Charming Naïveté

Apparently, there are still people who find this shocking:

So a Rupert Murdoch rag claims that Edward Snowden gave the Russians his whole archive which endangered a bunch of MI6 agents.

Well, duh. Or did anybody really believe that Putin is keeping Snowden in expensive toys and flashy strippers for free?

And here is another funny quote on the subject:

It is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data, or whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.

Of course, it’s cute that people can still be so rosy-cheeked and naive. But at the same time, it’s also kind of scary.

3 thoughts on “Charming Naïveté”

I vaguely remember Snowden saying once how he was trained so well that he won’t reveal in any way real American secrets to Russia, and he probably said something about being trained to withstand torture too.

Believing that is not cute at all. Those people vote.

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Clarissa says:

June 14, 2015 at 14:52

Yes, I know. They vote and they surround us everywhere. And it’s scary to be surrounded by such folks.

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Lots of holes in the Snowden so-called story:

1. Is it true that Russia and China have gained access to Snowden’s top-secret documents? If so, where is the evidence?

Which cache of documents is the UK government talking about? Snowden has said he handed tens of thousands of leaked documents over to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and that he has not had them in his possession since. Have Russia and China managed to access documents held by one of the journalists or their companies?

In addition, if agents had to be moved, why? Which Snowden documents allegedly compromised them to the extent they had to be forcibly removed from post?

5. What about the debatable assertions and at least one totally inaccurate point in the Sunday Times piece?
The Sunday Times says Snowden “fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history”. In fact he fled Hong Kong bound for Latin America, via Moscow and Cuba. The US revoked his passport, providing Russia with an excuse to hold him in transit.

The Sunday Times says it is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data or “whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow”. The latter is not possible if, as Snowden says, he gave all the documents to journalists in Hong Kong in June 2013.
The Sunday Times says it is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data or “whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow”. The latter is not possible if, as Snowden says, he gave all the documents to journalists in Hong Kong in June 2013.

The Sunday Times also reports that “David Miranda, the boyfriend of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, wasseized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 ‘highly-classified’ intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow”.

This is inaccurate. Miranda had in fact been in Berlin seeing the film-maker Laura Poitras, not in Moscow visiting Snowden. It is not a small point.

The claim about Miranda having been in Moscow first appeared in the Daily Mail in September under the headline “An intelligence expert’s devastating verdict: Leaks by Edward Snowden and the Guardian have put British hostages in even greater peril”. It was written by Professor Anthony Glees, the director of the centre for security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, and has never been corrected. Maybe the Sunday Times can do better.

Whenever somebody tells you something you want to hear, then that’s when you especially need to be on guard.

http://www.alternet.org/5-questions-uk-government-after-sunday-times-snowden-take-down

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