snowden

     Edward Snowden is now in exile in Russia, having landed there almost by accident when his passport was revoked by the US.  They have given him temporary asylum.   European countries have refused to give him asylum saying they cannot protect him from extradition to face spying charges in his home country.
      So, while he is being hailed as a hero in many quarters for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency which he says operates unconstitutional and illegal surveillance of the general population and been awarded the Stuttgart Peace Prize last year, President Obama simply says he should  come back and face espionage charges.
    The film made by Laura Poitras showing him handed over secret information to Guardian journalists, Citizenfour, shows the firmness of his intent "whatever they do to me."   It is a portrait of extraordinary courage and determination.  "These are not my issues.  They are everyone's issues."      The NSA has direct access to millions of privage phone calls and messages, he says, and the public is unprotected - it is blanket surveillance.
      The film, nearly two hours long, gives an opportunity to study him.  He is intelligent, thoughtful, modest (a friend described him as 'a deep thinker, caring and sensitive') the sort of young man you would trust with a secret.   But he decided to break that trust when he decided the secret was based on State lying and subterfuge he could no longer support.
 There were "billions" of intercepts on laptops, and GCHQ was "the most invasive system in the world."    His breaking point came when he saw lying about the system in Congress and felt he had to come up with the truth.
     But he has not decided which of the many subjects in the documents should be disclosed.   Instead, he handed it all over to Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill, giving the paper the huge task of discovering the public interest stories in them which could be carried in the paper, as well as facing the retribution by the authorities for doing so.
    Greenwald has published a book about the disclosures "No Place to Hide.".   Prism was the programme used by the NSA to access, among others, Google, Microsoft and Apple servers, and the UK's Tempora which deals with web and telephone traffic.  So none of us is safe.   This is how it was in the old Soviet Union when, if you needed to discuss something privately, you arranged to meet on the metro underground platform or in a wood if you were in the country.   I know, I've done it, and don't really want to have to do it here.  Thanks, Edward Snowden.


ends

        Whatever they do to him, he will never regret disclosing the illegal surveillance of millions of private communications by the US National Security Agency, says Edward Snowden.
     I watched Laura Poitras's film, citizenfour, which shows Snowden producing the secret files in the neutral safety of Hong Kong.  It was an extraordinary experience.   Snowden ("I'm known as Ed) emerges as a likeable, modest, highly intelligent young man whom you would have no trouble in trusting with any of your secrets.   But the NSA did trust him, mistakenly.
      Snowden says the NSA programme is unconstitutional and illegal.    He says when he saw two congressmen lying under oath about it to Congress, he came to breaking point and decided to act.
 in its extensive sur his job working for the corporation Booz Allen Hamilton after being trained  by the NSA was tp look for ways that could be used to break into the internet and phone traffic globally.
     Now President Obama is saying he should come back to the States, where he was born in North Caroline, to face espionage charges.   In detail, these are theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence.

Green Coalition?

      Both the Tories and Labour are having to face the possibility of sharing a coalition government with the Greens after the May election.   Green membership has quadrupled - there appears to be an idealistic yearning growing in the UK, apparently, for policies to save the planet.    The Greens now have more members than the LibDems or UKIP.
But the day-to-day mechanics of running the country would present new problems with a Green voice in the government;  negative growth is one of their policies.   
    This is reminiscent of the days of the growth of the Green movement in Germany a long time ago, when there were the same problems for the ruling parties.   In 1982, the Greens were stating conditions for coalition talks under their extraordinary young leader, Petra Kelly.    She had a missionary fervour totally committed to Green ideas, never giving up on her crusade to recruit to her cause everyone she met.   Under her leadership, power was taken away from the Social Democrats.  
     "If the SPD switches off all atomic power stations, stops the stationing of missiles, and starts building ambulances in place of tanks, we can begin to talk to them" she declared.    The Greens were warned - as has been the case in this country - that entry into the German Parliament, the Bundestag, could mean a victory for the Conservative DDU over the Social Democrats.  They said they were not concerned about this, that they were the anti-party party.   But the Greens secured significant representation in the Bundestag and Germany did not get nuclear weapons.
     Her father was an American serving in the forces in Germany after the war.  Petra had started her career with a post working for the EU in Brussels where she found many compromises in policy which shocked her.
     She came to Britain and spoke for the Greens in Trafalgar Square and at the War Memorial in Whitehall.   Now, at last, the Green party is here in force in this country, with its environmentalist ideas.   Whatever the outcome of the May election, some of those ideas will now be taken into account, as they were in Germany.