Can anyone explain why Snowden is still charged with espionage and not 100% protected by whistleblower protections seeing how the program itself has been deemed to have been highly illegal by the courts and the testimony about its usefulness discredited years ago?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T3CK

I thought the law shields people who expose government criminality…what gives?!

The FAA is up there with the TSA, DHS and the NSA as far as TLAs you should NEVER piss-off.

I got pulled over by DHS while I was driving through North Cascades National Park a few years ago. They weren't even marked trucks. One pulled ahead of me, the second one was right on my rear bumper and the "PULL OVER NOW!" was like the voice of God.

I was going camping and they made me pull every fucking thing out of my Subie. Then they went through it all. They confiscated my two pre-rolls and my pipe ("you're on Federal land"), then they called "backup". I sat on the side of the road at Newhalem for about two hours while they dug through all my stuff like a half-dozen times and kept asking me the same stupid-ass questions ("why are you here", "do you know anyone in this area?", "have you ever been arrested for a crime in the US or abroad?") over and over. People where driving by and looking at me and my wife like we were the whitest ISIS fighters ever.

They gave me the ol' "You're free to go" and drove off.

Fuckers took my dope!!

A bit off topic, but Yeah. How dare Biden remove all those operational safeguards Tiananmen Trump put in place!?....
....what....Trump never tried to protect digital infrastructure and denied Russia ever tried to hack them, contradicting his own DOJ, NSA, and FBI?! D'oh!
Guess it was Trump who "allowed" this for the last 4 years while now it's Republicans blocking any upgrades Biden has tried to implement.

Remember, according to Trump's own DOJ and NSA, Russia hacked into almost every single part of our digital infrastructure, gaining unfettered access nationwide during his administration, and he completely ignored it while kissing Putin's cock lovingly.
Biden has made strengthening our digital security across all infrastructure a priority, and Republicans still want none of it and oppose every single upgrade.

🤦‍♂️ so sad, bobknight33.2.0. Just delusional and sad.

I didn't come up with it. It was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission. If you disagree , your beef is with them.

I'm sorry you are so ill informed. Perhaps out might try being less dismissive and insulting about your ignorance....but likely not.

Apparently it wasn't enough time for him to grasp the seriousness. It was barely enough time to staff the NSA. They briefed him a few times, but the "Osama Bin Laden preparing to attack" report went unread or at best unheeded. Again, this is according to the bipartisan Senate commission set up to determine what actually happened.

Edit: Andy Card, Bush's chief of staff - “The 9/11 Commission had said if there had been a longer transition and there had been cooperation, there might have been a better response, or maybe not even any attack,” the former chief of staff said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/11/former-bush-chief-of-staff-cites-9/11-warns-about-slow-transition.html

The 9/11 Commission Report noted:
"[T]he 36-day delay cut in half the normal transition period. Given that a presidential election in the United States brings wholesale change in personnel, this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees."
The point is that delaying these processes such as obtaining background checks can create significant later delays in putting new officials into place and in some cases obtaining Senate confirmations. Delays in the transference of information with the incoming team can also obstruct the next administration’s ability to carry out existing and new policies.
Perhaps you're unaware, the Bush administration, like others before it, did not have its full national security team on the job until at least six months after it took office.

Plans like watch for groups of middle eastern men who suddenly have funds to move to America, especially those who want to learn to fly, but not take off or land. Plans like track Bin Laden's money and deny people he funds from entering the country. Plans like focus on his communications to learn what his plans were. Plans like take him out before he attacks. There were many plans, I'm sure most were classified but many just common sense.

Really, you never heard the intelligence community makes plans to deal with threats?! They might not have been successful at stopping an attack, but at least could have tried.

Congratulations! Your video, American Cities Under Attack From NSA Software, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 157 Badge!

Your video, American Cities Under Attack From NSA Software, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't trust your video, not even a little bit.

I know you just dismissed opposing evidence earlier up thread, but here's a link to audio recordings and english transcripts the NSA captured and posted from Israeli helicopters in the area at the time. Again, I know you dismiss it, but they certainly were uncertain of what had just been hit/attacked.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/uss-liberty/recordings.shtml

Friendly fire is a fact of war, Canadians on a training mission in Afghanistan where killed by USAF runs despite their training operation and location being registered with the airforce. Fatal screw ups happen in war so it seems much less of a stretch to call this an accident than a deliberate scheme against an ally.

You go ahead and believe some video referring to the 'mockingbird media' and using literally 4-5 words of audio and leaving out all other communications though, I'm sure they left it out for brevity and not because it contradicts their narrative. That's something only the mockingbird media would do...

Or perhaps more briefly, provide a little better evidence before acting like this is as clear cut as our knowledge that the earth is round...

You think the CIA / NSA/deep state isn't in partnership in gathering all that FB/ google and 23 and me data?

You think there isn't deep state money funding these in the beginning?

Bob, I must congratulate you. Your caricature of gullible republicans is spot on.

I guess Obama is going down for being an illegal immigrant from Kenya, right? Hillary for Benghazi, and all federal law enforcement for......having some agents who don't like or respect orange Kanye, just like every Republican senator and representative just months earlier. I guess you're just lucky that wasn't Obama's move, or they would have released all their damming info about Trump and not implicated Clinton last minute, but somehow now that they're investigating Trump they're all deep state democrats (that threw an election to elect Trump).
You cannot be that dumb, the fact you remember to breathe is proof you have too much intelligence to believe such flipflopping theories that require amnesia of yesterday to believe today's new utter bullshit story.

It's hilariously transparent that, according to Trump, the FBI, CIA, and NSA are suddenly republican enemies (so much for being the law and order party, huh?) and Putin is your friend. Reagan would be so proud.

Just joking NSA lol

Slashdot had a post about an upcoming (about 1 year out) phone that can run pretty standard Linux distros. I took interest because I'm very annoyed about how UNconfigurable android is.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2, very old by now, but hardware wise it still works fine. Software wise, it is shit. Android apps are massively bloated compared to when the phone was new, so the "system" partition of the phone is too small to install anything other than like 1-2 apps. From what I can tell, rooting might not help because there are still standard partitioning requirements? I dunno. Anyway, it is a big mess compared to a desktop, where I can partition things any way I want (which works great if you know what you are doing).

Anyway, I don't want to shill for Purism, the company that will be making the phone in the Slashdot article (for one thing, the phone is still a year or so away from final production), but they seem to be doing things right. They DO have some laptops on the market now, which apparently include a relevant feature mentioned in the write-up about their upcoming phone: hardware kill switches for the microphone, camera, and WiFi/Bluetooth.

If you read the ToS (hah! as if) for things like Facebook's app or the phones / OS themselves, you might see that you are "agreeing" to this kind of data collectionspying. If that sets the bar for "good" behavior, imagine what the bad guys (NSA, other agencies, state actors, unscrupulous advertisers, malware producers, etc.) can and will do. That's why any software solution is dubious. That's why electrical tape over your webcam is better than assuming that the record light is trustworthy. That's why a hardware kill switch is a good feature if you're concerned about this (like me).

Here's links to:
an article about the hardware kill switches in Purism's laptops, and
an article about their upcoming phone the Librem 5

I don't own any of their hardware. I don't like paid shills. That being said, I'm interested in what they are doing.

This documentary is about NSA annalist William Binney and his method to look at data. Hind sight connected the dots to 911.
NSA would rather use 911 as a trigger to get money from government for next 15 years than use William Binney Thin Thread program..

Remember Scott Ritter? Arms inspector, made the rounds with Seymour Hersh about a decade ago with "Target Iran", when the Bush administration was in a very bellicose posture vis-a-vis Iran.

Interesting guy, often amongst the first to call out attempts to fabricate a casus belli on Middle Eastern nations.

He had a go at the NSA document supposedly leaked by Leigh Winner. Check it out: Leaked NSA Report Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case

"In many ways, the rush to blame Russia for attempting to undermine American democracy by meddling in our election system has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The damage done to the credibility of our democratic institutions as a result of the politicized congressional proceedings has been incalculable, and by all accounts the worst is yet to come.

The Russians barely had to lift a finger—the wounds derived from this political maelstrom have all been self-inflicted. The fact that the mainstream media have been unable to accurately report on the issue only underscores the depths to which institutions and agencies will fall to deride and destroy that which they detest and abhor, namely President Trump."

what classified info has Trump handed over?
who says?

NSA, CIA, FBI and joint chiefs all said once again had to waste time saying it never happened... liberal media continues making shit up.

man I've never seen liberals so crybaby over losing, and seeing their political correctness being dismantled

Agree on the "SLAMS" title, it still irks me every time I see one.

At this point though, the general consensus is that Russia did have direct involvement in a campaign to influence the US election. The NSA, FBI, and CIA all have confirmed as such. The investigation is is to determine the extent of the influence.