Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or traitor?

By admin-s Last updated Jun 10, 2014

(Al Jazeera) – He broke the rules and worse yet, embarrassed some of the most powerful leaders.

It is hard to imagine that just one year ago, Edward Snowden famously walked away. He was a low-level employee of Dell contractor at a nondescript National Security Agency site. A non-entity by design. Just one of hundreds of thousands of people working in the burgeoning national security complex in the United States – the ultimate faceless cog. Now, one year later, he is a household name but the world remains divided on who Edward Snowden is. Is he a whistleblower or a traitor? It turns out that question is often answered not by how people view Snowden but how they view their government.

Snowden the whistleblower

For many around the world, and a growing number of Americans, Snowden is a hero and whistleblower who put his own freedom at stake to reveal shocking abuses by the US intelligence agencies. Much of what Snowden has done certainly looks like a whistleblower. First, he does not appear to have sought money for his disclosures. Indeed, he appears to have thought more about what he was taking than where he was taking it.

Secondly, and most importantly, is the breathtaking disclosures that he made. Consider a few of the more important disclosures:

Secret orders under which the NSA was seizing phone and text records of virtually every citizen in the United States. The scope and lack of protection in the program was described by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian”.
Surveillance of world leaders, including some of our closest allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At least 122 world leaders were intercepted by the United States.
The forced cooperation of US telecommunication companies to turn over data on every US citizen under programmes like PRISM.
Programmes like XKeyscore to search “nearly everything a user does on the Internet” through data it intercepts across the world.
The tapping of fiber optic cables by British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in conjunction with the NSA.
The interception of millions of calls in foreign countries, including every single call in places like Afghanistan.

What is most striking is that in the wake of these disclosures, the Obama Administration first denied the allegations. National Intelligence Director James R Clapper Jr not only denied the existence of the programme before the Senate but he later explained that his testimony was “the least untrue” statement that he could make. Of course, that would still make it untrue, but he has never been investigated, let alone prosecuted.

While President Barack Obama would later insist that Snowden did not influence the various reforms implemented after his disclosure, few people believe that claim. There is no question that Snowden succeeded in forcing multiple task force investigations and a series of changes, including the claimed cessation of some aspects of these programmes.

Snowden the traitor

What so many people around the world admire about Snowden is precisely what makes him such a hated figure within government. He broke the rules and worse yet, embarrassed some of the most powerful leaders in Washington. He obviously broke the law in removing and disclosing classified information – material potentially harmful to the security of the United States.

The anger over Snowden clearly goes beyond the act itself however. For many of Washington’s elite, Snowden is as baffling as some alien from another planet. These are people who spent their lives playing by the rules in a system controlled by a duopoly of power. With two parties controlling the system, there is little that happens in Washington that is not predictable and often controlled. The reactions of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry are particularly illustrative.