Snowden: 'I have data on EVERY NSA operation against China' NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed he taught a course in “cyber-counterintelligence” against China and has access to data on every active operation mounted against the People’s Republic by the US spy agency. In a lengthy interview with the New York Times, Snowden revealed more about his time at the National Security …
They are both a target and a perpetrator.
The same applies to most countries now. Covert intelligence is just part of the standard national security and diplomatic package, as is putting on a show of outrage upon discovering your side has been a victim of the same methods you've been using on others. It's only spying if you get caught.
Has been for at least my lifetime, and probably that of many of my ancestors too.
What concerns me about Mr Snowden is that he may be getting too excited by the leaking and go beyond public interest (NSA spies on Americans shocker) to getting a bunch of people killed for acting within their own framework of morals and beliefs in the name of his own morals and beliefs.
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You could be right. Until I read this article I thought that Snowden was more or less 100% right in what he did and that that the US throwing the espionage act at him was more than vindictive, but now I am not so sure.
It seems that he may be so wrapped up in his beliefs about what is right and wrong, and a general naiveness as to how the world works, that he has not kept a clear line between whistleblowing in the public interest versus holding information clearly of interest to other States.
He's now damaging his integrity with these latest revelations, so he is either so wrapped up in his halo that he can't see the sunshine or playing a very dangerous game of chess to persuade the Chinese to allow him to move there when his Russian visa expires next year, but that would just play into accusations of him being a spy, which indeed he may become if he hands the data over to the Chinese in the future as payment for them allowing him to go back to China.
Overall I supported his whistleblowing but he needs to be absolutely sure he's not aiding and abetting the Chinese.
"I have completely the opposite view. He is demonstrating his integrity."
As I said before, his integrity was well and truly gone on day one.
His credibility is now long gone as well.
I met him in 2008, he was a systems administrator. His original statements all said he was a systems administrator.
Now, suddenly, he's a seekret agent.
If so, then I'm the King of Scotland.
What exactly is that supposed to mean ?
Are you implying that Snowden should have said to himself : "I cannot stand this blanket surveillance state anymore, but everyone is doing it, so I'll just resign quietly and forget about the Constitution of my country" ?
Is that what you're saying ?
Because that's how it looks to me. And I disagree. We obviously need more naiveness.
"Are you implying that Snowden should have said to himself : "I cannot stand this blanket surveillance state anymore, but everyone is doing it, so I'll just resign quietly and forget about the Constitution of my country" ?"
Is there not a US Congress? Is there not a US press, rather than a foreign press?
Did he approach any Congressional leader?
First question: Yes. Second question: Yes. Third question: No.
He didn't approach any domestic press either.
Sorry, he's off for his own publicity.
His sudden self-elevation from a SA to network spook only proves it.
But then, I have met the man when he was sent to help recover US government networks from a PRC attack.
He was a prima donna then, he still is.
Only, his songs are off key by a *lot* now.
This is of course all interesting questions as the USA, China and Russia and their relations are so important for the future of this planet. Compared to Russia (or Japan) China has not been much of an Imperialist in its history. One thing you Americans seldom know is how the Russians adore you, that is the old image of you they still believe in. Next to you they adore the Germans, During the Cold War there was nothing similar in The Soviet Union to the Communist fear and paranoia in the USA. That was All American. I admit Cuba was scary stuff but perhaps one should remember Turkey too with the US bombs.
Compared to Russia (or Japan) China has not been much of an Imperialist in its history.
Missed the part where they managed to hold on to their conquered territories, did you? Completely overlooked the whole "One China" principle (especially as it applies to Tibet). They have had much more practice than pretty much any other country I can think of in terms of ongoing imperialistic efforts, starting with Qin Shi Huang and going on up to the present day.
You are right, the comparison completely favors the Chinese in that they have been much better in their imperial aspirations in comparison to Japan and Russia.
To give you another view, I'm quite sure that Hitler and Stalin also acted within their own framework of morals and beliefs. That doesn't mean that they were right, and shouldn't count as an excuse - not for them and not for the NSA.
Actually, the NSA has one big thing speaking against them: they worked against the will of the people, which is a no-no in a democracy. Hitler and Stalin didn't have to care about that, because they weren't in democracies. One could argue that the NSA is morally worse off than those dictators.
Yes, the relevations might get a few NSA workers killed. So what?
"Yes, the relevations might get a few NSA workers killed. So what?"
While you are free to agree or disagree with Snowden's actions, the politics and the methods of most of the Wests Intelligence Apparatus, I find your willingness to throw away human life, regardless of their employment, a little distasteful.
"While you are free to agree or disagree with Snowden's actions, the politics and the methods of most of the Wests Intelligence Apparatus, I find your willingness to throw away human life, regardless of their employment, a little distasteful."
The funny thing is, ask any combat veteran if they find the willingness to throw away human life distasteful, they'd all find it extremely distasteful.
Even the enemy.
We'd have been happier if they simply decided to quit and go home.
I'm quite sure that Hitler and Stalin ...
Thanks to Godwin's Law, such a comparison probably isn't going to garner you quite as many upvotes as you might have hoped. Save the Hitler comparisons for much later in the thread (assuming it's even appropriate there).
"Actually, the NSA has one big thing speaking against them: they worked against the will of the people, which is a no-no in a democracy."
FDR and Churchill did things against the will of the people and even stomped all over civil rights during WWII.
I guess we should all apologize to Japan and Germany, then surrender to them.
"Yes, the relevations might get a few NSA workers killed. So what?"
So nice of you to say so what to the death of US government workers. How about I volunteer your family for such a fate and say so what?
No, I wouldn't.
That is the difference between a civilized man and one who is not civilized.
>>...acting within their own framework of morals and beliefs in the name of his own morals and beliefs.<<
My post above currently stands at 6 up votes and 14 down votes. Interestingly, Europe upvoted and all the down votes appeared when USA came online. Not going to read anything into that, just noticed it and thought it worth mentioning.
As for the down votes, that's fine, disagree and have different opinions, but make *some* effort to argue them out! Which bit do you find against your world view enough to press a JavaScript button, but not enough to actually go so far as to type letters and form sentences for? No, seriously? I am happy to change my mind if convinced
I only find it fascinating how he was self-described as a systems administrator, now suddenly he is an information intelligence operative.
Even more fascinating, as when I met him in 2008, he was only a systems administrator.
And a prima donna.
With remarkably average skills as an SA.
"Has been for at least my lifetime, and probably that of many of my ancestors too.
What concerns me about Mr Snowden is that he may be getting too excited by the leaking and go beyond public interest (NSA spies on Americans shocker) to getting a bunch of people killed for acting within their own framework of morals and beliefs in the name of his own morals and beliefs"
Indeed. Anyone who thinks this is new or confined to a single nation or other group of individuals (Deutsche Bundesbahn were up to it and a number of other German organisations) is clearly smoking the wrong pipe mixture:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100242400/france-is-shocked-shocked-i-tell-you-that-america-would-spy-on-its-allies/
All that Snowden and the would be do-gooders succeed in doing is altering the playing field in the favour of those who oppose their home country. They should not be surprised when payback time arrives, which it will do, one way or another. Quite possibly in the form of a Chinese end.
getting a bunch of people killed for acting within their own framework of morals and beliefs in the name of his own morals and beliefs
Everyone "act[s] within their own framework of morals and beliefs", if they consider their actions at all. That's what morality entails: considering whether an action is good.1
Consequently, when two factions are opposed, there must be a conflict between their "morals and beliefs", except in the unlikely event that one or both factions is acting in an entirely unconsidered manner. Clearly that's not the case here, since both sides2 are presenting arguments justifying their positions.
Leaving aside the question of whether indeed anyone is "getting ... killed" as a direct result of Snowden's actions, the issue of conflicting "morals and beliefs" does not have any bearing on the morality (or, for that matter, ethical appropriateness) of Snowden's actions.
1Whether an unconsidered action can be moral or immoral is a matter of philosophical debate; Kant, for example, argued that morality only attaches when the actor is cognizant of the good or evil in an action.
2Really "all sides", since there are many positions on the matter.
"The New York Times is blocked in China."
Erm, not for *all* Chinese networks. There are certain special purpose military networks that do not block anything.
I'll not comment beyond that, save that they know our networks as well.
Think of it as Spy vs Spy, only messier, but nobody so far has gotten badly hurt.
Well, save one Russian oil pipeline that was made with stolen Canadian designs that were, erm, altered at US counterintelligence behest.
Well, Snowden has just made himself wanted by the Chinese as well, and not by good means.
If he disappears, it may not be Gitmo where he'll show up again. As a matter of fact, he may never show up again at all, as he has now declared himself even a bigger danger to the US, and a much more desirable source of info for the Chinese.
Not his smartest move IMHO.
Actually, it's only spying if you got SHOT.
I was once able to avoid assignment to a project in the PRC by (among other things) telling my manager I'd volunteer to report to the Defense Intelligence Agency about it if they made me go. They didn't.
A SMART adversary will always assume people it brings in so they can reveal secrets will also be stealing them; patriotic duty is not confined to nationals of any one country.
There is no 'truth', everything isn't binary opposites in the world, in the analogue world it's all a murky mess. 'Truth' changes with time and perspective, walls are solid if you're 4 years old and a mass of nothingness and wave functions of you're a nuclear physicist. Both are true. There is your truth and my truth and lots of other truths, but with very few exceptions no absolute truths.
^^Slightly scary that 4 out of 11 people who expressed a preference think truth *is* absolute. I have to assume they're young and haven't tried living as a grown up yet.
Or maybe I'm wrong, it is *my* truth of course. And I'm prepared to discuss it - but just pressing downvote is easier than rational discussion, eh?
>>No, more irritating (evil grin)<<
I'll take that as one or more of...
1) I can't form an argument
2) You're the best Cliff, I stand no chance against your superior insight
3) I'm only 14 anyway and have the attention span of a....oooh look another button to click...
^^ Thanks for the kind advice, Anonymous Coward. I typically ignore the downvote keyboard warrior army, sometimes surprises me though that so many people can disagree with an idea or statement, yet offer no alternative. They can even do so as AC's if they don't have the courage of their convictions. The very lamest keyboard warrior army.
Not sure why, but I hope for better from The Reg readers, supposedly intelligent technologists. I guess I hope I can learn something from them if I'm so clearly wrong... but a downvote is barely even a synapse fire. Shame.
As the AC who wrote that comment:
4) whinging about downvotes is not very productive, so I have decided to:
a - bring some levity to the proceedings
b - wind you up just a little bit (but gently - I *really* dislike the childish ad hominem stuff)
c - remain AC as that really seems to get some people's goat. Which bizarrely is an expression that comes from horse racing, but that's another tangent.
So there. Mope no more. All is well. And you may fart in my general direction :)
"There is no 'truth', everything isn't binary opposites in the world, in the analogue world it's all a murky mess."
Indeed, and it is one mark of personality disorder when people see things in black and white. Cluster B, aka "the pests", a lot of whom seem to be here present.
Hi Jake,
Trust on whose side? We have a guy who claims to be a whistleblower and who reveals claims about the American Government's dirty little secrets. Given their response to him, I trust what he says to be true. The American Government just doesn't annul people's passports for no good reason. They are angry with him. He has made his life miserable for he believes to be right.
He is calling the American Government's bluff by playing his China card. Since there is a good chance that he had access to this material, can the American Government afford not to trust what he says to be true?
Thanks for the downvote, btw.
Is it because he doesn't continually come on here posting bullshit about his amazing life, his internal stomach based brewery, the way he makes cheese from his own milk, etc...?
Sorry, it just seems bizarre that you're questioning someone elses credibility....
You bring to mind something I heard a female teenager say when, as an even younger male, I was waiting on a bus stop. There were two girls and one male. The latter appeared to be trying hard to persuade one of the femmes to go with her and accept into her body that portion of the male anatomy which transmits seed. "Of course I trust ya darlin; I trust ya from ere to ere" (Motioning from one ear to another, via the epiglottis.)
I wonder if the timing of the release had anything to do with the US spat over its household budget. China is the USA's biggest creditor and it is generally very foolish to upset one's creditors. they may decide that they want their money back.
Or is this simply a warning to US death squads? Assassinate me and the World will know what you've been up to in regards to China.
Wow just looked and I am quite shocked to see the UK fairly high on the list of foreign investors (ok sure $150billion is about 11% of China's, but then again we are much smaller than China)
Now if only the UK could stop sending aid to countries with Space programs we could start paying off our national debt...
Seriously if you can afford a space program, you can afford to look after you own people!
@MrXavia I would agree that the USA is far behind most of the western world regarding education, health care and social security on the whole. But I would not diss NASA and the Space program and I would agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson on that subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc
"... it is generally very foolish to upset one's creditors. they may decide that they want their money back."
Most people have no understanding of what the national debt it, what it means, and how it works. Clearly you have even less than most. Congratulations.
Here, read this. It will make you a lot smarter than you are now.
http://www.cracked.com/article_20454_5-scary-myths-you-probably-believe-about-economy.html
The tactics of the American govt on foreign soil don't really matter to most people, we are well aware that this has been going since at least the Cold War. Snowden is not really brining much to light here.
The only things truly interesting in Snowdens adventure are the proof and scale by which the Yanks and the Brits are spying on their own people.
Some might say protecting us from within but it's already too late.. Once you have the flu, no amount of pills or medecine will cure it. The best cure for the flu is to avoid catching it, ie. avoid others that already have it. In other words, it's about time that we stopped poking our noses into other people business.
But colds and flus are rarely fatal, so it's NOT too late. It's entirely possible to MITIGATE its effects. Sure, you can have an insider in your midst, but there are ways to minimize the damage, just as it's possible to still control the situation after discovering a bomb.
"While estimates of case-fatality (CF) rates for past influenza pandemics have ranged from about 0.1% (1957 and 1968 pandemics) to 2.5% (1918 pandemic); the official World Health Organization estimate for the current outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza to date is around 60%. While the real H5N1 CF rate (what it would be if we had perfect knowledge) could be lower (one study suggests that the real H5N1 CF rate is closer to 14–33%); it is unlikely that, if it becomes a pandemic, it will go to the 0.1–0.4% level currently embraced by many pandemic plans"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1
Whilst I take your point that seasonal flu has a fairly low mortality rate (I think the UK average is around 30-50 per year) there are occasional outbreaks that kill off lots of people.
Also, if you take into account people getting flu and then developing pneumonia as a result the numbers are considerably higher.
I'm assuming you aren't in a high risk group either (i.e. elderly or child).
Sigismund Freud was not a scientist; he gave a up a promising career in medicine and medical research (he was published) to work in the therapies (NB, these are nothing to do with the sciences, unless they have a strong foundation of cognitive/behavioural science) having discovered that a dodgy therapeutic tool appear to work. He changed careers because he knew this would bring in the money, and he wanted to marry Anna.
Very few of his patients were ever 'cured' - the wolfman, and even then people like Frederick Crews, having researched the matter, concluded that he did not even cure him - and, indeed, the 'talking cure' takes place over such a long period (normally months or years) that it is no better than placebo (waiting list will do), and patients appear to recover by dint of 'spontaneous remission'. We have Hans Eysenck to thank for this insight.
An examination of the mumbo jumbo of Freudianism shows no clear scientific concepts, and also no verifiable/falsifiable material. Indeed, a lot of the stuff to which you allude is 'double bind' material; you are sick with this... ...but if you are not, you are sick with this.
Freud stole his ideas from Greek mythology, from a branch of German philosophy known as German speculative idealism (the concept of repression came from the philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart, e.g.), and so on. Findings in modern neuroscience indicate that this business of splitting idea content from affect content is BS. Each memory is formed by means of a new protein, these do not split.
I could go on for quite a while about this, having blazed a small academic trail in it, a long time ago, before I left the business of slaying academic fairies at the bottom of the garden for molecular biology and forensic psychiatry.
It is unwise and unsound to justify anything using Freud, his followers, or related 'disciplines'. Feminists do, and they look very silly. I think they adopted Freud as a means of overturning the penis envy fallacy. Utterly infantile, like the man himself, about whom I uncovered a lot of material from letters written in his youth. A fool, and a successfully greedy one too.
Snowden is pure win.
“If that was compromised, NSA would have set the table on fire from slamming it so many times in denouncing the damage it had caused."
Muah!
I do hope quite a few of the brats in the control complex and their congressional shills (always a step away from dying via fat overload or sheer stupidity or both) get blood pressure so high that their ears bleed. "Discussion welcoming" Obama can bleed too.
"If he really has dirt as good as he has just announced, then he has just completely fucked himself. EVERYONE is going to be after him. Does he really think Russia would be against quietly handing him over to China for cash or favours?"
Russia is very wary, if not actually scared, of China. As Victor Rezun reported a Soviet military instructor saying, "There are a billion Chinese. If you killed a million a day, it would take you three years to kill them all."
The point being that China is overpopulated but Siberia is nearly empty. There is a belief that China has some reasons (supportable or otherwise I do not know) that they feel justify them in claiming that Siberia was stolen from them, and that they are entitled to claim sovereignty over large parts of it. This makes Russia nervous, as they are worried that China might demand it Siberia back from the Russians.
By damaging American operations against China, Russia might begin to feel that Snowden is acting against Russian interests.
No, he would be ordered to leave Russia for some bullshit reason, and strangely the only transport he could find to get him out of Russia would be an Air China flight to Beijing.
But that wont happen, because China already have everything he has, but Russia still hasn't drained him dry.
"Does he really think Russia would be against quietly handing him over to China for cash or favours?"
I'm sure that, as a descendent of the KGB, the FSB will have a spare cell or two in somewhere like the underground Ural mountains complex, where they or their Chinese comrades can 'help' Snowden to remember things that he would normally resist... ...and if he confesses to things that he doesn't know anything about, so what? These people really do not care about modern western findings in forensic psychology/psychiatry, that torture does not normally work, they just want to do something, and torture fits the bill; all the more since it resembles something that torturers might recognise as 'revenge' for spying.
It ought not to surprise us if Snowden gradually fades into obscurity, long before the PRC and the Russian autocracy disintegrate. Human rights? They don't know them. For his folly this man truly is on his own now.
After giving them BS, or resisting, initially he'll give them half truths and chicken feed, in order to stop whatever they do. Later, when this does not satisfy them, he'll cough. Unless of course martyrdom beckons.
Torture mostly does not work, as (e.g.) the people convicted for the Birmingham pub bombing know; they confessed to anything, anything at all, anything as long as it would get the monkey off their back. They were sleep deprived, injected with chemicals, everything that could be done short of Gestapo techniques. Decades later they were released and compensated for the misfortunes and sorrow inflicted on them by the British state's representatives. Sadly the PRC and Russian autocracy do not appear to recognise this. Indeed, as the Wikipedia pages show, many, many genuine Russian journalists (by this I do not mean people like Assange, who claims to be one) have been assassinated, such as Anna Politkovskaya ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya ).
Snowden is right in the middle of where unpleasant things happen, and these people have much in common with the PRC, culturally, methodologically, in their training. He could not have picked a worse place, indeed in which only a hypocrite could seek protection from the very agencies that are pitted against his protectors, while so many juveniles and immature easily conned fools adulate and support him.
Life would appear to be wasted on the living. Like Assange Snowden doesn't have much of one.
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I Agree The NSA Have Not Been Good Enough
The NSA and DSA are failures.
They have not stopped the domestic fun lovers, (must not call them terrorists) blowing up people within the USA.
The allowed fun loving people to learn to fly - (but not land planes) so they could kill people.
The employed lame attentions seekers to tell other dumb people that the government were trying to do their job.
Who in their right mind did not know that any and ALL intelligence bodies would be looking for intelligence on threats?
I know governments have some pretty dumb fools working for them, we see it every day, but should they corner the market in hopeless cases? Does our UK government really use residents from Broadmoor to write the systems they expect us to user or is it just down to stupid civil servants buying the wrong pups?
The Chinese are surely aware that the US heavily spy on them. The NSA budget does give a little hint.
They would surely love to get Snowden, but they would just as much love to have any other educated NSA employee. Working with somebody else at Booz Allen would be much more discrete and there are surely some greedy bastards that are less principled (easier to buy) than Mr. Snowden.
Snowden also no longer has any documents. To get those the Chinese and Russians might try to go after the newspapers that have the documents. Or considering the excellent security of the NSA system, maybe they should just dig up a cable in Hawaii.
The US authorities try to smear Mr. Snowden and they try to build a case against him with hearsay and allegations. After all that Snowden did, I gotta say that I trust him to tell the truth (take that, Jake). Contrast that with the repeated lying of Mr Clapper and Mr. Alexander. Whom would you want as role model for your kids?
Hmm. Snowden isn't just interesting because of his documents - he's also interesting as an insider, and with the right, er, "encouragement" will be able to recall those tiny details that illustrate the cracks in the system.
That may have been the key driver behind the NSA sysadmin purge.
Leaving information in Hong Kong doesn't seem like a very effective way of keeping it out of Chinese hands to me. Now, maybe those journalists did quickly get it out of Hong Kong again, to somewhere safe - but his confidence in that seems a little optimistic to me.
Of course, the NSA thought they had technical precautions in place to stop Snowden getting most of the information he's been leaking, up until it was too late. How can Snowden be so sure his own precautions are better than theirs - or that he's the first to breach the NSA's own? People have been speculating a lot about NSA-inserted backdoors in other products: what about PRC-inserted backdoors in the NSA itself? Were the holes Snowden exploited to get his haul of information all accidental or his own, or was he following in the footsteps of others?
It just seems a bit far-fetched to me that if one lone idealist could do this just as a matter of principle, the Chinese, Russian and other intelligence services wouldn't have gone the same route too. If they did, would the NSA know it (they didn't spot Snowden in time!) and would they admit it if they did?
The spectacularly short-sighted and, frankly, stupid comments here demonstrate that people born after the fall of the Berlin wall have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the importance of SIGINT to the life of the nation.
Worse, malign regimes like China's, which is currently engaged in a massive State backed industrial, military and corporate espionage campaign against the West, are given a free pass.
What is WRONG with you people?
I live and work with a number of people who were born behind the Berlin wall and it is precisely those people, who experienced boundless state surveillance who are most vocal in condemning it. Similarly, it is not a coincidence that Germany is highly sensitive to protecting privacy and fundamental rights and freedoms of their citizens. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. For all their weaknesses and mistakes, I do believe the Germany have learned what the americans are still attempting to deny.
> What is WRONG with you people?
Based on earlier experience, I'd say they're a mix of Chinese nationalists defending the honor of the glorious motherland, and western libertarians. Libertarians hate democracies and love dictatorships, especially China since it sports exactly the kind of corrupt robber capitalism libertarians adore.
"The spectacularly short-sighted and, frankly, stupid comments here demonstrate that people born after the fall of the Berlin wall have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the importance of SIGINT to the life of the nation.
[...]
What is WRONG with you people?"
It is exactly as you said; when the wall came down people started to eat lotus. Computing happened, people sat in front of screens and imagined they could be like Neo. When this happened in the 20th century, twice, such lazy thinkers received a slap to the face... ...even then people such as Keir Hardie stood in Trafalgar Square and denounced war with Germany, even though they planned to hit us quite hard.
'Twas ever thus. The best that can be done is to post up material that is not to their liking, try to wake up at least some of them; someone in these fora appears to believe that he can tell, from FOIL requests, what challenges the security services face, that is, whether or not they are up against terrorist networks and how many/the nature of them. This is all baby Neo stuff. It is deluded, and I actually walked away from it last time.
If people are drowning so willingly in stupidity perhaps it is better to leave them be but, in their defence, it can be said that the USSR was a tangible, a palpable enemy (even if some are now trying to revise that and say they meant no harm!), whereas secret terrorists cells and the means of combating are less easily visualised, especially for those who are not the brightest light in the harbour, those for whom recorded incidents of terrorism and of successful prosecutions for planning such matters do not constitute evidence of the need to fight them using the tools of secrecy and espionage.
For people such as the nay sayers even another series of underground explosions, even the prevented aircraft bombers who had devised bombs that worked only when chemicals were mixed, for these people nothing will wake them up. Halifax felt before WWII that we should be nice to Germany. Need I say any more? How many ways are there to say that society has its idiots and that is good that the like of you and I metaphorically slap 'em around the face in order that at least some of them wake up.
If you think he should never have opened his mouth in the first place, then let's just say we disagree, vehemently and go our separate ways.
Once he had done so, the USA began a war against him, preventing him travelling as far as they could. Persuading other governments to arrest and search anyone connected with him. The guy is stuck in Russia (where I'm sure he doesn't want to be) and he is faced with the choice of either working his way out of this mess, or letting the US capture him, at which point he'll spend the rest of his life in jail.
So at this point, I have no problems with him doing or saying ANYTHING to make his own future! Why should he continue to hold loyalties to countries that have treated him despicably? And if preserving his future now rests on aiding an enemy of the USA, then I'd pick China over Russia any day.
Yes, he should have kept it shut. Why? Cause anyone with half a brain knows already that every world power spies on everything they can. You do not stay on top by following the rules, you get there by making the rules and NOT following them or by changing them mid game like that one asshole kid we all grew up with.
This act was just to inflate his ego, get a pat on the back and some fame. I doubt he knows half of what he claims.
Now that he is directly threatening the United States he is committing no questions asked head on a pike treason.
Considering that they have revoked his US citizenship, how can this be considered treason?
That's an interesting point, actually. I suspect that it remains treason because the acts were committed whilst still being a US citizen, but I actually don't know the laws in that context. Anyone?
"the acts were committed whilst still being a US citizen"
I agree that the previous leaks were as a US citizen, but this latest development where he mentions that he has material that would be of serious interest to China etc. are post citizenship. I thought the OP was referring to the latest 'threats', rather than the leaks that have occurred so far.
As spying is now a seemingly legitimate activity ... I thought some might appreciate this novel consumer item aimed at a rather neglected market: Pineapple Drone
You may want to seek permission before flying that over GCHQ though!
> there was a “zero per cent chance” any of the documents had found their way into China’s hands because he was effectively able to second guess Chinese intelligence
Hahaha sweet jesus, he's a fucking child. I'd bet a thousand bucks China has every one of those documents, plus everything he brought on his laptops to trade to the Chinese for asylum. That they already had everything he wanted to trade is the reason he was allowed to leave China.
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