8 ms·

Why only 1% of the Snowden Archive will ever be published

121 points by DerekBickerton 3y ago

agilob 3y ago
We need somebody to leak it
- bena 3y ago
  We should make a wiki for all of these leaks.
  - eviks 3y ago
    and have a catchy descriptive name for the project
    - Boogie_Man 3y ago
      Leakypedia™
      - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        Unfortunately the name is already taken by my online encyclopedia on incontinence.
        hedora 3y ago
        So, it mostly covers congressional leaks?
        climatekid 3y ago
        Also called the online encyclopedia of incompetence
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Wikileakya?
  - DerekBickerton 3y ago
    Erm, there is this: https://github.com/iamcryptoki/snowden-archive/ https://github.com/iamcryptoki/snowden-archive/
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      In case you didn't catch on, it's a joke about wikileaks.
garciasn 3y ago
> Why was only 1% of the documents published, in the end? “The documents are not like the WikiLeaks ones from the US state department, which were written by diplomats and, for the most part, easily understandable,” said Ewen MacAskill. “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.” Ignoring the operational limitation requirement (of which there is no way it's 99% vs 1%), a capable public can make this determination; we do not need journalists doing it for us. I am uninterested in the journalistic value of these documents; I am interested in the public value of potentially knowing the content of those documents and how the government is surveilling us and/or abusing their authority. >“The bottom line is that Snowden is facing charges under the Espionage Act. If he was ever to return to the US and face trial, the documents could be used against him. Snowden knew this when he leaked the documents and he now resides, ironically, in one of the most surveilled countries in the world. He believed he was acting in the best interests on the public and is it NOT the job of journalists to protect a known source entity; they are to protect unknown sources. Release MORE of the files, your profits and/or biased concerns for the journalistic value of the information shared be dammed. There is WAY more at stake.
- RobertRoberts 3y ago
  Snowden was _trapped_ in Russia. He was on his way to a country with no extradition and his passport was revoked, it's worth looking up to know that he didn't chose Russia.
  - garciasn 3y ago
    I said he resides there and it’s ironic; I didn’t say he chose it.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  Yes, wouldn't the document still be used against him even if he just leaked to journalists.
kylebenzle 3y ago
The answer is burried, here is the only real reason given: When MacAskill replied: “The main reason for only a small percentage [being published] was diminishing interest [from the public]...” This is insane. They have 99% of the leak under lock and key and they say the reason is because no one wants to see it? My guess is its a gag order/request, if they publish they will lose other access or something but why would this Ewen MacAskill, @ewenmacaskill feel comfortable lying so directly?
- krapp 3y ago
  Remember, the purpose of journalism is to make money - news is a product like any other. A story people aren't as interested in anymore is a story that doesn't make as much revenue.
  - toyg 3y ago
    News is actually a loss-leader - either for ads or for influence.
    - krapp 3y ago
      Nevertheless, news is still there to sell ad space. In a captialist system, it can't exist unless someone is making money on it, somehow. The rationale for choosing not to publish from the Snowden Archive because of lack of interest is an economic one.
  - wubrr 3y ago
    You're ignoring the role of the state and intelligence agencies in shaping the media and what's reported. If you look at any war, conflict, theory about adversaries, etc. - the news in Western (and equivalently any other region) mainstream media is almost always completely aligned with the government positions and the position of the 'intelligence community' (CIA/NSA). So, yeah media/news is strongly driven by profit, but the ability for the organization to exist and continue to make profit is very dependent on having the right political alignment/spin.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
jasmes 3y ago
Journalistic integrity balancing with the national security interests of the most powerful nation on the planet is complicated. I am comfortable trusting the NYT to do their job. I hope that eventually all the technical papers eventually are available out of nerdy curiosity, but I’d prefer that be through declassification and not espionage.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > national security interests of the most powerful nation on the planet is complicated It's actually the opposite National security of least powerfull countries, like Korea, is most complicated. They are most at risk and least likely to harm others. The most powerfull nation on earth is the opposite, it is not really in danger, its very secure, and presents the most danger to others - whether through ignorance or stupidity or malice. So we should actually be publishing almost everything from US/Russia/China because they often ruin millions of lives, but in practice ofcourse we do the opposite.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Do you really think that as a global power the national security interests become less complex and less serious?
  - riversflow 3y ago
    The bigger you are, the farther you have to fall. The most powerful nation on earth also has the most to lose.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      The richer you are, the more you habe to lose. Thats why welfare state should take care of the richest people first
- pauldenton 3y ago
  Just like they did in 2003 with WMDs in Iraq? Or when they said that Trump colluded with the Russians and that's why he got elected? At least the journalists who said Saddam had WMDs didn't get a Pulitzer Prize, like those reporting on Russiagate did back in 2018. https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer-of-the-ny-times-and-washington-post/ https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer... Meanwhile NYPost breaks the Hunter Biden Laptop story and gets banned from every major social media and tech site for saying the truth, while NYT and Washington Post get Pulitzer Prizes for telling lies.
aestetix 3y ago
> “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.” Sorry, was the point of these revelations to increase public interest (aka to make the newspapers money), or to bring accountability against the NSA? So far there has been nothing published that would give any individual standing to bring such a lawsuit. Is this because Snowden was naive, or because the journalists sacrificed real accountability for self-interest?
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Snowden said the point was to let the public decide. There were several lawsuits. Some activities were ruled illegal. More accountability would require prosecutions and political action. And there was enough evidence for them.
- mhh__ 3y ago
  Public not interest is a euphemism for journalists incapable of processing.
- wubrr 3y ago
  It's essentially impossible to bring and win a lawsuit against NSA, because they can claim everything is classified.
pphysch 3y ago
> the files are in the New York Times office What a sham. The NYT has openly said many times that it allows the US Government to determine what is "fit to print". How did it come to this? I strongly believe there was some level of collusion between Greenwald & the USG. How else did he get to have a successful media career in the West, while fellow publisher/journalist Assange rots in prison? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/government-censorship.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/government-censor...
- toyg 3y ago
  Greenwald moved to Brazil, and his partner was subjected to extraordinary detention while travelling. Greenwald was just smarter than Assange at avoiding traps.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    I'm not saying Greenwald was an agent of the USG or always planning to collude, but I think he saw the opportunity and took it, especially after his partner was detained and he saw how serious it was.
- duxup 3y ago
  >How did it come to this? Because leaks can have consequences and it's not clear to the NYT exactly what those might be? It's a tough situation because the government may not be a trusted partner, but I understand asking / trying to avoid collateral damage.
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > Because leaks can have consequences and it's not clear to the NYT exactly what those might be? With this, the NYT has decided that they want to be a government propaganda organ instead of a journalistic organ.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      > With this, the NYT has decided that they want to be a government propaganda organ instead of a journalistic organ. It isn't "with this". In a way (in recent history) it always has been. Case in point, almost any political event. See what the NYT publishes on the Israel-Gaza conflict, in comparison with any middleeast/asian outlet. I'm not saying that this is always on purpose, it's likely a lot of it is human bias - but it doesn't change the fact that journalistic organizations have bias, and you need to read different papers for a complete picture.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Snowden made a mistake in not dumping the whole archive to Wikileaks as was done with the US State Department cables and the CIA's Vault 7 files. I think there's probably a lot more in those files that's of great embarrassment not just to the NSA and the US government in general (such as proof that it was conducting an illegal warrantless mass surveillance program in violation of US law) - but also to their collaborators in the private tech sector who seem to have been quite active participants in the program. For example, one of the most revealing revelations was that NSA spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras - which is very hard to justify on national security grounds, and instead points to industrial espionage of the kind the NSA claims it doesn't engage in (as compared to China, etc.). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idINBRE98817N20130909 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr...
- schoen 3y ago
  > which is very hard to justify on national security grounds I think the people doing this have a completely different notion of national security than the general public, one that includes a supposed right to know about surprises in general and big events in general, not just about bad guys plotting to attack you. For example, they might believe that details of economic activity, prices, religious movements, relationships among foreign politicians, epidemics, boycott and antiboycott campaigns, etc., are matters of national security in the sense that they could eventually develop into things that would affect a society negatively, or that could tend to increase or decrease the power of a state. In maintaining the idea of privacy, we have to also maintain that others have to accept surprises and uncertainty. I don't know my neighbors' religious views, I don't know what oatmilk will cost next week at the supermarket, I didn't know when my former coworkers started trying to organize a union, I don't know if anyone has a crush on me. But all that information exists somewhere in computer systems. I accept that I have no right to it, but it seems incredibly hard to get governments to think the same way. When Glenn Greenwald first talked about how spying on Petrobras wasn't a matter of U.S. national security, I thought that was obviously right. Petrobras isn't going to attack the U.S., it doesn't have any means of attacking the U.S., and it doesn't have any obligation to sell or not sell oil to the U.S. or any other country at any particular price. But now I think that it's not just like "the NSA must plan to help the Texas oil industry" or "the NSA must plan to help the Saudi oil industry" or something; it's more like "they don't accept that they should have to contend with surprises and uncertainty". To be clear, I think that spying on Petrobras is wrong and I wish that Petrobras had a remedy for it. And I think disclosing that it happens is right, but it doesn't seem to have led to the kind of discussion or debate that Greenwald seemed to hope for. Edit: The comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 had a more concise take on this point. > If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted. (But in this context we're not just talking about risks of violent attacks, but really risks of anything disruptive.) Edit 2: The U.S. in particular is powerful enough to enforce economic sanctions which are themselves justified on national security grounds, so then there's also the sanctions enforcement part like figuring out whether Petrobras is working with the Iranian oil industry or whatever. Most countries probably wouldn't even expect to be able to do anything about that, although they might want to exert diplomatic pressure like "please stop trading with our enemy, from whom we concretely fear a physical attack".
art_vandalay 3y ago
Snowden is a hero. Unlike some bootlickers here
- MikusR 3y ago
  [flagged]
taylorfinley 3y ago
See also Pierre Omidyar investing $250m to create a news organization for Scahill, Greenwald and Poitros. Silver, or lead? Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/the-intercept-the-first-online-publication-from-ebay-founder-pierre-omidyar-is-now-live https://thenextweb.com/news/the-intercept-the-first-online-p...
eviks 3y ago
Because the people in charge are mainstream publishing professionals, who can't even come up with a good explanation
greatgib 3y ago
> “There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in" The point is that these documents have interesting content, but it would not sell newspapers so they don't want to invest time working on that... it's nothing related to the publics interest.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

We need somebody to leak it

bena 3y ago
We should make a wiki for all of these leaks.
- eviks 3y ago
  and have a catchy descriptive name for the project
  - Boogie_Man 3y ago
    Leakypedia™
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Unfortunately the name is already taken by my online encyclopedia on incontinence.
      - hedora 3y ago
        So, it mostly covers congressional leaks?
        climatekid 3y ago
        Also called the online encyclopedia of incompetence
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Wikileakya?
- DerekBickerton 3y ago
  Erm, there is this: https://github.com/iamcryptoki/snowden-archive/ https://github.com/iamcryptoki/snowden-archive/
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    In case you didn't catch on, it's a joke about wikileaks.

> Why was only 1% of the documents published, in the end? “The documents are not like the WikiLeaks ones from the US state department, which were written by diplomats and, for the most part, easily understandable,” said Ewen MacAskill. “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.” Ignoring the operational limitation requirement (of which there is no way it's 99% vs 1%), a capable public can make this determination; we do not need journalists doing it for us. I am uninterested in the journalistic value of these documents; I am interested in the public value of potentially knowing the content of those documents and how the government is surveilling us and/or abusing their authority. >“The bottom line is that Snowden is facing charges under the Espionage Act. If he was ever to return to the US and face trial, the documents could be used against him. Snowden knew this when he leaked the documents and he now resides, ironically, in one of the most surveilled countries in the world. He believed he was acting in the best interests on the public and is it NOT the job of journalists to protect a known source entity; they are to protect unknown sources. Release MORE of the files, your profits and/or biased concerns for the journalistic value of the information shared be dammed. There is WAY more at stake.

RobertRoberts 3y ago
Snowden was _trapped_ in Russia. He was on his way to a country with no extradition and his passport was revoked, it's worth looking up to know that he didn't chose Russia.
- garciasn 3y ago
  I said he resides there and it’s ironic; I didn’t say he chose it.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Yes, wouldn't the document still be used against him even if he just leaked to journalists.

kylebenzle 3y ago

The answer is burried, here is the only real reason given: When MacAskill replied: “The main reason for only a small percentage [being published] was diminishing interest [from the public]...” This is insane. They have 99% of the leak under lock and key and they say the reason is because no one wants to see it? My guess is its a gag order/request, if they publish they will lose other access or something but why would this Ewen MacAskill, @ewenmacaskill feel comfortable lying so directly?

krapp 3y ago
Remember, the purpose of journalism is to make money - news is a product like any other. A story people aren't as interested in anymore is a story that doesn't make as much revenue.
- toyg 3y ago
  News is actually a loss-leader - either for ads or for influence.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Nevertheless, news is still there to sell ad space. In a captialist system, it can't exist unless someone is making money on it, somehow. The rationale for choosing not to publish from the Snowden Archive because of lack of interest is an economic one.
- wubrr 3y ago
  You're ignoring the role of the state and intelligence agencies in shaping the media and what's reported. If you look at any war, conflict, theory about adversaries, etc. - the news in Western (and equivalently any other region) mainstream media is almost always completely aligned with the government positions and the position of the 'intelligence community' (CIA/NSA). So, yeah media/news is strongly driven by profit, but the ability for the organization to exist and continue to make profit is very dependent on having the right political alignment/spin.
- throw0101c 3y ago

jasmes 3y ago

Journalistic integrity balancing with the national security interests of the most powerful nation on the planet is complicated. I am comfortable trusting the NYT to do their job. I hope that eventually all the technical papers eventually are available out of nerdy curiosity, but I’d prefer that be through declassification and not espionage.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> national security interests of the most powerful nation on the planet is complicated It's actually the opposite National security of least powerfull countries, like Korea, is most complicated. They are most at risk and least likely to harm others. The most powerfull nation on earth is the opposite, it is not really in danger, its very secure, and presents the most danger to others - whether through ignorance or stupidity or malice. So we should actually be publishing almost everything from US/Russia/China because they often ruin millions of lives, but in practice ofcourse we do the opposite.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Do you really think that as a global power the national security interests become less complex and less serious?
- riversflow 3y ago
  The bigger you are, the farther you have to fall. The most powerful nation on earth also has the most to lose.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    The richer you are, the more you habe to lose. Thats why welfare state should take care of the richest people first
pauldenton 3y ago
Just like they did in 2003 with WMDs in Iraq? Or when they said that Trump colluded with the Russians and that's why he got elected? At least the journalists who said Saddam had WMDs didn't get a Pulitzer Prize, like those reporting on Russiagate did back in 2018. https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer-of-the-ny-times-and-washington-post/ https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer... Meanwhile NYPost breaks the Hunter Biden Laptop story and gets banned from every major social media and tech site for saying the truth, while NYT and Washington Post get Pulitzer Prizes for telling lies.

aestetix 3y ago

> “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.” Sorry, was the point of these revelations to increase public interest (aka to make the newspapers money), or to bring accountability against the NSA? So far there has been nothing published that would give any individual standing to bring such a lawsuit. Is this because Snowden was naive, or because the journalists sacrificed real accountability for self-interest?

pseudalopex 3y ago
Snowden said the point was to let the public decide. There were several lawsuits. Some activities were ruled illegal. More accountability would require prosecutions and political action. And there was enough evidence for them.
mhh__ 3y ago
Public not interest is a euphemism for journalists incapable of processing.
wubrr 3y ago
It's essentially impossible to bring and win a lawsuit against NSA, because they can claim everything is classified.

pphysch 3y ago

> the files are in the New York Times office What a sham. The NYT has openly said many times that it allows the US Government to determine what is "fit to print". How did it come to this? I strongly believe there was some level of collusion between Greenwald & the USG. How else did he get to have a successful media career in the West, while fellow publisher/journalist Assange rots in prison? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/government-censorship.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/government-censor...

toyg 3y ago
Greenwald moved to Brazil, and his partner was subjected to extraordinary detention while travelling. Greenwald was just smarter than Assange at avoiding traps.
- pphysch 3y ago
  I'm not saying Greenwald was an agent of the USG or always planning to collude, but I think he saw the opportunity and took it, especially after his partner was detained and he saw how serious it was.
duxup 3y ago
>How did it come to this? Because leaks can have consequences and it's not clear to the NYT exactly what those might be? It's a tough situation because the government may not be a trusted partner, but I understand asking / trying to avoid collateral damage.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Because leaks can have consequences and it's not clear to the NYT exactly what those might be? With this, the NYT has decided that they want to be a government propaganda organ instead of a journalistic organ.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    > With this, the NYT has decided that they want to be a government propaganda organ instead of a journalistic organ. It isn't "with this". In a way (in recent history) it always has been. Case in point, almost any political event. See what the NYT publishes on the Israel-Gaza conflict, in comparison with any middleeast/asian outlet. I'm not saying that this is always on purpose, it's likely a lot of it is human bias - but it doesn't change the fact that journalistic organizations have bias, and you need to read different papers for a complete picture.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Snowden made a mistake in not dumping the whole archive to Wikileaks as was done with the US State Department cables and the CIA's Vault 7 files. I think there's probably a lot more in those files that's of great embarrassment not just to the NSA and the US government in general (such as proof that it was conducting an illegal warrantless mass surveillance program in violation of US law) - but also to their collaborators in the private tech sector who seem to have been quite active participants in the program. For example, one of the most revealing revelations was that NSA spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras - which is very hard to justify on national security grounds, and instead points to industrial espionage of the kind the NSA claims it doesn't engage in (as compared to China, etc.). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petrobras-idINBRE98817N20130909 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr...

schoen 3y ago
> which is very hard to justify on national security grounds I think the people doing this have a completely different notion of national security than the general public, one that includes a supposed right to know about surprises in general and big events in general, not just about bad guys plotting to attack you. For example, they might believe that details of economic activity, prices, religious movements, relationships among foreign politicians, epidemics, boycott and antiboycott campaigns, etc., are matters of national security in the sense that they could eventually develop into things that would affect a society negatively, or that could tend to increase or decrease the power of a state. In maintaining the idea of privacy, we have to also maintain that others have to accept surprises and uncertainty. I don't know my neighbors' religious views, I don't know what oatmilk will cost next week at the supermarket, I didn't know when my former coworkers started trying to organize a union, I don't know if anyone has a crush on me. But all that information exists somewhere in computer systems. I accept that I have no right to it, but it seems incredibly hard to get governments to think the same way. When Glenn Greenwald first talked about how spying on Petrobras wasn't a matter of U.S. national security, I thought that was obviously right. Petrobras isn't going to attack the U.S., it doesn't have any means of attacking the U.S., and it doesn't have any obligation to sell or not sell oil to the U.S. or any other country at any particular price. But now I think that it's not just like "the NSA must plan to help the Texas oil industry" or "the NSA must plan to help the Saudi oil industry" or something; it's more like "they don't accept that they should have to contend with surprises and uncertainty". To be clear, I think that spying on Petrobras is wrong and I wish that Petrobras had a remedy for it. And I think disclosing that it happens is right, but it doesn't seem to have led to the kind of discussion or debate that Greenwald seemed to hope for. Edit: The comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181265 had a more concise take on this point. > If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted. (But in this context we're not just talking about risks of violent attacks, but really risks of anything disruptive.) Edit 2: The U.S. in particular is powerful enough to enforce economic sanctions which are themselves justified on national security grounds, so then there's also the sanctions enforcement part like figuring out whether Petrobras is working with the Iranian oil industry or whatever. Most countries probably wouldn't even expect to be able to do anything about that, although they might want to exert diplomatic pressure like "please stop trading with our enemy, from whom we concretely fear a physical attack".

art_vandalay 3y ago

Snowden is a hero. Unlike some bootlickers here

MikusR 3y ago
[flagged]

taylorfinley 3y ago

See also Pierre Omidyar investing $250m to create a news organization for Scahill, Greenwald and Poitros. Silver, or lead? Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/the-intercept-the-first-online-publication-from-ebay-founder-pierre-omidyar-is-now-live https://thenextweb.com/news/the-intercept-the-first-online-p...

eviks 3y ago

Because the people in charge are mainstream publishing professionals, who can't even come up with a good explanation

greatgib 3y ago

> “There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in" The point is that these documents have interesting content, but it would not sell newspapers so they don't want to invest time working on that... it's nothing related to the publics interest.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]