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<p style="margin:1em 0 3px 0;">Some interesting analysis, including
how the left and right in the US are responding to this... this is
definitely not just a left wing or liberal concern in the US...<br>
</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0 3px 0;"><br>
<a name="1" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;font-size:18px;"
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/NakedCapitalism/%7E3/0j7jP4Yr45E/edward-snowden-makes-himself-an-even-bigger-problem-to-the-officialdom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Edward
Snowden Makes Himself an Even Bigger Problem to the Officialdom</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
10 Jun 2013 03:25 AM PDT</p>
<p>Former CIA employee, most recently Booz Allen employee Edward
Snowden was already the intel community’s biggest nightmare, and
now this:</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5yB3n9fu-rM"
allowfullscreen="" width="600" frameborder="0" height="338"></iframe></p>
<p>You could not have done better if you had gone to central casting
and had a professional scriptwriter. He’s on the nerdy side of
attractive, sensible-sounding and relaxed, articulate, and able to
deliver key points in a compact, mass market friendly manner.
Sadly, who carriers the message matters a great deal to Americans,
and Snowden has revealed himself to be credible and likeable. In
other words, as Foreign Policy noted a couple of days ago, the PR
battle is on, and Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian team have
played this very well. The releasing of key pieces over a series
of days has kept the story on a full boil, and having Snowden
agree to the taping and releasing it towards the end was astute,
witness:</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screen-shot-2013-06-10-at-4.41.00-AM.png"><img
src="cid:part2.05040203.07080504@gmail.com" alt="Screen shot
2013-06-10 at 4.41.00 AM" class="aligncenter size-full
wp-image-42399" width="522" height="131"></a></p>
<p>But putting the effectiveness of the strategy of the packaging of
the story aside, the message in the video is even more disturbing
than the program overviews released so far. If nothing else,
listen to the section starting at 3:16 to 3:40, where he described
the untrammeled access analysts have to information. Your
information. </p>
<p>And we’re already seeing serious fracturing on political lines.
Some vocal members of the right are alarmed about the reach of the
surveillance state. <a href="%28https://twitter.com/glennbeck">Glenn
Beck</a> and <a
href="%28http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher">Rod
Dreher</a> of the American Conservative have come out supporting
Snowden by name. <a
href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/caa202e6-d12b-11e2-a3ea-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VhrwtelH">Rand
Paul</a>, <a
href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/08/im-not-going-to-play-this-game-with-you-neil-cavuto-rips-guest-for-obama-spy-scandal-defense/">Neil
Cavuto</a>,<br>
<a
href="http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/06/08/the-era-of-metadata/">Peggy
Noonan</a>,<br>
<a
href="http://www.ibtimes.com/jim-sensenbrenner-republican-author-patriot-act-says-nsa-prism-surveillance-goes-too-far-1297697">Jim
Sensenbrenner</a>,<a
href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/heatherginsberg/">Heather
Ginsberg</a> and <a
href="http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/07/white-house-on-surveillance-hey-lets-have-a-debate/">Ed
Morrissey</a> have all criticized the programs discussed in the
Snowden revelations.</p>
<p>Andrew Dittmer sent these comments from the very conservative
site TheBlaze, picking the most recent ones expressing a clear
point of view on Snowden:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Regardless this guy is an American hero. Thank God for his
courage and integrity.”</p>
<p>“Just finished listening to the video and analyzing his body
language;this guy is a good guy and nothing like that POS
Bradley Manning. Manning should spend life in prison or be shot
and this guy needs an Independent seat in the Senate and head an
Intelligence Committee.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad that this information is exposed, but I don’t believe
this “whistleblower” had purely honorable intentions. He could
have given this information to Constitution friendly
politicians, NY Times, Fox News, but he chose to give it to a
well known anti-American journalist that works for a foreign
news organization.”</p>
<p>“I find it interesting that you think Glenn Greenwald is
anti-American because he recently went to work for a british
newspaper (bigger money offer, American capitalism and such) and
that he is willing to speak out against the gubment. Is that not
an American ideal – to speak out against the gubment when you
think it is wrong?”</p>
<p>“The difference is simple, Manning was trying to hurt America,
this guy is<br>
trying to save her.”</p>
<p>“As for me, this dude is a freedom fighter for humanity and
against tyranny.”</p>
<p>“not very bright for an ex-spook. Guess he doesn’t read the
news, Obamy is out for leaker blood.”</p>
<p>“One day when we elect an American again as president I hope we
can put this man on a Quarter as an anniversery coin.”</p>
<p>“The govt program is illegal, so I’d like to think he’s a good
guy. I’m concerned he could be seeking publicity, but I hope
he’s a true believer in freedom & liberty, though I see
globalism in his word choices, which sets off my alert signals.”</p>
<p>“Watched the video. Can’t say the young man is a patriot and
hero, nor can I say that he is a wacked liberal. More needs to
be seen and revealed. The man definitely has humility and is not
arrogant, but very bright. Some would say that he is not very
bright doing what heis doing.”
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Chris Engel pointed out yesterday, a number of sites,
particularly tech oriented sites, have tried attacking Greenwald’s
work for inaccuracy. Ed Harrison has been keeping tabs on the
reporting (see <a href="https://delicious.com/edwardnh/freedom">here</a>
and <a href="https://www.diigo.com/user/edwardnh/freedom">here</a>)
and describes it as falling into two camps, the first being
techies who take issue with the use of terminology. This is
similar to the sort of finance pedantry which was routine during
and after the crisis. While getting the fine points right matters,
too often the critics are simply trying to confine the discussion
to experts, who also happen overwhelmingly to be pro status quo.
The second is more obvious: journalists who are affiliated with
the technology industry (and may not be experts but translate for
them regularly) and will defend their meal tickets (the tech
industry gets huge amounts of funding from the defense and intel
communities). </p>
<p>The other element that Ed highlighted by e-mail is that this
shows the dangers of outsourcing government functions. Here are
some sections of a blistering, must-read <a
href="http://www.salon.com/2007/01/08/mcconnell_5/">2007 Salon
article by Tim Shorrock on Booz</a> (hat tip Richard Smith):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With revenues of $3.7 billion in 2005, Booz Allen is one of the
nation’s biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under
[J.Michael] McConnell’s watch, Booz Allen has been deeply
involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism
programs the Bush administration has run, including the infamous
Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme. As a key
contractor and advisor to the NSA, Booz Allen is almost
certainly participating in the agency’s warrantless surveillance
of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens…</p>
<p>U.S. intelligence budgets are classified, as are nearly all
intelligence contracts. But the overall budget is generally
understood to be running about $45 billion a year. Based on
interviews I’ve done for an upcoming book, I estimate that about
50 percent of this spending goes directly to private companies.
This is big business: The accumulated spending on intelligence
since 2002 is much higher than the total of $33 billion the Bush
administration paid to Bechtel, Halliburton and other large
corporations for reconstruction projects in Iraq…</p>
<p>Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Booz Allen was hired
by the CIA to audit the agency’s monitoring of trillions of
dollars in international financial transactions moving through a
European cooperative called SWIFT….</p>
<p>The ACLU and Privacy International, an organization that
monitors government intrusion, jointly issued a scathing report
on the issue last September. “Though Booz Allen’s role is to
verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its
relationship with the US government calls its objectivity
significantly into question,” the two organizations said….</p>
<p>Booz Allen served as the NSA’s chief advisor on one of its most
significant outsourcing projects. Called Groundbreaker, this
huge project was launched shortly before the 9/11 attacks to
overhaul the NSA’s internal I.T. systems. Booz Allen’s work on
this project was outlined in a Booz Allen magazine piece on
“Government Clients.” Working with the NSA, the article states,
Booz Allen “helped create a new model of managed competition
that outsourced key pieces of the agency’s IT infrastructure
services.” Its work on Groundbreaker “included source selection
support and evaluating vendor proposals.”</p>
<p>Last year, however, the Baltimore Sun investigated the project
and concluded it was a failure. Over the course of the project,
Groundbreaker’s $2 billion price tag had doubled, and the
problems with the system, according to insiders who spoke to the
Sun, were legion. “Some analysts and managers have said their
productivity is half of what it used to be because the new
system requires them to perform many more steps to accomplish
what a few keystrokes used to,” the paper reported. Another NSA
program that Booz Allen was involved in, Trailblazer, which was
designed to overhaul the NSA’s signals intelligence system, is
widely considered an even worse failure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oh, and guess who the majority owner of Booz is? Carlyle Group,
the long-time DC heavyweight private equity firm with deep
connections to the Bush family. We can see how clever it is
proving to be to have outsourced big chunks of the defense,
security, and intelligence apparatus to mercenaries, even worse,
ones with really high return targets (the traditional public
service model led to screening for true believers. By contrast,
Snowden touches on his discomfort with his well-paid lifestyle and
his power). </p>
<p>And even though a lot of the tech community benefits directly
from military-industrial complex largesse, there’s also a good
deal of soul searching and consternation in some quarters of that
world as well. </p>
<p>We finally may have seen the abuse where Obama’s default
strategy, that any problem can be solved by better PR, has met its
match. The fact that Greenwald and the Guardian have played this
story well and gotten it the airing it deserves is very important.
But it’s also that Snowden has been able to provide concrete
examples that put the spotlight on the scope and lack of real
checks on a massive police state apparatus. And it isn’t just
Americans that are alarmed. It’s going to be very hard for the
officialdom to minimize or explain away this information, and we
should all be very grateful for that. </p>
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