“It is hard to think of a
greater stamp of authenticity than the US government filing a lawsuit claiming
your book is so truthful that it was literally against the law to write,”
Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden
“Who controls the past
controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The ink on Edward Snowden’s
new book had barely dried when the US government sought to block the proceeds
of his memoir Permanent Record.
The US Department of Justice
filed suit on Tuesday against Edward Snowden and his publisher Macmillan. The
aim of this vindictive move was to stop Snowden from receiving any money made from
the publication of his new book. US Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger stated,
“This lawsuit will ensure that Edward Snowden receives no monetary benefits from
breaching the trust placed in him.” Snowden's publisher Macmillan is also being
sued “solely to ensure that no funds are transferred to Snowden, or at his
direction, while the court resolves the United States’ claims.”
Snowden who has over four
million Twitter followers is widely respected for his whistleblowing act and in
some quarters is regarded as a hero said the book was written not for monetary
gain but in order to set the record straight regarding his release of data that
showed the US government had systematically and secretly tapped the internet
records of every single person on the planet. In doing so successive, the US
government had violated constitutional rights on a massive scale.
As Snowden intimates in the
book, the surveillance apparatus exposed has no real parallel in history. Companies
like Verizon, Google and Yahoo helped the US government collect billions of
emails, phone calls, texts, videoconferences and webcam recordings.
One writer said that it “allows
the surveillance agencies to draw social and political profiles of every person
in the US and hundreds of millions of people beyond America’s borders”.
The book itself contains no
“secrets” it still nonetheless takes the breath away at the extent of spying the
US government undertook. While not implying in the book Snowden has uncovered through a series of
leaks “the very advanced framework of a police state, both illegal and
unconstitutional. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the US spy network are
engaged in the collection of virtually all communications and the assembling of
vast databases for the purpose of monitoring the personal, social and political
activities of the entire population”.
As Snowden graphically puts
it in an interview “All of your private records, all of your private
communications, all of your transactions, all of your associations, who you
talk to, who you love, what you buy, what you read—all of those things can be
seized and held by the government and then searched later for any reason,
hardly, without any justification, without any real oversight, without any real
accountability for those who do wrong”.
On a human level, this point
was hit home in the book when Snowden was spying on someone and was watching
his target through his computer. The target had his son on his knee all the
while Snowden was spying on him.
As Snowden notes he could “actually
see you write sentences and then backspace over your mistakes and then change
the words and then kind of pause and think about what you wanted to say and
then change it. Moreover, it is this extraordinary intrusion not just into your
communications, your finished messages but your actual drafting process, into
the way you think.”
One overarching aim of the lawsuit
is to try to deter people from buying the book and discussing content such as
the one above but as Edward Snowden tweeted “Yesterday, the government sued
the publisher of #PermanentRecord for—not kidding—printing it without giving
the CIA and NSA a chance to erase details of their classified crimes from the
manuscript. Today, it is the best-selling book in the world.”
Snowden’s book is a cross
between a novel, spy story and biography, and this makes it a cracking read.
Reading the book, one is struck by a certain degree of irony. Although carrying
out one of the most audacious revolutionary acts this century Snowden's early
life would appear to have been the inspiration for the film The Truman Show.
Snowden grew up in the
suburbs of Washington, DC. His family was all involved in the military or
federal government in some capacity. Snowden himself becoming a trusted CIA
employee and NSA intelligence contractor.
There is a lot to admire
about Snowden. On a personal level, the fact that he was prepared to sacrifice
everything to expose illegal US government spying shows he was a man of courage
and principle. On a broader level, Snowden was radicalised by the multiple
wars carried out by the US government during his most formative years. In this
sense, Snowden is not alone.
The life experience of the
30-year-old Snowden reflects that of an entire generation. “The disaffection
with and growing opposition to the existing social and political set-up
reflected in the evolution of Snowden’s views is not simply an individual
process, but part of a change involving millions of his generation. It is this
fact that accounts for the extraordinary level of anger and fear within the
state apparatus that has been generated by his actions”.
From reading his book, his
whistleblowing was as much an act against the massive invasion of privacy as it
was against a quarter-century of wars. It would appear that Snowden very
consciously fought to oppose these wars in the one way that was open to him and
that was whistleblowing.
Kevin Reed supports this
sentiment adding“ millions of workers and young people are entering political
struggle today—facing a crisis that will challenge and shake up their views
about the nature of the US military, the two-party system, the unions,
bourgeois nationalism, etc.—Snowden’s book provides an insight into the
internal process by which one young intelligence worker came to act, on the
basis of principles, against the entire military-intelligence establishment of
the American government”.[1]
There is much to like about
this book. While Snowden had a reasonable idea of what would happen after he
released his files nothing really prepared him for how fundamental his life
would change. Once the files were released he planned to go to one of few
countries that he would feel safe in that being Ecuador.
To do so, he had to fly via
Russia while in the air Snowden’s passport was revoked by the US Department of
State. Snowden lived at the airport in Russia for 40 days after which he was
given asylum by the Russian government.
One striking aspect of the
book is the degree of confidence Snowden has shown in his actions. There is not
a moment of the doubt despite the years of threats and calumny by the US
government. His courage and principled stand is not just a reflection of his personal
courage but because he knows he has widespread support.
As Glenn Greenwaldy states “Snowden seemed to derive a sense of strength
from having made this decision. He exuded an extraordinary equanimity when
talking about what the US government might do to him. The sight of this
twenty-nine-year-old young man responding this way to the threat of decades, or
life, in a super-max prison—a prospect that, by design, would scare almost
anyone into paralysis—was deeply inspiring. And his courage was contagious:
Laura and I vowed to each other repeatedly and to Snowden that every action we
would take and every decision we would make from that point forward would honour
his choice.” [2]
It would be pointless to
hope this book gets a wide readership as it is already selling bucketloads
throughout the world. It is hoped that the new generation of workers and
students reading the book act upon his courageous and selfless action. In his
book, he is refreshingly frank about the emotional crisis his whistleblowing caused
to his family and partner Lindsay. While had to abandon his girlfriend without
any warning it is comforting to know that their relationship was as strong as
his principles.
Further Reading
A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global
Hegemony 1990-2016 Paperback – 27 Jul 2016-by David North
(Author)- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarter-Century-War-Hegemony-990-2016/dp/1893638693
[1] US Justice Department sues Edward
Snowden to block proceeds of memoir
Kevin
Reed-23 September 2019-
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/23/snow-s23.html
[2]No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the
NSA and the Surveillance State
By Glenn
Greenwaldy-(p51)
