All of the comments taking umbrage that the article isn't celebrating Snowden's character are missing the point. While it is entirely possible that he was qualified or even overqualified for the position he had at Booz Allen Hamilton, nothing in his resume suggests that which raises the question who else has access to sensitive data and secrets? The answer could be that Snowden was an exceptional individual and that's how he got to where he was, but it could also be that the government is terrible at hiring and granting security clearance and there are a lot of terrible individuals with access to secrets & sensitive data and Snowden just happened to be a standout.
I don't think Slate is trying to crucify Edward Snowden. I think it was more "If a high school dropout with basic computer skills can win this contract, imagine what a talented hacker with malicious intentions could do", and just happened to attack Snowden a bit too much.
The author is full of stupid snark. Clearly Snowden is an exceptional individual; learning that he used to be a janitor, or whatever, shouldn't cause us to throw away all the evidence we have about him and double-take "they promoted a <i>janitor</i>?".<p>Perhaps the quality of his work matched his obviously high character, regardless of his initial lack of formal credential. This is IT we're talking about - classes are a joke.
So now lack of a degree means you cannot be trusted with sensitive data - wtf?<p>I understand the guy is emphasizing these things to make his point but still, wtf.<p>What about his morals? What about his courage? I would most definitely trust my data to a guy that was and is prepared to go to jail for his beliefs that my data should be treated with respect and within the law.
I expect this from some news sources such as CNN, but not from Slate and definitely not from Farhad Manjoo.<p>Why can't we celebrate him for having the moral character to have done the right thing instead of assault his character.<p>A college dropout that did the right thing by whistleblowing is 1000x better to have in this World than an MIT, Stanford or Harvard graduate who is working at the NSA or CIA being enabling or at least complicit in programs.
I wouldn't be surprised if the #1 criteria for NSA grunt employees is patriotism. If he's prepared to sacrifice everything for his country than he seems to be the perfect candidate to me.
<a href="http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html</a><p>It seems unlikely Snowden was in a high-paid and important position without having demonstrated some kind of aptitude. I have the impression he was highly skilled.
He comes off as a fairly intelligent person in the interview.<p>The tech community should be the most understanding when it comes to overlooked people who kick ass on the job. Too many tech companies today are focusing on university names, this isn't the way it always was.<p>Is being nice to Edward Snowden considered aiding a terrorist? The NSA probably just fired off a warrant for the rest of my communications.
'If Slate trusts Farhad Manjoo with their Op/Ed writing and critical thinking, why should we trust Slate with their journalism?'<p>//insert crappy article<p>I mean, why should we give interviews at all? Obviously someone's resume and a class they didn't complete is all we need to know about them.
Not a big fan of the reasons we are supposedly not supposed to trust Snowden specifically, but the question remains a powerful one in the sense that if you can't ensure that the data and systems you're using for something this powerful can remain secure from the actions of <i>any</i> single person, then you have a huge problem.<p>I've worked at companies where the secrets behind our app signing key are held to a higher standard than being entrusted to the care of any single entity. Even ignoring how you feel about whether the PRISM system is good or bad, shouldn't we expect the NSA to have better security policies, given the huge scope of abuse these systems could allow?
> He was accorded the NSA’s top security clearance, which allowed him to see and to download the agency’s most sensitive documents.<p>Document control works on two dimensions: clearance level and need to know. You need to both have the requisite clearance level and a need to know to be approved for access to a given document. Having a top clearance doesn't mean you get to freely look at whatever you want, although the press and general public seems to think it does.
But...but they're helping us secure our home networks!<p>"The Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) at NSA recently released a new technical guide entitled Best Practices for Securing a Home Network." - <a href="http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml</a>
The very fact that Edward has the integrity to risk his life in the name of public interest means that he's exactly the kind of person the NSA should be trusting with our data. It's probably his combination of integrity and competence that let him get the access he did in the first place.
In my university, we had a computer security program where computer scientists were heavily recruited to work for the DoD for a few years in exchange for a scholarship. One of the students I knew who ended up at the NSA was a standout, but the many others I knew were of average intellect and in many cases were below average computer scientists. These are not the level of people you want involved in mass surveillance programs.<p>What matters most to the NSA is your ability to pass a polygraph - not your engineering skills.
It seems like hiring someone who isn't a tech genius (assuming Snowden isn't one, but it doesn't matter) is exactly what the NSA should want, the less technically advanced their employees, the less likely they are to be aware of the wrongness of what they are doing, especially if they are given simple tools that do all the work for them and mask the technical guts behind a point and click interface that "anyone" can operate.
Please. This is not about can we trust them because someone leaked, any civic-minded person would have done what he did if they had big enough balls. Are we trying to say that out of the thousands of employees the NSA has no one else but this one guy felt there was something wrong with this program?
Obviously slate.com's journalist doesn't understand how most of Silicon Valley works with recruiting these days and those "top companies" contributing to PRISM's dataset.