Unless this leak was part of that very protection arrangement, or part of some larger play. It's possible Snowden had all this stuff and the timing works out (right?). And let's not forget the mysterious "it's time" tweets from Snowden a few weeks ago.

Edit: I don't know why I'm being downvoted here. Isn't this a plausible explanation until we have more evidence?

Unless you have evidence for any of that you are just playing the "Lets pull out a wild conspiracy card" game.

Personally I think Snowden is the Lemming Prophet of the Epsilon-Tau Lizard People.

Snowden worked at the NSA and took a bunch of stuff. These leaks are from that time period. This isn't crazy.

Edit: His "it's time" tweet happened less than 48 hours after the first TheShadowBrokers account (reddit) was created, prior to activity. Those accounts were dormant until the drop.

It's also possible the timestamps on the files match up to Snowden's leaks because the NSA stopped using that server / etc.

But the "it's time" tweet seems to imply Snowden may have known this was coming. It could also be a conincidence, of course.

If Snowden is right then Russia wants people to know extra-officially that it was them.

That's not new, actually. Remember the Polonium murder? They take some weird pride in their lack of humanity.

Unlike the US, which is busy creating narratives to justify their lack of humanity?

exactly. the DNC hack was traced by 2 agencies and 3 private firms. no one leaves behind that kind of evidence unless they want to get caught

Exactly what I thought about this "hack"

To be fair, he also all but accuses NSA of interfering with US ally's Elections.

Honestly, I think its a bit far fetched the US would meddle in the foreign affairs of an ally. We have a long documented history of staying out of civil wars, guerrilla warfare, and aiding the "right" people to come to leadership as it suits us.

Right now though the average person can still say "Where's your tinfoil hat, stop being ridiculous".

If it were confirmed, they'd have to switch to "Well if they weren't doing anything wrong they wouldn't have to worry about being interfered with, stop being ridiculous".

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FWIW, I personally would be relatively shocked if that(election tampering) did turn out to be legit. I suppose there's motive and means, but it just seems a little too far for the NSA. On the other hand, I can't understand why Snowden would put that in a tweet if he didn't want people to consider the possibility. So either,

1) He's a careless writer(I think this one is the least likely)

2) The NSA interferes with US ally's elections

3) Snowden is a Russian agent or has been coerced into that messaging

The CIA has used torture and overthrown governments. Since the NSA is another secretive US government agency, I have no reason to believe that there is such a thing as going too far for them in an ethical sense, although of course there are practical limits on what they can accomplish.

Also, like any organization, the NSA is not monolithic. It must have various strata, various different groups making it up. It is possible, for example, that 95% of the NSA operates in ways that are relatively ethical, but that there is also a more-or-less secret pipeline of information and control built into the organization's architecture that enables important figures both inside and outside of the organization to use its databases and tools and to coordinate its operations without the knowledge of most of its employees.

I can't believe the tinfoil argument is still strong even after the NSA revelations. At this point it's deep denial, which seems to run strong.

You'l have to show the sarcasm tag, I almost fell for it...

"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests." -Henry Kissinger

The more interesting question is that are any proofs behind the theory around? For DNCLeaks, for example, not really.