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     Edward Snowden is now in exile in Russia, having landed there almost by accident when his passport was revoked by the US.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.


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