Sunday, June 09, 2013
Putting the focus on Snowden, who may have leaked the data and may be in Hong Kong
by Larry Geller
Because Snowden is now in Hong Kong, it’s unclear what the United States can do to him. But watch for officials to tar Snowden—he’ll be called unpatriotic, unprofessional, treasonous, a liar, grandiose, and worse. As in the Bradley Manning case, though, the more badly Snowden is depicted, the more rickety the government’s case for surveillance becomes. After all, they hired him. They gave him unrestricted access to their systems, from court orders to PowerPoint presentations depicting the crown jewels of their surveillance infrastructure.
[Slate, If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA?, 6/9/2013]
Check out the article to see why the writers think Snowden should not have been given access to secret data at all.
But with regard to the snip above:
1) Who says we trust the NSA? One real risk is that information about any of us can proliferate. Just wait until someone “loses” a laptop with three million dossiers on it, for example. That person could be anyone from a local defense contractor, to the NSA itself, back down to a local police agency, since the government shares its data.
2) Who says Snowden is really in Hong Kong? Perhaps he is, perhaps he isn’t.
Snowden probably is the whistleblower and he probably is in Hong Kong, but maybe not. Misdirection would be as good a strategy for the leaker as for a stage magician.
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