What did Edward Snowden leak that James Bamford didn't years earlier?
If a newspaper reporter claims to have a stash of secret documents and does not disclose them, it's a dangerous ruse, and obviously some agents fell for it and gave their lives.
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In December 2013, The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said: "We have published I think 26 documents so far out of the 58,000 we've seen.
Did Edward Snowden really disclose anything about the NSA that say James Bamford didn't already as early as The Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets years before the Snowden revelations?
The naming of "Alaska Judiciary Snowden Administrative Building" at 820 W 4th Ave, Anchorage, AK 99501 is a strong indicator of favoritism and official support for Snowden from the otherwise extremely hostile Juneau political Establishment.
The surveillance intelligence itself is highly classified — we the people know good and well "they" are spying on us and they possess Too Much Information on us which they do not Need To Know.
But the existence of the surveillance networks — hostile as well as purportedly friendly — is scarcely a secret. It's just that Snowden presented the existence of the universal UK-USA and "Western" intelligence networks in a poor light which was felt by them to be damaging to their careers and reputations and by Putin to be beneficial to Russia's government.
Given Snowden's role as an outside general computer security consultant, presumably assisting to secure login portals to government sites without any inside access, any documents he would have had access to, including the ones he allegedly leaked, were very probably unclassified and already well-circulated among most city police departments without any particular need to know, for use with the usual parallel construction to obtain false warrants.
Snowden's opinions were damaging perhaps to the reputations and careers of city and state beat cops insisting on unfettered access to universal multinational military surveillance intelligence, but other than that, I don't sign NDA's for part time temporary gigs, and I don't know fertilizer about a hill of beans why NSA and the whole UK-USA FVEY "Five Eyes" alliance has to sneak and peek in our bedrooms, bathrooms and cell phones, gossip about us and trash-talk us on top secret encrypted channels all the time.
Who are the red commie spies here? The NSA is pregnant and fast becoming redder than any of its enemies. City and state beat cops do not and cannot have any federal top secret clearance for any particular reason, the feds have to get a proper warrant and a grand jury indictment for anything, and FISA court doesn't count for Constitutional purposes.