Snowden right and wrong

Let me first concede on the main factual point:  the National Security Agency (NSA) has been doing what Edward Snowden alleges, and then some.  I have long assumed that NSA collects all electronic communications in the US, as well as any they can manage to intercept abroad.  I doubt this is limited to “meta” data.  We’d all do best to assume that it includes everything you or I transmit by electronic means.

Of course the companies that transmit this data for us–your phone company or Google, for example–already have it all.  But there is a big difference between government collection of this data and the companies’ presumably indifferent transmission, even if Google uses it to send me bespoke ads.  Neither Google nor Verizon has any real incentive to use the stuff in order to limit my civil liberties, only my advertising.  Nor do they have the means.

The government however might.  Anyone who lived through Nixon’s “enemies” list can’t shrug off the real possibility government might abuse the privilege of reading his or her mail.  I’m inclined to agree that Snowden’s revelations, few of which are entirely new, have set in motion a healthy discussion of what the government should and should not be able to do.  Having that discussion in public and not only in a secret court is desirable.

Where I part from Snowden is in his effort to justify the specific method he chose and escape the consequences.  There were many less spectacular ways in which someone with Snowden’s inside knowledge could have initiated a serious discussion of what limits the government should observe.  He chose to do it the most spectacular way:  by publishing classified US government documents he had signed a pledge to keep secret.

Actions have consequences.  He can and should expect the United States to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, since only by doing so can it convince others who possess classified information that following in his footsteps is unwise.   Even if you like what Snowden did, most reasonable people would agree that there are official secrets that should not be published.

Snowden though seems to think he can get off the hook by fleeing.  This is not only undignified, it further compounds his crime.  If you are going to break the law intentionally for the sake of something you believe in, you need to be prepared to defend your views and your behavior in court.  This is what Daniel Ellsberg, who published the Pentagon papers that revealed Vietnam war secrets, did, after a period underground within the US.

Ellsberg got off because of the egregious behavior of the Nixon administration during his trial.  The Obama administration is unlikely to make those errors, and Ellsberg believes Snowden was right to flee, so that he can continue to speak out.  I don’t.  Snowden should be ready and willing to take his chances in court, because that is his best bet for giving the campaign against snooping traction.  Hiding out for the rest of his life in some paragon of free speech like Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia will do nothing to give him the moral high ground he so obviously craves and needs to make his charges against the US government stick.

So yes, Snowden has triggered a discussion we should be having.  I suspect it will however come to a conclusion he won’t like:  most Americans seem comfortable with the government having access to their communications if that can prevent terrorism (though polling results on the subject are varied).  Their representatives in Congress, who had been briefed on NSA’s efforts, will be even more amenable, unless there are abuses.  But no, Snowden is not doing himself or his cause any favors by trying to escape the criminal proceedings that he is due.

He was right to raise the issue, but wrong to flee.