Whistleblowers and privacy

By Ken Russell in All Sorts

reflections on the power of governments and the disenchantment of the people

Whistleblowers are in the news, and whether it's Julian Assange languishing forever in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Bradley Manning to be sentenced at Fort Meade, Maryland, for "aiding the enemy" of the United States, or Edward Snowden holed up in the transit lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, it should never be suggested that lifting the lid on a nation's murkiest secrets is a ticket to a lifetime of ease or profit. They're marked men, all, with the United States and its powerful friends intent on exacting punishment on those they label as traitors, while somehow plugging the flow of embarrassing truths that are being uncovered for the whole world to see.
Whistleblowers are the anti-heroes in the world of super-intelligence. Villains to those who abuse power and harbour information it is not their rightful business to have, but unsung heroes to those of us suffering shrunken liberties and threatened rights. Assange, Manning and Snowden are not the first who have been moved by an imperative to tell the uncomfortable and unpalatable truth our masters would prefer we didn't know. Their line goes back hundreds, even thousands of years. Truth-telling can be a risky, costly experience for the truth-teller.
Let's take the case of Ed Snowden, a softly spoken, 30yr-old articulate American, whose interview with Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian newspaper can be readily accessed on the internet. Snowden has no history as a serial malcontent. Quite the contrary, he has been an insider of exemplary experience and competence. A former CIA operative living a comfortable and well paid lifestyle in Hawaii he was employed as an "infrastructure analyst" with National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
In that capacity, and over a period of some 3 years working daily with highly classified material, Snowden learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities are, claiming "they are intent on making
every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".
In June/July of this year he leaked details of American and British government mass surveillance programmes, in particular the PRISM system of surveillance, said to be the most sophisticated and comprehensive ever devised. Indeed, it is being said that Snowden's disclosures rank among the most significant security breaches in US history.
So why did he do it? Snowden says he leaked the information "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name, and that which is done against them." His lofty idealism is impossible to disguise. "You can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act." He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".
But after prolonged exposure to the increasing layers of sophisticated intelligence gathering he reached the conclusion that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance." What I've done is out of self-interest," he says. "I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and no room for intellectual exploration and creativity." Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing poses an existential threat to democracy", he warns.
So why give up freedom and a privileged lifestyle? His answer is simple - with more than a touch of Jesus about it - "there are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."
For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself (the techno-spy Snowden) have the latitude to go further than they (should be) allowed to do," he said.
So what will become of Edward Joseph Snowden? Who knows. A Russian transit lounge must be a forbidding prospect. A life time in exile? Three Latin American countries have offered him asylum but Washington has used its powerful influence to ensure that no airline in the world can escape its threat to intercept and divert any flight for search at a friendly location. President Putin, hardly the most likely guarantor of political freedoms, has said he can stay in Russia, but in so doing he's safeguarding an uneasy relationship with Washington by sealing Snowden's future silence. So, whistleblower or traitor, who would volunteer to take his place?
__________________________________________
Meantime, our National-led government is intent on passing the newly revised GCSB bill by one vote. That should be warning enough when hard-won freedoms are at stake. The Law Commission, the Human Rights Commission and the Privacy Commissioner have all stood up to warn against the erosion of fundamental rights guaranteed under the Human Rights Act, 1993 - but still the Key government is hell bent on progressing the powers of the spy agency to intrude itself on the daily lives of New Zealand citizens, especially including our investigative journalists. Last weekend thousands protested in at least 10 cities, including a goodly crowd in the Octagon to hear Mayor Dave Cull say "we put MP's in Parliament to represent us, not to tap our phones." I wasn't there but I should have been.
The extent to which the demands of American intelligence gathering have encroached around the world is now all too clear, and who could doubt the GCSB bill is part of that? The two huge spy domes at Waihopai, Marlborough, have been part and parcel of our national complicity, and instead of punishing the likes of the so-called Waihopai Three, is it not time to acknowledge that their act of attacking the domes, while undoubtedly illegal, was a costly prophetic act for which all of us should be indebted?

And finally, what about a wider context for these "whistleblowing" events? Rod Mitchell has helped me with his recent reflection on philosopher Charles Taylor's 2007 analogy contrasting the pre-1500 AD mood of "enchantment" - a mood wherein the people of the world bestowed unquestioning respect and obedience to accepted notions of God - to the post-1500 mood of "disenchantment" - a mood in which successive generations have successively challenged and doubted historic creeds and dogmas. Taylor's analogy has a wide application. Common peoples' disenchantment with established power and authority, religious, political, military and economic, is surging to tsunami levels around the world, and delivering an unmistakeable message to totalitarian regimes and institutions. We are hugely disenchanted! Don't exceed your elected authority. Don't take us for granted. Don't invade our privacy. Don't demean us. Don't rob us of our right to self-expression. Above all, remember we are your masters and not you ours.
Ken Russell