General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Holy. Fucking. Shit. The candle flickers... (NSA) [View all]sofa king
(10,857 posts)We can now safely assume that the Chinese had far more information than Snowden did, seeing as they let him go. If he had something--anything--that they needed he would have been treated as an intelligence asset and never let go.
That suggests that NSA is acting as a foreign intelligence agency in the service of the Chinese, exactly as the Luftwaffe's bad encryption security made them act as a foreign intelligence agency in the service of the Allies. NSA is collecting information on everyone, all the Chinese have to do is get to the information they want, using their own information sources to refine their searches.
That's going to allow them to recruit spies and stay a step ahead of the FBI. It may have already been instrumental in identifying Snowden as a disgruntled contractor and recruiting him.
There is an invisible hand of espionage, and it works like this: when you collect information on your own subjects, your enemies have at least as many uses for the intelligence you generate as you do.