| title | tags |
|---|---|
An anarchist critique of Glenn Greenwald's reporting |
anarchism glenn-greenwald edward-snowden nsa espionage concentrated-power |
As the year rolls to an end, I'd like to compile my thoughts on the NSA secrets that Edward Snowden leaked to Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others. This debate has occurred on ephemeral media like twitter, and these matters deserve a more extended treatment. I hope to continue challenging my thinking through writing, and perhaps I can shed light on some aspects I feel need more attention. And much has occurred since my last post on the subject.
Throughout this post, keep in mind that I approach this as a radical, anti-institutionalist anarchist. My values place very little weight on compromising secret government plots for any reason. I disagree fundamentally with Snowden's desire for selective leaking, though it shouldn't surprise anybody that an ex-NSA employee would maintain very different priorities than an anarchist. Nothing could be more useless or moronic than to expect relatively establishmentarian, statist folks like Snowden or Greenwald to act exactly like I might were I in their shoes.
However, I have a basic respect for Snowden's sacrifice and Greenwald's work that transcends my political preferences. I will not sully that respect by dragging any of these people through the mud, even if they don't do any of this according to my personal standards. Indeed, one of my goals is to advance a critique of Snowden and Greenwald that can actually contribute to the debate without drowning everything in the noise of acrimony and belligerence.
Unlike many on the radical left, I believe tone is important, both for maintaining crucial solidarity within the larger resistance and for disciplining our own thinking against irrational laziness. Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras, and others are fundamentally on my side of this issue, regardless of our differences in values and ideology. People on the same side can disagree and debate without devolving into crude infighting. I regard it as shameful, juvenile, and counter-productive to elevate any kind of political or methodological purity over those broad interests that unite us.
Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Julian Assange, Jacob Applebaum, and others have had to sacrifice some degree of the kind of personal liberty, safety and security we all take for granted. They did so in order to facilitate an informed, urgent debate that could advance beyond breathless, unhinged conspiracy theory. It is the U.S. government that has created the best argument for why Greenwald is careful about releasing NSA documents. As Greenwald has stated:
One of the few protections you have when you're reporting on classified materials is that you're doing it as a journalist. It's therefore vital that we never act as a source or distributor of the materials, which is what the DOJ would eagerly claim if - as individuals - we just started handing out massive amounts of documents to media organizations around the world, rather than doing what we've been doing: reporting on them on a story-by-story basis with those outlets.
The decisions about what to release and how must be made in a legal and operational climate where not only known legal precedent such as the above is taken into account. No, Greenwald et al must contend with all sorts of governmental deceit, spooky dirty tricks, and outright nationalist bellicosity.
Remember: the U.S. Government is not engaging in this debate with critics of their policies. They aren't entertaining anything but the most trivial, shallow observations. Greenwald, on the other hand, has shown remarkable (if finite) patience with his critics. From the very get-go he has solicited a debate around the ethics of the leaks, apparently because he understands the unique position in which he has placed himself. He's not a public servant and has no inherent duty to do his job the way we like, let alone according to values he does not share. In seeking out critique, Greenwald should not have to contend with bile and insult simply because he's made the admirable decision to pay attention to this criticism.
It's also curious to see how few complaints Greenwald's critics hurl at Snowden himself. Indeed, it seems to me that the constraints Snowden placed on Greenwald are the most draconian. Why does Snowden get comparatively little criticism, especially when he could have (and in my opinion, should have) dumped all these documents on Wikileaks in one fell swoop? I'm sad to say that it's probably because Snowden isn't engaging with his rancid critics. Does that mean Greenwald should be penalized by us radicals for admirably choosing to engage? It just doesn't make sense to me, and I believe that if anybody is to blame for the trickle it is Snowden.
Just because I oppose the writing of rancid screeds denouncing these heroes doesn't mean critiques of their approach are somehow automatically illegitimate. Snowden, Greenwald, and others' roles in bringing these revelations to light are undoubtedly an important (but not most important) part of the story. An unprecedented leak obviously sets a precedent for future leaks, so everybody concerned with secretive institutional misconduct has an interest in how this plays out. We are learning lessons and hashing out disputes that will guide future whistleblowers, journalists, and activists for decades to come.
Greenwald in particular has asked folks who criticize his approach to suggest better ways to go about it. There is a sense in which any suggestions are meaningless without his access to the source documents. There's reason to defer to his judgment there, but it's not really a satisfying principle to uphold. That said, there are certain problems with how he has reported this story, and I'll make some general suggestions as we proceed.
There's no doubt that establishment journalism implicitly serves some political narrative; probably what defines the status quo is it's ability to sneak in political assumptions as neutral facts of life. Nevertheless, Greenwald has explicitly stated that he releases documents and details from the NSA leak cache in order to maximize the drama of the debate (need to look this up for exact quote). This is a troublesome criterion for publication of original source materials.
Imagine for a moment that Greenwald did release all the NSA documents and wrote all the stories exactly as he has done. Accusations of bias would of necessity ring much more hollow because anybody who doubted his take on the documents could check the source materials themselves. Greenwald's particular use for the source materials--as well as materials he chose not to use--could be tempered by alternative interpretations.
Or imagine that Greenwald followed his current source material release strategy but wrote in a much less opinionated, more neutral and descriptive voice. No speculations, no denouncements, no context from his constitutional law background--just the absolute basic facts about a leak and its contents. The rest of us could build our stories around interpretations of this data, but Greenwald would not be choosing what to leak and not leak merely to promote a personal agenda.
The problem Greenwald's professed thinking here--where he leaks in order to best enhance the kind of story he wants to tell--is that one wonders whether he's telling the whole story. What if he's not releasing documents that contradict the picture he's painting? There's a certain amount of trust Greenwald is asking of his readers and, indeed, an entire world that needs to understand that cache of secrets. That trust largely comes from his gamble that many like me see these issues within the same general narrative that he and Snowden does. Do you trust him enough to let him withhold information from you? Is sharing a distaste for totalitarian government surveillance sufficient to give him authority over what you do and don't learn about?
To be clear, every journalist filters source information in this way. However, most journalists can be independently fact checked and followed up on by other outlets. Greenwald's control over access to the source material is therefore uniquely problematic. Working with other establishment journalists to reach a consensus on what should be published doesn't put my mind at ease because I remember how Assange got screwed over by mainstream papers. Ultimately, only open access puts the matter to rest.
That Greenwald refutes accusations of monopolizing the documents by pointing out other mainstream journalists working with him is to me besides the point. Journalistic mediation of source materials is not supposed to restrict access to it; it's supposed to add clarity and understanding to it. I can't help but regard Greenwald's arguments here as inherently elitist; the idea that we, the public, must be guided or conditioned by the "drip" strategy of reporting on the leaks seems almost insulting.
But how else can the leaks be safely consumed than journalists dishing them out? Greenwald in a recent blog post lays out some hypothetical situations in which we would presumably approve of his judgment in withholding documents:
- if we know the names of people the NSA is accusing of engaging in "online promiscuity" on the internet, or the names of those the NSA believes are terrorists, should we publish that, thereby invading their privacy and destroying their reputations?
- if we have the raw chats, internet activity, and telephone calls of people on whom the NSA has spied, should we just publish those?
- if we have documents that would help other states spy more effectively on their own citizens' internet activities, should we publish those, thereby subjecting hundreds of millions of people to heightened state surveillance?
- if we have documents containing the names of innocent people whose reputations or lives would be endangered if they were exposed, should we just ignore their plight and publish those?
- if we have documents that are so complex that we don't yet understand the potential consequences for other people from publishing them, should we just throw caution to the wind and publish them anyway, and learn later what happens?
One thing I will say is that I was amazed at how much more complex answering these questions became for me if I actually put myself in Greenwald's shoes. There are no perfectly secure places to leak that volume of data. There are legal issues with being himself a source. It's not cut and dry, and that's why despite our differences I afford him a great deal of deference.
Nevertheless, I want to address these hypotheticals by breaking the concerns down into three categories:
- Personal identity issues I'd be in favor of redacting any and all names automatically if it would speed up the release of documents. To me, "who" is doing the bad stuff and "who" is being harmed is much, much less important to this story than "what" is going on and "how". Sure, there's probably some information that could be traced back to particular people even without explicit names, but at least some deniability would be preserved. In any case, this is one pretty clear cut way to strike a balance between personal privacy and the public interest. A newspaper who legitimately cared about the debate could perform this as a public service, all while maintaining their first scoop advantage.
- Technocratic issues I have a hard time believing that publishing any technological details mentioned by the documents would do more harm than good. Open information in this area can inform and quicken the production of countermeasures. I assume Greenwald would approve of the public at large learning to defend against NSA exploits.
But here's the bigger issue with that reasoning for withholding: the technical details matter relatively little because the most effective things the NSA has done can only be done at scale. The scale at which the NSA operates--the amount of money and authority they wield--dwarfs any other institution. It is that power, not the particular exploits or spyware schematics, that makes the NSA totalitarian.
The NSA is no more dangerous than other governments, organized crime syndicates, and gadfly hackers in its intentions. Most of the technical methods they've employed would be available to anybody. But no one person, and probably no other institution on the planet, could assemble the sheer scale of tools that the NSA takes for granted. The scale at which the NSA operates is what is uniquely dangerous, and any other institution with that scale of money and power at their command could easily replicate the NSA's capabilities.
For example, if the NSA had invested in uncovering only the software, hardware, and firmware exploits it absolutely needed for surveillance, that might be worth keeping secret. But they've tried to amass a great deal of overlapping exploits in the interests of maximizing not just the breadth of surveillance but its redundancy as well. Exploits can and will always be discovered; the NSA has simply been able to bring so much power to bear on the problem that they've collected a lot of them. Or they've been able to use political clout to enlist third parties to help them, something that any other sufficiently powerful spy agency could also do.
I cannot accept that withholding this information does stops anybody from being spied on. Releasing this information publicly is in fact the best thing one can do to counter this power. Once these bugs are public, they have to be fixed or their programmers suffer. 3. National security issues What if there are documents that, once published, would have consequences we simply don't or can't understand? To me, this line of thinking totally validates the arguments of the NSA's defenders who say public knowledge of any of this endangers us. I can't accept that; I doubt that there are any legitimate national security secrets necessary to our survival as an independent nation--at least, an independent nation sans the empire we've collected over the past century.
Now, neither Snowden nor Greenwald are anarchists, so it surprises me not at all that they'd strike a very different balance on national security than I would. Berating them over this is particularly unhelpful, not least because it reinforces any elitist notion that the public at large is too immature or reckless to handle this information. Based on what has come out so far, the NSA has very poor reasons for keeping secrets. If Snowden or Greenwald have the same or superior reasons, they should not expect our patience with non-explanations. Make your case explicit, release it entirely, or relinquish the moral high ground in this particular aspect.
It seems to me that if Greenwald is going to control how these documents are disseminated, he cannot simply do so in the service of his own reporting or the reporting of those he hand picks. This story is just too important, and if the open debate he and Snowden seek is going to happen it needs to happen on our terms, not theirs. Therefore, I'd like to suggest that as steward of these leaked documents, Greenwald has an equal responsibility to see that the documents get out as quickly as possible, regardless of whether they serve his reporting narrative, as long as he complies with his agreement with Snowden of course.
As soon as documents are cleared according to whatever criteria he arrives at, regardless of whether he reports on them or not, Greenwald should release them. I realize he cannot be seen as a disseminator of these leaks in order to protect himself, but I have a hard time believing there isn't a way to speed up the leaks, or that these other journalist outlets he's been collaborating with couldn't help here.
Moreover, I do not accept that Greenwald's "drip" strategy is a sufficient reason to withhold these leaks from the public. Keep in mind that the vast majority of people will not even want to read the source documents directly, so it's not like one cannot maintain at once a drip of reporting and a healthy stream of source materials. He has a duty in my opinion to both report on the leaks and make the leaks available in some way third parties can verify.
I mentioned earlier that it is the scale at which the NSA operates that makes it dangerous. Only with such concentrated resources and authority can the NSA compromise the entire computer infrastructure at every layer. Any defense strategy that doesn't bring an equal or superior amount of power, money, and authority to bear is doomed. This is another instance of the timeless problem of concentrated power, and clever hacking will not save us.
Knowing this, statists of all varieties must wrestle with how to check and balance the government. The sheer level of secrecy and abuse here can't help but give the lie to their minarchism, however. Clearly any government abiding an organization like the NSA is no mere accomplice. Somebody wrote their checks, and those people can be replaced unless we eliminate their positions.
While anarchists understand that even this latest outrage is likely insufficient to foment the revolution, I do think we are uniquely positioned to advocate for extreme measures that others find unthinkable. There literally is no alternative, because who could ever trust anything the government does in secret again? The NSA's power must be scaled far, far back if we are to have a real solution to this crisis. Indeed, the state must be made to understand that its very legitimacy is at stake.
Dissolution of the state and the NSA may not be politically feasible, but a sharp and crippling cut to the budget--especially the abolition of the secret black budget--may be one concession we the people can extract from the establishment. The anarchist imagination can pave the way for radical solutions that actually strike the root of the problem. Remember: the NSA's power does not derive from whiz kids or hackers but from money and power. When you kill this snake, be sure you remove the head.