Who is the puppetmaster of Edward Snowden? [analyse]

[Diglytron]

Hey TWC,

I have been wondering about this quite a lot lately. I highly doubt Snowden acted alone, as a individual. He certainly has received help from inside the NSA (thats a fact, he used paswords of his collegues to login and download information. (source in Dutch: http://nos.nl/artikel/572335-collega...n-snowden.html)

Important people in the NSA reveals who are exposed already:

1: Edward Snowden



Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American computer specialist, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who disclosed classified NSA documents to several media outlets, initiating the NSA leaks, which reveal operational details of a global surveillance apparatus operated by the United States working with its Five Eyes partners, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and intimately connected with most Western countries' security agencies.

Snowden's release of classified material was called the most significant leak in US history by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. A series of exposés beginning in June 2013 revealed Internet surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora, as well as the interception of US and European telephone metadata. The reports were based on documents Snowden leaked to The Guardian and The Washington Post while employed by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. By November 2013, six months after the disclosures began, the Guardian had published one percent of the documents, with "the worst yet to come". Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Function: Formal NSA employee now professional whistleblower
Doubts by me: He seems to calm. Although he never had a media training, he is talking very calm and clear. To clear for me. What are his motives, who is supporting him and who are his mighty ''friends''?
What are his motives: motive behind leaks was to expose ‘surveillance state’ according to himself in an interview with Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...459_story.html

2: Glenn Greenwald



Glenn Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, political commentator, lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. He was a columnist for Guardian US from August 2012 to October 2013. He was a columnist for Salon.com from 2007 to 2012, and an occasional contributor to The Guardian. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator. At Salon he contributed as a columnist and blogger, focusing on political and legal topics. He has also contributed to other newspapers and political news magazines, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The American Conservative, The National Interest, and In These Times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald

Function: Guardian journalist and writer based in Brazil who helped publishing the information Snowden revealed.
Doubts by me: Greenwald is very arrogant, not open for critics and doesn't play down his own work.
What are his motives: He doesn't trust anything governments say he said himself in an interview. Further he is very active in privacy and social rights campaign.

Who has profit from the reveals?

Secondly I also wonder who is profiting from this? Snowden is currently only revealing information from the NSA and from European secret agencies who are helping the NSA. Those ''14 eyes are countries have contracts with the NSA about sharing information of citizens, secret agencies and terrorist suspects. Still the exact purpose of the 14-eyes group isn't clear. The New York Times only says that the nations comprising the 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes groups have formal arrangements with NSA, which is something that also makes a country a traditional 3rd party partner.

According to Snowden-documents, about 30 countries have this status, but so far only the names of Germany, France, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and Poland were published. Some other sources say that Norway, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, South-Korea, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa are 3rd party partners too.

If we compare this to the 14-Eyes, we see that only France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Belgium and probably Spain are known 3rd party partners. Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands are not, but it's assumed they had or have less formal arrangements for exchanging SIGINT and cryptologic information with NSA. This also applies to Finland and Taiwan, and therefore these countries are sometimes called 4th party partners.

It seems there are roughly three possibilities:

A. All countries of the 14-Eyes (and subsequently those of the 9-Eyes) are actually 3rd party partners, because of having formal arrangements with NSA. Which means Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands must have acquired that position in recent years. Grouping them in two 'Eyes' would only make sense if that's for some specific initiatives.


B. Countries belonging to the 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes have a more close relationship with NSA and are therefore somewhere in between the 2nd party and the 3rd party nations. This is what both papers suggest, but it seems not very likely that relationships like these allow that much of (formal) refinement.


C. The 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes are groups created for specific goals and consist of the Five Eyes with some additional 3rd and 4th party nations, depending on whether their participation is needed for achieving those goals.

Sources: http://electrospaces.blogspot.nl/201...e.html#14-eyes

So its also highly likely Snowden, or the people who used him as a puppet have people inside those ''14 eyes'' countries aswell. Now the obvious question to ask next is: Who are profiting from the Snowden reveals? And which strong group inside the NSA let him do his revealings?

Source 1

According to Snowden, he didn’t reveal the surveillance information during the Bush administration because he believed the election of President Obama would see an end to the programs. But the fallacy in this claim is that the programs were revealed to the public in 2005 and thereafter Congress wrote legislation that made them legal.


According to him, he was disappointed when the newly elected President chose to maintain the programs, but he waited throughout the entire first 4 years of the Presidency, sat silently as Congress expanded the Patriot Act and NDAA and did nothing. In fact, Snowden chose to expose the surveillance programs only after the President called on Congress to engage in debate about refining and ultimately repealing the very powers Snowden is complaining about?


It was common knowledge that Senator Mark Udall of Colorado and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had complained about the scope of government surveillance. In 2011, Senator Udall had gone so far as to say,

“The intelligence community can target individuals who have no connection to terrorist organizations... They can collect business records on law-abiding Americans.”

Source: http://thepoliticalpragmatic.blogspo...petmaster.html

To be updated.

[Condottiere 40K]

[Mike92574]

You used Wikipedia as a source in this analysis. All your arguments are therefore invalid

[Diglytron]

You used Wikipedia as a source in this analysis. All your arguments are therefore invalid

Well Mike I used Wikipedia to put some small information about Greenwald and Snowden, it isn't exactly a main source of my analyse. And I do not tend to agree, Wikipedia is quite a decent source to use for this small amounts of basic information. I'le be updating more later, basically so it will form an informative article to which I can link on Reddit

[conon394]

He certainly has received help from inside the NSA (thats a fact, he used paswords of his collegues to login and download information.

Maybe maybe not. Unless somebody else actually says that - and if its only his claim I would not say that is the only option. People are lazy and its relativity easy to get their passwords, or cards etc. Most people have too many and write them down, and also fail to lock thier doors so it not all that hard to step in to a cubical or office and look around. Also it just not all that to watch them. for example at the self check out at the Safeway where I used to live the monitor had to key in a code at the consumer station for buying alcohol or cigarettes(that is right in front of me) even if it was not printed on the screen it was easy to memorize the code. I'm over 40 so I don't care but I bet I could have sold it a lot college kids only need to loiter around and wait for the monitor to get tied up with some old lady who was having issues on a busy day. would you say they inside help or just a bad system that was easy to manipulate if you are already inside.

Similarly I also once did an experiment. My wife was on maternity leave and we worked in the same secure building with card access on every floor but the first which had 2 security guys to check you in and supposedly look at your badge. Thing is my wife had all floor access and I only had one floor access. but for 3 months all I did wave may wife's card with my thumb over the picture and security never blinked or actually asked to look at my card in person because I was a known employee.

Now Maybe the CIA or NSA runs a tighter ship but I suspect the same applies.

[Pielstick]

Agree with Conon, IT security isn't taken as seriously as it should.

At my work we have a nine letter password generated for our login every 90 days. Most people write it down somewhere, usually on their notepad which then goes in their pocket. I've even known one guy (a senior officer) to write his password down on a whiteboard in the engineers' office on my ship. Lots of guys also get distracted by something or someone when the are using a computer, get up and walk away, leaving themselves logged on without locking the station. This is usually my cue to begin some computer based shenanigans.

About nine years ago I was in Singapore at Sembawang Naval Base. It was the 4th July (my birthday) and my friends and I went ashore for the evening. The Americans were having a big party at the Terror Club and there was lots of security. On the way back to the ship I realised I had left my military ID card on board. I proceeded to get through three Singapore Navy and two USMC armed checkpoints flashing a South Tyneside College Student Card.

Quite scary really.

[Gaidin]

Agree with Conon, IT security isn't taken as seriously as it should.

At my work we have a nine letter password generated for our login every 90 days. Most people write it down somewhere, usually on their notepad which then goes in their pocket. I've even known one guy (a senior officer) to write his password down on a whiteboard in the engineers' office on my ship. Lots of guys also get distracted by something or someone when the are using a computer, get up and walk away, leaving themselves logged on without locking the station. This is usually my cue to begin some computer based shenanigans.

About nine years ago I was in Singapore at Sembawang Naval Base. It was the 4th July (my birthday) and my friends and I went ashore for the evening. The Americans were having a big party at the Terror Club and there was lots of security. On the way back to the ship I realised I had left my military ID card on board. I proceeded to get through three Singapore Navy and two USMC armed checkpoints flashing a South Tyneside College Student Card.

Quite scary really.

That's because all the IT security you described in that post isn't actually IT security persay. People do IT security perfectly fine after a fashion, when it's actually IT. That's the security that IT people are trained. They're merely told to remember to lock their station instead of having it drilled into them over, say, that week of whatever training they did at the same damn place at the same damn desk that thus made locking the station irrelevant. What you just described amounts to people skills and habits. If you really want them to get that into their skulls, you've gotta stop calling it IT security and actually set aside a week and drill those habits into them so it becomes a legitimate part of their routine.

[Roma_Victrix]

How exactly would Edward Snowden be following a "puppetmaster" in this scenario? Exactly what benefits is Snowden reaping from all this? Why would he risk his neck and face banishment from the U.S. (or worse, imprisonment like Bradley Manning) just to be the stooge or fall guy for someone else? No offense, but that's pretty stupid. Unless of course he was getting paid to do all this, which he's not (as far as we know). He carried a serious risk of being captured, so all the money in the world wouldn't matter if you're rotting in Guantanamo.

The OP thus lacks common sense, as do most conspiracy theories. The webcam spying conspiracy theory, however, proved to be true.

[The Bold Burgundian]

It's Sweden. The Lion of the North is RISING AGAIN!

[Denny Crane!]

All of this "eyes" business makes it sound very tin foil hatty.

[YukonTrooper]

The "Eyes" business is lexicon taken straight out of NSA literature. No tinfoil hats needed. Some megalomaniac 4-star generals probably came up with that vocabulary over a bottle of whisky on the shores of the Potomac.

[Simon Cashmere]

How about this, Snowden was always an agent of the SVR or an informant of the SVR (successor to KGB), and him going to Hong Kong first and then splitting to Russia just in the nick o time was all contrived theater to give plausible deniability that there was any connection to Russia. Would China and Russia collaborate to get in a sucker punch on the Great Satan? Absolutely. Are the SVR that smart? Yes sir, smarter than that even.