Today we learned that Edward Snowden was the whistleblower behind the recent revelations concerning domestic spying being done by the National Security Agency.
A number of things about this story are striking. Here are a few that struck me.
First, in his statement to The Guardian, Snowden calls out President Obama in particular for advancing the policies that concerned him and drove him to the decision to disclose NSA activities. Here is the quote from the article:
He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."Second, in an article in Forbes this weekend, Andy Greenberg points out that the operation exposed by Snowden (in particular the collection of domestic voice data records) explicitly contradicts the Congressional testimony in March of 2012 of NSA Director Keith Alexander.
Today Bruce Schneier posted a short article on this matter, discussing the need to protect whistleblowers and the significant cost to our Democracy of our failing to do so.
We are at a pivotal point in the future of our rights to privacy and quite possibly the long term efficacy of our Republic.
This may sound like hyperbole, but I don't think so.
As Obama ironically pointed out in a memo to his staff early in his Presidency:
"A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency."So where is the disconnect here? Is this some kind of cognitive dissonance? Some kind of conspiracy? What gives?
- Barack Obama
I can't speak for the President, but I do believe that it is the American people that are ultimately responsible for this dramatic erosion of personal liberty that is happening before our eyes. From time to time those in power will attempt to usurp the rights of the people, that is human nature. In a functioning Democracy, it is ultimately the job of the citizenry to keep these abuses in check.
It would be too simple to say that, well, this all rests on complex technologies, advances in data mining, etc, and the average citizen can't be expected to pass judgement on something like this. Worse, I have seen recent comments to the effect that well, is it really spying? There is so much data, it can't all possibly be read by an analyst, I mean, if a tree falls in the forest... Or, well, our government needs to access this data to keep us safe, I mean, we need this data to catch the terrorists, right? I mean they tell us so, and who am I to contradict all of this, I'm no expert.
In truth, it is not at all that complicated.
It is simply this: does the government have the right to monitor all of your digital communications? Do they have the right to do this secretively without telling you about it?
Even if (and this is a pretty big "if") such a thing was in fact necessary to combat the terrorist threat, it should certainly be something discussed publicly. Does our Democracy deserve anything less?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."
- Benjamin Franklin
