Edward Snowden revealed himself this week as the whistleblower responsible for perhaps the most significant release of secret government documents in U.S. history. The former CIA staffer and analyst for the private intelligence consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton spoke to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman in Hong Kong, providing convincing evidence that the U.S. government, primarily the National Security Agency, is conducting massive, unconstitutional surveillance globally, and perhaps most controversially, on almost all, if not all, U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
The chorus of establishment condemnation was swift and unrelenting. Jeffrey Toobin, legal pundit, quickly blogged that Snowden is \u201ca grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.\u201d New York Times columnists chimed in, with Thomas Friedman writing, \u201cI don\u2019t believe that Edward Snowden, the leaker of all this secret material, is some heroic whistle-blower.\u201d His colleague David Brooks engaged in speculative psychoanalysis of Snowden, opining, \u201c[t]hough obviously terrifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snowden\u2019s educational path has attracted significant attention. U.S. senators oh-so-gently questioned NSA Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander and others at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, including liberal Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, echoing Brooks\u2019 incredulity that someone with a GED could possibly hoodwink the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. Alexander confessed, \u201cIn the IT arena, in the cyber arena, some of these people have skills to operate networks. That was his job for the most part; he had great skills in the area. The rest of it you\u2019ve hit on the head. We do need to go back and look at the processes\u2013where we went wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg countered the criticism, writing, \u201cIn my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden\u2019s release of NSA material\u2014and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden\u2019s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an \u2018executive coup\u2019 against the U.S. Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snowden\u2019s historic leak revealed what he calls an \u201carchitecture of oppression\u201d\u2014a series of top-secret surveillance programs that go far beyond what has been publicly known to date. The first was an order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court requesting a division of the phone giant Verizon to hand over \u201call call detail records\u201d for calls to or from the U.S. and locations abroad, or all calls within the U.S., including local calls. Another document was a slide presentation revealing a program dubbed \u201cPRISM,\u201d which allegedly empowers NSA snoops access to all the private data stored by Internet giants like Microsoft, AOL, Skype, Google, Apple and Facebook, including email, video chats, photos, files transfers and more.<\/p>\n
Snowden released Presidential Policy Directive 20\u2014a top-secret memo from President Barack Obama directing U.S. intelligence agencies to draw up a list of targets for U.S. cyberattacks. Finally came proof of the program called \u201cBoundless Informant,\u201d which creates a global \u201cheat map\u201d detailing the source countries of the 97 billion intercepted electronic records collected by the NSA in the month of March 2013. Among the top targets were Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Jordan. The leaked map color-codes countries: red for \u201chot,\u201d then yellow and green. Last March, the U.S. was yellow, providing the NSA with close to 2.9 billion intercepts.<\/p>\n
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit immediately after the programs were revealed, arguing that the \u201cpractice is akin to snatching every American\u2019s address book\u2014with annotations detailing whom we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward Snowden, at the time of this writing, is in hiding, presumably still in Hong Kong, where he told the South China Morning Post, \u201cI am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.\u201d In the videotaped interview he gave to Greenwald and Poitras, Snowden spoke of his reasons behind the leak: \u201cSitting at my desk, [I] certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president. … This is something that\u2019s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related:<\/b><\/p>\n _________________________<\/p>\n Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of \u201c<\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier,\u201d recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n\n