Navy professor resigns after racy photo inquiry
By JENNIFER MCDERMOTT | The Associated Press | Published: August 11, 2014
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A U.S. Naval War College professor has resigned following an investigation into a complaint that he took a racy photo that wound up online.
John Schindler voluntarily resigned his post as a professor of national security affairs, effective Aug. 29, a college spokeswoman said Monday. The former National Security Agency intelligence analyst has been on administrative leave since late June.
A May text message conversation with a photo of a penis and Schindler's name atop it was circulated in June on Twitter. It was unclear who sent it and who posted it.
A blogger sent a complaint to college administrators in Newport, and the college's president ordered an investigation.
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/navy-professor-resigns-after-racy-photo-inquiry-1.297789How Surveillance-State Insiders Try to Discredit NSA Critics
Journalists opposed to the surveillance state are accused of sensationalism and withholding context. But unlike our critics, we're eager for the whole truth to out.
Conor Friedersdorf Dec 3, 2013
Who has done more than anyone else to increase public understanding of what the National Security Agency does? A top-10 list would have to include James Bamford, its first and most prolific journalistic chronicler, and Glenn Greenwald, a primary recipient of classified documents leaked months ago by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Over the weekend, I engaged in a back-and-forth with a former NSA employee who harshly criticized both (and me, too) with words that illuminate how some insiders view the press and the national-security state.
His name is John R. Schindler. In his own words, he is a "professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he’s been since 2005, and where he teaches courses on security, strategy, intelligence, terrorism, and occasionally military history." He previously spent "nearly a decade with the National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer," and he is "a senior fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University and is chairman of the Partnership for Peace Consortium's Combating Terrorism Working Group, a unique body which brings together scholars and practitioners from more than two dozen countries across Eurasia to tackle problems of terrorism, extremism, and political violence." In addition, his blog has some smart commentary on it.
He is certainly a surveillance-state expert. In comparison, I started writing regularly about surveillance in June when the Snowden story broke. If we're going by the dictionary definition, Schindler is correct that I am a neophyte, "a person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief." As Schindler and I interacted on Twitter, a predictable divide opened up between his followers, who are generally supportive of the surveillance state, and mine, who are more skeptical of it. Highlighting parts of our exchange* will permit me to better explain what it is that many of us "outsiders" find so frustrating about how "insiders" treat this subject.
<SNIP>
That brings me back to Schindler, who I follow, and who retweeted the following:
Rafal Rohozinski @rohozinski
Analysis of Snowden disclosures is ~100% context-free. Wish media would investigate rather than reporting slide decks as if they were fact.
5:49 PM - 30 Nov 2013
This is factually inaccurate. Numerous news organizations have spent untold sums attempting to investigate the context of Snowden's leaks. They have added lots of context beyond reproducing slide decks. (To cite one typical example, see Barton Gellman in this story, augmenting his analysis of leaked documents with independent verification from intelligence sources. Also see much of what Marc Ambinder writes.) And while there's been a lot of flawed journalism on this subject, as on all subjects, many commentators have been more unfair to Snowden and Greenwald than the NSA. Richard Cohen puts himself in that category!
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/how-surveillance-state-insiders-try-to-discredit-nsa-critics/281941/
= new reply since forum marked as read
