Before I Forget
I wondered why Snowden wasn’t charged under the laws that I was constantly being reminded of when I was at NSA, then someone explained it all.
Snowden didn’t work for the government, and those laws apply to people who work for the government. Snowden worked for Booz-Allen and his actions would have been a civil matter of the non-disclosure clause in his employment contract. The government had to go to the Espionage Act to find something to charge him with that was criminal in nature.
Another thing that happens because Snowden didn’t work for the government, is that the complaints process wasn’t available to him. He wasn’t part of the system and had no chain of command to act on his complaints. No one in the government was required to listen to anything he had to say, much less generate any paperwork.
It has been suggested that he could have sent his concerns to Congress. Yeah, right. Senators Wyden and Udall couldn’t get Congress to do anything, but some unknown Booz-Allen employee was going to be taken seriously.
This would be the same Congress that is now suggesting that he was in league with Russia. There were a 1000 people at NSA who were system administrators and every one of them should have been able to do what Snowden did, if they were qualified for their jobs.
8 comments
Congress is too stupid to suggest that wiping your ass is a good idea after taking a dump, so the idea of Snowden working for Russia is a trial balloon that came from Zero’s administration, not some idea they came up with on their own. Of course if Snowden had been working for Russia we would have never heard about any of this, because he would have been simply sliding the material under the transom of some restroom somewhere for the Russians to cache in their archives. Putin ain’t exactly one of those open disclosure types, he’s a spy, and spies habitually keep stuff secret even when it has no business being secret.
Like I said, if Zero really cared about reforming the NSA, he’d be giving Snowden the Presidential Medal and a full pardon, not floating the notion of Snowden as a master spy (as if!).
It does rather stretch one’s imagination to believe that the FSB would ‘share’ anything with anyone. It is apparently forgotten that Snowden was on his way to Ecuador and was stopped in Russia by US action, after they dropped the ball in Hong Kong.
Putin let him stay because it pissed off the US, and he was unhappy with the way the US was treating him [Putin] at the time. Score another loss for US arrogance.
If Snowden was an FSB spy, he’d still be working for Booze-Allen, just running queries late at night on targets of FSB interest. In fact, I would be strongly surprised if there *wasn’t* an FSB spy somewhere in that mess running queries on targets of Russian interest. This ain’t your NSA, that’s for sure…
Yes, I remember Zero making a public stink when Putin didn’t just hand Snowden over with nothing in return. WTF? Treating Putin like he’s some tinpot third world dictator rather than the leader of a major power with nuclear weapons? The rule of the game between major powers is, I got something you want, you give me something I want in return, that’s *always* been the rule of the game between major powers, and Zero either never learned it or decided Russia was no longer a major power, either way he fscked that pooch good. Putin wasn’t going to take being dissed like that sitting down. I doubt Putin has any love of Snowden — whistleblowers tend to get “disappeared” by the FSB, not embraced — but sheesh.
With all of the contractors involved, I don’t doubt that there are dozens of agents from different services throughout this ’empire’ of Alexander the Geek. They outsource everything, so they don’t control anything. They don’t seem to care about defense, only about offense.
American ‘exceptionalism’ doesn’t go over well with anyone outside the US. It is not how you make friends or create allies. The Shrubbery pretty much threw away the spirit of good will generated by the 9/11 attacks, and pissed off a lot of people. Other governments are really tired of the attitude the US can seem to get beyond.
I had to deal a lot with the Russians in the 80’s, as I’ve mentioned before. They never gave anything without getting something substantial in return. And they wouldn’t have needed Snowden, they would have already known more than he did (by that I mean if the USA Intel services were doing in the 80’s what they are doing today, especially outsourcing everything! The USSR would have been ecstatic! They were past masters at ‘Social Engineering’ and other skills.
Back then, if this had happened, they would have made Snowden a hero, made sure everything he knows was sent to the four winds (except for a few diamonds, if any, they would have kept for themselves, as a kind of payment) just to seriously piss-off the USA (as it is today) because Russia knows they cannot trust or make any kind of beneficial deals with the USA (plus Putin is even more arrogant than Obama, and probably smarter, and crazy as a cut snake!). Back then, Snowden wouldn’t have had a damned thing to say about it either if he had ended up in Russia in the 80’s! Oh, they would have treated him well, making sure he knew that could change. If it had been the 60’s, Snowden would never have seen the light of day again! And the USSR would have known everything he knew, and things he didn’t know he knew! The USSR had softened somewhat by the 80’s, as they had realized they needed some International good will and political capitol, and even… International friends ( a new concept for them). 😉
Putin is… strange. I can’t really get a handle on him. And that’s somewhat unusual for me. He worries me. More than the Soviet I knew in the 80’s. Anyway… not something I want to go into on an open blog. *shrug*
I dunno, Kryten. Putin seems very… Russian… to me. And like a lot of the former KGB/FSB people I’ve dealt with in my industry. They’re all smart as **** and give off this dangerous almost-feral vibe that makes you *not* want to f*ck with them. These are the survivors who managed to come out on top in a brutal profession when the Soviet system collapsed, and thus in many ways are the worst of the worse — they know things about human nature that the rest of us don’t want to think about. But because they’re *smart*, they keep it controlled, hidden behind the facade. But you can feel it there.
Multiply that times a jillion, and you have Putin. A dangerous man, as his (now deceased) critics have found out. Obama trying to run roughshod over Putin is like a cute kitten trying to run roughshod over a pit bull. That don’t work, yo.
Putin spent a large part of his ‘working’ life in East Germany arranging to buy technology from East German affiliates of West German companies. [So much for the anti-Soviet sanctions and technology embargo.] He was a big supporter of Gorbachev’s Glosnost initiative and rose quickly. He was cutting deals with major corporations so he honed his skills against some of the sleaziest business operators on the planet. There’s nothing like a combination of the KGB and the Fortune 500 to produce a real SOB.
Putin was waiting for an offer from the US, and all he got was a public demand. That was the last thing the US should have done. Putin’s power is based on a projection of being in charge and the leader who will move Russia back to the position of power enjoyed by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. Everything he does has to bolster that image. I get a feeling he wants to be the new Stalin. He is certainly using The Prince as a reference work, including the bits about appearing to be morally upright.
There’s nothing like a combination of the KGB and the Fortune 500 to produce a real SOB.
Exactly. The Russians I encounter who are from that world (KGB + business) are not people I voluntarily spend time in enclosed areas with. They’re not necessarily evil, but definitely not people to f*ck with.
Putin was waiting for an offer from the US, and all he got was a public demand.
Yeah. That really made me sit up and go “Wha?!” because Putin is basically a crime kingpin and one thing I learned dealing with that type in an official capacity was that the last thing you want to do is public demands that will cause them to lose face with their followers. If you believe you’re in a position to make demands, you do it quietly, in closed-door negotiations — not out in public where they’ll look weak if they give you what you asked for. It was as if Obama wanted Putin to give Snowden asylum.
Oh wait. If Obama was really that sneaky, maybe he did want Putin to give Snowden asylum. If he didn’t trust his own security, if he was afraid that his own safety would be compromised if he crossed the national security establishment by calling off the global witch-hunt for Snowden… but no. That’s 4-dimensional chess BS, and Obama has never shown any signs of being that sneaky. He’s no Nixon. His actual platform published on his campaign web site and what he has done as President match pretty closely. He’s just a master of getting people to look at how he says things rather than at what he says, which is a completely different kind of misdirection.
Which is why we’re so fscked.