Dozens of countries hit by hacks using stolen NSA tools.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Hackers exploiting malicious software stolen from the National Security Agency executed damaging cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries worldwide, forcing Britain’s public health system to send patients away, freezing computers at Russia’s Interior Ministry and wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers elsewhere. 

The attacks amounted to an audacious global blackmail attempt spread by the internet and underscored the vulnerabilities of the digital age. 

Transmitted via email, the malicious software locked British hospitals out of their computer systems and demanded ransom before users could be let back in — with a threat that data would be destroyed if the demands were not met. 

By late Friday the attacks had spread to more than 74 countries, according to security firms tracking the spread. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said Russia was the worst-hit, followed by Ukraine, India and Taiwan. Reports of attacks also came from Latin America and Africa. 

The attacks appeared to be the largest ransomware assault on record, but the scope of the damage was hard to measure. It was not clear if victims were paying the ransom, which began at about $300 to unlock individual computers, or even if those who did pay would regain access to their data. 

Finally this hack was stopped by a British blogger who triggered a "kill switch" and essentially turned it off.

Of course Edward Snowden was quick to jump in and blame the whole thing on the NSA.

If @NSAGov had privately disclosed the flaw used to attack hospitals when they *found* it, not when they lost it, this may not have happened https://t.co/lhApAqB5j3

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 12, 2017

However let me point out once again that many of these hacks are directly related to the NSA tools that Snowden smuggled out of the country and which ended up in the hands of the Russians.

I know that there are still some Snowden apologists who refuse to believe he is not a hero, but the evidence of his crimes are all around us.

Snowden took sensitive data from the intelligence agency designed to protect America, and let it fall into the hands of those who want to cause harm to America, and other countries as well. 

And Hollywood even made a fucking movie about him.

Bill Maher has a message for liberal purists, "Go f**k yourself!"

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

“That begins learning the difference between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy,” Maher said. He went on to quote Jill Stein, who famously said both candidates were like being murdered just in different ways. “Well, I’m sure with Trump in charge and a racist attorney general there will be a lot more of both.” 

Before the election, Edward Snowden tweeted “2016: The difference between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs.” Maher noted that Trump has actually hired Goldman Sachs executives and former staffers to work for him. “The only people he hasn’t hired from Goldman Sachs is Goldman and Sachs.” 

He then cited Cornell West who called Trump a neofascist and Clinton a ‘neoliberal disaster.’ “I don’t even know what a neoliberal disaster even means but whatever it is, isn’t it better than a fascist one? Have you people lost your f*cking minds? 

“If Hillary was president now, would we be turning the clock back on the one issue on which there is no more time: climate change?” Maher asked. “Would we have to wonder if our president’s fascination with dictators is foreshadowing a coup here? Would we ever have to wonder if she was Putin’s b*tch? And instead of trying to kick millions off health care to pay tax cuts for herself, she would be trying to raise her own taxes to get more people covered. She wouldn’t be complaining, ‘It’s complicated! Who knew?’ She knew.”

At the end of his rant Maher suggests that the liberal purists who refused to recognize the clear and obvious differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should go fuck themselves with "a locally grown organic cucumber."

That's a little crude for my tastes, but I certainly agree with the sentiment.

Our country would be in such better shape if these idiots had not allowed themselves to be manipulated by the Russians into believing that Hillary was winning because she was "the anointed one," and had put on their big boy pants and cast their vote for the good of the nation instead of pouting like children because they did not get their way.

Edward Snowden is being paid as much as $30,000 to speak by satellite, from the comfort of his Moscow apartment, to American college students. And that is WRONG!

Snowden's Russian ID.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

The university paid $30,000 through an American speakers’ bureau to digitally host Snowden, one of his largest known contracts to date, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Finance. The Ohio State event was one of a series of speeches that have netted Snowden — who is still a fugitive in the eyes of the U.S. government — well over $200,000 in the past two years, as Yahoo News first reported last year. He has continued to give paid speeches, including at U.S. colleges, in 2017. 

The ongoing speaking contracts come at a time when Snowden’s fate and influence are more uncertain than ever. A campaign by Snowden’s supporters to win him a pardon was rebuffed by the outgoing Obama White House, and new President Donald Trump previously labeled him a “terrible traitor.” 

Moreover, Snowden’s efforts to present himself as an Internet privacy pioneer are now complicated by an American political environment colored by increasing wariness and hostility toward Snowden’s host since June 2013: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Gee, no shit!

In my opinion Snowden should receive NO funds from American colleges or universities in the wake of the hack of our 2016 election by the Russians.

I think it is now beyond obvious that this the new Russian expertise in hacking American companies, political organizations, and US citizens is due to their access to the materials that Snowden pilfered from the NSA.

In my opinion Snowden is the worst kind of traitor and I believe his actions have undermined our very democracy,

Keep in mind that it was Julian Assange who sent one of his compatriots to assist Edward Snowden and helped him to gain entry into Russia, after dissuading him from going to Latin America.

As we now know it was through Wikileaks that Russia released the information they hacked during the 2016 campaign, leaving no doubt that they are Russian stooges.

And I am 100% certain that when Snowden arrived in Russia, with the NSA tools that he smuggled out of America, that they immediately found their way into the hands of the FSB, Russian Intelligence, and that THAT was the impetus for all of the hacking and manipulations that we have seen since.

Remember, Wikileaks JUST released those CIA hacking tools.

How could they have possibly gotten their hands on that without the information that Snowden carried with him into Russia?

They couldn't have.

It is time for all of these Snowden fan boys to finally recognize that their idol is at best a "useful tool" of the Russian government, and at worst a spy for Vladimir Putin.

Amid an ongoing back and forth between Donald Trump and American intelligence agencies, Wikileaks releases documents from CIA hack.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions. 

If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage. 

The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first part of the document collection, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, the group said. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, it said.

Now Wikileaks offers up some obfuscation to camouflage the source of this hack but if you are not already convinced that it is the Russians than you have simply not been paying attention.

Currently Trump is reeling from one anonymous tip after another showing that his White House is in turmoil, his ties to Russia are multiplying exponentially, and his mental health is in question.

Much of this Trump is blaming on intelligence sources, and as of yesterday those same intelligence sources threw cold water on his claim that President Obama tapped his phones.

In a word he is pissed!

So then we come to today and lo and behold Wikileaks, the same group who released information hacked from the DNC and other sources to help Trump win the election, have suddenly released a treasure trove of information concerning HOW the CIA conducts espionage and gains access to electronic devices.

What a coinky dink.

So how does this help Trump you might ask?

Well besides offering an irresistible distraction to the media, there are tidbits like this:

Another program described in the documents, named Umbrage, is a voluminous library of cyberattack techniques that the C.I.A. has collected from malware produced by other countries, including Russia. According to the WikiLeaks release, the large number of techniques allows the C.I.A. to mask the origin of some of its cyberattacks and confuse forensic investigators.

Now just let that digest a little. And then imagine what Trump supporters will make of that revelation.

Well here let me just tell you, because they are already doing it.

What this Umbrage program suggests is that the CIA could hack into a computer and then leave behind false data that will confuse investigators into believing that the hack came from another source.

So if you are a Trump supporter who does not want to accept the fact that the Russians hacked computers in America in order to help hand the election to your candidate, well now you don't have to accept that fact.  

You can simply convince yourself that the CIA hacked the DNC, State Department, Clinton Campaign, White House, and apparently themselves, and then blamed the whole thing on poor, blameless Vladimir Putin.

And if you don't think they are dumb enough to do this, well like I said you have not been paying attention.

Speaking of Putin and Russia, I would like to bring something else to your attention.

According to the New York Times this material was apparently hacked between 2013 and 2016.

This means that whoever had it in their possession (The Russians) has had all of those CIA tricks in their tool kit for as long as three years.

That means that they could have been using that stolen data to gain access to any number of computers, televisions, and smart phones in the possession of diplomats, reporters, politicians, you name it.

If you then remember that the Russians are famous for using blackmail to force powerful people to bend to their will, well then at this point I think some things might be starting to fall into place.

Now do you remember what else happened in 2013?

That is the year that Edward Snowden flew to Russia after stealing the global surveillance blueprints from the NSA.

As @wikileaks are revealing how the CIA hack, let's ask why they never leak anything about SORM. pic.twitter.com/QHanK2dth3

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) March 7, 2017

And once again the picture starts to become a little bit clearer.

Wall Street Journal reporter eviscerates legend of Edward Snowden.

As I think I have made clear on this blog multiple times I have long thought that the information Snowden stole from the NSA had ended up in Putin's hands and that it was instrumental in helping him to hack into our various agencies.

This article by Edward Jay Epstein at the Wall Street Journal provides support for that assessment.

On what he took:

The number of purloined documents is more than what NSA officials were willing to say in 2013 about the removal of data, possibly because the House committee had the benefit of the Pentagon’s more-extensive investigation. But even just taking into account the material that Mr. Snowden handed over to journalists, the December House report concluded that he compromised “secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states.” These were, the report said, “merely the tip of the iceberg.” 

The Pentagon’s investigation during 2013 and 2014 employed hundreds of military-intelligence officers, working around the clock, to review all 1.5 million documents. Most had nothing to do with domestic surveillance or whistle blowing. They were mainly military secrets, as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on March 6, 2014. 

It was not the quantity of Mr. Snowden’s theft but the quality that was most telling. Mr. Snowden’s theft put documents at risk that could reveal the NSA’s Level 3 tool kit—a reference to documents containing the NSA’s most-important sources and methods. Since the agency was created in 1952, Russia and other adversary nations had been trying to penetrate its Level-3 secrets without great success. 

Yet it was precisely these secrets that Mr. Snowden changed jobs to steal. In an interview in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on June 15, 2013, he said he sought to work on a Booz Allen contract at the CIA, even at a cut in pay, because it gave him access to secret lists of computers that the NSA was tapping into around the world.

In short Snowden absconded with the very information that foreign governments, such as Russia, had been trying to get their hands on for years.

And not only did he take them, he delivered them by hand to their very doorstep.

But didn't Snowden only end up in Russia because the United States pulled his Visa?

Nope.

The State Department invalidated Mr. Snowden’s passport while he was still in Hong Kong, not after he left for Moscow on June 23. The “Consul General-Hong Kong confirmed that Hong Kong authorities were notified that Mr. Snowden’s passport was revoked June 22,” according to the State Department’s senior watch officer, as reported by ABC news on June 23, 2013. By falsely claiming his passport was invalidated after the plane departed Hong Kong—instead of before he left—Mr. Snowden hoped to conceal this extraordinary waiver. The Russian government further revealed its helping hand, judging by a report in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper when, on arrival, Mr. Snowden was taken off the plane by a security team in a “special operation.” 

Nor was it any kind of accident. Vladimir Putin personally authorized this assistance after Mr. Snowden met with Russian officials in Hong Kong, as Mr. Putin admitted in a televised press conference on Sept. 2, 2013.

Okay but Snowden claims that he destroyed what he took from the NSA before he landed in Russia.

Yeah. not so much.

I went to Moscow in October 2015 to see Mr. Kucherena. During our conversation, Mr. Kucherena confirmed that his interview with Ms. Shevardnadze was accurate, and that Mr. Snowden had brought secret material with him to Moscow. 

Mr. Snowden’s narrative also includes the assertion that he was neither debriefed by nor even met with any Russian government official after he arrived in Moscow. This part of the narrative runs counter to findings of U.S. intelligence. According to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report, Mr. Snowden, since he arrived in Moscow, “has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” This finding is consistent with Russian debriefing practices, as described by the ex-KGB officers with whom I spoke in Moscow.

Wikileaks is mentioned as playing a role in helping Snowden make contacts in Russia, and in helping him cover his tracks, so you can bet they, and their surrogates, are going to attack this article quite aggressively. 

And since this reporter uses information provided to him by the Pentagon, the NSA, and Kremlin insiders there are those who will dismiss it as nothing more than propaganda promoted by the Obama Administration.

However before anybody dismisses this out of hand, think back to the pattern of attacks that we have seen on the DNC, the Clinton Campaign, the State Department, the White House, and even the freaking NSA itself, and ask yourself how were these attacks so damn successful?

And even before you saw this article, did you not kind of think that they must have some inside information?

Well I most certainly did, and I am pretty damn sure that I know where that information came from.

Remember what I said in an earlier post about foreign governments not helping candidates win elections unless there is something in it for them?

Yeah, well the same holds true for former NSA employees who steal state secrets.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

.@jonathanchait Cousins in Putin's worldwide web. pic.twitter.com/5gipj5j6tE

— Mykola Molodyko (@molodyko) December 29, 2016

I will admit that some of this is a little exaggerated, but not by much in my opinion.

I really do think that Putin's incredible success with hacking lately is directly tied to the information that Edward Snowden stole from the NSA and then took with him to Russia.

Newsweek reveals why this latest FBI e-mail "investigation" was never really a thing.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that almost every email discovered in a laptop used primarily by the husband of an aide to Hillary Clinton was a duplicate of previously produced documents or personal emails, a person close to the case told Newsweek. As a result, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress Sunday saying the new emails have not changed the bureau’s earlier decision that no crime occurred with Clinton’s use of a private server while she was secretary of state. 

Less than two weeks ago, Comey set the election on its head when he informed Congress that his agents had located emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the Clinton investigation. At that point, the FBI did not have a warrant to review the emails, nor had they sought permission from the owners of the laptop to search it. In fact, people involved in the case said, the FBI never asked either the Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, or her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, if they would voluntarily allow for such a search. 

The night of the disclosure, Newsweek reported that the emails were from as many as three accounts—one through Yahoo, one on the domain clintonemail.com, and one from an account Abedin used in support of one of Weiner’s campaigns for office. Last week, Newsweek learned that that account was through Gmail. In other words, Abedin’s personal account provided by the State Department for non-classified emails was not involved. Abedin, who did not know Clinton used a private server for her emails, told the bureau in an April interview that she used the account on the clintonemail.com domain only for issues related to the secretary’s personal affairs, such as communicating with her friends. For work-related records, Abedin primarily used the email account provided to her by the State Department.

So to be clear the FBI should have realized from the very beginning that they were never going to find a "smoking gun" in these e-mails.

And yet James Comey issued that letter to Congress on October 28th anyway.

The Newsweek article goes on to say that the reason there were duplicates of e-mails on this laptop is that Huma sent them from her non-classified e-mail at the State Department so that she could print them at home for Hillary because the State Department is apparently several decades behind technologically.

NONE of the e-mails she sent herself were confidential or classified, they just contained information pertinent to her boss who it seems likes to read them on actual paper.

In another interesting aside, despite what the Trump campaign might want you to believe, Edward Snowden suggests that the FBI COULD have gone through the e-mails on this laptop in a matter of hours.

@jeffjarvis Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016

If true that means that the FBI should have figured this whole thing out well before Comey sent that letter to Congress on October 28th.

And yet he sent it.

Wikileaks, Russia, the Republicans, and now the FBI, all working as one to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming our next President.

Who ever thought that the idea of a female President would be so terrifying?

Information from the NSA has been leaked as confirmed by secret documents provided by Edward Snowden. Wait.....

Courtesy of The Intercept: 

On Monday, a hacking group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide. 

The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency. 

The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE.

Now many security analysts are now suggesting that this group must have hacked into the NSA in order to get their hands on these "cyber weapons" however Snowden himself offers another explanation: 

Snowden, who worked for NSA contractors Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton, has offered some context and a relatively mundane possible explanation for the leak: that the NSA headquarters was not hacked, but rather one of the computers the agency uses to plan and execute attacks was compromised. In a series of tweets, he pointed out that the NSA often lurks on systems that are supposed to be controlled by others, and it’s possible someone at the agency took control of a server and failed to clean up after themselves. A regime, hacker group, or intelligence agency could have seized the files and the opportunity to embarrass the agency.

Okay, maybe. But here's a third option.

First has anybody else noticed that the number of hacks in America determined to have originated in Russia have gone up exponentially since Snowden landed there three years ago?

Remember that Snowden landed in Russia with tons of materials that he stole from the NSA.

And then there was this from July of 2013:

Edward Snowden has very sensitive ‘‘blueprints’’ detailing how the National Security Agency operates that would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance, a journalist close to the intelligence leaker said Sunday. 

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist with The Guardian newspaper who closely communicates with Snowden and first reported on his intelligence leaks, told The Associated Press that the former NSA systems analyst has ‘‘literally thousands of documents’’ that constitute ‘‘basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.’’ ‘ 

‘In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,’’ Greenwald said in Brazil, adding that the interview was taking place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.

So to prove that what he had was accurate, Snowden took the blueprints for how the NSA works into Russia with him.

At the time Snowden assured his critics that the information was safe in his hands: 

The dramatic plot of the Edward Snowden NSA whistleblowing saga has just taken an interesting twist: in a letter to U.S. Senator Gordon Humphreys, Snowden declares himself impervious to torture. 

Furthermore, he claims his encryption cannot be hacked. 

From his letter, posted in the Guardian: 

[N]o intelligence service — not even our own — has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China). 

You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture. 

How comforting.

So we are left to wonder if this information was accessed by a group of Russian hackers who broke into NSA computers from the outside, was revealed through some sloppy work by a current NSA operative, or that Edward Snowden simply carried it into Russia with him and then handed it over to Vladimir Putin for a roof over his head and protection from American prosecution?

Gee, I wonder which one sounds the most likely?

So Russia just signed massive new surveillance measures into law. Wait, didn't those already exist?

Courtesy of The Washington Times:

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation Thursday compelling telephone companies and internet providers to save and store the private communications of its customers, notwithstanding concerns raised by human rights advocates and big business alike. 

Included within a package of amendments proposed as antiterrorism measures, the law will require telecoms to collect and keep copies of customers’ phone calls, text messages and emails for six months, as well as maintain metadata concerning those communications for up to three years. 

Other provisions effectively outlaw the use of digital encryption within Russia and introduce new penalties for individuals accused of inciting terrorism through social media.

Wondering how Edward Snowden is handling this news? Not very well actually.

#Putin has signed a repressive new law that violates not only human rights, but common sense. Dark day for #Russia. https://t.co/J4I2SQ9VCe

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Signing the #BigBrother law must be condemned. Beyond political and constitution consequences, it is also a $33b+ tax on Russia's internet.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Personally I think that most of these measures have already been in place for quite some time, and for whatever reason Putin just now decided to make it public.

After all the idea that Russia has a less intrusive domestic spying program than the United States is simply ridiculous.

While we're on the subject is anybody else essentially no longer worrying about privacy and government surveillance in light of the number of terror attacks that have occurred here and in other places around the world?

It just seems to me that every time there is an attack everybody complains that law enforcement did not keep close enough tabs on the suspect, and rarely do I hear anybody challenging the idea of the government keeping tabs on people.

Or maybe it just seems that way to me.

Sarah Palin compares Hillary Clinton to Edward Snowden because you know that makes so much sense.

Courtesy of Palin's only remaining link to her dwindling fan base.

Okay now first off whether you agree with Snowden's actions or not, the fact is that he smuggled top secret information out of the NSA which he then distributed to the media and brought with him when he left America.

THAT stands in stark contrast to the possibility that Hillary Clinton, who was the Secretary of State at the time, might have sent sensitive information through a private e-mail server that everybody in the White House already knew about.

The conversation about whether Snowden should be considered a traitor or not is a legitimate one, however Palin has no interest in actually having it as she is only interested in using Snowden to attack Hillary.

By the way it should be mentioned at this time that the State Department was certainly not secure enough to resist being hacked and shut down in 2014. (Which it should be noted happened AFTER Hillary left office.)

On the other hand Hillary's e-mail was not hacked by anyone as far as we know, and the only peek into what she was receiving on her private server only comes because her friend Sydney Blumenthal was hacked.

And that only revealed what he sent her, and nothing that she sent back.

As it appears right now Clinton's e-mail account seems to be the one that was the safest from attack.

So in what way did she secretly expose classified information?

FBI admits that no major acts of terrorism have been prevented by the Patriot Act.

Courtesy of The Washington Times:  

FBI agents can’t point to any major terrorism cases they’ve cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating. 

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations. 

The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215. 

Backers say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it’s used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the National Security Agency’s phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden. 

Clearly it is time to do away with the program completely or  modify it in such as way that every single American citizen is not treated as a potential terrorist.

But it is equally clear that most likely neither of those two things will ever happen.

Federal court finds that the government systematically collecting the phone records of American citizens is illegal. I knew it!

Courtesy of Reuters:  

A U.S. spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans' phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, putting pressure on Congress to quickly decide whether to replace or end the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance. 

Ruling on a program revealed by former government security contractor Edward Snowden, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans' calling records in bulk. 

Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel that Section 215, which addresses the FBI's ability to gather business records, could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a "staggering" amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations. 

"Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans," Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision. "We would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate."

The appeals court did NOT rule as to whether or not the spying violated the Constitution, and they also declined to call a halt to the program citing the fact that parts of the Patriot Act are up for renewal on June 1.

So what happens now?

It is hard to imagine that the United States is going to dismantle the program even in the face of this ruling, governments typically do not give up this kind of power voluntarily.

Which leads me to believe that the Congress might instead vote to alter it in a way that makes it more palatable to the legal system (They are already talking about doing that.), or that the government will challenge this ruling and take it to the Supreme Court.

And let's face it, the way the Supreme Court lines up right now it seems unlikely they will rule against the program.

It is also time to admit that, regardless of our personal feelings about the guy, without Edward Snowden this would never have gone to trial.

In fact most of us would be blissfully unaware that our phone records were even being tracked.

More evidence that Edward Snowden is not the selfless patriot that many want him to be.

Courtesy of Forward Progressives:  

For the sake of argument let’s say that everything Snowden stole pertaining to possible illegal activity by the NSA is 100% legit and every last bit of it is proven to be unconstitutional. Then yes, I would agree that he’s a patriot and a hero for risking everything to take that stand. 

Except that’s not all he stole, nor is it all that he’s leaked. 

Telling a newspaper in China that the United States government spied on Chinese computers isn’t “revealing unconstitutional surveillance of Americans” and leaking that classified information is illegal. 

Writing an “open letter” trying to get Brazil to grant him political asylum by offering to help Brazil investigate United States surveillance, because Snowden leaked information about the U.S. spying on the Brazilian government, isn’t “standing up for the Constitutional rights of Americans.” 

Saying that the NSA is “in bed” with Germany and other governments, working together on elaborate surveillance programs, isn’t “protecting the freedom of American citizens.” 

Leaking documents showing that Sweden has helped the United States spy on Russia isn’t “being a patriot.” 

Producing documents that reveal details on how the NSA gets some of its intelligence on the location of dangerous terrorists isn’t “being a passionate supporter of our Bill of Rights.” 

Revealing that the United States uses cyber-attacks as an “intelligence weapon” for overseas targets has nothing to do with our Constitution. 

Neither did producing documents that showed the British government set up surveillance of G20 delegates and phones during the G20 summit in 2009. 

Last I checked, countries in Latin America weren’t protected by our Constitution either – yet Snowden still leaked information about how the NSA listens in on phone calls in many of those nations.

There is actually quite a bit more over at Forward Progressives, but I think you get the drift.

IF Snowden had simply revealed the domestic spying that was going on in this country, then the argument concerning his patriotism, even if he fled the country, might seem valid.

But as the above post lays out Snowden reveaed information that undercuts our ability to protect ourselves from cyber attacks, our ability to gather intelligence, and our reputation with our allies.   

Now recent information suggests that Snowden may have come to the attention of Moscow six years ago.

I know there are still some arguing that he is a misunderstood whistle blower who is being smeared by the United States, but most of the evidence I have seen suggests otherwise.

Putin signs law which demands bloggers register with the government and lose their anonymity. Thanks Edward Snowden for giving him the idea.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Widely known as the “bloggers law,” the new Russian measure specifies that any site with more than 3,000 visitors daily will be considered a media outlet akin to a newspaper and be responsible for the accuracy of the information published. 

Besides registering, bloggers can no longer remain anonymous online, and organizations that provide platforms for their work such as search engines, social networks and other forums must maintain computer records on Russian soil of everything posted over the previous six months. 

“This law will cut the number of critical voices and opposition voices on the Internet,” said Galina Arapova, director of the Mass Media Defense Center and an expert on Russian media law. “The whole package seems quite restrictive and might affect harshly those who disseminate critical information about the state, about authorities, about public figures.” 

Mr. Putin has already used the pliable Russian Parliament to pass laws that scattered the opposition, hobbled nongovernmental organizations and shut down public protests. Now, riding a wave of popular support after hosting the Winter Olympics and annexing Crimea, he has turned his attention to regulating the Internet, as well as burnishing his credentials as the worldwide champion of conservative values. 

Aside from the Internet law signed Monday, the Russian leader signed a new profanity law that levies heavy fines for using four common vulgarities in the arts, including literature, movies, plays and television. 

Speaking in St. Petersburg in late April, Mr. Putin voiced his suspicions about the Internet, even while noting that it had become a public market of huge proportions. 

“You know that it all began initially, when the Internet first appeared, as a special C.I.A. project,” he said in remarks broadcast live nationally, before adding that “special services are still at the center of things.” He specifically thanked Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor granted asylum in Russia, for revealing to the world how efficient the N.S.A. was at collecting information.

So this is the place that Edward Snowden ran to after fleeing America because he was morally outraged by the NSA spying.

A place that not only spies on EVERYONE coming across their borders, but also makes bloggers register their name with the government, and censors their websites.

Kind of like jumping out of the red, white and blue frying pan and into freaking Russia!

Hillary Clinton speaks out about Edward Snowden.

Courtesy of the National Journal:  

Speaking at the University of Connecticut on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton made a restrained but nonetheless damning attack against Edward Snowden. 

"People were desperate to avoid another attack, and I saw enough intelligence as a senator from New York, and then certainly as secretary [of State], that this is a constant—there are people right this minute trying to figure out how to do harm to Americans and to other innocent people," Clinton said. "So it was a debate that needs to happen, so that we make sure that we're not infringing on Americans' privacy, which is a valued, cherished personal belief that we have. But we also had to figure out how to get the right amount of security." 

As for Snowden's role in exposing the NSA programs, Clinton insinuated that she found his motives suspicious. 

"When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled because we have all these protections for whistle-blowers. If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been," she said. "But it struck me as—I just have to be honest with you—as sort of odd that he would flee to China, because Hong Kong is controlled by China, and that he would then go to Russia—two countries with which we have very difficult cyberrelationships, to put it mildly." 

Clinton stressed the strangeness of Snowden's decision to flee to countries that have perpetrated cyberattacks against the U.S. She noted that when State Department officials would travel to Russia or China on diplomatic business, they would leave their cell phones aboard the plane with their batteries taken out. "It's not like the only government in the world doing anything is the United States," she said. 

"I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally—drained, gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and the like. So I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken refuge in Russia, under Putin's authority." 

With sarcasm creeping into her voice, Clinton implied that Snowden acted all too friendly toward Vladimir Putin, whose country has been harboring Snowden since last August. 

"And then he calls in to a Putin talk show and says, 'President Putin, do you spy on people?' And President Putin says, 'Well, from one intelligence professional to another, of course not.' 'Oh, thank you so much!' I mean really. I don't know, I have a hard time following it."

I'm going to leave Hillary's statements here for you to discuss, without adding any of my own opinion.

Besides by now I think most of you know where I am on the Edward Snowden situation.

Edward Snowden regrets participating in staged Q and A with Putin. Gee, ya think?

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

NSA leaker Edward Snowden instantly regretted asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a softball question on live television about the Kremlin’s mass surveillance effort, two sources close to the leaker tell The Daily Beast. 

“It certainly didn’t go as he would’ve hoped,” one of these sources said. “I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that he made an error in judgment.” “He basically viewed the question as his first foray into criticizing Russia. 

He was genuinely surprised that in reasonable corridors it was seen as the opposite,” added Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who serves as one of Snowden’s closest advisers. According to Wizner and others, Snowden hadn’t realized how much last week’s Q&A—with Putin blithely assuring Snowden that Moscow had no such eavesdropping programs—would appear to be a Kremlin propaganda victory to Western eyes. 

Snowden’s camp wouldn’t get into the specifics of how his question made it onto the live broadcast on Russian state television. But it is worth noting that Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s Russian lawyer, has deep Kremlin ties and sits on the board that oversees the FSB, the successor to the KGB. Getting on state television wouldn’t have been much trouble. 

The article goes on to quote Snowden's camp as claiming that Snowden genuinely thought he could catch Putin in a lie, and that he would prove to the western world that he was not a Russian stooge.

Now color me as a skeptic here, but this reads like damage control to me.

As the article pointed out, Snowden's Russian lawyer has deep ties to the KGB, just like Putin, and appears to me as more of a handler than a lawyer.

So if a former KGB operative is controlling the message read by an American defector, what in the world would make somebody supposedly as smart as Edward Snowden believe that he would be allowed to ask a question live and on the air that Putin had not been prepared to answer?

Which clearly he was: 

Putin’s answer was predictable.  

“Of course, we know that criminals and terrorists use technology for their criminal acts and of course the special services have to use technical means to respond to their crimes,” he said. “But we don’t have a mass-scale, uncontrollable efforts like that…Our special services…are strictly controlled by the society and the law, and are regulated by the law.”

As the Daily Beast article points out that is a blatant, and obvious lie. 

Yet it was left to hang there, unchallenged by Snowden, or anybody else involved in the interview session.

That meant that to Russian and American ears, Edward Snowden, the man who revealed duplicity with the NSA here at home, had just provided Putin with a get out of domestic spying free card.

There is no goddamn way that he could not have seen that coming!

So I call bullshit on the Q and A, and I call bullshit on this attempt to cover his ass.

No longer up for discussion, Edward Snowden is a traitor.

The other day Vladimir Putin did a televised propaganda outreach.

During the carefully manipulated session, there was a "surprise" caller.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

NSA leaker Edward Snowden put a direct question to Vladimir Putin during a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, asking Russia's president about Moscow's use of mass surveillance on its citizens. 

Speaking via a video link, Snowden asked: "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance, so I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" 

Putin replied by stating Russia did not carry out mass surveillance on its population, and that its intelligence operations were strictly regulated by court orders. 

"Mr Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for the intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language," Putin said, according to translation by state-run broadcaster Russia Today. 

"Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law so...you have to get a court permission to stalk that particular person. 

"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by society and the law and regulated by the law." 

He added: "Of course, we know that terrorists and criminals use technology so we have to use means to respond to these, but we don't have uncontrollable efforts like [in America]." 

One of the call-in program's hosts introduced Snowden's video message by saying: "We've got really sensational, really outrageous video message from a person who revolutionized the world by leaking information about American secret services."

So the Snowden has now completely transformed himself from a "reluctant whistle blower who felt compelled to reveal the NSA's data gathering techniques" to a propaganda tool for an ex-KGB agent turned Russian tyrant, who identified him directly "a former agent, a spy."

There is nothing to take from this except for the fact that Snowden did indeed provide Russia with the material that he took from is time working for Booz Allen Hamilton, and that now he is functioning as fully cooperating operative of the Putin administration.

One who is now allowing Putin to shrug off charges of being a despot by using the NSA scandal to provide cover for his actions, and to paint him as more sympathetic character, while blaming the Ukrainian situation on interference from President Obama. A tactic that is helped in no small way by John McCain and conservatives in this country. 

Earlier there had been speculation that the information Snowden provided Putin might have been what enabled Putin to slip Russian forces into Crimea undetected, and I think this is just one more piece of evidence which supports that contention.

I think for those who are still supporters of Edward Snowden there are some very serious, and very troubling questions you have to ask yourself.

Number one is was Snowden a Russian spy all along?

Russia invades Crimea right under America's nose as if the NSA had suddenly lost the ability to track their actions. What changed?

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

U.S. officials think that Russia may have recently obtained the ability to evade U.S. eavesdropping equipment while commandeering Crimea and amassing troops near Ukraine's border. 

The revelation reportedly has the White House "very nervous," especially because it's unclear how the Kremlin hid its plans from the National Security Agency's snooping on digital and electronic communications. 

One interesting parallel is the presence of Edward Snowden in Russia, where he has been living since flying to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. 

In July, primary Snowden source Glenn Greenwald told The Associated Press that Snowden "is in possession of literally thousands of documents that contain very specific blueprints that would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it." 

So it's either a coincidence that the Russians figured out how to evade NSA surveillance while hosting the NSA-trained hacker, or else it implies that Snowden may have provided the Russians with access to NSA files. 

A coincidence? Yeah, right.

Of course the claim is that Snowden gave all of his purloined data to the journalists and kept nothing for himself, however the timeline, and veracity, of that occurrence is still in doubt.

There were many who suggested that President Obama's public statement that he will work with Congress to reign in the NSA's ability to collect data as proof that Snowden is a hero and that the country owes him their gratitude.

However we still do not dully understand exactly WHAT Snowden took, and WHOSE hands it ended up in. (Remember before landing in Russia Snowden stopped in Hong Kong for a month, and at that time definitely had the data on him. And we have already possibly seen the fallout from that.)

Personally I find it hard to believe that Putin would offer Snowden sanctuary in Russia if he did not have something substantial with which to bargain. And the ability to evade American eavesdropping equipment, allowing you to invade countries under the radar, would be a rather large bargaining chip.

One of the questions remaining is, if our intelligence gathering technology is now in the hands of the Russians, how vulnerable are we?

Chinese cyber attacks and how Edward Snowden became their not so secret weapon.

Courtesy of the New York Post:  

China’s military hackers are back, more brazen than ever. You can thank Edward Snowden. 

A year ago, the Internet security firm Mandiant went public with what cyber-war watchers had known for some time: Unit 61398, a secret branch of the Chinese military, had been behind more than 1,000 cyber attacks on Western targets since 2006. Employing thousands of trained cyber warriors housed in a 12-story building in Shanghai — and backed by an enormous militia of part-time hackers — Unit 61398 had been waging a constant war on foreign banks, infrastructure, defense firms and government agencies, including one spectacular 2007 raid on the Pentagon that shut down 1,500 different Defense Department networks. 

The resulting international sensation forced a reluctant President Obama to confront the Chinese premier on the issue. Beijing issued its usual furious denial — but the attacks stopped and Unit 61398 fell from the headlines. 

But now we know they didn’t stop for long — and the West and the Obama administration are looking as ill-prepared and impotent as ever in dealing with the threat. China’s usual attacks on banks, weapons manufacturers and other juicy targets are now back to almost daily. 

The first big attack came as early as late May, when Chinese hackers raided networks at top US defense firms, swiping information on more than two dozen weapons systems.  

In October, they hit the Federal Electoral Commission, suggesting the People’s Liberation Army is looking at ways to interfere in the US electoral process.

In December, they launched a series of attacks on the foreign ministries of five countries ahead of the G-20 summit, using an infected e-mail attachment that was supposed to provide updates on the Syria crisis. (Not as clever as Unit 61398’s similar 2011 attack, which used an e-mail promising nude photos of then French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni.)  

The latest outrage came Feb. 11, when evidence revealed Chinese cyber warriors had cracked open the Veterans of Foreign Wars computer system — itself not an obvious security threat, but part of what experts believe was a much broader attack on US military personnel records and files, both past and current. 

Most striking is how bold the attacks have grown. The Chinese are apparently so confident we can’t (or won’t) stop them that they’ve gotten sloppy. Examining hacker codes left behind on US military and commercial networks, Internet-security engineers have been finding bits of code identical to Chinese commercial software sold for export by companies with contracts with the People’s Liberation Army.

What has emboldened the Chinese military hackers?

Well that would be Edward Snowden.  

The Snowden defection back in June was a double gift for China’s hackers (as well as for Russian ones — the State Department even issued a warning that any cellphone or laptop brought to the Sochi Olympics would almost certainly be hacked there, and its passwords stolen). 

The data Snowden brought with him to Hong Kong included a wealth of information about how our intelligence agencies fight and trace hackers, as well as on the NSA’s own hacking efforts in China.

Not only has the information that Snowden carried into China given them the blueprint for how our  data gathering system work, but the fact that we have data gathering systems has allowed China, who hacks into American businesses to sell the information to Chinese businesses, to play the moral equivalency game.

If the US does it, how can they point the finger at us?

Here is more from a Newsweek article from November: 

"Snowden couldn't have played better into China's strategy for protecting its cyber activities if he had been doing it on purpose,'' one American intelligence official says. 

Snowden's revelations quickly veered away from what he called the NSA's "domestic surveillance state" to overseas espionage by the United States. After fleeing to Hong Kong, he provided local reporters with NSA documents and told them the United States was hacking major Chinese telecommunications companies, a Beijing university and the corporate owner of the region's most extensive fiber-optic submarine cable network. That information, government officials and industry experts say, is now used by the Chinese to deflect criticisms of their hacking, both in meetings with the administration and at cyber security conferences.

The activities of the two sides, however, are vastly different in scope and intent. The United States engages in widespread electronic espionage, but that classified information cannot legally be handed over to private industry. China is using its surveillance to steal trade secrets, harm international competitors and undermine American businesses.

In Snowden's zeal to be the next Daniel Ellsberg he has instead become perhaps the worst American traitor since Aldrich Ames.

If Snowden had released his information to journalists here in the country, and kept the stolen data within American borders, he could rightfully be called a hero.

But taking such sensitive material out of the country, and reporting on our data gathering process to nations with an adversarial relationship with America, Snowden has not only placed our state secrets in jeopardy, he has also irrevocably damaged out ability to deal with cyber attacks, or hold those who do them accountable.

Despite Statements by Edward Snowden to the contrary evidence suggest that he did indeed steal co-worker's passwords.

Courtesy of USA Today:

A National Security Agency employee resigned from the agency after admitting to federal investigators that he gave former NSA analyst Edward Snowden a digital key that allowed him to gain access to classified materials, the NSA has told Congress. Snowden has previously said he did not steal any passwords. 

The unnamed civilian employee who worked with Snowden resigned last month after the government revoked his security clearance, according to a letter that NSA legislative director Ethan L. Bauman sent this week to the House Judiciary Committee. A military employee and a private contractor also lost their access to NSA data as part of the continuing investigation by the FBI, Bauman said. 

Bauman's memo, dated Feb. 10, provides some of the first details about what authorities said they have learned about how Snowden retrieved so many classified documents before passing them to news organizations. Top U.S. national security officials have acknowledged they do not know many files Snowden took before he fled the U.S. 

Snowden has denied that he stole computer passwords or tricked some co-workers into giving him their passwords. The NSA letter suggested Snowden tricked at least one co-worker and copied the employee's password without his knowledge. The civilian NSA worker told FBI investigators last June that he allowed Snowden to use an encrypted digital key known as a Public Key Infrastructure certificate to gain access to classified information on NSANet, the agency's computer network. The system connects into many of the NSA's classified databanks. The memo said that previously Snowden had been denied access to the network. 

After the co-worker entered his secure PKI password, Snowden "was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information," Bauman told lawmakers. He said the civilian NSA employee was not aware that Snowden intended to reveal any classified information. It was not clear from the memo how much classified information Snowden had collected before using the co-worker's password. 

Last month, Snowden participated in a public question-and-answer session on the "Free Snowden" website. "I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers," he asserted.

I know that many Americans are split when it comes to Edward Snowden, but if he is willing to lie about this it kind of makes one wonder what else he is lying about.

Currently Snowden has received eight nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

However I would contend that, even though the information about NSA spying tactics was beneficial, there is still a lot we do not know about Snowden's activities at the NSA.