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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"the Sunday Times story...contains some pretty dubious claims, contradictions, and inaccuracies"
Questions About The Sunday Times Snowden Story
Sunday, 14 June 2015
Ryan Gallagher
The Sunday Times has a front page story out today claiming that the Chinese and Russian governments have somehow managed to obtain National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden's trove of documents. The story is sourced from anonymous UK government officials who make a series of significant allegations, unfortunately backed up with zero evidence. It's worth going through some of the key points of the story to cast some critical scrutiny on the central claims and to raise a few questions about them:
1) "RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden...according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services."
Is the claim here that a full archive of encrypted files was "cracked" by some sort of brute-force decryption attack? If so, how did these "senior officials" establish that? How did the Russians and Chinese allegedly obtain the encrypted material in the first place?
2) "forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries."
This was a surprise to me because I've reviewed the Snowden documents and I've never seen anything in there naming active MI6 agents. Were the agents pulled out as a precautionary measure? Keeping in mind that the UK government does not actually know exactly what Snowden leaked, how do these officials know there were documents in there that implicated MI6 operatives and live operations in the first place?
3) "Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor"
Snowden has said repeatedly that he did not carry any files with him when he left Hong Kong for Moscow. Is this article alleging that he is lying? If so, where's the evidence to support that? Moreover, I've seen nothing in the region of 1m documents in the Snowden archive, so I don't know where that number has come from. Oh, wait:
4) "Snowden, a former contractor at the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), downloaded 1.7m secret documents"
This 1.7m figure was invented by US officials and since then it has been regurgitated repeatedly and unquestioningly by various media outlets. I've seen the trove of documents; the claim or insinuation that he leaked 1.7m is not true.
.......(snip).......
All in all, for me the Sunday Times story raises more questions than it answers, and more importantly it contains some pretty dubious claims, contradictions, and inaccuracies. The most astonishing thing about it is the total lack of scepticism it shows for these grand government assertions, made behind a veil of anonymity. This sort of credulous regurgitation of government statements is antithetical to good journalism. ............................(more)
http://notes.rjgallagher.co.uk/2015/06/sunday-times-snowden-china-russia-questions.html
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"the Sunday Times story...contains some pretty dubious claims, contradictions, and inaccuracies" (Original Post)
marmar
Jun 2015
OP
Man from Pickens
(1,713 posts)1. Cryptonomicron should be required reading
really important to understand the relationship between espionage and cryptography in order to make any sense of this
most vital is the concept that if you act on information the enemy doesn't know you have access to, he learns from your act that you do in fact have access to it, and thus by using your intelligence you can compromise the method by which you got it
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)2. The latest attempt to use snowden as the whipping boy
for all security state failures is laughable.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)3. Deflecting from their own incompetence
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026833995
I made a post with several links detailing how epically the DHS and NSA shat in their own mess kit with no help from anyone.
I made a post with several links detailing how epically the DHS and NSA shat in their own mess kit with no help from anyone.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)4. If you're going to lie, lie big!
All of the authoritarians are taking victory laps over the Times' giant bag of bullshit. They actually like being spied on, as long as the president is the one doing the spying. Sadly, I must admit that such people end up with the government they wanted.