Could you please elaborate on this? I recently had dinner with a friend in intelligence, who was trying to convince me that Snowden was in bed with Russia from the get-go, and that the 90% of the leak had nothing to do with privacy concerns.
I took his opinions with a grain of salt given his background, but also couldn't refute due to being relatively unfamiliar with the Snowden saga.
For a while, I've been in the camp that the Snowden leaks were intentional and that he still works for the US. A rich work from home government contractor, with a smoking hot girlfriend, takes off with secrets and hides in Russia. His hot girlfriend is even allowed to join him.
I think it's more likely the Snowden leaks were to show just how little Americans care. They're using that spy network to track reactions.
Does anyone remember that Bradley Manning went to a meet-up in Boston at some hackerspace? He was hanging out with David House.
It's NOT beyond the range of possibilities that Snowden was (loosely) affiliated with other hackers who were interested in the subject of government surveillance. It's also not beyond the range of possibilities that help was provided to him by a friendly person who Snowden HAD NO IDEA WAS providing that assistance on behalf of a foreign government.
So when Snowden insists that he was acting alone, how does he know? This sort of thing has been done before you know, and the Soviets are particularly skilled at concealing their hand when it would impact the actions of a cultivated asset.
You don't need to dig deeper, it's completely transparent. Everything Putin says is meant for internal consumption in Russia, where nobody (within 99% margin, Putin doesn't care about a minuscule bunch of geeks who only talk to people like them) knows how NSA or CIA works and can not distinguish between CIA operative and NSA technical contractor. So for them Snowden is a CIA spy, and the fact that CIA spy has defected to Russian side is a welcome reference to the olden times, where the cases of such defectors were celebrates and triumphantly displayed as a proof of the superiority of everything Soviet. There's nothing new and deep here - it is a simple lie that is designed to deceive the uninformed and keep them this way so that they would keep supporting Putin who protects them from CIA atrocities. Any authoritarian thug with quarter a brain does that.
I recently had a conversation with someone who works IT for the Air Force. Apparently, it is now the OpSec position that Snowden's story of how he got the data is mostly a lie and he was almost certainly acting as a Russian asset.
Is there any reason Snowden would be in a position to know this? The article doesn't give any evidence, but merely an accusation. Snowden was privy to intelligence info in 2013, but it's been 5 years since then and I imagine that his knowledge would be too dated to know what's going on here.
I know almost no one on HN wants to hear anything bad about Snowden, but Greenwald has stated that Snowden has leaked some information out of self preservation. We can't rule out the fact that Snowden has given information to the Russian government.
Now seriously, I honestly don't know: what would Snowden being in colusion with Russa prior to the affair explain, or explain better?
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