Agreed. I think the Snowden revelations have harmed the NSA's reputation to the point where most people on HN just assume NSA is a bond-level villain. The NSA serves a purpose, they are meant to be prepared offensively and defensively for the USA's security, which includes the internet. I have no problems with the NSA's purpose and would prefer they continue to exist and prepare against threats to the country.
I do believe the NSA overstepped their mandate in domestic surveillance, and should be held accountable, but let's not forget that this world does have bad guy's - plenty of nations would lose no sleep at night if they hurt America.
Sapir-Whorf and Newspeak. What does "security" mean?
I have no doubt that the NSA's job is "national security" and that some portion of that work serves the people. Nobody knows what that portion is, by design.
If you bury the difficult, complicated issues under terms like "security", "threat to the country", and "bad guys", you're basically just supporting the NSA on faith.
Forget the terminology and FUD of "threats", and let's ask ourselves what the concrete benefit to the people of the United States (or better yet, the world) is for the NSA to be arming themselves for the destruction of computer systems. Is the benefit Cold Waresque deterrence through keeping the rest of the world in fear? Is this the strategy we want our work and taxes to support?
Maybe it's too complicated to think about, and even if we wanted to critically analyse the situation, secrecy prevents us from knowing anything besides what the government desires the people to know. It's easier to just trust in benevolent "national security" protecting us from Eastasia. Let's not forget that the world does have bad guys, and besides, we've always been at war with Eastasia.
> I do believe the NSA overstepped their mandate in domestic surveillance
They've been doing it longer than the Internet. The "Five Eyes" have existed for a while, so that they can have a legal loophole for domestic spying (e.g. "We can't spy on our citizens, so we'll just ask our allies to do it for us!"). To me this indicates that, while the stated purpose behind the organization may have merits, the execution of that purpose has been flawed for some time.
It specifically explores the conflict of interest that the NSA must work both offensively and defensively. It makes the argument that the balance has shifted so drastically to the offensive that our defensive is being weakened.
What the article fails to mention is the NSA's instrumental efforts in weakening crypto standards and computer security in general. We don't know the extent of that undermining yet, but it's likely significant. They are also hoarding security vulnerabilities and not releasing them, as responsible researchers should. They're weakening security for everyone.
Now, the US government as a whole is in a very strong position to actually push for genuine security compliance and to ultimately defend against even the most determined state cyber warfare initiative. They haven't done that because they want a way to get into systems even if it makes people less safe on the whole.
precisely, and this is why I'm starting to think that snowden has - at least - caused as much harm as good by his revelations. if he had stopped at revealing the domestic surveillance he would be an undisputed hero/patriot. but with all of these unnecessary leaks that does nothing but harm to national interest I can understand how others might view him otherwise.
Others have said as much. Here is a quote from William Binney, another NSA whistleblower, on advice that he has for Snowden:
> I would tell him to steer away from anything that isn't a public service — like talking about the ability of the U.S. government to hack into other countries or other people is not a public service. So that's kind of compromising capabilities and sources and methods, basically. That's getting away from the public service that he did initially. And those would be the acts that people would charge him with as clearly treason.
The US public has a legitimate interest in knowing about NSA's hacking abilities, because vulnerabilities used by the NSA abroad can just as easily be used domestically by foreign or criminal attackers.
Against a well-prepared adversary, a vulnerability can only be exploited once -- a zero day. After disclosure, or evidence of an exploit in circulation, such vulnerabilities become useless towards the agency's mandate, whether or not you agree with that mandate. Realpolitik? Definitely.
The affected public is not just in the US, considering us citizens of (even) allied countries are fair game. The motto you cite probably refers to just US citizens.
Do you realize that Snowden never leaked single documents? He just delivered over 100,000 of documents to Glenn Greenwald last year, and he published them continuously over a long time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they said some time ago that only 1% was published. So it would be impossible for Snowden himself to read everything and choose if it should be published.
as you said, he leaked 100k documents to Glenn Greenwald. My point is that it was his responsibility to vet them himself and not rely on Glenn and whoever Glenn chooses.
Specifically which leaks harmed "national interest" without benefit to the public? I ask non-rhetorically, as GCHQ at least have shown themselves not to be above "leaking" carefully selected titbits and attributing them to Snowden, just to muddy the debate:
Note that this "leak", as well as NOT coming from Snowden, isn't really in the domestic public interest, is an activity that a far larger percentage of people would support, and presumably is already known by the target anyway. The clear intent is to make people read the article and go "huh, this Snowden ballyhoo is very overblown". I wonder why the so-called "Independent" played along.
> if he had stopped at revealing the domestic surveillance he would be an undisputed hero/patriot. but with all of these unnecessary leaks that does nothing but harm to national interest
It's also important the public realize the NSA is more than just the National Stalking Agency.
I'd say it's safe to assume all 1.7 million documents, including the secrets his bot scraped that Snowden didn't want released are in the hands of the Chinese MSS already. I find it hard to believe they didn't set up shop beside his room in that HK hotel to use state intel agency methods to grab his keys, nor do I believe that his hasty destruction of his standard laptop wear-levelling flash drives in the airport before departure to Moscow actually destroyed all the data.
I bet there's a room stacked to the ceiling in printed US secret military documents in Beijing that they trade to Russia for cheap oil+gas imports. I realize Snowden never wanted that to happen but there's a reason why state's have strict methods to store and transport top secret data and they don't include using questionable XTS container software and staying in a HK hotel with the entire secret US archive stored on a commercial device.
I do believe the NSA overstepped their mandate in domestic surveillance, and should be held accountable, but let's not forget that this world does have bad guy's - plenty of nations would lose no sleep at night if they hurt America.