NSA chief says Snowden leaked up to 200,000 secret documents

[struggle4progress]

By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON
Thu Nov 14, 2013 4:04pm EST

... In a question-and-answer session following a speech to a foreign affairs group in Baltimore on October 31, NSA Director General Keith Alexander was asked by a member of the audience what steps U.S. authorities were taking to stop Snowden from leaking additional information to journalists.

"I wish there was a way to prevent it. Snowden has shared somewhere between 50 (thousand) and 200,000 documents with reporters. These will continue to come out," Alexander said.

Alexander added that the documents were "being put out in a way that does the maximum damage to NSA and our nation," according to a transcript of his talk made available by NSA.

U.S. officials briefed on investigations into Snowden's activities have said privately for months that internal government assessments indicate that the number of classified documents to which Snowden got access as a systems operator at NSA installations ran into the hundreds of thousands ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE9AD19B20131114

[RC]

1. And well it should be causing the maximum damage to the NSA.

All that damage would not be possible if the NSA were operating constitutionally, within the law.

Alexander added that the documents were "being put out in a way that does the maximum damage to NSA and our nation," according to a transcript of his talk made available by NSA.

The Constitution means little to many government agencies. It is the NSA, among others, that is damaging our nation, not Edward Snowden.

[struggle4progress]

2. Could be. Then again, the value of signals intelligence work drops quite rapidly if everybody learns

how much one knows and how much one doesn't know. So mebbe your view -- that the fact, that signals intelligence folk are upset about having vast numbers of documents stolen, proves directly that they were doing something wrong -- really just shows you don't understand what their job is

[RC]

3. It has been quite obvious for some time that the NSA does not understand their own job.

The job is not to spy on American citizens without probable cause. Splitter rooms, wholesale collection of mete data, the collection and storage of phone conversations, whether listen to or not, are all against the law and unconstitutional. No matter what thire captive coure says.
If you really think the NSA is operating within the law, you might want to re-read the Constitution for comprehension.

[struggle4progress]

4. (1) There's no question the Bushistas were violating the law, as a result of which the law

was tightened in some ways and simply modified in others, just as in the case of Nixon's abuses

(2) There does not seem to be credible evidence to date that the NSA is currently engaged in wholesale violation of the current law -- though the legal environment could change if (say) SCOTUS determined that metadata collection must be limited

(3) At present, then, there is a rather different matter that is actually at stake, which is the issue of whether current practices are dangerously over-reaching and potentially harmful to a democratic society

(4) The positive answer to the question in #3, that many want to give, leads to the practical question, namely, exactly how the law ought to be changed: Nixon argued successfully in his time that national security issues are the responsibility of the President, and there is no reason to think that, after years of court packing manipulation by the GOP, the Federal courts, with their current composition, would overturn such an expansive doctrine of Presidential power

If you have good ideas about how to address such problems, I'm quite sure most of us would be very interested to hear them, but we simply cannot win such a fight without very careful attention to facts -- and one of the facts, like it or not, is that my own reading of the Constitution, or your reading of it, simply do not (in the most realistic sense) determine what is, or is not, Constitutional: the Constitution itself ultimately hands that determination to the Supreme Court

Everything here therefore turns on political questions -- that is, to win reforms, one must first win elections and next must immediately turn to organizing effective public pressure for specific changes

[RC]

7. NSA Spying Crushes US Tech Companies in Emerging Markets (“An Industry Phenomenon")

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024036997

[struggle4progress]

9. Could be. But it's a complete change of topic. You had been expressing your concern

about the unconstitutionality of alleged NSA spying on US citizens

[RC]

10. How is this not a result of the NSA corruption?

[bemildred]

5. So he still has no idea what Snowden took beyond "a lot".

And yes, you are quite right, General, it is being leaked in a way to do the most damage, and YOU general created that opportunity waiting to happen.

[Fumesucker]

6. Oh please, we've known all about this stuff since 2006 or 1996 or 1796 or something

[TheKentuckian]

8. Good.