“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in [Rio de Janeiro] via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald noted. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”
Your title suggestion is too much of an assumption and accusation.
While the disclosure of Prism has confirmed what many tech minded people I know have always assumed, it does not stand to reason that other countries do not monitor chatter and would not act on intel that is valuable.
Basically, what I'm saying is to keep our minds open while reading these articles...an example of why would be if you remember Huawei Routers not being allowed in certain US infrastructure [0], or Clinton lobbying China to remove it's firewall [1].
Open minds can then start speculating past motivations in old articles.
I hope I didn't come off nationalistic...esp given my criminal record.
Why I linked those old articles, I imply that the US didn't want China to do what it was doing (which is what PRISM revealed) to have a backdoor into US infrastructure through Huewei routers, and that the administration wanted to possibly make it easier to monitor China's chatter by pushing for it to tear down the "Great Firewall."
The point is not that your comment was itself nationalistic, rather that you fell in to the trap of interpreting everything from the standpoint of a world divided in to nations. Why is this an issue? The totalitarian trajectory at issue here is one of importance globally, which will affect the future of all humanity. (Contrast: Einstein famously defined nationalism as an infantile disease; the measles of mankind.)
What do you people think intelligence agencies do? I'm surprised how far some people are taking the feigned ignorance/outrage. The NSA is reading the traffic from the biggest web communities in the world? Major shocker there. And now we're trying to make a scandal of an intelligence agency discreetly taking an object that may contain data that compromises national security? Things like that are why clandestine services exist in the first place: making sure we have a way into major communication channels when necessary, and making sure sensitive information is kept from prying eyes. These are basic functions for meaningful intelligence. Do we think the CIA just sits around in Langley all day?
“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in [Rio de Janeiro] via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald noted. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”