The document titled "ECI Compartments" is interesting:<p><i></i>* It's possible work out the geographic region of certain compartments based on the organizational code attached to it.<p><i></i>* The redactions in the "Control Authority" column are variable size, possibly even proportionate to character length.<p><i></i>* The fact that document was merely classified "confidential" is odd.<p><i></i>* I was able to identify[0][1] all but one item listed in the "Organization" column.<p>The sole item that eluded identification was "S0242". It is listed alone under two compartments. I couldn't find anything on it; one can only surmise it is something within the Signals Intelligence Directorate (probably something boring, despite the mystique).<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Structure" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Struct...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.matthewaid.com/post/58339598875/organizational-structure-of-the-national-security" rel="nofollow">http://www.matthewaid.com/post/58339598875/organizational-st...</a>
“The facts contained in this program constitute a combination of the greatest number of highly sensitive facts related to NSA/CSS’s overall cryptologic mission,” the briefing document states. “Unauthorized disclosure…will cause exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The loss of this information could critically compromise highly sensitive cryptologic U.S. and foreign relationships, multi-year past and future NSA investments, and the ability to exploit foreign adversary cyberspace while protecting U.S. cyberspace.”<p>Maybe they could have not published this one.<p>I'm very much interested in the Snowden Documents and am a strong advocate for civil liberties (look at some of my other posts, and the ones under the handle 'xnull').<p>I also repeatedly explain, on Hacker News, and other places, that there is a global cyber intelligence war and that the Snowden Leaks showed us key insights into what was going on, how it's not 'about terrorism' and a great number of other things.<p>But I'm bewildered by this article. It seems really damaging, and like it doesn't really add very much to the corpus they've already published.<p>Any ideas?<p>Edit: Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden, etc all decide what material to publish and what material not to publish. Greenwald, by his own admission, works with US officials to redact information and to choose which stories make it out of the gate. He's also said that he isn't revealing (paraphrasing) 'the most horrendous material in the Snowden documents, for fear of the fallout'. My question should not be thought of a challenge to revealing Snowden documents as a whole. Contrary to this I think it is of the very highest service. My question is only 'why this document'?
I read the entire article with the hopes that company names would be mentioned. Let's see who took cash to weaken encryption. Let's see who helped the government create back doors. That would have made this article stand out. But alas it contained more of the same things we already knew or assumed was going on.<p>Here's hoping for next time.
The NSA has clearly recruited employees from companies like Google, Facebook, Cisco, etc to compromise and place vulnerabilities that the NSA can exploit. The fact that the NSA has decided that the legal channels to acquire data through warrants and actual investigations no longer applies must be stopped.
It is unfortunate the shadowing did not also go to homework and extra curricular activities. This is an area that is neglected too. If he had sat through a practice, then gone home to read 200 pages and do two hours of homework, his conclusions would be even more dramatic.
Thank God we are clustered with Germany and South Korea in this. I can only imagine the not-giving-a-fuckery if the targets were "China, Iran and Cuba"
Revealing mass surveillance is one thing (great!), but some of these leaks feels like revealing too much and some of whats meant to be protecting us...no??
I wonder what's in the tip of the pyramid, shaded in black. Somethings I like to imagine:<p>- Kennedy was assassinated by CIA<p>- Aliens transferred technology to US government<p>- Former strongman of South Korea was assassinated by CIA<p>- List of other assassinations by CIA<p>- Iraq WMD was made up and knew about it but went ahead with war anyway.<p>etc...