CIA's Ex-No. 2 Says ISIS ‘Learned from Snowden’

[DonViejo]

Shane Harris

The former deputy director of the CIA says in a new book that the NSA contractor’s disclosures allowed the forerunners of the terrorist group to evade electronic surveillance.

Edward Snowden’s leaks about U.S. intelligence operations “played a role in the rise of ISIS.” That’s the explosive new allegation from the former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell, who was among the United States’ most senior intelligence officials when Snowden began providing highly-classified documents to journalists in 2013.

U.S. intelligence officials have long argued that Snowden’s disclosures provided valuable insights to terrorist groups and nation-state adversaries, including China and Russia, about how the U.S. monitors communications around the world. But in his new memoir, to be published next week, Morell raises the stakes of that debate by directly implicating Snowden in the expansion of ISIS, which broke away from Al Qaeda and has conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

“Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Morell writes. Among the most damaging leaks, he adds, was one that described a program that collects foreigners’ emails as they move through equipment in the United States.

Terrorist groups, including ISIS, have since shifted their communications to more “secure” platforms, are using encryption, or “are avoiding electronic communications altogether.”

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/06/cia-s-ex-no-2-says-isis-learned-from-snowden.html

[cantbeserious]

1. More Fear Mongering From Ever Desperate Bureaucrats Seeking To Justify Their Existence

eom

[hifiguy]

2. Bullshit.

They'd have switched platforms and started encrypting anyway. They are barbaric assholes but not stupid.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

3. I am like George Carlin, never believe ANYTHING they say

[951-Riverside]

4. So the CIA learned what from Snowden?

...see what I did there?

[gratuitous]

5. That sounds convenient

Of course, there's no way to evaluate Mr. Morell's claims, whether they're accurate or not or have a factual basis. I guess we'll have to just take his word for it.

[Aerows]

6. The poor naive

put upon CIA members.

It's not like they have *EVER* done anything for the members of the public to doubt their tireless dedication to all that is kind and good in the world.

If I have to put a sarcasm tag on that one ... yikes.

[Downwinder]

7. What did they learn

since we don't do any of those things Snowden reported?