Published time: June 12, 2013 04:29
It will be up to brave young people like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning to stop invasive surveillance and government abuse, Michael Ratner, an attorney for Julian Assange and the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told RT.
RT: Tell us more about Edward Snowden’s position
then — we know an investigation has been launched — is the US
government simply going to throw the book at him?
Michael Ratner: I
think there’s no doubt about it — what it’s done with every
whistleblower, every truth-teller, is tried to throw the book at
them. The Bradley Manning trial — he is of course the young
soldier who revealed all of the Iraq War logs, the Collateral
Murder video — he’s facing life in prison. Even after pleading
guilty to 20 years, they want to go for life. That trial is going
on right now.
My client, Julian Assange, I think it’s likely there’s an
indictment. He is sitting in the Ecuador embassy, having been
granted political asylum, afraid very much of eventually getting
a one-way ticket to some prison in the United States. Jeremy
Hammond, a young whistleblower, was forced to admit hacking into
private intelligence company Stratford – otherwise he was facing
life in prison. So now with Snowden, I don’t think there’s any
question that this country will want to hit him with a
sledgehammer.
RT: Let me just ask — this prism surveillance
program has caused fury across the Atlantic, with EU leaders
demanding answers from President Obama. How justified is this
anger?
MR: Snowden has revealed what we have thought for a
long time – that everything we do — from every phone call I make,
to every time I use Google to the internet, every single thing is
surveilled by this country under its very programs. And every
time I make a call to a foreign program it’s surveilled. It’s
interesting to see Europe getting slightly upset because of
course their intelligence relationship is like hand in glove —
it’s not like the US doesn’t share and work with the UK, other
countries in Europe on this intelligence. So it’s a little bit
like saying ‘well, let’s let the US deal with it — we’re going to
try and step away a bit,’ when I don’t think they can step away
very much. They’re deeply implicated, I think, in this whole
program.
RT: Despite an administration-led crackdown on
whistleblowers, these leaks keep coming don’t they? — What’s
behind this?
MR: This shows you how bad the situation is, and how
much courage these people have — after the US hit these people
with sledgehammers — Manning, Assange, Hammond, you still get
people like Edward Snowden coming out. So it indicates that
there’s a tremendous amount of courage of young people to try and
reveal the criminality and the surveillance and the state that we
have here. The US — what it’s doing, is not working, and I expect
there’s going to be more. They’ve hired thousands — tens of
thousands of young people into this network of theirs – their
surveillance network — and a lot of these young people have
consciences. It still takes courage once you have conscience, but
we’re seeing that happen now — this isn’t going to be stopped —
it’s very important, because we don’t want to have a massive
surveillance state, where everything we do —everything I do- is
recorded. If I want to do a demonstration in the square next to
me — I’ll call my friends; I’ll come out to the demonstration,
the government right now will know everything I do, and will make
its efforts to monitor or stop it — we don’t want that kind of
concrete. — Snowdon, Manning, Assange, Hammond — they’re are all
heroes.
RT: Snowden has exposed information about programs
that the authorities claim are legal and help protect the nation
— don’t they have a point?
MR: The legal part is no point at all — the legal
part has to do with laws that this country passed post-9/11 in
particular, courts that are essentially hand-picked and decide to
uphold those, and a President who is willing apparently to
approve this massive surveillance scheme. You can have unjust
laws, and that’s what we have when it comes to surveillance. And
the broader issue — does it really prevent anything? Well, I
think they’re going to use that as an excuse. Terrorism is not
the biggest problem in the United States. Of course, the
uncontrolled use of guns in the US — many more people — I mean,
ten times, a hundred times the number of people are killed by
that than by terrorism. I think that terrorism is used as an
excuse to be able to surveil — and keep tabs on every single
American to prevent a change in government, to prevent really
progressive government, progressive organizing and other people
coming out onto the streets, and this is not about our safety,
not at all.
This article originally appeared on: RT