In your opinion, is the leaked information more of a threat to our security or ...?

[kentuck]

...more embarrassing to the NSA and our intelligence organizations?

If there was a danger of foreign assets being exposed, would they not be leaving their present stations and transferred to other secret posts? Would that not make any such information that Snowden might have obsolete? Move all the assets around with new names.

Or is it that some countries may be very angry to find out how the NSA has been spying on them and it would be very embarrassing to our country and to the NSA?

In your opinion, which is the likeliest case??

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. Aren't you ...

assuming that you, or anyone attempting to answer this question, know enough about how intelligence operations work to make any kind of judgment?

From the self-disclosures on this board ... I can think of, maybe 2, DUers that have disclosed an Intelligence background ... and, coincedently, neither of them are hyper-ventilating on this topic.

[gopiscrap]

2. The reaction is all about power

fuck with the government and they'll fuck with you out of spite.

[winter is coming]

10. +1. It's very Cheney-esque.

I think the leak is more about the fear of being embarrassed/discredited/prosecuted than a genuine security concern. If it were the latter, I'd expect the reaction to be as secretive and quiet as possible. Instead, we're getting a lot of thuggish posturing and ad hominem attacks. Someone is desperate.

[gopiscrap]

11. and Nixonian

[DirkGently]

3. "Terrorists" assumed they were spied on. WE did not.

We're in far more danger from an out-of-control nationwide surveillance apparatus than from angry foreigners with bombs.

[HooptieWagon]

4. The war on journalists and whistleblowers....

and secret surveillence are a greater threat to democracy than terrorists. Democratic governments don't operate in secret. Secrecy is for totalitarian regimes.

[idwiyo]

5. Snowden might have something they are shit scared about. Copies of files on politicians foreign

and domestic full of blackmail material for instance. Proof of NSA engaging in corporate espionage on behalf of American companies maybe. Something along those lines.

I would be VERY surprised if there are no such files.

[Recursion]

6. Well, exfil is certainly not that simple

Move all the assets around with new names.

Muj 1: "Where did Ahmed go?"

Muj 2: "I don't know. He stopped showing up right after those news stories about the NSA leaks."

Muj 1: "What an odd coincidence. No need to talk to people he had met with or anything."

[kentuck]

7. Better to stay in place?

???

[Recursion]

9. Actually, sometimes yes, depending

The assets themselves are rarely actually named in any document, though in some cases their identity can be deduced from their activities.

In general the greater danger (either from terrorists or repressive regimes) is when it says "asset LONEWOLF (the codename) met with journalist AHMED AL WALI AL SHARI..." etc. Now Ahmed either gets blown up or enhancedly interrogated. But he's going to be hard to exfiltrate: not only is he not working for the CIA, he doesn't particularly like the CIA to begin with and he didn't even know that LONEWOLF was working for the CIA at the time. This is what happened to several people in the Maldives after the Manning cable dump: the USG assets were codenamed but their local civic and political contacts weren't. (The Maldives aren't special in this regard; I just happened to follow this part of the fallout.)

[uponit7771]

8. They're starting to look more like threats seeing people who leaked didnt have progressive motives

...or motives that were constructive.

There was a better way to go about what Snowden et al did and using the excuse "the justice system is corrupt so I'll run from it" isn't a benefit extended to people of color in the US by Snowden supporters