COLETTE DOUGLAS HOME
Snowden would be more of a hero if he went home and faced the music
THE WHITE House has put pressure on Russia to expel fugitive Edward Snowden to ensure he returns to the US.
The administration urged Moscow not to allow the surveillance whistleblower to leave the country to travel elsewhere as his attempted escape to South America descended into confusion.
The White House also criticised China for allowing the former US spy agency contractor who disclosed government surveillance secrets to leave Hong Kong.
A White House spokesman said the US assumed Mr Snowden was still in Russia and dismissed suggestions the decision to allow Mr Snowden to depart Hong Kong was a technical one.
He said: “We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official.
“This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the USChina relationship.
US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed frustration that neither the Chinese or Russian governments had detained Mr Snowden.
He said: “It would be deeply troubling if they had adequate notice and, notwithstanding that, they made the decision wilfully to ignore that and not live by the standards of the law.”
Mr Snowden, who had worked at a US National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about secret US surveillance programs to news media.
The 30-year-old has applied to Ecuador for political asylum, but the country’s foreign minister has implied he is still in Russia. A seat was booked in his name on a flight to Cuba yesterday morning, but he is not thought to have boarded.
The White House spokesman said US officials had been in contact with Hong Kong authorities since June 10 and urged them to honour Washington’s request that he be arrested. Hong Kong acknowledged receipt of the US request on June 17 and requested additional information.
He said: “The US had been in communication about these inquiries and were in the process of responding to the request when we learned Hong Kong authorities had allowed the fugitive to leave.
The White House spokesman noted that individuals with arrest warrants were subject to having their passports revoked.
He could not comment specifically on Mr Snowden’s passport for privacy reasons but said Hong Kong officials were advised of his travel document status in time to have prohibited his departure.
Mr Snowden is charged with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.
The White House spokesman, who in recent weeks has avoided mentioning Mr Snowden by name, criticised the former contractor for the countries he had potentially chosen for refuge. He said: “Mr Snowden’s claim that he is focused on supporting transparency, freedom of the press and protection of individual rights is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen – China, Russia, Ecuador, as we’ve seen.
“His failures to criticise these regimes suggests his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance internet freedom and free speech.”
Russian officials say they lack the legal authority to detain him.
“TheAmericans cannot demand anything,” human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said, saying that as long as Mr Snowden did not leave the Moscow airport’s secure transit area, he was not on Russian soil.
EVERY time I hear about Edward Snowden I am reminded of a Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the title that resonates. If ever there was a David and Goliath set-to, surely this is it: one slight, bespectacled young man has poked a sharp stick in the eye of the mightiest power on earth and it is spitting with rage. Here’s roughly how things stand. On one side there’s a delightful, urbane President who has punitive forces at his disposal – satellites, drones, spies, armies, nuclear armaments, assassins, not to mention a powerful body of statute and a judiciary.
On the other, apart from his glasses, Mr Snowden possesses only state secrets, many of which are now not so secret. He doesn’t even have a valid passport after the US cancelled it. Hence he is throwing himself on the mercy of any sympathetic country that will give him safe passage or refuge.
Would he be more of a hero if he stopped trying to run and went back to America to face the music? The answer has to be yes. If he’d face the cameras before boarding that flight home and tell the world why he acted as he did, why his fellow countrymen have a right to know their own government has been spying on them, his constituency would be larger than that of the President.
If he’d voluntarily boarded a plane to Washington, instead of fleeing to Ecuador, his fate would be a matter of concern for all. He would be fighting a battle of principle.
Instead he is playing into the hands of the establishment by going on the run. His flight to ever more unsavoury places is a distraction. Instead of behaving like a hero, he’s presenting himself as a fugitive from justice. And instead of the public remaining focused on the great scandal he has unearthed, they are watching him.
The United States gets to looks affronted, outraged and betrayed, when it should be looking guilty.
The fact is Mr Snowden exposed the US state and the UK Government – or sections of both – with their noses in our private lives.
His leaks show the nonsense of the parliamentary debate to decide whether the security services can legally keep track of who we speak to or email without viewing content.
It’s closing the stable door since we now discover GCHQ has had access to the content of what we write and say by accessing the Americans’ Prism programme.
So having thought we were free citizens ruled by elected parliamentarians with an agreed manifesto, we discover we inhabit a state that feels free routinely to invade our privacy. In this case the pretext is keeping us safe from terrorists?
It is an honourable purpose. But how did this mass surveillance on entire populations happen without proper public debate? Where was the discussion, the consultation, the vote? What happened to the democratic process? It was circumvented by a loophole in the law.
Any reasonable person can see the difficulties the state confronts. We have home-grown jihadists who want to blow us to kingdom come. We can’t debate with them, come to a political arrangement with them or reason with them. They are fundamentalist, happy to die for their cause and in the process to kill as many of us as they can. All we can do is stop them before they strike.
That’s the reality. And those charged with “keeping us safe” have been pragmatic in our defence.
Looking back at the number of foiled plots that have gone through the courts in the recent past, it’s clear something is working. We can’t know how many of us have escaped death or maiming thanks to this surveillance.
But is that good enough? Does that warrant the huge and fundamental They would be better confronting their accusers and forcing the US Government to justify its actions relinquishment of our right to private communication without our permission?
I think not. I find the loss of my right to a private life as great and as disturbing as the risk of terrorism.
I want the ability to be an enemy of the state. That’s not as mad as it sounds. Because we have known only freedom and tolerance we forget that, in global terms and in historical terms, our experience is the exception.
There were times in this country when espousing the “wrong” religious faith saw you burned at the stake. There were times when preferring Parliament over royalty (or vice versa) would have stretched your neck.
It’s a mere 70 years since we were threatened by a Nazi invasion. We’d have been fighting on the beaches, in the fields and in the streets if that had happened. If defeated we’d have continued fighting as an underground movement. And we would have been right.
How would we manage such a resistance now that everything we say and do, every journey we make and every purchase is recorded? The state is keeping us safe from terrorism but how will we protect ourselves from the state if it is ever other than benign?
For example, what if the far right returns? Before you say it’s not possible take a closer look at modern Greece. When economies collapse, extremes proliferate.
What if some other horror emerges? Look at what happened in America when McCarthyism raged. People’s careers were ended because they were suspected of communist sympathies.
What Mr Snowden has shown us is that whatever it says to the voting public, the state will take whatever powers unto itself it considers necessary to quell a threat. And it won’t necessarily seek our permission in advance.
What Mr Snowden has revealed is that our sense of privacy is an illusion. If we want to communicate privately we’d better train pigeons and learn sign language. This genie will never go back into the bottle.
Wherever Mr Snowden is – at the time of writing his whereabouts are uncertain – we owe him a debt.
So what should happen to this whistleblower?
If there were a people’s knighthood, I’d give him one. He should be lauded, applauded and celebrated for reminding us that we cannot be lazy about our liberty.
Instead, if caught, he faces the fate of Bradley Manning. That young soldier has been incarcerated in reportedly unpleasant conditions. He probably faces many more years of solitude before he gains his freedom.
That WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange is growing plump in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London while his reputation diminishes. His avoidance of the suspicion of rape accusation he faces in Sweden makes him seem less than the man of principal we thought he was. Meanwhile he is costing us all a fortune in policing. He would have done better to face a Swedish court and risk extradition. But that’s easy for me to say. My life and my freedom are not on the line.
The real point is that neither Mr Assange nor Mr Snowden will ever again feel free. They will always have to hide away. They will always feel endangered. It will be a kind of incarceration. So, in my view, they would be better confronting their accusers and forcing the US Government to justify its actions to its people. Yet it’s clear that blind rage is more likely than blind justice in America. So what should be their fate?
In the long-term it’s possible we should have a body like the international criminal court that adjudicates where humanity’s interest lies in cases such as these. But until then Mr Snowden should finish what he started. Rather than scuttling from country to country he should carry on the fight. I’d send some cash for his defence, wouldn’t you?
Remember David did beat Goliath. Remember Luke Skywalker lives to fight another day.