The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

NSA and the Ethos of the Geek Elite

Posted on | June 16, 2013 | 59 Comments

Edward Snowden as a 22-year-old übergeek

“I woke this morning with a new name. I had had a vision. A dream vision. A vision righteous and true. . . .
“You’ve felt it, known it, recognized it.
“Now realize it.
“I woke this morning with a new name. That name is Wolfking.
“Wolfking Awesomefox.”
— Edward Snowden (“The TrueHOOHA”), June 12. 2008

Can we trust Edward Snowden? If the National Security Agency could not trust him to keep the secrets he was paid so handsomely to keep, why should we trust his description of what the NSA does? This is a question that troubles Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

I want to know how far I can trust Edward Snowden. He’s supposed to be a technical guru of some sort, but apparently he didn’t understand this. Or, if he did, he didn’t bother clearing it up for either Glenn Greenwald or Bart Gellman, who both went with the “direct access” phrase in their initial stories. If it’s the former, I wonder just how much he actually knows about NSA’s capabilities. If it’s the latter, I wonder about his motivations. …
Snowden has made several other dubious statements, including the suggestion that he could order a wiretap on anyone he wanted, and that he had access to any CIA station. Put this all together, and I think it’s reasonable to ask just how much we can trust what Snowden is saying.

Understand that Kevin Drum is a lefty who very much wants to believe the worst of the American Military-Industrial Complex, and yet he’s honest enough with his readers to admit that key details of Snowden’s story don’t seem to check out as verifiable facts.

My early doubts about Snowden’s reliability have only been exacerbated by revelations over the past few days that expose Snowden as a certain type of punk: He feels no loyalty to anyone or anything, except himself, and yet imagines his narrow selfishness as a heroic quality: “Behold, my courageous commitment to an ideological abstraction that is incomprehensible to inferior mortals!”

Snowden’s capacity for self-dramatizing heroism is evident to anyone who carefully reads the lengthy profiles in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and I continue to insist that the real scandal here is that a clown like this could get security clearance. If I understand the timeline of Snowden’s career correctly, he wrote his bizarre “Wolfking Awesomefox” rant while he was posted in Geneva, Switzerland, as a CIA technician under diplomatic cover.

Great Caesar’s Ghost! We’ve entrusted our national security to creepy little weirdos who have nothing better to do in their spare time than hang out in online forums talking about videogames?

The resemblance between Edward Snowden and any number of misfit psychopaths who come to mind — from Lee Harvey Oswald to Dylan Klebold to Jared Loughner — ought to be obvious enough. Yet our security agencies were so hungry for computer talent that nobody thought, “Hey, maybe we ought to keep an eye out for kooks”? And nobody bothered to make sure these geeks weren’t sneaking out the door with top-secret data on their thumb drives?

He was a teenage aficionado of role-playing video games and Japanese anime cartoons who dropped out of high school and turned his avid interest in computer technology into a career that paid him more than $100,000 a year before he turned 30, living every nerd’s dream with a beautiful girlfriend and a job in the tropical paradise of Hawaii.
For all his success, however, Edward Snowden harbored profound doubts about the world into which his skills had brought him. Snowden worked as a contractor on powerful top-secret information systems that sorted through data for the U.S. government, in what officials describe as a vital program to prevent terrorist attacks, but which Snowden and others say was an unconstitutional intrusion on the privacy of American citizens. . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read. Say what you want about surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, but I just don’t trust this guy.

 

Category: Crime, Culture

Comments

59 Responses to “NSA and the Ethos of the Geek Elite”

  1. Finrod Felagund
    June 16th, 2013 @ 6:53 pm

    Half the Internet as we know it was built by creepy little weirdos who have nothing better to do in their spare time than hang out in online forums talking about videogames.

  2. TC_LeatherPenguin
    June 16th, 2013 @ 6:54 pm

    He’s a “herring,” but I’m not quite sure whether it’s a red one….

  3. robertstacymccain
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:07 pm

    Yeah, I know — starting with Al Gore.

  4. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:19 pm

    I distrust the NSA’s data mining program, but a dweeb who reveals that to the media and then flees to the ChiComs for freedom? Sorry, that is wrong.

  5. Dianna Deeley
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:31 pm

    I’ve wondered how trustworthy he is, as well.

    Still not comfortable with the NSA datamining program, though.

  6. Dianna Deeley
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:32 pm

    Ooooh! Score!

  7. Finrod Felagund
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:35 pm

    Heck, if you still count talking about 1980s-era videogames, I could qualify.

  8. robertstacymccain
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:35 pm

    My point is that “Wolfking Awesomefox” is not the guy who gets to decide whether this stuff stays secret.

  9. Finrod Felagund
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:39 pm

    I distrust both this clown and the NSA, really.

  10. K-Bob
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:43 pm

    I have no idea why people on the right have been hailing this guy as a hero. First thing out of the box he goes to talk to Greenwald? Seriously? Huge red flag right there.

    I’ve been holding up the big yellow caution flag on this one since the day the story broke. If he turns out to be a hero, I’ll send money to his legal defense fund. Right now I want to know if he’s even real.

    As to people being considered “computer geniuses” I urge caution there, as well. 99% of the people I’ve seen hailed by the press as a “computer genius” are the equivalent of some kid who learned how to run a D&D game on a crappy server in their Mom’s basement, or download a botnet program they do not understand and could never write, but can at least follow the simple directions.

  11. Charles
    June 16th, 2013 @ 7:46 pm

    Keep in mind how much classified information Private Manning had access to and was able to leak. The “not wittingly” testimony as to the U.S. intelligence community has proven most truthful.

  12. Wombat_socho
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:02 pm

    Indeed, there’s a big difference between an annoying, destructive script kiddie and a true hacker. Unless you’re a journalist who couldn’t even program in BASIC to save his life.

  13. Bob Belvedere
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:07 pm

    THIS – in spades.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:15 pm

    I have been in a rather unique position in my job since the very late 1980’s: I’ve had one foot in the IT world and one in the Managerial.

    One of my jobs has been to caution the executives and managers to educate themselves more about the tech geeks and who they are. Too often they trust them with too much power. And I’m not even speaking of putting geeks in managerial positions. Too often the lower-tier IT people have access to too much data and system control [sometimes because they need to have it in order to do their jobs properly].

    Non-IT people in positions of authority really need to learn more about this ‘alien race’ and their ‘alien powers’.

    Even someone like me, who is a self-taught semi-geek, could wreck havoc on the systems I have access to and I could very easily steal data.

  15. Dandapani
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:17 pm

    sudo rm -fr /

    cul8r! 😉

  16. Finrod Felagund
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

  17. keyboard jockey
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:36 pm

    If he’s for real, my 2 cents he wants to be Bradley Manning, because he’s seen the attention Manning is getting.

    If he’s not for real see –
    I still want this to be PSYOP.

    For sometime now in the news we always get to hear how unhappy our government is with the Chinese hackers – hacking us unrelentingly. And now one of our own magically drops in their laps. Just sayin, I hope he’s bait, and I hope they swallow it hook line and sinker 🙂

  18. Christopher Blake Carlton
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:37 pm

    I think the NSA and other intel organizations see themselves like SHIELD in the Avengers. In truth, it seems they are closer to this dunce Snowden. God help us.

  19. Dandapani
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:49 pm

    That’ll work also.

  20. JackOkie
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:54 pm

    What difference, at this point, does it make?

  21. Adjoran
    June 16th, 2013 @ 8:56 pm

    I was also skeptical from the beginning, for two main reasons: the leak was to Greenwald, a known liar and anti-American piece of crap, instead of a mainstream journalist with some reputation to uphold, and then Snowden flees to Hong Kong instead of seeking protection under the Whistle-blower Act or Rand Paul’s office. These are not the actions of a credible whistle-blower with America’s best interests at heart.

    The more I learn about the guy, the less I believe what he says.

  22. Adjoran
    June 16th, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

    I remember in the early ’80s the management of a Fortune 500 media company being in awe of their IT department. For problems with the new $multimillion computer system, they called “the programmers,” who came down, looked at the problem, murmured to themselves, and went back to their offices with the blinds always drawn. Sometimes the problem was fixed, sometimes not, but God forbid you should raise questions about “the programmers.” Better to question the Pope’s theological judgment.

    One day I met with the head of Subscriber Relations, which also handled missed paper complaints, etc., for the newspaper. As I was leaving, I noticed his assistant looking at the previous day’s service call records on a computer screen. She was totaling up the numbers for each area of the city on a tape calculator! I asked the department head why the totals didn’t just show on the screen; he told me “the programmers” said it couldn’t be done without redoing the whole system.

    I went straight to the publisher and told him he was paying a bunch of knuckleheads to sit around jerking off all day. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. But two years later we had another expensive new system – and all new “programmers.”

  23. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 16th, 2013 @ 9:08 pm

    Funny how the monks can take over if you give them a chance.

  24. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 16th, 2013 @ 9:11 pm

    And if he is going to make that call, he should be a man and stand up and face the music. If this was truly about “freedom” he could have revealed data to Rand Paul instead of Glenn Greenwald and not fled to Hong Kong. It is not, Snowden is a show boater and a poser (and probably a fabulist liar on some of this stuff).

  25. Secret Agent Man | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    June 16th, 2013 @ 10:11 pm

    […] Stacy McCain lays it out: […]

  26. robertstacymccain
    June 16th, 2013 @ 10:13 pm

    Insofar as guys are savvy enough to managers, is it too much to expect them also to learn a thing or two about the tools they use? Not everyone has to be totally geekified — obviously, I’m not — but you would think that at some point in the past 20 years, managers who aspire to the upper tiers would have learned that knowing a bit about computers would be helpful.

    The problem, as I see it, is that computer specialists have begun to think that their specialized knowledge makes them so superior that no one who does not also have that knowledge can tell them what to do.

  27. robertstacymccain
    June 16th, 2013 @ 10:15 pm

    “he was paying a bunch of knuckleheads to sit around jerking off all day.”

    In their offices with the shades drawn.

  28. robertstacymccain
    June 16th, 2013 @ 10:16 pm

    Hey, I resemble that remark!

  29. SemperRectus
    June 16th, 2013 @ 10:33 pm

    Hmmmm….

    Don’t like the message? Destroy the messenger!

    That is what this article seems like, destroying the messenger. Focus on the message and destroy that! Don’t lower yourself to that of liberals.

  30. Maggie@Maggie's Notebook
    June 16th, 2013 @ 11:04 pm

    I don’t trust Snowden, and I sure don’t trust the establishment on both sides of the aisle who are desperately trying to cover their asses – but one thing we do know is that it’s true, and that it’s worse than even Snowden alleged. I’m waiting for the next brick to drop – what else can he tell us, because so far he cannot have helped al-Qaeda, although Washington is screaming doom because the enemy is now aware. Give me a break. We are naive to think they are daunted by the revelation that we’ve all suspected anyway.

    BTW Stacy, I hope you had a wonderful Father’s Day!

  31. JeffS
    June 16th, 2013 @ 11:17 pm

    Insofar as guys are savvy enough to managers, is it too much to expect
    them also to learn a thing or two about the tools they use?

    Not in my experience … … … and I work for the government. Even the IT managers can be completely ignorant of the technology they supposedly manage. They get there because of seniority or who they know. I have seen this time and again, in and out of IT. This appears to be true even of agencies with people that are supposed to be technically savvy, such as engineers and scientists.

    The problem is that the managers are managing their workload. Theoretically, at least. They want or need those technologies to do their job, but they are more interested in the products than the process, and leave much of the detail work to their underlings. Who may or may not be blowing smoke up management’s ass.

    Indeed, I know of non-IT mid-level managers who exploit this weakness in the managerial hierarchy, but are fairly ignorant of IT themselves, but have subordinates who do. They put up a smoke screen of models, processes, data collection, etc, and present themselves as the High Priest (or Priestess) of the Oracle, to whom all must pray and sacrifice in order to Get The Job Done. They become “indispensable”, and start controlling the mission because they give the answers the bosses want to hear. When, in fact, they are pulling numbers out of their ass.

    And I work no where near the intelligence community. I had to learn the basics of information technology in order to keep IT honest, and to prevent the non-IT people from running amok in where I work.

    So it ain’t just computer specialists, but anyone who can run software to control a process.

    Scary, huh?

  32. Finrod Felagund
    June 17th, 2013 @ 12:51 am

    A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Many managers get to this level and end up thinking that all of this computer stuff is trivial and that their people should be able to do anything in an afternoon on their whim.

  33. Dirt McGirt
    June 17th, 2013 @ 1:23 am

    Correct – there are *so* many better routes he could have taken. That he thought that the Communist Greenwald would be in any way an appropriate ally says enough about him for me.

  34. Adjoran
    June 17th, 2013 @ 1:24 am

    I suppose it was possible they were playing video games. But JSB welcomed blunt talk from those he knew were doing their jobs.

    But to almost everyone in the company, those guys might as well have been alien overlords. They showed up where and when they wanted, did everything on their schedule without regard for company operations, and generally regarded the rest of us as scenery.

    You can’t manage anyone whose job you don’t understand.

  35. Matthew W
    June 17th, 2013 @ 6:57 am

    Back in the day when only professional IT geeks could find free porn on the internet !!!

  36. Quartermaster
    June 17th, 2013 @ 7:30 am

    And there’s something wrong with BASIC?
    I still use BASIC after leaving FORTRAN behind in the late 70s. I was using GWBASIC unil 64 bit OS stooped that. I use True BASIC by the guys that originally wrote Dartmouth BASIC and am able to do some pretty sophisticated jobs with it. It’s far easier to work with than FORTRAN, and far easier to learn than the various versions of C.

  37. Quartermaster
    June 17th, 2013 @ 7:32 am

    The back bone of the innertubez was established by DARPA. I was able to play a bit with the original version when I was a young tech wizard and could afford to try more than I do now as an old codger.
    The creepy geeks made a mess of it, quite frankly.

  38. Bob Belvedere
    June 17th, 2013 @ 8:30 am

    I miss my COBOL and SQL is no fun.

  39. Bob Belvedere
    June 17th, 2013 @ 8:34 am

    Exactly. That’s why I was made a department head because I could.

    I didn’t even want the damn job – I liked leaving work and not thinking about the job – but one day the boss and his second-in-command took me into the second’s car and told me in no uncertain terms that I would accept the job.

  40. Bob Belvedere
    June 17th, 2013 @ 8:34 am

    Memories….

  41. Bob Belvedere
    June 17th, 2013 @ 8:37 am

    I always told the IT guys I managed to apply the Scotty Rule: If it’s going to take two days, tell them four so, if you get it done ‘early’ you look like a miracle worker – but I did it mostly because there are always unforeseen problems that crop up.

  42. Edward Snowden: Paranoid Goofball or America-Hating Douchebag? : The Other McCain
    June 17th, 2013 @ 3:43 pm

    […] trust “Wolfking Awesomefox” […]

  43. Alessandra
    June 17th, 2013 @ 4:56 pm

    Guardian Q&A with him today was most interesting!

  44. Wombat_socho
    June 17th, 2013 @ 5:44 pm

    I picked BASIC because I don’t think there’s any easier language to code in.

  45. Wombat_socho
    June 17th, 2013 @ 5:45 pm

    Because they were the ones creating it. 🙂

  46. Quartermaster
    June 17th, 2013 @ 9:53 pm

    COBOL was a good bidness language. I find it a bit strange it has declined as much as it has.

    And, NO, SQL is no fun. I think I’d rather have an all expenses paid vacation to GITMO than to deal with SQL. Fortunately, I don’t have to mess with it.

  47. Quartermaster
    June 17th, 2013 @ 9:56 pm

    There are some, but they aren’t nearly as common. FORTH and LISP were pretty good for their limited market. BASIC, OTOH, is a very good general purpose language and fairly easy to use. FORTRAN is fairly easy as well, but I/O is not fun. I/O is where BASIC shines. I can everything in BASIC I ever did with FORTRAN, and do it faster. I turned out a 5000 line program once in less than a week. I tried later to port it FORTRAN, but gave it up as a lost cause.

  48. smitty
    June 17th, 2013 @ 10:05 pm

    SQL is a great language, albeit not Turing complete. Bite your tongue, laddie.

  49. smitty
    June 17th, 2013 @ 10:06 pm

    Visual Basic for Applications lets you beat up Microsoft products, which is always a joy.

  50. smitty
    June 17th, 2013 @ 10:06 pm

    Nothing about BASIC shines. You want shiny, try Python or Ruby.