Immediately below is a commentary I wrote last Saturday (June 8) on the public’s reaction to leaks about the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA) spying on its citizens. In light of the international media frenzy NSA leaker Edward Snowden caused this week, I have decided to reprise it here, followed by a new commentary on the cause celebre he has become.
Complaints about NSA spying are schizophrenic…and misguided
Frankly, Americans complaining about the government spying on them is rather like Kim Kardashian complaining about the paparazzi taking pictures of her.
You’d better pray you are never prosecuted or sued for anything. Because not only Big Brother but even your civil adversary could compel Google to turn over all of the searches you made when you thought nobody was watching. And just think how embarrassing or compromising it would be to have some of those search terms come under public scrutiny – no matter how innocent your explanation.
So if you’re planning to cheat on your spouse, or to do something even worse, don’t search Google for guidance because you might as well be talking to your local gossipmonger, or to the police. And if you think you can un-Google your most compromising searches, think again…
By the way, it’s not just Google. Because you’d be shocked at the spying and eavesdropping your employer, your Internet Service Provider, your local supermarket, or even your favorite (naughty) website engages in to keep track of your emails, purchases, preferences and … peccadilloes. And all of them blithely use that information for their own commercial purposes, but would rat you out just as blithely at the mere hint of prosecution or civil litigation.
(“Beware: Google Declares ‘Nothing’s Private,’ The iPINIONS Journal, December 8, 2009)
In this Information Age, tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and WikiLeaks are masters of the universe. But they have created a schizophrenic human species – whose members share everything about everything, yet claim to be zealous about their privacy..
Only this explains the growing nationaloutrage over the government’s National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring their promiscuous and indiscriminate footprints (online and via telephone). But nothing explains why these nincompoops think it’s okay for tech companies to spy on them to sell them stuff, but not okay for the NSA to do so to keep them safe.
Not to mention how they blithely give up truly sensitive personal information for the convenience of buying stuff with credit cards. After all, records collected from such transactions make the generic phone records the NSA collects seem even less intrusive than a traffic cop’s speed gun.
All we need is for terrorists to pull off another 9/11. Because the same people venting outrage about government surveillance today will be venting ever greater outrage over the government’s failure to monitor the footprints of those terrorists (i.e., connecting the dots).
This is why I applaud President Obama for effectively telling these nincompoops to get over their outrage … and themselves with their inherently contradictory concerns about privacy:
Nobody is listening to your telephone calls… [The government is merely] digesting phone numbers and the durations of calls, seeking links that might identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.
It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.
(Associated Press, June 8, 2013)
Enough said?
Except that I gather some people are concerned about the government using the metadata the NSA collects to prosecute them. But clearly no concern is warranted in this respect, unless they are engaged in illegal activities. Even then, no judge would admit any evidence obtained via an illegal wiretap or e-mail intercept. In law we call such tainted evidence “fruit of the poisonous tree.”
And if they are merely worried about electronic data being used in civil litigation or to embarrass them, then they should be far more concerned about the spying Google and other private companies do than about that which the government does.
Leaker Snowden: more useful idiot than national traitor
Foremost I should say that Edward Snowden strikes me as little more than a narcissistic, egotistical, publicity-seeking idiot who is to national intelligence what Kim Kardashian is to media celebrity.
What’s more, he seems every bit the media whore she is, and is probably hoping that his NSA leaks will make him even more famous than her sex tape made her. I suspect the more we learn about him, the more this analogy will play out.
But think about this folks: If the United States is spying on China as much as Snowden claims (and it is), and China is spying on the United States as much as Obama claims (and it is), then clearly neither country needs anyone to tell it anything about the extent of spying going on between them, right?
So Snowden telling China that the United States is spying on it is rather like a disgruntled Obama staffer telling Romney that Obama is looking for dirt to hurl at him during last year’s presidential campaign. Duh.
Not to mention the idiocy inherent in Snowden seeking political asylum in China to protest a lack of government transparency in the United States. At least the spies who betrayed their country during the Cold War had a reasonable expectation that a political and ideological Shangri-La awaited them in the Soviet Union.
You’d think Snowden would’ve been guided by the disillusionment those spies suffered after jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, and then realizing that they were nothing more than useful idiots for anti-Western propaganda.
All of which is why this NSA story is really all about the leaker, not his leaks. And with their hysterical and overblown coverage, the media are willingly, willfully, and wantonly making him into an international cause celebre who, in his deluded mind, has the two most powerful nations in the world fighting over him. Indeed, Snowden probably finds being in this hot seat positively ecstatic, if not priapic….
That said, for anyone who think he has anything credible to say, consider this:
Snowden claims, with nary a hint of the delusions of grandeur that clearly motivate him, that he “had the authority to wiretap anyone … even the president.” Except that:
Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was wrong when he claimed he had the ability [just sitting at his desk with his computer] to tap into the private emails or phone calls of any American citizen — even President Barack Obama.
‘False,’ Alexander said, when answering a question from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) about Snowden’s claim. ‘I know of no way to do that.’
(Business Insider, June 12, 2013)
Mind you, this is not to say that I don’t believe the U.S. government would ever spy on innocent Americans. After all, I know all too well that the FBI did just that for years on no less an American than Martin Luther King Jr. My only point is that, for all of his talk about NSA spying, this joker has yet to cite the name of a single American who he (or anyone else at this agency) was ordered to spy on.
In any event, despite the media frenzy, Snowden’s “leaks” will have no real impact on U.S. intelligence activities. Not least because, just as Obama not only adopted but expanded all of the spying tactics he criticized George W. Bush for deploying, almost every politician now venting constitutional outrage over NSA spying will vote for it to continue when the time comes to put up or shut up.
Why? Because no (mainstream) politician wants it on his record or conscience that he voted against a program that could have prevented a terrorist attack….
Meanwhile, nothing indicates how fleeting, inconsequential, and costly Snowden’s notoriety will be, and rightly so, quite like the fates that have befallen Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for their “wikileaks” of U.S. diplomatic secrets:
- Their leaks have had practically no impact on U.S. foreign policy.
- Manning is being tried in virtual obscurity, and faces even greater obscurity if/when he’s sentenced to life in prison.
- And Assange is already in a de facto prison, hiding out, as he is, in Ecuador’s embassy in London since last August as a fugitive from justice. But I assure you, British intelligence is doing everything possible to spy on his activities to ensure he does not slip out undetected. Therefore, he’s dares not even set foot outside for fear of being arrested and extradited pursuant to a judge’s order: first to Sweden to face trial and punishment on sexual assault charges, then to the United States to follow the path Manning is now blazing into obscurity.
To be clear, just as it was with Manning, the United States must protest damage to national security in this case. It must do so not only to establish probable cause for arresting and prosecuting Snowden, but also to provide whatever deterrence it can for all of the other misguided nerds out there who might be thinking of emulating his method of revenge … for their 15 minutes of infamy.
Related commentaries:
Complaints about NSA
Ecuador grants Assange asylum…