We
have a young man who has led a blameless life. Few can say as much
and the attack dogs will not be able to discredit him this way. In
the meantime he has placed himself outside frivolous law enforcement.
This was also necessary.
Now
the press and the American people can confront this new reality.
What is completely shocking is just how easily they chose to create
this capability. The USA is not supposed to be at war with its
citizens. How are the American people going to fix this?
Too
many people are dabbling in real power to abuse humanity and
observing this is very difficult.
That
individuals will abuse this is inevitable. In the past we had real
protection in numbers. Now anyone can fabricate a case for blackmail
on almost anyone.
The Character of
Edward Snowden
JUNE 11, 2013
by JEFFREY A. TUCKER
Edward Snowden, age 29
and now temporarily living in Hong Kong, is the overnight sensation
who leaked details about the National Security Administration’s
(NSA) practice of massive and sweeping surveillance of Americans’
browsing habits. He has also provided a model of what it means to
live a principled life, even when it comes at personal expense.
What his leak revealed
is truly chilling and even infuriating. He demonstrated that
websites and cell phone companies are sharing their databases with
the U.S. government in real time—without so much as court
orders—and thereby making every one of us a victim of snooping and
possibly vulnerable to blackmail for so long as we shall live.
Much more important
for any lover of freedom, however, is the manner in which he went
about his defiance. He acted peacefully, openly, with total
dedication to principle. He took responsibility for speaking the
truth. He did it with a clean conscience. He has been willing to face
the consequences for his actions.
It will take millions
more like him to give freedom a fighting chance in an age of
leviathan State control.
In his life, he had
seen enough to make him crippled with fear. But he rejected fear
and took a different route. He used the very technologies that he
knew to be compromised by government invasion and surveillance in
order to speak truth to power. His actions reveal a path forward
for the whole cause of human freedom—using every opportunity to act
on the courage of our convictions.
By now, everyone knows
the story of Edward’s life, just as millions have already seen his
interview following his disclosures. Edward was born in 1983 and
raised in North Carolina. His enrollment in a community college made
up for his poor high school education and allowed him to earn a
general education degree.
He signed up with the
Army—he hoped to liberate people in Iraq, but was shocked to find
that this wasn’t really the goal—and was discharged following leg
injuries. He went to work as a security guard for an NSA security
facility in Maryland, where he must have revealed his competence in
information technology and code. (In some ways, he is an archetype of
today’s self-taught but indispensable code “geeks.”)
Soon after that he was
snapped up by the talent-hungry CIA. By 2007 he found himself in
Geneva, maintaining computer security for the agency. Two years later
he was working for the NSA in Japan—the very definition of upward
mobility.
Then earlier this
year, he landed the dream job. He began working for Booz Allen
Hamilton in Hawaii. This is a private company that collects,
analyzes, and disseminates data for the NSA, enjoying billions in
contracts from the government. Edward himself was only 29 years
old, but he was pulling in $200,000 in a cushy job in a dreamland,
living with his girlfriend. In Hawaii!
To appreciate what he
has done, you have to put yourself in his position. Would you give
that up? Would you be willing to walk away? He was surrounded by
people who just took it for granted that every American deserves to
be spied on, that government has the full right to everyone’s
information.
This was the culture
of his firm. The people paying him to manage computer networks all
accepted the premise that all this stuff about freedom and democracy,
court orders and the Bill of Rights, was just a veneer—just the
silly doctrines of the civic religion that we tell our children but
don’t really believe. Their real job at Booz was to collect as
much information as possible and let the government use it as it sees
fit.
Most people in that
position would say nothing. Maybe they would even feel a sense of
power at being able to wiretap anyone or dig through the email
archives of anyone. The financial incentive alone would be enough to
keep him quiet. Why risk such a happy life as this? He could have
stayed there forever. Most everyone would have done exactly this.
Instead, his
well-formed conscience intervened. One day, he and his girlfriend
gathered up their things and left. He told his superiors that he was
going to get treated for epilepsy. Instead, he flew to Hong Kong and
lived in a hotel room. He called up journalist Glenn Greenwald (a man
he knew he could trust) and gave him the documents that are rocking
the world today.
That’s when the
witch-hunt for the leaker began. Official Washington swore vengeance.
But Edward wasn’t
finished. Rather than remain in hiding, he took the opposite path. He
granted an on-camera interview in which he revealed everything there
was to know about him. He put himself on the line, with confidence
and grace.
He said:
I'm no different from
anybody else. I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who
sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and
goes, "This is something that's not our place to decide, the
public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right
or wrong."
After the leaks, his former employer denounced him and his “shocking” actions, saying that his revelations are “a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm.” The partisans of the national security state called him evil and Congressman called for his extradition and prosecution.
He had already
anticipated this. He knew the risks. He figures he will never go home
again. He is now seeking asylum in Iceland, a fact that should give
every American pause.
Here is the statement
I find so incredible, so compelling, so absolutely on point. He
explains why he chose to be a whistleblower rather than continue to
live a comfortable but morally compromised life:
You can't come forward
against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be
completely free from risk because they're such powerful adversaries.
No one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you, they'll
get you in time. But at the same time you have to make a
determination about what it is that's important to you.
And if living unfreely
but comfortably is something you're willing to accept—and I think
many of us are, it's the human nature—you can get up every day, you
can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck for relatively
little work, against the public interest, and go to sleep at night
after watching your shows. (emphasis added)
Millions of people do
just this. They choose to live unfreely—but comfortably. It is the
habit of nearly everyone—especially in times when the leviathan
State is so imposing and threatening—to put up with the immorality
and evil around them, to look the other way in the face of fraud and
wickedness, to help cover up the unethical deceptions and lies, to
pretend like the plunder and surveillance and invasions are just no
big deal, rather than come forward.
To choose the security
of the known evil—no matter how pressing that evil is, so long as
that evil is your personal benefactor—rather than take the risk
that comes with improving the world is the pattern and habit of our
day. Millions do it. Millions in government. Millions in the private
sector. And that is precisely why so much of the world is on its
present course.
To break away from
that requires something special, something spectacular, something
singular in our times. So why take this extraordinary step? As Edward
told Greenwald in his interview, it’s because someone has to act in
his generation or it will be worse in the next one. The “architecture
of oppression” must be exposed now as a way of making the world a
better place in the future.
And so he acted. He
used technology to speak directly to the whole human family. He
bypassed the gatekeepers completely and put to use the technological
marvels of our time to make a difference.
He could have done
otherwise. He could have sat by, just as tens of thousands, hundreds
of thousands, do every day. After all, his company employs 25,000
people, most of whom were in a position to do the same thing. But
they did not. He did.
What makes the
difference? What made him act? He decided not to be part of the
system. He decided that he would not live an unprincipled life. He
would not be unfree. He would choose truth, and this truth would set
him free.
Too often we think of
our freedom as something that is either granted or taken away from us
by government. This is partially but not completely true. There are
ways in our lives that we can choose—right where we are—to
embrace or reject freedom. All of us, but especially those who work
for government or government contractors, are often faced with the
choice of accepting a comfortable lie or taking the risk to live the
more difficult truth.
As Snowden seems
intuitively to understand, the “architecture of oppression”
relies most fundamentally on our own cooperation and complacency.
Withdrawing our consent, and doing so with integrity and
openness, is probably the single most powerful blow any of us can
ever strike for the cause of human freedom and the well-being of
future generations.
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