By Emily Nelson
It’s been nearly a year since Edward Snowden leaked details about the National Security Agency’s top-secret surveillance program, which some critics have described as a means of spying on the private phone communications of the American people. Now, the infamous whistle-blower is back in the headlines again.
Which argument is true? Has Snowden posed a threat to our national security or is he a hero that refused to sit back and allow the U.S. government to spy on its people? Has he made the world a more “peaceful” place by outing the NSA?
The two news outlets that published numerous stories on Snowden’s NSA whistle blowing, The Guardian and The Washington Post, received journalism’s highest honor in April: the Pulitzer Prize Medal for Public Service. Snowden said in a statement that the award was “vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government”.
Clearly Russia agrees. Not only has Russia granted Snowden asylum there, but its media outlets have even created a namesake award for the U.S. fugitive.
The Moscow Times recently reported that an association of Internet companies has created a new award named after the now infamous former NSA contractor called the Edward Snowden online media award.
Many national security observers have vocalized strong opinions about Snowden, including former Bush administration UN Ambassador John Bolton, who made the controversial comments that Edward Snowden “ought to swing from a tall oak tree.”
Bolton said he stands by this statement. “After prosecution of course. Look he’s confessed to treason,” Bolton said in an interview with me during his February 22 appearance at a Republican fundraiser in Naples, Florida.
Other U.S. officials like former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton find Snowden’s NSA leak and subsequent refuge in Russia as a bit of an oxymoron. Clinton spoke at an event held at the University of Connecticut in late April and when asked about Snowden said, “I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken refuge in Russia, under Putin’s authority.”
It’s not just the Russians or liberal news organizations that are taking Snowden’s side. Several Snowden supporters here at home, including the Libertarian party, believe he is a true American patriot.
Jarred Grifoni is the chairman of the Libertarians of Collier County Florida, which includes Naples Florida where Bolton spoke to a group of Republicans at a Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner, a fundraising event for the GOP. Grifoni organized a group of other Libertarians to hold a protest outside of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Naples where the event was taking place.
“Without Edward Snowden whistle-blowing on these programs, we never would have known the extent of what was going on,” Grifoni told me in an interview while standing with his supporters near the hotel where Bolton was speaking.
He and the other protesters say Bolton’s comments about Snowden are unfounded.
“The threat on our national security is that the fact that the entire American public… all three-hundred-and sixty-some-odd-million of us have been under surveillance,” Grifoni said.
It’s not just the libertarians that are standing up for Snowden. Earlier this year it was widely reported that two Norwegian politicians nominated Snowden for the 2014 Nobel peace prize, stating Snowden “contributed to a more peaceful world order.”
According to Susan Herman, President of the ACLU and Professor at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, New York, both sides of the Snowden debate might be making a mountain out of a molehill. “It’s far from clear whether the mega-surveillance programs and other post-9/11 laws are actually contributing to our safety,” she said in an interview on the Brooklyn Law website.
What is clear is that whether or not Snowden really did pose a threat to our national security, his NSA leak has shed light on a program that was otherwise keeping Americans in the dark. Now that light has been shown, the consequences, or lack there of, remain to be seen.
