{"id":41110,"date":"2013-06-12T08:27:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T07:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/greenwald-botches-nsa-leak\/41110\/"},"modified":"2013-06-12T08:27:24","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T07:27:24","slug":"greenwald-botches-nsa-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/greenwald-botches-nsa-leak\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenwald Botches NSA Leak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Snowden\u2019s leak of NSA material was not well executed. One of several mistakes was that he sought refuge in Hong Kong, which, as the Times<\/i> argues<\/a>, \u201cis likely to extradite leaker if U.S. asks\u201d. And it\u2019s not as though there weren\u2019t alternatives: Snowden could\u2019ve fled to Latin America, which is exactly where Julian Assange \u201cstrongly advise[s] him to go\u201d. As Assange put it, \u201cLatin America has shown in the past 10 years that it is really pushing forward in human rights. There\u2019s a long tradition of asylum.\u201d Assange is presently being given political asylum in Ecuador\u2019s embassy in London.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also puzzling that one of the journalists whom Snowden contacted about the leak, Glenn Greenwald, did not advise Snowden to forgo Hong Kong in favor of Latin America. Greenwald is a former civil rights litigator turned journalist who writes helpfully and knowledgeably about civil liberties: he can\u2019t plausibly claim ignorance about the fact that Hong Kong typically cooperates with U.S. extradition requests. Having by his own account corresponded with Snowden \u201csince February\u201d, this would\u2019ve given Greenwald plenty of time to research the likelihood that Hong Kong would grant Snowden political asylum. Greenwald even notes that he was \u201cworking with\u201d Snowden \u201clong before anyone spoke to Bart Gellman,\u201d the only other journalist with whom Snowden corresponded. So Greenwald was not short on time to research potential safe havens for Snowden.<\/p>\n

Snowden even informed Greenwald of his intentions to flee the country: as Greenwald recalled<\/a>, \u201cHe sort of said, \u2018My plan is, at some point, go somewhere far away, and I want you to come there and interview me.\u2019\u201d Then would\u2019ve been a good time to exercise some journalistic ethics and see to it that his source would be going to a safe place. Having failed that, he complied with Snowden\u2019s request to publish his name. Now Snowden is in a country that\u2019s likely to extradite him, and he can\u2019t fly somewhere else because the world knows who and where he is.<\/p>\n

When Snowden first contacted Greenwald, Snowden reasonably requested that they communicate using encryption. Greenwald replied<\/a> that he didn\u2019t have encryption software. Snowden graciously sent him a homemade video with instructions on how to install such software, which Greenwald never completed. Irritated, Snowden then moved on to a filmmaker, Laura Poitras, who, when asked<\/a> if she gets a lot of requests to communicate via encrypted methods, said \u201cNo, I don\u2019t.\u201d Presumably neither does Greenwald, which makes it all the more baffling that he didn\u2019t bother to install encryption software per the directions he was so helpfully given.<\/p>\n

To be fair, The Guardian <\/i>is hardly unique in its failure to equip its journalists with encryption software or even knowledge about such tools. As Forbes columnist Andy Greenberg helpfully explains in his recent book, \u201cThis Machine Kills Secrets\u201d, most if not all of the mainstream media fail to have adequate encryption software with which to communicate with potential sources. In most cases, either encryption software is installed lazily\u2013riddled with security holes\u2013or it isn\u2019t installed at all. In contrast, Wikileaks features excellent encryption software along with protocols that very meaningfully protect leakers\u2019 anonymity. As perplexing as Snowden\u2019s choice of refuge is, so too was his choice to submit his leak to The Guardian<\/i> instead of Wikileaks. It\u2019s worth noting that Bradley Manning was caught because of human rather than technological failure. Manning confided his leak in a friend who would later give him the Judas treatment. Wikileaks\u2019 software, based in large part on the Tor anonymity engine, succeeded in concealing Manning\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

Barton Gellman, who scooped<\/a> Greenwald by about twenty minutes, had an interesting explanation for why he decided to publish the story when he did. Though he \u201cwould have been happier to have had a day or two\u201d on the story, he \u201cstarted to hear some footsteps, so I had to move.\u201d The cynicism is astonishing. God forbid The Guardian<\/i> should beat Gellman to the story by 30 minutes or so. If only Gellman\u2019s concern over being the first to break the story was matched by his concern for the source\u2019s safety; Snowden then might not be facing likely extradition, as he is now. When sources are regarded as merely opportunities for career advancement, it\u2019s no wonder there aren\u2019t more people leaking to the press.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear to me which is the greater threat to freedom of the press: cyber surveillance or journalists\u2019 vainglory.<\/p>\n

Ken Klippenstein <\/i><\/b>lives in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, where he edits the left issues journal, whiterosereader.org<\/a> He can be reached at Reader246@gmail.com<\/i><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Snowden\u2019s leak of NSA material was not well executed. One of several mistakes was that he sought refuge in Hong Kong, which, as the Times argues, \u201cis likely to extradite leaker if U.S. asks\u201d. And it\u2019s not as though there weren\u2019t alternatives: Snowden could\u2019ve fled to Latin America, which is exactly where Julian Assange […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}