Originally published on the Leftist Critic blog on May 20, 2017.
This post was analyzed for mistakes and other content in January 2019, as part of an effort to engage in self-criticism. Some changes have been made.
In the past I’ve criticized Snowden’s ridiculous claims and his celebrity-like status. I first mentioned him in an article criticizing The Intercept, Pierre Omidyar’s plaything, the CIA and corporate surveillance, noting how a letter by Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, got Snowden and “celebrity left personality Deray to back Apple,” which collects reams of data itself. A few months after that, I wrote an article saying that “celebrity whistleblower Edward Snowden…has wide influence it is best to look at his words and their symbolic meaning” and that Snowden, in his “privileged position,” can be critical of the media even has he ignores the “role of the bourgeois media” in capitalist society, gives the New York Times a pass despite the fact that its audience is broadly male college-educated bourgeois individuals, never mentions “the role of advertisers in determining media content,” and puts out, just like BuzzFeed and Celebrity Left personalities, “content…engineered to be more attention getting, even though they have no public value…[or] no news value at all,” with his often “self-congratulatory and…egoist remarks” with a “pseudo-change sentiment” at times, even as much of the content he found while working at the NSA and CIA as a contractor has STILL not been released. The following month, in response to frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracist individuals who are worthless twitter scum and give reason for why people hate “the Left,” I wrote another piece about Snowden. I went through a number of conspiracies revolving around Snowden’s ties to the CIA, saying that: (1) “Ellsburg, Assange, and Snowden should be criticized, but to call them intelligence operations seems far-fetched and just putting oneself down a rabbit hole with no escape”; (2) “…Assange and Snowden are likely not in as much danger as supporters claim, to claim they are intelligence assets…[or] created by certain U.S. covert elements is…so ridiculous that it isn’t worth taking [it]…seriously,” among other elements.
Today, I aim to return to Snowden once again with some information I scoured from old storifies I deleted. Perhaps we can start use what Snowden said to show his “adversarial” nature which includes “challenging” the U$ government (not really), staying uber-nationalist, and promoting encryption software as a solution (“By all means, doubt me. Be suspicious and test my every claim. That’s rational. Then, do the same for those in power. That’s American”) to criticize him and his pathetic narrative.
Enter Douglas Valentine
I’ve read Mr. Valentine’s Strength of the Wolf, even using it to talk about the drug trade within Iran in the 1940s through the 1960s. Here, I aim to look at some of his posts on Snowden. To my knowledge, he has only written two posts on Snowden apart from a post criticizing journalist, and celebrity left personality, Glenn Greenwald on income inequality, another criticizing the movie of Greenwald’s friend in company, Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars, for being self-indulgent, or a small mention in an article poking at those “criticizing” the NSA.
In his 2013 article, the first substantively on Snowden, Mr. Valentine argues that Greenwald is trying to prove he is “a different sort of liberal capitalist” by launching his “media empire with a sensational “exposé” on the National Security Agency (NSA)” based on the documents Snowden gave him. He goes on to say that Snowden’s material “undoubtedly reveals NSA-supported CIA operations at the strategic level around the world” but that he could also “sift through Snowden’s material, edit out the good stuff, and focus on tactical matters like assassinations,” which would be good for those that favor such assassinations. He ends by saying that Greenwald could do “what Snowden did and risk it all. The choice is his.” At this point and time, clearly, Mr. Valentine was more favorable to Snowden. By 2015 that would change.
That year, Mr. Valentine wrote an article which criticized Citizen Four, way before that horrid Oliver Stone “Snowden” movie had come on the scene. He notes how the documentary begins with Greenwald sitting in a hotel room in Hong Kong with Snowden and Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian reporter, with Snowden “earnestly explaining his selfless motive,” saying that he wants the store to be about “the mechanisms of the thought police” not about himself. However, Greenwald has different ideas, thinking, as Mr. Valentine argues, that he can turn Snowden into a big celebrity and “Hollywood star,” showing Greenwald as maneuvering the “naive, trusting, vulnerable” Snowden into being a celebrity, with Snowden submitting himself to such manipulation. The article goes on to say that Greenwald’s money-making scheme from the Snowden files, which calls “GG Industries Inc” (now including all of those at The Intercept) sees Snowden as “a celebrity and perpetual money-making myth for the faux gauche, in the mold of Dan Ellsberg” or Bob Dylan, who he argues “creates its special kind of neurasthenia, a complex of neuroses that render the celebrity incapable of honest self-awareness or genuine human interaction,” a form of the “celebrity virus.” Mr. Valentine goes on. He says that such celebrities direct “all of America’s latent revolutionary impulses into America’s unique brand of post-modern fascism,” that the Citizen Four documentary deceives the audience as a classist “propaganda film” that protects the CIA while exploiting Snowden to be a celebrity, serving the bourgeois, and being “the biggest fluff piece ever contrived.” His criticism goes beyond this by saying that the producers of the documentary cannot be critical of Snowden, which manipulates its audience,who is a “dedicated counter-revolutionary,” who doesn’t want to reveal CIA “methods…names and locations” which he calls, probably accurately, a “fascistic streak” and adds thatin the end, Citizen Four is “a propaganda film espousing the virtues of the faux gauche and its self-induced delusion, and self-perpetuating illusion, that the capitalist system is capable of correcting itself.” The rest of the article writes itself.
Mr. Valentine’s criticism is on par with what Tarzie says, who goes farther by saying that “there can be no intelligent, leftist consideration of Snowden, or any other figure of similar stature for that matter, without recognizing that we know him entirely through instruments specially designed to prevent and suppress any dissent that’s likely to disquiet members of the ruling class and their state security apparatus,” that the few “genuinely entertaining aspects of The Snowden Show at its peak was the struggle of his hand-picked media proxies [such as Greenwald] to look like enemies of the state as they flew from place to place, entirely without incident,” and that Snowden was “running what’s known in intelligence as a limited hangout.” He added that Snowden “encourages us to focus entirely on signals intelligence, and…on only one of the federal agencies that collect signals intelligence,” such as the CIA, leading to a “trivial conversation about surveillance, that…chillingly reminds people they’re always being watched” and that Snowden & Co. have fostered a “swamp of pseudo-dissidence.”
While I tend to be more critical of Tarzie, who defines himself as an anarchist living in Seattle for all I know, after he blocked me on his now-suspended account (@TheRancidSector), even though I still follow his other account without interruption. He blocked me then when I criticized him for calling for another Twitter user to kill themselves since they said something that made him angry, and didn’t respond for some time afterwards to his “steaming” tweets, showing that he didn’t give me a chance to explain myself. Still, I think that he has a good point here when it comes to Snowden. He does tend, as does do the rest of the sycophants, to focus on the NSA and not other intelligence agencies, with a few exceptions. However, I wouldn’t say he was running a “limited hangout” only because I don’t know enough about the subject admittedly and it risks getting pulled into the conspiracist realm of the never-ending theorizing about the JFK assassination or 9/11 attacks, which is a waste of everyone’s time. Instead of worrying yourself with trying to “investigate” these topics on your own and get stuck in the conspiracist loop, perhaps it is better to organize against capitalism, revealing actual conspiracies about the capitalist class oppressing the proletariat rather than theories you get from magical authors/commentators (like Alex Jones or Webster Tarpley to name a few) who claim to “know the truth” and are part of an industry to promote these theories to the populace for a buck.
Problem with the “Deep State” term
In terms of conspiracists, there is one term that has made its stamp in the public discourse recently: “deep state.” I first heard of it when I went to the LeftForum years ago, on some handouts given out by 9/11 conspiracists if I remember correctly and dismissed it back then, but now it has come to the forefront more than before, even taking the form of an “announcement” on the Descent Into Tyranny subreddit. [1]
Some advocates of the term even admit that it is “hard to define precisely” while others have just mentioned it in passing (see here and here)or mentioned it in reference to the spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, is on an international scale. There have been some recent criticisms. One individual criticized by the term by saying that the “real deep state” is the administrative state or federal bureaucracy that the orange menace’s administration seems they are fighting.
The other was a more direct criticism striking at the heart of the term itself by Mr. Anthony DiMaggio. He says that the rise of the “deep state” critique basically started by Mr. Lofgren, which meant to “spotlight the U.S. corporate-national security-intelligence apparatus, has quickly devolved into a cartoonish absurdity” and no longer useful. He goes on to say that even as he agrees that focusing on the dangers of the National Security State, use of the “panopticon as a symbol of the modern-day surveillance state is apt,” emphasizing “other threats to American democracy,” and concern about “rise of Wall Street power,” is justified, that the concept is not nuanced or clear, meaning that Lofgren’s analysis is tame, pedestrian, and conservative, not incorporating any Marxian concepts within elite theory. Mr. DiMaggio adds that the idea of a “secret shadow government, impervious to any controls or regulation by elected officials” which is so effective that the U$ populace has “zero political influence over American politics” and pushes away any promotion of political change is absurd since “the last century of U.S. political activism demonstrates that large numbers of social movements were able to fundamentally transform American culture and politics.” He adds to this that saying that so-called “deep state” bureaucrats hold all of the power in Washington instead of elected officials is also not true, even though there is an “institutionalized military-intelligence state…[and] a militarized police system,” since politicians are not “puppets of the bureaucracy,” the intelligence (or military) community is not uniformed or unified “about U.S. militarism and empire.” He ends by saying he isn’t sure why “additional analytical value” comes from referring to the military apparatus and intelligence agencies as a “deep state” and that the term’s value is dwindling, meaning “whatever people want it to mean,” suggesting that “it’s time to start looking for a more coherent, informed analyses than what is being offered by various conspiracy theorists on the left and right.”
Mr. DiMaggio is no radical, just like Mr. Lofgren, who condemned Marxism, the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and claimed that we have “to reflect upon defunct glacial despotisms such as the USSR or East Germany to realize that nothing is forever,” despite the fact that both, even if they arguably were revisionist states in their later years, were by no means “despotisms.” Also, we don’t need to “reflect” upon those states. Mr. DiMaggio condemns what he calls dictatorships (“Mubarak in Egypt, Assad in Syria, or Erdogan in Turkey”) even though Assad’s government doesn’t fit that description, and he engages in uber nationalist, pro-imperialist rhetoric in saying that there are “obvious differences” between the U$ and those countries, implying that the U$ is somehow “better” than other parts of the world, an Orientalist viewpoint. Still, his criticism of the “deep state” is completely justified. Karen (kazahann), has argued that the term blocks criticism of the capitalist class, is a worthless buzzword, and claims that the state is neutral or benign.
Karen and Mr. DiMaggio’s criticisms should be taken to heart. The term, as I see it, is highly inaccurate and leads to political apathy. This is bolstered by the fact that those who advocate for the idea of a “deep state,” such as John W. Whitehead, Paul Street, John Stanton (quoting Peggy Noonan), and Mr. Lofgren, cannot agree on one definition but include the following groups within their respective use of the term: militarized police, fusion centers, courthouses, prisons, private mercenaries, the hundreds of thousands who have Top Secret clearance, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Treasury, National Security Council, FISA court, certain federal trial courts, defense and intelligence communities at-large, other spy agencies, Wall Street, the military-industrial-complex, Silicon Valley (also called Sexist Valley or Surveillance Valley more accurately), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Federal Reserve.
Just this list shows that the theory is all over the place and totally disorganized, with no rhyme or reason. Instead, of using such a misplaced idea, it is better to talk about the capitalist bureaucracy that most of these organizations, apart from the social control organs manifested in courthouses, prisons, and fusion centers, and capitalist industry represented by Silicon Valley or Wall Street, inhibit. There is undoubtedly a surveillance apparatus within the capitalist bureaucracy of the U$, which fulfills a purpose to keep the populace in line, watching for any challenges to the capitalist class, looking to disrupt and shut it down. Such groups are much more vast than what the “Deep State” theorists imagine, but includes a constellation of agencies brought together by the White House Situation Room, but also independent, working in the areas of “intelligence,” “homeland security,” military affairs, and civilian affairs. A chart from a book by bourgeois liberal journalists, Dana Priest and William Arkin, titled Top Secret America, written in 2011, lays this out clearly for all to see:
Such a chart doesn’t include the private military contractors (mercenaries), the hundreds of thousands who have Top Secret clearance, the foreign policy establishment in the State Department, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Federal Reserve, which also have a role in the capitalist state. I don’t need anyone to say that “the whole government” is the “thought police,” with the state defending an “entrenched economic elite and philosophic orthodoxy,” or that the US’s “representative democracy has broken down,” serving the big capitalists, I can figure that out myself. [2] You could even call it the National Security State if you wanted, like Gore Vidal, but that may be too limited of a term for what exists currently.
Bashar Al-Assad and the “deep state”
On April 27th, the duly elected president of the socially democratic and secular Arab Republic of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, had an interview with Telesur where he sort of used the term “deep state.” Here’s what he said in response to a question about the orange menace’s foreign policies, with the “deep state” section bolded:
The American President has no policies. There are policies drawn by the American institutions which control the American regime which are the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms and oil companies, and financial institutions, in addition to some other lobbies which influence American decision-making. The American President merely implements these policies, and the evidence is that when Trump tried to move on a different track, during and after his election campaign, he couldn’t. He came under a ferocious attack. As we have seen in the past few week, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime. That’s why it is unrealistic and a complete waste of time to make an assessment of the American President’s foreign policy, for he might say something; but he ultimately does what these institutions dictate to him. This is not new. This has been ongoing American policy for decades.
Revisionist Gowans describes this as Assad recognizing that “the US government is…a committee for managing the common affairs of the country’s business owners” with US foreign policy serving their interests. In this case, Assad is NOT using the term “deep state” in the same way as conspiracists use it, but rather is using it to describe, the state being a manager of the affairs of the bourgeoisie as Marx and Engels described the actions of a capitalist state. Assad is undoubtedly right in this regard and is right to point out that US foreign policy is imperialist and serves the capitalist class…but why would such a policy not serve their interests? It always has in some way or another.
The surveillance apparatus strikes again!
Recently Greenwald wrote a heavily promoted story disproving, on his terms, that Snowden was not a “spy for either [capitalist] Russia and/or [revisionist] China at the time he took and then leaked documents from the National Security Agency.” I personally don’t think it is even worth anyone’s effort to read this article which is clearly self-congratulatory and egoist, saying that they “were right” all along. I do think it is evident that Snowden was not a Russian or Chinese spy, but that isn’t the point. Neither are claims by people like bourgeois liberal Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post. [3] Instead, the discussion should be about the U$’s worldwide surveillance apparatus.
There are a number of facts that are evident. [4] For one, there are the NSA misdeeds including wiretapping a member of Congress, collecting the telephone records of millions of US Verizon customers, gathering information from tech giants (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube, and Apple) in the PRISM program, trying to access the data of private companies from 1999-2007 with only Qwest refusing access, monitoring all credit card transactions, and running the country’s biggest spy center If that isn’t enough, the NSA has: been getting an “electronic copy” of detail records of all Verizon phone calls within the U$ and between the U$ and abroad; has “strategic partnerships” with varied companies (At&T, Verizon, Motorola, Qwest, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, EDS, Oracle, and Qualcomm); shares signal Intelligence with exchanged with Israel, including private data of Americans; spying on foreign leaders (former President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, Mexico’s Peno Nieto, Germany’s Angela Merkel); spying on UN Security Council members; partnering with Saudi Arabia’s brutal state police; infects millions of computers with malware; and may have caused the Syrian internet blackout in 2012. And there are many more programs. However, the NSA is obviously not the only one in this game. Apart from the DOJ once wiretapping the cloakroom of the House of Representatives, the FBI worked with the NSA on spying on Muslim leaders, worked with the CIA to select information from the PRISM system, and gave the NSA access to a broad range of data on Facebook. The FBI also has used drones to monitor citizens on U$ soil, is monitoring “First Amendment activities…in the name of safety and security in a post-9/11 age,” is conducting its “own signals intelligence as part of the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU),” having the Magic Lantern program which logs keystrokes, the surveillance program called the Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier, and DCSNet which is a “sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device.” Apart from that, there is evidence that the CIA searched U$ senate computers, that all U$ mail is being scanned and put into the “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking” database, and that there is a “terrorist screening database” of 680,000 people, almost half of whom are not classified as “terrorists,” with the CIA, DIA, NSA and FBI among those who can nominate people to the list. Then, of course there is the surveillance blimps program launched by the U$ Army, called aerostats, which have a “surveillance range of over 300 miles,” with this program still on schedule and in operation despite the loss of one of the huge surveillance blimps from Aberdeen in October 2015.
With this data, all of those government entities engaging in surveillance (CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, DHS, and others) are committing crimes, eviscerating privacy, but so are big capitalist firms, especially in the tech industry, like Google, Apple, and Verizon to name a few. Some have said that there is so much data that the NSA has “invented new units of measurement just to describe it” with the NSA’s electric bill reaching in the millions of dollars each year, while some facial recognition and RFID software becomes more common, as billions are spent to keep “secrets secret” making it easier to crack down on dissent to the capitalist class in this surveillance (and capitalist) society. [5] I know conspiracists will be giddy about me mentioning the word RFID chips, as many think it is part of some government conspiracy, but they can just wipe the grins right off their faces. The corporate and government surveillance systems are one complex and should not be separated or compartmentalized as some, like Snowden & co., have done. This system, which some have called “Top Secret America,” others the “surveillance state,” or the “national security state,” is a partnership between big capitalists and the US capitalist government. We have a state of total surveillance with no gender, class, religious or other boundaries, but it falls hardest on the proletariat whether they are people of color, dedicated activists, or Muslims, to name a few.
The government, has for years, been afraid of leaked information, even more so with the orange menace in charge. In the 1980s, the CIA’s Director of Security was angry that information had been released to establishment journalist Bob Woodward (some think that he working with the CIA as planted journalist but this has not been proven and is still a speculation) about the MIG-25, echoing other concerns by the NSA. [6] This was not a surprise since the Church and Pike Committees in 1970s, with the former committee more moderate than the latter, which included revelations about the CIA MK/ULTRA experiments, with the intelligence agencies feeling “secure behind the cloak.” [7] Other concerns were abound. The CIA’s Director of Public Affairs, their propaganda officer, chastised Woodward for violating supposed “ground rules” for interviews, and later claimed that “damage” from leaks about U$ policy toward Libya is “money and lives,” with some of this damage as “invisible.” [8] Lest us forget that the U$ engaged in anti-terrorism” actions, by firing 48 missiles and dropping 232 bombs on two airfields, two “air defense” networks, two barracks, and one camp within the Great Socialist People’s Arab Jamahiriya, then run by Muammar Gaddafi, killing over thirty Libyans as Todd R. Phinney even admitted in a pro-U$, pro-military thesis on the subject. [9] If this wasn’t enough, the CIA even created a special team to investigate leaks, with “500 such incidents” in 1986 alone, with claims it hurt “presidential credibility,” with proposals of limited paperflow and calls for “surprise police raids on newsrooms” by CIA Director Bill Casey, lining up with the Reagan administration’s limits on the Freedom of Patriot Act’s scope. [10] By 1988, then-Ambassador Richard Helms was lamenting that U$ “friends and collaborators abroad” have been convinced “that our Intelligence Community can keep no secrets,” which could “hurt” the empire. [11]
It is worth pointing this out because Obama’s war against leakers/whistleblowers has and will continue under the orange menace who is egotistical and more about his self-image than many others who have held the presidency, making it “not an aberration, but the norm.” [12] Hence, while they try to stop the leaks, they will keep coming, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing except that such leakers are often moderate in their beliefs and only one reform, meaning that the capitalist system is able to deal with such disruptions. Expanding on that is a subject for another day, maybe.
The “surveillance reform” BS
In order to determine what should be done, it is worth considering what shouldn’t be done first. Snowden himself has issued calls for surveillance reform, which Tarzie criticized for the former having a “bizarre notion of human rights.” In the post, Snowden is quoted as saying that “self-government is about…[not] making these decisions behind closed doors, without public debate, without public consent” and that the decision about surveillance belongs to the people not politicians.
For one, this is ignorant of the reality because as it stands now, people don’t have such a voice in US government. In the famed April 2014 study by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin L. Page of Northwestern University, they argued that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence…Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.” This was even echoed by fake “radical” and class collaborator Noam Chomsky in August 2013, when he said that “roughly 70% of the population…have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised….maybe a tenth of one percent…determine the policy…the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.” Even Chris Hedges, who embraces “democratic socialism,” openly quotes rabid anti-communist George Orwell, and determined the characteristics for being “a socialist,” while waving the word around, admitted this much. Remember he is also a person who says he opposes “totalitarian capitalism” (can’t you just call it capitalism?), was confused if the U$ had capitalism or not, hates Black Bloc with a passion (see here, here, and here), is pro-Green Party (a social democratic party), and declared seven paragraphs into an article criticizing climate change liberals that:
“This is not a battle [against “corporate capitalism] I would have picked. I prefer incremental and piecemeal reform. I prefer a system in which we can elect politicians to represent the governed and thwart corporate abuse. I prefer a United Nations that serves the interests of people around the globe rather than corporate profit. I prefer a vigorous and free debate in the public arena. I prefer a judiciary that is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state. I prefer the freedom to express dissent without government monitoring of my communications and control of my movements. I prefer to have my basic civil liberties protected. But we do not live in such a system.”
This shows that Hedges is a wannabe radical who is really an inner liberal. Still, he said in his book, Empire of Illusion (p. 142-143), that the idea of consent of the governed is an empty one: “The words consent of the governed have become an empty phrase…Our nation has been hijacked by oligarchs, corporations, and a narrow, selfish, political, and economic elite…The government…provides little more than technical expertise for elites and corporations…It has become the greatest illusion in a culture of illusions.” Beyond this, there is the controversial but well-sourced study titled ‘Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies’ which argued that the collapse of human civilization can be avoided if “the rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level and if resources are distributed equitably” and said that most common in society today are elite-commoner societies: “the economic stratification of society into Elites and Masses (or “Commoners”)…accumulated surplus [or wealth] is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels…Elites “prey” on the production of wealth by Commoners.” Even more, as a leaked Citigroup memo (if it isn’t a hoax) noted, there is a plutonomy referring to the habits of rich consumers, rather than “the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many” which is driven by “ongoing technology/biotechnology revolution…capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes…greater financial complexity and innovation…[and] patent protection.”
This invalidates Snowden’s philosophy, if you could call it that, which is that: as “long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision…the public needs to decide whether these policies are right or wrong.” [13] Ultimately, the people, as it currently stands, don’t have an ability to decide if policies are right or wrong because they aren’t part of the policy-making apparatus, and their views are easily brushed aside by capitalist class in the U$ and in other capitalist states. Additionally, Snowden’s trust in the thoughts of the public also forgets the fact that public opinion polls can be manipulated, deceptive, or limit “people’s sense of wider possibilities.” Still, I would like to point out I am not saying that people do have the ability to influence or push government to make certain decisions. However, I am saying that in general, the government, I’m mainly talking about the U$ government but this could be applied to other governments, doesn’t really care what ordinary people think. They care what the people with the deep pockets say and think. That’s who they, in general, listen to. That is the current state of affairs.
Then there is the whole “Reset the Net” campaign, making it clear that working with the corporate sector in order to counter surveillance is wholly counterproductive and makes you a simple pawn of big business, along with recognizing reforming the NSA in any way, shape or form is a waste of energy. This “anti-surveillance” campaign was created after Snowden’s “revelations of government surveillance” with Snowden making it seem that it would be opposing all types of surveillance, saying that “today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same…[encryption is] the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance…don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back.” [14] However, Tiffiniy Cheng, spokesperson for Fight for the Future, which coordinated Reset the Net basically undermined this idea. She told its real focus, saying that “now, they’ve [the US government] got a rebellion on their hands as tech companies and internet users work together to directly intervene in mass surveillance and block the NSA and its kind from the web.”
I’m not sure how something is a “rebellion” if corporations and internet users are working together! That sounds more like a way for the companies to reassure customers and their users that they “care” about privacy. As Microsoft’s General Counsel Brad Smith said, “it’s of course important for companies to do the things under our own control, and what we have under our own control is our own technology practices. I don’t know that anyone believes that will be sufficient to allay everyone’s concerns. There is a need for reform of government practices, but those will take longer.” This makes me concerned about this campaign.Another problem is that the campaign’s main goal is to push for “mass adoption of encryption is a tool to fight mass surveillance” strong encryption doesn’t always translate into cyber security in reality. Despite this, the EFF, the Tor Project, ACLU of Massachusetts (and likely the whole organization), Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, Natasha Leonard of Vice and New Inquiry, Glenn Greenwald (I would believe so) [15] and many others support this campaign.
Using their website, I found who supports Reset the Net, which are the usual suspects. According to their list of supporters, which compromises of fifty-six non-profit, public and private organizations, thirteen are for-profit companies (approx. 23%), twenty are non profits (including the three organizations that back Democrats) (approx. 36 %), three are political parties, and four are mostly alternative media. The rest, sixteen organizations, are considered other, as I could not figure how to categorize them. Think what you want about these supporters, but this doesn’t look good to me. Ashlin Lee and Peta Cook of the University of Tasmania added that while the campaign could be praised,
“encryption makes any collected data more difficult (but not impossible) for authorities to interpret and act upon…The Reset the Net project acts to reinforce the idea that surveillance is primarily conducted by state authorities…But the reality is that the NSA is only one actor in the surveillance drama…Google is just one of many private companies conducting surveillance today…Surveillance today is not just about seeing into the lives of the present – it’s about cataloguing and using the past (and present) to understand the future…The Reset the Net project paradoxically represents a small positive step in resisting and counteracting warrantless and illegal surveillance, while ignoring the bigger picture.”
Yasha Levine had a similar critique on PandoDaily, which often shills for the tech industry (but didn’t in this article), writing that Reset the Net avoids Google’s snooping, saying that “the campaign is not against online surveillance, just government surveillance….these companies — which themselves stay in business by spying on us online — help to defeat surveillance? By offering encryption apps…Reset the Net is outraged by our government’s capability to wantonly vacuum up our personal info, and yet it unconditionally trusts powerful Surveillance Valley megacorps when they do the same thing on an even greater scale as a normal part of doing business.” Bill Blunden argues something similar saying that “in contrast to the inflated fanfare about disrupting terrorist plots…the global surveillance apparatus is essentially being driven by powerful corporate interests….Roughly 70 percent of the intelligence budget…goes to the private sector…Google has extensive long-standing connections with the defense industry.” Then there are quotes of individuals in the PBS Frontline documentary, United States of Secrets, talking about how corporations were integral to the surveillance apparatus, connected to the government-issued National Security Letters (NSL) which can compel certain private companies and individuals to give them information, quoting Tim Wu, Chris Hoofnagle, Julia Angwin, Askan Soltani, Barton Gellman, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, and Martin Smith, to name a few.
To end this off, the Reset the Net supporters who know the underlying truth that corporations are integral to surveillance system, and still support the campaign are being foolish. There is no doubt that the interests of those against government surveillance will overlap with the companies that want to act like they care about privacy (they don’t). I understand why ordinary people are participating in this campaign as many are pissed off and for good reason, but I will not be signing any petitions, or participating in any actions by Reset the Net or others following their example. Some seem to think that working with the companies is a good idea and I disagree. Even though these companies have a good amount of clout, that doesn’t mean that people should be working with them. This effort, Reset the Net, is no rebellion, rather it is an anti-NSA surveillance effort serving as a front for corporations that participate (and profit from) government mass surveillance. As Eli Pariser wrote, powerful cloud giants, like Google and Amazon, have “a vested interest in keeping the government entities happy.” [16] This effort is in a sense a way of keeping the government entities happy, as it distracts from the corporate-state nexis on surveillance, but in another sense it is also about defending their bottom line, their profit margins, protecting their consumer base. Some may think that Reset the Net is even a social movement, but clearly is not by any reasonable standards. It does not deploy symbolic resources, it does not shift construction of identity and it does not product popular and scholarly knowledge.
What should be done?
The total surveillance that exists today is nothing new.The “rollback” of NSA surveillance hasn’t changed much broadly as the FBI still pushes to keep its existing surveillance powers. At minimum, those who care about state surveillance should push for the NSA, CIA and FBI to be abolished for starters, with those who committed crimes, perhaps top NSA officials, going on trial. However, this in and of itself is still reformism, only the first step, while liberals would see it as the only step. Neither encryption or bowing before tech giants to “save us” from government surveillance will solve anything. In the end, what happens now, in regards of the massive U$ surveillance apparatus, is up to us.
Notes
[1] As the Wikipedia page on the subject notes, it has been increasingly used by the orange menace’s supporters. Beyond this, see these articles as testament to how this term has seeped into the “mainstream”: Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, “As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2017; Ed Rogers, “The ‘deep state’ is real. The ‘alt right’ is fake,” Washington Post opinions, Feb. 21, 2017; Moyers & Company, “The Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight,” Feb. 21, 2014; Tim Naftali, “”Deep State” myth won’t fix wiretapping mess,” CNN opinions, Mar. 17, 2017; Glenn Greenwald, “The Deep State Goes to War With President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer,” The Intercept, Jan. 11, 2017; Greg Grandin, “What Is the Deep State?,” The Nation, Feb. 17, 2017; Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, “Why Steve Bannon Wants You to Believe in the Deep State,” Politico, Mar. 21, 2017; Anne O’Donnell, “The Bolsheviks Versus the Deep State,” New York Times opinion, Mar. 27, 2017; NPR, “With Intelligence Leaks, The ‘Deep State’ Resurfaces,” Feb. 19, 2017; Doyle McManus, “Op-Ed: Is the ‘deep state’ out to get Trump? We’re not there yet,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2017; Neil Munro, “Bill Kristol Backs ‘Deep State’ over President Trump, Republican Government,” Breitbart, Feb. 15, 2017; Philip Giraldi, “Deep State America,” The American Conservative, July 30, 2015; Rod Drehler, “The Deep State,” The American Conservative, Feb. 28, 2014; Marc Anbinder, “Trump Is Showing How the Deep State Really Works,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 15, 2017; Joel P. Pollak, “Deep State #Resistance: Spies Withhold Intel from Trump, Says WSJ,” Breitbart, Feb. 15, 2017; Steven A. Cook, “The Deep State Comes to America,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 24, 2017; Finian Cunningham, “‘Deep State’ wins… Trump is being tamed to toe the line,” Russia Today, Jan. 12, 2017; Ishaan Tharoor, “Is Trump fighting the ‘deep state’ or creating his own?,” Washington Post opinions, Feb. 1, 2017; Andrew Napolitano, “Revenge of the Deep State,” Reason, Feb. 23, 2017; Hunter Schwartz, “What’s a ‘Deep State’ and why is it a new buzzword for the online right?,” CNN opinions, Mar. 11, 2017; Democracy Now!, “Greenwald: Empowering the “Deep State” to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy,” Feb. 16, 2017; Matt Wilstein, “Stephen Colbert Mocks Trump Administration’s ‘Deep State’ Paranoia,” The Daily Beast, Mar. 21, 2017; Chris Stirewalt, “Trump knocks down ‘Deep State’ claims,” Fox News, Feb. 16, 2017; Alastair Cooke, “‘Deep State’ Has Trump on the Menu,” Consortium News, Feb. 17, 2017; John R. Schindler, “Rebellion Brews in Washington—But American ‘Deep State’ Is Only a Myth,” Observer, Feb. 22, 2017; Alana Abramson, “President Trump’s Allies Keep Talking About the ‘Deep State.’ What’s That?,” Time, Mar. 8, 2017; Patrick Buchanan, “The Deep State Targets Trump,” Real Clear Politics, Feb. 17, 2017; Joe Blistein, “Watch Samantha Bee Skewer Trump’s ‘Deep State’ Fears,” Rolling Stone, Mar. 16, 2017; David Remnick, “There Is No Deep State,” New Yorker, Mar. 20, 2017; Danielle Ryan, “Is Michael Flynn the first casualty of a “deep state” coup? It’s not unthinkable,” Salon, Feb. 16, 2017; Elias Isquith, “Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”,” Salon, Jan. 5, 2016; Washington’s Blog, “The Deep State,” Mar. 3, 2014; David A. Graham, “There Is No American ‘Deep State’,” The Atlantic, Feb. 20, 2017; Loren DeJonge Schulman, “The Deep State Is a Figment of Steve Bannon’s Imagination,” Politico, Mar. 9, 2017; Shadi Hamid, “The American ‘Deep State,’ as a Trump Voter Might See It,” The Atlantic, Mar. 7, 2017; Justin Raimondo, “A Win for the Deep State,” Antiwar.com, Feb. 15, 2017; Emily Jane Fox, “Trump’s Soviet-Style Plan to Create His Own Deep State,” Vanity Fair, Mar. 20, 2017; Patrick J. Buchanan, “The deep state targets Trump,” World Net Daily (WND), Feb. 16, 2017; Jeet Heer, “Donald Trump Can Do a Lot With the “Deep State”,” The New Republic, Feb. 22, 2017; Sarah Childress, “The Deep State: How Egypt’s Shadow State Won Out,” PBS, Sept. 27, 2013; Mike Lofgren, “The Deep State 2.0,” Common Dreams, Mar. 4, 2017; F.H. Buckley, “Trump’s threat to the liberal ‘deep state’,” New York Post, Jan. 17, 2017; Kevin D. Williamson, “The Right discovers the ‘Deep State,'” National Review, Mar. 12, 2017; Peter Dale Scott, “The “Deep State” behind U.S. democracy,” Voltaire Network, Apr. 6, 2011.
[2] I’m referring to David “Dave” Foreman, a former Earth First! founder, here, quoted in Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin & Dave Foreman (ed. Steve Chase, Boston: South End Press, 1991), 44, 67. He had (and still has) some strong anti-immigrant views, there is no doubt about it. Also quoted in that book is problematic former anarchist Murray Bookchin.
[3] Fareed Zakaria, “Fareed Zakaria: Why Edward Snowden should agree to stand trial in the U.S.,” Washington Post, October 23, 2014.
[4] For information used here, see documents used in Glenn Greenwald’s new book shown in a 108 page PDF, and numerous other sources: Russ Tice, “NSA Recording All International Calls From U.S.,” March 17, 2014; TRNN, “U.S. Army to Test Blimps With Capacity to Surveil East Coast,” January 28, 2014; Michael Rattner, “Where’s the Outrage Over Spying on Muslim Civil Rights Leaders?,” July 10, 2014; Glenn Greenwald, “The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations,” The Intercept, Sept. 15, 2014; Ryan Gallagher, “The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google,” The Intercept, Aug. 25, 2014; Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, “The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police,” The Intercept, July 25, 2014; Glenn Greenwald, “Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack,” The Intercept, Aug. 4, 2014; Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, “Watch Commander: Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers,” The Intercept, Aug. 5, 2014; Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher, “How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware,” The Intercept, March 12, 2014; Dam Froomkin, “Calls for Brennan’s Ouster Emerge Along With Details of CIA Search of Senate Computers,” The Intercept, March 12, 2014; Dan Novack, “DOJ Still Ducking Scrutiny After Misleading Supreme Court on Surveillance,” The Intercept, February 26, 2014; Ryan Gallagher, “How Secret Partners Expand NSA’s Surveillance Dragnet,” The Intercept, June 18, 2014; Ryan Gallagher, “Der Spiegel: NSA Put Merkel on List of 122 Targeted Leaders,” The Intercept, March 29, 2014; Dam Froomkin, “Reports of the Death of a National License-Plate Tracking Database Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” The Intercept, March 17, 2014; Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman, “NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama,” The Guardian, June 27, 2013; Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman, “How the NSA is still harvesting your online data,” The Guardian, June 27, 2013; Ewan MacAskill and Julian Borger, “New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies,” The Guardian, June 30, 2013; Glenn Greenwald, Ewan MacAskill, Laura Poitras, Spencer Ackerman, and Dominic Rushe, “Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages,” The Guardian, July 12, 2013; Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger, “Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ,” The Guardian, Aug. 1, 2013; James Ball and Spencer Ackerman, “NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens’ emails and phone calls,” The Guardian, Aug. 9, 2013; Ewan MacAskill, “NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies,” The Guardian, Aug. 23, 2013; Spencer Ackerman, “US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency’s top lawyer insists,” The Guardian, March 19, 2014; James Ball, Julian Borger, and Glenn Greenwald, “Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security,” The Guardian, Sept. 6, 2013; James Ball, Bruce Schneier, and Glenn Greenwald, “NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users,” The Guardian, Oct. 4, 2013; Glenn Greenwald and James Ball, “The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant,” The Guardian, June 20, 2013; Jason Burke, “NSA spied on Indian embassy and UN mission, Edward Snowden files reveal,” The Guardian, Sept. 25, 2013; Wikipedia, “Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats”; Ian Trayor, Philip Oltermann, and Paul Lewis, “Angela Merkel’s call to Obama: are you bugging my mobile phone?,” The Guardian, Oct. 24, 2013; James Ball, “NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts,” The Guardian, Oct. 25, 2013; Alex Hern, “US government increases funding for Tor, giving $1.8m in 2013,” The Guardian, July 29, 2014; Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill, “NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel,” The Guardian, Sept. 11, 2013; Associated Press, “NSA intercepts: ordinary internet users ‘far outnumbered’ legal targets,” The Guardian, July 6, 2014; Spencer Ackerman, “NSA searched data troves for 198 ‘identifiers’ of Americans’ information,” The Guardian, June 30, 2014; Spencer Ackerman, “NSA queried phone records of just 248 people despite massive data sweep,” The Guardian, June 27, 2014; Juliette Garside, “Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance,” The Guardian, June 5, 2014; Jason Leopold, “Top NSA officials struggled over surge in Foia requests, emails reveal,” The Guardian, May 29, 2014; Matthew Weaver, “US intercepts Moscow’s calls to spies in Ukraine, report says,” The Guardian, April 30, 2014; Luke Harding, “Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers,” The Guardian, April 8, 2014; Martin Pangelly, “NSA targeted Chinese telecoms giant Huawei – report,” The Guardian, March 22, 2014; Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, “Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ,” The Guardian, February 28, 2014; John Vidal and Suzanne Goldenberg, “Snowden revelations of NSA spying on Copenhagen climate talks spark anger,” The Guardian, January 30, 2014; James Ball, “Angry Birds and ‘leaky’ phone apps targeted by NSA and GCHQ for user data,” The Guardian, January 28, 2014; Nafeez Ahmed, “Are you opposed to fracking? Then you might just be a terrorist,” The Guardian, January 21, 2014; Dominic Rushe, “Apple insists it did not work with NSA to create iPhone backdoor program,” The Guardian, December 31, 2013; Paul Lewis and Philip Oltermann, “Angela Merkel denied access to her NSA file,” The Guardian, April 10, 2014; Spencer Ackermann, “NSA keeps low profile at hacker conventions despite past appearances,” The Guardian, July 31, 2014; Lisa Graves, “How the Government Targeted Occupy,” In These Times, May 21, 2013; David Kravets, “FBI Admits It Surveils U.S. With Drones,” Wired magazine, June 6, 2013; Brian Zick, “”Illegal Use of Space-Based Satellites and Systems to Spy On U.S. Citizens,”” In These Times, May 12, 2006; Cole Stangler, “Tar Sands Drones Are On Their Way,” In These Times, Aug. 22, 2013; Kristie Reilly, “Warning! You Are Being Watched,” In These Times, Sept. 19, 2003; Ron Nixon, “U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement,” New York Times, July 3, 2013; Wikipedia, “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking“; Jesus Diaz, “Imagine the US Postal Service Opened, Scanned, and Emailed All Your Letters,” Gizmodo, April 2, 2010; Bruce Schneider, “The FBI Might Do More Domestic Surveillance than the NSA,” 2013; Ryan Singel, “Point, Click … Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates,” Wired magazine, July 28, 2007; Brian Beutler, “Inside the Shadow Factory,” In These Times, Dec. 18, 2008; Susan J. Douglas, “Information Highway Robbery,” In These Times, May 28, 2014; Wikipedia, “Magic Lantern (software)“; Wikipedia, “Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier“; Why NSA Surveillance Should Alarm Labor,” In These Times, July 24, 2013; Van Badham, “Governments are spying on our sexual lives. Will we tolerate it?,” The Guardian, Mar. 5, 2014; Alex Hern, “Phone call metadata does betray sensitive details about your life – study,” The Guardian, Mar. 13, 2014; Trevor Timm, “The US government doesn’t want you to know how the cops are tracking you,” The Guardian, June 14, 2014; Anthony Loewenstein, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control,” The Guardian, July 10, 2014; Josh Levy, “For Communities Of Color, Mass Surveillance Is All Too Familiar,” Talking Points Memo, Nov. 5, 2013; Kirk Wiebe, “NSA Whistleblower: USA Freedom Act Will Not Go Far Enough To Protect Civil Liberties,” The Real News, Feb. 10, 2014; Ana Marie Cox, “Who should we fear more with our data: the government or companies?,” The Guardian, Jan. 20, 2014; Charles Arthur, “Google’s Eric Schmidt denies knowledge of NSA data tapping of firm,” The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2014; Arun Kundnani, “No NSA reform can fix the American Islamophobic surveillance complex,” The Guardian, Mar. 28, 2014; Nafeez Ahmed, “Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown,” The Guardian, June 12, 2014; Ray McGovern, “McGovern: Unconstitutionality of NSA Phone Call Collection is Indisputable,” The Real News, Dec. 16, 2013; Virginia Eubanks, “Want to Predict the Future of Surveillance? Ask Poor Communities,” The American Prospect, Jan. 15, 2014.
[5] These sources are bourgeois liberal individuals, but their analysis is half-decent so it is included here. Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 11; Maureen Webb, Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World (San Francisco: City Lights, 2007), 48, 71-72, 84-85, 101, 194-5, 196, 201, 209, 235, 239-240, 243; Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (New York: Little Brown & Company, 2011), 24, 51, 77, 156, 133, 182, 277; Mark Monmonier, Spying With Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 2, 151-152, 170, 172.
[6] Director of Security to Deputy Director For Central Intelligence, May 11, 1982: “Latin American Pilots Training on Soviet Mig-25 from an article in the Washington Post entitled ‘U.S. Approves Covert Plan In Nicaragua’ by Patrick E. Tyler and Bob Woodward on 10 March 1982”; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD; Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (Vintage Books Edition; New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 167.
[7] CIA, April, 17, 1985: Reprint of “All Things Considered” transcript on “CIA Secrecy”; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD.
[8] George V. Lauder, CIA Director of Public Affairs, to Bob Woodward, Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1986; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD; CIA, Dec. 11. 1986: “Annex: Unauthorized disclosures of Classified Intelligence”; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD. Bok, Secrets, 134, 169; Stephen Hess, “The Greatest Generation.” Whatever Happened to the Washington Reporters, 1978-2012 (Paperback Edition; Washington, D.C.: Brookings Instiution Press, 2013), 11.
[9] See pp. 10, 12, 16-7, 20-1 of Phinney’s thesis.
[10] William J. Casey, Director of the CIA, to Frank Carlucci, Assistant to the President for National Security, Dec. 17, 1986; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD. Note at the end of the letter implies that the letter is not by Casey, but someone who works for Casey, as it says “Bill might not sign these exact words but the problem and specific measures suggested are things he feels very strongly about”; Executive Director of the CIA to Frank Carlucci, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Dec. 18. 1986; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD; Matthew B Kerbel, “The President and the News Media,” CQ Press Guide To The Presidency and the Executive Branch (Fifth Edition, ed. Michael Nelson; Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2013), 1045; Arthur L. Liman, “Implausible Deniability: Why Reagan Was Not Impeached,” Lawyer: A Life of Counsel and Controversy (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), 345; Hedrick Smith, “The Image Game: Scripting the Video Presidency,” The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 437-9, 446.
[11] William M. Baker, CIA Director of Public Affairs, to Judge Webster, Jan. 28, 1988; Electronic Reading Room; CREST: 25-Year Program Archive; CREST; National Archives at College Park, MD. The part of this document cited here is an annex titled the letter from Ambassador Richard Helms on January 22, 1988. While the document says 1987, I think it’s a mistake and they mean 1988.
[12] Wendell Bell, “Some Practical Strategies for Judging Preferable Futures,” Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era: Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society (Volume 2, updated edition; London: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 164; Smith, “The Image Game: Scripting the Video Presidency,” 439.
[13] This was expressed in articles in the New York Times and The Guardian. Obviously, Snowden has more thoughts than this, but these are some of his major reformist views.
[14] In a post on the Reset the Net tumblr blog, he showed that this was not the case, with the full quote which was partially used in The Guardian article:
“Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. That’s why I’m asking you to join me on June 5th for Reset the Net, when people and companies all over the world will come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the mass surveillance programs of any government. …We have the technology, and adopting encryption is the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance. That’s why I am excited for Reset the Net — it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale.”
[15] According to an article in Firedoglake by Kevin Gosztola summarizing Glenn Greenwald’s speech to the Socialism 2013 Conference, he “…expanded the discussion into how private companies are working in concert with the federal government. He characterized this coopeation as “a full-scale merger between the federal government and industry” where the two are “equally important parts” of the surveillance state,” however from this account it seems he focused a lot on government surveillance and very little on corporate surveillance which is tied into government surveillance. What was his solution? Subverting the “radical transparency” of the surveillance state, groups like Anonymous, organizations like WikiLeaks, wanting “holes to be blown in the wall of secrecy” and endorsing “the use of technology that protects the identity of users.” The last endorsement sounds a lot like Reset the Net.
[16] Pariser, The Filter Bubble, 146. One of the best examples of keeping these entities them happy is Google and the CIA both investing in a company called Recorded Future, “which focuses on using data collection to predict future real world events.”
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