“The way in which [the Snowden] disclosures happened has been damaging to the United States and damaging to our intelligence capabilities…”
Yes, exactly how arresting a Bank robber is damaging to his freedom to steal and damaging to his false reputation for honesty.
The NSA’s reckless “freedom to steal” our personal information and the US reputation as trustworthy are severely damaged only because it has conducted, and continues to conduct, massively criminal Privacy violations upon innocent Americans and to innocent foreigners in other countries.
But there is no evidence of any damage to American spying beyond that. There is no evidence that any terrorist activities are affected in any way – good or bad. The only damage from the disclosures so far was exposing world class embarrassing official US criminal actions and anti-constitutional acts by US government agencies; primarily the NSA, and until recently wholly supported by President Obama.
Now that a Federal Judge has ruled NSA’s mass surveillance data collection is unconstitutional (“‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion of privacy”) , I predict that Snowden will beat Mandela for Time’s 2013 Person of the Year; and that these things will be revealed in 2014 –
1. NSA spied upon and continues to spy on Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen.
2. NSA spied upon and continues to spy on Federal Court Judges.
Spying on Congress or Judges can allow different degrees of criminal “persuasion” (read Blackmail and Extortion) of Federal officials forcing them to unwillingly protect the “Indited States’ ” NSA, a vastly more powerful version of the dreaded “Stasi” of Germany.
3. Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others gave away some unconstitutional access to the NSA for cash– just like NSA gave RSA a $10 million contract to reveal encryption secrets so that they can “backdoor” decrypt all your communications.
4. NSA / CIA has been “adjusting” bank accounts by removing money.
5. NSA critics will sadly continue to confuse the very different terms “illegal” and unconstitutional.”
No need to fasten your seatbelts – just be extremely careful what you email or say on the phone.
Never again should you write or say on the phone “I’m going to blow up my friend’s photograph” – even in jest, because police never think it is as funny as you do.
Happy Surveilled Seasons 😉
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Good article “How to Encrypt Emails: Protect Yourself from Online Snoops”
PS Try this funny video “The NSA is Coming to Town”
Update Dec 23: Whoops: I should have checked Time’s website, since they chose the “Person of the Year” about 2 weeks before I published this article. They chose the new Pope Francis who is a champion of the poor. “Francis has made society’s most vulnerable—the sick, the elderly, immigrants and children—the focus of his ministry.” While I am not catholic as far as I know, I can applaud this choice. When was the last time you heard a candidate for American President even mention the poor?
I am pleased to report that Time chose Edward Snowden as Person of the Moment only a week before I wrote this article.