Snowden Reminders

As he has said repeatedly, [Edward Snowden] wanted journalists – not himself – to make these decisions based on what is in the public interest and what can be disclosed without subjecting innocent people to harm. He was adamant that not all of the documents he provided were appropriate for publication, and was especially clear (at least to me) that certain categories of documents not be published (which is why those who demand that all documents be released are arguing, even though they won’t acknowledge it, that we should violate our agreement with our source, disregard Snowden’s conditions for furnishing the documents, and subject him to a wide range of risks he did not want to take).

[...]

‘There have of course been some stories where my calculation of what is not public interest differs from that of reporters, but it is for this precise reason that publication decisions were entrusted to journalists and their editors,’ he told Time.”

  The Intercept

The most striking numbers show a generation gap in the way people think about Snowden. Just 35% of Americans ages 18 to 30 say Snowden should be charged with a crime, compared with 57% of those 30 and older, according to a November poll by the Washington Post and ABC News. And 56% of young adults say he did the “right thing,” compared with 32% of their elders.

  Time

So maybe there is some reason to be hopeful about the future.

And Snowden has some suggestions for how to reform:

“The President,” Snowden wrote, “could plausibly use the mandate of public knowledge to both reform these programs to reasonable standards and direct the NSA to focus its tremendous power toward developing new global technical standards that enforce robust end-to-end security, ensuring that not only are we not improperly surveilling individuals but that other governments aren’t either.”

He could, but he won’t. And neither will the one who comes after him. Politics in this country has been careening toward corruption and the abuse of power for decades. Even when Congress and the public disapproved of ideas like the Pentagon’s Big Brother TIA, those ideas have not been abandoned, but merely carried on under a different guise and in secret.