If you think you have nothing to hide, think again…
The most wanted man in the world, Edward Snowden, sat down with NBC’s Brian Williams for his first extended interview since pulling back the curtain on America’s widespread spying programs. It was fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
He laid out his harrowing journey from government employee to international superhero. To tell you the truth, he came off incredibly well; he was well-rehearsed, unassailable, and even likable. Not exactly the vengeful and careless “traitor” the establishment would have liked to appear…
He spelled out exactly why Americans should be concerned about their personal privacy, even if they have nothing to hide. I thought the most startling exchange was when Williams pulled out a cell phone and asked Snowden exactly how the government can “get into my life”.
“As soon as you turn it on, it can be theirs. They can turn it into a microphone, they can take pictures from it, they can take the data off of it,” he said. “If the government thinks you are suspicious, they can hack into your phone and detail your ‘pattern of life’.”
Williams asked if the government cared that he was checking the score of the New York Rangers hockey game. It’s the old “I have nothing to hide, why should I care” defense.
I hate this argument…and obviously so did Edward Snowden; and what he said next should send a chill down the spine of every American.
So why in the world would the government care if you were checking sports scores on your iPhone? Because it tells them all sorts of things about you that you probably did not consider…
“You might say, does anybody really care that I’m looking up the score for the Ranger’s game? Well, a government, a hacker, or some other nefarious individual, would say yes; they’re very interested in that. It tells a lot about you. You probably speak English. It says you’re probably an American…
Where were you in the world when you checked this score? Do you check it when you travel, or do you check it when you’re just at home? They’d be able to tell something called your “pattern of life”. When are you doing these kind of activities? When do you wake up, when do you go to sleep? What other phones are around you when you wake up or go to sleep. Are you with someone who’s not your wife? Are you some place you shouldn’t be — according to the government? Are you engaged in any kind of activities that we disapprove of, even if they aren’t technically illegal…”
It’s scary to say the least…and this is just talking about checking sports scores. Imagine the scrutiny for speaking out against the government online — as we so often do here. The whole spying program is like the “death from a thousand cuts” torture method popularized by the Chinese until 1905. Also known as slow slicing, this form of torture and execution removed portions of the body bit by bit until the prisoner died.
It’s basically what the spying program does: taking bits of information that may seem benign on their own, but when pieced together by a tyrannical force, it adds up to high treason. As French Clergyman Cardinal Richelieu once remarked, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.”
That is the fallacy of the “nothing to hide” argument.
“All of these things can raise your level of scrutiny. Even if it seems entirely innocent to you. Even if you have nothing to hide, even if you’re doing nothing wrong. These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted and used to harm you as an individual,” Snowden said.
“All because I Googled: Rangers/ Canadiens final score?” Williams asked.
“Exactly.”
Snowden also took on his relationship with the Russian government — a straw man argument that defenders of spying like to trot out to discredit him.
“I’m personally surprised that I ended up here…I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America. And I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trapped me in Moscow airport. So when people ask why are you in Russia, I’d say ask the State Department.”
What about Vladimir Putin, perhaps the most famous ex-spy on earth? Surely he has bled Snowden for information…
“I have no relationship with the Russian government at all. I’ve never met the Russian president. I’m not supported by the Russian government, I’m not taking money from the Russian government. I’m not a spy — which is the real question…”
So how can we possibly believe that? Surely Putin would be drooling at the thought of using Snowden’s information against us. Snowden refuted this claim outright. He said he destroyed the material before he left for his flight.
“I took nothing to Russia, so I could give them nothing. If I’m traveling through Russia…and I look like Tweety bird to Sylvester the cat. That’s a very dangerous thing for me.”
If he indeed wanted to leak the material for personal gain or government retribution, he could have sold it off for a very high price. He didn’t do that…
I think most of us are good, upstanding citizens with nothing serious to hide. But we simply don’t trust the government to decide what is or is not in our best interest.
Personally, I don’t want the government knowing when I go to sleep. I don’t want the government deciding when I “shouldn’t be” somewhere; especially if it’s not even a crime. The fact that our entire lives are being made into dossiers for crimes that haven’t happened is a dystopian nightmare. And I praise Edward Snowden for exposing it all — regardless of his motives.
“Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break the law”, he said.
But he isn’t the “traitor and coward” that John Kerry referred to after the interview. He isn’t Julius Rosenberg, who purposefully leaked nuclear secrets to Russia in the 1940s.
He is much more like Daniel Ellsberg — the former military analyst who blew the lid off our atrocities in Vietnam by leaking the Pentagon Papers. And if someone like John Kerry — who made his name by exposing many of the same facts Ellsberg brought to light — has the gall to call him a traitor, then that just gives you one more reason to back Snowden and distrust the government even more.
That’s what is scariest about an NBC poll after the interview. It showed that American voters view Snowden unfavorably by a 2-to-1 margin. I guess those Americans would have rather buried their heads in the sand and prayed they had nothing to hide.
It seems like a case of Stockholm Syndrome to me, where hostages begin to sympathize with their captors. And if the government can infiltrate every aspect of our private lives, then that’s exactly what we are: hostages.
As Ben Franklin famously said, “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
