From TPM Reader SG …
Hi, longtime reader here. I want to register my opinion on a couple of things.
1. I am surprised at how much you are willing to be caught up in evaluating Snowden as a messenger. It seems to me the authenticity of the materials he has provided is not seriously in question. We have these “denials” from corporations, but the intelligence community seems not to be denying anything, but rather to be claiming that we in the public don’t really understand and that the release of the info is damaging.
My friend and mentor John Judis has a piece out in The New Republic putting today’s news in the context the low-level harassment and surveillance he was put under as a pretty unthreatening New Left radical journalist back in the 60s and early 70s. I can see that John and I are coming at this whole story from pretty different sides. But John’s a smart enough guy and I’ve seen enough times when he saw things that I missed and got things right that I got wrong that I wanted to link to his piece.
Hong Kong-based TPM Reader RC says Beijing/Hong Kong will send Snowden back to the USA …
As a longtime HK-based journalist and Beijing observer, my view is that there isn’t really a scenario in which Beijing wouldn’t send back Edward Snowden. In their minds he is a lawbreaker of the worst, Ai Weiwei-Liu Xiaobo kind.
Some of Greenwald’s statements sound a bit more like threats than laying out a story.
Icelandic lawmaker says she’s ready to help Snowden get asylum in Iceland.
Snowden and many others have now said that these leaks are important and justified because the public needs to decide whether this is done in their name. Basically I disagree with that (the justification for the leak). But it does raise a basic point that it is inherently difficult for the public to make fully informed decisions about intelligence work done in its name. Yet, who gets to do this? Snowden says it’s up to the public. But it’s really more like Snowden and Greenwald have made that decision on the public’s behalf.
TPM Reader LF has some similar thoughts. I don’t agree with all of it. And he loses me on some of the points toward the end. But I’m on the same page on this basic point …
There is a lot of conversation at TPM, and around the world, about NSA intelligence programs, etc., which has come to light lately in issues about leaks of information and documents. But the announcement by the 29-year old Edward Snowden that he leaked the classified documents brings up a very important issue–who gets to leak this type of information.
I don’t agree with his take. But some interesting thoughts on the Snowden story from James Fallows.
One point Fallows raises is the folly of creating a system that one dissenting or disgruntled employee can so easily upend. There’s a word for this in the intelligence world: compartmentalization. We don’t know yet just the breadth of access Snowden had. What he claimed in the video seems a little far-fetched. But clearly he had enough to release things that Intel Community finds very damaging. That’s another dimension to this story. Setting aside the issue of people who may leak to the press, intelligence agencies are always prey to counter-espionage. A lot of questions to be asked there.
Justice Department spokesperson, on the self-unmasking of Edward Snowden:
The Department of Justice is in the initial stages of an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by an individual with authorized access. Consistent with long standing Department policy and procedure and in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we must decline further comment.