When asked if Edward Snowden deserves to be the Man of the Year, and I
have been many times, my answer has to be a categorical, resounding,
“Yes.” Sure, it has been an eventful year and there are a lot of
contenders. But the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden stands
out for me for three key reasons: his personal and conscious
courage, the sheer scale of his disclosures and the continuing,
global impact of what he did. Purely because of his actions, we,
the world's citizens, are now able to have a discussion about the
nature of our civilization and potentially call a halt to the
frightening slide into a global surveillance dystopia.For the actions of Snowden have indeed laid bare the fact that we
are living in a global crisis of civilization. To date it is
estimated that we have only seen about 1 percent of the documents
he disclosed – the merest hint of the tip of a monstrous iceberg.
What further horrors await us in 2014 and beyond?
The personal risk
First of all, there is the personal aspect. Snowden has said that
he does not want to be the story, he wants the focus to remain on
the information. I respect that, but it is worth reminding
ourselves of the scale of sacrifice this young, just 30-year-old
man has made. He had a well-paid job with a consulting firm in
Hawaii servicing the US National Security Agency, good career
prospects and an apparently happy relationship. All this he threw
away to alert the world to the secret, illegal and dystopian
surveillance system that has stealthily been smothering the
world.But Snowden faced far more than merely throwing away a
comfortable professional life. Over the last few years the US
government, apparently learning well from its former colonial
master the UK about the art of crushing of whistleblowers, has
been waging a war against what it now deems the “insider
threat” – i.e. persons of conscience who speak out.
President Obama has used the Espionage Act (1917) to persecute
and prosecute more whistleblowers than all previous presidents in
total before him.
This is indeed a “war on whistleblowers.” John Kiriakou,
a former CIA officer who refused to participate in the torture
program and then exposed it, it is currently languishing in
prison; Thomas Drake, an earlier NSA whistleblower, was
threatened with 35 years in prison; young Chelsea Manning was
maltreated in prison, faced a kangaroo court, and is currently
serving a 35-year sentence for the exposure of hideous war crimes
against civilians in the Middle East. So the list goes on...So not only did Edward Snowden turn his back on his career, he
knew exactly the sheer scale of the legal risk he was taking when
he went public, displaying bravery very much above and beyond the
call of duty.
The intelligence apologists in the media have inevitably shouted
“narcissism” about his brave step to out himself, rather
than just leak the information anonymously. However, these
establishment windbags are the real narcissists. Snowden
correctly assessed that, had he not put his name to the
disclosures, there would have been a witch-hunt targeting his
former colleagues and he wanted to protect them. Plus, as he said
in his very first public interview, he wanted to explain why he
had done what he had done and what the implications were for the
world.
The disclosures
The sheer scale and nature of the disclosures so far has been
breathtaking, and they just keep coming. They show that a vast,
subterranean surveillance state that has crept across the whole
world, unknown and unchecked by the very politicians who are
supposed to hold it to account. Indeed, not only have we learned
that we are all under constant electronic surveillance, but these
politicians are targeted too. This is a global secret state
running amok and we are all now targets.Only on Sunday, Der Spiegel reported more egregious examples of how the spies
bug us: hardware hacks, computer viruses and even microwave
wavelengths attacking both our computers and us. Perhaps tinfoil
hats might not be such a bad idea after all....
The implications
Snowden's disclosures have laid bare the fact that the internet
has been thoroughly hacked, subverted and indeed militarized
against the people. The basic freedom of privacy, enshrined in
the UN Declaration of Human Rights in the immediate aftermath of
the Second World War, has been destroyed.Without free media, where we can all read, write, listen and
discuss ideas freely and in privacy, we are all living in an
Orwellian dystopia, and we are all potentially at risk. These
media must be based on technologies that empower individual
citizens, not corporations or foreign governments, and certainly
not a shadowy and unaccountable secret state.
The central societal function of privacy is to create the space
for citizens to resist the violation of their rights by
governments and corporations. Privacy is the last line of defense
historically against the most potentially dangerous organization
that exists: the state.By risking his life, Edward Snowden has allowed us all to see
exactly the scale of the threat now facing us and to allow us the
opportunity to resist. Every citizen on the planet owes him a
debt of gratitude.Therefore there is no ‘balance between privacy and
security’ and this false dichotomy should not be part of any
policy debate.The
statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Courtesy : RT
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