http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Snowden-isolates-America/2013/07/01/article1660828.ece
By Upendra Nath Sharma
01st July 2013 07:11 AM
Edward Snowden’s escapade after blowing the whistle on omnibus surveillance operation PRISM launched by the security agencies of the United States has evoked a rather curious ding-bat meme from a section of US intelligentsia that empathises with his cause. Some have complained that Snowden did not do what might a brave patriot have done by staying in the US to face the legal music as did Daniel Ellsberg, after leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Tim Weiner, a former national security reporter for the New York Times, for instance, said that Snowden should have the courage to come home, to fight in court, under the law and asked quite a few questions. “Why contemplate asylum in Ecuador, a country with one of the worst records on free speech and free press in the Western Hemisphere? Why does he act like a spy on the run from a country he betrayed?”
It would seem that for these observers, Snowden’s exposure is understandable and forgivable only as ungovernable moral outrage and not as a calculated effort to document for the US public the almost unimaginable reach of the US surveillance apparatus. They would prefer it if Snowden, in addition to difficulties he has already experienced, returned to the US to offer himself as a human sacrifice in an attempt to demonstrate the worthiness of himself and his cause to his most determined critics.
They, however, forget that Ellsberg, a member of the national security establishment, had initially declined to identify himself as the source of the leak. Instead, he went into hiding for 13 days after the New York Times broke the Pentagon Papers story in order to evade “the largest FBI manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping”, avoid questioning, achieve the maximum publicity for his disclosures, and circulate the papers to as many media outlets as possible.
In fact, Ellsberg himself seems to endorse Snowden’s action. He told a TV show: “I think very realistically, that if he wanted to be able to tell the public what he had done and why he had done it and what his motives were and what the patterns of criminality were in the material that he was releasing, it had to be outside the United States. Otherwise he would be in perhaps the same cell that Bradley Manning was, and that’s a military cell.”
The US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) permits military custody indefinitely of an American citizen who is a civilian. Had he stayed, Snowden could very well have found himself at Quantico, naked perhaps like Bradley was for a while, and be really incommunicado, as Bradley has been for three years with the single exception of being allowed to make a statement when he pled guilty to 10 charges.
The truth is that just as he was about to confront Chinese president Xi Jinping with awkward questions after months of painstaking preparation of the Chinese cyber-espionage dossier, US president Barrack Obama received a rude jolt when Snowden blew the whistle. And his administration has been less than sure-footed in its response to the Snowden shock.
The US administration could have shrugged off the Snowden revelations or handled them as an element in the US domestic debate over intensive/extensive NSA surveillance. Former lawyer turned Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, through whom Snowden organised his exposure of US surveillance, has said that in his dealings with Snowden the 30-year-old systems administrator was adamant that he and his newspaper go through the document and only publish what served the public’s right to know. “Snowden himself was vehement from the start that we do engage in that journalistic process and we not gratuitously publish things,” Greenwald said. “I do know he was vehement about that. He was not trying to harm the US government; he was trying to shine light on it.”
After Greenwald broke the news of Snowden’s flight to Hong Kong, Washington could have rushed someone there, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial. If the US establishment was ready to have an honest discussion about its powers, Snowden might have wound up not in Moscow, but back in Washington.
Instead of treating Snowden as a public spirited whistleblower who may have gone a bit too far, the US administration went on an overdrive to project him as a traitor. National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander told a congressional committee to assert that Snowden had done “irreversible and significant damage” to the United States. US representative Peter King called Snowden a defector and said it was time to get tough with China and Russia. Former vice-president Dick Cheney called him a traitor who might have been working for China.
Voices like those of Greenwald tried to cut through the chaff being thrown around by the government and its supporters to distract attention from the content of Snowden’s leaks. They asserted that Snowden is essentially a whistleblower carefully revealing embarrassing secrets — but not vital operational details — in order to force a public debate on surveillance practices that the US government is desperate to keep private. But the US establishment haughtily ignored this sane counsel.
Not unexpectedly, the US bullying tactics met a stonewall of indifference and hostility from the rest of the world, which not only ignored US cries for help but questioned the US government’s claim of grievance over the cyber-violation of the sovereignty of other countries.
This is a clear indication that the world is now less willing to be dictated by US prescriptions of right and wrong. Russia and China have openly rejected the US appeals for help and Ecuador has ramped up its defiance by waiving preferential trade rights with Washington to indicate that it retains its right to give asylum to Snowden. Even the friendly countries are looking suspiciously at the United States. For that the fact that Edward Snowden has been declared a fugitive by the US law is not an international problem. It is America’s problem.
The writer is a former professor of sociology, IIT-Kanpur.
Email: upendrasarojsharma@yahoo.com
By Upendra Nath Sharma
01st July 2013 07:11 AM
Edward Snowden’s escapade after blowing the whistle on omnibus surveillance operation PRISM launched by the security agencies of the United States has evoked a rather curious ding-bat meme from a section of US intelligentsia that empathises with his cause. Some have complained that Snowden did not do what might a brave patriot have done by staying in the US to face the legal music as did Daniel Ellsberg, after leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Tim Weiner, a former national security reporter for the New York Times, for instance, said that Snowden should have the courage to come home, to fight in court, under the law and asked quite a few questions. “Why contemplate asylum in Ecuador, a country with one of the worst records on free speech and free press in the Western Hemisphere? Why does he act like a spy on the run from a country he betrayed?”
It would seem that for these observers, Snowden’s exposure is understandable and forgivable only as ungovernable moral outrage and not as a calculated effort to document for the US public the almost unimaginable reach of the US surveillance apparatus. They would prefer it if Snowden, in addition to difficulties he has already experienced, returned to the US to offer himself as a human sacrifice in an attempt to demonstrate the worthiness of himself and his cause to his most determined critics.
They, however, forget that Ellsberg, a member of the national security establishment, had initially declined to identify himself as the source of the leak. Instead, he went into hiding for 13 days after the New York Times broke the Pentagon Papers story in order to evade “the largest FBI manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping”, avoid questioning, achieve the maximum publicity for his disclosures, and circulate the papers to as many media outlets as possible.
In fact, Ellsberg himself seems to endorse Snowden’s action. He told a TV show: “I think very realistically, that if he wanted to be able to tell the public what he had done and why he had done it and what his motives were and what the patterns of criminality were in the material that he was releasing, it had to be outside the United States. Otherwise he would be in perhaps the same cell that Bradley Manning was, and that’s a military cell.”
The US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) permits military custody indefinitely of an American citizen who is a civilian. Had he stayed, Snowden could very well have found himself at Quantico, naked perhaps like Bradley was for a while, and be really incommunicado, as Bradley has been for three years with the single exception of being allowed to make a statement when he pled guilty to 10 charges.
The truth is that just as he was about to confront Chinese president Xi Jinping with awkward questions after months of painstaking preparation of the Chinese cyber-espionage dossier, US president Barrack Obama received a rude jolt when Snowden blew the whistle. And his administration has been less than sure-footed in its response to the Snowden shock.
The US administration could have shrugged off the Snowden revelations or handled them as an element in the US domestic debate over intensive/extensive NSA surveillance. Former lawyer turned Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, through whom Snowden organised his exposure of US surveillance, has said that in his dealings with Snowden the 30-year-old systems administrator was adamant that he and his newspaper go through the document and only publish what served the public’s right to know. “Snowden himself was vehement from the start that we do engage in that journalistic process and we not gratuitously publish things,” Greenwald said. “I do know he was vehement about that. He was not trying to harm the US government; he was trying to shine light on it.”
After Greenwald broke the news of Snowden’s flight to Hong Kong, Washington could have rushed someone there, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial. If the US establishment was ready to have an honest discussion about its powers, Snowden might have wound up not in Moscow, but back in Washington.
Instead of treating Snowden as a public spirited whistleblower who may have gone a bit too far, the US administration went on an overdrive to project him as a traitor. National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander told a congressional committee to assert that Snowden had done “irreversible and significant damage” to the United States. US representative Peter King called Snowden a defector and said it was time to get tough with China and Russia. Former vice-president Dick Cheney called him a traitor who might have been working for China.
Voices like those of Greenwald tried to cut through the chaff being thrown around by the government and its supporters to distract attention from the content of Snowden’s leaks. They asserted that Snowden is essentially a whistleblower carefully revealing embarrassing secrets — but not vital operational details — in order to force a public debate on surveillance practices that the US government is desperate to keep private. But the US establishment haughtily ignored this sane counsel.
Not unexpectedly, the US bullying tactics met a stonewall of indifference and hostility from the rest of the world, which not only ignored US cries for help but questioned the US government’s claim of grievance over the cyber-violation of the sovereignty of other countries.
This is a clear indication that the world is now less willing to be dictated by US prescriptions of right and wrong. Russia and China have openly rejected the US appeals for help and Ecuador has ramped up its defiance by waiving preferential trade rights with Washington to indicate that it retains its right to give asylum to Snowden. Even the friendly countries are looking suspiciously at the United States. For that the fact that Edward Snowden has been declared a fugitive by the US law is not an international problem. It is America’s problem.
The writer is a former professor of sociology, IIT-Kanpur.
Email: upendrasarojsharma@yahoo.com
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