Its a pity that those who want to get the NSA and GCHQ revelations out of the news are succeeding and it make me wonder about these sorts of pieces. Defending Greenwald/Snowden has merit but it shouldn't be swamping the more valuable NSA/GCHQ content as much as it has.
Why do human interest stories always swamp other content? Writing about a person is a basic tool of journalistic story telling. Nobody wants to get every juicy update on what we know about an inanimate computer system.
Spying isn't a problem, hypocrisy is. While the USG decries terrorists and unfriendly state-actors as a major source of cyber-warfare, the US are most certainly at the heart of it as well.
This seems like the build-up to a war and the United States government has mobilized unimaginable resources devoted to offensive capabilities, and there's an eerie sense of escalation that's reminiscent of the Cold War.
The story about the messenger is a lesson of the times to come where few people can make a lot of difference. I am not talking about whistleblowing, I am talking about a more radical approach like hacking country facilities around the world to uncover and discover crimes and unethical actions. It's obvious that this power can be used for good or bad.
Do you remember the last time in history where a single person without any weapons or military training has such big impact? You don't even need followers. I am really excited! (uh, NSA is reading HN too).
It's getting worse. Now we're turning the story from Snowden to Greenwald.
It's sad to see that even the media doesn't want to protect itself anymore. Well I hope they won't count on our support later, when they come arresting more of them for publishing any sort of leak and "harming national security".
It is definitely getting worse. I had MSNBC on last night as background noise and heard several pundits speculate that Snowden may have sold or given information to China or Russia.
That's what they do though. They have to fill the air time with something so they fill it with wild speculation. Unfortunately, this ends up leading the public discussion around by the nose.
Yes, by why are they speculating about the crimes that Snowden and Greenwald may have committed rather than the crimes that members of the Establishment may have committed? They could just as well fill that time with wild speculation about what people with access to the data could be doing with it. In fact, that would be even more entertaining and given the bipartisan disdain for these secrete laws among the proletariat, it would likely improve ratings even more.
In fact, normally that is what they fill their time with. MSNBC speculates wildly about members of the GOP while Fox speculates wildly about members of the Democratic party. Why is this case different? What should that difference tell us?
I know this is going to get me labeled as a Snowden "demonizer" by those who take the G.W. Bush approach of "you're either with us or against us"...but these specific allegations, if true, should not be taken as just trivialities.
The OP seems to be implying the possibility that Snowden purportedly took the Booz Allen job with the explicit purpose that of exposing what he perceived as NSA's unethical practices. Now, replace "Snowden" with...well, a hypothetical whistleblower, and "Booz Allen" and "NSA" with [company/institution you respect]
e.g. Henry Ford joined Tesla Motors to get the access to documents that prove that Elon Musk is cutting corners just as Ford suspected.
There have been unfair and trivial criticisms of Snowden, but this particular angle is not completely trivial. Note, however, that even if true, it does not dismiss Snowden's claims or findings...but it's the kind of pre-condition that must be weighed as it would be in any controversy.
Complete Speculation. Is there video evidence that he said this?
But yes, even if true, lets hold proles to the word of the law, while writing new laws that demonize all whistleblowing and the exposing of corruption.
I find it funny how we always get into the character attacks. Lets talk about the leaks.
Bradley Manning -> Traitor
Julian Assange -> Rapist
Edward Snowden -> Spy(?)/Traitor/Ethical Person who knew about the abuses and attempted to follow through with uncovering them?
You can call it by different names all you want, but ultimately we can either support the act, or demonize the individuals.
OK, if the accusation is false, then there's not much to talk about...it's just a smear. I was only speaking of the condition in which this accusation is true. If so, it does not mean that Snowden was wrong or that he is being nefarious. However, it's not just an ancillary demonization...at least for those of us who interpreted his story to be of someone who turned because of what he saw to be unjust practices.
In otherwords, he's less of a whistleblower, more of a muckraker. Both are capable of bringing about needed reform
I can understand where you're coming from. The definitions are outdated.
With the government being able to request your confidential sources, and with the government being able to see all forms of electronic communication, my idea of a whistleblower is the following:
"Anyone who peacefully and in good faith informs the public of government or corporate wrongdoing."
You can definitely agree that Snowden did not violently do this, and we can debate whether or not he has done this in good faith, however, people should be innocent until proven guilty in a free society.
So my opinion right now is that he is a whistleblower. If the government can prove that he is a spy or is subverting the government for nefarious purposes, then the actions they're committing would be justified, but as of now, they are not in the slightest.
So, what's the significance? Even if true, he can still be "someone who turned because of what he saw to be unjust practices," he just purposely went a bit deeper to get better evidence.
Can you only be a whistleblower if the evidence serendipitously falls into your lap? Is it less ethical to make a conscious choice to pursue it further? Sure, you're not exactly acting in good faith toward your employer, but only because you believe they are not acting in good faith toward the American people.
I suppose it could turn out that he had some personal axe to grind and got a bit delusional in putting together a conspiracy theory. This news could lend credence to that interpretation, but I find it less likely based on what we know.
I don't care what anyone thinks of Snowden or of his motives. I care about the illegality he has revealed. Weigh it against the fact that there was vanishingly little chance for this information to have been revealed without breaking someone's rules.
The Ford/Tesla example is completely different. Booz is a government contractor, and so is already sharing information with the NSA. If it is true that he took the job just to get the documents, he probably already knew about PRISM, but just didn't have access to all the details.
A better example would be someone from Ford getting a job at one of their suppliers (e.g. the brake manufacturer) to expose something.
I don't see how we conclude that he knew anything about PRISM before Booz Allen. It's entirely possible that he planned to get some documents without knowing what he would get. Or that he was primarily interested in other documents.
Given the amount of planning Snowden put into this, and that he only had 4 weeks at Booz Allen, the timetable for having a revelation that he wanted to become a whistleblower is almost implausibly compressed. It seems very plausible that he knew what he wanted to do before he took the job.
That's a nice article to read. Happy to see this as a conclusion:
“They are trying to shift attention away from what the U.S. government has done onto what the people who have reported it have done.”
Seriously. It would be like if someone trespassing on OJ Simpson's property caught video of OJ harming people with a knife and then the public focusing on how terrible of a person the trespasser is, ignoring the fact that it's incredible video evidence of a much more serious crime. Further, it would be as though the trespasser only trespassed in the first place because he heard loud screams from the property.
In other words, Snowden's a whistleblower, but I think the media and gov't have succeeded in ruining the term 'whistleblower'. Whistleblowers almost by definition have to violate certain laws, but our protection laws were supposed to make that ok. It's highly complex and more so for people in intelligence whistleblowing on intelligence matters. That's why Snowden's also a hero.
Isn’t a lot of this hatred of Greenwald jealousy-based. The Bestselling book, all the media attention, the overnight blog success, etc? I’d be the first to say his style can be bombastic and he can be overly aggressive. But nobody denies that he’s very smart, and among liberal bloggers at least, very moderate and rational in his view, and unusually willing to engage debate. So it’s hard to figure out what there could be about me that generates such strong emotions.
That may be part of the explanation, but I very much doubt it constitutes a significant part. Whenever the omnipotence and/or moral authority of the bureaucracy is challenged the media rushes to its defense. The typical way it does this is to vilify those who raised the objections.
See: labor unions, Martin Luther King, jr., Michael Moore, WikiLeaks/Julian Assange, Al Gore, Joe and Valerie Wilson, Thomas Drake, #occupy, Bradley Manning, and now Snowden and Greenwald.
32 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] threadThe fact that the NSA spies on internet communications, on the other hand, has been known (at least in principle) for years.
This seems like the build-up to a war and the United States government has mobilized unimaginable resources devoted to offensive capabilities, and there's an eerie sense of escalation that's reminiscent of the Cold War.
The story about the messenger is a lesson of the times to come where few people can make a lot of difference. I am not talking about whistleblowing, I am talking about a more radical approach like hacking country facilities around the world to uncover and discover crimes and unethical actions. It's obvious that this power can be used for good or bad.
Do you remember the last time in history where a single person without any weapons or military training has such big impact? You don't even need followers. I am really excited! (uh, NSA is reading HN too).
It's sad to see that even the media doesn't want to protect itself anymore. Well I hope they won't count on our support later, when they come arresting more of them for publishing any sort of leak and "harming national security".
In fact, normally that is what they fill their time with. MSNBC speculates wildly about members of the GOP while Fox speculates wildly about members of the Democratic party. Why is this case different? What should that difference tell us?
The OP seems to be implying the possibility that Snowden purportedly took the Booz Allen job with the explicit purpose that of exposing what he perceived as NSA's unethical practices. Now, replace "Snowden" with...well, a hypothetical whistleblower, and "Booz Allen" and "NSA" with [company/institution you respect]
e.g. Henry Ford joined Tesla Motors to get the access to documents that prove that Elon Musk is cutting corners just as Ford suspected.
There have been unfair and trivial criticisms of Snowden, but this particular angle is not completely trivial. Note, however, that even if true, it does not dismiss Snowden's claims or findings...but it's the kind of pre-condition that must be weighed as it would be in any controversy.
Upton Sinclair took a job at a meatpacker so that he could get the information to write The Jungle.
Its totally different than the scenario of Ford spying on Tesla.
But yes, even if true, lets hold proles to the word of the law, while writing new laws that demonize all whistleblowing and the exposing of corruption.
I find it funny how we always get into the character attacks. Lets talk about the leaks.
Bradley Manning -> Traitor
Julian Assange -> Rapist
Edward Snowden -> Spy(?)/Traitor/Ethical Person who knew about the abuses and attempted to follow through with uncovering them?
You can call it by different names all you want, but ultimately we can either support the act, or demonize the individuals.
In otherwords, he's less of a whistleblower, more of a muckraker. Both are capable of bringing about needed reform
With the government being able to request your confidential sources, and with the government being able to see all forms of electronic communication, my idea of a whistleblower is the following:
"Anyone who peacefully and in good faith informs the public of government or corporate wrongdoing."
You can definitely agree that Snowden did not violently do this, and we can debate whether or not he has done this in good faith, however, people should be innocent until proven guilty in a free society.
So my opinion right now is that he is a whistleblower. If the government can prove that he is a spy or is subverting the government for nefarious purposes, then the actions they're committing would be justified, but as of now, they are not in the slightest.
Can you only be a whistleblower if the evidence serendipitously falls into your lap? Is it less ethical to make a conscious choice to pursue it further? Sure, you're not exactly acting in good faith toward your employer, but only because you believe they are not acting in good faith toward the American people.
I suppose it could turn out that he had some personal axe to grind and got a bit delusional in putting together a conspiracy theory. This news could lend credence to that interpretation, but I find it less likely based on what we know.
A better example would be someone from Ford getting a job at one of their suppliers (e.g. the brake manufacturer) to expose something.
“They are trying to shift attention away from what the U.S. government has done onto what the people who have reported it have done.”
Seriously. It would be like if someone trespassing on OJ Simpson's property caught video of OJ harming people with a knife and then the public focusing on how terrible of a person the trespasser is, ignoring the fact that it's incredible video evidence of a much more serious crime. Further, it would be as though the trespasser only trespassed in the first place because he heard loud screams from the property.
In other words, Snowden's a whistleblower, but I think the media and gov't have succeeded in ruining the term 'whistleblower'. Whistleblowers almost by definition have to violate certain laws, but our protection laws were supposed to make that ok. It's highly complex and more so for people in intelligence whistleblowing on intelligence matters. That's why Snowden's also a hero.
See: labor unions, Martin Luther King, jr., Michael Moore, WikiLeaks/Julian Assange, Al Gore, Joe and Valerie Wilson, Thomas Drake, #occupy, Bradley Manning, and now Snowden and Greenwald.
I'm sure there are other examples.