Edward Snowden as Conscientious Objector

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/10


NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. (Photograph: guardian.co.uk)

Edward Snowden is a very modern spy – neither gun-blazingly dashing nor cat-strokingly sinister. He is young, tech-savvy, quietly articulate and intensely interested in human rights. His work did not involve high-speed car chases or elaborate gadgets – just a desk and a computer. Using these simple tools he could spy on anyone, anywhere.

There are many people like him, and they are, on his account, potentially frightening figures. "We hack everyone everywhere," he told the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald in the foreign hotel where he has taken refuge. "I had the authorities to wiretap anyone – you, a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal email." He describes a "horrifying" infrastructure where he and other analysts could intercept the vast majority of human communications around the world.

And now Edward Snowden has gone and blown it open – literally. He has stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself to be the source of the Guardian's string of recent disclosures of what the National Security Agency has been up to in recent years – some of it ostensibly legal. He asserts that the NSA has routinely misled the people who are supposed to oversee its actions. He is only too aware that he has himself broken the law by going public with his concerns and that the consequences could well be personally extremely uncomfortable. His actions make him a different kind of frightening figure – to those whose methods he is now directly challenging.

The script for what happens next is, in a sense, routine. It is certain that the US government and security agencies will pursue Snowden to the ends of the earth – appropriately, in his case, since he has taken himself off to Hong Kong. But in other ways the usual processes are already wrong. There is no need for a leaks inquiry: the source has outed himself. And Snowden's current location complicates matter immensely for the US administration. He cannot easily be arrested, rendered and kept in solitary confinement – the fate of another young whistleblower, Bradley Manning, currently on trial and facing an eternity in prison. Edward Snowden promises to be a much more complex problem.

[In_The_Wind]

1. It's time we knew the truth about violating the individual's right to privacy.

[Kolesar]

2. Snowden donated $250 to Ron Paul for President

https://www.google.com/search?q=snowden+%22ron+paul%22&oq=snowden+%22ron+paul%22&aqs=chrome.0.57.6905j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[JoePhilly]

4. It will be interesting to watch this angle ...

The more I read from this guy ... the more he sounds like a conspiracy nut in the mold of Ron Paul.

He'll say a few things that sound reasonable, things one might even agree with, and then he says something that sounds totally insane, like that he had the ability to wiretap the President.

[marmar]

3. k/r

[William769]

5. Good for him.

I wish him well in the chase.

[xchrom]

6. i do too. nt