Paulmd199

Paul D · @Paulmd199

13th Dec 2013 from TwitLonger

@violentfanon @Cryptomeorg Binney's calculation is an interesting one. (and one he's used before) It's based on the docket number of the Verizon order (BR 13-80) It being the secondary order Verizon would be subject to one other,it would leave a maximum of 78 other companies, besides Verizon, subject to similar orders. If he said "Financial" in the original email, it was a mistake.

However, that calculation in general is screwy. For one, the primary order actually dates back 7 years, so we're up to 79 again. And there's nothing preventing the court from combining multiple companies on the same docket number, it doesn't take in to account previous years, and on and on.

In general, there's no real way of knowing how many companies are subject to BR FISA orders just by the a single case number.

The other question: would Paypal documents relating to the Wikileaks blockade actually be in the Snowden Cache? Not necessarily. One of the defenses against hacking is to set up "honeypots," places to tempt hackers. They alarm when they are accessed. Snowden would have been aware of this and avoided anything claiming to be related to Wikileaks like the plague.

And then there is the question of Omidyar's role. He was no longer in charge of Paypal at the time of the blockade and even spoke out against it. Was Paypal's participation in it voluntary? I wager not, it is incredibly difficult to resist the sort of legal pressure the Security State can bring to bear. The best known case is Levison and Lavabit. He fought tooth and nail to resist bulk collection on his service, and ultimately failed to simultaneously maintain Lavabit as a company, and its principles. He pulled the ultimate desperate move, which Paypal would have been unable to do, he shut down. Paypal was, by then in the control of a committee, who would have seen the financial picture.

As for the document/page count, I doubt anyone, even Snowden truly knows how many there are. The relationships between documents and pages isn't fixed, especially in the case of Intellipedia and other dynamic pages (variances in font size and page layout) The low estimate was 15,000, given by Greenwald during testimony to the Brazilian senate. The number keeps inflating, always by those who have an interest in making Snowden as villainous as possible. I'll believe the numbers when they can provide an inventory. Until then, all figures, even Greenwald's are hyperbole (he has an interest in the opposite). You can maintain a list, but the projected completion date is a fiction (on the subject of which, the stated document count in SVT/Trojkan's possession is 20, it says in the video).

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