by BJW Nashe
Apparently the new faces of crime, in our current Information Age, belong to Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange, as well as the stylized Guy Falkes masks worn by members of Anonymous, the international group of online hackers.
Neither Manning, Snowden, or Assange have actually harmed anyone, though. The crimes they are accused of are highly abstract, related solely to information and data systems, rather than any living persons. Thus it is difficult for many of us to view them as truly “dangerous.” So why is the government so hell-bent on punishing these three individuals?
By now we have all heard the arguments made against Manning, Snowden, and Assange. We’ve listened to the pundits and the politicians and the senior Justice Department officials, and frankly, many of us are not buying what they’re selling. Manning, Snowden, and Assange may or may not be “heroes.” But they have raised serious questions about the role of secrecy, and the importance of freedom of information, in our democratic society. For this they should be praised. And many of us remain deeply skeptical of the official position on these issues. The arguments reek of the military-industrial complex mania for power and control, and they often amount to little more than fear-mongering and intimidation. In the larger context of American crime, and what it means to “keep Americans safe,” the arguments against Manning, Snowden, and Assange seem downright ridiculous.
Let’s briefly review what each of these three men is accused of, and where they stand right now in terms of our criminal justice system.
Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, journalist, and activist who is best known as the charismatic founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization which publishes secret information submitted by anonymous sources and “whistle-blowers.” Since it was launched in 2006, WikiLeaks has published the largest amount of classified data in history, to the dismay and outrage of government officials around the globe. The U.S. Justice Department has reportedly considered prosecuting Assange for various offenses, even though he is not a U.S. citizen. In late 2010, Assange was the subject of a European Arrest Warrant pertaining to a sexual assault investigation in Sweden considered by many to be simply a pretext for political prosecution. When Assange’s appeal against enforcement of the warrant was denied by the U.K. Supreme Court, he refused to surrender to his bail. U.K. authorities thus consider him to have absconded. Since June 2012, Assange has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been granted diplomatic asylum. His long-term future remains uncertain.
Bradley Manning is a former U.S. Army private who was arrested while serving in Iraq in May 2010 on suspicion of delivering classified information to the WikiLeaks organization. The massive amount of information he anonymously submitted to WikiLeaks included over 750,000 secret document files, in the form of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, U.S. State Department cables, and video footage of a U.S. helicopter attack in which civilians and journalists were murdered. Manning never denied that he had released these materials, once he was arrested after being turned in to the FBI by an internet chat companion. Manning’s three years in military prison included lengthy stays in solitary confinement, sometimes without any clothes or personal items. When he was finally allowed to make a statement to the court, Manning explained why he thought releasing the information was a morally defensible act. Although Manning pled guilty to 10 of the counts against him, the U.S. refused a plea deal, and went ahead to prosecute him for 22 offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy. In late July 2013, Manning was convicted of most of the charges, including several violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, but was acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. Manning is currently awaiting the sentencing the phase of his trial to determine the length of his incarceration.
Edward Snowden is a former Infrastructure Analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton, a firm contracted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to provide technical support services. In spring 2013, Snowden, whose past includes working as an analyst for the NSA and CIA, leaked details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for The Guardian. The British paper then published a series of exposés in June and July which identified and described secret Internet surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora, as well as programs designed to intercept U.S. and European telephone metadata. Snowden’s disclosures are considered to be one of the most significant NSA security breaches in U.S. history. On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. Snowden fled the United States prior to his first disclosures, initially staying in Honk Kong, and is now living in Russia under temporary asylum. Like Assange, his long-term future remains uncertain.
We can leave the legal wrangling up to the lawyers and judges. Whether a particular individual violated this or that statute is too narrow of a lens for us in the general public to use in viewing these three men. For us, there are larger issues involved, much broader in scope than any specific law. Going forward, we must look to see the forest through the trees. Manning, Assange, and Snowden have no doubt broken some laws. The overriding philosophical questions they force us to grapple with are: Did they break those laws for a good reason? Was it justified? Was it the right thing to do? Did they serve the public good?
Whistleblowers and activists are by definition almost always involved in breaking the rules. Nobody should be condemned as a matter of course just because they disobeyed orders. We have a long history in this country of highly constructive rule-breaking. Illegality has at times borne rich fruit for our democracy. Martin Luther King, Jr. broke the rules when he led the civil rights movement, which included acts of civil disobedience that landed him in jail. Daniel Ellsberg broke the rules when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, showing everyone proof that the U.S. government had been lying about the Vietnam War. Neither King or Ellsberg have gone down in history as “dangerous criminals.” In fact, it is the people who most vehemently opposed them who strike us as being dangerous.
Why does the same line of reasoning not apply to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning? The value of the information they made public is indisputable. Yet we are told that they have put the security of military operations and the lives of soldiers at risk. We are told that they have threatened diplomatic relations around the world. However, there is no concrete evidence that anyone has been harmed due to information submitted to WikiLeaks. The only people threatened by WikiLeaks are the ones in power, who prefer to work in secrecy, because they know the public will be outraged to learn what they are involved in behind closed doors, or beneath the cloak of “classified information.”
As for Snowden, no one can deny that his NSA disclosures have sparked a public debate that is of vital importance to our democracy. Yet we are told that his revelations have made it more difficult for the agency to keep us safe from terrorist attacks, and that his disclosures have most likely aided terrorist organizations. Again, there is no evidence that this is true. It is strictly conjecture. We are also told that the NSA is not involved in spying on U.S. citizens. Yet how are we to know this, if the programs are operating in secrecy? At this point, I am not too worried about someone at the NSA reading my email. The internet is simply too large for total, complete surveillance. Yet who’s to say what the future will bring in terms of big data crunching capabilities? How long will it take until every keystroke is in fact monitored and stored and analyzed? Should anyone living in a democratic society be comfortable with these systems being developed and implemented in utter secrecy? No, the potential for abuse is simply too large for any reasonable person to accept. If the surveillance programs were used only to target terrorists overseas, that would be one thing. But this is never the case with such programs. In a breaking news story, Reuters reports that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been sharing surveillance data with various local law enforcement agencies, who use the data for criminal investigations against U.S. citizens, and then create false paper trails to cover up the true source of the information. One doesn’t need to be a radical libertarian to view such practices as a clear threat to our civil liberties and our right to privacy.
We have heard the official line of reasoning before: trust us, we need to maintain secrecy in order to do all these wonderful things which will keep you “safe.” The problem is that the government’s track record is far from stellar when it comes to secret programs and spying on citizens. In light of this track record, we would be foolish to buy into the “just trust us” argument. Remember J. Edgar Hoover’s “secret files?” Remember Nixon’s COINTELPRO hijinks, and his “enemies list?” Or Nixon’s great Watergate fiasco? How about Reagan’s sordid Iran-Contra scandal? Or Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping scheme? Just imagine what Keith Alexander, the current NSA Director, might be up to, if he has any inclination toward dirty tricks, sabotage, or blackmail. Given the scope of the NSA in its current high tech incarnation, Alexander is probably the most powerful man in the world that most of us have never heard of — until now.
In a bizarre twist to the ongoing story, Alexander recently spoke at the Black Hat Convention in Las Vegas. This gathering of cutting edge digital entrepreneurs, often called a “hacker’s convention,” would seem to be an unlikely place for the head of the NSA to be making his case. Yet it shows that the government takes the high tech community seriously. There are no doubt folks at that convention who can cause plenty of problems for the ruling elite. Fear cuts both ways, when it comes to digital freedom and control. There are also plenty of technical geniuses at the convention that Alexander would love to have on his side of the debate. I trust he won’t get his hopes too high in this regard.
Alexander’s public outreach mission is meant to reassure us and inspire our trust. Yet, who can deny that the whole notion of trusting government secrecy is absurd? Likewise, the whole idea that the government’s overriding concern is to “keep us safe” strikes many of us as no more than a joke. Our criminal justice system largely serves to protect the interests of the ruling elite — the small percentage of people who control all the wealth and power. Regardless of what anyone says on Sunday TV shows, keeping the rest of us safe does not appear to be the primary concern. It may be a concern sometimes (depending on a number of factors). But it’s not at the top of the list. No way.
If you don’t agree with this grim assessment, consider the following facts insofar as they relate to the whole issue of “keeping us safe.” In reviewing the safety and security of the American people, we can identify two very tangible threats that have caused serious harm in the past several years: gun violence and corporate banking crime. Consider the government’s response to both of these threats.
Gun Violence. We have seen heavily armed gunmen open fire at a college campus in Virginia, a political rally in Arizona, a movie theater in Colorado, and an elementary school in Massachusetts. In each instance, innocent civilians were massacred. Despite the public outrage that followed these attacks, the same politicians in the House and the Senate who love to champion the importance of keeping America safe from terrorists failed to pass even the most basic common sense gun safety legislation that might prevent further tragedies such as these from happening in the future. Ignoring public opinion polls, the politicians caved in to pressure from the gun lobby, which helps to finance their campaigns — or the campaigns of their opponents, should they fall out of favor.
Banking Crime. We have endured devastating fallout from the greed and recklessness of large banks that 1) engaged in fraudulent gambling practices that threatened the stability of our entire economy (the housing bubble), 2) reaped immense profits from a massive international interest rate fixing scam (the LIBOR scandal), and 3) conducted illegal business transactions with drug cartels and terrorist groups (the HSBC scandal). Yet the Justice Department has not pursued a single criminal case in regard to any of these debacles. No one has even been prosecuted, let alone sent to prison. The only consequences for those responsible has been a slap on the wrist and some fines. Meanwhile, the cost to American families and businesses has been catastrophic. For people who lost their homes and their careers and their savings during this time period, government assistance has been practically nonexistent. And very little has been done to ensure that similar financial scandals are prevented in the future. The banks are considered to be “too big” to mess with.
Now, in this context, we are supposed to believe that Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange are “dangerous criminals” who need to be aggressively pursued and prosecuted at all costs, in order to “keep us safe?” It’s a ridiculous proposition, at best. The government’s position regarding those who dare to reveal its secrets is pure politics — nothing but an intimidation tactic, propped up by fear-mongering, in order to protect those in power.
The mainstream media’s approach to this story has been far too timid, preferring to tip-toe around the edges of the big issues, rather than dive in and do solid reporting and analysis. Often, journalists simply adopt the official position, speaking of how long it will take before “we capture Snowden.” Some have even questioned whether Glenn Greenwald himself should be prosecuted for publishing Snowden’s NSA disclosures. David Gregory of NBC News actually asked Greenwald on the air why he should not be prosecuted. It’s stunning to see one journalist ask another one this question, all the while keeping a straight face. Evidently “freedom of the press” is now open for discussion, as just another “point of view.” Many media outlets take solace in pure tabloid journalism. With Manning, we had to endure the stories about his homosexuality, and his experimentation with cross-dressing. Now, Snowden’s pole-dancing ex-girlfriend in Hawaii has become a hot news story.
In the end, despite any distractions, the saga of these three men is about resistance in the face of massive government power, secrecy, and intimidation. Most of us who hold that freedom of information is the foundation of democracy, and who are convinced that the Age of Information must belong to the people, not just the ruling elite — we will not be intimidated. We are not afraid of the government, or the military-industrial complex. And we are tired of being lied to. We understand that the NSA’s job is intelligence gathering. Yet we fail to see why the nature and scope of the intelligence gathering has to be a big secret. In a robust democracy, we the people have the right to know what the NSA is doing. And we have the right to rein in the agency’s vastly expanding powers.
Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden have provided the American people with invaluable information about the world’s ruling elite, and what goes on behind closed doors in the most hidden corridors of power, or in the most distant theater of war. For this, they will go down in history as being on the side of freedom and democracy, rather than tyranny and corruption. Manning’s biggest mistake was getting caught; we shall wait and see whether this ends up being true for the other two as well.
In any case, future activists will learn from the examples of Manning, Assange, and Snowden, We can all look forward to further debates, disruptions, and leaks of secret information. It’s the American way.