Brennan and Clapper: Guardians at the U.S. intelligence gate,
and for many, two of the central villains in the Snowden saga.
On Russian Spies and 'Snowdenistas': A
Rebuttel of Edward Lucas (Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland)
"What would the Russians achieve by losing such a valuable
source within America's intelligence services? 'Sow discord among the allies,'
suggests Edward Lucas, who alerts readers to the fact that, due to Snowden's
disclosures, 'anti-Americanism in Germany and other European countries is now
ablaze.' ... European anti-Americanism is the price America pays for sucking us
into Iraq with lies about 'weapons of mass destruction.' Even I, a fanatical
admirer of American history, culture and political inventions like the 'First
Amendment,' have become deeply suspicious of the country. ... If any evidence
of Snowden's guilt does appear, I will of course condemn him as a spy. But even
that wouldn't change my generally-positive evaluation of what he has
done."
Is Edward Snowden a 'Russian agent' of some kind, and should people concerned about the elimination of privacy and out of control surveillance give a damn?
When
a person - a journalist, an opposition politician, a whistleblower, whoever -
reveals any kind of wrongdoing on the part of the group in power, there are
usually two types of reaction.
When
the allegations are untrue, the authorities concerned react with swift and
specific denials. When they are true, the typical reaction is to change the
subject: stop talking about the message - let’s talk about the messenger.
So
who is he? What are his sins? What do we have in our archives that could be
used against him? Also, who stands behind him and what's the purpose of the
entire brouhaha? Let’s look for that someone instead of discussing the merits
of his revelation!
In
our own country’s political life, where it is standard behavior for any
politician caught doing something wrong, we are thoroughly familiar with the
strategy of changing the subject. This is popular, however, in all countries and
all political systems.
I
can still remember our communist propaganda masters, who used the same tactic
against the opposition fighting for democracy: Let's set aside what Adam Michnik
or JacekKuroń [founders of the Worker's
Defense Committee in 1976] have said about the poor treatment of workers in
Radom [beaten and hounded by the communist authorities after strikes and
riots erupted]. Let’s ask instead: Who pays the pair to talk this way, and what
specific circles have an agenda that makes them propagate their message?
I
was reminded of this language when last Saturday, I read in the GazetaWyborczaMagazinean
article about Snowden by Edward Lucas, as well as Lucas' e-book on the same
subject. Lucas’ evidence that Edward Snowden was working with Russian
intelligence is precisely as strong as that for communist propaganda about how Kuroń and Michnik were
American agents. The rationale behind it is: “Whom does it benefit if not our nation's
enemies.”
Do
I - as Lucas defined it a “Snowdenista” - have any
proof of Snowden’s innocence? Of course not. Putting aside, however, my general
lack of enthusiasm for “proving his innocence,” I’ll explain why I don’t
believe Lucas.
***
The
history of espionage tells us that when an intelligence service gains access to
the enemy’s secrets, the priority is to conceal the source so that the other
side won’t shut down that access by arresting the "mole" or changing his
or her codes. This was well demonstrated by the history of the Venona
project, through which American intelligence gained access to the encrypted
messages of the Soviets.
USSR
intelligence used the “one-time
pad” system, which is theoretically unbreakable. Its weakest link turned
out to be the human element. Due to the errors and carelessness of the Soviets,
the Americans broke the code and suddenly all the activity of Soviet agents in
the United States lay open to them.
The
Americans couldn’t arrest all the spies, however, because that would tip off
their opponents to the fact that they knew their secrets. Hence the anti-communist
chaos of the McCarthy era
trials. The FBI knew who the Russian spies were, but couldn't reveal it, so
Senator McCarthy and his Un-American Affairs Committee threw out random
accusations, sending a signal to the Russians that the Americans couldn't see
the forest for the trees.
The
Russians, however, knew about Venona since 1949, because
Kim Philby,
the KGB's man in British intelligence, learned of the secret. Still, the Russians didn't change their codes, not
wanting the Americans to learn that they knew, etc. In wars of intelligence, the
winner is whoever’s knowledge is atop the recurrent “we know that they know
that we know that they know …”
Given
this, it is hard for me to believe that Russian intelligence, having a mole
with access to the most classified NSA secrets, would allow him, first, to
anonymously warn Internet users about American surveillance (until May 2012,
Snowden wrote about it under the nickname ''TheTrueHOOHA,''
on the forum of techie Web page ArsTechnica), and then to release everything to the media.
In fact, the Russians would more likely have paid him a great deal of
money to maintain a low profile and conceal his opinions. True Russian spies
like Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, or Earl Edwin
Pitts, never pitched their revelations to newspapers, but rather passed them on
secretly to their handlers.
The
crowning evidence, according to Lucas, is Snowden’s trip to India in 2010. What
need was there for him to go there? “This trip makes no sense” is Lucas’
charge, followed by “India is more friendly territory for Russian spies who
want to meet their sources than places like Japan or Switzerland.” [Translated
quotes].
Again:
the real history of spies in America shows that geography is not something that
would stand in the way of KGB or SVR operations.
Pitts met his Russian case officer in New York, Hanssen
and Ames met theirs in Washington D.C., and Anna Chapman, arguably the most
famous Russian agent ever, had an office on Wall Street.
Perhaps
Lucas is right that Snowden's trip to India made no sense, but if he himself
never made a senseless journey, he must have had a boring life indeed. I know
in my own case how easy it would be to prove my collaboration with any
intelligence agency based on my many travels that made no sense at all (who
would believe that I added miles upon miles to my journeys just to see a place
featured in a movie, a TV series, a novel, or a computer game?)
And
what would the Russians achieve by losing such a valuable source within
America's intelligence services? “Sow discord among the allies,” suggests
Lucas, who alerts readers to the fact that, due to Snowden’s disclosures,
“anti-Americanism in Germany and other European countries is now ablaze.”
This
seems to me too small a gain at too high a price. Anti-Americanism in Europe
doesn’t need intelligence tricks to flourish.
European
anti-Americanism is the price America pays for sucking us into the Iraq brawl
with lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” As a consequence, even I, a
fanatical admirer of American history, culture and political inventions like
the "First Amendment" and "class action lawsuits," have
become deeply suspicious of the country and its foreign policy.
***
If
any evidence of Snowden’s guilt does appear, I will of course condemn him as a
spy. But even that wouldn't change my generally-positive evaluation of what he
has done.
I
am glad that corporations like Google and Facebook have appealed to President
Obama to curtail the surveillance of Internet users - but they wouldn’t have
done so without Snowden’s revelations. I am glad that the president himself
announced the reform of surveillance and an end to, among other things, spying
on America’s allies. However, he wouldn’t have done so without Snowden’s
revelations. I am glad that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers [ICANN] and the Internet Engineering Task
Force [IETF], organizations that rule the Internet
and are theoretically non-governmental but are in practice connected to the
U.S. government, have finally begun distancing themselves from it - but they
wouldn’t be doing so without Snowden’s revelations.
There
are examples galore. Without Snowden we would not have all of this discussion
about the limits of surveillance, the balance between security and privacy, and
on the need for the European Union to have digital independence - which only
emerged in the middle of last year.
These
are modern civilization's most pressing issues. Nevertheless, until the middle
of 2013 they were brushed off with platitudinous comments like “it is common
knowledge that everyone is eavesdropping on everyone,” or “progress cannot be
stopped.”
***
And
yet, while it is obvious that the special services should watch the Internet,
it is just as obvious that their activities should be subject to external
oversight. You can’t tell such people: “do whatever you like.” The most
important aspect of Snowden’s revelations is precisely this - not the fact that
they are eavesdropping, but that no one has any control over it.
America's
FISA court, established in 1978 to oversee
surveillance, has proven to be a rubber stamp. It has mechanically approved
everything the special services have demanded - even such outrageous ideas as
the unspecified gathering of metadata from all American mobile phone users or
the snooping on allies.
Until
the Snowden revelations, Americans didn’t even try to seek a balance between
privacy and security. They just unilaterally declared an end to privacy and
began treating the rest of the world accordingly.
Posted
By Worldmeets.US
This
is perfectly shown by the history of the transatlantic tug of war over the
SWIFT system for bank transfers and passenger flight data. The Americans
demanded that we give them access to our databases so they could fish around
that sea of data for criminals and terrorists.
The
European Union kept repeating: Fine, but let’s see if you really need all that
raw data? If you are after people acting suspiciously, we can arrange for you
to have access to that part of the information, while protecting the privacy of
innocent people, and if you find something, we can pass on the rest of the data
concerning that specific individual.
That
is just an example to show that there is a chance to take a middle road, which
would enable the intelligence services to look for terrorists
and criminals while protecting the privacy of innocent people. This is how it's
supposed to be done in Europe.
This once seemed - in theory - to be the America way, too, until Snowden revealed that the U.S. intelligence services are breaking U.S. rules regarding even their own citizens - let alone those of the rest of the world. NSA chief Keith
Alexander and national intelligence chief James Clapper lied to their own
citizens, and thanks to Snowden, they were even caught lying to Congress.
What
is more important: these lies, or the question of whether the person who
revealed them was an agent of the Russians, the Chinese, or God knows, perhaps
the Martians?
