Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 2, 2013 23:46:58 GMT -6
from Common Dreams
Who is Actually Bringing 'Injury to America'?
On the Espionage Act Charges Against Edward Snowden
by Glenn Greenwald
www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/22-2
"The US government has charged
Edward Snowden with 3 felonies, including 2 under the Espionage
Act, the 1917 statute enacted to criminalize dissent against World War
I. My priority at the moment is working on our next set of stories, so I
just want to briefly note a few points about this.
Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of
three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the
prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the
statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained
from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now 7 such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that?
For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect
"noble" and "patriotic" whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on
those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall
that the New Yorker's Jane Mayer said recently
that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has
brought investigative journalism to a "standstill", while James Goodale,
the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the
Nixon administration, wrote last month in that paper
that "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the
worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom."
Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama
administration's threat to the news-gathering process not a serious
crisis at this point?
Few people - likely including Snowden himself - would contest that
his actions constitute some sort of breach of the law. He made his
choice based on basic theories of civil disobedience: that those who
control the law have become corrupt, that the law in this case (by
concealing the actions of government officials in building this massive
spying apparatus in secret) is a tool of injustice, and that he felt
compelled to act in violation of it in order to expose these official
bad acts and enable debate and reform.
But that's a far cry from charging Snowden, who just turned 30
yesterday, with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act that will send
him to prison for decades if not life upon conviction. In what
conceivable sense are Snowden's actions "espionage"? He could have - but
chose not - sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence
service for vast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of
America's enemies, or worked at the direction of a foreign government. That is espionage. He did none of those things.
What he did instead was give up his life of career stability and
economic prosperity, living with his long-time girlfriend in Hawaii, in
order to inform his fellow citizens (both in America and around the
world) of what the US government and its allies are doing to them and
their privacy. He did that by very carefully selecting which documents
he thought should be disclosed and concealed, then gave them to a
newspaper with a team of editors and journalists and repeatedly insisted
that journalistic judgments be exercised about which of those documents
should be published in the public interest and which should be
withheld.
That's what every single whistleblower and source for investigative journalism, in every case, does - by definition. In what conceivable sense does that merit felony charges under the Espionage Act?
The essence of that extremely broad, century-old law
is that one is guilty if one discloses classified information "with
intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the
injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation".
Please read this rather good summary
in this morning's New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has
enabled - how these disclosures have "set off a national debate over the
proper limits of government surveillance" and "opened an unprecedented
window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its
compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United
States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major
American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple
and Skype" - and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to
bring "injury to the United States", or has he performed an immense
public service?
The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous
surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own
citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of "espionage". It
seems clear that the people who are actually bringing "injury
to the United States" are those who are waging war on basic tenets of
transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens - and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they're doing - rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.
The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously.
They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or
even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin
Laden raid. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of
classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than
anyone.
What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their
wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted. It's a
completely one-sided and manipulative abuse of secrecy laws. It's all
designed to ensure that the only information we as citizens can learn is
what they want us to learn because it makes them look good. The only
leaks they're interested in severely punishing are those that undermine
them politically. The "enemy" they're seeking to keep ignorant with
selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The
Chinese Communists. It's the American people.
The Terrorists already knew, and have long known, that the US
government is doing everything possible to surveil their telephonic and
internet communications. The Chinese have long known, and have
repeatedly said, that the US is hacking into both their governmental and
civilian systems (just as the Chinese are doing to the US). The
Russians have long known that the US and UK try to intercept the
conversations of their leaders just as the Russians do to the US and the
UK.
They haven't learned anything from these disclosures that
they didn't already well know. The people who have learned things they
didn't already know are American citizens who have no connection to
terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of
citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have
learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.
And that is precisely why the US government is so furious
and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What
has been "harmed" is not the national security of the US but the ability
of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and
citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real
accountability. If anything is a crime, it's that secret, unaccountable
and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it."
Who is Actually Bringing 'Injury to America'?
On the Espionage Act Charges Against Edward Snowden
by Glenn Greenwald
www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/22-2
"The US government has charged
Edward Snowden with 3 felonies, including 2 under the Espionage
Act, the 1917 statute enacted to criminalize dissent against World War
I. My priority at the moment is working on our next set of stories, so I
just want to briefly note a few points about this.
Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of
three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the
prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the
statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained
from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now 7 such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that?
For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect
"noble" and "patriotic" whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on
those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall
that the New Yorker's Jane Mayer said recently
that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has
brought investigative journalism to a "standstill", while James Goodale,
the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the
Nixon administration, wrote last month in that paper
that "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the
worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom."
Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama
administration's threat to the news-gathering process not a serious
crisis at this point?
Few people - likely including Snowden himself - would contest that
his actions constitute some sort of breach of the law. He made his
choice based on basic theories of civil disobedience: that those who
control the law have become corrupt, that the law in this case (by
concealing the actions of government officials in building this massive
spying apparatus in secret) is a tool of injustice, and that he felt
compelled to act in violation of it in order to expose these official
bad acts and enable debate and reform.
But that's a far cry from charging Snowden, who just turned 30
yesterday, with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act that will send
him to prison for decades if not life upon conviction. In what
conceivable sense are Snowden's actions "espionage"? He could have - but
chose not - sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence
service for vast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of
America's enemies, or worked at the direction of a foreign government. That is espionage. He did none of those things.
What he did instead was give up his life of career stability and
economic prosperity, living with his long-time girlfriend in Hawaii, in
order to inform his fellow citizens (both in America and around the
world) of what the US government and its allies are doing to them and
their privacy. He did that by very carefully selecting which documents
he thought should be disclosed and concealed, then gave them to a
newspaper with a team of editors and journalists and repeatedly insisted
that journalistic judgments be exercised about which of those documents
should be published in the public interest and which should be
withheld.
That's what every single whistleblower and source for investigative journalism, in every case, does - by definition. In what conceivable sense does that merit felony charges under the Espionage Act?
The essence of that extremely broad, century-old law
is that one is guilty if one discloses classified information "with
intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the
injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation".
Please read this rather good summary
in this morning's New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has
enabled - how these disclosures have "set off a national debate over the
proper limits of government surveillance" and "opened an unprecedented
window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its
compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United
States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major
American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple
and Skype" - and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to
bring "injury to the United States", or has he performed an immense
public service?
The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous
surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own
citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of "espionage". It
seems clear that the people who are actually bringing "injury
to the United States" are those who are waging war on basic tenets of
transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens - and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they're doing - rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.
The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously.
They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or
even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin
Laden raid. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of
classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than
anyone.
What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their
wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted. It's a
completely one-sided and manipulative abuse of secrecy laws. It's all
designed to ensure that the only information we as citizens can learn is
what they want us to learn because it makes them look good. The only
leaks they're interested in severely punishing are those that undermine
them politically. The "enemy" they're seeking to keep ignorant with
selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The
Chinese Communists. It's the American people.
The Terrorists already knew, and have long known, that the US
government is doing everything possible to surveil their telephonic and
internet communications. The Chinese have long known, and have
repeatedly said, that the US is hacking into both their governmental and
civilian systems (just as the Chinese are doing to the US). The
Russians have long known that the US and UK try to intercept the
conversations of their leaders just as the Russians do to the US and the
UK.
They haven't learned anything from these disclosures that
they didn't already well know. The people who have learned things they
didn't already know are American citizens who have no connection to
terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of
citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have
learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.
And that is precisely why the US government is so furious
and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What
has been "harmed" is not the national security of the US but the ability
of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and
citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real
accountability. If anything is a crime, it's that secret, unaccountable
and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it."