Why were Snowden's revelations so upsetting in 2013 when it was already obvious that Echelon had been listening in on everything for over a decade?
1 2018-07-29 by rockytimber
The U.S. National Security Agency spied on and intercepted the phone calls of Princess Diana right until she died in a Paris car crash with Dodi Fayed in 1997. The NSA currently holds 1,056 pages of classified information about Princess Diana, which has been classified as top secret "because their disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security ... the damage would be caused not by the information about Diana, but because the documents would disclose 'sources and methods' of U.S. intelligence gathering".[58] An official insisted that "the references to Diana in intercepted conversations were 'incidental'," and she was never a 'target' of the NSA eavesdropping.[58]
U.K. agents monitored the conversations of the 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan.[59][60] U.S. agents gathered "detailed biometric information" on the 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon.[61][62] In the early 1990s, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted the communications between the European aerospace company Airbus and the Saudi Arabian national airline. In 1994, Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia after the NSA, acting as a whistleblower, reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract.[63] As a result, the American aerospace company McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) won the multibillion-dollar contract instead of Airbus.[64]
The American defense contractor Raytheon won a US$1.3 billion contract with the Government of Brazil to monitor the Amazon rainforest after the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), acting as a whistleblower, reported that Raytheon's French competitor Thomson-Alcatel had been paying bribes to get the contract.[65]
In order to boost America's position in trade negotiations with the then Japanese Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, in 1995 the CIA eavesdropped on the conversations between Japanese bureaucrats and executives of car manufacturers Toyota and Nissan.
https://mashable.com/2014/06/05/edward-snowden-revelations/#Kgr0UymrNPqQ
What was new in 2013 that wasn't leaked previously? That NSA cracks Google and Yahoo data center links?
36 comments
1 zipperlt 2018-07-29
I was being called paranoid conspiracy nut for pointing out that we are tracked/listened to constantly in my circle of friends. Snowden helped change that.
1 Pete_Castiglione_ 2018-07-29
Gotta love that vindication!
1 zipperlt 2018-07-29
I am still a weird one for pointing out pedo cover ups and dangers of Wifi/5G lol.
1 Pete_Castiglione_ 2018-07-29
The spy that did the AmA here on conspiracy told me to hire a prostitute that will dress up like a robot, when I asked him about Cloning/Life Model Androids that can replace people seamlessly.
1 Dizzy-Dolphin 2018-07-29
Wifi danger?
1 zipperlt 2018-07-29
Wifi danger.
1 Dizzy-Dolphin 2018-07-29
Yeah but what is it, I’ve never heard of it
1 zipperlt 2018-07-29
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf
1 demyrial 2018-07-29
Yeah, and that's because he had documentation. That's the big difference between him and pretty much everyone else.
1 Capt_Irk 2018-07-29
I tried telling people that they were listening to everything way before Snowden came out with full disclosure. They called me a conspiracy theorist.
1 perfect_pickles 2018-07-29
ask them again, do a follow up survey.
1 ogrelin 2018-07-29
Confirmation.
1 rockytimber 2018-07-29
I guess we need new confirmation every year then. Because this had been confirmed many times before. Maybe we just put it out of our mind.
The degree of snooping increases every year, the technologies advance. All the while the media continues to deteriorate and the political situation worsens. Our movements are now being tracked like never before. I guess its time for a bunch of new revelations, but the media would not report it this time.
1 ogrelin 2018-07-29
We tend to forget our history and repeat the same mistakes over and over. I think it’s pretty much human nature.
1 brainstew232 2018-07-29
The layman didn't care to look into relatively obscure court cases and happenings. This was all proven before.
Snowden revelations went mainstream in a big way. That was the difference.
1 TrueNameAmended 2018-07-29
You just highlighted precisely why “Snowden” was a limited hangout psyop. Anyone who was paying attention already knew all this shit. He didn’t “reveal” anything. “Snowden” is likely not even a real person for Christ’s sake.
1 DontTreadOnMe16 2018-07-29
Came here to say exactly this. If anything, all Snowden did was get the public at large to start engaging in self-censorship and paranoia that the state was always listening to them. They essentially turned the entire country into a kind of Panopticon overnight.
Once a CIA trained operative, always a CIA trained operative. “Contractor” my ass.
1 TrueNameAmended 2018-07-29
You are 100% correct. What the “revelations” from “Snowden” accomplished was normalizing the practice. The general public’s mentality shifted from “oh you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist” to “if you have nothing to hide what are you worried about?”
1 perfect_pickles 2018-07-29
it was a nightmare for GCHQ
1 michaelmalak 2018-07-29
Gradual revelation to manufacture consent.
1990s: Echelon international eavesdropping revealed
2007: "NSA room" at AT&T building revealed on PBS. Rest of mass media silent.
2008: Congress retroactively legalizes warrantless wiretapping
2013: Mass media decides to go wall-to-wall with Snowden "revelations". It's legal now, so might as well get the populace to accept it.
1 theawesomethatis 2018-07-29
It was amazing how fast we went from 'yeah that's bullshit nobody is listening in! you need more tinfoil!' to 'duh they're listening to everything'.
For the conspiracys we find out 40 years after the fact were true...
A few more of the current ones should be paid real attention.
1 nickintexas90 2018-07-29
Obviously the Snowden leaks weren’t shocking enough because it seems like the majority of the population got over it quickly or ignored it altogether.
1 SativaGanesh 2018-07-29
For me, what made it an interesting leak was that it revealed that everyone was being surveilled. I think most people can accept that governments and corporations would listen in on important people but it seemed like a serious waste of resources to spy on everyone.
1 rockytimber 2018-07-29
1 SativaGanesh 2018-07-29
I not saying it was an entirely new revelation, but for a lot of people it was the first they were hearing of mass surveillance not just on people of interest but everyone. That was largely due to the massive press it got, I myself missed the things you mention from 07 and 08.
1 rockytimber 2018-07-29
It was intended that you and others would miss it.
1 gustoreddit51 2018-07-29
I know. It's not like there weren't enough clues even if one loosely paid attention to tech news - just one example;
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) - Wired (Mar 2012)
1 IGnuGnat 2018-07-29
Before Snowden, Echelon was common knowledge pretty much only among IT and "conspiracy" followers. The information was out there, and even occasionally in the newspapers but the average person didn't really pick up on it or fully understand it's implications. Snowden at least raised the profile of these issues, so that the average person had a chance to get a behind the scenes glimpse,
1 rockytimber 2018-07-29
The targets complained bitterly. Average American Joe was proud of the deep state/military aptitude, didn't want to think about it being turned on him.
Media was complicit in keeping Americans in the dark
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html
It was huge news at the time. But it was still lying. The NSA was already more than a decade into the practice of wholesale data gathering on US citizens, a practice that it was trying to cover up, and US politicians were helping them to cover it up, as was the media.
Average Joe was effectively complicit in being dupped, but was still being dupped. It was never that technically complicated. The only part technically difficult to comprehend was the scale. Until you look at the size and budget of the NSA.
1 perfect_pickles 2018-07-29
proof on electronic paper.
it blew the lid completely off the GCHQ procedures, along with NSA stuff.
I would say the revelations were worse for the British GCHQ than the NSA.
1 mindboglin 2018-07-29
They created a poster boy for online security and privacy. How many people now use Tor/Tails because of this Snowden character ? Seems a little too good to be true.
1 SimonGallupsBass 2018-07-29
Snowden showed an entirely different scale that Echelon. Echelon was like an 8 track tape built in the 70s. The new programs collect every single data stream for instant recall without a warrant, and more importantly, these tools were managed by a third tier defense contractor with absolutely no oversight.
1 rockytimber 2018-07-29
Best answer so far.
1 Zarathasstra 2018-07-29
They weren’t upsetting. Nobody cares and nothing changed
1 tupac_cares_bot 2018-07-29
Tupac cares, if don't nobody else care.
1 zipperlt 2018-07-29
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf