Eyes Wide Open

Frontline’s two-part series, “The United States of Secrets,” was quite an eye-opener. For many of us, perhaps, our eyes were already open a crack, thanks to Edward Snowden. But the program added some length to the toothpicks.

If you’re like me, you probably had it in the back of your mind, at least, that the NSA and many large tech companies knew everything about you based on your behavior online or on mobile, but thanks to the whistle-blowers (of whom Snowden is the most famous in a rather long line), now you know the extent of it.

Now we have to decide how much it bothers us, and what we’re going to do about it as individuals. Because it doesn’t bother everyone equally. You may insist that the practice of storing your data stop, on principle, but that’s probably not going to happen, at least for quite a while. So the only thing left that you control is your own behavior. Are you willing to drop out and disconnect? Again, probably not. But at least now, you can’t say you don’t know what the price of living in the modern world is. And in the end, if it doesn’t change your daily life, you may actually make peace with it.

If not, are there enough of us out here so outraged by what we have learned that we are willing to put our vote where our anger is and elect those who would forbid these practices? To be honest, if Barack Obama were running for a third term, I don’t know if I’d vote for him again. A big part of his platform was transparency, but it seems there’s even less of it in government now than there was under W. His director of national intelligence lied to Congress about the extent of data collection. It wasn’t prevarication, or dissembling, or misleading – it was a LIE.

OK, so are we safer for what’s been going on, now that we know about it? Is 9/11 going to be our last Pearl Harbor? What major attacks have been broken up, thanks to the Program? Well, of course, they won’t tell us that (I’m almost ready to shout, “So at least make something UP!”).

As for search engines and other information companies, are there any out there promising NOT to collect our data, that can perform as well as Google or the other biggies? That we might even have to pay for to use?

Mr. Snowden et al have done their jobs. Now it’s down to us.

TMI

The first two bullets fired in what could become one of the biggest legal battles in American history have struck a target. A federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s massive collection of phone data on millions of us appears to violate the Constitution, and ordered it to stop doing so on two plaintiffs.

A big section of pavement has been laid on Edward Snowden’s likely road to sainthood. If it weren’t for him, of course, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. But if it weren’t for the government taking on private contractors to operate this system, there probably wouldn’t be an Edward Snowden, either. How many other private contractors are there, with access to information on us, who just might not be as interested in the greater good?

When a sitting federal judge throws around terms like “Orwellian,” it tends to get your attention. Personally, I have no problem with the use of modern information systems to prevent terrorism. But does this massive NSA program actually work? As critics have pointed out making the haystack bigger only makes it harder to find the needle.  

I have this creeping suspicion that while our lives are becoming more transparent to government (and Google, Microsoft et al, BTW), government operations are becoming more and more opaque. Is it really all about safety and security? Do you think sometimes, when government power is exercised, it’s just because it’s there and justifies someone’s job?

Of course, these issues are not as black-and-white as the Snowden fans would have us believe. But 9/11 happened in large measure not because the dots weren’t already there, but because nobody connected them, which seems to be a factor in many high-profile man-made tragedies, such as school shootings. Can we have a reasonable discussion about what information the authorities need about us and what they don’t – and what government operations need to be secret and what don’t? The deep end isn’t all that far away, and I’d really hate to see us go off it.

Be a Hero, Pay a Price

A military judge has found Army Pvt. Bradley Manning guilty of more than 20 counts against him, including espionage, for his role in supplying information for the notorious WikiLeaks release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents, including State Department cables. Manning walked on the count of “aiding the enemy” – appropriate, in my view, as I don’t think that was his intention, even though some of the material could actually put foreign interests working with the United States in danger. Manning’s stated intention was to encourage debate, and that he did, but it could cost him decades in prison.

Pardon me, but I’m still trying to figure out, besides sparking debate, exactly what this release accomplished. Manning had to violate an oath, steal information, and make public cables for which the senders had a reasonable expectation of privacy. While Manning  likely heads for prison, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, perhaps a step up in accommodations, but probably not much higher.

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden remains stuck in the Moscow airport transit section following his revelation of the NSA scheme to collect data on Americans, whether or not they are suspected of crimes. Snowden also violated an oath, but felt we all needed to know about this program and start talking about it. It worked! But Snowden may find himself living in less-than-savory countries from now on, always looking over his shoulder.

Some -- though I’m not one of them -- may consider all three of these guys heroes and may wonder why they have to pay for brave acts in furtherance of the noble cause of light-shedding. Bravery (or bravado) was certainly involved, but how noble were the causes? It may truly be up to history to decide that question. I do think it’s fair to say that all three deserve what’s coming to them, at least in the short term.

A hero always has to pay a price – or risk paying one. It comes with the territory.

I Don't Care Where He Is

Edward Snowden, the former contractor who is credited with pulling the veil off of PRISM, the massive federal surveillance program, is in Moscow at this writing, reportedly asking Ecuador for asylum.

Hero or traitor, he picks some strange places to escape U.S. charges: Hong Kong (China) and now Moscow. He reportedly considered Cuba and Venezuela. Perhaps since Julian Assange was able to hide in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, Snowden figured he’d find some refuge in that South American country.

Those who think he’s a traitor would no doubt prefer to see him in the confined spaces of an American prison, but his other choices aren’t so great. If I were choosing places to live, Hong Kong, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador would probably not be high on the list. He can never again set foot in the United States or a country that’s too friendly with us if he wants to avoid capture. Those who want to see him paying a price for his misdeed might take some comfort from the fact that he will always have to be looking over his shoulder. As for Julian Assange, BTW, I don’t see the Ecuadorean embassy listed among London’s five-star hotels. Plus, he can’t use any free tickets to those West End shows.

It may be easy for others to conclude that Snowden is a hero, but heroes don’t always get an immediate ticker-tape parade.  We’ve only recently gotten close to the concept of honoring our own service members who fought in unpopular wars. Heroism usually requires a price of some kind, which Mr. Snowden is already paying.

Personally, I would prefer we spend as little time and money as possible on this fellow. And perhaps we’ll be a little more careful before we hire government contractors in the future.

One piece of advice, though, Ed: If I were you, I’d be careful to avoid open spaces. With this administration’s penchant for using drones, well, a round of golf might be a really bad idea right now.

Hero/Leaker Worship

Wherever he is now, there’s no question that Edward Snowden, who revealed the existence of the massive PRISM data-gathering program (or metadata, or whatever that’s called) is the most famous man on the planet – but is he a hero?

Personally, I’m not sure I’m ready to see him fitted him for a red cape quite yet. I actually had a Facebook friend who said Snowden should be compared to patriots who won the United States its independence from Britain. Really? Didn’t he violate a secrecy oath? I’m also a little bothered by the fact that he fled to Hong Kong – a little too close to China for my taste. And it has been pointed out that there were existing channels for whistleblowing, that the world stage wasn’t necessary.

Fine. Perhaps he could have used existing channels, but it might have been a long time before any of us actually heard the whistle. This way, we all heard it instantly.

Maybe I should be outraged at the existence of this kind of program. I’m not. It may even be a good idea in some respects. But do we deserve to know about it and to have a debate about it? Absolutely!

There are a couple of things that bother me about it, aside from the concept of surveillance (that word is troublesome, only because it implies someone’s actually looking at all this data at all times – that’s not happening). But I heard the feds are building a zillion-dollar facility somewhere to house all of this stuff  – a home for the “haystacks” in which the security folks would look for “needles” when learning of a terrorist threat. How many such facilities will be necessary going forward? Second, why is a 29-year-old contractor with no college degree given access to top secret information – and paid $200,000 a year? How many more Snowdens are we relying on to keep our secrets (and some secrets have to be kept)? Now that we know what we’re paying for, are we getting our money’s worth?

As I’ve said before, the average American can’t get too upset about privacy loss when he’s willing to sell his soul to the digital devil after seeing an online deal for a $100 flat-screen TV.

In my view, the only thing that’s really going to protect us from government abuse is SUNLIGHT. Snowden did us a favor. He ripped the black curtain off the window – but he didn’t exactly topple the Berlin Wall. Before he ascends into heaven – or descends to the other place – we all have something to discuss first.