Edward Snowden, 29, is now a hunted man. The media this morning has moved from the shock over the massive surveillance of citizens to attacking Snowden as a leaker. Indeed, this morning, CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst Jeff Toobin denounced Snowden as a “clown” and someone who should be denounced. Toobin and I have been disagreeing a great deal lately. While I respect Jeff Toobin, I was surprised last week when he defended aspects of the investigation of journalists and later the massive surveillance programs. However, I was taken aback by the attack on Snowden. There certainly is a basis for criminal investigation — a point no one denies. He will have to answer for any violation of his clearance agreement and national security laws. However, it is the tenor and shift of the comments this morning that so surprised me. Rather than continue the debate of the loss of privacy, political and media figures are focusing on Snowden rather than the programs. You can disagree with his methods just as you can disagree with Julian Assange. However, there is an obvious effort to (like Assange) make him look unbalanced and dangerous. The story appears more complex. This is a man who gave up a $200,000 a year job and his likely freedom to reveal something that he felt the public should know about in the interest of privacy. You can disagree with his method, but few of his critics would even consider such a sacrifice for principle. Yet, the coverage this morning is largely on how to catch him and punish him. Over the weekend, the White House said it would find the person responsible and punish him. Snowden then self-disclosed his identity.
Ironically, President Barack Obama told the public that he was happy that we could have this debate over the balancing of privacy and security. However, he wants the person responsible for that debate to be prosecuted. Without Snowden, the program would have remained secret and no debate would likely have occurred. While aspects of these programs were previously discussed in 2006, this was the first confirmation of the programs from the government.
U.S. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called Snowden “a defector” and said “this person is dangerous to the country.” That is the new spin: the “high school dropout” and “clown” who fled to Hong Kong. Indeed, many news outlets are focusing on the fact that he allegedly had a $300 night hotel in Hong Kong before checking out. (Anyone who has traveled to Hong Kong will tell you that this expense for a room is not uncommon and it is certainly not “one of the priciest” rooms for the city). Much of the focus will be on Snowden and his case as opposed to the massive surveillance program. Many believe, like Snowden, that the greater danger to the country is the loss of privacy — as discussed in my column today in USA Today. What is clear is that this massive security state, and its contractors, are irate about these leaks, which have given critical information to the public that has long been denied to it by its elected representatives. It is a closed system that is represented vividly by Booz Allen. The current head of national intelligence (Clapper) is a former company executive. The prior intelligence head is now leading the company. It is part of a security state that generates hundreds of billions of dollars and we are the subject of their work under these and other programs. They do not like people causing the public to ask questions.
Snowden acted from within this closed system. We have a democratic system that seems entirely unconnected to the public. From the continuation of our fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to warrantless surveillance, the views of the public seem entirely immaterial to our leaders. They offer rhetorical responses but largely act within a system controlled by two parties and their leaders. Congress itself has proven, yet again, to be entirely disinterested in civil liberties or privacy values. The courts have refused to hear dozens of public interest lawsuits seeking review of such programs. In this environment, whistleblowers often feel that they have no recourse but to go to the media. Of course, this Administration has not only attacked privacy but the free press in the recent scandals.
What is striking is the anger directed at Snowden from the media. He will be held accountable for any crime, but he is also someone who acted at great peril to himself. I do not believe that that makes him a “clown” and I hope that some attention will remain on the attack on privacy represented by these programs.
What do you think?
AP,
I know a number of brilliant folks that only have GEDs…… I’m amazed that he was able to get a job like this….. Pretty snooty group….
Getting warmer…
Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America
Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us a chance to roll back what is tantamount to an ‘executive coup’ against the US constitution
by Daniel Ellsberg
Monday 10 June 2013 06.30 ED
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-united-stasi-america
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.
Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.
The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: “It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.”
For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads –they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.
The fact that congressional leaders were “briefed” on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.
Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people’s privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.
There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That’s why Bradley Mannning and I – both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret – chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.
But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that’s why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:
“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America’s intelligence gathering capability – which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era – “at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left.”
That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former “democratic republic” of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.
So we have fallen into Senator Church’s abyss. The questions now are whether he was right or wrong that there is no return from it, and whether that means that effective democracy will become impossible. A week ago, I would have found it hard to argue with pessimistic answers to those conclusions.
But with Edward Snowden having put his life on the line to get this information out, quite possibly inspiring others with similar knowledge, conscience and patriotism to show comparable civil courage – in the public, in Congress, in the executive branch itself – I see the unexpected possibility of a way up and out of the abyss.
Pressure by an informed public on Congress to form a select committee to investigate the revelations by Snowden and, I hope, others to come might lead us to bring NSA and the rest of the intelligence community under real supervision and restraint and restore the protections of the bill of rights.
Snowden did what he did because he recognised the NSA’s surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity. This wholesale invasion of Americans’ and foreign citizens’ privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we’re trying to protect.
Tobin uses the term clown for Snowden, Oky1 brands SwM a Nazi
It’s called demonization – an argumentative strategy, often employed in political contexts, whereby one group consistently describes a rival group as beings of pure evil who want nothing more than their enslavement, destruction, or corruption. Such a strategy is very good for whipping up lynch mobs, quelling internal strife ‘in the face of the common threat’, and stifling the usual twinges of conscience most people experience when mistreating others. This sometimes requires the use of otherism beforehand, to make people view the targeted group as an “other.”
SwM, you have been targeted.
Oky1,
I can’t believe you just went Godwin, not only on SwM, but on a previous administration. We have had some bad Presidents in the history of our country, but Nazi is something so evil, it is in a category by itself. Your comment suggests you know nothing at all of history. I lived through those times, and the wrongness of your comment and observations is staggering in its offensiveness.
Oky, I did not render an opinion on whether or not Obama should leave only that the ways things are lining up that it did not appear to be happening. That prospect seemed to put you over the edge.
Snowden’s likely a plant. The timing and just about everything else surrounding this story is suspicious.
I know a number of folks with “only” a GED who are stars… and rather bright ones.
Gene H, Thanks., In the prisonplanet world that Oky seems to occupy calling someone that disagrees with you a nazi seems rather commonplace.
Darren,
Haven’t you figured out that you never get the truth or tell the truth from your mistress…. It’s only an illusion…..
And to think this Geek only has a GED…..
It’s time for certain elements in the news media to stop being in bed with this administration and start striving for the truth.
Smom is a lot of things. Nazi isn’t even remotely one of them. Godwin’s Law applies in every situation where the person you accuse of being a Nazi has offered concrete proof that they indeed take Nazi-like actions. This is why calling Smom a Nazi fails. There is no indicator that she is an oppressive fascist although we disagree on quite a bit politically. Had you said “Eric Holder is a Nazi”, well, there is plenty of concrete evidence that he’s an oppressive (it’s okay to spy on everyone) fascist (but we can’t prosecute the Wall St. criminals) and the epithet might actually apply,
Nazi is a special word.
It should be saved for special people.
While Smom is special in a lot ways, she’s not that kind of special.
I understand Tobin’s anger … he’s part of the national media that has lost the confidence of the American people. Poor Tobin is simply part of the Americanized version of Pravda.
If we want to get any truth at all we have to subscribe to foreign news outlets giving a whole new meaning to the term “Radio Free Europe”.
Copy that, mespo.
In my experience, the only time a whistleblower is called a “clown” or such other epithet is when his info is accurate, righteous, and important.
Bravo, Mr. Snowden.
The Snowden Effect
By Charles P. Pierce
6/10/13
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Snowden_Revelations
Excerpt:
…But there are issues beyond Edward Snowden, and whatever comes next, and these are issues worthy of an open and national debate, and they should be examined in the light of day.
First of all, it’s past time to re-examine everything that was done in such a panic after 9/11. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was warning us about the NSA and secrecy three decades ago. Jim Bamford has made his living writing about the NSA. These problems are not new. This re-evaluation especially includes the Patriot Act, which keeps getting renewed by a Congress which long ago abdicated its oversight role in intelligence as thoroughly as it has abdicated its War Powers. (Senator Mark Udall is all over this, and good for him.) The answer, “Well, we stopped a bunch of attacks we can’t tell you about” ought not the be adequate any longer. Second, it’s time for the president to differentiate, clearly, himself from his predecessor. What did he do that you haven’t? What have you done that he didn’t? The attempt to pry these revelations loose from the history that led to the programs that are now being revealed guarantees that the discussion will slide into commonplace political argument, which will get us approximately nowhere in discussing the real problem, which is the place of privacy in a democracy that insists on surveilling itself to death. If this whole thing comes down to Obama-is-better-than-Bush vs. Obama-is-history’s-greatest-monster,and there’s too much of both right now, then the opportunity goes a’glimmering.
(Oh, and Senator Aqua Buddha, you’re a U.S. Senator. If you want to do something about this state of affairs, you have more serious means to which you can resort than a futile lawsuit, although that will add some names to your fundraising database for 2016. Grow the fk up, please.)
Unfortunately, the real test will come after the next terrorist attack that succeeds. It seems as though the surveillance stepped up in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. I don’t recall anyone warning about that in the immediate aftermath. If you want to see what effect, if any, Edward Snowden’s revelations have had on the country, and on what it’s doing to itself, look for it there. I would almost guarantee you that you won’t like what you see. Fear is the new normal. I lived through the Church Committee hearings. That was the last time the secret state-within-a-state was revealed to this extent, and that was by an empowered congressional committee. Business as usual opened again in 1980. We are not the country we say we are. What we are arguing about is the distance between the two.
SwM,
Now you’re a Nazi …
Reblogged this on Es ist ein Klaüsterfökken..
Ron Paul On Government Spying: “Should We Be Shocked?”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/10/2013 – 10:01
What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head. The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around… We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.
More at zerohedge
There are a lot of incompetent and/or unethical people who work for private companies/businesses. Look at what the banksters of Wall Street did to our economy and to people’s pension funds. Our government goes after whistle-blowers with a vengeance but gives wealthy banksters a slap on the wrist.