FBD
06-06-2016, 01:28 PM
Edward Snowden's story is one that most know by now - the NSA contractor who went rogue and instead of going through available channels to voice his concerns, leaked sensitive government documents that revealed how the US surveillance state operates for all the world to see.
Or at least, that's what the government's version of the story is.
In a Vice News exclusive, based on over 800 pages of newly released documents from the NSA and countless interviews, Vice News finds that there is much more to the story that the public isn't being told. Snowden, according to Vice News, did have both email and face-to-face contact with compliance over concerns, and the available options for Snowden may not have been adequate during the time Snowden was actually working as a contractor at the NSA.
At a bare minimum, Vice News provides valuable insight into the fact that while the NSA and other government agencies put on a public face that they were "sure" only a single email sent by Snowden, the investigation missed a lot of correspondence over time, and even a critical face-to-face interaction that wasn't documented until much later.
The following helps walk through what Vice News found, however we encourage readers to read the full piece at Vice News.
We'll start by pointing out a quick aside, and that is that Vice News (https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive) also found as it received the FOIA documents, that the NSA admitted that it altered emails related to its discussions about Snowden - "unavoidably" of course.
.
In a letter disclosed to VICE News Friday morning, Justice Department attorney Brigham Bowen said, "Due to a technical flaw in an operating system, some timestamps in email headers were unavoidably altered. Another artifact from this technical flaw is that the organizational designators for records from that system have been unavoidably altered to show the current organizations for the individuals in the To/From/CC lines of the header for the overall email, instead of the organizational designators correct at the time the email was sent."
The single email theory that the government trotted out is a bit more complex, as it involved multiple people from different departments as an answer was formulated. Everything was set in motion when Snowden clicked the "email us" link on the internal website of the NSA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) to ask his question on April 5, 2013.
Snowden clicked the "email us" link on the internal website of the NSA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) and wrote, "I have a question regarding the mandatory USSID 18 training."
United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) encompasses rules by which the NSA is supposed to abide in order to protect the privacy of the communications of people in the United States. Snowden was taking this and other training courses in Maryland while working to transition from a Sysadmin to an analyst position. Referring to a slide from the training program that seemed to indicate federal statutes and presidential Executive Orders (EOs) carry equal legal weight, Snowden wrote, "this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law. My understanding is that EOs may be superseded by federal statute, but EOs may not override statute."
On the morning of May 29, 2014, after Snowden had gone public, the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Robert Litt, wrote an email to high level officials with a topic saying "What to do about Edward Snowden." In it the back and forth, NSA's general counsel Rajesh De, advocated for the public release of the Snowden email because De believed it was weak enough to call Snowden's credibility into question. However, Litt disagreed - for the time being... "I'm not sure that releasing the email will necessarily prove him a liar. It is, I could argue, technically true that Snowden's email raised concerns about the NSA's interpretation of its legal authorities. As I recall, the email essentially questions a document that Snowden interpreted as claiming that Executive Orders were on par with statutes. While that is surely not raising the kind of questions that Snowden is trying to suggest he raised, neither does it seem to me that email is a home run refutation."
Of course, Litt had his mind changed, as in a recent interview with Vice News Litt said "To the extent Snowden was saying he raised his concerns internally within the NSA, no rational person could read this as being anything other than a question about an unclear single page of training."
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yeahyeahyeah, lie and now foia.
hillary forgets that foia is relevant to the person not the device, so her "private" server is automatically government property as soon as it was built and connected to a network.
Or at least, that's what the government's version of the story is.
In a Vice News exclusive, based on over 800 pages of newly released documents from the NSA and countless interviews, Vice News finds that there is much more to the story that the public isn't being told. Snowden, according to Vice News, did have both email and face-to-face contact with compliance over concerns, and the available options for Snowden may not have been adequate during the time Snowden was actually working as a contractor at the NSA.
At a bare minimum, Vice News provides valuable insight into the fact that while the NSA and other government agencies put on a public face that they were "sure" only a single email sent by Snowden, the investigation missed a lot of correspondence over time, and even a critical face-to-face interaction that wasn't documented until much later.
The following helps walk through what Vice News found, however we encourage readers to read the full piece at Vice News.
We'll start by pointing out a quick aside, and that is that Vice News (https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive) also found as it received the FOIA documents, that the NSA admitted that it altered emails related to its discussions about Snowden - "unavoidably" of course.
.
In a letter disclosed to VICE News Friday morning, Justice Department attorney Brigham Bowen said, "Due to a technical flaw in an operating system, some timestamps in email headers were unavoidably altered. Another artifact from this technical flaw is that the organizational designators for records from that system have been unavoidably altered to show the current organizations for the individuals in the To/From/CC lines of the header for the overall email, instead of the organizational designators correct at the time the email was sent."
The single email theory that the government trotted out is a bit more complex, as it involved multiple people from different departments as an answer was formulated. Everything was set in motion when Snowden clicked the "email us" link on the internal website of the NSA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) to ask his question on April 5, 2013.
Snowden clicked the "email us" link on the internal website of the NSA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) and wrote, "I have a question regarding the mandatory USSID 18 training."
United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) encompasses rules by which the NSA is supposed to abide in order to protect the privacy of the communications of people in the United States. Snowden was taking this and other training courses in Maryland while working to transition from a Sysadmin to an analyst position. Referring to a slide from the training program that seemed to indicate federal statutes and presidential Executive Orders (EOs) carry equal legal weight, Snowden wrote, "this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law. My understanding is that EOs may be superseded by federal statute, but EOs may not override statute."
On the morning of May 29, 2014, after Snowden had gone public, the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Robert Litt, wrote an email to high level officials with a topic saying "What to do about Edward Snowden." In it the back and forth, NSA's general counsel Rajesh De, advocated for the public release of the Snowden email because De believed it was weak enough to call Snowden's credibility into question. However, Litt disagreed - for the time being... "I'm not sure that releasing the email will necessarily prove him a liar. It is, I could argue, technically true that Snowden's email raised concerns about the NSA's interpretation of its legal authorities. As I recall, the email essentially questions a document that Snowden interpreted as claiming that Executive Orders were on par with statutes. While that is surely not raising the kind of questions that Snowden is trying to suggest he raised, neither does it seem to me that email is a home run refutation."
Of course, Litt had his mind changed, as in a recent interview with Vice News Litt said "To the extent Snowden was saying he raised his concerns internally within the NSA, no rational person could read this as being anything other than a question about an unclear single page of training."
-----
yeahyeahyeah, lie and now foia.
hillary forgets that foia is relevant to the person not the device, so her "private" server is automatically government property as soon as it was built and connected to a network.