Babak Fakhamzadeh
Essentially a more elaborate version of the film Citizenfour.
Greenwald is at his best when synthesising the US government's history of abuse of surveillance, and its consequences for the fourth estate, the media. Though, he is also overly wordy, perhaps in part as, at the time of publication of this book, Greenwald was still not quite certain of his position vis-à-vis the US government and his chances of facing prosecution. The introductory chapters, on obtaining the documents, read like a bad spy novel, and particularly now, some 10 years after the initial revelations, take away from the importance of the contents of the book. In addition, Greenwald's ability to turn his recounting of the experiences of others really about himself, I know now, is a less-pleasant feature of Greenwald's personality and style, which dovetails with Greenwald's more recent unexpected stances on more current American politics.
Some analyses have mostly been overtaken by reality:
+ Greenwald asks whether the internet will provide individual liberation or omnipresent monitoring, pointing out that both are possible, but now mostly seems to have been answered: A little bit of the former, quite a lot of the latter. + Snowden justifies being based in Hong Kong on the city's arc towards independence from China, which, we now know, was more a anomaly than anything else. + Greenwald's departure from The Intercept, the public row, and the closing of the Snowden Archive, as well as the infiltration of the British secret service at The Guardian, make it difficult to not be cynical about society's options for avoiding full-scale surveillance and the knowledge of such. + Since the Snowden revelations, the US has started accusing Russia and China of doing exactly the things they themselves have been doing, specifically the manipulation through digital services, and the surveillance through both software, backdoors, and hardware. To this point, the rise of Chinese hardware companies is what has made the US government jittery, for its lack of access to backdoors in these technologies. + Greenwald's descriptions on the attempted character assassination against him and Snowden are almost exact, if less severe, copies of what Assange is still facing. What was coming for Assange should have been more obvious. More so, Greenwald's claim that “it is no longer possible for the US government to distract from the message simply by demonizing the messenger” has worked very well for Greenwald, though his rhetoric in relation to Trump could draw some odd conclusions, but not so much for Assange.
Points worth reiterating:
+ The post-9/11 American veneration of security has created a climate particularly conducive to abuses of power. + History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. + The ability to eavesdrop on people’s communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused; Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature. + The NSA is able to turn cellphones into roving bugs, turning them on at will, as long as the battery is inserted. And, in a 2006 federal case, this was deemed *legal*. + The NSA has direct access to communications on platforms like Google and Facebook. + The NSA has shared raw unfiltered data with Israeli intelligence; "As the NSA complained, the partnership was geared “almost totally” to Israel’s needs." + The disturbing entanglement of spying for security concerns as well as economic concerns; "The documents left no doubt that the NSA was equally involved in economic espionage, diplomatic spying, and suspicion-less surveillance aimed at entire populations. " This is underscored by the more recent shift in American foreign security policy, to target 'corruption' abroad, in order to serve their own political agenda. + Snowden: “This was when I really started seeing how easy it is to divorce power from accountability, and how the higher the levels of power, the less oversight and accountability there was.” + The Five Eyes relationship is so close that member governments place the NSA’s desires above the privacy of their own citizens. + There are far too many power factions with a vested interest in the fear of terrorism: the government, seeking justification for its actions; the surveillance and weapons industries, drowning in public funding; and the permanent power factions in Washington, committed to setting their priorities without real challenge. + Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name.
A few additional points:
"The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who 'have done something wrong' should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing."
"We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance."
"Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else."
"The point is not the hypocrisy of those who disparage the value of privacy while intensely safeguarding their own, although that is striking. It is that the desire for privacy is shared by us all as an essential, not ancillary, part of what it means to be human." and "The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who 'have done something wrong' should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing."
Greenwald in his last chapter points out that the fourth estate and the political elite, in the U.S., have become near-interchangeable. With that, Greenwald identifies a throbbing cancer hiding in plain sight in modern western journalism in general and American journalism in particular: that in the past, journalists took pride in being the outsider, confronting the abuse of power (by the government or others), but that now, many journalists feel they are doing the right thing when their governments praise them instead.
An important aspect of the US' ability to monitor virtually all internet traffic is that, up to recently, most internet traffic ran through the US. Brazil was early in working towards connecting to the rest of the world without having to go through the US. It's now obvious why Putin has done exactly the same thing. This also very strongly ties in to the concept of 'multiple realities', based on contradicting 'facts', invisible to members of disjoint groups.
A nice aside, something I had forgotten after the first time I read the book, is that Snowden in part explains his reason for pursuing societal justice by referring to his experience in playing video games, in which a 'regular' character goes through a typical hero's journey to overcome the worst odds in defeating a nemesis.
Essentially a more elaborate version of the film Citizenfour.
Greenwald is at his best when synthesising the US government's history of abuse of surveillance, and its consequences for the fourth estate, the media. Though, he is also overly wordy, perhaps in part as, at the time of publication of this book, Greenwald was still not quite certain of his position vis-à-vis the US government and his chances of facing prosecution. The introductory chapters, on obtaining the documents, read like a bad spy novel, and particularly now, some 10 years after the initial revelations, take away from the importance of the contents of the book. In addition, Greenwald's ability to turn his recounting of the experiences of others really about himself, I know now, is a less-pleasant feature of Greenwald's personality and style, which dovetails with Greenwald's more recent unexpected stances on more current American politics.
Some analyses have mostly been overtaken by reality:
+ Greenwald asks whether the internet will provide individual liberation or omnipresent monitoring, pointing out that both are possible, but now mostly seems to have been answered: A little bit of the former, quite a lot of the latter. + Snowden justifies being based in Hong Kong on the city's arc towards independence from China, which, we now know, was more a anomaly than anything else. + Greenwald's departure from The Intercept, the public row, and the closing of the Snowden Archive, as well as the infiltration of the British secret service at The Guardian, make it difficult to not be cynical about society's options for avoiding full-scale surveillance and the knowledge of such. + Since the Snowden revelations, the US has started accusing Russia and China of doing exactly the things they themselves have been doing, specifically the manipulation through digital services, and the surveillance through both software, backdoors, and hardware. To this point, the rise of Chinese hardware companies is what has made the US government jittery, for its lack of access to backdoors in these technologies. + Greenwald's descriptions on the attempted character assassination against him and Snowden are almost exact, if less severe, copies of what Assange is still facing. What was coming for Assange should have been more obvious. More so, Greenwald's claim that “it is no longer possible for the US government to distract from the message simply by demonizing the messenger” has worked very well for Greenwald, though his rhetoric in relation to Trump could draw some odd conclusions, but not so much for Assange.
Points worth reiterating:
+ The post-9/11 American veneration of security has created a climate particularly conducive to abuses of power. + History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. + The ability to eavesdrop on people’s communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused; Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature. + The NSA is able to turn cellphones into roving bugs, turning them on at will, as long as the battery is inserted. And, in a 2006 federal case, this was deemed *legal*. + The NSA has direct access to communications on platforms like Google and Facebook. + The NSA has shared raw unfiltered data with Israeli intelligence; "As the NSA complained, the partnership was geared “almost totally” to Israel’s needs." + The disturbing entanglement of spying for security concerns as well as economic concerns; "The documents left no doubt that the NSA was equally involved in economic espionage, diplomatic spying, and suspicion-less surveillance aimed at entire populations. " This is underscored by the more recent shift in American foreign security policy, to target 'corruption' abroad, in order to serve their own political agenda. + Snowden: “This was when I really started seeing how easy it is to divorce power from accountability, and how the higher the levels of power, the less oversight and accountability there was.” + The Five Eyes relationship is so close that member governments place the NSA’s desires above the privacy of their own citizens. + There are far too many power factions with a vested interest in the fear of terrorism: the government, seeking justification for its actions; the surveillance and weapons industries, drowning in public funding; and the permanent power factions in Washington, committed to setting their priorities without real challenge. + Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name.
A few additional points:
"The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who 'have done something wrong' should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing."
"We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance."
"Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else."
"The point is not the hypocrisy of those who disparage the value of privacy while intensely safeguarding their own, although that is striking. It is that the desire for privacy is shared by us all as an essential, not ancillary, part of what it means to be human." and "The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who 'have done something wrong' should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing."
Greenwald in his last chapter points out that the fourth estate and the political elite, in the U.S., have become near-interchangeable. With that, Greenwald identifies a throbbing cancer hiding in plain sight in modern western journalism in general and American journalism in particular: that in the past, journalists took pride in being the outsider, confronting the abuse of power (by the government or others), but that now, many journalists feel they are doing the right thing when their governments praise them instead.
An important aspect of the US' ability to monitor virtually all internet traffic is that, up to recently, most internet traffic ran through the US. Brazil was early in working towards connecting to the rest of the world without having to go through the US. It's now obvious why Putin has done exactly the same thing. This also very strongly ties in to the concept of 'multiple realities', based on contradicting 'facts', invisible to members of disjoint groups.
A nice aside, something I had forgotten after the first time I read the book, is that Snowden in part explains his reason for pursuing societal justice by referring to his experience in playing video games, in which a 'regular' character goes through a typical hero's journey to overcome the worst odds in defeating a nemesis.