NSA whistleblower to tech firms, Obama: 'Grow a pair!'

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old fugitive who revealed the NSA's PRISM system, has told the technology companies involved in surveillance to stand up for users' rights and demand a change in the current law. "If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence …

[Anomalous Cowshed]

Re. Snowdon

We need more good men, men who are not tempted by money or power, but by honour and a sense of civic duty towards their fellow man. Men who will stand up and be counted, and keep the massive, evil conglomerates of power in check. Mr. Snowden is such a man, he has led the way. Where are the others? Let them stand up and be counted!

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel sorry for Snowdon

He has done the world a makor favour. Yet in a few weeks time, when he has no more dirt to throw, the very people who encouraged him to do it (i.e. the reporters and papers) will drop him like a hot potato, any financial assistance he's receiving (hotels etc) will all eventually dwindle. Its gut wrenching really :(

[lightknight]

Re: I feel sorry for Snowdon

Well, duh, obviously, that's how things roll. You go public, you make your case, the opposition examines your entire life from the moment you were conceived, finds something that will be blasted into a larger story than the original (pick anything out of the ordinary, it can be phrased to sound wrong..."He ate a hamburger...a piece of cow's flesh, on a bun made from wheat that was once harvested by slaves in a third world country...he ate a hamburger, and enjoyed it!"), people become fixated on the bun ("Did he know that slaves were responsible for his white privileged food? How could he not?"), every time someone brings up the first piece ("Controversial NSA program"), they will, of course, feel the urge to discuss the second piece ("Isn't it dumb how they tried to link him to bun-gate?"), which will eventually sidetrack or arrest the whole conversation, ensuring that nothing is resolved. Wash, rinse, repeat.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not yet springtime in 'murica

@lightnight. The predictable trashing that is always directed at people who rock the boat is a form of control.

It's designed to show others that the leaker is 'not like you and me' - the desired inference being, ' Normal people like you and me don't do things like this, do we ?'.

The powers that be are terrified of what might happen should large numbers of 'normal' people wake up one day and say 'OK, enough ..'

[Miek]

Re: it's not yet springtime in 'murica

@Nicho

"The powers that be are terrified of what might happen should large numbers of 'normal' people wake up one day and say 'OK, enough ..' "

Youtube: I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

[Dan Paul]

Re: it's not yet springtime in 'murica

Nicho,

As I have said several times in similar circumstances, the actions of these alphabet soup agencies overseeing "PRISM" are exactly why our forefathers created the Second Amendment.

The specific reason why they want us all disarmed is due to the fact that it is inevitable that we, the people will "wake up and smell the springtime air".

Which "Springtime" do you think I am referring to? Not "Springtime for Hitler" I assure you!

I commend Snowden for his chutzpah in revealing these secrets. No, he is not like most people in that he is acting on the courage of his convictions and principles.

It is altogether too sad that there are not more men like him and that those brave men would be part of our government.

Unfortunately, all we got are the spineless, lying weasels that we see on TV. If they are the new "normal" then I never want to be normal again.

Now is the time for all "GOOD" men to come to the aid of their country!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I feel sorry for Snowdon

"He has done the world a makor favour. Yet in a few weeks time, when he has no more dirt to throw, the very people who encouraged him to do it (i.e. the reporters and papers) will drop him like a hot potato, any financial assistance he's receiving (hotels etc) will all eventually dwindle. Its gut wrenching really"

What reporters are you referring to. Snowdon never received any encouragment from any reporters before he want public. He did this out of conscience and to illuminate the kind of state security apparatus you used to only find in some east European soviet republic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Explanation

Quote: "tells the world something which no one would ever have guessed (the NSA is eavesdropping on people)".

To be more exact: "Tells the world something that was published multiple times down to the exact technical detail".

I am going to make a (very) educated guess here: Where do you think Teresa May got her ideas from? Thin air?

[Herby]

15 minutes...

...Come and gone. That's how it is.

Fade to black.

[P. Lee]

Re: 15 minutes...

This is not about the man. My understanding is that spying on Americans is the job of the FBI (a slightly more transparent and accountable organisation) and not allowed for the NSA.

The story is about the NSA ignoring or working around this restriction to the point where the intent of the prohibition is completely undermined. The prohibition is to limit government intrusion.

It would be like Google routing all data in loop through Canada so that the US government can read everything as it crosses the borders.

Its one thing to know something happens. Its quite another to have evidence which names names.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think open source is any better?

Lets look at the model that is the internet

device with software/os > company providing software, service or connection to said internet

Do you think google or any of the other companies don't record your information because your using open source? like it's some kind of magical invisibility cloak.

Don't get me wrong I like open source but to even suggest that is naive in the extreme.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

Using FOSS doesn't stop them tapping the wires, but it does make it pretty difficult to monitor the microphone and/or camera in your computer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

but it does make it pretty difficult to monitor the microphone and/or camera in your computer

Really? Is the kernel barred from accessing those devices? I think you're suffering what in the trade is known as a "false sense of security", which is IMHO more dangerous than simply not trusting the machine, ANY machine.

Unless you have the expertise to specifically screen for malicious code in an application I would do away with that certainty. It's not news that repositories get hacked too..

[heyrick]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

"Using FOSS doesn't stop them tapping the wires, but it does make it pretty difficult to monitor the microphone and/or camera in your computer."

<hat type="tin foil">Really? You audit the source of every update and compile yourself from said sources on a tool chain you cross-compiled yourself? If binaries, do you implicitly trust the distributors of said software not to cave to being leaned on (or threat of jail) for slipping something into it? Maybe there's a conspiracy with <insert favourite Linux here> where the American devs all know damn well that something is spyware, but they are legally gagged from even discussing the matter...and nobody in the internation community has reviewed the code (not that that would matter, the spyware isn't built with the published code, you need to decompile the driver to see that).

Can you say for absolute certain you know what every driver does and every bit of code in every driver does, that there is nothing that could be monitoring your activities in any way? Even in an FOSS release?</hat>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

Well if the NSA want to see me sat here wearing my tinfoil hat in my y-fronts,vest, smoking jacket and bubble pipe eating scotch eggs whilst looking at pi porn (projects and idea for the raspberry) then they can do so

Seriously though, I'm pretty sure if they were using your microphone and camera that somebody and I have thought about doing this myself for fun, would have picked it up with packet inspection in the same way a certain android feature got caught out... a la Carrier IQ...

[heyrick]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

"a la Carrier IQ..." ... and look how widely that was deployed before it got found out.

[gromm]

Re: Why do you think open source is any better?

One of the reasons my computer has neither a microphone or a camera, I guess.

That, and I have no use for them at the moment.

[John Smith 19]

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American,"

Damm right.

Being given a "loyalty" lecture from the man who arranged through a subordinate who went on to work for the company (because to do it himself would be a "conflict of interest.") the mult $Bn contract to deal with Iraq to his old company (as sole source and in large part cost plus).

The estimated "missing" funds from Iraq is > $13T, that's a 1 and 12 noughts.

Cheyney may not be the biggest (alleged) crook in American political history.

But he's the biggest (alleged) crook I'm aware of.

[gromm]

I'd like to hear more about endpoint security from this guy.

So Mr. Snowden, what exactly *are* we doing wrong with endpoint security that's making our encryption easy to work around, anyway? Are we talking about people's PCs, or servers here?

[Dave 126]

Re: I'd like to hear more about endpoint security from this guy.

>So Mr. Snowden, what exactly *are* we doing wrong with endpoint security that's making our encryption easy to work around, anyway? Are we talking about people's PCs, or servers here?

If the person you are communicating with (or their machine) is compromised, so are your communications with that person.

[Anonymous Coward]

What Will Change?

How will this impact the internet? Some people who are "tech savvy" (like the readers of The Register) & companies will probably start using more security measures like encryption (Snowden said it works, though the security at the ends is easy to circumnavigate). I can foresee a balkanisation of the internet as well as some countries like Iran & China might establish their own national intranets. More businesses offering more private browsing, emails, etc. will appear. However, I don't think the average user of the internet will their behaviour much (I haven't). Either it's too much hassle, they're ignorant of the issue or they don't care.

[asdf]

Re: What Will Change?

Not much will change until the Worst Generation (Baby Boomers) are no longer in charge and are in nursing homes or graves instead where they belong.

[asdf]

hmm

Few words conjure passive evil with plausible deniability in my head like the term "defense" (best defense is a good offense) contractor employee. Right up there with concentration camp guard. The guy should have known why they were paying him so much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hmm

So in your world we only get to choose, right or wrong; no learning from mistakes made and being the wiser for it? For all his many, many faults, the Churchill we got in 1940 was as much the product of the mistakes he'd made or been party to, as the successes he'd had.

I'd far rather trust someone who recognised and learned from past error than someone who stuck rigidly to boxes ticked at 20, against all evidence, and just got on with 'my country right or wrong'.

[David 14]

No real surprise here...

I know this is getting a lot of coverage... but for me, it was about who said it, not what has been said.

Snowden was a spook-for-hire... his job was to be the snooper and help in the snooping. The fact that we have the "name" of the snooping operation and some details on the extent are not really a big deal... as most everyone has already assumed it to be the case... haven't they?

I know, as a Canadian IT person, that the Patriot Act is one of the best known pieces of US Legislation, just behind their constitution and their Miranda-rights which are so often part of TV drama....

The Patriot Act, though, forms a regular part of my consulting with IT departments as reasons why US-based providers or even US-based consultants are issues when dealing with Canadian citizen data... if the data is in the USA, or managed by a company that is USA based, there is a (real) fear that it can and will be disclosed to the US government without notification.

I am not a fan of people breaking a trust to disclose such obvious acts, this does not seem to me to be a situation where the protection of freedom warrants the treason against one's own government.

My $0.02

[Anonymous Coward]

Spies spy on people shocker.

Wooo! Scorcher! Wotalota news.

I'm starting to get bored already. And sense the press is too.

Like was said earlier. He's completely f*cked.

What I don't get is how anyone's surprised that an organisation with a budget bigger than half the world's countries, whose entire task in life is to spy on anyone it can, is in fact, spying on anyone it can. Is there anyone reading really shocked? Really? What did anyone who'd heard of them, think they were doing?

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Spies spy on people shocker.

No-one here is surprised, but I suspect many, like me, are relieved that people like you have to resort to new phrasings of our sanity, rather than just saying we are conspiracy theorists. No longer can the apologists of over-reaching security get away with saying "Nah, they wouldn't just take all data!", because this shows that they do, and that those of us that knew that they could and would have been vindicated.

[VernonDozier]

Yeah,

At Microsoft, we hired a former Military, Former Booz Allen Hamilton Employee, and other former military nutjobs.

They helped Microsoft to provide foundations for international collection of this data, as well as insight and information for a new datacenter to house it.

If you want help making sure your company is compliant with Patriot-Act Spy Programs, Booz Contractors will do it very well.

The person we hired worked on SigINT during the Iran-Contra thing. He was a great liar. It's a breath of fresh air to see Snowden be more honest than other Booz Employees.

[additional info]

5%

I think you've made a mistake interpreting the comment about 5%. He wasn't saying that 5% of internet communication is terrorists. That would be a hell of a lot of bandwidth for guys on 486s running Windows 95 in Pakistani internet cafes.

I think his 95% comment was a reference to the fact that the law allows only non-domestic (non-US) communications to be snooped. If I understood his point correctly, he's saying that just because that 95% of communications isn't US citizens (rather "non-domestic") that doesn't make the snooping acceptable.

[Anonymous Coward]

GCHQ spied on G20 London summit ..

GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits

Exclusive: phones were monitored and fake internet cafes set up to gather information from allies in London in 2009

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates' use of computers;

• Penetrating the security on delegates' BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow. link

[Anonymous Coward]

Who remembers MS's denials wrt NSAkey?

Anyone still remember MS and the 1999 story of the NT 4 OS variable with the name of NSAkey?

Those who don't remember might want to go read about it.

Now, who still believes the MS denials that anything dodgy was going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Grow a pair"....

Not going to happen, if they did:

The CEO would be the next employee labelled an "enemy combatant" for just long enough to be kidnapped, taken from work, lose most of his sphincter to a blow torch.

[g e]

"Shut them down?"

No.

But I'm sure the CEO's lives could suddenly become extremely awkward with their personal assets frozen pending an 'investigation' of some sort.

[cs94njw]

Don't be so naive guys. If you had to protect your country, and you needed information about potential terrorists, you would use all resources at your disposal.

Google holds a stupendously large amount of data about you - your location, your emails, phone calls, credit cards, etc, etc. It would be laughable if the US Gov wasn't taking advantage of that large amount of information.

Maybe I've dropped my guard with 24, Enemy of the State, etc, etc, but I hope they are using that information.

There is a special relationship between the US, the UK, Germany, and I think another country - where they share information they have. France are annoyed because the other guys won't let them join the party.

We criticize police forces for not sharing the details of suspects in-between counties, and if there was a major terrorist issue - the papers would be blaming the US Gov for not predicting it or dealing with leads.

I'm more worried about the more boring departments than the NSA & CIA - tax, insurance, police. That's when the information they can use becomes very personal.

[Callum]

@David 14

it's not just Canadian companies. I know quite a few UK based financial companies that have in/out-sourced data centres in the USA - whilst they have got around the EEA data protection by introducing fair-collection-notices (that customers never understand the ramifications of) they still have not appreciated the problems of the Patriot act and indeed other legislation such as the US FoI act.

e.g. if you find out that a UK company that you are making a complaint to has a US data centre then you can simply hire a US Attorney and do a FoI request - which in the USA also applies to companies. You can typically get far more evidence than you could in the UK where no such legislation applies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have confidence that the 'Spying' program will actually work?

Will it work to take down the 'bad guys' or will it be an expensive exercise in farce? Someone asked why the US thinks its ok to spy on 100% of the world just to catch the 5%. i.e. What makes it ok for my Government to unapologetically spy on absolutely everyone else just to protect its own? After all its charter isn't to protect the planet, its to protect American citizens and I for me am getting tired of it.

China and Russia may taper some of the US' Curb Your Enthusiasm. For my money US intelligence is so dysfunctional it must be run by Larry David. The Coen Brothers captured it perfectly with Burn After Reading. I think most Americans working in intelligence lack worldly knowledge i.e. extensive travel, understanding of world history, ability to speak languages other than English or Bad English. We are too pollyannic or naive to comprehend foreign situations and ignore warnings by journalists such as Robert Fisk on the Taliban. Instead, we snoop big-data, build computing Monoliths and trawl for signs of trouble.

Our naivety is reminiscent of how we arrived at the financial collapse. Our so-smart mathematicians hailed infallible models that were actually full of assumptions. Traders then placed leveraged bets with 5-10 years of historical data. But economic cycles have been with us forever and there are always cyclical ups and downs. Yet no one thought to look back or question the assumptions including Alan Greenspan.

So, do I have any confidence in the US using this raw data to bring about a perfect 'Person of Interest' like anti-terror computer? Don't make me laugh, save it for a TV series! When we trawl big-data in an underground computer the size off Utah, we'll end up with the answer 42! Then we'll have to build another monster the size of America just to analyse this, and the Military-industrial spending complex will go on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does anyone have confidence that the 'Spying' program will actually work?

Team america, world police. F*ck yeah...

So true that it is not even funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does anyone have confidence that the 'Spying' program will actually work?

"Team America, world police. F*ck yeah..."

Too right! When you're roasted by the Southwark guys its time to accept you're taking yourself too seriously. The movie was outright ballsy. It came out at the height of The Bush-Cheney Animal-Farm like submission to patriotism. Disagree? ..... You're a traitor...

When I hear Cheney firebranding Snowden a traitor, I know American exceptionalism has morphed into something fascist. Are the rest of the world traitors too for not submiitting to US spying? Any internet entrepreneurs that can offer global social networks or search engines which put privacy first?

[peanutbutter and jellyfish]

We all remember the legend of the brave Dutch boy who saved Holland

"he was startled by the sound of trickling water. Whence did it come? He looked up and saw a small hole in the dike through which a tiny stream was flowing. Any child in Holland will shudder at the thought of a leak in the dike! The boy understood the danger at a glance. That little hole, if the water were allowed to trickle through, would soon be a large one, and a terrible inundation would be the result."

Today Edward Snowden is the brave American who emulated that brave Dutch boy, not by sticking his finger in the dike, but by pulling his finger out..

[boatsman]

who do we trust Huawei ? or Cisco ?

these same types like that Clapper with his semantic blindspot are blackpainting company's like Huawei.

but 90% of the internet runs through Cisco gear.

Oh right, that's only foreigners private data, not from uebermenschen from the USA. I should have remembered that.