Obama says Snowden’s actions have “done unnecessary damage”

[Wilikon]

President will spend winter holiday in Hawaii reflecting on surveillance policy.



In his final press conference of the year, President Barack Obama told reporters on Friday that despite the fact that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures have accelerated the national debate about national security and civil liberties, he has caused “unnecessary damage.”

“I think that as important and as necessary as this debate has been, it is also important to understand that it has done unnecessary damage to United States' intelligence capabilities and to US diplomacy,” he said. “But I will leave it up to the courts and the attorney general to weigh in publicly on the specifics of Mr. Snowden’s case.”

Obama was responding specifically to comments from last week by the NSA’s incoming number two official, Rick Ledgett, who said that “it’s worth having a conversation about” possible amnesty for Snowden, the former NSA contractor. (At least one tech leader has recommended to Obama that he grant Snowden a full pardon.)

“There's a difference between Ledgett saying something and the president of the United States saying something,” Obama added.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/obama-says-snowdens-actions-have-done-unnecessary-damage/

[player01]

I doubt the damage the Obama cares about has anything to do with international relations, rather it seems he is likely much more obsessed with the way he is perceived in the press, and wanting to appear as regal as possible while "the man of the people" is always hard when you are an elitist snob who hasn't done a day of hard work in his life.

[Wilikon]

I doubt the damage the Obama cares about has anything to do with international relations, rather it seems he is likely much more obsessed with the way he is perceived in the press, and wanting to appear as regal as possible while "the man of the people" is always hard when you are an elitist snob who hasn't done a day of hard work in his life.

He wrote 2 autobiographies. 2. That is hard work 

[beetcoin]

tea pot calling the kettle black (i don't mean that in a racist way btw).. fuck off, obama.

[Wilikon]

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved late Friday to prevent a federal judge in California from ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the Bush administration, telling a court that recent disclosures about National Security Agency spying were not enough to undermine its claim that litigating the case would jeopardize state secrets.

In a set of filings in the two long-running cases in the Northern District of California, the government acknowledged for the first time that the N.S.A. started systematically collecting data about Americans’ emails and phone calls in 2001, alongside its program of wiretapping certain calls without warrants. The government had long argued that disclosure of these and other secrets would put the country at risk if they came out in court.

But the government said that despite recent leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that made public a fuller scope of the surveillance and data collection programs put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks, sensitive secrets remained at risk in any courtroom discussion of their details — like whether the plaintiffs were targets of intelligence collection or whether particular telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon had helped the agency.

“Disclosure of this still-classified information regarding the scope and operational details of N.S.A. intelligence activities implicated by plaintiffs’ allegations could be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.

So, he said, he was continuing to assert the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to seek to block information from being used in court even if that means the case must be dismissed. The Justice Department wants the judge to dismiss the matter without ruling on whether the programs violated the First or Fourth Amendment.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/us/white-house-tries-to-prevent-judge-from-ruling-on-surveillance-efforts.html

[Wilikon]

The National Security Agency essentially bribed an important industry computer and network security firm to put a secret backdoor in their encryption formulas, according to a new report.

In September, a report by The Guardian sourced top-secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden to reveal that the National Security Agency intentionally compromised security standards for a wide range of technology products, with the intention of accessing information from so-called “backdoors” in those systems.

According to the Reuters report, the NSA paid a $10 million contract to RSA Security, described as “one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry,” to intentionally include an NSA-friendly code in a key part of the encryption of one of RSA’s popular security tools. The report was based on “two sources familiar with the contract.



http://www.latinospost.com/articles/32769/20131221/nsa-payed-security-firm-rsa-10-million-to-intentionally-weaken-encryption-report.htm

------------------------------------------------------

Of course Obama will still blame snowden when RSA will go bankrupt.

[NUFCrichard]

Obama really is a dreadful president. He gets caught out lying and spying on his allies, but it isn't that America is at fault, just that Snowden has hurt the country. I think the truth has hurt the country and it is time they take a good long look at themselves, otherwise they could end up being moved aside in future global politics.

[beetcoin]

it doesn't seem like hilary clinton is any better than him. she appears to prefer the status quo, so no voting for her. she'll probably be more effective than obama has been though. that man is the best at running campiagn, and not so great at being president.

[FCTaiChi]

Yes...  Unnecessary damage to the image the voters had about the validity of the system.

[antithetical]

Those people who read this docs of Snowden, probably could calculate the budget of NSA from this:

Security company RSA was paid $10 million to use the flawed Dual_EC_DRBG pseudorandom number generating algorithm as the default algorithm in its BSafe crypto library, according to sources speaking to Reuters.

$10 million

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/report-nsa-paid-rsa-to-make-flawed-crypto-algorithm-the-default/

There is thread on reddit, you can find, there are >100 companies like Cisco, Apple, IBM, Oracle, D-Link, and like this for the whole of hundred who vulnerable of this backdoor.

Probably, every tech-technology around us backdoored by NSA, since 2001.

related thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=379948.msg4082690#msg4082690

[marcus_of_augustus]

Ummm, and the massive "unnecessary damage" wrought by the NSA can be ignored then?

I guess when you are part of the problem only counting one side of the ledger is ok ....

[marcus_of_augustus]

“Disclosure of this still-classified information regarding the scope and operational details of N.S.A. intelligence activities implicated by plaintiffs’ allegations could be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.

This is from the guy who lies under oath to congress ...

.... it is such a wanton subversion of the justice system to aim to have cases dismeissed because they know they will be criminally liable if it ever gets to trial. All the while using the Justice Department to argue "state secrets" bullshit to keep it out of court. There are some govt. lawyers who's souls are going to be rotting in eternal hell for keeping criminal govt actions out of court for so many years now. I hope those lawyers in particular have thier children and children's children are surveilled to their death.

[hilariousandco]

tea pot calling the kettle black (i don't mean that in a racist way btw).. fuck off, obama.

Haha.

it doesn't seem like hilary clinton is any better than him. she appears to prefer the status quo, so no voting for her. she'll probably be more effective than obama has been though. that man is the best at running campiagn, and not so great at being president.

Doesn't matter who wins, they're all the same and won't change shit.

[bryant.coleman]

Is he joking? I thought that it was Obama's men who spied on various world leaders, such as Merkel and the Brazilian president. Snowden just exposed that. So who is the real culprit here?

[Mike Christ]

Is he joking? I thought that it was Obama's men who spied on various world leaders, such as Merkel and the Brazilian president. Snowden just exposed that. So who is the real culprit here?

The people who lend power to this man.

[FCTaiChi]

Is he joking? I thought that it was Obama's men who spied on various world leaders, such as Merkel and the Brazilian president. Snowden just exposed that. So who is the real culprit here?

The people who lend power to this man.

True, but the real power doesn't lie with the voters when we don't have democracy.  As long as people can buy law and political positioning we are far from it.  Then again it will only change when voters do.  A bit of a conundrum, though, as this leads to something akin to victim blaming.

[Mike Christ]

Is he joking? I thought that it was Obama's men who spied on various world leaders, such as Merkel and the Brazilian president. Snowden just exposed that. So who is the real culprit here?

The people who lend power to this man.

True, but the real power doesn't lie with the voters when we don't have democracy.  As long as people can buy law and political positioning we are far from it.  Then again it will only change when voters do.  A bit of a conundrum, though, as this leads to something akin to victim blaming.

Perhaps, but I allude to the core belief system, that even a notion of there being the "right guy" to rule the people is what gives power to the worst of us.  Despite our powers in voting being limited to none, what truly powers the state is the amount of people who acknowledge that the state is just; if one sees evil and condones it, if for no other reason but fear, he who commits evil acts grows in power.  Without this factor, Obama, and any president for that matter, is limited to nothing more than an adviser, and in this case, a poor one.

If one allows their time and energy, whether from their money or their direct labor, to be used in a manner one finds immoral, one cannot be excused from the acts which follow; either one must acknowledge that they willingly support evil, or acknowledge that they are not free to make the decision to stop supporting evil.  Once this distinction is made--which in most people, I believe, it hasn't--then the individual in question regains the power he unknowingly lent and is free to do with it as he chooses, no matter the form of government that is popular at the time.  I'm betting my money on that power being directed away from the power structure, not toward.

[hilariousandco]

Every year Channel 4 do a "alternative" Christmas message to the Queen's one. This year it was Snowden: http://www.channel4.com/news/edward-snowden-nsa-gchq-whistleblower-surveillance-spying

Was a little disappointed in it really. Just the usual our governments are spying on us blah blah.

[User_513]

I agree with Obama. I mean really, look at all those innocent people that Snowden has killed and maimed with drones. Look at all the people who've lost significant value in their investments because of all those taxes that Snowden signed into law. Look at all the people who are going to have to pay far more for their health care while receiving a much lesser degree of care because of 'Snowden-care'.

Oh, wait... Obama did those things which have caused unnecessary damage to innocent people, not Edward Snowden. I guess we all know who the real dick is, don't we?

[bryant.coleman]

Every year Channel 4 do a "alternative" Christmas message to the Queen's one. This year it was Snowden: http://www.channel4.com/news/edward-snowden-nsa-gchq-whistleblower-surveillance-spying

Was a little disappointed in it really. Just the usual our governments are spying on us blah blah.

Still it was better than the one last year, which was delivered by  Adam Hills. The one I found the most interesting was that by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008.