contrary to the frequent assertions in the last week (including by Fred Kaplan) that Snowden is particularly reprehensible because he “broke his OATH of secrecy,” neither Snowden nor anyone else broke such a secrecy “oath.”
Such an oath doesn’t exist (look up “oath” on the web). Rather he—and I—broke an agreement (known as Standard Form 312) which was a condition of employment.
As citizens, the questions we face become more broad and cut to the very core of what it means to live in a democracy: What is the impact to businesses when Internet traffic and private networks are breached or they’re required to provide backdoors or hackable vulnerabilities in their products? What will become of our relationship to technology if no one trusts the platforms we use all day long? What is the impact on personal relationships when NSA employees are able to monitor loved ones’, co-workers’ or enemies’ Internet traffic? What are we condoning?
Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”
Edward Snowden is vilified as a “traitor” by politicians of the American political duopoly, and hunted like Public Enemy Number One by the global imperial apparatus. However, for a large proportion of Earthlings, Snowden has made the singular contribution to humanity of the year 2013.
My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me, and Brazil is certainly one of those.
At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time.
David Cameron has gone down the way of Tony Blair. Just as Blair’s moderation dissolved when it came to the invasion of Iraq, Cameron’s has been wearing thin for the last year, with increasingly radical and reactionary attitudes toward Europe, immigration and personal liberties. Harassment of The Guardian has been two-pronged. First there was private pressure; then there was public pressure after the private attempts failed to produce the desired effect.
The “Paypal 14″ are back in court. They are accused of participating in DDoS attacks on Paypal when Paypal – in conjunction with Visa and Mastercard – cut off financial services to Wikileaks.
The eventual outcome of the trial will define not just how we see DDoS but the larger question of the right to protest online.
To the likes of [New York Times columnist David] Brooks, Snowden was a disconcerting mystery; Glenn Greenwald, though, got him right away. “He had no power, no prestige, he grew up in a lower-middle-class family, totally obscure, totally ordinary,” Greenwald says. “He didn’t even have a high school diploma. But he was going to change the world – and I knew that.” And, Greenwald also believed, so would he. “In all kinds of ways, my whole life has been in preparation for this moment,” he says.
I would think journalists would want to be very careful about embracing this pernicious theory of “privatizing” journalism given how virtually all of you are not only are paid for the journalism you do, but also have your own journalism funded by all sorts of extremely rich people and other corporate interests.
Stephen Sackur, presenter of BBC World News’ flagship current affairs interview programme, defends government line against Glenn Greenwald
“The hypocrisy of “law and order” and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.”
“I saw what Chelsea Manning did,” Hammond said when we spoke last Wednesday, seated at a metal table. “Through her hacking she became a contender, a world changer. She took tremendous risks to show the ugly truth about war. I asked myself, if she could make that risk shouldn’t I make that risk? Wasn’t it wrong to sit comfortably by, working on the websites of Food Not Bombs, while I had the skills to do something similar? I too could make a difference. It was her courage that prompted me to act.”
