by Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen
Some highlights:
Snowden: We are a
representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through
direct action. And that’s enshrined in our Constitution and in our
values. We have the right of revolution. Revolution does not always have
to be weapons and warfare; it’s also about revolutionary ideas. It’s
about the principles that we hold to be representative of the kind of
world we want to live in. A given order may at any given time fail to
represent those values, even work against those values. I think that’s
the dynamic we’re seeing today. We have these traditional political
parties that are less and less responsive to the needs of ordinary
people, so people are in search of their own values. If the government
or the parties won’t address our needs, we will. It’s about direct
action, even civil disobedience. But then the state says: “Well, in
order for it to be legitimate civil disobedience, you have to follow
these rules.” They put us in “free-speech zones”; they say you can only
do it at this time, and in this way, and you can’t interrupt the
functioning of the government. They limit the impact that civil
disobedience can achieve. We have to remember that civil disobedience
must be disobedience if it’s to be effective. If we simply follow the
rules that a state imposes upon us when that state is acting contrary to
the public interest, we’re not actually improving anything. We’re not
changing anything.
Snowden: The
surveillance revelations are critically important because they revealed
that our rights are being redefined in secret, by secret courts that
were never intended to have that role—without the consent of the public,
without even the awareness of the majority of our political
representatives. However, as important as that is, I don’t think it is
the most important thing. I think it is the fact that the director of
national intelligence gave a false statement to Congress under oath,
which is a felony. If we allow our officials to knowingly break the law
publicly and face no consequences, we’re instituting a culture of
immunity, and this is what I think historically will actually be
considered the biggest disappointment of the Obama administration. I
don’t think it’s going to be related to social or economic policies;
it’s going to be the fact that he said let’s go forward, not backward,
in regard to the violations of law that occurred under the Bush
administration. There was a real choice when he became president. It was
a very difficult choice—to say, “We’re not going to hold senior
officials to account with the same laws that every other citizen in the
country is held to,” or “This is a nation that believes in the rule of
law.” And the rule of law doesn’t mean the police are in charge, but
that we all answer to the same laws. You know, if Congress is going to
investigate baseball players about whether or not they told the truth,
how can we justify giving the most powerful intelligence official,
Clapper, a pass? This is how J. Edgar Hoover ended up in charge of the
FBI forever.
Snowden: That’s the
key—to maintain the garden of liberty, right? This is a generational
thing that we must all do continuously. We only have the rights that we
protect. It doesn’t matter what we say or think we have. It’s not enough
to believe in something; it matters what we actually defend. So when we
think in the context of the last decade’s infringements upon personal
liberty and the last year’s revelations, it’s not about surveillance.
It’s about liberty. When people say, “I have nothing to hide,” what
they’re saying is, “My rights don’t matter.” Because you don’t need to
justify your rights as a citizen—that inverts the model of
responsibility. The government must justify its intrusion into your
rights. If you stop defending your rights by saying, “I don’t need them
in this context” or “I can’t understand this,” they are no longer
rights. You have ceded the concept of your own rights. You’ve converted
them into something you get as a revocable privilege from the
government, something that can be abrogated at its convenience. And that
has diminished the measure of liberty within a society.
Snowden: From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform:
there’s the political and the technical. I don’t believe the political
will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is
too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in
their lives. And we do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not
prepared to contest power. We have a system of education that is really a
sort of euphemism for indoctrination. It’s not designed to create
critical thinkers. We have a media that goes along with the government
by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional
response—for example, “national security.” Everyone says “national
security” to the point that we now must use the term “national
security.” But it is not national security that they’re concerned with;
it is state security. And that’s a key distinction. We don’t like to use
the phrase “state security” in the United States because it reminds us
of all the bad regimes. But it’s a key concept, because when these
officials are out on TV, they’re not talking about what’s good for you.
They’re not talking about what’s good for business. They’re not talking
about what’s good for society. They’re talking about the protection and
perpetuation of a national state system.
I’m not an anarchist. I’m not saying, “Burn it to the ground.” But I’m saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest. And that cannot happen if we do not question the premises on which they’re founded. And that’s why I don’t think political reform is likely to succeed. [Senators] Udall and Wyden, on the intelligence committee, have been sounding the alarm, but they are a minority.
Snowden: What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one’s country. As I said before, that’s distinct from acting to benefit the government—a distinction that’s increasingly lost today. You’re not patriotic just because you back whoever’s in power today or their policies. You’re patriotic when you work to improve the lives of the people of your country, your community and your family. Sometimes that means making hard choices, choices that go against your personal interest. People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy—one of the early charges leveled against me. But it’s a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail. But you are also asked to take an oath, and that’s the oath of service. The oath of service is not to secrecy, but to the Constitution—to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s the oath that I kept, that James Clapper and former NSA director Keith Alexander did not. You raise your hand and you take the oath in your class when you are on board. All government officials are made to do it who work for the intelligence agencies—at least, that’s where I took the oath.
Snowden: As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I’m some kind
of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative. But when it comes to social
policies, I believe women have the right to make their own choices, and
inequality is a really important issue. As a technologist, I see the
trends, and I see that automation inevitably is going to mean fewer and
fewer jobs. And if we do not find a way to provide a basic income for
people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have
social unrest that could get people killed. When we have increasing
production—year after year after year—some of that needs to be
reinvested in society. It doesn’t need to be consistently concentrated
in these venture-capital funds and things like that. I’m not a
communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be
addressed.
Read the full interview here: http://www.thenation.com/article/186129/snowden-exile-exclusive-interview
I’m not an anarchist. I’m not saying, “Burn it to the ground.” But I’m saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest. And that cannot happen if we do not question the premises on which they’re founded. And that’s why I don’t think political reform is likely to succeed. [Senators] Udall and Wyden, on the intelligence committee, have been sounding the alarm, but they are a minority.
Snowden: What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one’s country. As I said before, that’s distinct from acting to benefit the government—a distinction that’s increasingly lost today. You’re not patriotic just because you back whoever’s in power today or their policies. You’re patriotic when you work to improve the lives of the people of your country, your community and your family. Sometimes that means making hard choices, choices that go against your personal interest. People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy—one of the early charges leveled against me. But it’s a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail. But you are also asked to take an oath, and that’s the oath of service. The oath of service is not to secrecy, but to the Constitution—to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s the oath that I kept, that James Clapper and former NSA director Keith Alexander did not. You raise your hand and you take the oath in your class when you are on board. All government officials are made to do it who work for the intelligence agencies—at least, that’s where I took the oath.
Read the full interview here: http://www.thenation.com/article/186129/snowden-exile-exclusive-interview
