Earlier today, the identity of last week’s much-talked-about National Security Agency whistleblower was made public. His name is Edward Snowden, and he’s a former technical assistant for the CIA, who, most recently, worked for the NSA through the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d highly recommend that you watch this video of Snowden, which was just shot in Hong Kong, where the 29-year-old recently fled in hopes of avoiding prosecution. It’s really quite extraordinary.
[The article which accompanies the video can be found at the website of The Guardian.]
As I know that some of you won’t follow the link, or watch the video, in spite of my urging, here’s a brief clip from the transcript. This is how Snowden responds to the, “Why should people care about surveillance?”, question.
“Because, even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded. The storage capability of the systems increases every year, consistently, by orders of magnitude… It’s getting to the point, you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they could use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.”
And that, in a nutshell, sums up why Snowden turned over these classified documents to the press. That is, if you believe him.
Many don’t.
Many, from what I can tell, seem to think, given that he’s in Hong Kong, that’s he’s done this on behalf of the Chinese, who are looking to further destabilize our government. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, given that China is our biggest trading partner, and they need for us to remain solvent, but some, it would seem, are having trouble accepting that a young man would choose to give up a high-level intelligence position in Hawaii that paid nearly $200,000 a year, and go into exile, leaving behind his girlfriend and family, just because he thought that the American people should know that they’re being lied to and spied on. Apparently the concept that an individual would sacrifice his or her life for what they believe to be right is foreign to many Americans. (And, as Snowden points out, if his objective had really been to bring down the United States, he could have just released the identities of every undercover asset we currently have deployed across the globe – information, according to Snowden, that he possessed.)
No, according to Snowden, he chose to release this information, which demonstrates the enormity of the NSA’s domestic surveillance operation, because he saw “abuses,” and the framework for what he calls an, “architecture of oppression.”
I’m not sure that it will ultimately go down in history alongside the likes of Nathan Hale’s “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country” speech, but it’s hard to imagine a more timely and important sentiment than the following.
“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.” -Edward Snowden
I could go on and on about Snowden, his politics (he’s a Ron Paul supporter), his motivations, and the way that this will all likely play out for him, but, as I keep nodding off to sleep, I’ll just leave you with this final thought from him, offered in response to a question about the possibility that he could very well be killed for treason, or locked up in seclusion for the rest of his life.
“The greatest fear I have… is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They will know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society, but they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”
I know that some of you will disagree, thinking that patriots are people who vote a certain way, and put magnetic ribbons on the backs of their SUVs, but this, to me, is the very definition of patriotism.
Best of luck, Mr. Snowden. And thank you for having the courage to do what thousands of others in positions to do so did not.
39 Comments
“Whistleblower” is person who reveals wrongdoing, corruption, illegal activity. None of this applies here even
if you oppose current policy.
Dragon, NSA executives, in sworn testimony to Congress, said that American citizens were not being spied on. That was a lie. The documents leaked by Snowden prove that.
In an ideal world, Snowden’s revelations would prompt a much-needed national discussion about whether, and to what degree, we, as a society, are comfortable giving our government extraordinary new powers to monitor our private lives — in exchange for what level of alleged safety.
Unfortunately, after reading the comments following many articles about this story yesterday, it seems the “average” American has already concluded this guy is nothing but a traitor and a terrorist (i.e. radical Islamist) sympathizer. (I even read several comments suggesting Snowden’s actions were a slap in the face to the Boston bombing victims, their families, etc. …)
Iceland may offer asylum. I suspect he’d be happier there, but it’s probably more difficult for the US to get at him in Hong Kong.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/09/icelandic-legislator-im-ready-to-help-nsa-whistleblower-seek-asylum/
Snowden clearly knows how the government works. He knows this is likely the end of him, and yet he did it anyway. You have to admire that.
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
Speaking of Ron Paul, his son Rand announced this weekend that he’d be bringing a class action lawsuit against the federal government.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/09/paul-wants-to-lead-supreme-court-challenge-to-fed-tracking-americans-calls/
I will say this, I am very creeped out by the interconnectedness of data for and of advertising, and view that as an enormous violation of privacy that occurs routinely now.
This man is a hero. He’s forfeiting his life in order to bring this massive violation of privacy rights tot he American people. History will recognize his contribution. I’m afraid, however, that we’ll ignore it. Privacy is the war of our generation.
“Hopefully we can retrieve him from his hideout, scrub his laptop, and hang him.”
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-traitor/
“I’ve talked to a bunch of people in Washington today, in official positions, and they are looking at this as a potential Chinese espionage case. On the face of it, it looks like it is under some sort of Chinese control.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-cia-officer-officials-considering-nsa-whistleblowers-case-potential-chinese-espionage/
“I was just with Dan Ellsberg as he learned out about Edward Snowden. He called Snowden a hero, said he’s been waiting for him for 40 years.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/more-people-think-edward-snowden-is-a-hero-than-a-traitor
And it’s getting worse. They’re building a Deathstar in Utah.
From Wired:
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
The hacker who identified the accused rapists in the Steubenville rape case is now facing more time than the rapists themselves. I don’t know how this is relevant but I think it is.
http://www.metafilter.com/128918/Citizens-of-the-World-I-am-Deric-Lostutter-and-this-is-my-story
Didn’t I read that Twitter is 30-1 in support of Snowden? I wonder if people won’t, in some fashion or another, support the role of a whistleblower, but at the same time think this isn’t that big a deal. Hasn’t the Patriot Act permitted this behavior for quite some time? Even though I don’t like it I’ve sort of assumed that my privacy was more or less compromised a long time ago.
The more information they take in, the more people they’ll have to sorting through it, and the more opportunities for breaches. You just can’t control an operation this big. We’re just lucky that Snowden didn’t sell our credit card data to a Nigerian warlord.
Edward Snowden is “missing”.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1g2upz/nsa_whistleblower_edward_snowden_missing_in_hong/
The catch 22 that they have no answer for.
“If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA? The more badly Snowden is depicted, the more rickety the government’s case for surveillance becomes. After all, they hired him. They gave him unrestricted access to their systems.”
Read more:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/09/edward_snowden_why_did_the_nsa_whistleblower_have_access_to_prism_and_other.html
The Booz Allen guys have to be shitting bricks right now.
Also, I hope that he’s smart enough to stay ahead of the U.S. intelligence community, and eventually make his way to Iceland, if it doesn’t look as though the Chinese can keep him safe. I’m concerned that he “disappeared” yesterday. I hope that means he went underground, but I fear that we may already have him. I’m not sure as to the timing of events, but, if his video interview happened after the story broke, it’s not hard to believe that Glenn Greenwald was being followed when they spoke. My guess is that every move Greenwald makes for the next several years will be tracked meticulously.
Restore the 4th protests are being planned for the 4th of July.
http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth
It also looks like there’s a movement afoot to send money to Snowden to help defray his living expenses. I imagine he’s got a lot saved, but Hong Kong aint cheap.
https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/reward-edward-snowden-for-courageously-leaking-nsa-docs/description
The opposition is coming together:
Read more:
http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/6/11/4418794/stopwatchingus-internet-orgs-ask-congress-to-stop-surveillance
I’m reserving judgement on whether Snowden is a hero or not simply because I now know more about Snowden than the surveillance program he alleges to have exposed.
I think this is true of a lot of Americans.
Peter, is that PhD refundable?
It is impossible to keep any government system secure from infiltration by organized nefarious interests. Any information the government collects, can be accessed by a nefarious interest. Any information that has any potential value to a nefarious interest will be accessed inevitably. Any capability the government is granted can be accessed by nefarious interests as well of course.
This is the purpose for limiting government. Not because government itself is inherently bad, but because it’s permissions, capabilities and powers are inevitably accessed by nefarious interests.
This has been demonstrated over and over in history to ad nauseam. Still, most people continue to believe we can somehow transcend this very natural set of realities.
Nefarious interests have repeatedly perpetrated very obvious hijackings of governmental systems, agencies, and powers, and used them to their own ends, while to the society as whole these actions were incredibly costly and disastrous. These actions have been remarkably blatant, and still somehow the vast majority of the public can’t see the connections. It’s really quite astonishing.
Not only did he leave the paradise that is Hawaii and a $200,000 a year job, but a super hot girlfriend who is a professional dancer.
Nathan Hale didn’t give up nearly as much.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/11/lindsay-mills-edward-snowden-s-girlfriend-writes-all-i-feel-is-alone.html
Mr. Voss,
I read the transcript of this video and found it to be quite light. I don’t think that Snowden’s message is earth shattering. Should we be surprised to learn that intelligence agencies are collecting and dredging data?
Instead of writing a detailed analysis of this program, which would be far more useful and damning, Snowden presents a few light bullet points in a video interview. So, like I said, we now know more about Snowden than the program itself.
I am a cynic when it comes to what lefty america chooses to get behind. Snowden is a sound bite from a cute, white and harmless face. If he had been unatteactive , old, ugly, or used big words, we would have heard nothing about him.
I would have said that Mark wouldn’t have posted it, but Mark has posted video of some really hideous and unintelligible people in the past.
Mark has rightly pointed out to me that the story preceded the release of the Snowden interview.
“Mark has posted video of some really hideous and unintelligible people in the past.”
I was most certainly referring to myself.
So that there is no mistake, a criticism of lefty weaknesses for cute and fluffy white faces is not a defense of any sort of domestic spying effort.
Snowden did an AMA on Reddit.
“All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.” – Edward Snowden
Read more:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1gihc9/nsa_whistleblower_edward_snowden_live_qa_11am/
He’s in Russia now, on his way to somewhere else. Apparently Hong Kong wasn’t willing to fight for him. If he’s not going to stop in Russia, it’s difficult to imagine that he’ll find another country that’s strong enough to ward off a U.S. assault, but he hasn’t given up yet.
For those of you who wonder why he’s running, read up on what happened a few days ago to Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings, who was killed shortly after telling friends that he was onto a big story and being pursued by the FBI.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/michael-hastings-warned-colleagues-hours-before-crash/
Edward Snowden has distributed encoded copies of documents as protection in case “anything happens to him”
Read more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/25/greenwald-snowden-s-files-are-out-there-if-anything-happens-to-him.html
Two interesting articles for you all this rainy Wednesday morning.
“Obama To Leno: ‘There Is No Spying On Americans'”
“Obama Removes Promise to Protect Whistleblowers From Old Campaign Website”
Read the first article:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/06/209692380/obama-to-leno-there-is-no-spying-on-americans?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130807
Read the second article:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/57017/obama-removes-promise-to-protect-whistleblowers-from-old-campaign-website
NSA colleague describes life with Snowden: “a genius” who wore EFF anti-NSA hoodies to work and kept a copy of the Constitution on his desk
Read more:
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/17/nsa-colleague-describes-life-w.html
PS: Snowden is currently seeking asylum in Brazil.
Read more:
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/17/edward-snowdens-open-letter.html
This is fun. Snowden and his merry band of Putin dupes are some special kind of hero for the left. It’s old from 2014, would have been handy when engaging with the bros during the election. You know, those dudes HRC-loving mass hysteria invented. Because women…
https://newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe
yeah it’s old. and not that impressive.
http://crookedtimber.org/2014/01/19/the-liberal-surveillance-state/
I agree with that criticism, kjc. It is flip and dismissive and mostly a gotcha piece. But given that those three were exalted by the bros repeatedly, it would have proven useful. Greenwald’s pettiness and tendency to libertarianism was especially relevant. Snowden is just a dick, which most of us suspected. Worse things have been said about Assange. When people make Kings of men, it’s useful to tip the crown. Neither the impulse to ideological fealty nor the natural reaction are well considered approaches. If all discourse happened on the level of that response, we’d all have better conversations. And we would probably have a better president right now.
FWIW, It is no surprise to me that Snowden is a dick. He was a dick from the very beginning. Less of a dick than Assange. More of one than Greenwald, imho. None of it really matters to the issue at hand except when people start worshiping them.
I think what Snowden did was terrible, fwiw. Not helpful at all (I mean, has anything changed?) and potentially harmful. There are reasons why some information is classified and often it is to protect the safety of people. My biggest problem with Snowden isn’t that he is wrong about the NSA but that he and Greenwald just released everything without regard to how appropriate it was. I don’t see either of them as heroes but I don’t really see them as villains either. I don’t think Snowden should get a pardon but I probably wouldnt object if he were to get one either.
The issue is important; the people involved less so. I liked Citizen Four in part because I came away not liking anyone. Many people saw the same film and came out seeing Snowden and Greenwald as a hero. Poitras’ points about the surveillance state are more important than any of the characters in her film, even her. She also put together a great exhibit at the Whitney this fall addressing surveillance and the state. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/arts/design/laura-poitras-astro-noise-examines-surveillance-and-the-new-normal.html She has had to relocate to Berlin to escape govt harassment. Government surveillance capacity is more concerning to me now than ever. Obama really set Trump up with everything he needs to ensure compliance from the people– surveillance, a proto-registry of muslims, limits to public demonstration and a very expensive, mostly empty illegal prison in Cuba waiting to be ‘filled’ according to candidate Trump. I know Obama is scrambling to undo some of this in his last month, but he has set Trump up for the wrong kind of success.
Why do I suspect Snowden and Assange are happy about that?
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