This Snowden NSA leak saga is doing strange things to me.
For starters, it has me obsessed. This real-time spy thriller has
me scanning through the Internets, searching for the latest news and looking
for any and all information about this snowy-white computer whiz kid that I can
dig up. I want to know everything.
Freedom of
information
I want to know more details about Snowden's life, like when
he switched from believing that whistle blowers were traitors to believing that
they are heroes.
I want to know the details of his military service, along
with what Snowden's opinion might be about the fact that the US
Army is declining to release his records. Would he condemn the government's
refusal to reveal the truth, or would he applaud the government's respect for
his right to privacy?
I want to know why the initial sensational reports by both The Guardian and The Washington Post about the PRISM Internet surveillance program had
gotten the details of the NSA's access to information wrong, erring, of
course, on the side of sensationalism.
I want to know the reasons behind The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald and The Post's Barton Gellman feud over which
journalist Snowden contacted first.
I want to know more about this Snowden claim: "Any
analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those
communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks
and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the
ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the
authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to
even the President if I had a personal e-mail."
I want to know all of Snowden's motives for revealing the
information he revealed, why he chose the information he chose, and why he decided
to present the information in the way he did. According
to The Guardian, he began thinking about exposing
government secrets while working for the CIA in Geneva, beginning in 2007, but
decided that the CIA's secrets were not the right secrets to reveal: "Most
of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I
didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger
anyone." Does this mean that, rather than focusing on the work he was
assigned to do, he spent his post-CIA career seeking out better secrets and
figuring out ways to steal them? So far, Snowden has not given a
straightforward answer when asked about this.
I want to know why, also according to The Guardian, he regards himself not as having committed a crime,
but rather, as "the person exposing alleged criminality on the part of the Obama
administration." None of the leaked documents point to the Obama
administration having committed criminal acts, while clearly, Snowden committed
the crimes of theft and conversion of government property according to the laws
that are in place – more on this to come.
I really want to know how he could remain so invisible in
the transit lounge at that Moscow airport, which has been crawling with
reporters scanning the airport bars, overpriced restaurants, and reportedly
huge duty-free shop for a glimpse of the ex-spook for over two weeks.
Knowing all of this stuff might just help me feel more like
his exposure of a secret program that gathers massive amounts of metadata on
citizens of the world, probably in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution,
in the case of domestic spying, was truly the act of a citizen who was concerned
about the legality and ethics of the NSA's and other clandestine programs and
less like he did it because he is a true believer in the philosophy that the
executive branch – or perhaps just President Obama – holds too much power and that
we have all become slaves to state tyranny.
Inertia
Obviously, the surveillance programs need to be brought
under better oversight, with more transparency than what exists right now, and
I am glad that the domestic spying was unveiled so that champions like Senator
Bernie Sanders (I, VT) along with Senators
Mark Udall (D, CO) and Ron Wydn (D, OR), who have been sounding the alarm
and demanding answers for years, can finally make some progress in reforming
the system. The surveillance industry, like the prison industry and the
military-industrial complex, is anti-democratic and ripe for abuse. These are
massive, widespread, institutionalized programs that are run by career experts,
outliving individual politicians and requiring long-term planning that
functions to enhance their progress and resistance to change while they remain
hidden behind a wall of secretive "necessity." They are so massive
and so entrenched that to alter their inertia is a Herculean task. Because of
all of this, extraordinary measures must be taken to prevent their abuse and to
make sure that reform is possible. And for this reason, Edward Snowden deserves
a great deal of credit for bringing the secret surveillance program into the
light of public attention.
The oneness of means
and ends
My biggest concern about Snowden's revelations is borne out
in the comment section of any article by any journalist who is doing their job,
which is to investigate the story and ask questions instead of just accepting
things at face value. These journalists are routinely accused of trying to
sideline the story about the extent of government hacking because they,
themselves, must be government-paid hacks, as are any commenters who dare to
ask relevant questions. Edward Snowden claims that all he really wanted was to
start a discussion, but what kind of discussion can there be when his
supporters, who range from privacy advocates and free-press protectors to
libertarians, conspiracy theorists, social conservatives, are unwilling to
discuss valid criticisms of the leaker, the process, or the outcome of the
leaks beyond the fact that they unveiled a surveillance program that is in need
of reform?
As I argued in my
article on Snowden at Truthout.org,
the character, actions, and motivations of Edward Snowden and other actors such
as Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange are as integral to the story as the
information being leaked is. These aspects cannot be separated from the
entirety of the situation. The means to an outcome are not separate from the
outcome. To the contrary, they shape and color the outcome in ways that the
actors do not foresee, and this has certainly proven to be the case here, where
the outcome of leaking top-secret information with such major
implications has led to a surreal drama that includes pitting journalists and
even entire global regions sniping at each other – not exactly a path to
increased peace and freedom in the world.
Fundamentalism and
Big Brother alarmism
Now, I have done my share of angrily bloviating about the
danger of secrecy to democracy. Something else strange that this story is doing
to me is making me defend the surveillance state against Snowden's leak,
seemingly contradicting my own strongly held beliefs and values. It troubles me
greatly that I would come to disagree with such heroes of mine as Daniel
Ellsberg, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, and many others about this issue, leading
me to believe that I might be on the wrong track, that I might decide that I am
wrong to feel the way I presently do. After all, I was deeply ashamed for
having attempted to rationalize Obama's decision to enact the military surge in
Afghanistan back in 2009 – although I would like to think that I learned from my
mistake. In this Snowden case, I have longed to find a position that reconciles
my feelings of discomfort with what Snowden is doing with my principles
concerning the corrosive effects of secrecy on democracy. So after a great deal
of hand-wringing and parsing out the issues, I have come to the conclusion that
this is about secrecy fundamentalism, and that this fundamentalism, tied to his
disdain for the federal government of the United States that is so prevalent among
libertarians, has shaped Snowden into a misguided zealot whose choices are not
in the best interest of addressing the problem he is trying to solve.
My realization that fundamentalism can be applied to
concepts beyond religion came in regard to freedom of speech, when I developed
the argument that the free-speech
fundamentalism that exists in the United States means that Christian and
Jewish fundamentalists are free to purposely incite fundamentalist Muslims to
violence and conflict in order to fulfill a prophecy, while placing some limits
on such dangerous speech is a valid way to promote peace and democracy.
Fundamentalism, the strict interpretation and adherence to a
principle or ideology, is incapable of critical self-examination or adjustment
to changing social values and situations. It is unsophisticated and
anti-progressive, and in its reductionism, it poses a great danger when applied
to complex subjects. State secrecy, I would argue, is a complex subject, and freaking
out over the Orwellian nature of government surveillance results from an exaggeration
of reality that is comparable to homophobic fears about the slippery slide to
bestiality and the downfall of civilization. After all, in Bernie
Sanders' interview with Chris Hayes, he didn't advocate for getting rid of
all surveillance programs. Rather, he specified Section 215 of the Patriot Act
and said that Congress needs to narrow its scope. He also raised concerns about
information gathering by private companies and warned of an Orwellian future,
meaning that he doesn't think it is so just yet. Bernie Sanders is probably the
most principled man in the US Congress today, thanks to being independent from both
political parties, but he exhibits his progressive bonifides by consistently
showing that he is capable of moderating his positions when the process of
passing legislation calls for it, such as when it came to passing the landmark
Affordable Care Act in 2010. This is a concept that Tea Party conservatives
just don't get, and it is exactly why they make such horrible legislators.
Avoiding fundamentalism is
something that all self-respecting progressives should endeavor toward, because
not doing so can lead to contradictions such as freedom advocates turning to
countries with low rankings in civil and political liberties (i.e. Russia,
Venezuela, Nicaragua, according to Freedom
House) and/or in press freedom (Russia, Ecuador, Venezuela, according to
Reporters Without Borders), while the Committee to Protect Journalists has
Russia, Ecuador, and Brazil on its "risk
list" of the top ten worst countries for press freedom in the world –
for protection and support. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a
wartime philosophy that may serve in the short term but is not a sound
long-term policy.
Edward Snowden's
fundamentalist focus on secrecy and the alarmist way that the truth is being
revealed is unsettling because it feeds the radicalism of ideologues from pro-lifers
and uber-Zionists
at World News Daily to the conservative
hacks at Breitbart.com and more
than one insomniac
libertarian and, on the left, free-speech
purists. Radical fundamentalism is the enemy of peace and freedom,
regardless of political slant.
For those whose political
slant is conservative or libertarian, the fears of Big Brother Obama are easy
to fan, despite the fact that this NSA surveillance program is not really about
the Obama administration, as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is
overseen by Congress and the judges appointed by the Supreme Court chief
justice. And Congress' involvement isn't limited to oversight. James Bamford's
eye-opening March 2012 story in Wired
magazine about the secret
NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah reveals this tidbit:
Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy’s exascale computing initiative (the NSA’s budget requests are classified). They cited the necessity to keep up with and surpass China and Japan. “The race is on to develop exascale computing capabilities,” the senators noted. The reason was clear: By late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan’s “K Computer,” with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
As Bamford explains, the international speed race is all about breaking encryption codes, and one of the
purposes of the Bluffdale facility is to store massive amounts of encrypted
information for the eventuality that the computers will one day be able to
decrypt it.
Believe me, in my experience
as an expat in Argentina and Uruguay, especially when I was editing two daily
expat websites, I heard ALL about the "United States as evil empire"
meme from other expats having fled the country for reasons ranging from fear of
the One World Order, with its UN thugs, to anti-tax zealots trying to hide
their wealth from the IRS thugs, with just a few of us citing deep
disappointment and disgust with the war-mongering police-state thugs, a
position I'm pretty sure has a lot to do with why Glenn Greenwald now lives in
Brazil. I recently read Edwardo Galeano's The
Open Veins of Latin America. I am a fierce critic of US foreign policy, the
War on Drugs, and the export of militarism, and I am distraught about the use
of drones and the force-feeding of hunger-striking inmates at Guantanamo. I
totally agree that the United States is hypocritical, meddling, thuggish, and
completely full of itself. And I suppose the US government deserves this outing
of its secret surveillance network because it is so vast and out of hand.
However, I am very concerned
about the methodology being employed by Snowden, Greenwald, and Laura Poitras,
the documentary filmmaker who Snowden reached out to even before he contacted
the journalists at The Post and The Guardian, to publicize the leaks,
because this alarmist tactic is toxic. As I mentioned before, the initial
reports by these two publications were incorrect in the key details about the
NSA's access to the metadata of corporations like Facebook and Microsoft, but
as we all learned long ago from the Drudge Report and Andrew Breitbart, once a
rumor or untruth gets put out there, it lives a long and fruitful life on the
Internet, regardless of any attempts to clear the story up.
And the problem hasn't ended
with the first reports. Rather, the continuing allegations of spying operations
seem intent on fomenting anti-US sentiment across the globe, and it makes me
worry about the consequences – especially if, once again, the allegations turn
out to be less than accurate or the caveats that explain how the headline is
not as frightening as it appears are buried amidst hyperbole like this, from Greenwald's
7 July 2013 article in The Guardian:
That the US government – in complete secrecy – is constructing a ubiquitous spying apparatus aimed not only at its own citizens, but all of the world's citizens, has profound consequences... It radically alters the balance of power between the US and ordinary citizens of the world. And it sends an unmistakable signal to the world that while the US very minimally values the privacy rights of Americans, it assigns zero value to the privacy of everyone else on the planet.
Seriously, Glen, get a grip
on yourself. We get it. The NSA surveillance network needs to be reformed, and
you have incited enough outrage that it will be. You have done your job. But
now, you run the risk of overplaying your hand and creating bigger problems
because the United States, for all of its problems, has not yet become the
Orwellian tyranny that you are making it out to be, and with this kind of
language, it is you who is sending
this message that the US government is out to crush freedom the world over.
As long as I am asking questions,
Glenn, why didn't you – or anyone else, for that matter – report on this 25
June 2013 report by Stephen Aftergood at the Federation of Scientists' Secrecy News titled "Secrecy System
Shows Signs of Contraction," which includes details such as how, in
December 2009, President Obama issued executive order 13526
on reforming the security classification and declassification processes to
augment government transparency? Could it be that it doesn't fit into your
narrative that the Obama administration hates democracy and freedom?
There is enough
grandstanding, backstabbing, intrigue, and drama queening in international
politics already – especially among the leaders of Latin America, the queens
among queens, although Barton Gellman's description of Snowden as being "capable
of melodrama" indicates that he, along with Greenwald, is no slouch in
this department – without having the excuse of Evo Morales' airplane being
diverted for the hard-left populist leaders of South America to puff themselves
up and grandstand before their state-run media about EEUU imperialismo. But in all of this theater, there are real
consequences for regular people, as even before the airspace fiasco, Ecuador's
communications minister "unilaterally and irrevocably" renounced
the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which provides for
reduced tariffs on hundreds of millions of US dollars' worth of Ecuadorean
trade, leaving the country's flower growers and other exporters in the lurch.
It, of course, also doesn't help that Sen. Robert Menendez (D, NJ), head of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, got in on the drama-queen act as well,
threatening to block renewal if Ecuador offered asylum to Snowden. A few months
ago, there were hopeful signs that Venezuelan and Cuban relations with the
United States were warming, to the dismay of Republican hardliners in the
United States and others who put their ideology above creating more stability
in the Americas by forging positive relationships – but now?
The Church Committee
Now, about that quote that
has appeared all over the Internet as of late by the late Sen. Frank Church (D,
ID), a great statesman who, in 1975, chaired the senate committee that was set
up to investigate US intelligence agencies for illegal activities after the
Vietnam War. Never trust that an out-of-context quote means what the quoter's
use of it would lead you to believe that it means.
The 8 September 1975 Newsweek article titled "No Place To Hide"
catches readers' attention in dramatic fashion, breaking the news "that the
country's most secret intelligence operation, the National Security Agency,
already possesses the computerized equipment to monitor nearly all overseas
telephone calls and most domestic and international printed messages-and that
the NSA has made heavy use of its Orwellian technology."
But despite its use of
"the Big O," the article goes on to discuss the need for this kind of
intelligence gathering in the face of nuclear proliferation and the Cold War,
even as first the Rockefeller Commission and then the Church Committee, which
was much larger in scope and depth, had been charged with investigating
intelligence service abuses. The nature of the abuses ranged from the subversion,
sabotage, paramilitary action, and attempted assassination that the Church
Committee would deem to be unauthorized illegal covert actions on the part of
the CIA to domestic spying on antiwar activists and black power organizations by
the NSA.
Found near the end of the
article, the now-ubiquitous quote by Senator Church is from an appearance he
made on Meet the Press a month
earlier, where he stated that eavesdropping technology "at any time could
be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy
left, such is the capability to monitor everything-telephone conversations,
telegrams, it doesn't matter … I know the capacity that is there to make
tyranny total in America."
Two paragraphs later, the
article concludes:
But the central issue raised by NSA's huge eavesdropping network is not really whether the agency has over stepped its authority. The point is that the scientific capability for this wholesale monitoring now exists, and where the capability exists, so too does the potential for abuse. It is the old story of technology rushing forward with some new wonder, before the men who supposedly control the machines have figured out how to prevent the machines from controlling them.
What this shows is that, way
back in 1975, eight years before Edward Snowden was born into this world, the country
was struggling with these same issues, and the intelligence network that has
evolved since then did not develop entirely without regard to these complex
dilemmas. The issues of keeping the laws up with the pace of technology and of finding
a balance between secrecy and the democratic values of freedom and the right to
privacy have been of concern to those who have been paying attention since the
mid-70s, when such revelations as the FBI's COINTELPRO, the CIA's Family Jewels,
and Nixon's dirty tricks were fresh and disturbing. It was a perilous world
filled with perceived enemies of freedom, when the US government was truly more
thuggish than it is perceived to be today because the intelligence community had
evolved ad hoc, running ahead of any system of accountability. The Church
Committee, lead by a true national hero, analyzed the problems in depth and
made created a system of oversight that, not surprisingly, nearly 30 years
later, in the wake of the Red Scare's definitive replacement by terrorism, is
ready for more reform.
The Church
Committee Reports show the great detail that the committee went into in its
investigation of the legality of intelligence activities with the central aim
of addressing the balance of secrecy and democracy:
The task of democratic government is to reconcile conflicting values.
The fundamental question faced by the Select Committee is how to reconcile the clash between secrecy and democratic government itself.
Secrecy is an essential part of most intelligence activities. However, secrecy undermines the United States Government's capacity to deal effectively with the principal issues of American intelligence addressed by the Select Committee:
-The lack of clear legislation defining the authority for permissible intelligence activities has been justified in part for reasons of secrecy. Absent clear legal boundaries for intelligence activities, the Constitution has been violated in secret and the power of the executive branch has gone unchecked, unbalanced.
-Secrecy has shielded intelligence activities from full accountability and effective supervision both within the executive branch and by the Congress.
-Reliance on covert action has been excessive because it offers a secret shortcut around the democratic process. This shortcut has led to questionable foreign involvements and unacceptable acts.
-The important line between public and private action has become blurred as the result of the secret use of private institutions and individuals by intelligence agencies. This clandestine relationship has called into question their integrity and undermined the crucial independent role of the private sector in the American system of democracy.
-Duplication, waste, inertia and ineffectiveness in the intelligence community has been one of the costs of insulating the intelligence bureaucracy from the rigors of Congressional and public scrutiny.
-Finally, secrecy has been a tragic conceit. Inevitably, the truth prevails, and policies pursued on the premise that they could be plausibly denied, in the end damage America's reputation and the faith of her people in their government.
For three decades, these problems have grown more intense. The United States Government responded to the challenge of secret intelligence operations by resorting to procedures that were informal, implicit, tacit. Such an approach could fit within the tolerances of our democratic system so long as such activities were small or temporary.
Now, however, the permanence and scale of America's intelligence effort and the persistence of its problems require a different solution.
These reports are essential
reading, as they provide an indispensable historical perspective on the issues.
Clearly, Senator Church's Meet the Press
comment, uttered while he was in the midst of the investigations, shows that he
was deeply concerned about the potential for abuse of the system, and the Church
Committee Reports show that he was well aware of the tendency for intelligence
community step outside of the bounds of constitutionality and to hoard the power
of intelligence information in the name of national security, but he was by no
means predicting that tyranny was inevitable. His intent was to highlight the vast
scope of the capabilities of the new technology and gain support for the oversight
of such powerful technology through the balancing of power among the three
branches of the federal government.
On the bravery of being out of range
Edward Snowden took brash
steps to steal and then pass to journalists for publication top-secret
information about the NSA's domestic surveillance programs that are in need of
better oversight to prevent possible abuse. He also stole and then passed on
top-secret information about foreign intelligence programs, an act that is far
more dubious in its valor because it treads into the arena of international
relations, opening up a can of worms concerning the complicity of the governments
of other nations in surveillance that verges on meddling in the internal
affairs of foreign countries, with the collateral effect of doing the opposite
of promoting peace among nations.
But it is Edward Snowden's
attempt to run away and hide from the United States that really turns me off to
the idea that he is a real "hero." This has been defended by many
people who I highly regard on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial
at the hands of US law enforcement. But I reject this excuse in the name of all
African-Americans, women and any other nonwhite male group who has ever been
excluded from participation in the forging of laws under which they have been
subject, many of which still have no chance of receiving fair treatment in all
aspects of their lives. Every black person and undocumented immigrant in the
United States today, other than regular old criminals and psychopaths, is a
hero for trying to live their lives under an unjust system, and the biggest
heroes are those who have fought to change the system in some way. The most
effective way to create change is to dramatize the unjust nature of the system
by disobeying the law and suffering unjust punishment – otherwise known as
"civil disobedience." This is what makes Bradley Manning, William
Binney, Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so heroic. The
point is not only to defy the law, put to suffer the consequences, sacrificing
the self to emphasize how morally wrong the laws are, to endure physical and
mental pain and suffering, yet go on fighting.
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