The Snowden Puzzle

Published at almost the same time as Edward Lucas’s ebook, Catherine A. Fitzpatrick’s full-length (200+pp) study of the Snowden case – Privacy for Thee and Not For Me: The Movement for Invincible Personal Encryption, Radical State Transparency, and the Snowden Hack – is now available on Scribd.

In her author’s preface, Fitzpatrick likens the case to a Rubik’s cube:

Turn the colorful cube one way, and it seems as if Edward, a 29-year-old systems analyst who said he became troubled by secret practices “done in our name”, was only concerned about civil rights… Turned in another direction, and it seemed that his coercive action… was in fact presenting Congress and the courts with an undemocratic fait accompli.

Although the author does not claim to provide a solution to the puzzle, her book analyses its many and various pieces in extensively sourced detail, so that others may reach a conclusion for themselves.

The Snowden Disaster

Edward Lucas’s newly published ebook The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster is available from Amazon as a Kindle Single. It gives a clear and concise all-round survey of the Snowden affair, setting it in the historical context of international espionage. In particular, it analyses the particular characteristics of Snowden’s disclosures, which the author says

are heavily spun and damaging to American and allied interests in a way that goes far beyond the purported goals of promoting a debate about digital security.

The Technorevolutionaries – 2

Links:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/louisemensch/100231784/david-miranda-detention-why-i-believe-the-guardian-has-smeared-britains-security-services/

But you know, why is the New York Times breaking the story that Miranda was transporting stolen intelligence data, stolen by Snowden? Why wouldn’t our fearless truth-seekers at the Guardian let Britain know what David Miranda was really doing?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2398470/STEPHEN-GLOVER-That-airport-arrest-troubles-But-Guardians-murky-waters-love-country-venture.html

If the Guardian is employing at least one reporter driven by revenge to damage this country, hasn’t the time come for the paper to review this connection with Edward Snowden? Hasn’t this whole thing got out of hand?

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/08/the-guardians-computer-smash-up-story-grows-increasingly-bizarre-ridiculous/

As the hours tick away, this whole computer caper is appearing more and more like that time when Morton Downey Jr., with his ratings in decline, staged an assault in which he shaved his own head and drew several badly rendered swastikas on his body with a Sharpie. It’s getting to be just that silly. And it would be equally entertaining to observe if it wasn’t orbiting such a deadly serious topic.

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/08/a-family-of-monkeys-raids-the-banana-trees-and-engages-in-shrieking-battles-with-dogs-.html

I had noted before that Snowden’s entire digital footprint seems to drop off in 2009. You just don’t see him post or do things from then until he posts his PGP key and starts his life as a defector. But in fact there are a few posts on Ars Technica — like once or twice a year in 2010, 2011, 2012.