The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Is it ever OK for the state to spy on you?
One of Edward Snowden’s collaborators delivers a timely warning about how data is gathered. By Con Coughlin
IDARK MIRROR by Barton Gellman 448pp, Bodley Head, £20, ebook £9.99
n this age of coronavirus, when governments are desperate to acquire information about the effect Covid-19 has on their citizens, it is worth remembering there is no guarantee that data gathered from the likes of smartphones and apps will be used solely for the purposes of scientific endeavour.
The notion that governments might seek to harvest information for uses other than those originally intended is not far-fetched, as we now know as a result of the revelations made by Edward Snowden. The whistleblower from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) exposed how America’s intelligence services spied on their own citizens.
As American journalist Barton Gellman explains in Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State, the explosion in modern communications systems, from smartphones to social media platforms, has been matched by an exponential increase in the amount of data that intelligence services around the world – including our own GCHQ – can access regarding the everyday lives of citizens.
I should state at the outset that I am no fan of Snowden, whose revelations in 2013 provided hostile states like Russia and China with priceless information about how America and its allies conduct their intelligence operations – thereby making him an early candidate for the greatest traitor of the 21st century. It was surely no coincidence that, equipped with four laptops filled with tens of thousands of pages of sensitive documents, Snowden, who was employed as a low-grade technician at the NSA’s Hawaii station, fled first to China and then to Russia, where he now resides.
Gellman, who was one of the journalists who helped to bring Snowden’s revelations into the public domain, unsurprisingly takes a more sympathetic view, describing his actions as a
“spectacular act of transgression against his employer”.
Snowden, who used the code name “Verax” during his initial meetings with Gellman, does not come across as a particularly sympathetic character. An obsessive computer nerd who took it upon himself to launch a one-man campaign against the entire American intelligence establishment, he smugly remarks, when asked how he managed to download so much sensitive information from one of the US’s most secret organisations, “it’s just a question of being smarter than the adversary”.
Gellman himself relates how he constantly had problems of his own working with Snowden, who would go for long periods without speaking to him over disagreements about how his information had been presented in the Washington Post, where the journalist worked.
Nevertheless, as a result of the material Snowden provided, Gellman, who specialises in investigating US covert operations, was able to pursue his own inquiries into the extent of America’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance on its citizens, primarily through social media platforms.
Gellman found these operations dated back to the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks in 2001, when the Bush administration feared a further series of attacks on American soil. Their scale was truly staggering; through a cosy arrangement with telecoms companies, the NSA managed to acquire files of every telephone call made in the US and beyond, to the extent that the organisation was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information at its disposal.
Much of this data, moreover, had been acquired illegally for, under US law, intelligence and security officers are only allowed to spy on American citizens if they have a warrant.
Gellman, who even found himself the subject of surveillance as he conducted his Snowden-led investigations, argues that this fundamental breach of civil liberties is the key issue that has emerged as a result of the revelations.
Although Gellman’s book is at times overwritten and selfserving, with the author frequently seeking to settle scores with former editors, fellow journalists and even Snowden himself, his concerns about the state’s ability to spy on its own citizens are particularly relevant today – as governments seek to monitor our movements even more closely on the pretext of overcoming the coronavirus pandemic.
Even so, I cannot agree with Gellman’s claim that Snowden did more good than harm. One day – hopefully soon – he should be made to face justice.
The NSA managed to acquire files of every telephone call made in the US and beyond