Report: The NSA Still Doesn't Know Which Files Edward Snowden Took

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Taylor Berman

08/20/13 06:33PM

Filed to: edward snowden

According to an NBC News report, an "overwhelmed" National Security Agency still isn't sure which files Edward Snowden took with him when he fled to Hong Kong more than two months ago.

Citing two separate sources briefed on the matter, NBC News reports that the remaining unreleased documents likely include information about the intelligence gathering techniques of the U.S.'s key allies, including United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

If true, that might explain the recent U.K.-led crackdown on journalists and (their partners) who have had access to Snowden's leaked documents. On Sunday, David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald—the first to break the Snowden story—was detained for nine hours in London's Heathrow Airport under the rarely used “Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000”; all of Miranda's electronic equipment, including a laptop and flash drives, were confiscated. And last month, Guardian employees, under pressure from U.K. government officials, destroyed various hard drives and memory cards that once held the files leaked by Snowden.

[Image via AP]

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35

JohnMcClanesSmirk Taylor Berman 08/20/13 08:11PM

Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000

There's that goddamn word again. Of course they could hold him as a "terrorist" because "terrorist" means whatever the fuck Western governments what it to mean

Maybe I'm too much of an Orwell fanboi but I'm increasingly convinced that the most effective means of opposing state surveillance and state violence would be simply to rid the world of thought-terminating cliches like "Terrorism" - an effort that could certainly start with the media. We've see it done as of late with the Washington Redskins by thinking publications, who've refused to use the moniker to advocate against racial bullying; they should do the same for words that justify racist global bullying by the US. Refuse to publish it, and when quoting - ad irony quotes to the word. (btw Gawker is pretty good about not using it but vast majority aren't)

Its use, by definition, is propaganda, and its repetition - without irony quotes - is carrying water for propaganda. It has no fixed meaning, no intellectual purchase (has the word ever enhanced a thought? Ever?), and is, in practice, decidedly racist. (Fort Hood = Terrorism, Sandy Hook = Lone gunman.)

To wit, let's play the Orwell substitution game. Under his thinking any meaningful, non-propaganda idea or thought expressed can simply be restated, if needed, without losing its value. Thought-terminating cliches like "terrorism" are, by their nature, designed to smuggle in morally offensive ideas without creating cognitive dissonance in otherwise moral people. But with "terrorism" this can't be done. One cannot restate its "idea" in any other way without looking like nutty. Imagine a sane person saying the following:

"The United States has spent $615 Billion on the 'War on A Few Hundred Islamist in Central Asia. It's been absolutely worth it."

"Look, Anwar Al-awlaki had it coming, American or not, he was involved in advocating violence against U.S. interests overseas on YouTube videos."

"The NSA's new surveillance measures are essential. To fight a loosely aligned and undefined number of radical Islamists who live primary in East Africa and Central Asia we have to compromise some privacy at home. I'm okay with that."

I can't. Also, for a good laugh, check out the UK's legal definition of "terrorism" under this statute. Its definition could literally include any crime or mild form of agitation ever.

5

DoctorNine JohnMcClanesSmirk 08/20/13 08:25PM

More fundamentally, whilst we have ubiquitous references to the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, we are never allowed close examination of what makes a substance found in one plant a drug, rather than another substance which is food. Nor are we allowed a dispassionate analysis of why exactly one group of people who force their peers to behave in a certain way are terrorists, while another group of people who force groups of their peers to behave in another way are somehow patriots. It's curious.

pumpkinamdy JohnMcClanesSmirk 08/20/13 08:28PM

I don't understand one fucking word of that.

1

rstlne pumpkinamdy 08/20/13 09:08PM

Then go eat a bullet because you won't survive 10 minutes in the upcoming civil war.

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JohnMcClanesSmirk DoctorNine 08/21/13 12:32AM

Sad thing is most of these terms, at one point, had poetic or illuminative value. "Terrorism" was a somewhat useful term to describe sub-state violence in a post-modern age after World War II before it went to mean everything and nothing. Indeed, I've always thought Sartre's quip "terrorism is the nuclear bomb of the poor" did a better job of explaining Islamic radicalism than all commentary on the subject in America over the past 10 years combined.

And War on Drugs was, at some point, in some since distant do-goody think-tank of the 60s, a necessary metaphor for a country gripped by drugs and drugs violence. But then, (as Orwell predicts) the words began to choose the meaning and not the meaning the words - so what happened? It literally became a war. With guns and military invasions and a body count and futile violence.

43

cheerful_exgirlfriend Taylor Berman 08/20/13 06:37PM

They should make some sort of agency to figure this stuff out.

28

ResBasEco cheerful_exgirlfriend 08/20/13 06:44PM

Like some agency that centralizes intelligence?

22

JacquesBauer cheerful_exgirlfriend 08/20/13 06:46PM

True. If it became too much work, they could just contract it out to private companies giving only the most patriotic employees security clearance.

1

IamnotXenaWarriorPrincess cheerful_exgirlfriend 08/20/13 06:46PM

I loled

1

donmiguelb cheerful_exgirlfriend 08/20/13 06:57PM

I really laughed. Thank you.

27

Laurel-Hardy Taylor Berman 08/20/13 06:47PM

This only supports my supposition that the compulsive and draconian need for secrecy we see is designed not so much to contain state secrets as we've always understood them, but to cover the asses of the very ordinary, extremely mendacious (aside from their egos) people, high and low, running our governmento-industrial complex (with a complex). Seriously, they keep going on about the damage being done by our knowing about this, but this is nothing like when the GOP outed Valerie Plame, this is not going to put undercover agents at risk of death. The secret being so virulently protected (under Obama's administration traditional journalism is designated espionage) guarded is that the emperor has no clothes.

4

Hellephant Laurel-Hardy 08/20/13 06:52PM

How can you say that so confidently when we don't know what secrets Snowden stole?

1

ExcrecementalMeditation Laurel-Hardy 08/20/13 06:53PM

You mean it all seems so banal?

1

TorontoPirateGuy Hellephant 08/20/13 07:05PM

Because if they were as competent and effective as they want us to believe, it would be impossible for them to not know what Snowden stole?

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ResBasEco Hellephant 08/20/13 07:05PM

I heard he's going to spill the beans on the Pole Shift and Planet X. No kidding, I saw it on youtube.

14

Hellephant Taylor Berman 08/20/13 06:44PM

Intelligence gathering techniques of Canada:

"Hey, you have any intelligence for me today, eh?"

"No, sorry, hosehead."

"Ok, beauty. Good day, eh."

2

TheTigerMSTR Hellephant 08/20/13 08:29PM

I know some people at CSIS who would love to disagree with you.

Hellephant TheTigerMSTR 08/20/13 08:42PM

I know. All we have left down here is our sense of humor (humour). I wouldn't be surprised if Ted Cruz were a CSIS agent.

1

Iwona Burgunda Hellephant 08/20/13 10:19PM

Please! Canada! Take him back!

tudok_dugni Hellephant 08/21/13 03:23AM

and then they open a Molson Golden (or Labatt's if they are in ontario) and swig up.