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Edward Snowden. (Courtesy of guardiannews.com)Ad Policy

While the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed the National Security Agencys mass spying, was still stuck in Moscows Sheremetyevo airport, he received support from an unexpected quarter. Four leaders of Solidarity, the workers movement in Poland that upended that countrys totalitarian Communist regime in the 1980s, issued an open letter demanding that their government give Snowden sanctuary from the global manhunt being conducted by the United States. The signers were Barbara Labuda, Jzef Pinior, Zbigniew Bujak and Wadysaw Frasyniuk, all of whom had the experience of being stalked by their government when they went underground during the period of martial law that began in 1981. Edward Snowden did not kill anyone, did not kidnap or attack or maim anyone, they wrote. And yet, he is hunted and cornered like a terrorist. Why? Because he revealed an inconvenient truth about the activities of the authorities of his country. He revealed to the world that the American government systematically controls the behavior of millions of his [fellow] citizens through mass registering and listening to their telephone, Skype, Facebook, email and chat activities. Snowdens revelations uncovered an ugly face of the American administration.

And they voiced their expectation that the European Parliament will recognize the value of his act and will extend over him the protections of European democratic institutions, which were created in order to defend and enlarge civic freedoms and human rights.

Around the same time, in the West, a word familiar from the not so distant pastdissidentbegan to be attached to Snowden and other whistleblowers, like Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Chelsea Manning, who soon received her ruthless sentence of thirty-five years for disclosing classified documents. In The New York Times, for instance, John Broder and Scott Shane wrote: In 2006, when Edward J. Snowden joined the thousands of computer virtuosos going to work for Americas spy agencies, there were no recent examples of insiders going public as dissidents. The use of the word is striking, because it was last widely employed to name those who, in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, had resisted the totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union and its client governmentsin other words, people like the four Solidarity leaders who signed the letter in support of Snowden. Used this way, the word carried the implication that the US government might be that sort of oppressive power, or is perhaps on its way to becoming one. As support for Snowden grew globally and the Obama administration widened its campaign to capture him, that picture of Snowdens situation became so broadly accepted that the White House felt impelled to challenge it explicitly. Obamas press secretary, Jay Carney, asserted, He is not a human rights activist. He is not a dissident.

Or to translate: We are no Soviet Union.

And certainly, the four Poles, of all people, are as fully aware as any sensible person of the abyss of difference that separates the Obama administration from, say, the regime of Joseph Stalin, slayer of tens of millions of his own people. And yet it is chillingly true at the same time that the US government has gone further than any previous governmentnot excluding Stalinsin setting up machinery that satisfies certain tendencies that are in the genetic code of totalitarianism. One is the ambition to invade personal privacy without check or possibility of individual protection. This was impossible in the era of mere phone wiretapping, before the recent explosion of electronic communicationsbefore the cellphones that disclose the whereabouts of their owners, the personal computers with their masses of personal data and easily penetrated defenses, the e-mails that flow through readily tapped cables and servers, the biometrics, the street-corner surveillance cameras. But now, to borrow the name of an intelligence program from the Bush years, Total Information Awareness is technologically within reach. The Bush and Obama administrations have taken giant strides in this direction. That China and Russiaand Britain, and many other countrieshave done the same is hardly comforting to the humble individual under the eye of the universal spying apparatus.

A second totalitarian tendency has been the ambition to control the entire globea goal built into fascist as well as communist ideologies of the early twentieth century. In Hannah Arendts words, Evidence that totalitarian governments aspire to conquer the globe and bring all countries on earth under their domination can be found repeatedly in Nazi and Bolshevik literature. Neither achieved it, or even came close. But now, in the limited arena of information, a sort of shadow or rudiment of this ambition is near realization by the sole superpower, the United States. Much attention has been paid to Americans loss of privacy rights, but relatively overlooked in the debate over the governments surveillance activities (at least in the United States) has been that all foreign communicationsincluding those occurring in the lands of close allies, such as Germanyare fair game and are being swept into the US data banks.

The extent of the US global reach over information was mirrored in Snowdens fate. Astonishingly, almost no fully democratic country would have him. (The conspicuous exception was Bolivia, whose president suffered the indignity of a forced diversion and landing of his plane when he was suspected of carrying Snowden to safety.) Almost all others, including Poland, bowed to US pressure, actual or potential, to refuse Snowden protection. The Polish letter writers were scandalized by this spectacle. The fact that only dictatorial governments agreed to give him shelter shames the democratic states, they wrote. Our democracies discredit themselves with their indifference and cowardice in this matter.

What happened to Snowden in Moscow diagramed the new global reality. He wanted to leave Russia, but the State Department, in an act of highly dubious legality, stripped him of his passport, leaving himfor purposes of travel, at leaststateless. Suddenly, he was welcome nowhere in the great wide world, which shrank down to a single point: the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo. Then, having by its own action trapped him in Russia, the administration mocked and reviled him for remaining in an authoritarian country. Only in unfree countries was Edward Snowden welcome. What we are pleased to call the free world had become a giant prison for a hero of freedom.

Open letter by leaders of Polands solidarity movement in defense of Edward Snowden.

Read this article:
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, the New Dissidents?

Francis is an extraordinary human being and an extraordinary pope. But to be Planet Earths person of the year, to be extraordinary is not enough.

You must be superlativethe years most surprising, most consequential, most transformative figure alive. And by that standard, the only possible standard, Pope Francis is not the person of the year. That is a title that can only belong to Edward Snowden.

Many people do not want this, or this kind of thing, to be true, but it iswhether measured by scope of change, depth of change, or something even deeper.

Consider the breadth of change wrought by Francis and Snowden. If the pope, writes TIME magazine, could bring the church into a new relationship with its critics and dissidentsagreeing to disagree about issues that divide them while cooperating in the urgent mission of spreading mercyhe might unleash untold good. Perhaps. So far, he has created the possibility.

And possibilities, once created, are powerful things.

But Snowden has created an even more powerful possibilityby shocking America and the rest of the world into apprehending what a truly global tyranny would be. Francis is showing the world a new way of approaching the good news of the gospel. Snowden has given us access to bad news of a kind we never knew existed.

From his platform, Francis is free to dazzle. From within the machinery of the surveillance state, Snowdens freedom was radically confinedreduced to the single, world-altering choice to leak or not to leak. While a life outside the papacy would leave Francis no less full and forceful a Christian, a life unleaked would have made Snowden far more a burial ground for secrets than many a Catholic priest.

While the faithful preach the Bible openly, nearly every person alive and aware of the secrets Snowden released sitsstill!beneath a coercive cone of silence. Members of Congress withhold the truth while those they call to testify lie under oath. Without Francis, a cosmopolitan civilization a billion strong would rise to its own defense. Without Snowden, who knows how long Americans would grope around in gloomy ignorance of our true relationship with our own government? Without Snowden, the global character of total information awareness would be no more than a superstitionno doubt assiduously dismissed by all the powers that be.

Now the depth of Snowdens change comes into focus. Francis is not a revolutionary. As TIME observes, Francis signals great change while giving the same answers to the uncomfortable questions. Now, becoming person of the year is not about winning a change-agent contest. Defeat the Confederacy, survive the Blitz, and youve got pretty good odds on the honor. As an agent against a certain sort of change, Francis is, again, extraordinary. But again, Snowden has him beat. Who has done so much, in so short a time, to return the human mind to the most basic questions of libertywhat it is, how to keep it, how to know if it is lost?

Yet at the same time, there is no topping the radical quality of the Snowden-led rebellion against omniscient rule. You are right to wonder if it might not turn out for the best, especially outside America, where the false alternatives of a return to innocence and a perpetual revolution so stubbornly vex the spirit. But inside America, we should not be deceived by the riots and assassinations that havent followed on Snowdens monstrous disclosures. Organized resistance against Washingtons permanent collection of all datawhether among elites or the rest of uswould be unthinkable in a world without Snowden.

Even more significant, however, is the reorientation of anti-establishment politics that follows. Before Snowden, the prospect of a successful bipartisan alliance for radical reform was a fantasy, a laugh. Today it is real, and the closest we come to an answer to the cynicism and despair draped around popular opinion. Meanwhile, no matter how profound Franciss response to human discontent, no pope can fully attend to earthly justice, as students of Catholic history know all too well.

Dramatic as the scope and depth of Snowdens impact may be, the case for him does not end here. There is a darker, yet more transcendent, sense in which he is our unchallengeable person of the year.

Francis greatly moves and inspires many of us. (No, not all.) But the way he does is defined by a simple fact: It flatters our favorite prejudices. He is humble; he loves all; hes unafraid of unattractive people; he knows how to smile. Pope Francis appeals to some of the deepest Christian intuitions about how to live into the brotherhood of Man. Inevitably, he also appeals to the vanities of our warm, fuzzy, quasi-spiritual popular culture.

In that happy place of the collective imagination, Snowden is practically an avatar of our secular devilnegativity incarnate. Snowden is a bummer; Snowden is a rule-breaker; Snowden is non-compliant; Snowden is not constructive. Some say he is even a traitor. Either way, Snowdens acts place the possibility for awakening our moral imagination at our own feet and for that, in a secret part of our hearts, we might just hate him.

But in that anger and disappointment, we are pulled back from the kind of shared delight that can become a conspiracy of consolation for the death of our deeper dreams. As enchanting as the experience of heavenly servitude may be, Americans know that when it is offered together with earthly subjection, our instinct for life turns against itself.

The celebration of Pope Francis should not become just such a therapy for the unfree. Nor should our recognition of Edward Snowden occasion our rejection of peace and joy as a wellspring of our lives. Fortunately for us all, to confront the darkness is still not to curse the light.

Originally posted here:
Edward Snowden, Not Pope Francis, Is the Person of the Year

There are a number of narratives being floated by the usual suspects to attempt to demonstrate that Edward Snowden is a traitor who has betrayed secrets vital to the security of the United States. All the arguments being made are essentially without merit. Snowden has undeniably violated his agreement to protect classified information, which is a crime. But in reality, he has revealed only one actual secret that matters, which is the United States governments serial violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution through its collection of personal information on millions of innocent American citizens without any probable cause or search warrant.

That makes Snowden a whistleblower, as he is exposing illegal activity on the part of the federal government. The damage he has inflicted is not against U.S. national security but rather on the politicians and senior bureaucrats who ordered, managed, condoned, and concealed the illegal activity.

First and foremost among the accusations is the treason claim being advanced by such legal experts as former Vice President Dick Cheney, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Senator Dianne Feinstein. The critics are saying that Snowden has committed treason because he has revealed U.S. intelligence capabilities to groups like al-Qaeda, with which the United States is at war. Treason is, in fact, the only crime that is specifically named and described in the Constitution, in Article III: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Whether Washington is actually at war with al-Qaeda is, of course, debatable since there has been no declaration of war by Congress as required by Article I of the Constitution. Congress has, however, passed legislation, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force, empowering the President to employ all necessary force against al-Qaeda and associated groups; this is what Cheney and the others are relying on to establish a state of war.

But even accepting the somewhat fast and loose standard for being at war, it is difficult to discern where Snowden has been supporting the al-Qaeda and associated groups enemy. Snowden has had no contact with al-Qaeda and he has not provided them with any classified information. Nor has he ever spoken up on their behalf, given them advice, or supported in any way their activities directed against the United States. The fallback argument that Snowden has alerted terrorists to the fact that Washington is able to read their emails and listen in on their phone conversationsenabling them to change their methods of communicationis hardly worth considering, as groups like al-Qaeda have long since figured that out. Osama bin Laden, a graduate in engineering, repeatedly warned his followers not to use phones or the Internet, and he himself communicated only using live couriers. His awareness of U.S. technical capabilities was such that he would wear a cowboy hat when out in the courtyard of his villa to make it impossible for him to be identified by hovering drones and surveillance satellites.

Attempts to stretch the treason argument still further by claiming that Snowden has provided classified information to Russia and China are equally wrong-headed, as the U.S. has full and normally friendly diplomatic relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Both are major trading partners. Washington is not at war with either nation and never has been apart from a brief and limited intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918. Nor is there any evidence that Snowden passed any material directly to either countrys government or that he has any connection to their intelligence services.

Then there is the broader national security argument. It goes something like this: Washington will no longer be able to spy on enemies and competitors in the world because Snowden has revealed the sources and methods used by the NSA to do so. Everyone will change their methods of communication, and the United States will be both blind and clueless. Well, one might argue that the White House has been clueless for at least 12 years, but the fact is that the technology and techniques employed by NSA are not exactly secret. Any reasonably well educated telecommunications engineer can tell you exactly what is being done, which means the Russians, Chinese, British, Germans, Israelis, and just about everyone else who has an interest is fully aware of what the capabilities of the United States are in a technical sense. This is why they change their diplomatic and military communications codes on a regular basis and why their civilian telecommunications systems have software that detects hacking by organizations like NSA.

Foreign nations also know that what distinguishes the NSA telecommunications interception program is the enormous scale of the dedicated resources in terms of computers and personnel, which permit real time accessing of billions of pieces of information. NSA also benefits from the ability to tie into communications hubs located in the continental United States or that are indirectly accessible, permitting the U.S. government to acquire streams of data directly. The intelligence community is also able to obtain both private data and backdoor access to information through internet, social networking, and computer software companies, the largest of which are American. Anyone interested in more detail on how the NSA operates and what it is capable of should read Jim Bamfords excellent books on the subject.

The NSAs capabilities, though highly classified, have long been known to many in the intelligence community. In 2007, I described the Bush administrations drive to broaden the NSAs activities, noting that

The president is clearly seeking open-ended authority to intercept communications without any due process, and he apparently intends to do so in the United States House Republican leader John Boehner (OH), citing 9/11, has described the White House proposal as a necessary step to break down bureaucratic impediments to intelligence collection and analysis. It is not at all clear how unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure would do that. Modernizing FISA would enable the government to operate without any restraint. Is that what Boehner actually means?

It was clear to me that in 2007 Washington already possessed the technical capability to greatly increase its interception of communications networks, but I was wrong in my belief that the government had actually been somewhat restrained by legal and privacy concerns. Operating widely in a permissive extralegal environment had already startedsix years before, shortly after 9/11, under the auspices of the Patriot Act and the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

The White Houses colossal data mining operation has now been exposed by Edward Snowden, and the American people have discovered that they have been scrutinized by Washington far beyond any level that they would have imagined possible. Many foreign nations have also now realized that the scope of U.S. spying exceeds any reasonable standard of behavior, so much so that if there are any bombshells remaining in the documents taken by Snowden they would most likely relate to the specific targets of overseas espionage.

Here in the United States, it remains to be seen whether anyone actually cares enough to do something about the illegal activity while being bombarded with the false claims that the out of control surveillance program has kept us safe. It is interesting to observe in passing that the revelations derived from Snowdens whistleblowing strongly suggest that the hippies and other counter-culture types who, back in the 1960s, protested that the government could not be trusted actually had it right all along.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executivedirector of the Council for the National Interest.

See the original post:
Edward Snowden Is No Traitor | The American Conservative

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET

MOSCOW National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden wants asylum in Russia and is willing to stop sharing information as a trade-off for such a deal, according to a lawmaker who was among a dozen activists and officials to meet with him Friday at the Moscow airport where he has been marooned for weeks.

Snowden appeared nervous, but in apparently good health during the meeting behind closed doors in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport, Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov told reporters.

Human Rights Watch provided a photo of Snowden at the meeting, the first new image to appear of the former NSA systems analyst since the Guardian newspaper broke the story of widespread U.S. Internet surveillance based on his leaks.

Whether Russia would be willing to take Snowden up on his request is unclear. The Kremlin has signaled that it wants Snowden out. But granting asylum would be a diplomatically risky move, threatening to worsen Moscow-Washington already strained by U.S. criticism of President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on the country's opposition and Putin's allegation that the U.S. is meddling in Russian affairs.

But it would allow Putin to portray Russia as a principled defender of human rights and openness, despite the fact that it allows its security agencies to monitor the Internet.

In Washington, the White House criticized Russia for allowing activists to meet with Snowden. Spokesman Jay Carney said Friday's meeting amounted to a "propaganda platform" for the man the Obama administrations wants Russia to return to the U.S. to face multiple charges of leaking classified information.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told Russian news agencies after the announcement that Russia has not yet received a new bid for asylum and that Putin would continue with his insistence that Snowden stop leaking information.

Anatoly Kucherena, a well-known lawyer in Russia, said that he would be helping Snowden with the necessary paperwork to officially request asylum, CBS News' Svetlana Berdnikova reports from Russia.

"Mr. Snowden is a courageous person," Kucherena told Russian television station Russia Today. "He is a hero."

Kucherena said he would meet with Snowden again in the near future to expedite the process, which was estimated to take at least another two weeks, Berdnikova reports.

Both Nikonov and Genri Reznik, a lawyer who participated in the meeting, said Snowden was willing to stop leaks.

"He said he was informed of this condition and that he can easily accept it. He does not intend to damage the United States' interests given that he is a patriot of his country," Nikonov said. However, it is unclear whether Snowden still is holding onto potentially sensitive information about U.S. intelligence operations.

Snowden is believed to have been stuck in the transit zone since June 23, when he arrived on a flight from Hong Kong, where he had gone before his revelations were made public. He had been expected to transfer in Moscow to a Cuba-bound flight, but did not get on the plane.

A brief video of the meeting's opening shown on the Russian news site Life News showed Snowden speaking, then being interrupted by a flight announcement on the airport's public-address system.

"I've heard that a lot in the past weeks," Snowden said, smiling ironically.

Snowden made an initial bid for Russian asylum, but Putin said he would have to agree to stop leaking before asylum would be considered. Snowden then withdrew his bid.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua recently have offered him asylum, but it is unclear if he could fly to any of those countries from Moscow without passing through airspace of the United States or its allies. Some European countries allegedly refused to allow Bolivian President Evo Morales to fly through their airspace on his way home from Moscow last week because of suspicions that Snowden was on his plane.

In a text of his opening statement at the meeting released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, Snowden said he wanted to accept all asylum offers and travel to the countries that have made them "to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders."

"I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably," Snowden said in the statement released late Friday morning.

He also denounced the United States for what he said was pressuring its allies to block him from their airspace. Snowden could be hoping that Washington would not risk trying to block a flight he was on if he had Russian asylum.

In the short term, he could also be seeking Russian asylum simply as a way of being able to get out of the airport and move freely.

How long a decision would take is unclear. Anatoly Kucherena, a member of a Kremlin advisory body who was at the meeting, said the process could take two to three weeks. But Putin's imprimatur could accelerate the process, as it did when French actor Gerard Depardieu was granted Russian citizenship in a matter of a few days.

The activists at the meeting included Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International's Russia office, and Tatiana Lokshina, deputy head of the Russian office of Human Rights Watch. Also taken into the meeting room was Russia's presidential human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

Amnesty International considers Snowden a "whistleblower," according to a statement released to CBS News by Widney Brown, the group's senior director of international law and policy.

"He has revealed evidence of the U.S. government's unlawful behavior -- unlawful under international human rights law (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the right to privacy) and unconstitutional with regard to the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which also guarantees the right to privacy and protections against unreasonable search and seizure," Brown said.

The activists came after an email in Snowden's name was sent on Thursday. On Facebook, Lokshina posted the text of the email, which says in part that Snowden wants to make "a brief statement and discussion regarding the next steps forward in my situation."

Hundreds of journalists flocked to the airport, but were kept in a hallway outside the meeting area which was behind a gray door marked "staff only." It was not clear if Snowden would have to come out that door or if he could exit by another route.

Russia has said it cannot extradite him because by remaining in the transit zone he is technically outside Russian territory.

Although the meeting left Snowden's fate still uncertain, it at least confirmed where he was; speculation had swirled that he had been spirited out of the country.

"We found for ourselves that he is real, he's no phantom," said Kuchurena.

Go here to see the original:
Edward Snowden emerges, wants asylum in Russia - CBS News