(11) Thu Oct 27
Edward Snowden post-mortem
BEFORE CLASS:
1. Write
Edward Snowden: patriot or traitor?
2. Watch
Watch John Oliver’s interview of Edward Snowden on Vialogues and share a one-sentence critical response.
3. Read
Edward Snowden: The world says no to surveillance
(NYT op-ed, 2015)
MOSCOW — Two years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.
Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.
Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.
Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.
Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.
This is the power of an informed public.
Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the latest product of a change in global awareness. Since 2013, institutions across Europe have ruled similar laws and operations illegal and imposed new restrictions on future activities. The United Nations declared mass surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights. In Latin America, the efforts of citizens in Brazil led to the Marco Civil, an Internet Bill of Rights. Recognizing the critical role of informed citizens in correcting the excesses of government, the Council of Europe called for new laws to protect whistle-blowers.
Beyond the frontiers of law, progress has come even more quickly. Technologists have worked tirelessly to re-engineer the security of the devices that surround us, along with the language of the Internet itself. Secret flaws in critical infrastructure that had been exploited by governments to facilitate mass surveillance have been detected and corrected. Basic technical safeguards such as encryption — once considered esoteric and unnecessary — are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.
Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy — the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights — remains under threat. Some of the world’s most popular online services have been enlisted as partners in the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs, and technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world to work against their customers rather than for them. Billions of cellphone location records are still being intercepted without regard for the guilt or innocence of those affected. We have learned that our government intentionally weakens the fundamental security of the Internet with “back doors” that transform private lives into open books. Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.
Spymasters in Australia, Canada and France have exploited recent tragedies to seek intrusive new powers despite evidence such programs would not have prevented attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain recently mused, “Do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?” He soon found his answer, proclaiming that “for too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: As long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”
At the turning of the millennium, few imagined that citizens of developed democracies would soon be required to defend the concept of an open society against their own leaders.
Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.
Edward J. Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and National Security Agency contractor, is a director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Eric Holder: The Justice Department could strike deal with Edward Snowden
Michael Isinoff (Yahoo! News, 2015)
Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a “possibility exists” for the Justice Department to cut a deal with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Moscow.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Holder said “we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures” and that “his actions spurred a necessary debate” that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies on the bulk collection of phone records of American citizens.
Asked if that meant the Justice Department might now be open to a plea bargain that allows Snowden to return from his self-imposed exile in Moscow, Holder replied: “I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with. I think the possibility exists.”
Holder’s comments came as he began a new job as a private lawyer at Covington & Burling, the elite Washington law firm where he worked before serving as the nation’s top law enforcement officer from February 2009 until last April.
In that capacity, Holder presided over an unprecedented crackdown on government leakers, including the filing of a June 2013 criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with three felony violations of the Espionage Act for turning over tens of thousands of government documents to journalists.
Holder had previously said — in a January 2014 interview with MSNBC — that the U.S. would be willing to “engage in conversation” with Snowden and his lawyers were he willing to return to the United States to face the charges, but ruled out any granting of clemency.
But his remarks to Yahoo News go further than any current or former Obama administration official in suggesting that Snowden’s disclosures had a positive impact and that the administration might be open to a negotiated plea that the self-described whistleblower could accept, according to his lawyer Ben Wizner.
“The former attorney general’s recognition that Snowden’s actions led to meaningful changes is welcome,” said Wizner. “This is significant … I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of respect from anybody at a Cabinet level before.”
Holder declined to discuss what the outlines of a possible deal might consist of, saying that as the former attorney general, it would not be “appropriate” for him to discuss it.
It’s also not clear whether Holder’s comments signal a shift in Obama administration attitudes that could result in a resolution of the charges against Snowden. Melanie Newman, chief spokeswoman for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Holder’s successor, immediately shot down the idea that the Justice Department was softening its stance on Snowden.
“This is an ongoing case so I am not going to get into specific details but I can say our position regarding bringing Edward Snowden back to the United States to face charges has not changed,” she said in an email.
Three sources familiar with informal discussions of Snowden’s case told Yahoo News that one top U.S. intelligence official, Robert Litt, the chief counsel to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, recently privately floated the idea that the government might be open to a plea bargain in which Snowden returns to the United States, pleads guilty to one felony count and receives a prison sentence of three to five years in exchange for full cooperation with the government.
Litt declined to comment. A source close to Litt said any comments he made were personal and did not represent the position of the U.S. government. The source also said Litt has made clear to Snowden’s representatives that “nothing is going to happen unless he comes in and moves off this idea, ‘I’m entitled to a medal.’”
But Wizner, Snowden’s lawyer, said any felony plea by Snowden that results in prison time would be unacceptable to his client. “Our position is he should not be reporting to prison as a felon and losing his civil rights as a result of his act of conscience,” he said.
Moreover, any suggestion of leniency toward Snowden would likely run into strong political opposition in Congress as well as fierce resistance from hard-liners in the intelligence community who remain outraged over his wholesale disclosure of highly classified government documents. Those feelings have, in some ways, been exacerbated by Snowden’s worldwide celebrity that recently prompted him to enter into an arrangement with a speaker’s bureau that has allowed him to give paid talks to worldwide audiences via Skype from his apartment in Moscow.
“I’m quite stunned that we would be considering any return of Snowden to this country other than to meet a jury of his peers, period,” said Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and CIA under President George W. Bush, when asked about Holder’s comments.
What Snowden did, however, “was the greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of the republic, no question about it,” Hayden added.
Whatever happens, Snowden’s legal fate won’t be in Holder’s hands. In the interview, he said he planned to concentrate on giving “strategic advice” to corporate clients at Covington — but no lobbying — while also engaging in significant pro bono work, including starting a foundation to promote issues such as criminal justice reform.
Holder also said he has already had “interactions” with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and expects to be helpful, including possibly speaking at campaign events and providing advice. “That will be up to the campaign,” he said. “Whatever the nominee wants.”
4. Link
DURING CLASS:
1. Current events
- Discussion leader: Robert
2. Lesson work
- Assigned reading/video discussion leader: A
- Online discussion leader: B
- Links library discussion leader: C
3. Digerati: Edward Snowden
- Activity leader: D
In-class reading (click here for a copy) excerpted from: Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State (2014)
In-class video:
4. Preview
Preview Sunday Story #7 for Sun Oct 30
- Privacy or Security?
Preview homework for class 14: Thu Nov 10
- Homework
- Classroom leadership assignments
