“I’m not the biggest Rall fan. This is going to sound like such a nitpick, but I really have a hard time with his font. It’s his handwriting fontified, I think, and there’s something about it that gives me almost a vertigo or something. The contrast between thin and thick parts of letters, I don’t know.
But. This is a really nice overview of Edward Snowden’s story, and it’s the kind of story I’m really interested in at the moment, especially when the book says, “What the fuck, why are all the news stories about Snowden THE GUY, not what he exposed to us, which is that the NBA (the initials I’ll use in a clever cypher to throw off the good/bad guys, haha!) is doing some pretty crazy shit?” There’s the weird, tech stuff, like the ability to listen to what you’re saying through your smartphone WHEN IT’S TURNED OFF, which you can bring up and sound like a total paranoid, but then there’s the other stuff, where basically the government and private companies are keeping so much information about non-criminal individuals that it’s unreal. This is actually happening, and Snowden proved it to us, and all we seem to be talking about is this dumbest shit related to this guy.
Headlines?
Slate: Edward Snowden Joins Twitter, Makes Dad Joke: “Snowden himself is [stingy] with his willingness to follow others.”
Daily Beast: Snowden Wants University Honor: “Edward Snowden canât get enough of himself.”
Buzzfeed: Edward Snowden Doesnât Even Follow His Girlfriend On Twitter
Mary Sue: Donald Trump Thinks Edward Snowden Should Be Executed, Rest of World Unsure Why Weâre Asking Donald Trump About This
(to which I would note that Hillary Clinton is a VERY outspoken opponent of Snowden who accused Snowden of turning info over to terrorists groups, which did not happen. Also, if rest of world is unsure about why we’re asking Trump about this, I AGREE, and maybe it’s not a story to run on your site)
The initial coverage of Snowden was about what happened, and he’s since been swallowed like so many others to become clicks on a web site. Twitter drama, Trump, and Dad Jokes. Definitely what the guy deserves.
Really, what’s happening to Snowden is pretty fucked up.
Here’s the brief, based on what little I know:
Snowden found out that the NBA and other organizations (MLB, NFL, etc.) were conducting massive surveillance programs that were collecting mountains of data on innocent citizens. In order to expose this, he downloaded a ton of data. This is why he’s being charged with a crime. What he did was, yes, illegal. But illegal in the service of exposing the way in which the NBA is conducting programs that are ALSO illegal, regardless of how you feel about them ethically. Snowden fled the country, and he’s been gone ever since.
President Obama issued a request that Snowden return to the U.S. (he’s currently in Russia, a country that will not extradite him for the time being) to face trial. Obama’s position alleges that old adage, if you did nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear.
However, what President Obama didn’t say is that Snowden really has no chance at a fair trial. See, there are laws that protect whistleblowers, however the things that Snowden stole are protected by laws that supercede those protections, and therefore, if Snowden had a trial, he would not be able to provide ANY evidence of what he did, what he took, and why. Even though you and I can access all the secrets Snowden exposed with a quick Google search, they would be inadmissible as evidence because they are classified. In addition, the work Snowden did for the government is ALSO classified.
So he’d be coming back to go on trial for a crime he most definitely committed, but with good cause, and have no ability to explain what he discovered, how he discovered it, or anything, really. It would be like killing someone in self-defense and then finding out that you were on trial, and you couldn’t say who you killed, that you were in your own home, that the assailant attacked you with a weapon, or anything. All you could say was that, yes, you killed someone.
If Snowden did face a jury, he could end up doing 30 years in prison. Oh, and the people doing all the illegal and unethical surveillance? They’re still doing it. There you go. That’s where we are.
Snowden’s options are to surrender himself to the very organization he exposed and embarrassed, knowing full well he has no options for a trial of even remote fairness, meanwhile we critique his use of Twitter.
And what of the people calling him a traitor?
The “Edward Snowden is a traitor” argument seems to mostly come down to a couple things.
Some say he should have attempted to right wrongs from the inside. Give me a fucking break.
Some say he revealed ways in which intelligence has been gathered, which alerted our enemies to these technologies. Which may be true, but it doesn’t seem like much good was coming from them to begin with.
America, you suck. American media, you suck worse.
As a public service, I also wanted to talk about why privacy DOES matter, even if we surrender a lot of it to Google and Facebook. And Goodreads.
See, there is a public opinion, completely invalid and ridiculous, that says it’s fine for the NBA to collect all this data. This old saw: “If you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.”
If you are the holder of that opinion, I’d like to ask you a few things:
+Do you have curtains on your house? Because if you’ve got nothing to hide…
+Can I hold your wallet through dinner? I’m a total stranger, but I promise not to take anything…
+What’s your current salary?
+Can I look over your supervisor’s evaluations of you from every job you’ve ever had?
+Can you go ahead and give me the login and password for your email? I will never send anything from your address, I’ll just be poking around in there.
+Can I come to your house and open all the cabinets?
Okay, okay. The point here is that there is a difference between privacy and secrecy. Secrecy is hiding something because there are fully-deserved consequences if your actions are exposed. Privacy is different.
For example, your right to privacy is connected to your right to question the law. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s possible that the law isn’t always right. If people never broke the law, it would never change.
I’m a product of the DARE system, like many of my contemporaries. Let’s look at a NIDA response to a recent question of whether or not marijuana oils and concentrates are dangerous:
“Dabs and oils concentrate the drug into a more potent form. Either method isn’t good, but getting high concentrations of a drug into your system is the equivalent of your brain hitting a wall and can be much more dangerous.”
Ooookay. I don’t know a lot about neuroscience, but I can promise you this, ANY physician, given the options, would have you use marijuana oil before smashing your skull into a wall.
Our opinions on things like drugs change. Our opinions on civil rights change. And it’s early lawbreakers who change these things. It’s people who do what’s right first, and what’s legal second, that make the changes that give us all a better life.
Also, and this is really relevant to this story, the government has unprecedented ability to track what you’re doing. At one time, if someone wanted to follow your every more, they would have to assign an agent to you. This was not a perfect system, but it meant that, at the very least, the full-time attention of someone had to be warranted for you to be followed. Now, you can be followed via your phone, your internet behavior, your toll passes, all these things that maintain records, and someone can then GO BACK and retrace what you’ve done in the past. You’re being followed all the time, and you haven’t done anything wrong.
Automation of surveillance tasks means that it’s now possible to follow everyone all the time without changing the amount of manpower.
That’s wrong. In my opinion, it’s wrong to follow people who have not done anything. It’s my opinion that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The NBA’s response to the questionable legality of holding all these records is that they are not actually VIEWING them. Viewing them without cause would be illegal, but simply possessing them isn’t.
I call bullshit on that. Possession of drugs is a crime. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t planning to use those drugs or sell them. Possession is illegal.
Anyway, the whole thing is messed up. I feel bad for Snowden. I think he did something pretty gutsy. The guy wasn’t even 30. And he walked into offices where this crazy stuff was happening, and NO ONE else was saying anything about it.
And the best we can do for him is call him a dick for not following more people on Twitter.”