Edward Snowden

wanted”, and the more he learned about NSA’s ubiquitous international surveillance pro- The man who grammes, the more troubled he became. “A system of global mass surveillance,” he realised, pro- exposed the duces “a permanent record of everyone’s life”, and indeed that was the intelligence agencies’ pro- watchers fessed goal. “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with some- David J. Garrow thing else that arrives at a future point in time,” CIA chief technical officer Gus Hunt explained in early Dark Mirror: 2013. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t Edward Snowden dward snowden revealed him- have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally and the American self to the world, via a Guardian try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.” Surveillance State web-video, on 9 June 2013, four By that time, Snowden had resolved to act, but by Barton Gellman days after the Guardian, and then his initial anonymous messages to radical journal- The Bodley Head, the Washington Post, first reported ist Glenn Greenwald went unanswered. Progres- £20 on the astonishing treasure trove of top-secret US sive filmmaker Laura Poitras did respond, and she Eintelligence community documents they had in turn contacted both former Washington Post Permanent Record been given by the 29-year-old computer systems reporter Bart Gellman, a well-known national se- by Edward Snowden engineer who worked at the National Security curity journalist, and Greenwald. By mid-May Poi- Macmillan, £20 Agency’s (NSA) Hawaii listening post. In close col- tras and Gellman had convinced the still-anony- laboration with the UK’s GCHQ, and the other mous Snowden of their interest, and on 19 May, three members of the “Five Eyes” international having taken medical leave from his job, Snowden surveillance network — Canada, Australia, and paid cash for a one-way flight to Tokyo, where he New Zealand — the NSA had siphoned off mas- then bought one to Hong Kong. sive amounts of user data from Google, Facebook, Simultaneously, he made his huge electronic Microsoft and other tech platforms through a se- archive of thousands of NSA documents available cret programme called Prism. to Poitras and Gellman. In his cover note, he told A high school dropout notwithstanding a geni- them that “My sole motive is to inform the public us-level IQ score, Snowden had quit US Special as to that which is done in their name and that Forces training after breaking both of his legs. But which is done against them,” outside the US as having earned a Microsoft Certified Systems Engi- well as within. The Five Eyes “have inflicted upon neer credential at 19, Snowden parlayed that the world a system of secret, pervasive surveil- door-opener into an entry-level post at NSA lance from which there is no refuge”. and easily obtained a beyond-Top Secret SCI — Snowden wanted the duo to fly to Hong Kong “Sensitive Compartmented Information” security for an in-person debriefing, but Gellman got pro- clearance. fessional cold feet over Snowden’s request that the Jobs with the CIA and high-paying government ensuing story be published in such a way as to fa- Books contractors such as Dell and Booz Allen soon fol- cilitate Snowden’s hope of obtaining political asy- lowed, but by 2012, as the sole staffer at the ironi- lum from the left-wing government of Ecuador. cally-named Office of Information Sharing, Holed up day after day in room 1014 of Hong Snowden was experiencing deep disquiet with the Kong’s Mira Hotel and subsisting on room-service NSA’s work. In the wake of 9/11, he had been a food, Snowden lived in quiet terror until Poitras gung-ho recruit in President George W. Bush’s and Greenwald, soon joined by the veteran “war on terror,” but by the early years of Barack Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill, finally ar- Obama’s presidency, as the ostensibly progressive rived on 2 June. chief executive time and again “rebranded and re- certified” Bush’s far-reaching surveillance pro- Once Snowden’s identity became public grammes, Snowden and his partner, Lindsay on 9 June, he fled his hotel for a pair of secret Mills, came to realise that their hopes for Obama home-stays with humble clients of a local immi- were proving “more and more misplaced”. gration lawyer. US prosecutors sought his extradi- tion, but through the good efforts of Wikileaks’ snowden’s post as “the manager of docu- Sarah Harrison and Ecuador’s UK consul, on 21 ment management at one of NSA’s most signifi- June Snowden set out on a four-leg flight plan to The Critic cant facilities” gave him “as much time to read as I Quito via Moscow, Havana and Caracas. Before the critic 70 jul|aug 2020 leaving, “I wiped my four laptops “world citizen’s” view. completely clean and destroyed the But Gellman concluded that cryptographic key” to his NSA mate- “when it came to nonsubjective in- rials, “which meant that I could no formation,” Snowden “was depend- longer access any of the documents ably careful”. And despite living in a even if compelled”. completely unexpected and foreign exile — “I never thought I would end upon arriving at moscow’s up in Russia,” he said — Gellman Sheremetyevo airport, Russian FSB also realised that Snowden was both security officers informed Snowden happy and wholly at peace with that he could not fly onward to Ha- everything that had transpired. “The vana because the US government fact I’m walking free today, the fact had cancelled his passport. “I was that I’m still able to communicate incredulous: my own government with you, it shows that . there are had trapped me in Russia,” and the circumstances where if you do things FSB offered its assistance: “Life for a right, if you do things carefully, you person in your situation can be very can win . You can beat them.” difficult without friends who can What’s more, “one of the very in- help,” the top officer volunteered. “If teresting things about doing the there is some information, perhaps, right thing is you have no trouble some small thing you could share sleeping.” Indeed, “for me, in terms with us?” of personal satisfaction and accom- Snowden politely declined, but plishing the mission, the mission’s he was stranded at the airport, albeit accomplished. I already won . I got with full internet access. Yet a grand everything I wanted,” Snowden told total of 27 asylum requests went for Gellman. “Really, my work is done. I naught, and on 1 August Snowden feel that in a large way, my life’s work reluctantly accepted temporary asylum in Russia. Gellman is completed . If something terrible happens to Only four months later did Barton Gellman me and I disappear, don’t shed a tear for me.” make the first of two trips to Moscow to finally rightly judges meet and interview Snowden. As Gellman had Snowden’s only several years later would Gellman dug deeper into the Snowden archive, publishing fully appreciate just how perspicacious Snowden an ongoing series of revelatory articles in the Post, cumulative could be. In late 2013, Snowden hypothesised he had come to realise even more fully just how disclosures out loud about the dangers that comprehensive inclusive Snowden’s reach had been. Through his electronic surveillance created. “What if I had “Privileged Access” status, Snowden “had the as “the most been a real political partisan . and collected highest-tier privileges as a system administrator” consequential every Democratic official’s emails between now and “held valid credentials to read, write, copy, or leak in the and the election coming up . and leaked them delete just about any document”. In addition, “he out as the new October surprise?” he asked. As could disable, edit, or erase some of the activity history of US Gellman, and millions more, would realise in the logs that would otherwise leave evidence of his intelligence” wake of the 2016 US election, “Snowden saw the digital movements”. potential before it happened.” During 14 hours together over the course of two Snowden further believed that by sharing his full days, Gellman realised that “Snowden was tru- David J. Garrow’s materials with experienced journalists, rather ly reluctant to talk about himself” but listened books include than releasing them en masse, “I did what I could carefully to a sophisticated, albeit radical thinker. The FBI and Martin to maximise what was in the public interest and “I believe our Constitution protects everybody, Luther King, Jr. minimise what would cause harm.” Gellman felt not just citizens” of the US, Snowden stated. The (1981), Bearing similarly, since “some of the NSA archive, I strong- Declaration of Independence “does not declare the Cross (1986), ly believed, should not see the light of day”, given that ‘all US persons are created equal,’ does it? [In- a Pulitzer Prize- what it revealed about programmes and methods deed it says “all men”.] Much of my reasoning fol- winning biography rightly targeting dangerous terrorist groups and lows from that,” Snowden explained, adding that of King, and renegade state actors. the “probable cause” standard required for do- Rising Star: The Editors at the Guardian and the Post agreed, mestic judicial warrants should apply even to for- Making of Barack and Gellman does not shy from stating that “there eign intelligence targeting, a truly remarkable Obama (2017) were many times . when it was possible to re- the critic 71 jul|aug 2020 move details” that knowledgeable government some ambivalent critics mocked him for thanking officials believed would do gratuitous damage his novelist friend Joshua Cohen for “helping to “without undercutting the news value of a story”.

Load more