SNOWDEN, THE NSA, AND THE SURVILLANCE STATE

SNOWDEN, THE NSA, AND THE SURVILLANCE STATE

SOWDEN THE NSA AND THE THE SURVILLANCE STATE

Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed to intimidating. But there is a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I am no longer alone. EDWARD SNOWDEN VANITY FAIR

PART ONE GUINNESS HONG KONG AND THE INTELIGENCE DROP

MAY 24, 2013 Edward Snowden arrived at the MIRA hotel in downtown Hong Kong. In his luggage he carried bags filled with laptops and flash drives. They contained the largest data breach in U.S. history. He was 29.

THE LAMPS AND HEADBOARD SEEN ON THE MIRA S WEBSITE GAVE A CLUE AS TO WHERE SNOWDEN WAS.

After setting up his personal security systems he piled pillows against the door so no one in the hallway could eavesdrop. Then he sat on the bed alone. He had stolen thousands of top-secret documents from the U.S. government and was ready to share them with the press.

SNOWDEN HAD REACHED OUT TO 3 JOURNALISTS TO SHARE HIS STORY. GLEN GREENWALD THE GUARDIAN - ENGLAND LAURA POITRAS DOCUMENTARIAN - GERMANY 2 ACCEPTED, AND 1 DELCINED BARTON GELLMAN THE WASHINGTON POST U.S.A.

GLENN GREENWALD American journalist and lawyer living in Brazil. Writer for the Guardian (UK/USA). Authored a blog (Unclaimed Territory). Now edits The Intercept online news. LAURA POITRAS American documentary film-maker living in Germany. She was nominated for an Oscar. On a Government watch-list. Films featured on the NY Times website. BARTON GELLMAN American journalist for the Washington Post. Won a Pulitzer for his writing on Dick Cheney and the Bush warentless surveillance program.

On Dec. 1, 2012 Greenwald got a cryptic email from an anonymous sender. The sender asked him to get a public encryption key (PEG), which he did not have. Greenwald didn t think it was worth the trouble. Snowden then sent him encryption tutorials, including one on video. Greenwald again, bulked.

He didn t know it then but his work with Snowden would later win him the Pulitzer Prize. Getting him to buy in was a challenge for Snowden.

In late January 2013, Snowden sent an email to LAURA POITRAS. He had read about her on Greenwald s blog Unclaimed Territory. She had an encryption key but he asked her to get a more secure one. She was wary. I don t know if you re legit, crazy, or trying to entrap me. She asked if he had seen the government file on her. He responded no. He replied I m not going to ask you anything. I m just going to tell you things.

Poitras sought the advice of a fellow journalist...

Using encrypted messages as a precaution, she set up a meeting with BARTON GELLMAN at a cafe in NY s West village. Then they moved to another cafe. Poitras shared Snowden s information. The more they spoke, the more they were convinced he was real. In May, 2013 Gellman began getting email s of his own from Snowden.

One of the email s contained a POWERPOINT presentation about a program called PRISIM...

Gellman recognized how explosive the story was. Snowden wanted the Post to publish within 72 hrs. They refused, citing the time needed to authenticate the story and the source...

Snowden then turned back to Poitras, who contacted Greenwald and suggested they work together.

SNOWDEN THEN INVITED THEM TO HONG KONG THEIR EDITORS DEMANDED A CHAPERONE

ON JUNE 1, 2013, GREENWALD AND POITRAS FLEW OUT OF KENNEDY AIRPORT. THEY WERE TO MEET A 61 YEAR OLD REPORTER FROM THE GUARDIAN...

EWEN MacASKILL SENIOR GUARDIAN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT feared their conversations would be bugged so he worked out a code so his editors back in England could know if Snowden was credible. HIS EDITORS WOULD ASK HIM IF THE... WAS GOOD?

THE GUINNESS WAS VERY GOOD.

The revelations have challenged basic assumptions about what is private, ripping open debates, long festering, about safeguarding our nation versus safeguarding the Constitution. They have raised questions about whether we should be able, either collectively or individually, to keep a secret. Because of Snowden, we suddenly live in a very different world. People trust the Internet and their devices much less than they did, because it is understood that those devices can be used not only against individuals but also to control society and politics. Governments, meanwhile, are taking evasive and defensive actions. Hackers and the tech community are looking hard at new ways to ensure secure communications at least for themselves, if not for everyone. We were sleepwalking into abandoning our privacy, and Snowden has woken us up, says David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center,

WHO IS EDWARD SNOWDEN How could a seemingly aimless, geeky kid from the Maryland suburbs find himself in possession of America s most carefully guarded secrets in a Hong Kong hotel room with pillows piled against the door? VANITY FAIR, MAY, 2014

PART TWO verax an introduction to Wolfgang Awsomeness

In the days after Snowden s leaks were published, the President characterized him this way...

Was he right?

Snowden was born June 21, 1983 in North Carolina. When he was 9 the family moved to Crofton, MD. about 14 miles from the NSA. He went to Arundel High School until his Sophomore year when he developed Mono. He missed several months of school and never went back. He enrolled at Community College and earned an advanced certification as a systems engineer.

In 2002 after a bitter divorce he and his mother moved to Ellicott City. He loved to take apart computers and put them back together. He joined the chat room of a technology internet website, where he was clever, arch, and witty, taking the screen name The True HooHa. In 2002 he joined a anime group that hung out around the Fort Meade area. On one photo he wrote... I like Japanese, I like food, I like martial arts, I like ponies, I like guns, I like food, I like girls, I like my girlish figure that attracts girls. I really am a nice guy, though.

Snowden s world changed after the 9-11 attacks. At age 20, he joined the army and went to Fort Benning Georgia in 18X Special Forces unit. He soon grew disillusioned. He felt may recruits were less interested in helping oppressed people, than killing them. He broke both legs in a training accident and later returned to MD.

He soon got a job at the Univ. of Maryland, as a security guard. Eighteen months later, he was hired by the CIA as a computer engineer. He blogged... I don t have a degree of ANY type. In fact I don t even have a high school diploma. That said, I have $0 in debt from student loans, and I make $70K. Following the cold war the CIA cut its staff by 23,000. After 9-11 they were desperate to hire young people who understood the new world of computers. His job was to maintain the computer system. It required a top-secret security clearance.

To celebrate his new job he gave himself a new gamer name on internet websites... WOLFGANG AWESOMEFOX

He was transferred to Geneva and given diplomatic cover. He again grew disillusioned at how the U.S. Gov. does business.

THE FOLLOWING MONTH, SNOWDEN RESIGNED FROM THE CIA. The circumstances remain in dispute. He is believed to have received a derogatory comment in his personnel file from a supervisor who had suspicions he was trying to break into unauthorized computer files. He claims he was given permission to hack the system by his boss to test for flaws.

In 2009 he took a new job with in Tokyo, Japan. He worked at Yokota Air Base where he instructed top officers on how to defend themselves against Chinese hackers.

While there, he designed a highly sophisticated data backup system called EPICSHELTER

EPICSHELTER USED AN ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY TO PLACE A SHIELD AROUND EVERY NSA SITE IN THE WORLD, ENSURING THAT THE NSA WOULD BE ABLE TO RECOVER INFORMATION FROM ANY OF ITS LOATIONS EVEN IF THE SITE WERE COMPLETELY DESTROYED IN THE EVENT OF A WAR OR OTHER CALAMITY.

THE NSA IS ONE OF DELL S MOST IMPORTANT SECRETIVE CLIENTS.

then assigned Snowden to a job as a high level systems administrator (SYSADMIN) at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations center in Oahu, Hawaii. His girlfriend LINDSAY MILLS (from Maryland) accompanied him to his new job.

He worked in what was known as the Tunnel because part of the complex is underground. The base was created to spy on Japan and China. Snowden had 2 jobs. He was there to deal with computer problems and answer staff questions and to troubleshoot computers and software.

The facility was cold and Snowden began wearing a sweatshirt from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It was a clue to his changing attitude His salary ranged from $122,000 to $200,000

Snowden told the European Parliament that while working for DELL he spoke to more than 10 officials of his concerns about overreaching government surveillance. The NSA s deputy director has denied this.

3 months prior to the leak Snowden quit his job with Dell and took a lower paying job with According to the South China Morning Post, he took the job to gain better access to NSA documents in order to leak them. Intelligence officials said he was a system administrator but Snowden said he was an infrastructure analyst charged with discovering new ways to break into internet and telephone traffic worldwide.

THE NSA The NSA lies on 350 acres. It has 35,000 employees, and 18,000 parking spaces. Employees refer to the main building as OPS-2A an 11 story cube of steel and black glass. Budget: $10.5 B.

CONNECTOR ROAD THE NSA These companies get multimillion dollar contracts to do NSA work.

CONNECTOR ROAD THE NSA They are directly tied to the NSA via Connector Road which runs underneath the BW Pkwy. The company made $5.8 B in 2013 with $1.3 B coming from intelligence work.

Snowden s job in Hawaii was to copy millions of files from the NSA s central computers on the mainland onto servers in Hawaii. These stockpiles would be important in the event of a power outage or a cyber attack. In retrospect it is astounding that a single person and an outside contractor at that would be given such power to root through the nation s national intelligence archives VANITY FAIR, 2014

LINDSAY MILLS Lindsay Mills was Snowden s girlfriend who followed him to Hawaii. She was an amateur photographer and dancer who grew up in Laurel and loved to post provocative photos of herself online. She was learning to pole dance.

Shortly after she arrived in Hawaii, she tweeted The universe is telling me something and I'm pretty sure it s saying get out. For those that have forgotten I moved to Hawaii to continue my relationship with E. It has been an emotional rollercoaster since I stepped off the plane. She was taking dance classes and had made friends. She finally got Snowden out of the house to meet them, but until then blogged......he made himself so scarce, people weren t quite sure E existed. At Thanksgiving, 2012 she returned to Maryland for a visit.

WHILE SHE WAS AWAY, SNOWDEN WOULD TYPE HIS FIRST EMAIL TO GUARDIAN REPORTER GLENN GREENWALD.

Glenn Greenwald was living in Brazil. He had moved there to be with his boyfriend DAVID MIRANDA. The two had met in 2002 when Greenwald took a vacation there and met him on the beach. They fell in love. Greenwald was unable to obtain citizenship for him due to the Defense of Marriage Act so he moved to Rio De Janeiro.

In March 2013 Snowden flew to the NSA for training. After 2 weeks he returned to Hawaii and picked up the keys to his new rental home. Mills posted this picture to Instagram and labeled it carpet dancing.

In May, 2013 Snowden began sending documents to BARTON GELLMAN of the WASHINGTON POST. Perhaps I am naive, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents." EDWARD SNOWDEN

SNOWDEN CALLED HIMSELF verax LATIN FOR TRUTH-TELLER

On Friday, May 17, Mills went for a week of sailing with friends. Snowden told her he was going on a business trip and probably would not be home when she returned. He told his bosses at Booz Allen that he needed to take medical leave for his epilepsy. He downloaded the last of his documents on a thumb-drive and then went to the airport.

HE WALKED INTO THE AIRPORT ALONE

HE BELIEVED HE MIGHT NEVER RETURN.

THE END SNOWDEN / THE NSA AND THE SURVEILLANCE STATE