Snowden, Neither Hero Nor Traitor

Updated Research August 17

Recent developments include American corporations mining China through surveillance, or the "shoe is on the other foot." For article head to the Motely Fool site. The headline of this article reads:  Did Edward Snowden's NSA Papers Really Hurt American Business Interests?

Updated research August 7: Here's an article by Glen Greenwald on the canceled meeting between Obama and Putin as well as references to several refusals of the Washington administration to extradite people to other countries. It offers a bit of a global view of the extradition battleground arena an inspires further research.

Here's a taste of the article


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Research Notes

Update, August 1: Snowden leaves airport room with temporary asylum to live in Russia for a year.

Now that Snowden has left the airport and is busy reestablishing a life in a new country, I hope to see a strong move toward investigating, reducing and monitoring surveillance programs around the world. It will be an interesting year for 27/7 surveillance programs versus people who find them offensive, illegal and dangerous. We'll see if anything happens happens.

July 21

In the case of Edward Snowden, let's drop the argument on whether he is hero or traitor. It will not do us any good as a population of people attempting to enhance our living conditions in America. Either way, we would have found out the details sooner or later.

Besides, how could I or anyone possibly know if is a hero or traitor? Just the word hero limits his actions as does the word traitor. Anyone using either term to define Snowden should perhaps take a think it over walk. You may have been too quick with the labeling gun. I'm suggesting, for those of us interested, it isn't an either-or situation. Its complexity makes him both and neither, one cancels out the other.

 I like the word enlightener for Edward Snowden. Such a word has nothing to do with whether he's a traitor or hero. It defines the act. An enlightener simply makes public what until his or her exposure has remained, more or less, hidden.

I like to think of Voltaire, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Naomi Klein as enlighteners to the positive. Poets, novelists, filmmakers and song writers can be enlighteners. Satirists such as Michael Moore, Paul Krassner and Matt Groening are perhaps some of the more visible enlighteners today as they use humor to bring questionable behavior to the surface, and in doing so, reach a broad range of people from varied cultures and backgrounds. Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange fit into another category of enlighteners. Supporters of Edward Snowden put him in with this last group. But there are all kinds of enlighteners with a political microphone,  Elizabeth Warren, Robert Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, to name a few.

We should note another group of enlighteners. This last group of enlighteners have no recognizable face of intent. These people go on missions to enlighten people for the wrong reasons, those likely to harm  Main Street for the benefit of the few. I suppose voices such as Dick Cheney fall under this category. These are the ones who expose to justify actions or ideas such as metadata collections, the presence of terrorists, dangers of a weak economy or public debt, the need for higher interest rates, the justification for a mortgage crises, and so on, in order to shape public acceptance and attitudes and prevent mass discontent.

So, what are we supposed to do with our new knowledge, the facts?

First we have to answer some critical questions. Should the government or corporations be the first to know when we fall in love? Or have an argument? Or come up with a new idea? Should some bored or unimaginative hack steal our earliest creative impulses put on paper or into an image and sent to friends or colleagues for early feedback? Should the government have the tools to create a working profile of us and use it for its own purposes with or without our consent? Is it okay for other people--our neighbors, perhaps--to follow our every move? Listen to our every word? Know where we are at all times?

If so, I suggest we tear down the walls of our homes and put a giant transparent tarp over neighborhoods. That might be the best way to ensure one another nothing fishy (dissent or broadly defined terrorism) is going on behind closed doors.

We're familiar with boogeymen from our childhoods. While we've grown up, we still harbor emotional canals filled with pus (fear) that make us do stupid things, like put our heads under the covers (give up our civil liberties) in hopes the boogeyman won't get us.

While many of us already knew we live under a system of international surveillance, we lacked the detailed facts of its extent. Now we have them and the responsibility that goes along with it. Will we act on the responsibility?


I digress for one moment. I voted for Obama. But not for the reasons you may think. One person cannot possibly undo the extensive damage imposed on how we govern ourselves in the US.  I never believed him capable of making the changes he promised for Main Street. But I did believe--probably just as naively--he'd leave open the door just a crack (through transparency?) for Main Street to get its foot in. I really believed Main Street would rise to the occasion and spend Obama's 4-8 years in the streets and at the tables making untold critical changes to create a truly better America in terms of education, health care, distribution of wealth, cost of living, working conditions, and increased awareness at all levels.  I was wrong. Whether feeling comfortable or paralyzed, Main Street has sat on the couch most of the time.

To grind myself further into disappointment, I now predict Main Street will not jump to its feet and stop the massive surveillance against our personal privacy. So far I've seen less than a handful on Main Street jump to their feet this past week when the Fisa Court quietly extended the government's surveillance programs. Meanwhile, the government, just as do corporations, has assured Main Street it can self-regulate its surveillance. And that appears all it takes to keep people on the couch.

We should look at who has the chance to benefit from the Edward Snowden saga.


WHO BENEFITS, GROUPS A - F

Group A

This group believes in freedom of the press and privacy. It's been unable to get any real traction in support of these freedoms since 9/11, when America put the brakes on real freedom and stalled its own momentum toward a greater open society with real liberty and real opportunity for all. Real freedom. This group has the opportunity to benefit now if it becomes very visible and very loud. It can demand that all records collected on Americas be destroyed and surveillance stopped. It can boycott social media and corporations who spy (is that all by now?) until they prove they stop. It can call for dismantling the Utah Storage Chamber and using its funding, present and future, to establish and maintain some kind of research, arts and recreation center for the advancement of culture, science and medicine. It can borrow the mantra, America will never be the same after 6/9-11 with the intent that the people will be keeping an eye on Washington and Corporations rather than the other way around. For this group to benefit, it has to engage in movement and get itself and others off the couch.

Group B

The group trying to make the debate on privacy versus security now has a very large microphone inside the public arena, including just about every media outlet, to get its argument heard and repeated, echoes in the closed chamber of the new America. They benefit because they can accumulate followers who are willing to vote for less privacy to gain what they believe is more security.  

Group C

The government officials and petty officials who wanted to go public, at some point, with the news that everyone in America is being watched in order to prevent terrorism but really to control dissent. This group now has an international open ear.  This group needed a Snowden in order for this group to use his revelations to sensationalize, distort and circulate the news. They welcomed a diversion (Snowden) to lighten the blow to the American people and to keep the real issue--privacy and freedom of speech and the press--in the background. Chase scenes in films are usually mesmerizing.  If the Snowden saga seems like a chase scene in a movie, this group benefits. With Main Street focused on the chase rather than the revelations, the exposed surveillance systems get twisted into appearing as the victims in this saga. Once the fake victims convince Main Street that Snowden, in the chase scene, is a bad guy not good guy, it gets Main Street to root against itself and save the fake victims and crucify Snowden. Meanwhile, time passes and Americans get used to this notion of being watched 24/7. We're very good at taking sides or adjusting to changes in the weather.

This group can also benefit by finding a new context--6/9-11--to remind Main Street that terrorists still exist and pose a threat 24/7. It can also benefit by using Snowden as an example of what happens to you if you reveal illegal (and spying on innocent Americans is illegal) actions people running the society engage in.  So for this group, they have 9/11 and 6/9-11 to maintain control 24/7.This group benefits by turning and twisting Snowden's plight until it ends up free advertisement for a system already in place!

Group D

Social media groups and communication corporations. These groups benefit by no longer having to hide their subservient role to the government. With the news in the open, everyone is now free to spy on everyone else. Let us not forget that hundreds of anti-surveillance devices to protect privacy (not really but kind of) from the government and corporations are emerging for reasonable prices. Such a deal. Oy!

Group E

Other countries with repressive regimes. These countries can now bring to light that the United States is just as another form of corrupt and disfigured Democracy. It spies on its people just as does China, Russia, Germany, England, and others. Just because everyone is spying on Main Street does not make it right. Other regimes can benefit because they too can make their surveillance systems known. I guess it cost more money to hide them than it does to make them visible.

Group F

Boogeymen can benefit by being set on a pedestal, capable of taking over at any time, powerful to the nth degree. There's a lot of ego to be gained if Main Street willingly gives up its civil liberties and money just to keep you at a distance.

Ultimately, with everyone being watched 24/7, the world has a chance to become globally in tune with one another, more narrow in its thinking, less imaginative in its art, more suspicious in its dealings, and less energetic to build a freer environment for itself. Settling for surface living, we have the chance to willingly censor and scrub our words and our gestures. In our bedrooms, we have the chance to willingly let in satellite devices that pick up our making love moves. We have already let smart meters in to measure how often we turn on our ovens and computers. When we sit down to dinner, we can now willingly agree which devices we'd like the government to use to count our calories.

updated July 20 & July 26.

My novel Plato's Screw will be published next month by Del Sol Press. It is about love, work and surveillance. It took ten years to write it.