Greenwald makes an important point and then sabotages it with over-the-top emotional appeals.
He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.
But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. quelle horreur.
The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.
The Post can be cowardly and still correct.
Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the
sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?
Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.
What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.
We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data than "courage" or even best intentions to come to a conclusion.
There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with "bravery".
> What's most maddening to me is the narrative [...] that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability
I don't know where you're getting that. It's certainly not what Greenwald is saying. He's saying (and I agree) that Snowden acted responsibly by leaving to journalists the decision of what, of all the leaked material, to publish. He didn't just throw the whole pile on Wikileaks. Does that not make a difference to you? Does the Post bear no responsibility whatsoever for the decisions of their own news editors?
The fact that Snowden didn't do the worst possible thing and just dump everything onto BitTorrent does not for me suggest that Snowden's actions are unimpeachable.
But I also have grave problems with the manner in which the Snowden cache was handled. I don't think the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the Guardian have the OPSEC chops to protect the data. But more than that, I don't think The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald, The New York Times, and The Guardian can generate the right set of expertise to evaluate all these documents. I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to review the cache.
The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.
So I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that, despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.
> I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that, despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.
I have no problem with that either, as long as we don't forget the accountability of the other people involved. That would include those who initiated and furthered the unconstitutional NSA programs; those who kept them hidden even from Congress; those to whom Snowden gave the documents; and, to some extent, all the rest of us looking on, at whatever distance, and commenting (or not).
> The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.
Any more than, say, the American Revolution?
I suspect the creation of history is always a bit messy when it involves human beings.
It is just not the case that the state is obligated to withhold prosecution until everyone who could possibly be culpable is also charged. This is logic that is deployed constantly on HN --- most commonly in the form of "none of the banksters went to prison so why are we prosecuting XXX" --- and it's just not valid. No state works that way.
I would be really happy to see NSA employees charged for (provable) abuse of laws governing their operations. I totally believe that a lot of what NSA has done has been abusive. I mean that in the sense of: I would feel better about our country if that happened.
But the fact that it hasn't happened or even that it won't happen doesn't change my feelings about whether Snowden should be accountable for his actions.
The state is obligated to cease withholding prosecution of those who are 100% in their jurisdiction to prosecute right now.
You'd love it if the powerful were brought to justice for breaking the law but you're largely unfussed by it brazenly being stifled. This has no influence on your belief of the necessity of going after the one who exposed them? This will result in it being less likely that we're going to find out about criminality by these people abusing their power. This gives the optics of the prosecutor's office being in support of the rampant, flagrant, totally illegal abuse of power.
There is this idea about the rule of law and equality before it. Baying for the prosecution of the whistle blower while not tying it to the prosecution of all those utter crooks he exposed. It's straight up support of corruption. It's the same prosecutors' office deciding whether to prosecute both of these things it found out about simultaneously from the same source, isn't it?
The rule of law and equality before it is a thing. Some find it worthwhile and have fought, died and killed for it. Supporting it in both theory and practice seems admirable to me. I have trouble in seeing a similarly admirable quality in what you've written here.
> It is just not the case that the state is obligated to withhold prosecution until everyone who could possibly be culpable is also charged.
That's true, but it's not a license to scapegoat one person and let everyone else off scot-free. A legitimate attempt must be made to bring the other involved people to justice.
You know as well as I do that no one besides Snowden will ever be prosecuted in this connection. Everybody already knows that James Clapper perjured himself before Congress, and he hasn't even been fired.
They briefly allowed some industry people to look at a few of the documents, like Bruce Schneier who said he wished he could have had more time instead of being placed in front of a live OS with a few dozen pdfs the Guardian wanted him to review. As for OPSEC there was the time the Guardian leaked the password to the first Wikileaks large Manning dump (the Assange hotel napkin PGP password incident), then they actually wrote Op-Ed attack pieces on Assange for "releasing unredacted classified information".
The fact that it was people like Bruce Schneier who got access to the document, and not, say, Bruce Leidl, is a big part of my problem with the process used to evaluate the documents.
> I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to review the cache.
So you're claiming that he should be prosecuted and convicted for the leaks, but simultaneously that he should have allowed more people to have access to the leaks? This position doesn't seem very consistent.
> none of those obligations include full-throated support for the sources interests moving forward.
False dichotomy. They could have simply refrained from editorializing collectively on the matter at all.
As much as the editorial board members may not like it, they write under the same masthead as the newspeople who published the PRISM material. They get paid out of the same page views. If they really feel their news desk did something that was grossly irresponsible, they should quit.
They could have, I agree. What I don't understand is their obligation not to offer a genuinely held opinion about a public policy issue on their editorial page.
I agree that the editorial was hypocritical and should have made mention of the Post's own role.
There's no way such an editorial could fail to be hypocritical unless it said, We're returning our Pulitzer and firing our news team that worked on the story. Otherwise they've received benefit from what they themselves are arguing was an illegal and irresponsible act.
If the members of the editorial board who feel this way had quit, they would then be in a position to express their opinion in another venue without hypocrisy.
Anyway, it's a sad day for American journalism. They've guaranteed that the Post will never again be offered leaked material. I will be very surprised if they don't lose some of their newspeople over this.
Setting aside Greenwald's over-the-top emotional appeals, what do you think of the following logic (which may reflect the underlying reasoning):
1. Let's assume that the information obtained from the NSA was illegally acquired by Snowden.
2. The Washington Post purposely disseminated such illegally obtained information.
3. Following examination of the materials, it is difficult to believe that the Washington Post did not know that such material was classified, confidential, held state secrets, or was illegally obtained.
4. Therefore, the Washington Post knowingly and purposely disseminated illegally obtained information.
5. Arguably, the Washington post profited from the publishing of such illegally obtained information.
Given the above, shouldn't the Washington Post receive whatever punishment Snowden receives? If point #5 is true, it seems that the Washington Post should receive a greater punishment.
I don't know about criminal punishment. It's a complicated issue. It is extremely problematic that journalists can play an active role in disseminating state secrets and absolve themselves of responsibility. Also: the Washington Post clearly crossed the line from advocate for the US public interest to... something else... in their choices of what to public from the Snowden cache.
I'm not here to argue that the Post wasn't hypocritical. They clearly were.
I'm just saying:
* Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the Post's argument. We can despise the Post's Editorial Page editors as much as Greenwald wants us to and still reach the conclusion that the editorial is valid (though incomplete).
* Greenwald is so eager to cast aspersions at journalists who disagree with him that he roped Fred Kaplan into his piece, despite his having nothing (that I know of) to do with the Post's handling of Snowden. Simply because Kaplan is also a journalist, Greenwald believes he's not entitled to correct the record on Oliver Stone's terribly flawed movie.
What I'd like to see addressed more is his decision to outsource judgement to the news outlets. It seems that there is a qualitative difference between choosing to out sensitive information yourself and letting someone else ostensibly more qualified make the decision.
Even if we concede the improper revelations, how do we characterize this lesser culpability?
He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.
But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. quelle horreur.
The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.
The Post can be cowardly and still correct.
Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?
Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.
What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.
We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data than "courage" or even best intentions to come to a conclusion.
There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with "bravery".