Ben Smith Wants You to Ignore This

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As soon as Edward Snowden came forward as the “face” of the NSA leaks, the question immediately suggested itself: “Hero or Traitor?”

Revelations about the NSA surveillance program had made worldwide headlines. Coming on the heels of other scandals, it seemed to fit into an emerging neo-Nixonian picture of the Obama administration. As I wrote Friday at The American Spectator:

Welcome to America in 2013, where Hope and Change have transmogrified into Fear and Loathing, where even a liberal reporter who last year praised Obama as “one of the most talented politicians around” could not resist the pervasive paranoia inspired by what voters were once promised would be “the most transparent administration in history.” Between the IRS secretly punishing the president’s political enemies, the Justice Department secretly seizing reporters’ phone records and the NSA’s secret surveillance, the only thing transparent about this administration is its dishonest hypocrisy.

One little problem: The IRS scandal and the DOJ scandal are genuine scandals — clear-cut abuses of power — whereas the NSA surveillance program had no actual victims. That is to say, while the NSA’s access to phone and e-mail records raises Fourth Amendment concerns about potential abuse, there is no one who can point to an instance where actual abuse has occurred. So far as we know, no one has been arrested on the basis of illegally obtained information or targeted by the NSA because they’re on Obama’s Enemies List of political opponents.

Apparently, Glenn Greenwald’s idea to solve this problem was to present the world with Edward Snowden as the hero-victim, making him the symbol (as Greenwald saw it) of how the administration was punishing courageous truth-tellers. However, rational people (a category from which Greenwald long ago excluded himself) recognized this as problematic: Snowden wasn’t an IRS employee revealing important truths about unlawful political abuse of government power, or a DOJ staffer disclosing the surveillance of journalists. Snowden had top-secret clearance at an agency whose express mission it is to gather communications (“signals intelligence,” or sigint) about America’s enemies. There is a world of difference between these two categories, and my antennae detected this difference when I saw the quote from Snowden praising Army Pvt. Bradley Manning as “a classic whistleblower” who “was inspired by the public good.”

Thanks for clearing that up, Ed: Having declared that Manning is a traitor who should be shot by a firing squad, I needed nothing else but your praise of him to form an opinion of you. If Bradley Manning is your hero, you can share a cell with him at Leavenworth.

Army privates don’t get to decide what classified documents the Army keeps secret, and 29-year-old computer nerds don’t get to decide what NSA operations our enemies can know about. And there was a certain too-good-to-be-true quality to the narrative:

Hollywood Script: Hipster Geek With Hot
Girlfriend Fights ‘Omniscient’ Government

Something about this movie scenario I instantly disliked. If leaking top-secret information made Ed Snowden a hero, then everyone with access to classified information who doesn’t leak it is a villain. And the more I looked at the backstory, the less I liked it:

After leaving the CIA a few years later, however, Snowden seemed disillusioned and suspicious toward government. In a comment on an Ars Technica article about surveillance software developed by Cisco, Snowden expressed concern about “how little this sort of corporate behavior bothers those outside of technology circles.” Criticizing what he called an attitude of “unquestioning obedience,” Snowden suggested that such surveillance had “sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy.”

Oh, what fresh hell is this? When I see the word “corporate” used as a pejorative, coupled with a jab at “unquestioning obedience,” I don’t think of Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry. Instead I think of Theodor Adorno, C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse — the leftist indictment of 1950s America as proto-fascist oppression. I also think of every disgruntled misfit I’ve ever had the misfortune to know, malcontent whiners grumbling about the “bosses” and doing their best to spread demoralization throughout the organization.

Lee Stranahan yesterday finally went off on the conservatives who have made their pilgrimage to the Sacred Temple of Saint Edward the Whistleblower, where Glenn Greenwald presides as High Priest.

About damned time somebody said it. Greenwald had been secretly communicating with Ed Snowden for months. Greenwald timed the disclosure of the NSA documents and then presented the world with the Heroic Truth-Teller in a carefully scripted morality tale, and some people swallowed the entire narrative without stopping to think: How do we know Ed Snowden is actually telling the truth?

Gen. Keith Alexander says Snowden is lying and so we have to ask ourselves who we believe, the career Army officer who has dedicated his entire life to defending America from its enemies, or the dropout gamer who is Glenn Greenwald’s new man-crush?

Meanwhile, emerging from the JournoList conference call to share with us the Official Media Consensus, Ben Smith declares that Ed Snowden’s motives ares now utterly irrelevant to the narrative.

Permit me to quote from memory: “Fuck you. War.”

ADDENDUM: How strangely coincidental that Ben Smith decided to declare Snowden’s motives irrelevant as soon as Saint Edward embarked on the Grand Tour of America’s Adversaries.

 

122 comments

  2. So far as we know, no one has been arrested on the basis of illegally
    obtained information or targeted by the NSA because they’re on Obama’s
    Enemies List of political opponents.

    We’re told that dozens have been, but we can’t know about them because its classified. OTOH, if no one has, of what use is this?

    As for actual abuse, hoovering up our communications is abuse.

  3. Given the facts in the other Obama scandals, I would say that the program itself is an abuse.

    I confess that I might have defended it before 2009 — but even then I would have done so only on the assumption, now proven risible, that the American people would never elect a Mussolini wannabe to the highest office in the land.

  4. Where the Unicorn Prince is concerned, the only safe assumption is that the data are being used improperly. IWTAIWTD.

    And now we have to assume that any power that might be used improperly, will be. By electing Obama the American people have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

    Sadly, these days the knowledge eventually wears off, but still…

  5. That’s just it, isn’t it? We have a fundamental question of whether our elected leaders can be entrusted with this kind of power. In a politically polarized nation, this becomes a partisan issue and what I’m trying to tell people — perhaps I’m not making it clear enough — is that Glenn Greenwald is telling you a Fairy Tale that was carefully scripted to appeal to this attitude of suspicion.

    What Greenwald and Snowden are telling us about the NSA programs are at variance with what the NSA (and leading members of Congress, in both parties) are telling us about these programs. So once again the question becomes one of trust. And by God, I don’t trust a liar or a thief, nor do I trust a nerd living out some kind of Walter Mitty fantasy.

  6. We have a fundamental question of whether our elected leaders can be entrusted with this kind of power.

    That debate was settled in 1791. We cannot, should not, must not. The Bill of Rights is meant to restrain government, and yet it has slipped the leash anyway.

    If the problem is jihadis, the solution is profiling for jihadis.

    BTW, if what Snowden is saying is false, then how is he a traitor who has damaged our national security? You can’t have it both ways.

  8. I defended it when my understanding was that it was only collecting stuff that went international. So, no 100% domestically transmitted communication. Possibly this is my fault for being too low information on the subject, but I would not have defended the program as I now understand it if I were in control of it, let alone a politician of any sort.

  9. Our honored host wrote:

    One little problem: The IRS scandal and the DOJ scandal are genuine scandals — clear-cut abuses of power — whereas the NSA surveillance program had no actual victims. That is to say, while the NSA’s access to phone and e-mail records raises Fourth Amendment concerns about potential abuse, there is no one who can point to an instance where actual abuse has occurred. So far as we know, no one has been arrested on the basis of illegally obtained information or targeted by the NSA because they’re on Obama’s Enemies List of political opponents.

    This assumes that you are not a victim if, regardless of what may have been seen or read, you were not actually arrested. If some chick named Tiffany sends an email to PFC McCain with an NSFW Rule 5 picture of herself, and it is intercepted and read/seen by the government, yet not published or disseminated in any way — other than maybe being shown around the office — she has been victimized in the same way that a guy peeking through her window would have done. If we catch that guy, we arrest him.

  10. Mr McCain wrote:

    What Greenwald and Snowden are telling us about the NSA programs are at variance with what the NSA (and leading members of Congress, in both parties) are telling us about these programs. So once again the question
    becomes one of trust.

    And “leading members of Congress, in both parties” know what is happening how? b They know because the very people they are (supposedly) overseeing told them what they have been doing. Are we to assume that the Obama Administration told the truth to Republican congressmen?

  12. Gen. Keith Alexander says Snowden is lying and so we have to ask
    ourselves who we believe, the career Army officer who has dedicated his
    entire life to defending America from its enemies, or the dropout gamer
    who is Glenn Greenwald’s new man-crush?

    Alexander is lying. Najibullah Zazi came to our attention by emailing an account that the Brits were watching.

    That doesn’t tell us anything about Snowden, but I don’t believe the guy I know for a fact is lying.

  14. MY GOD IN HEAVEN, I’M TIRED OF THIS!

    Why is it everybody is obsessively fixated on the (alleged and speculative) Fourth Amendment violations of a classified program (a) which responsible officials tell us isn’t actually snooping on law-abiding Americans and (b) about which we know only those details that Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have decided to disclose?

    This reminds me very much of the “Free Kate” people who, having originally bought into the claim that Kaitlyn Hunt was the victim of unjust discrimination, could not turn loose of that concept even after the contradictory facts had become public, because they were so emotionally invested in the victimhood narrative that it overpowered whatever capacity for rational thought they ever possessed.

    People who craft narratives in order to manipulate public perception know what they’re doing and WHEN I TELL YOU WHAT THEY’RE DOING, doesn’t that make any dent in your perception? Why is it that everyone in the comments is suddenly saying they trust Glenn Greenwald’s judgment better than my judgment?

    Excuse my impatient frustration here, but I think longtime readers would by now have more confidence in my bullshit detector.

  16. about which we know only those details that Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have decided to disclose?

    You should explain that to those who keep telling us that this is a nothingburger because we’ve known about all this for years. And then, perhaps, you could figure out what the hell this is for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

  18. Stacy if you don’t think the NSA scandal produced no actual victims then I have to worry that your undersanding of the 4th Amendment is suspect.

    No actual victims? Stacy, every single one of us has been and continues to be victimized by this. This is not like having a file at the DMV, or even a gun permit, where the government collects information on you in respect to specific activities.

    This is a fishing expedition against every man, woman, child and LGBTXYZ in the United States of America. To what end? To be able to intimidate or publish any American private citizen who dares to venture into public life, if the reigning political power sees fit. Run for Congress? Better hope the Administration likes you, or they’ll bring up your “links” to extremist political movements because you’re still talking to your brother the tree-hugger. Want to write a newspaper column criticizing the Administration? Better hope the government does decide to publicly investigate your “ties” to rightwing extremists” — you know, that guy you shared handloading tips with on that shooter;s forum two years ago. Want to bring out dirt against a corrupt civil service union? Better hope the government does link your circle of professional and business contacts to Andy Stern and SEIU. Your boy wants to go to OCS? Better hope no one brings up some of the folks in your journalistic connections?

    Remember that crap you took for your “ties” to rightwing racists a while back? This is a mechanism to let the government with all its poer do to you and your family, your associate and your employers what those amateurs did to you. Think that didn’t cost you?

    This is exactly what the 4th Amendment was written to forbid, and it seems to be exactly what you’re missing.

  19. That and when anything within the US was directed only at actual suspects, ie “warrantless wiretaps.”, with subsequent court approval.

    General warrants are a whole ‘nother matter.

  21. I must take issue with the distinction that there are no victims in the NSA scandal. Anytime the government chooses to exercise “eminent domain” on any of our unalienable rights, we all become victims, regardless of whether the guys in the black shirts show up at our door at 2:00 AM. The analogy would be if someone were to appropriate one’s credit card account numbers but decide not to use them (yet). Somehow, I, for one, would not be comforted in relying on the good will of the person with the information I assumed was private. Ditto in spades with the government, regardless of the party which is charge.

  22. Evidently, we were composing our comments at the same time. 🙂 Oh, well. Original thought is like Original Sin. They both happened a long time ago to people you could not possibly have met.

  23. Given the myriad of scandals involving the improper use of government power to harrass certain groups, I am not prepared to trust it on this issue. Snowden and Greenwald are irrelevant to the discussion in my view. We know the program exists. The government has admitted as much, and claimed that attacks have been thwarted. We are now faced with assurances from these powers that be that they will not misuse/abuse the power they have appropriated. Forgive those of us who remain wary.

  25. The people the government refused to promise they weren’t wiretapping are in charge of supervising the wiretappers in possession of all their dirt.

    “Yeah that ough to do it. Thanks, Ray,”

  27. Stacy why are you unable to grasp that we are not defending Snowden; it is simply that we hate the abuses he uncovered, of the Constitution and the trust of the American people, far more.

    Snowden’s were the offenses of a single individual, for which he should be punished, and which he is no longer in a position to repeat. The NSA/IRS/EPA/ATF/DOJ/ETC’s are the abuses of an entire branch of government, which are ungoing and unlikely to be punished since THEY are in charge of policing the offenders. Which is the greater problem?

  29. From the link:

    ‘The NSA operates in “strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations,” she said. “Any allegation of wrongdoing by employees is thoroughly investigated” and if misconduct is discovered, “we take swift and certain remedial action.”‘

    Indeed. The IRS scandal proved to be nothing more than a couple of rogue agents in an office in Cincinnati. And, following a thorough investigation, swift and certain remedial action was most certainly taken. Oh…wait.

    Tis our responsibility to challenge and question the authority of our government and our elected tormentors. Snowden became a non-issue for me very shortly after he made his splash onto the world stage. IMO–he’s simply a “shiny object” at this point, whereas our behemoth, unaccountable, nefarious Federal government is worthy of our entire focus.

  30. Presumption of innocence.

    If the government can’t show a “reasonable suspicion,” they have no more business monitoring your electronic communication than they do rummaging in your sock drawer.

    Or watching your bank account, although that one has been shot to blazes by the awful 16th.

    It used to be a cornerstone of the justice system. You were presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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