The debate about whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain has never been resolved, just as it never was re Julian Assange. Some see Snowden as an out and out traitor, others as a knight in shining armor. Since he’s a real live human being, it’s unlikely that he’s either.
He broke
some US laws and ran for cover. That makes him an outlaw. He did it deliberately,
so he knew what the consequences would be; he knew he’d have to leave the US
and probably live in a foreign country. That makes him courageous. He knew he’d
probably only have the option of a foreign country with arguably much worse
human rights records than the US because those were the only countries that
might grant him asylum.
Right now he’s living in a country that sent two young
women to a labor camp in Siberia or speaking out against the government. He
hasn’t said a word about that atrocity or their human rights, or Vladimir
Putin’s propensity to jail anybody he wants to. That makes Snowden a bit of a
hypocrite.
He exposed
real time, arguably unnecessary NSA encroachments on privacy, all in the name of
the war on terrorism. The war on Iraq was in the name of terrorism. That pushes
the needle towards Snowden being a modern day hero. Some good has resulted from
his actions. President Obama appointed a panel to investigate the agency’s
alleged infractions and the panel has called for an overhaul of the NSA modus
operandi. More points for Snowden the hero. Even the
Editorial Board of the New York Times and The Guardian Editorial have gotten
involved. Both argued that Snowden has done more good than harm and should be
pardoned by the US President or at least treated leniently.
The NYT
said “The revelations have already prompted two federal judges to accuse
the NSA of violating the Constitution”. They name one, but not the other and I
can’t find evidence of who it is. The one they do name, Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington didn’t
actually accuse the NSA of violating the Constitution.
In a
preliminary hearing of Klayman I and II (see NYT article for the PDF of the case) against Obama et al, Judge Leon granted
a motion for a Preliminary Injunction for Klayman I but denied the same motion
for Klayman II, saying “the Court concludes that plaintiffs have the standing
to challenge the Constitutionality of the Governments bulk collection and
querying of phone record metadata …” The judge then stayed the order pending
appeal “in view of the significant national security interests at stake in this
case and the novelty of the constitutional issues.” Which is rather
different to saying the NSA violated the constitution. The judge was
clearly unhappy about the NSA’s activities, though. The NYT got that right.
By the
way, ‘et al’ refers to the NSA, The Department of Justice, Barack Obama, Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr., General Keith B Alexander, Director General of the
NSA, and US District Judge Roger Vinson, Verizon Communications and it’s chief
executive officer - and Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, YouTube, AOL,
PalTalk, Skype, Sprint, AT&T and Apple. None of which is mentioned in the
NYT Editorial.
In late
December Judge William H. Pauley in New York ruled in another case that the NSA
acted within the bounds of the Constitution. Okay, so no agreement amongst the
wise men of the land. Not a whole lot of unbiased journalism on the
subject.
As for the
problems Snowden's revelations have caused for the way the US deals with
terrorism, nobody can say, because that’s classified – which is arguably
understandable. So there may be a whole bundle of points for Snowden the
traitor that none of us know about. We might never know. Or we could find out
empirically. There might be another huge terror attack that's a direct result
of exposing how the NSA’s surveillance works. It could happen soon, it could
happen years from now.
I don’t
know if that's a reasonable justification for the NSA's activities. I guess if
I’m the target of terrorism one day and I could prove the attack could have
been prevented if Edward Snowden had never played hero, I’d say it was a great
justification.
Some people think they’d rather not put that one to
the test; they’d just prefer that the NSA has what it needs to do its job.
Maybe that's little simplistic, over-trusting. But it's not necessarily unwise.
We can’t know, and that’s the part that leaves me wishing that Snowden had
thought this through a little more.
Then there’s
the fact that privacy doesn’t have the same value today as it had even fifty years
ago, let alone when the Fourth Amendment was cast in stone. We give our rights
to privacy away all the time, to Google, Yahoo! Facebook, Apple et al. We
enable apps that ask us to sign away our rights to stop them from using our
private information and even our friend’s private information. We don’t feel as
if we’re connected to the human race unless we do it. So I don’t really get the
outrage at a government department that spies on everybody because it’s looking
for terrorists and doesn’t know how else to find them. What’s Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook,
Apple et al’s excuse? We want to make life better for you?
And the
difference is? Personally I'd prefer to be spied on by an organization that at
least is prompted by the desire to protect me than by ones that just
want to make a buck out of me. Well, Edward Snowden didn't see it that way, and
nor does half the world. Should he get leniency? I think so. I don't see the point
in destroying his life, because whatever he is, he's clearly not an out and out
villain and he's not responsible for the fact that he had so much unsupervised power and he wasn't adequately vetted.
