[Cryptography] [cryptography] Cryptome’s searing critique of Snowden Inc.

Kevin W. Wall kevin.w.wall at gmail.com
Sun Feb 14 18:13:04 EST 2016


(Note: Removed some mailing lists that I am not subscribed to.)

On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 5:38 AM, John Young <jya at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> Cryptome's searing critique of Snowden Inc.
>
> http://timshorrock.com/?p=2354

One thing that I'm not quite getting here that perhaps you can
explain. Ms. Natsios made this comment in the partial interview
transcript posted to http://timshorrock.com/?p=2354:

    But these are taxpayer-paid documents belonging in the public
    domain. What authority does he have to open the spigot where he
    is now controlling in a fairly doctrinaire and authoritarian way
    what happens to this trove, this cache?…

I am not disputing the rather dubious handling by Snowden and
others of this all being somewhat self-serving. However, I would question
that these documents (legally speaking) "belong in the public domain"
simply because they were paid for by US taxes and have been
leaked in part. It is a fair question of whether they _should_ be
regarded in this manner, but I am sure that the USG would dispute
that since most of these documents were classified as Secret or
Top Secret and thus never intended for public viewing. It's not
like had we known that these documents existed pre-Snowden disclosure
that we would have had any prayer getting them released via a
FOIA request even if there were prior proof of their existence.
After all, if you believed that, you could make a FOIA request
for the missing pages of the PRISM report and obtain them that
way. Yeah, good luck with that.

-kevin
-- 
Blog: http://off-the-wall-security.blogspot.com/    | Twitter: @KevinWWall
NSA: All your crypto bit are belong to us.


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