Snowden's cloying and mendacious op-ed piece in the Guardian adds insult to injury -- the TV show with Putin was meant to mass-hypnotize Russian TV audiences and American Internet audiences with the dazzling notion that "Snowden could criticize Putin" and "Putin could calmly answer hard questions" -- and both were as phony as three-dollar bills, as I wrote.
Now in this more detailed piece, Snowden is trying to reach now a wonkier and thinkier audience by saying that he really is shocked, shocked that anyone would think these bad things about him, that he'd be an apologist for Putin -- and we must all understand that Snowden -- who has to play dissident hacker at home as well as abroad for want of anybody else in Russia to do this, supposedly -- only has altruistic motives in mind here.
Worse -- Snowden has cunningly sucker-punched one of Russia's major if cautious critics of the FSB and its surveillance -- Andrei Soldatov -- into praising Snowden for his question that helped Russia start a "national conversation" -- barf. Of the sort that we're supposedly having -- by coercion and thuggery through anarchist theft -- in this country. Right.
This piece is meant to achieve several things, really:
1. Snowden wants out of there. He's tired of being an indoor cat. Who knows, maybe his Internet is even getting restricted. So he wants to do something that might give Putin an excuse to ease him out of there -- by making a deal with the US, or convincing Germany to take him, already. If his video appearance really was live (and I doubt that), he may have departed from the script to goad Putin into giving him the boot -- somewhere.
2. Since nothing as major and scripted and choreographed as an encounter between Putin and Snowden could happen without Putin's personal management, most likely, Putin wants to evoke something here, and Snowden is playing along with it -- either Putin wants to make it look like his ward isn't a Kremlin tool because he realizes it's Edward's one weak point, or else he wants to convince the Internet intelligentsia in Russia that he really is a thoughtful fellow willing to start a conversation, hey, just like Obama -- to diffuse the growing criticism of his policies.
I found Soldatov's response here -- and Snowden's obvious self-serving and pandering exploitation of it -- to be particularly cloying:
The investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, perhaps the single most prominent critic of Russia's surveillance apparatus (and someone who has repeatedly criticised me in the past year), described my question as "extremely important for Russia". It could, he said, "lift a de facto ban on public conversations about state eavesdropping."
The idea that anyone in Russia can have a real conversation about the Internet with Putin, or about Putin, isn't naive -- it's manipulative.
The idea that something spontaneous came about here is a lie. Surely Soldatov realizes that nothing Snowden did or said in this encounter was real, and it is a theatrical enactment to serve Putin's agenda. It is managed democracy at best, and grotesque disinformation at worse. Why is Soldatov blessing a process that comes about this way?
It's manipulative because we are in a period where "the Zuckerberg of Russia" -- Pavel Durov, head of the social network VKontakte -- has just told us that he was ordered to turn over the personal data of Navalny's group and EuroMaidan on his network -- and is refusing. He's been manipulated out of his shares and is suing over them. What next? We don't get a question on THAT from young Edward.
For him to get in the spotlight on this issue, with Putin, and not mention Durov is just outrageous.
And Putin has ordered critical websites like grani.ru and Navalny's LiveJournal to be blocked (and you know, 40,000 sites are simply shut down for extremism or other perceived crimes without fair due process -- the sort of thing Evgeny Morozov used to tell us "never" happened in Russia and therefore there was "no" censorship.)
We're in a period when NGOs that rely heavily on the Internet for their work are in a court process to determine if they are "foreign agents" and must be shut down if they refuse to register with that scary and restrictive label. When is Snowden going to mention THAT?
3. By limiting the parameters of the Big Conversation in Russia to whether...servers store conversations for 24 hours or 24 years, or whether Russia has the capacity to do this, or whether law-enforcement requires this, or whether it's effective law-enforcement, Soldatov is going down the same false path that Snowden and Greenwald and the other Snowdenistas have been traipsing for a year. They're making it seem as if abstract and technical capacity issues, or hysterical hypotheticals in the literalist geek vein, are what privacy and security are really all about. But they aren't.
Privacy and security are about real cases in the real world.
Let me suggest the parameters for a REAL conversation about this issue -- that would of course include things like SORM and blanket surveillance already in play.
Why can the state wiretap Alexei Navalny's phone conversations and have him and his contacts followed around by clandestine video cameras, and place this on state TV -- including even the home search of a colleague in his foundation?
To be sure, Navalny has a bunch of lawsuits -- all harassment for his anti-corruption and opposition political work -- but we don't see warrants matching the content of these lawsuits, instead we see him simply smeared and set up for suspicion and ridicule on TV. This is a case. It's a sold, clear-cut case of misuse of surveillance power. Here's someone who ran in elections and is not really validly accused of any crime. Let's assume there might be some validity to one or another lawsuit -- why would searches of apartments be put on air in this fashion? What purpose does that serve except intimidation and humiliation? The apartment isn't even relevant to any investigation. Let's have a full and frank national conversation in Russia about why that is done, and why people think it's ok to do -- and why the state is using its considerable surveillance and broadcasting powers to do it. Ed?
Or let's take another case -- Victoria Nuland.
Why was it ok for Russia to wiretap her conversation with the US ambassador to Ukraine, then put it on Youtube to embarass her and harm relations with Ukraine? Why was that ok? What political interest does that serve? After all - as I keep saying -- we don't know the content of Merkel's conversation.
The same could be said about the wire-tapping of the conversation between Foreign Minister Paet of Estonia and the EU's High Representative Catherine Ashton. These are *cases*. The sort of thing Snowden never, ever has for the US --- where he only has vague, blanket accusations.
Explain these. Explain what policy could justify them; explain how they were authorized; explain how they could possibly be in compliance with law, and so on.
If Snowden can't talk about Navalny or the numerous other activists and opposition people whose phone calls and movements have been taped, if he can't talk about foreigners who have been not only surveilled but exposed, he's talking through his hat.
The most disgusting aspect of this utterly bad-faith message is the notion that there was some kind of comparison between Ron Wyden's confrontation of Clapper, Snowden's confrontation to the USA, and now his "confrontation" of Putin.
There most certainly was not -- and Wyden's manipulative gotcha wasn't fair or legitimate, in any event. Nevertheless, Edward says -- outrageously:
The question was intended to mirror the now infamous exchange in US Senate intelligence committee hearings between senator Ron Wyden and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, about whether the NSA collected records on millions of Americans, and to invite either an important concession or a clear evasion. (See a side-by-side comparison of Wyden's question and mine here.)
You know, because a choreographed state TV program with 3 million people sending in questions, some cherrypicked, and tens of millions of helpless viewers enthralled with the Dictator and his manipulative answers to a dutify and loyal narrator is *just like* the democratically elected Congress of the United States and its executive agency, the NSA, which is under its civilian oversight. Right? So identical!
Of course, Wyden was misleading here and I don't believe Clapper lied -- this is a faith issue for progressives that they can't prove, but can only try to hound people like me into believing. I don't. He answered as truthfully as the circumstances allowed; Wyden has a radical notion of what should be permissible and inflicts this notion on the debate mainly because he can; there are few that challenge him because they fear the technical aspects of the issue.
To study just how disingenuous Snowden is, contemplate these paragraphs:
When this event comes around next year, I hope we'll see more questions on surveillance programs and other controversial policies. But we don't have to wait until then. For example, journalists might ask for clarification as to how millions of individuals' communications are not being intercepted, analysed or stored, when, at least on a technical level, the systems that are in place must do precisely that in order to function. They might ask whether the social media companies reporting that they have received bulk collection requests from the Russian government are telling the truth.
I blew the whistle on the NSA's surveillance practices not because I believed that the United States was uniquely at fault, but because I believe that mass surveillance of innocents – the construction of enormous, state-run surveillance time machines that can turn back the clock on the most intimate details of our lives – is a threat to all people, everywhere, no matter who runs them.
Let's drop these vasty hypotheticals about systems and how they might work or not work, shall we?
Because that only leads -- quite frankly -- to Andrei Soldatov telling us that Russia is not as bad, it has less technical capacity, it doesn't store as long -- and therefore our lovely National Conversation kind of "goes nowhere" because we are merely left with a vague sense that the US is evil, Russia is less so and therefore, we should shut up!
Instead, let's go in a different direction entirely than that fruitless techie cul-de-sac.
Real questions to Putin would involve direct questions about real, individual questions. Why are you bugging -- and publicizing -- meetings that Navalny has? Why are you bugging and publicizing Toria Nuland's conversations?
Abstractions about hypothetical invasions of privacy are what Snowden has always loved to deal in -- then he doesn't have to provide proof or show damage. I suspect some National Conversation Starters in Russia would love this same approach precisely because it's so vague.
Well, there's little that could restore Snowden's credibility -- and this article and his stunt with Putin don't help. Where he has to start, however, is with real cases. He can start with disclosing the name of the hacker and his girlfriend abroad that he claims was put under surveillance by the NSA.
If he thinks Human Rights Watch is watched, then let's have names, dates, places.
Then we can see if his case has merits. We can see if in fact maybe those persons should have been put under surveillance for cause.
Because THAT is the conversation that really has to be had about all of this, too.
Then, at the end, Snowden makes a really outrageous bad-faith move -- he pretends that we must all be magnanimous and fair and let the authorities have the benefit of the doubt, and let them talk.
Well, of course Snowden didn't do that -- and his assessment of Clapper as "lying" -- and therefore justifying his outrageous theft -- is not one I share, and not legitimate as it did not follow due process.
Ultimately, my take on all this sudden live face-time and ink from Edward is this: both Edward and Vladimir want Edward out of there. Ed surely doesn't want to hang around in a cage in Russia, and cage that is getting more closed. Putin can't getting any more fur from this skinless pig, as he vividly put it a year ago, because, oddly enough, he's already pretty much given what he has to give. The three months that Snowden was missing and not heard from was probably a period where the Russians isolated and bugged him to scour what they could about any personal or work gossip they could out of him. Now they're done.
I think what the Russians would like to do is to have an excuse to send him to Germany, where he could have the lovely feature of annoying the shit out of the Americans, enabling lots of awful German leftists to gloat and continue to undermine the US and enable Russsia, and still remain in reach if Russia, in the guise of German fellow-travellers, ever needs anything from Ed again.
But likely Germany won't do this, with Crimea and all, and so they'll end up sending him to Ecuador or even Brazil, or maybe Venezuela or Cuba.
He can still annoy the shit out of the Americans there, but he will have less opportunity to make a world splash; Germany is a country with wealth and clout and influence in its parliament and media; Ecuador, not so much; Brazil much more than others, but still, limited. Meanwhile, Obama's people might be trying to get him back in some plea-bargain but then, there remains this danger: that he will be killed.
That would be the worse thing to happen, not only because it's wrong for anyone to kill a figure like this (I don't believe in the death penalty and even less in extra-judicial assassination), but because then his secrets die with him and we don't find out his real story -- plus he never has a chance to reach a stage of remorse.
I've heard the theory that the Russians would be the ones to kill him in Latin America, where security is less tight, and then pin it on the Americans.
There's another possibility, and one people aren't really taking seriously because they forget how the Kremlin has gotten in the past.
Sometimes people happily emigrated to Russia, to join the Workers' Paradise (Ford Motor Co. sent over hundreds of people in the Stalin era), or they have ideological affinities and decide to realize them, or they are loons. And in the past, they might risk being thrown into the GULAG to die. There was no guarantee. That has as much a chance of happening as anything.
But -- I don't think so. Anyone who has been allowed to pet the phoenix in Moscow as Snowden has with the TV show is safe for now -- and whatever happens next will be fully to Russia's advantage.
Good piece. But why denying James Clapper lied? He himself said he did. So good piece, but why not take away the party politics? It's not necessary to understand this topic. So why not delete all allegations of so-called progressives and you'll have a really good piece. Good luck.
Posted by: Georgeknightlang.wordpress.com | April 18, 2014 at 08:09 AM