligence professionals from 16 government agencies share information. And the NSA has purchased numerous servers from Google, utilizing their search technology to analyze and organize massive amounts of secure data all over the world."
At this point I think it safe to assume its the exact same code Google used in 2010, just a bit dumber, since Googles search engine only learns by being used, and since there are far fewer using it, it learns slower.
[1]http://questioneverything2012.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/googl...
The claim that wordpress.com-hosted blog makes isn't sourced. To further stretch its credibility, it also goes on to describe how Google was actually funded by secret CIA seed money and implies a Bilderberg Group controlling interest of Google.
So it is news, to those of us who haven't read this blog that makes an unsourced claim.
Besides, from the Greenwald docs, we've seen that Intelipedia is simply a giant Wikimedia instance, nothing fancy.
Why wouldn't Snowden cross that line, given all the other ones he crossed? I mean, blowing PRISM by itself was far more than "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities", so he's already crossed the Rubicon on that topic.
How was exposing PRISM worse? I'll admit to being biased in his favor, and somewhat ignorant of what exactly was disclosed and how it could help the enemy, so I welcome some input on that. My starting position is that I don't see how knowing that, say, Yahoo is tapped, has changed the bad guys' day-to-day operations to the degree that you could reasonably say Snowden significantly aided them. Or even if it did, it falls under the category of 'merely' "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities" which we both agree was a "line Snowden crossed."
Anyway, however damaging it was, my point is that some slides with a bunch of code names, "data-sharing partners", hints at legal justifications and the bureaucracy set up to carry this out, and maybe some high-level descriptions of how the systems work, is a lot different than releasing the actual code that does it, private keys to the servers involved, etc.
It's not like graph theory and data mining are elite subjects only NSA knows, so some high-level descriptions aren't going to help the bad guys much. Handing over complete source code would.
Revealing the existence isn't anywhere the same as revealing the guts of its operations, which for all we know could allow compromise or direct access.
PRISM is bad enough in US hands, but can you imagine if Oceania/Arstotzka got their hands on the data? (irrelevant countries as to not have to argue that)
I'd be more interested in seeing all the open source software it uses, as I'm sure it does and whether it has funded open source software development which I am not sure of but I can imagine happening indirectly and whether the programmers were aware or not which I imagine not happening.