Edward SnowdenVerified account

@Snowden Of course that is a credible tactical argument to get metadata ASAP, so as to isolate burner before discard. Just saying.

@AoDespair Not really. Phones used in real-world ops are disposed on a per-action, or per-call basis. Lifetimes of minutes, hours. Not days.

@Snowden Can't speak to shelf-life of disposible phone in Pakistan. In Baltimore, discipline and cost are such that it can be days.

@AoDespair Fair point. My background is in intelligence, not law enforcement. Transnational terrorists aren't hurting for burners.

@Snowden Neither should top-end drug traffickers in the more affluent US. And yet by the time the process trickles to the corner boys....

@AoDespair Tbf, mass surveillance wasn't pitched to catch "corner boys" or even "The Greek," but on thwarting OBLs. And there, never worked.

@AoDespair Commercial activities (drug sales) will always generate records that sporadic offensive operations (terrorism) will not.

@Snowden @emptywheel how about Telegram? @durov says ISIS use Telegram and their company do not share information with governments?

@firatdemirel Pretty sure @Snowden didn't sell ISIS on Telegram per se though as it post-dated his leaks. @durov

@emptywheel @Snowden i wonder how strict Telegram is. It's a US company and also NSA is more experienced to collect data then @durov's team.

@firatdemirel Its servers are in Berlin tho, aren't they? So would avoid PRISM. @Snowden @durov

@emptywheel dont kno that, but the thing that i know is every gov. wants to control data as much as they can. Incl. Germany. @Snowden @durov

@firatdemirel Sure, but Germany doesn't have as powerful tool as PRISM. Nor are they as good as tracking networks, I suspect @Snowden @durov