The Edward Snowden Affair (24 page)
Read The Edward Snowden Affair Online
Authors: Michael Gurnow
Tags: #History, #Legal, #Nonfiction, #Political, #Retail
The morning Greenwald informed the world that the NSA was watching most of Central and South America, the head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s Lower House of Parliament, Alexei Pushkov, posted on Twitter that Snowden had accepted Venezuela’s asylum offer. But controversy quickly ensued. Within minutes he removed the tweet. Another post promptly filled the void, “Information about Snowden accepting Maduro’s offer of asylum comes from [Russian TV channel] Vesti 24 newscast at 18:00. Contact them for all questions.” However, the press reported two different “original” notices. The most often quoted original announced, “Predictably, Snowden has agreed to Maduro’s offer of political asylum. Apparently, this option appeared most reliable to Snowden.”
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An alternative version read, “According to News 24, with reference to Maduro, Snowden accepted his offer of asylum. If so, it is (sic) found that the safest option.”
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Regardless of translation differences, it cannot be denied that “News 24” is mentioned in the alternative version. Since the former was the most frequently cited atop the unlikely possibility someone edited out “News 24” to incriminate Pushkov, this edition is probably the true original. It is also more plausible that the latter rendition was inserted into the media flow to buffer the Russian official’s misstep. News 24 posted on its website that Maduro had recently confirmed his offer of asylum, not that Snowden had accepted.
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Strangely, later that afternoon WikiLeaks announced, “Tomorrow the first phase of Edward Snowden’s ‘Flight of Liberty’ campaign will be launched. Follow for further details.”
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However, by the morning of July 11 nothing had been announced nor had Snowden made an appearance. Instead a bombshell of a disclosure debuted.
Greenwald came editorially and thematically home. Working from his house in Rio de Janeiro, he, Poitras and MacAskill presented “Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages” in
The Guardian
on July 11. They set out to do nothing short of prove Microsoft is a willing participant in the PRISM program.
They begin by reminding their audience that online companies first feigned ignorance of PRISM, proceeded to deny allowing the NSA access to their servers, then insisted data extraction took place only under individual court orders, progressed to admitting a blanket order forced compliance, before attempting defense by criticizing the federal government for not permitting them to release their unfiltered requisition data. “But,” says
The Guardian
, “internal NSA newsletters, marked top secret, suggest the co-operation between the intelligence community and the companies is deep and ongoing.”
Proof is provided by documentation from the NSA’s SSO division. In July 2012, Microsoft began trials runs of a new encryption service for its personal information manager program Outlook.com. The NSA was worried users would be able to encode chats and email. It is revealed in a newsletter dated December 26, 2012, that the issue had been resolved two weeks prior. Microsoft had granted the intelligence community preencryption access to Outlook, Live and Hotmail. The
Outlook.com
portal was released to the public on February 18, 2013. Microsoft boasted the program possessed new, tighter security features.
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The intelligence community’s other concern was Microsoft’s online storage accounts. By April 8, 2013, PRISM had been given free access to Microsoft’s cloud device, SkyDrive. The agreement was fashioned so “analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this [access to the cloud]—a process step that many analysts may not have known about.”
The NSA had already acquired full, direct access to Skype video transmissions by this time: “The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete ‘picture.’” The company’s privacy policy states, “Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and communications content.”
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Citing an August 3, 2012 classified document, Greenwald and Co. report that PRISM’s collected data is freely available to the FBI and CIA. All an agent has to do to get an NSA analyst’s findings is file a copy request. The document declares that file sharing makes PRISM a “team sport!”
Aside from the SSO’s admission that analysts “will no longer have to make a special request,” the NSA wanting preencryption access reveals it is conducting live surveillance without court oversight. Otherwise it would obtain and present an FISC order for a specific target’s materials. The encrypted data would then be taken to cryptanalysts to decode. Though some could argue cryptanalysis is time and labor-intensive, by law this is the process which the NSA should follow. As with his Verizon exposé, Greenwald judiciously left this reader to make a fair assumption of other software providers’ true relationship and roles with American intelligence.
This follows a 100-year tradition of American communication providers colluding with U.S. intelligence. The two largest telegraph companies, Western Union and Postal Telegraph, willfully violated the Radio Communication Act of 1912 and provided the first covert government intelligence agency, the Black Chamber, with daily supplies of its telegrams.
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Microsoft’s response to the claims added another chapter to its book of defenses: “[ … ] when we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request.” The company’s failure to deny or even shy away from the proceeding allegations implies the software corporation is haggardly admitting it is guilty of customer privacy violations.
After the Microsoft exposé, the steam train of disclosures inexplicably comes to an abrupt stop. Few knew the silence was an indicator that Greenwald and Poitras had been in contact with Snowden.
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As they had done before, they were deliberately leaving the headlines open.
On Friday, July 12, it was made public that the day before, Snowden had contacted 13 Russian officials, lawyers and the human rights advocacy organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as the international political and corporate watchdog group Transparency International.
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He asked them to meet in 24 hours—at 4:30 p.m.—in Sheremetyevo Airport where, at 5 p.m., he would be making a brief statement. Some invitation recipients were apprehensive because they had no way of confirming whether the summons was authentic. Tonya Lokshino of Human Rights Watch wrote on Facebook, “I’m not sure this is for real, but compelled to give it a try” and she “[w]ouldn’t want to create an impression that HRW is not interested in what Snowden has to say.” Others highlighted that Snowden’s request anomalously used the British spelling “centre” and “behaviour.” The same orthographical criticism had been leveled at his July 1 WikiLeaks announcement.
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However suspect, like Lokshino, no one who was invited was willing to take the chance of being wrong.
In traditional Snowden fashion, the NSA leaker had instructed his guests to be on the lookout for an individual bearing a sign which read “G9.” This would aid in separating the press from those which Snowden expressly wanted in attendance. When the G9 sign holder appeared, the invitees quietly followed. The press sensed a plot was afoot and summarily did the same. At 5:00, the gray doors emboldened with “Staff Only” closed within a room in Terminal E.
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The press had been refused admittance. Reporters and cameramen crowded outside, anxiously hoping for follow-up interviews. Snowden then appeared before his chosen audience. Despite his request that the conference not be photographed or recorded for security reasons, five minutes later the world got to see Snowden for the first time since he arrived in Russia. In the now iconic picture taken by Lokshina, he appears to be wearing the same or a similar shirt as in Poitras’ video and is in need of a haircut. He is flanked to the camera’s right by his Russian interpreter as Sarah Harrison sits on his left. He thanks everyone for coming and begins his announcement.
Given everything which preceded the meeting, his statement merits full disclosure.
Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.
It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice—that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.
That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.
Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement—the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.
Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.
I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.
This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.
If you have any questions, I will answer what I can. Thank you.
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By referencing international as well as American law, Snowden is clearly attempting to reach a global audience. His Thoreauvian citation of the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal in 1945-6 cleverly aligns the U.S. government’s dogged hunt for him with the infamous persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. It also implicitly alludes to a subsequent era of heightened government surveillance with East Germany’s Staatssicherheit, or state security, better known as the Stasi. Though Snowden reiterates that he believes he has only broken unjust American law and not universal principle, his moral conviction is best displayed in his stated intent to one day visit the countries which have “refused to compromise their principles.” He goes on to testify that his motives to whistleblow were irrefutably egalitarian because, in his words, “I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety.” He then imparts that the U.S. government’s pressuring of other nations to refuse him asylum undermines international law and the countries’ ability to make autonomous political decisions. By expressly commending the nations which have either aided him or offered their assistance, he subtly condemns those in the European Union for their involvement in the Morales plane incident. He appeals to have these nations conform to the international law of permitting a recognized asylee access and the freedom to enjoy the liberty he has been granted. Not surprisingly, he closes by stating his hand has been forced and he will be reapplying for Russian asylum until he is able to travel to his adopted land.