Edward Snowden Used a Simple Web Crawler To Gather NSA Data

[RoonMian]

Now I know this whole business has been around for a while now but what EXACTLY did he do?

I have inklings here and there but I would like a full unbiased story of exactly what he did.

he basically blew open the extent of what the NSA actually gets up to and how much data they collect on every day americans.

Not just americans...
We're talking about spying on a global scale here.

I just hope that this controversy won't stop until something happens. As long as he has media coverage, he's safe...

To be fair, there's no protections in the US constitution against spying on non-citizens in foreign countries. US Citizens, however, are supposed to be protected, and that's why the PATRIOT act, which is the legal basis for pretty much all of this crap, is so horrible.

To be fair, the vast majority of the people doesn't give two shits about the US and its constitution.
The thing is that currently the US is just showing every country its middle fingers and our governments (the German government in my case), don't do anything about it.
Instead of protecting us, they just bury their heads in the sand and wait for people to forget about it. Occasionally saying something among the lines of "It's all good. They're our friends." and "Hereby I declare the NSA-affair for finished."
The sad thing for us German citizens is that they want to (and most likely will) spy on us ourselves (keyword: VDS).

I'm with you on the patriot act thing though.
Whenever I hear someone talk about how free 'Murica is, I think about it. A country with such a law in place has no business in calling itself "the land of the free".

The even sadder thing for us Germans is, that Snowden also revealed the NSA engages in industrial espionage against its allies, meaning us. A few years ago the Spiegel found out that about 48% of German companies notice some leaking of know-how. Guess where that's going.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

There shouldn't be any controversy, the man was not only right, he's a patriot in the truest sense. It's the people clamoring for his head as a traitor who are the traitors, to the very ideals of democracy.

My feelings is that Snowden should be punished for breaking the law, as should those indicted by the information he revealed. In the eye of the law all is equal and there to be no exceptions. You break the law you need to face the prescribed punishment whether it is fines, jail time, or death.

Except the law he violated violated the constitution, and so did the people following it. The constitution is the highest law in the US, anything that violates it is superceded by it. Snowden is a hero.

Besides, if you think there's no reason to ever break the law, you've got a lot to learn about the law. There's this myth that the rule of law is some magical thing that keeps us separate from countries ruled by the whims of their leaders. That myth ignores who writes the laws.

 

[Orlake]

There shouldn't be any controversy, the man was not only right, he's a patriot in the truest sense. It's the people clamoring for his head as a traitor who are the traitors, to the very ideals of democracy.

My feelings is that Snowden should be punished for breaking the law, as should those indicted by the information he revealed. In the eye of the law all is equal and there to be no exceptions. You break the law you need to face the prescribed punishment whether it is fines, jail time, or death.

"beep boop, I'm a robot that decides what right or wrong based on the latest law; morality or ethics be damned, if it's in da rulez it goes"

That's what you sound like right now.

 

[Sofus]

I think Snowden should have leaked all of the data on the internet, that way the entire situation would most likely have caused massive uprisings aswell as people demanding that their governments resign or shut down certain branches. I don't care about the information regarding foreign citizens, but I do care about anything that involves the danish government.

Government employees work for and exist to serve the citizens of their country.. not the country itself.

 

[Senare]

Is there some kind of American lobby which takes this seriously and works for better privacy protection? Or couldn't all you Americans organize yourselves against this? Start a revolution or something?

 

[Vegosiux]

Web crawler? He hired Spiderman to do it? Good lord.

*ahem*

Jokes aside, just goes to show that information inherently wants to be free, and makes itself available to anyone who does some digging.

Also, at this point, it doesn't actually matter what the US government does with and/or to Snowden. The information is free.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Snowden was far smarter than them. He knew what they were monitoring internally and what they weren't.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

When he started working there he never had to sign a confidence agreement or anything?

Yes mr snowden violated the law also, he just violated it less than your president and congress and nsa. Half of them swore an oath on a bible to uphold the laws and constitution of this nation. mr snowden didnt he signed some papers, what should carry more weight?

I don't know about the USA, but in the UK every citizen is held under the Official Secrets Act. If a citizen knows a national secret, or even international secret, and knowingly spreads it to others not in the know they will be prosecuted...

It doesn't matter whether you have signed the official secrets act or swore an oath.

 

[Strazdas]

When he started working there he never had to sign a confidence agreement or anything?

Yes mr snowden violated the law also, he just violated it less than your president and congress and nsa. Half of them swore an oath on a bible to uphold the laws and constitution of this nation. mr snowden didnt he signed some papers, what should carry more weight?

signing a legal document carries more weight than swering on a bible. First is legally binding, second one is just some religiuos ceremony.

I think Snowden should have leaked all of the data on the internet, that way the entire situation would most likely have caused massive uprisings aswell as people demanding that their governments resign or shut down certain branches.

he DID leak it on the internet. Reddit to be specific.

Is there some kind of American lobby which takes this seriously and works for better privacy protection? Or couldn't all you Americans organize yourselves against this? Start a revolution or something?

In US in order to lobby you need rich corporation backing. since no corporation wants privacy this is not going to happen.
And you really asking majority to organize about anything? have you noticed that revolutions only ever start when people got nothing to loose and are starving to death?

 

[cerebus23]

Yes mr snowden violated the law also, he just violated it less than your president and congress and nsa. Half of them swore an oath on a bible to uphold the laws and constitution of this nation. mr snowden didnt he signed some papers, what should carry more weight?[/quote]
signing a legal document carries more weight than swering on a bible. First is legally binding, second one is just some religiuos ceremony.

I would hazard legally they are both equally binding and if your "god" fearing person than arguably the bible oath would be the one that would hold your immortal soul in peril to violate.......

And in either case when you agree to swear an oath you agree to the terms of the oath, weither or not you personally belive in the invisible old man in the sky or not does not matter.

But your attitude completely explains why mr obama, and so many other sentaors and house members wipes their ass with the bill of rights and constitution after swearing to uphold protect and defend those documents.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

To get this thread away from fierce politics arguments for just a sec: It's funny how many people think a lot of stuff in the real world they haven't seen happens just like in those Hollywood movies when just about the only thing those guys get right is people need to breath. And sometimes Hollywood screws that up, too.

I'd bet Snowden got his tools from something like sourceforge and the combined time of downloading it to a flash drive he could hide up his bum(citation needed) at home, plug it into his pc at work and copy all those files would be around 5-10 minutes and take like a dozen clicks of his mouse. Many sensitive installations like nuclear power plants, military bases, and super secret corporate research networks don't allow Internets or even usb port access to anyone but IT and high level personel. (For having a genius intellect, Q was a fucking idiot for plugging in the laptop of a known hacker wiz into M6's LAN.) Knowing the NSA and the government in general, they probably relaxed on way to many things during the recent budget cuts. He probably didn't really need to hide it all that well. The Fort Meade officials might be bluffing a little, too. Unless a guard is staring at a screen, or waiting for a sound to let him know something fishy is going on in the network, I'd say Snowden could have had enough time to get his files and run out saying my girlfriend was in an accident or something before they could look up her credit cards and say she just bought a latte 2 minutes ago. With the cuts of government employees and their hours all over while congress still gets full pay to sit on their ass and argue where to cut next, I'd say it could have happened at any of their locations, until he alerted them it was possible.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

There shouldn't be any controversy, the man was not only right, he's a patriot in the truest sense. It's the people clamoring for his head as a traitor who are the traitors, to the very ideals of democracy.

Couldn't have said it better myself. It's not a coincidence that among the -actual- traitors calling him the traitor are such "sterling" figures as former US President Bush and then... Basically the entire right-wing side of the political system.

Also if a simple web-crawler can bypass the NSA cyber-security, we've got a digital armageddon just waiting to happen.

 

[inidu]

Naturally, the US government charged him with treason and he fled the country rather than be executed. Last I heard, he's now living in Russia, and is under their protection.

That's... not at all true. Nothing you've said there is true except "he's now living in Russia."

Nobody's charged Snowden with treason. He's been charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications information. None of these crimes carries the death penalty.

Also, he left the country after obtaining but before leaking the documents. He left to Hong Kong, where he stayed at a hotel. He took a flight to South America by means of Moscow, but his passport was pulled while he was in Moscow, so he was stuck in Moscow airport for several months. Putin eventually granted him asylum in Russia.

he DID leak it on the internet. Reddit to be specific.

No, he didn't. He hasn't leaked anything at all to reddit. He leaked the documents to three reporters (Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman), who he charged with carefully selecting from these only those which would expose government wrongdoing and would not put any people in harm's way. I don't know where you're getting this whole 'he leaked to reddit' thing from.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Is there some kind of American lobby which takes this seriously and works for better privacy protection? Or couldn't all you Americans organize yourselves against this? Start a revolution or something?

In US in order to lobby you need rich corporation backing. since no corporation wants privacy this is not going to happen.
And you really asking majority to organize about anything? have you noticed that revolutions only ever start when people got nothing to loose and are starving to death?

Um, ahem:

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.eff.org/

Two of the higher profile organizations dedicated to this sort of thing.

Also, you don't need rich corporate backing in order to lobby in the US. It just helps if you want to get unscrupulous politicians to listen, because the laws are set up so you can butter them up with campaign donations, and until about 10 years ago, when a law was passed banning it, they'd go further with gifts and fancy dinners -- bribes that didn't involve directly giving someone cash, in other words. Lobbying in itself is just the act of talking to a politician personally and letting him know what you as a constituent want him to do. It's not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when bribery is a part of it.

 

[ntfwc]

It bugs me that the article didn't say the name of the tool used.

It was nothing uncommon. It is a tool that comes standard with basically any Linux distribution. For those curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget

The usual use-case is to download a single file, like the source code for some server application. It shows up in a bunch of tutorials.

 

[Strazdas]

Um, ahem:

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.eff.org/

Two of the higher profile organizations dedicated to this sort of thing.

Also, you don't need rich corporate backing in order to lobby in the US. It just helps if you want to get unscrupulous politicians to listen, because the laws are set up so you can butter them up with campaign donations, and until about 10 years ago, when a law was passed banning it, they'd go further with gifts and fancy dinners -- bribes that didn't involve directly giving someone cash, in other words. Lobbying in itself is just the act of talking to a politician personally and letting him know what you as a constituent want him to do. It's not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when bribery is a part of it.

I looked up ACLU and yes they do seem to be a group that may try to combat NSA spying.

EFF i support constantly, however they are not anti-spy lobby. they are working for consumer rights in electronic field and show up in gaming sphere from time to time.


Now, while you dont need rich corporations backing if you want to lobby, as is shown in both of your examples lack of them makes you not suceed. EFF has shown us that companies DONT need to sue potential copycats to keep thier patents, and yet even the news reporters that should know better keep telling us they do.

Talking to a politician is democracy. Paying a politician is lobbying.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Um, ahem:

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.eff.org/

Two of the higher profile organizations dedicated to this sort of thing.

Also, you don't need rich corporate backing in order to lobby in the US. It just helps if you want to get unscrupulous politicians to listen, because the laws are set up so you can butter them up with campaign donations, and until about 10 years ago, when a law was passed banning it, they'd go further with gifts and fancy dinners -- bribes that didn't involve directly giving someone cash, in other words. Lobbying in itself is just the act of talking to a politician personally and letting him know what you as a constituent want him to do. It's not a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when bribery is a part of it.

I looked up ACLU and yes they do seem to be a group that may try to combat NSA spying.

EFF i support constantly, however they are not anti-spy lobby. they are working for consumer rights in electronic field and show up in gaming sphere from time to time.


Now, while you dont need rich corporations backing if you want to lobby, as is shown in both of your examples lack of them makes you not suceed. EFF has shown us that companies DONT need to sue potential copycats to keep thier patents, and yet even the news reporters that should know better keep telling us they do.

Talking to a politician is democracy. Paying a politician is lobbying.

Look through the EFF's platform a bit more thoroughly, you'll see online privacy is one of their major issues.

As far as lobbying goes, voting is democracy, talking to a politician is lobbying, paying a politician is bribery (and something people who lobby for a living are notorious for). Money doesn't have to change hands for lobbying to occur, they just happen together so frequently that people don't know there's a difference.

 

[Strazdas]

Look through the EFF's platform a bit more thoroughly, you'll see online privacy is one of their major issues.

As far as lobbying goes, voting is democracy, talking to a politician is lobbying, paying a politician is bribery (and something people who lobby for a living are notorious for). Money doesn't have to change hands for lobbying to occur, they just happen together so frequently that people don't know there's a difference.

i feel ashamed now considering that after posting that reply yesterday i got email from EFF telling me to sign a petition against NSA.

 

[Senare]

Is there some kind of American lobby which takes this seriously and works for better privacy protection? Or couldn't all you Americans organize yourselves against this? Start a revolution or something?

In US in order to lobby you need rich corporation backing. since no corporation wants privacy this is not going to happen.
And you really asking majority to organize about anything? have you noticed that revolutions only ever start when people got nothing to loose and are starving to death?

Admittedly it was just wishful thinking. ._.
(New plan: Starve America.)