Just two days later, Greenwald revealed another bombshell -- PRISM -- which is possibly even more important than the first. All of the internet's biggest companies are sending the data they have on you to the government. Google, Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Skype, Yahoo, Facebook, Youtube, Paltalk -- the government possesses all the information you have ever given them. Everything.
Two days after that, the whistleblower who gave these things to Greenwald voluntarily came forward. His name is Edward Snowden. You need to watch the full 12-minute interview that was put up when he came forward. He explains who he is, why he did what he did, and puts all of these programs into better perspective.
The way the media reacted in the days following these revelations was the one of the most baffling things I've ever witnessed. People were shocked. I was fucking ecstatic, because people were finally talking about these things, and they were outraged. The floodgates had been opened. I remember the top story of Huffington Post, a liberal website, was a picture of Obama's and Bush's faces mashed together with the headline, "George W. Obama". The media, and the American people, were against the government for once.
And then all the outrage disappeared without explanation. Republicans started going on TV calling Snowden a "traitor" and a "Chinese spy." I thought they were going to get laughed at. Then Democrats piled on. Then almost overnight, the media shifted gears and stopped being so angry. They went back into "objectivity" mode, which means they unquestionably repeat whatever the White House press releases tell them.
Then the conversation shifted away from the largest and most pervasive surveillance apparatus in the history of the world, and became about the personal life of Edward Snowden. "Journalists" started focusing on how he "abandoned" his girlfriend, who they proceeded slut-shame by constantly pointing out that she was a dancer. Liberals found it necessary to mention that he was a Ron Paul supporter. News outlets have been mocking things he said when he was 17. They made it into a personality show, and they're talking about everything except what the government is doing.
This Mediaite article basically sums up what liberals have all been saying over the last week or two:
"...we’ve learned [Snowden] fled to a nation with far more restrictive rights; coldly ditched his girlfriend; suffers from what even his supporters have diagnosed as a case of grandiose delusions; and revealed information on foreign espionage efforts, which falls well outside the parameters of his initial objection to the surveillance programs. (Breaking: countries spy on each other!)"In a completely laughable display of propaganda, a white person dismissed this as a "white people problem," attempting to shame people into stop talking about it because of privilege? Or something?
"Just as those Stop and Frisk stats have everything to do with the cultural biases of the power structure, so does the mainstream media’s disproportionate interest in the NSA scandal over other, far more alarming injustices... Abuses like Stop and Frisk have been occurring for centuries, and have a lot more in common with J. Edgar Hoover than Barack Obama does. While we’re busy having the conversation about what the government might do with Prism, maybe we could make some room for what it’s already doing to millions of innocent citizens."Nevermind the surveillance and stalking of New York's Muslim community by the NYPD. I mean, I'm usually more than willing to stop and question myself if someone taps me on the shoulder and calls out my privilege. But this is nothing more than an attempt by a coward to shut down the conversation. Black Agenda Report has been all over this. Here's Margaret Kimberley. And Gary Younge. And Glen Ford. Bruce Dixon even drew comparisons to other fugitives like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. Believe it or not, people who are not white have also been furious about the government storing nearly every social interaction in their lives in a database. It's fucking absurd that anyone could think to write something like this.
A common argument I'm seeing is that Snowden shouldn't be considered a "whistleblower," and these revelations aren't important. Because they're "nothing new" and "everyone" already knew about them. If that's true, then how did he commit "treason" if everything he revealed was already in the public record? Why does he need to be in prison? You can't have both.
The most embarrassing argument I've seen is that these revelations have somehow damaged national security. As Greenwald has been pointing out over and over again in almost every interview I've seen with him, terrorists already knew the U.S government was spying on them. None of this is new to al-Qaeda. The Taliban doesn't use fucking Gmail. You know how al-Qaeda sends messages? They don't even have phones. They use runners who carry hand-written messages. They've been doing this for as long as we've been hunting them. These surveillance programs aren't meant to target terrorists. They target us, the government's real enemy.
On Sunday, David Gregory on Meet the Press openly accused Greenwald of treason for reporting on what the government does.
Gregory: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?
Greenwald: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence — the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the emails and records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced, being co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who receives classified information, is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a standstill — her word — as a result of the theories that you just referenced.
Gregory's defenders have been saying that they're "only questions," and Greenwald's outrage was uncalled for. But the way the question was phrased is important -- "why aren't you a criminal?" First of all, Gregory did outright accuse Greenwald of aiding and abetting. Read it over again. Right out of the gate, it immediately puts Greenwald on the defensive. He has to defend himself against the accusation of "aiding and abetting" a "traitor." It wasn't anything like, "What do you have to say about those who accuse you of committing a crime?" It was, "Convince me you're not a traitor."
There seems to be this widespread media campaign to discredit Greenwald and rebrand him as an "activist" or a "blogger" -- something that's not a journalist. The Washington Post wrote, "Glenn Greenwald isn’t your typical journalist. Actually, he’s not your typical anything. A lawyer, columnist, reporter and constitutional liberties advocate, Greenwald blurs a number of lines in an age in which anyone can report the news." Even Gregory, immediately after Greenwald's answer, replied with, "Well, the question of who's a journalist may be up to a debate, with regard to what you are doing."
Journalists are protected if they reveal government crimes. But "activists" aren't. These hacks are trying to make up rules about journalism and say that in order to be a journalist, you can't have opinions. The problem is that objectivity in journalism doesn't exist. If you only report what the government says, without any sort of critical eye, then you're simply a mouthpiece for the government. You're already biased by default. Even not reporting certain information is still spin. Objective journalism is impossible. What Greenwald is doing is reporting things without asking for permission -- what journalism is supposed to be about.
Redefining "journalism" is exactly how the government can go after Wikileaks with impunity. There is literally zero difference between what Wikileaks is doing and what Glenn Greenwald just did. Wikileaks is considered an "enemy of the state," which is the same classification reserved for al-Qaeda. The reason this can happen is because the people behind Wikileaks are considered "activists," not journalists. Nixon tried to criminalize the New York Times when they published the Pentagon Papers, so don't be surprised if this campaign to take down Greenwald is ramped up in the coming months.
A lot of liberals have also been saying that nothing revealed actually violates the law. First of all, it did violate the law when Bush did it. The only difference now is that the FISA court is so corrupt and stacked that it simply rubber stamps everything without question. Jim Crow was "legal." Japanese internment camps were "legal." Everything the Nazis did was "legal." The kidnapping and enslavement of millions of human beings was "legal." Saying something is okay because criminals have entered power and "legalized" it isn't valid.
And besides, it isn't legal. The Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." These programs violate the Constitution of the United States. Full stop.
As World Socialist Web Site brilliantly reminded us, these are "the same types of arguments that were used in the 1930s to defend the fascist dictatorships of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler." Obama partisans have clearly positioned themselves as authoritarian enemies of democracy, just as Bush partisans did a decade ago. And they should be treated as such -- with open hatred, and without respect. Fuck these traitors.
Edward Snowden himself has thankfully been able to elude capture so far. At the time of this writing, he's rumored to still be in a Moscow airport, presumably going over details about receiving asylum from Ecuador. Snowden is probably the greatest hero of our generation, at least in the west. Politicians in Germany have compared PRISM to the East German Stasi. Daniel Ellsberg called this the most important leak in American history -- including when he released the Pentagon Papers. A Congresswoman said two weeks ago that these revelations are just the "tip of the iceberg." Two Senators just said that the NSA is still lying to Congress about they're doing. The tragedy of it all is that there are still many Americans who are coming up with reasons to defend all of this. On this day, George Orwell's 110th birthday, Freedom indeed seems to be Slavery, and Ignorance seems to be Strength.
