Edward Snowden is still on the run. He was the contractor who exposed massive U.S. government spying on U.S citizens and foreigners through the new information technologies in an unprecedented way, perhaps as a Robin Hood of the Internet? Or a global muckraker of the new information age? Or a subverter of the free world, a “leaker” of information that enhances the power of the super villain terrorists who plot the destruction of humanity? Or perhaps even an example of blowback from the privatization of public activities, which seems to have been most pronounced in the military and intelligence services, given their lucrative and largely untouchable budgets?
But most of all, at least for me, the Snowden story seems to follow Karl Marx famous dictum that history repeats itself, but not exactly---the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
There were many tragic “spy stories” in the not so distant past, from Old Bolsheviks being executed in purge trials where they were accused of working with Nazi Germany and imperial Japan to subvert the Soviet Union to the U.S. Government executing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for stealing the non –existent secret of the atomic bomb and giving it to the Soviet Union, thus making them, as the Judge who sentenced them to death stated, responsible for all who would later perish in nuclear wars.
But these were political show trials—the first aimed at crushing opposition inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the policies of the Stalin leadership, the second in the U.S. aimed at demonizing the CPUSA as an agent of the Soviet Union and destroying in the process all forms of open opposition to U.S. cold war policies, from the nuclear arms race to the U.S. establishment of military alliance systems through the world.
The Snowden events as they are unfolding appear to be farce, even if they have the potentiality of becoming tragedy
The U.S. government is hunting Snowden through the world. Snowden went to Hong Kong, and then got on a plane to Moscow before the U.S. secured the cooperation of the Chinese authorities to arrest him. Then the Russians didn’t hand him , perhaps because there is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and post Soviet Russia
Then there were stories that Snowden was on a plane to Cuba, but he wasn’t. Now, he is apparently seeking political asylum in Ecuador and there are petitions calling for political asylum in Ecuador and prominent people are supporting his right to political asylum.
I have no problem with Ecuador giving him asylum. After all, the Polish Communist Party member who released to the CIA Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which then led to great conflict in the world Communist movement, was not only given political asylum in the U.S. but became a Professor of Communist Affairs at Columbia University. There is no comparable university in Ecuador to give Snowden a Professorship in,let's say, Capitalist Espionage Studies
And Secretary of State Kerry shouldn’t be so angry at the Chinese and/or the Russians for failing to turn Snowden over. This isn’t 1950, when the Mexican police literally kidnapped Morton Sobell, who fled to Mexico because he rightly feared that he would be brought into the Rosenberg Case, cracked his skull, and turned him over to the FBI.
The U.S. after all can’t seriously expect “Red China” and no longer Red Russia to jump to their commands like Mexico “in the good old days” of the high cold war period.
And, as Marjorie Cohn, a Law Professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law said in a recent interview, “if the U.S. did not have such an antagonistic and ill-advised policy against countries like Venezuela, Cuba, even Ecuador, then these countries would probably be extraditing him to the U.S.”
Cohn goes on to say that after pursuing over the decades policies of assassinations, kidnapping, provocation, to either keep reactionary governments in power throughout Latin America and other areas of the world or overthrow governments that it didn’t like, the U.S. government is in a fairly difficult place when it comes to calling upon these nations, either former or contemporary targets of its actions, to extradite Snowden in the name of adherence to international law and anti-terrorism policy
And what has Snowden done? Exposed U.S. government surveillance of private citizens, breaking into the internet world of information. Pundits like to say that the Internet is a road to a free market of ideas, preventing censorship through the world. If that is true, they should be rallying around Snowden. If they have some courage to go along with these convictions, they should be speaking up for Snowden
Also, these kinds of sweeping surveillance policies, liberal U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have stated, based on their longtime experience with the Senate Intelligence Committee, really don’t help in spotting legitimate terrorist threats as against traditional intelligence.
I would say, as students of the use of electronic intelligence have long maintained, beginning with studies of the Pearl Harbor attack, that such surveillance creates a kind of information overload, which often makes it difficult for analysts to separate significant from insignificant information as they waste most of their time wading through material with no value.
If anything, one might see Snowden as a 21st century “muckraker” warning concerned citizens about what is being done behind their back in the name of protecting their security.
A century ago, progressive journalists called “muckrakers” by their opponents exposed the abuses and plots of corporations and politicians and in the process aided campaigns to democratize politics.
At the same time and forever after, other kinds journalists begged, bribed, and stole incriminating information about mass market celebrities, movie stars, famous athletes(idols of consumption, sociologists later called them) to sell newspapers and magazines to a public which cared much more about these celebrities then about the business and political leaders. We have been inundated by the latter “leaked information” at higher and higher levels for generations.
There are really few examples of the former, but when they do occur, there are global manhunts, trials, prison sentences and official proclamations that people through the world are in grave danger
Why did Snowden do what he did? As Will Rogers used to say all I know is what I read in the newspapers (or today what I find by surfing the web)
So far, from surfing the web, I have no real idea what motivated Snowden
In the world of espionage, which through history has both been hugely over-rated and has had its many comedies (so many of the agents present false information to please their superiors and so many others who do gather valuable information have it ignored because it isn’t what their superiors want to know) non professional spies sometimes do it for reasons of political ideology, more often because of the money.
It doesn’t seem that Snowden had any real reason that is clear, at least from surfing the web, no proof of remorse at what he was being paid to do as a private contractor and no clear financial rewards for what he did. But some dark “spirits” from the past might come up with some reasons to explain his actions.
If Joe McCarthy were around and got over his hangover, he might come forward with a list of 56, 81, or 201.5 officials of the State Department who gave Snowden information. G. Gordon Liddy might arrange a burglary of Snowden’s psychiatrist’s office (if Snowden had a psychiatrist). Oliver North might come forward with a plan to trade arms to anyone who turns over Snowden.
We also have to look at the new information technology . The Internet cuts at least two ways. It enables those with political power to greatly increase their investigations into people’s lives---their financial situation, consumer preferences, political beliefs and affiliations, mostly to try to sell them things, but also to create files that, if 20th century U.S. history is any judge, can be used in all sorts of nefarious ways that violate the bill of rights—from illegal searches and seizures and imprisonment without warrants based on probable cause for such actions.
Saying that this is being done to combat international terrorism and that there is no danger to “law abiding American citizens” is like saying the same thing in the name of “national security” as the FBI and CIA opened mail, tapped phones, and had its agents disrupt the lives of law abiding American citizens by contacting their employers, landlords, friends and family
But the new information technologies also create enormous data bases that can be turned against the inquisitors, used to expose their actions and at the very least inform victims of what they face.
What is important about these events is not that Snowden has used his access to breach government security—the privatization of all sorts of services previously carried out by the public military and other public agencies, including armed security abroad, has not only cost U.S, citizens many billions but has created the opportunity for all sorts of abuses, including mercenary soldiers, double agents, rogue agents etc. What citizens should be angry with is what Snowden has exposed.
But back to Snowden and the soap opera of the moment. He fled to Hong Kong, which after being under British colonial control from the First Anglo-Chinese Opium War (1839-1842) for over one hundred and fifty years, reverting to Chinese sovereignty in 1998. And he then went to Moscow, his advisors referring to the new Russia as a “democratic country.”
The spokesman for the not so democratic Putin regime issued a statement that he and the regime have no knowledge of what is going on here. And it doesn’t look like Putin, who tries to convince Russians that he is something of a James Bond character, will turn him over to the U.S., no more than Hong Kong?
Will he defect to Russian Intelligence, no longer the KGB? Will he act as a double agent? Open up an Internet café in Moscow? Begin to work on a 21st century version of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground? Make it to Ecuador and live among the indigenous people? Become a contestant on Survivor? Stay tuned for the future adventures of Snowden
Randolph Bourne, the humanist philosopher whose critique of U.S. involvement in WWI inspired and continues to inspire peace activists everywhere, wrote famously that “war is the health of the state.” So, one might add, is secrecy.
For democrats with a small d, getting rid of the misnamed Patriot Act, seriously reforming intelligence gathering, and even ending the “privatization” of what were previously public activities, from corporate contractors overcharging U.S. taxpayers for food services for the military abroad, to the mercenaries working “private security contractors” whose crimes compromise the U.S. military and undermine U.S. policy, is what we should be demanding and fighting for.
What Snowden exposed and not Snowden’s deed is what should energize us. And the creation of effective restrictions on this kind of abuse of power, so that the neo J. Edgar Hoovers et al who advance such policies will be ones seeking political asylum is what we what we should be calling for today from the Obama administration.
