<story><title>Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vabmit</author><text>&amp;gt; 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to
&amp;gt; flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose
&amp;gt; more information so they know what he has.&lt;p&gt;I think they already know through a post event review of MicroSoft&amp;#x27;s built in auditing logs. My understanding is that Snowden was a low level Windows admin that copied stuff that was either 1) in transit through a Microsoft Sharepoint server 2) anything he could find by roaming around the intranet. The NSA disclosed that he started grabbing documents when he was working as a contractor under Dell. They said he was aggressively exploring the limits of his network access and announced that 1) documents on their intranet would from now on be encrypted 2) that they would drastically reduce the number of system and network (as in Microsoft misuse of the term) administrators.&lt;p&gt;Plus, Wikileaks leaked an AES256 encrypted insurance file that presumably is everything that have from Snowden. Wikileaks has some of the shittiest OPSEC ever (as the Manning events showed). So, we know that they probably used openssl for the encryption and that the STK string is probably a sentence, or a few sentences, from a seminal published book about liberty&amp;#x2F;privacy. The NSA has probably already cracked the insurance file key. So, if they don&amp;#x27;t have the Manning portfolio from audit logs, they probably have it from Wikileaks.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an ex-NSA NWC guy that is putting out a lot of excellent information on this whole thing: 20committee&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/20committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;20committee&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won&amp;#x27;t backfire enough to cause a dent.&lt;p&gt;1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has.&lt;p&gt;2) Another test is to test public opinion. So far we have seen nothing but defensiveness and accusations from  the White House. That bill to de-fund the NSA had some legs but didn&amp;#x27;t get off the ground. If there is no reaction that is a good benchmark, they don&amp;#x27;t have to stop and do anything. They could even push the envelope further and probably not get an real repercussions.&lt;p&gt;3) A warning is a powerful thing. It is message to all other journalists working with NSA sources. &amp;quot;Are you prepared to open your family to harassment, black lists and 9 hour detentions during travel?&amp;quot;. As some mentioned in the comments, even the Mafia has basic engagement rules to leave family members alone. That tells one the level of engagement and the mentality of government actors we are dealing with.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it&amp;#x27;s not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that&amp;#x27;s something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane.&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that the UK law enforcement and Brazil have a bit of a history when it comes to labelling people terrorist wrongly makes it even worse.</text></item><item><author>grey-area</author><text>The salient quote from Greenwald&amp;#x27;s article on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop &amp;quot;the terrorists&amp;quot;, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.&lt;/i&gt; [1]&lt;p&gt;This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;aug&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;david-m...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subsection1h</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;20committee
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
John Schindler is a homophobic and transphobic scumbag who recently joked about Greenwald being trans like Manning.</text></comment>
<story><title>Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vabmit</author><text>&amp;gt; 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to
&amp;gt; flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose
&amp;gt; more information so they know what he has.&lt;p&gt;I think they already know through a post event review of MicroSoft&amp;#x27;s built in auditing logs. My understanding is that Snowden was a low level Windows admin that copied stuff that was either 1) in transit through a Microsoft Sharepoint server 2) anything he could find by roaming around the intranet. The NSA disclosed that he started grabbing documents when he was working as a contractor under Dell. They said he was aggressively exploring the limits of his network access and announced that 1) documents on their intranet would from now on be encrypted 2) that they would drastically reduce the number of system and network (as in Microsoft misuse of the term) administrators.&lt;p&gt;Plus, Wikileaks leaked an AES256 encrypted insurance file that presumably is everything that have from Snowden. Wikileaks has some of the shittiest OPSEC ever (as the Manning events showed). So, we know that they probably used openssl for the encryption and that the STK string is probably a sentence, or a few sentences, from a seminal published book about liberty&amp;#x2F;privacy. The NSA has probably already cracked the insurance file key. So, if they don&amp;#x27;t have the Manning portfolio from audit logs, they probably have it from Wikileaks.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an ex-NSA NWC guy that is putting out a lot of excellent information on this whole thing: 20committee&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/20committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;20committee&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won&amp;#x27;t backfire enough to cause a dent.&lt;p&gt;1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has.&lt;p&gt;2) Another test is to test public opinion. So far we have seen nothing but defensiveness and accusations from  the White House. That bill to de-fund the NSA had some legs but didn&amp;#x27;t get off the ground. If there is no reaction that is a good benchmark, they don&amp;#x27;t have to stop and do anything. They could even push the envelope further and probably not get an real repercussions.&lt;p&gt;3) A warning is a powerful thing. It is message to all other journalists working with NSA sources. &amp;quot;Are you prepared to open your family to harassment, black lists and 9 hour detentions during travel?&amp;quot;. As some mentioned in the comments, even the Mafia has basic engagement rules to leave family members alone. That tells one the level of engagement and the mentality of government actors we are dealing with.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it&amp;#x27;s not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that&amp;#x27;s something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane.&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that the UK law enforcement and Brazil have a bit of a history when it comes to labelling people terrorist wrongly makes it even worse.</text></item><item><author>grey-area</author><text>The salient quote from Greenwald&amp;#x27;s article on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop &amp;quot;the terrorists&amp;quot;, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.&lt;/i&gt; [1]&lt;p&gt;This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;aug&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;david-m...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jasonwatkinspdx</author><text>&amp;gt; 20committee&lt;p&gt;Wow that guy is a dick. Tons of FUD and highly partisan cheerleading, and some pretty sad troll responses (though I&amp;#x27;m sure he gets a lot of troll attention, which does wear down a person&amp;#x27;s reasonableness).&lt;p&gt;I can understand that someone may have a different view on the balance between liberty and security, but his view is hyperbolic, not informative.</text></comment>