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Haaretz: Edward Snowden, defender of democracy or accessory to autocracy?
Re. the reports over the weekend that Russia and China have cracked Snowden's files:
...Greenwald, as usual, was quick to post an angry rebuttal on The Intercept. He accused the Sunday Times correspondents, quite rightly, of basing their report on anonymous sources with an obvious interest in smearing Snowden and blaming him for wreaking havoc. Greenwald pointed to contradictions in their information; he especially contested their assertion that Snowden arrived in Moscow with the documents still in his possession. The Snowden-Greenwald camp has long claimed that he handed these documents over to journalists he trusted – and even if he wanted to, he could no longer pass them on to another spy agency.
The British weekly’s account is indeed far from conclusive. But Greenwald’s detailed case for the defense continues to evade the central questions hovering over Snowden’s head. If his sole intention truly was to inform American citizens of the way their government intrudes on their private communications, why did he spend months collecting a massive collection of classified documents (as many as 1.7 million according to some sources), often using passwords purloined from his colleagues? Wouldn’t it have been enough to abscond with just the relevant ones? And when he began the big reveal, or more accurately, when journalists who received the documents began publishing them, why did the focus move away from solely privacy issues to practically any international spy program that titillated the media? (Take, for example, the eavesdropping of national leaders’ personal phones, including that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.)
...Greenwald accuses Snowden’s critics of not basing their allegations on facts, but fails to present his own facts to prop up his defense; he basically demands that we take Snowden and him at their word. Books published on the case and interviews Snowden has given recently present contradictions over how and when he decided to start hoarding documents and ultimately become a “whistleblower,” and how exactly he decided to travel to Hong Kong and meet Poitras and Greenwald. The presumption of Snowden’s innocence and noble intentions is based on unquestionably accepting his and Greenwald’s version of events, with all their contradictions, and believing that Moscow, against all logic and precedent, would just leave him to his own devices.
...Greenwald and his allies argue that, as Western journalists, their responsibility is to hold their own governments accountable. They also emphasize the fact that not many countries were willing to welcome Snowden with open arms. If he had leaked the documents while in the U.S. or a country with an extradition agreement with the U.S, he could have faced a similar fate to that of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst who passed hundreds of thousands of documents to the WikiLeaks organization and is now serving a 35-year sentence.
That argument may be valid, but it doesn’t excuse the near-total disregard of the much worse trespasses on the Russian side – especially not when there’s a possibility that Snowden, at best, is serving their propaganda and, at worst, that the documents he stole have fallen into their hands.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.661207
The British weekly’s account is indeed far from conclusive. But Greenwald’s detailed case for the defense continues to evade the central questions hovering over Snowden’s head. If his sole intention truly was to inform American citizens of the way their government intrudes on their private communications, why did he spend months collecting a massive collection of classified documents (as many as 1.7 million according to some sources), often using passwords purloined from his colleagues? Wouldn’t it have been enough to abscond with just the relevant ones? And when he began the big reveal, or more accurately, when journalists who received the documents began publishing them, why did the focus move away from solely privacy issues to practically any international spy program that titillated the media? (Take, for example, the eavesdropping of national leaders’ personal phones, including that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.)
...Greenwald accuses Snowden’s critics of not basing their allegations on facts, but fails to present his own facts to prop up his defense; he basically demands that we take Snowden and him at their word. Books published on the case and interviews Snowden has given recently present contradictions over how and when he decided to start hoarding documents and ultimately become a “whistleblower,” and how exactly he decided to travel to Hong Kong and meet Poitras and Greenwald. The presumption of Snowden’s innocence and noble intentions is based on unquestionably accepting his and Greenwald’s version of events, with all their contradictions, and believing that Moscow, against all logic and precedent, would just leave him to his own devices.
...Greenwald and his allies argue that, as Western journalists, their responsibility is to hold their own governments accountable. They also emphasize the fact that not many countries were willing to welcome Snowden with open arms. If he had leaked the documents while in the U.S. or a country with an extradition agreement with the U.S, he could have faced a similar fate to that of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst who passed hundreds of thousands of documents to the WikiLeaks organization and is now serving a 35-year sentence.
That argument may be valid, but it doesn’t excuse the near-total disregard of the much worse trespasses on the Russian side – especially not when there’s a possibility that Snowden, at best, is serving their propaganda and, at worst, that the documents he stole have fallen into their hands.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/.premium-1.661207
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