Snowden Queries Putin On Live TV Regarding Russian Internet Surveillance

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Edward Snowden appeared on a Russian television call-in show to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin about policies of mass surveillance. The exchange has a canned quality which will likely lead to questions regarding the integrity of Snowden's actions, in the query of his host in asylum."

Re:Old proverb

[lgw]

Not to Godwin the thread, but the new government in east Ukraine is actually registering Jews right now today [usatoday.com].

America learned once why it can't let dictators like Putin just invade their neighbors with impunity. How quickly we forgot where this all goes. It will take more than a sternly worded letter, or laughable sanctions, to stop this shit. And it must be stopped. It's on all of us, otherwise.

Re:Old proverb

[mbone]

The man this is supposed to be from is denying it, and also denying he ever claimed the title it gives him. See this, from Kiev Jewish [evreiskiy.kiev.ua].

dunno what to say

[some1into_ISP]

As someone into the business, there's only two prerequisites (concerning surveillance) to operate as an ISP in Russia. The first one is that you must (by the law) to store your ISP's netflow for 2 years, and to provide information for a) specific user (given by First + Last name) or b) by the IP address involved, to a) police, b) FSB or c) court, when they wanted to. And the second one, is that ISP required (by the law) to install surveillance equipment, sufficent enough to capture all the traffic of ISP's very own local clients (not the transit ones). That equipment is called "SORM" which means something like "support of investigation operations". That equipment is a bulk storage that is filled with data from selected customer IP when configured to. Equipment is controlled from local FSB office, using only E1 (smth like DS1) control channel. There's no bulk channel between ISP and FSB office because there's no bulk money at local government to pay to ISP for that. When they think they had gathered enough data. for specific subject, they can use this captured data from the SORM storage in the court. With the current ISP traffic plans, that storage can only held smth like 2hrs of all client's traffic captured simultaneously. Could you consider this as a "massive surveillance"?

Re:Useful Idiot

[nomanisanisland]

He could have gone to Congress.

What does "gone to Congress" mean? You mean like just walking in the front door and demanding speaking time during a joint session of both houses? (not gonna happen) Or do you mean he could have contacted a congressman, which would give him a fairly high chance of being arrested within hours for being a traitor? (or do you think contacting a congressman with information about the NSA's activities would somehow remain quiet for long?)

Maybe you aren't aware of it, but under the US Constitution the Congress has special powers that are quite useful in situations like this.

Maybe you aren't aware of it, but the US Constitution doesn't seem to have much applicability to NSA activities.

He stole ~ 1.7 million highly classified intelligence documents, fled the country, and started leaking them to whomever wanted a copy - at least as far as we have direct proof. He could have covertly done far worse. The description doesn't seem unreasonable.

Actually, according to the Guardian journalist, Snowden wouldn't give them a copy of everything. You can disbelieve him, but at least on the surface it appears Snowden was being more careful than Chelsea Manning. (and yes, I consider Chelsea Manning a traitor)

There's no debate Snowden stole highly classified intelligence documents and leaked them to the press. But that doesn't mean he's automatically a traitor. He might be, but we don't know. For example, suppose you had highly classified intelligence documents that implicated the NSA in a coup attempt to overthrow our elected leaders or coerce them in some way. Revealing those documents would not make you a traitor; quite the opposite. And for some people, what Snowden revealed shows an unconstitutional and potentially dangerous action by a portion of our government. If they're right, he's no traitor; quite the opposite.

And I'm only talking about the part that reveals blanket monitoring of US citizens, without cause nor due process. Monitoring foreign nationals isn't unconstitutional, and is what we should want our government to do: it's why have the CIA and NSA and so on to begin with. (Sorry Merkel, but monitoring Europeans is fine too, including their elected officials. We're friends now, but haven't always been, and might not forever be.)