@Kat_Missouri who blogs at Beyond Socrates Knee has an interesting post here about the Snowden story with some useful insights and findings.
She is one of those amateur Internet sleuths avidly following the Snowden story -- like me.
In the past, I've found her exasperating because of her anonymity and her law-enforcement like persona. Either she *is* a law-enforcement agent actually thinking and acting like a trained LEO under cover -- or she's a wannabee who watched a lot of detective shows. That's ok, but it can get annoying, either way.
Update: @Kat_Missouri disputes that she does this, and disputes that she is the same person account @AnnWimsatt, also from Missouri, who does delete tweets and says so. Wimsatt swears she is not @Kat_Missouri, and @Kat_Missouri has no comment as to whether she is the same person. I have no idea what to believe here, but I'll leave it at this: these accounts appear to be different people, even though they are interested in a lot of the same topics and tweet about the same things and are both from Missouri.
{In the past, she has had a TERRIBLE practice of deleting tweets -- deleting the process of her work. She deletes them ostensibly because they "no longer serve a purpose" but I believe that to be a TERRIBLE and DISHONEST practice. If you think your tweet trail will betray your real identity, then get out of the business of Tweeting. You are corrupting the environment for open intellectual inquiry when you indulge in bad practices like that. I never delete tweets unless I see a bad typo or broken link, and then I re-tweet the exact same thing over again with corrections.}
For me, this style of "sleuthing" gets especially annoying when somebody puts 30 tweets in your timeline with numerous complicated questions that in fact you've answered in a book that they should just read for the ridiculously low price of $2.99. Less than a latte. It's really, really hard work thinking through, writing, re-writing, correcting, fixing a 250-page book like this for free, and I can only ask people to a) read it and b) hit my tip jar if you appreciate it because it's work.
As it happens, @Kat_Missouri has sent me now offers to send me her real-life name, location and occupation months ago -- she may have forgotten. It's meaningless. I don't know if it's even the truth. And that's not the point. The point isn't for *me* to know something privately. The point is for such Internet sleuths making serious claims about others -- like that they're working for the FSB -- to take the same kind of risks I do when I put up my name, location, and occupation -- which is to suffer endless harassment and intrigues by all kinds of hostile forces, including other Internet sleuths.
Oh, you don't want to do that, and you want to make sure no one associated with your real job ever finds out you are Internet sleuthing so it won't hurt your busines? That's nice. I'm happy for you. That's your right, and I'm not advocating people be *forced* to give up their real identities. What I will point out is that every day you spend lobbing your insights up on to Twitter in 140 characters without any accountability is another day you destroy solidarity with those like me who *do* take the risks of putting themselves out there.
And by doing that, you destroy good will. You enable the work of people like LibertyLynx, willing to make the most outrageous false claims of other Internet researchers (she claimed falsely that I was the notorious Mr. X who has harassed others) -- just out of spite or jealousy -- or perhaps something worse.
Every day that the community of Twitter researchers in this or that obsessive subject (David Brooks explains how knowledge and journalism really seem to work these days) is tainted by those who are anonymous -- and therefore could be hostile powers' intelligence agents and provocateurs, or even our own intelligence agents not operating in good faith - is a day this community is not trustworthy.
Every day that you remain anonymous because you don't want to harm your employment, or don't want to suffer the FSB's threats to you is a day you make it easier for me to suffer those things.
So, to answer this post.
First of all, I've written a book and so I've thought of some but certainly not all of these angles and my opinion is worth it.
I think there's a number of interesting things here, and it's all worth pursuing further, but so far, we don't have a smoking gun of Russian intelligence using his debts or his vanity or his animosity to recruit him.
I don't know what @Kat_Missouri's point is tying his 2007 request and copying scripts to WikiLeaks in 2007, because the WikiLeaks files about Iraq and Afghanistan were from the Pentagon, not the NSA, unless there's something I don't know. Perhaps the wikification of intelligence and military files has muddled this and made it all terribly vulnerable, but we don't know that, do we?
But yes, connection to WikiLeaks before 2012 is definitely something to look for in the life of Edward Snowden.
It's great that she found this stock market angle and played out the scenarios with it that would put Ed in debt or with a big loss, that might make him a recruiting prospect. It's funny Streetwise Professor didn't spot and work this angle and she did, first. Great! But it would also be worth seeing what he does with this same information -- after all, he's a stock market expert and she's not -- unless there's something she hasn't told us.
Even so, if Snowden didn't have to pay rent or taxes, and he had $40,000 in hand, and he's a young 20-something male, spending $20,000 doesn't seem so horrible nor a loss preventing him from buying groceries. It's especially not horrible if he is an arrogant ass who thinks he'll win it back in a few weeks.
Also, Snowden could have been like scores of other ex-pats living abroad turning a buck by all kinds of things like flipping i-phones or selling duty-free cigarettes, and without any qualm of conscience. Perhaps he lived off the numerous free receptions for diplomats in Geneva and didn't worry about grocery money. Perhaps his mom sent his money or maybe he came in for an inheritance from his great aunt -- we don't know. He could also have had money from past stock winnings or business deals. It's shockingly easy for people in this age bracket with the kind of Randian absence of ethics he has to make money from selling their ADHD drugs or anything of the kind. So in and of itself, a stock market loss isn't proof that he now works for the FSB as a contracted agent.
The reason I'm for playing devil's advocate with every theory, including my own, is because we are in this environment as minorities. The overwhelmingly powerful narrative out there now from the Snowdenistas and their admiring media is that there is "no proof" that Snowden worked for the Russians. Therefore, in trying to show the opposite -- which is very possible, as we Russia watchers in particular know -- we have to try to be convincing in our arguments.
One thing that other commentators have said is that Geneva is a bad place to recruit people -- it's very heavily watched by the CIA itself, obviously, so the Russian recruitment effort in the Serpentine Lounge or wherever will be lit up like Yankee Stadium. Therefore, the need to go to another country arises, which is why he may have gone to India. Yet no Russians have turned up in India.
In my book, I work the Russian angle after his arrival *in Russia* to show the various connections and networks that supported him -- which haven't been covered before, around WikiLeaks and the intelligence veterans' association. But ultimately this is only an area to research, not an area where a definitive link to Snowden is established to prove he is "on the payroll". I believe, as does Edward Lucas, that it is fruitless to look for such a smoking gun, because that's not how Russian intelligence works anymore. They work "hands fee" through cut-outs, front groups, agents of influence, friendlies, likeminded, etc. They turn on RT.com, they celebrate hackers, they mingle with hackers, and they wait for nature to go its course.
I'm not opposed to trying to work all the typical angles of what Edward Lucas explains as MICE -- money, ideology, coercion, ego. But they may not work as they used to, before the Internet, and before the wealth of useful idiots we have today.
Lucas Harding isn't the source to be looking at about the altercation with the CIA manager. If you read my book you will be reminded that there are *three* New York Times articles you have to read in a row, all in context, to understand this story, and the CIA's denial AND James Risen's direct interview with Snowden tell a DIFFERENT story, one which I analyze in my book.
I think @Kat_Missouri's find about Snowden getting the virtual machine program in February 14, 2009 is very important IF it shows that he then began copying for eventual leaking purposes. Perhaps it's the best clue yet! It breaks up his own fake narrative -- which is the purpose of her working these various claims of his.
BUT one has to ask: why would someone trying to be a clever spy, why would this "genius," to hear the Forbes' source tell it, be so stupid as to ask for the information about how to make a VM and copy when it will stand out as a red flag on open chat that he can't erase thoroughly because the mods will have copies on their servers? It doesn't make sense. Maybe he was just making the classic arrogant geek's typical mistakes, or a newbie hacker's mistakes, I don't know, but it's worth asking.
Why is it important to find out if he began stealing before April 2012, which is the earliest that US authorities will admit he began stealing (at Dell in Hawaii)? Because that gives him plenty more time to hook up with WikiLeaks, hackers of various types, free software advocates, etc. etc. much as Aaron Swartz and Chelsea Manning did, and that means recruitment is more "doable." The same could be said for either Russian recruitment and/or "management."
So I'm all for running this to ground to the extent possible.
Finally, we have to ask why the Ars Technica links were shut down *today* as they appeared to show members of that community helping Ed Snowden figure out how to get copying and virtual machine tech that he used in his big hack of the NSA.
I've noticed as I researched that other links were shut down even earlier -- the original finding and its summary on soupsoup.net which doesn't even exist anymore, for example.
And that's because:
1) Real law-enforcement doing their jobs properly with all the necessary access to information and professional skills -- unlike amateur Internet sleuths -- have found that this mucking around in all these links and clues by amateurs is muddying the footprints and making it impossible to follow the case. They've asked Ars Technica to shut it down so that they themselves can properly research it, i.e. one of those anonymous people helping Snowden could be WikiLeaks or a Russian spy -- or be innocent -- and in all those cases, the worst possible way of finding the truth would be to have LibertyLynx start heckling them on Twitter and trying to make them talk in such a crude, stupid way -- like some kind of clumsy COINTELPRO operation. Very counterproductive.
2) Ars Technica itself is circling the wagons to protect its own. The geeks protect geeks above all, and the hell with the public or law-enforcement -- they don't feel they should "do their jobs for them." So they have removed it from the public eye -- and LE's eye -- so they can then be forced to get a warrant.
I'm going to vote for door no. 2 on this one.
We don't have anything more on that Swiss banker. Neither the US or Switzerland has confirmed it. On the face of it, it seems awfully risky and stupid to recruit someone by first getting them drunk, then following them and getting them out of trouble if they are arrested -- hoping they don't first crash and kill themselves. Weird. The reason was said to be due to the fact that the US wanted more transparency in banking -- and very likely this was related to the Russian mafia/Russian state as a lot of the cases the DOJ has to pursue are exactly in this area. But it could be about Iran or something else.
Kat_Missouri has a GREAT find in pointing out the "drunken banker" story is very likely lifted from an Alfred Hitchock film -- North by Northwest. We should have all realized this before. But again -- the guy in the movie nearly drives off a cliff! Works better in the movies...
Even so, she then proceeds to make the unsupported claim that Snowden started stealing documents in 2009 when he had his first run-in at work and got the derogatory remark in his file. He may well have begun stealing or cooperating even with foreign intelligence then, but here's the problem: @Kat_Missouri doesn't seem to have ready either a) the CIA's own denial b) Snowden's own denial and alibi. She's only read Harding's bungled version of this.
And while both the CIA and Snowden or Snowden alone could be lying, we're now confronted with the need to show more proof that he stole documents -- as distinct from just hacking into CIA computers for the sake of changing his own personnel form -- to make a point with his superior.
Kat_Missouri probably hasn't read my blog in ages, or she would have noticed this post about more use of tradecraft re: the Rubik's Cube which is followed up by this post asking more questions.
In the end, I'll have to conclude that the Beyond Socrates' Knees account are all very useful and intriguing, but more homework has to be done by this author to make the points claimed. And if we do prove that Ed began copying and keeping to leak files, then we have to find the person he gave them to. That remains elusive.
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