New revelations from the Snowden archive surface | Computer Weekly
www.computerweekly.com
He risked his neck. When Edward Snowden chose to expose the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)'s mass surveillance Leviathan, and that of its British counterpart, GCHQ, 10 years ago, he put his life on the line. And he has always declared he has never regretted it. But years after his act of extraordinary courage, the Snowden archive remains largely unpublished.  He trusted in journalists to decide what to publish. In an article published in June 2023, by Guardian Pulitzer prize winner Ewen MacAskill - who flew to Hong Kong with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras to meet Edward Snowden - McAskill confirmed that most of the archive has not been made public. "In the end, we published only about 1 percent of the document,” he wrote. What does the 99 percent of the Snowden archive contain? A decade on, it remains shrouded in secrecy. A doctoral thesis by American investigative journalist and post-doctoral researcher Jacob Appelbaum has now revealed unpublished information from the Snowden archive. These revelations go back to a decade but they remain of indisputable public interest: the NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing Central Processing Units (CPUs) - the main processor in a computer which runs the operating system and applications - as a successful example of a "SIGINT enabled" CPU vendor. Cavium, now owned by Marvell said it does not implement back doors for any government. · the NSA compromised lawful Russian interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archive contains slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: "you talk, we listen". The NSA  and/or GCHQ has also compromised "Key European LI [lawful interception] systems. · among example targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA listed the Tibetan government in exile.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5196551

A decade after Snowden exposed NSA’s mass surveillance in cooperation with the British GCHQ, only about 1 percent of the documents have been published, but three major facts can finally be revealed thanks to a doctoral thesis in applied cryptography by Jacob Appelbaum.

  • bemenaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    136·
    10 months ago

    When Snowden published information about the government surveiling it’s own citizens, which you should have known since the patriot act, he was being a hero. Until then people wanted to keep their head in the sand and deny that the government was going to use the patriot act the way those of us who protested it said they would.

    When Snowden published stuff about the government spying on foreign assets, he became a traitor to our country. We spy on other people? NO FUCKING SHIT, that’s what it’s call intelligence agencies. He did immense damage to national security and the safety of the free world.

    People have argued, well maybe we shouldn’t be spying at all, well maybe ,but for now EVERYONE does it, and it’s part of avoiding major wars. Sure, I would rather live in a star Trek universe, but for now we don’t, and this didn’t help that. Every country spies on each other.

    But it was never ok to spy on our own citizens, and that needs to prevented in the future. Remember that the next time something like the patriot act comes up.

    • TH1NKTHRICE@lemmy.ca
      3·
      10 months ago

      Without access to classified information, how can a distinction be made between “foreign assets” and US citizens that are suspected of working as “foreign assets”?

      • bemenaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        What snowden released went well beyond that. He gave up critical information used against countries like Russia. He exposed way more than just the spying on US citizens. He gave out secrets of how we conduct intelligence gathering on our adversaries, that we need to be gathering intelligence on. Operations that were 100% not on US soil, (which the NSA and CIA aren’t even allowed to operate on, though the Patriot Act somewhat redefined that), and operations that were 100% not involving US citizens, (which most intelligence gathering doesn’t.

          • bemenaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            It’s been a while so I may not remember all the details correctly. Originally Snowden met glen Griswold in Hong Kong to give him the data he dumped. After that the news about spying on Americans was published, which again, if you didn’t have your head up your ass you knew was happening. A few months later more information was published about how the NSA and CIA were doing their jobs and spying on other countries. I don’t remember for sure if there was a second meeting with Snowden or if all that came from the first data hand over. Snowden took a job at the NSA, where they, SPY ON OTHER COUNTRIES. I fully support the release initial information being published, too many people were sucking the ra ra patriotism dick to realize their liberties were being trounced. That’s why us crazy lefty liberals were against the patriot act. We knew this was going to be the result, since we read the damn bill. It was spelled out in the bill.but everyone said it wouldn’t happen.