Waltz Gets a Signal

 

When anything happens in TrumpWorld that sort of comports with reality, like the Signal chat-loving NSA Mike Waltz getting the boot, I want to do a blogpost about what the heck seems to be going on, but am always tempered by it being TrumpWorld, and the facts probably being muddier and dumber than what we initially hear. Of course, the fellow who initiated the notorious SignalGate chat is out, and so is his deputy, Alex Wong. 

Of course. A proper Administration might have done that weeks ago, and sent SecDef Hegseth packing as well. 

But this is TrumpWorld. It probably isn't the chat itself so much as Waltz having a perceived "unfriendly" journo in his saved phone contacts that did him in. And the contributions of MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. 

Marco Rubio is, like Elon Musk in the other day's cabinet meeting, wearing multiple hats, now. All I know is, Waltz shouldn't be replaced with Witlesskopf because that would be horrible--so that's what will probably happen. 

Cowardice Chasing Stupidity

Welcome to a stupid enterprise--emissaries from the Trump Administration appearing in Riyadh ready to deal away things they have no control over to appease Russians who our best intelligence indicates have no intention whatsoever to end the war in Ukraine.  They sat there and discussed what we were willing to stipulate without Europe or (and ESPECIALLY) Ukraine there, like their input would not matter. 

Because what the hell is the country that was actually invaded even doing in the picture, right? Let alone our NATO partners, huh? Like, what ABOUT Poland?

The picture above is a portrait of "cowardice chasing stupidity". Collectively, they might know what they are doing has no fucking chance in the world of leading to anything productive because of course not--but they are all dancing to Trump's incredibly foolish tune. 

Red Flag Warning--Who Are They Working For?

 

You know, if there are GOP congresscritters who are spouting Russian propaganda (and OMG--there sure are!) maybe we should pay attention to what legislative activity they also seem to be doing on behalf of Russia. 

When Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about Ukraine like NATO invaded it and they are Nazi or anti-Christian, she is directly aping Putin, and what she is saying is pure lies-shouldn't we be very interested in where this fool, who has yakked about Jewish space lasers and spread Q nonsense, gets her information? 

Maybe we should be more curious about why Scott Perry believes Ukraine shouldn't be supported because they can't win. I truly want to know where Tommy Taterhead is getting his extreme nonsense POV from. He seems to have Ukrainian public servants confused with Russian oligarchs. 

Used to Call Me on My Cell Phone

The funny thing about the CNN report that Trump refers to in a Tweet from an iPhone is that this isn't the first time it's been noted that Trump definitely is still using his personal cell phones for business, or the first time he has denied that this was the case, in a Tweet, from an iPhone.

It's just possible that both times the Tweets were actually sent by aides that Trump dictated his Tweets to or written by someone else. 

But all Tweeting aside, the idea that Trump has given his personal cell phone number to other world leaders in an attempt to evade White House record-keeping while leaving these communications subject to potential foreign eavesdropping is pretty disturbing. If he wants to keep his communications away from the prying eyes and ears of federal employees and from the American people, any information digitally picked up by foreign interests leaves him open to blackmail. (Assuming, which I don't actually, that he isn't already as compromised as a very compromised thing.)

It would be really quite something if "but his cell phone" had anything like the impact on this upcoming election that "but her emails" did the last one. But call me skeptical about it. IOKIYAR seems to be very much in effect--actually, Trump seems to be the most extreme example of it I can recall. 

This Trump World Grab-Bag is Too Much

Because I am starting to become "an old", my memory is stuffed-full of detritus that is fertilizer to me, even if it is mere dead material to "youngs". The term "useful idiot" is associated with Soviet Communism to me, because my first experience understanding of the world was a Cold War understanding, before the Berlin Wall fell and before Glastnost and perestroika and all that--it was that weird thing where some people thought it was hip to be Gorky Square. You start out as a with-it socialist who cares about human rights but thinks the working man suffers more from Big Money than Big Government, and then you take rubles to talk out your ass about whether Mother Russia's government love-taps people into submission or just earns every bit of respect from the citizenry that comes her way with excellent government.

Maybe I come pre-programmed to distrust all things where a US politician seems especially enamored of another nation. Maybe I just have too much suspicion regarding an entity that has weaponized lying. But I will say that I do kind of agree with Michael Hayden, in this instance, when he uses the term "useful idiot" for Trump. The "idiot" is a guarantee. And I suspect by now even Russia has had reason to pause over how useful he is.

I've been a bit adrift posting these Grab-bags because I'm trying not to make more of them than they are--stories, somehow, and maybe not even very-well sourced stories (although I try to keep my links tied to legitimate sources, not fake news mills), but things that are real enough to help construct a timeline and a narrative. I want to help a picture shape up--but I also know I am biased so I try to refrain from all but logical commentary. I am aware fake news exists and that tasty nuggets might not be all they seem--also, some stories are just too obvious. I've eschewed posting some recent news as a "Grab-Bag"because it is just boring-- Nigel Farage is a Person of Interest?

Of course Nigel Farage is gravitating to whatever power and money he can find. That seems like his natural depth. And regarding recent interviews with Vladimir Putin, of course he tries to deflect responsibility for hacking the US election. What else should he do?

And if you want proof, there seems to be proof that Russia wasn't just being APT 20-something in the DNC's email but influencing US voter offices.  A lot. And then you get news like the piece where the NSA got word that Russia even tried hacking not just our election, but the actual voting. Courtesy a certain person charmingly named "Reality Leigh Winner"--now arrested.

It is too much! It is too damn much. But it is, apparently, our reality. It could turn out to be misleading--but why is there so much even misleading info connecting the Trump campaign to Russia--and Russia to influencing the 2016 elections?

It Looks Bad Because it is Bad

Based on the Tweets that President Trump was offering up to the Internets a short while before FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director, Adm. Mike Rogers gave their testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, it seems like he already suspected this day would make the Administration look kind of bad.

And it did. FBI Director Comey shot down the case that the Trump campaign had been the subject of wiretapping at President Obama's direction, and acknowledged that there is an ongoing investigation into the Russian interference in the US election via hacking of the DNC and the possibility of the Trump campaign colluding in this effort. Adm. Rogers rejected the possibility floated by the Trump Administration that GCHQ performed the surveillance instead.  The FBI investigation is also looking into how Russian "bots" and "trolls" helped spread stories favorable to Trump (and negative stories about Clinton) on various websites.

I'm sure House GOP Reps who tried to steer attention to "leakers" and the shameful journalists who published leaks as if they were stories were trying to help, but I'm not sure it really does--after all, the Trump campaign "lived by the leak", with Trump going all in on praising WikiLeaks when it was damaging his opponent. Also, there is a limit to how much you can blame the press for bad news when it turns out not to be fake, but true!

It does seem to me that Rep. Devin Nunes was guilty of trying too hard by mournfully bemoaning the "big, gray cloud" that the Trump Administration was now under (of their own doing, I might add) and then, and somewhat bizarrely, saying he did not know who Carter Page or Roger Stone were when asked by Mother Jones' David Corn. That just doesn't even sound likely. Work in DC much, Rep. Nunes? (Actually, he was on the Trump transition team. So there's that.) I think Press Secretary Sean Spicer might have overstrained credulity in claiming Paul Manafort only had a limited role in the Trump Campaign. Oh, really?  (And that Gen. Flynn was a campaign volunteer. You know. The kind who is a top foreign policy adviser during the campaign and then becomes National Security adviser and who sits in on intelligence briefings. Practically just an envelope-stuffer!) I know they are trying to make things look a little better for President Trump, but, it doesn't really. The denials just sound more like covering up to me.

These things look and sound bad because they are bad.  This President had been under investigation since late July. Trump deflects criticism with wild, unfounded claims that are damaging to his credibility. His party has not yet reconciled themselves to the damage he is doing, but it can't really be denied forever--

Can it? When Trump tweets mischaracterizations of testimony so that it can be debunked in real time, can anyone say this is a misunderstanding? Does it not become clear that his credibility--essential to leadership--is perhaps fatally impaired? The state of this presidency is certainly, if not bad, not good. At some point, following the "lead" of a Tweet to suppose, perhaps, that "leaks" are the real issue (and not the damaging information they reveal) or setting up a straw man of Russian hacking of electoral votes, not seriously claimed by anyone, also looks, if not bad, certainly not good.

Ed Snowden Gave An Interview to Brian Williams.

And Brian Williams has freely taken. I'm not any kind of big old national security blogger, and I've never fully made up my mind where to stand on the subject of Ed Snowden, because he is just sui generis.  It is exactly true that his exploits have raised a conversation hitherto unthinkable--and I might add that what we will do exactly about it remains unthinkable, also. But I think the thing that everyone gasped about when it was dropped as a come-on to the rest of the interview was his claim that he is a "spy"--like, having worked for the CIA. NSA, and DOD under cover, what else would you even call him?

I don't know. Since he got treed in an airport after his passport was burned with no alternative but somehow to go to Russia, I'm thinking other terms might apply. I've called him the "Spy who Came in from the Warm" because "spy" is the only thing that makes sense, whether in the old-fashioned "working for a nation-state" sense or even in the less-conventional corporate-spy sense.

After all this, I'm giving it even odds that he's still a limited hang-out for US spy programs that were getting outed anyway and and doing modest and even overlooked tasks as "Our Man in Moscow" currently.

Or whatever. I've read way too many spy novels as a kid and am way too warped by the Cold War mentality now to think anyone is ever a straight-dealer where cloak, dagger, and digital data are concerned. Which is why I can't really appreciate whether this interview actually provided "information" per se.

So, uh, Putin talked with Ed Snowden

Kind of went like this:

Snowden asked: "Does Russia intercept or store or analyse the communication of millions of individuals?" He went on to ask whether increasing the effectiveness of internal security systems could ever justify such actions. 

To applause from the studio audience, Putin responded: "Mr Snowden you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for a intelligence service, we are going to talk the same language."

He said Russia did not have a comparable programme, stating: "Our agents are controlled by law. You have to get court permission to put an individual under surveillance. We don't have mass permission, and our law makes it impossible for that kind of mass permission to exist." 

He said he was aware that "criminals and terrorists" relied on this kind of interception, and that their actions demanded a response from the security services. "We have to use technical means to respond to their crimes, including those of a terrorist nature, we do have some efforts like that. We don't have a mass control. I hope we don't do that," he said.

He did not add, nor did he need to, that he was absolutely delighted that Edward-freaking-Snowden happened to ask him that question, or that comparing the extent of what he wanted to admit about Russia's surveillance capacity to the impression of the US capacity that Snowden has made known  is nothing but a joy, and also that, spy to a person he considers a fellow spy, he looks forward to this kind of conversation again, probably in public, albeit not as a condition of anything, oh, no...

A Big Brother Moment--

So what I very recently had said was:

Regardless of his motivations and methods, Edward Snowden raised necessary questions and caused endless systematic reconsideration within the intelligence community. And while a part of me has always been certain that the Powers That Be would pinpoint the mildly extralegal activities of Snowden's biggest worries and craft a very special law just to sanction whatever thing wide-awake people might balk at, fact is, I think the revelations might have caused a little change from compliant private communications network companies and US gov't officials who did not want to deal with this question.

And what recently came to pass was:  

In a 53-page opinion, U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said Friday that the program, which collects virtually all Americans’ phone records, represents the U.S. government’s “counter-punch” to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist network and does not violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. 

Pauley endorsed the assertion made by government officials that if the United States had the phone data collection program before 2001, they might have had a better chance at preventing the Sept. 11 attacks.

Which probably brings us just that much closer to there being a law making this exactly okay. I'm still conflicted about this, naturally. But at least someone has declared the metadata collection program totes magoats kosher. And that is a start, no?

Mission Probably Not Exactly Accomplished, But...

I've tended to view the Edward Snowden story with some skepticism because I do not suffer heroes gladly. The idea that someone ever goes completely out of their way to do a thing at great cost, without any thought to reward and ever mindful of possible retribution, hits me as bad code. As is often done at year-end, there is a kind of search for someone who has defined the year and possibly given us a narrative that explains where we are at this point in time. I'm not persuaded that what he did was exactly great, but as a person who very much spoke to what was happening in 2013--Snowden is your man.

I must wrestle a bit with the copy that became the title: "mission accomplished" is a phrase of two words that came to mean something rather different when they were uttered, 10 years ago, by a president making a ridiculous pose that was highly praised. In that instance, a figure abristle with the possibility of making history stood embellishing an untrue claim, and hammered home the cynicism of the regular lies with which his administration operated.

We are a decade later faced with a young idealist who came from out of the blue who presents us with possible hard truths that we might not be able to swallow entire, that promises us that while his job is done, and a very troubling one it was, the intelligence community's job is not. I expect, fear, and propose that it was possibly damaging. I also wonder if it wasn't necessary. The technological capacity to gather and archive data is vast. The necessary human ability to analyze it is finite. In the wrong hands, targeted data regarding a subject derived from sig int alone might be useless. I just recently did several minutes' long searches for info related to evangelical missionary work in Africa and also white supremicism. They might meet a metric for establishing what my interests are, but it might take humint to determine why I searched those subjects (although readers of my blog might get it at once). Otherwise I might find myself in the Christian militant skinhead bucket of potential watch-lists--just based on my recent reading.

Regardless of his motivations and methods, Edward Snowden raised necessary questions and caused endless systematic reconsideration within the intelligence community. And while a part of me has always been certain that the Powers That Be would pinpoint the mildly extralegal activities of Snowden's biggest worries and craft a very special law just to sanction whatever thing wide-awake people might balk at, fact is, I think the revelations might have caused a little change from compliant private communications network companies and US gov't officials who did not want to deal with this question.

I don't think I have to accept that he was all about just doing good, to have done some. I still say how he did it was hinky. But that, too, is kind of representative of the year we just had.

Okay--When is a secretive intelligence-gathering apparatus too big?

Um, when even the President might not know who and what they are spying on?

The idea that spying on world leaders might have been authorized some time ago, and then just operated as an on-going project, without the direct okay of the current president, kind of sounds a bit off, doesn't it? It seems to me though, that this is exactly what could happen in a ginormous apparatus with significant leeway on a basic level. The point of having things loose is being specifically able to do things that aren't necessarily policy, but might be temporarily deemed useful intelligence-gathering methods. So let's say some officially-used lines are monitored to understand who is calling who and talking to who to get a picture of what alliances are out there--what good is it?

Yes, I Know That Snowden and Greenwald and All Are Not the Story

Getting the standard Greenwald disclaimer out of the way, there was something of a follow-up to the original "David Miranda was detained for nine hours at Heathrow" story that tends to make me feel a bit less ambiguous about it all. Apparently, Miranda was actually carrying thousands of sensitive encrypted documents on his person...with the password to the encryption code on a piece of paper also on his person.

The government’s statement claims possession of the documents by Mr Miranda, Mr Greenwald and the Guardian posed a threat to national security, particularly because Mr Miranda was carrying a password alongside a range of electronic devices on which classified documents were stored. 

Keeping passwords separate from the computer files or accounts to which they relate is a basic security step. 

Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience in the Cabinet Office, said in his 13-page submission: “The information that has been accessed consists entirely of misappropriated material in the form of approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. 

“I can confirm that the disclosure of this information would cause harm to UK national security."

It bothers me to have to say this, but is it possible that out of 58,000 documents, Greenwald et als don't know what all they have their hands on, might actually have some information that would compromise human intelligence assets (that is to say, get friendly folks killed) and lack the good sense not to handle them like a Kindle full of trashy novels? Just asking. Because the road to ruin is paved with good intentions slathered in a mortar of stupid. And this episode looks like a trowel-full of the latter, even if you allow that the journalists in question are brimming with the former. And would this not suggest reasons why people do keep government secrets secretively?

(And in other news, I remain fascinated by the tale of Our Man in Moscow, whose mysterious inability to berth himself in any other asylum-granting happy spot--Venezuela, Ecuador, Fernando Poo, Latveria, Qwghlm--having set forth on the curious route of Hong Kong to Sheremetyevo, has not entirely been explained. One does not know what to make of his spending time in the Russian consulate prior to embarking for Moscow. I know he's not the story, either. But if you don't find that interesting, what does interest you?)

I Know This is Days Late--But I'm Still Wondering About the Morales Plane Deal

Okay, I have a bias that I have very little fear of admitting because I am not often proved entirely wrong--I refrain from thinking in conspiratorial terms because perfidy requires competence above and beyond most job specs, and it's easier to assume that when things look hinky, it's because someone was having a bad brain day, or week, or month. There's just no underestimating human intelligence. So when something just looks damn stupid to me, my first instinct is that it must be following the SNAFU principle.  Step one of the test is identifying who has the presumptive upper hand and who is being stupid. If they are one and the same, congratulations--this is a normal situation of up-fuckedness. So, when a bunch of "Old Europe" (as intended by Donald Rumsfeld, not Marija Gimbutas) countries (Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, I think, were all of them) decided that the plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales probably shouldn't land in any of those countries, but should probably land where it did--Austria? It just looked to me like an authoritarian allergic reaction to comments made by Morales earlier about just maybe thinking of offering asylum to Edward Snowden puffed out into his actually being presumed guilty. Initially embarassing, not overtly hinky.

But mulling over the Die Presse assertion that the claim that Snowden was on Morales' plane actually came from a US official, Amb. to Austria William Eacho, raised a bit of a flag in my head. Is there any reason at all that someone connected to the State Dept would have valid reason to believe Snowden was on that plane? Even if I thought life did sometimes work like a LeCarre thriller, the answer is, "No". Simply, Sheremetyevo is probably staked out to the max and movement from there to the airport Morales left from would probably have to be confirmed before someone would have the brass to assume that Snowden was being transported in the ultimate of Diplomatic Attache cases--a plane carrying a head of state.

To me, this is weird, because of the number of countries involved and that a name of a US official was floated as being the source of the rumor (or rather, since more than a rumor should have been needed--are we saying a firm lead? What should that have been--Interpol? Because like I suspected, Snowden is letting other countries' laundry hang out). But there doesn't look to be any major attempt at corroboration of the one link to the US floating that rumor we have (I suck and am no journalist, I checked Eacho's Twitter profile and Googled him, but mentions of l'affaire Snowden are scarce). And it still seems to me like it would be hella stupid for the US to initiate that kind of pressure--

For one thing, so heavy-handed. It looks totes authoritarian, which we should be trying to avoid right now, you think? Because if the US wanted to not call attention to what Snowden was putting out, "Hey, look over here, we're trying to catch Snowden a lot!" especially after Obama pointed out we wouldn't be scrambling jets after the guy looks a little klutz-fingered.

Also, if you think in terms of whether any action has an equal and opposite reaction (that's just science, peeps), doesn't it seems like doing stop and frisk on a Latin American head of state might just engender the handful of asylum offers that have occurred with Venezuala, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia? You know, to anyone who has ever watched a tv sitcom since the dawn of tv and has heard of the term "reverse psychology? Where something like Snowden's asylum has been almost embarrassingly discouraged and now it seems like the hip y tu mama tambien thing to do?

I dunno. I don't know why folks do what they do. It just bugs me.

He's A Lonely Boy, He Ain't Got A Home

It's hard for me to settle on a way to write about Edward Snowden's predicament, because there is a grudging part of me that wants to commend him for being a "doer". He saw something that pissed him off about the government of the country in which he lived and he by gawd did something about it. In a country where any number of lax-asses can't be bothered to read a newspaper or vote, he should be awarded with many, many "give a shit" points. I kind of want to sympathize with the situation he's in--a stateless wanderer who can't go home again without paying a high price for his act of conscience. In a world where things were really fair, wouldn't good intentions count for something? But at the same time, I can't help but question what he's done and what his plans and motivations were just because of all the unintended consequences that he doesn't seem to have anticipated.  It's one thing to believe in openness and want to defend the privacy of individuals against an omnipresent surveillance state--especially when such a paradigm may have no urgent purpose and be too ripe for exploitation by a corrupt government. It's another thing to all on one's lonesome determine that now is as good a time as any to let it all hang out, and then trot the globe hoping blowback is a thing that only happens to nations--not, you know, "doers".

Which is why the "terminal" plight of one airport bound whistleblower (or is it, hornblower?) opens up another meditation on exactly what his long game will have to be, because one can not live in an airport. But it has become clear that the promise of a berth with Ecuador  is essentially evaporating (and the relationship between Ecuador and Julian Assange of Wikileaks is possibly a little strained, by now, too)--long story short: Ecuador isn't running a hotel for wayward truthtellers.  And the possibility of asylum with Russia is not without strings:

Putin, who hosted a summit of gas-exporting nations in Moscow that included leaders from Venezuela, Bolivia and Iran, said he doesn't know if any of those attending could offer Snowden shelter. 

"If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do that," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: he must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound on my lips." 

Putin added that Snowden doesn't want to stop his efforts to reveal information about the U.S. surveillance program. 

"Just because he feels that he is a human rights defender, rights activist, he doesn't seem to have an intention to stop such work," Putin said.

And this is not without reason. While Snowden may have access to intelligence that is at least somewhat useful, and there may be some countries who don't entirely mind giving the US a "black eye", he's still kind of a diplomatic nightmare and a weird walking irony, since most of the nations on his asylum application list aren't exactly champions of the repressed, themselves. Because he has become so high-profile, countries that might consider hosting him are well warned-off. (And no, they don't need direct pressure from the US to know this.)

However, I've given some thought to whether his notoriety isn't in his favor in the one place that would love to have him--the US. I doubt he would be given the same treatment as Bradley Manning, let alone be "droned to death"--specifically because the whole world would be watching. It seems to me that the conditions that Edward Snowden's father indicated as being favorable to his son's return would be honored because of this. And should he return to the US to face sentencing and a trial, the actual questions of what he has uncovered can be properly publically debated, with less emphasis on "Where's Edward?" and "What will he do next?"

Provided, of course, that this a thing still within his means to do.  Which, though my glib blog title may have you think otherwise, is the thing that makes me fear for him. There are many forms of alienation--but being rootless because one has cut oneself off from one's roots is a terrible renunciation. More terrible if it was made for one.

Our Man in Hong Kong--or I Decide to Rampantly Speculate for Shits n' Grins

I've mentioned that I like the odd conspiracy theory, and since I'm just a no'count blogger and I've already floated speculation that Snowden's leak was targeted more at bringing down Booz Allen than disrupting NSA activity (and technically, I'm kind of pro-breaking up the cozy military/industrial/intelligence privatized apparatus), why not float a couple more?

There are a few questions people have been having about two big items on l'affaire Snowden. The first is "Why Hong Kong?" Me, I like James Clavell novels as much as the next gal, but that's a little off, no? Sure, he praised their "spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", but HK is a part of CHina,. you know? And part of his making friends and influencing people in HK has included revealing info about NSA hacking Chinese computers, leading to some speculation that he was planning to actually defect.

The second big item is his resume. There are some things about his education and background that sound a little out of place for the level of access he boasts. Also, his presentation has alarmed Naomi Wolf,  who actually doesn't sound all that off to me with respects to getting legal consultation up-front, but what do I know?

So let me put it all together--this is a limited hang-out. The current surveillance paradigm was going to get leaked and Snowden is a front for the government getting out in front of it in just the kind of way that clouds the details. Or, to really go for broke: although the NSA stuff has become the big story, it's just the cover for getting the deets of the Chinese hacking (I know we're all "shocked! shocked!" to know that there is hacking in our spy establishments!) out. (Also a runner-up, if China accepts an offer to defect, we have a man inside.)

I don't believe these things, obvs, because they have absolutely no foundation whatsoever and sound kind of like the plot of a drugstore paperback. But since the US has had an interrogation program loosely based on tips from the tv series "24", anything sounds plausible anymore, you know?

The Spy Who Came in from the Warm

I'm still not entirely sure what to make of our man, Edward Snowden. We are presented with a 29 year-old who had previously dropped out of HS, took some classes (but not computer classes) at community college, enlisted in the Army for special forces but did not complete training due to injury, ex- CIA employee who worked at Booz Allen for not quite three months, who seems to have been contacting media since before he started work at Booz Allen? And started packing up out of his Hawaii home around May 1st before all this story broke?

Not any of this recap of his bio this far is supposed to be about discrediting anything said about PRISM or necessarily what Snowden's access might have been. I just don't know about that, but what I am is a little skeptical. I've got a timeline that gives this guy a lot of career opportunities, but leads to a point where it seriously does look like he took a job at Booz Allen knowing what they were contracted to do for NSA just to gather info and air it out. I know there's some hero-worship out there regarding his bravery in leaking how and what info is gathered by contractors like Booz Allen on NSA's behalf, but I am not buying his "OMG I did not know there was a surveillance state and my being shocked, let me show you it" way of revealing a story people may or may not have cared about until they were asked to think about it.

Maybe this stems from jealousy. Goddamn. A $200k a year job in sunny, beautiful Hawaii warming a desk hoovering bytes of nonsense in general and tapping in on purpose with direction for the all-convenient national security apparatus. Oh, would some do-gooding media outlet help him unburden himself from the difficult and troubling ethical questions that arise from doing stuff that hasn't even been found illegal or questionable by Congress or anything, but would sound really fucked-up if someone kind of made it sound like twenty-something HS dropouts had the legal authority to ransack your emails  for vacation pictures of side boob and scour your phone conversations for those special times when you bitched about shit like not making $200k a year and who do you have to kill (metaphorically) to make that kind of scratch anyway?

Until and unless something better than "I got a Power Point presentation and I know how to use it" surfaces, I am going to either wonder what his deal is or assume he was put in that job as a patsy to wreak havoc on Booz Allen's stock by a rival contractor because the biggest takeaway I've gleaned from this so far is, I don't really think third parties should have root access to systems that deal with broad scope infiltration of people's privacy, and also, I am staggered if NSA doesn't hold their contractors to various oaths of "Do not access without authorization" and doesn't have key logger and Access logs of who uses their software. (I'm pretty sure IRS peeps, for example, have at least that much and probably more protocols in place to monitor their record access, and violations thereof range from discontinued access to prison time--unlawful use of a government computer, I think they call the federal felony charge.) He is the intel analyst mother warned you about.

I'm less pissed at the government than I am that this dude is getting the Shepard Fairly HOPE sign treatment as "HERO" without a critical evaluation of what the hell is going on with the leak shit. Are we that happy to dish up the Obama Administration as unfriendlies? The AP/Verizon stories are like, whevs. On top of the IRS nothingburger and the Benghazi nothingshwarma, they could look like "OMFG, what is the Obama Administration doing?"  But if you discount the first two by reason of, fug, whut? It's almost like obvs, think.  Why is all this hitting the news at the same time?

I'm not saying there are no coincidences, but...what is a blogger to think?

(Is it restraint on my part or laziness I couldn't find a proper "Snowden spills his guts" Catch-22 reference? Must be a way, besides postscript and parenthetically.)