No Place to Hide -- Review published in the Guardian
Cross-posted from World Forum.
At the outset of Glenn Greenwald's communications with the "anonymous leaker" later identified as 29-year-old former NSA employee Edward Snowden, Greenwald – a journalist, blogger and former lawyer – and the film-maker Laura Poitras, with whom he is collaborating, are told to use a PGP ("pretty good privacy"
encryption package. Only then will materials be sent to him since, as Snowden puts it, encryption is "not just for spies and philanderers". Eventually Greenwald receives word that a Federal Express package has been sent and will arrive in a couple of days. He doesn't know what it will contain – a computer program or the secret and incriminating US government documents themselves – but nothing comes on the scheduled day of delivery. FedEx says that the package is being held in customs for "reasons unknown". Ten days later it is finally delivered. "I tore open the envelope and found two USB thumb drives" and instructions for using the programs, Greenwald writes.
His account reminded me of the time, nearly a decade ago, when I was researching Britain's road to war in Iraq, and went through a similar experience. I was waiting for an overnight FedEx envelope to reach me in New York, sent from my London chambers; it contained materials that might relate to deliberations between George Bush and Tony Blair (materials of the kind that seem to be holding up the Chilcot inquiry). A day passed, then another, then two more. Eventually, I was told I could pick up the envelope at a FedEx office, but warned that it had been tampered with, which turned out to something of an understatement: there was no envelope for me to tear open, as the tearing had already occurred and all the contents had been removed. FedEx offered no explanation.
As Greenwald notes, experiences such as this, which signal that you may be being watched, can have a chilling effect, but you just find other ways to carry on. FedEx (and its like) are avoided, and steps are taken to make sure that anything significant or sensitive is communicated by other means. In any event, and no doubt like many others, I proceed on the basis that all my communications – personal and professional – are capable of being monitored by numerous governments, including my own. Whether they are is another matter, as is the question of what happens with material obtained by such surveillance – a point that this book touches on but never really addresses. Greenwald's argument is that it's not so much what happens with the material that matters, but the mere fact of its being gathered. Even so, his point is a powerful one.
. . . .
Snowden's revelations challenge us to reflect on the ideal balance between the power of the state to know and the right of the individual to go about her or his business unencumbered, and this in turn raises fundamental questions about the power of the media, on which Greenwald has strong views, usually (but not always) fairly articulated. He makes the case for Snowden, and it's a compelling one. One concern with WikiLeaks acting independently was the apparently random nature of its disclosures, without any obvious filtering on the basis of public interest or the possible exposure to risk of certain individuals. What is striking about this story, and the complex interplay between Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and the Guardian, is that the approach was different, as the justification for the leaks seems to have been at the forefront of all their minds. In his recent book Secrets and Leaks Rahul Sagar identified a set of necessary conditions for leaks. Is there clear evidence of abuse of authority? Will the release threaten public safety? Is the scale of the release limited? Many people, though not all, see these as having been met in the Snowden case.
. . . .
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/23/no-place-to-hide-glenn-greenwald-review
Sorry if this has been posted previously. I haven't seen it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Because it screams "conflict of interest", given the Guardian's closeness to the topic and the author...
Not that long ago it would have been seen as a pretty flagrant ethical breach (ala Mitch Albom)...But we're now living in the era of "new" media...
And I was working during that time on local beats...I remember the sheriff of a small municipality (about a couple hundred residents) casually telling our paper he ordered M-16s and SWAT gear from DHS for his department (and this was a police department of five cops, two working police cruisers and a total jurisdiction smaller than an NFL stadium parking lot) all because the sheriff claimed to have a report of two "middle eastern men" trying to scale the outer fence of an Air Force base which bordered the community....As if those overweight mooks were going to be the first line of defense when al-Quaeda starts parachuting in, lol...We all knew that sighting was bullshit and he just wanted some new toys to play with, but there was no way to disprove his claim...DHS did give him his toys, though either because his jurisdiction bordered a VERY important and VERY strategic AFB, or just because DHS was giving toys away to everyone who asked...
The Bush era of "Either with us or against us on the GWOT" enabled a LOT of crazy to enter the mainstream media unchecked, either as commentators or pundits, and we've never fully recovered...Coulter was putting out a book every six months and wanted to bring back the HUAC for muslims and anyone criticizing the Bush white house, O'Reilly wanted every muslim entering the country to have a mandatory background check, Malkin was arguing (with a straight face) in favor of WWII-style detention camps, the list goes on...And even some hardcore libertarian-leftists (i.e., Dan Savage) caught war fever...Other high-profile liberals fully crossed over to the dark side and never came back...
If you really want to shake your head, go search '02-'04 on a news archive site and SEE how many mainstream columnists at major daily newspapers (some of them are still writing today) justified torture as a completely legitimate way of doing things...Of course they all had that bullshit framing of the era: "Why wouldn't you torture a terrorist to discover the location of a ticking nuke? Or to prevent the next 9-11?" 
