[nrmilstein]

Information like this, and some of the other documents that have been released from the Snowden leaks recently, seem to be more than just "whistleblowing" and appear to do serious damage to the US's counter-terrorism and security efforts.

[jobu]

Unlikely. The terrorists have known for years that all of their technology was compromised by the US government. Osama Bin Laden would send his people hundreds of kilometers away to make phone calls on his behalf.

Also, it was Eugene Kaspersky that pointed the finger at the US and Israel over Stuxnet and Flame.

The only thing these documents do is make it clear the NSA has been lying or spinning much of the denials about these programs to avoid public scrutiny.

[nrmilstein]

Public scrutiny? I, for one, don't really care if the NSA does these things, and I don't think most people in the US do. Or do you mean scrutiny from other governments, and people outside the US? Then yes, it seems like a pretty good idea to keep it covert.

[DerpObvious]

US hackers for the NSA have been able to publicly admit to performing offensive cyber actions for years, usually by mentioning they were on the "offense" side of the program when talking about previous employment. They couldn't admit to specific acts, of course, but they could admit that such acts - categorically - happened.

People just didn't care.

[giardini]

How, precisely, does this information do "serious damage...", as you say. We already knew that the NSA can hack computers and cell phones; the article is simply more of the same.

[nrmilstein]

I'd say any specifics – size, people involved – on such a program could be damaging, and it also gives other nations more ammo in defending their own such programs, by pointing out ours. I know everyone already probably knows we have things like this, but it's even more public now. They also talk about a document in there revealing the specifics of counter-surveillance for the Bin Laden raid.

So "serious" damage is probably too far. But how does this benefit the American people? The US has pretty good reasons for keeping such an effort covert, and this stuff doesn't come across as an affront to people's privacy and freedoms, not like the domestic surveillance programs did.