LONDON - If it had been any other weekend before any other week, it is likely that by now Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks would have been already relegated to the darkest depths of the news. However, this is no ordinary week: the G8 have been meeting in Northern Ireland, and the time was therefore ripe for some G8 related leaks.
The latest batch of revelations, that the UK government spied on its G20 counterparts in 2009 through the implementation of fake Internet cafés that allowed GCHQ spooks to read emails “while or before” they had been read by their intended recipient, seem to have been designed to directly embarrass the UK at a pivotal moment. This round of talks should be about Syria, with Friday’s announcement that Britain and the US would directly arm the rebels, and the natural confrontation that this implies with Russia.
The G20 leaks certainly hit a chord with Turkey and Russia, with claims that the former president of the latter, Dmitry Medvedev, had his phone tapped during the 2009 event. This revelation does not appear to have been at the top of the agenda for Vladimir Putin, who has been more concerned this week with refuting UK and US support for Syrian rebels and reiterating its support for the Assad regime.
The leaks did cause embarrassment in as much as Turkey put an angry call through to the British Ambassador in Ankara, Sir David Reddaway, which the Foreign Office simultaneously confirmed and played down yesterday.
Regardless of the headline-grabbing revelations, the jury remains out on the long-term impact of Snowden and his leaks. The weekend saw mounting wholesale character assassination in the UK media as well as the US, probably because Snowden still comes across as calculating and not entirely reliable with the truth.
Much has been made of the fact that he was not earning the US$200,000 he originally claimed, but closer to US$120,000, while other journalists have focused on PRISM itself. According to some, the programme was never secret, companies that participated were forced to hand over information via subpoena and it might not even be a programme. As I wrote last week, Snowden is perhaps unfortunate that he is making his break for freedom in a more cynical age.
In a move designed to generate positive PR and credibility for himself and The Guardian, the latter hosted a live webchat with Snowden on Monday, offering the analyst the opportunity to clarify doubts that had been raised in the week. The success of this move is difficult to calculate. It gave Snowden, speaking from a (naturally) “secret location” in Hong Kong, the perfect podium from which to reiterate his cause, claiming that “nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target... without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people.”
The webchat, hosted by Snowden’s link at The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, also gave the public another view of the man many in the US are already referring to as a “traitor.” This is part of the problem: despite or because of his best efforts, Snowden cannot help but come across as cold and calculating, as someone who has seen the bigger picture and evangelizes about the coming “truth” storm. He criticizes the media about focusing on his girlfriend, which is fair, but his language portrays him as someone who recognizes the drama of his situation and cannot wait to remind the reader of it. “The truth is coming and it cannot be stopped, “ “the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing and murdering me” and “the country is worth dying for” are just a few examples of this.
In many ways, that leaves the public in exactly the same quandary they were in before the weekend. There are two narrative threads in this story: the paranoia-ridden view that Snowden is right and therefore governments are spying on their people; and the view that the government counters terrorism by spying on some people, probably not their own, and that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Both of these threads have their faults: Snowden is simply not convincing and tends to alienate, regardless of what he says, while the greater good is not a strong enough reason to spy on people’s email in other countries, notwithstanding their suspected terrorist activities. But still.
The main problem with this story is that it’s still a story. It has been designed to cause embarrassment, which it has done so successfully, and outrage, at which it has been less successful. Let’s suppose that that next round of leaks, whenever they appear, are more damaging than anything that’s been revealed so far. What actual impact will this have on anyone’s lives, beyond possibly Snowden’s? The reality is that this story is still not important and nothing suggests it will be, particularly in the UK. The cynical age in which these revelations have appeared have just got a bit more cynical. Thanks, Edward.
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As much as it seems that the leaks will not go away, nor, apparently, will Julian Assange — who announced on Monday that he was prepared to stay in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for “the next five years.” The announcement came after the apparent failure of a working party of Ecuadorean and British officials to reach a negotiated solution on what should be done about the Wikileaks frontman. Exactly how the Ecuadoreans feel, despite protestations that Assange should be let out “to see the sunshine” (an odd request in the UK summer) and smiles in the official press releases, is unclear.
@archiewhit
First published in the Buenos Aires Herald on June 19, 2013
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