Edward Snowden Deserves a Statue

National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden deserves a statue for revealing the espionage the United States has been conducting. Snowden has uncovered Orwellian surveillance methods of which the Nazis could only have dreamed.

Edward Snowden has done more than anyone to turn our perception of the relationship between government and the people upside down; those who have something to hide are rightly worried about what he is going to reveal next. People have had statues erected in their honor for less.

The most striking cartoon regarding this subject appeared last year in a German magazine. Obama is visiting a group of school children when one of them says to him, “My dad says you can spy on my computer.” Obama replies, “That is not your father.”

Onnogate*

The city council [of Maastricht] decided that the mayor should keep his job, on the basis that even he has a right to a private life. Had the NSA been able to tell them what had really gone on between Onno Hoes’ sheets, might they have reached a different decision? What was beyond the pale, of course, was the behavior of Albert Verlinde. A gossip columnist who tries to cover up his spouse’s extramarital affairs — that is outrageous. Resign!

Thanks to Snowden, the question that will always be in the back of our minds in the future is, “Did the NSA know about this?” It may also become a decisive factor for historians in weighing someone’s import: Was the NSA tapping their phone or not? For Angela Merkel, the answer is yes; for Onno Hoes, it is no. In the Netherlands, Mark Rutte is now waiting nervously for a phone call from the AIVD (the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service).

Intelligence Services

Meanwhile, the AIVD also has a fair amount of explaining to do; its director tried to do just that recently during a news program. Naturally, he assured us that his staff always acts lawfully, that there is little else he can do. Whether he is telling the truth is another question, of course; furthermore, if he is, maybe we should worry about whether some pretty large legal loopholes exist.

He is not the only top official from a security service that has recently found himself having to answer questions in public. His English counterpart preceded him and gave the same kind of assurances. Other countries have not gotten this far yet — and I don’t anticipate it happening anytime soon in Moscow or Beijing.

This, at least, is an advantage of a country like America: At least they get to hear about these things. In dictatorships such as those of Assad or Kim Jong Un, whistle-blowers don’t generally end up on national TV. Hitler’s Gestapo didn’t have to answer any questions until the Nuremberg trials.

“1984”

Snowden, however, has made it clear that Big Brother is watching us, and also that we have come to regard this as normal, just as in Orwell’s famous novel. Recently, a U.S. federal judge even made a statement to this effect. In “1984,” however, it was clear that the citizenry found the permanent presence of cameras in the public and semi-public sphere disturbing, while we, on the other hand, have gotten used to it.

Snowden’s revelations have awoken us to the reality of the insidious process that has been going on: Personal privacy has become completely subordinated to state security. Everything that has become technically possible has actually been done. Fortunately, the Gestapo was only capable of baby steps — the Nazis could barely have dreamt of the resources that the NSA possesses.

What might happen if their contemporary incarnations were to get hold of such means, or if America itself goes completely off the rails? The hysteria about terrorism that followed 9/11 offers us a valuable lesson; it made possible measures that had previously been considered unthinkable. Bin Laden managed to do something neither Hitler nor Stalin could: He led America to take the first steps toward becoming a totalitarian state.

Snowden has given us a wake-up call. He has also revealed, indirectly, the extent to which Europe has cooperated with this. For the sake of economic interests, the European Commission has been too willing to repeatedly share private information about European citizens with Washington. The information that has now come to light has given the European Commission an extra weapon to use to try to stop this from happening again. For that reason alone, Snowden deserves a statue.

Europe

If [Snowden’s] revelations lead Europe to finally draw some boundaries in its dealings with America and cause it to show a greater degree of unity when dealing with other parts of the world (e.g. Moscow), then we will also know where we should erect his statue. It should go in front of the European Council in Brussels, as befits a new European father of the nation. He won’t get it from the VVD (The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), though. It is striking how little this state omnipotence seems to bother “liberals” in the Netherlands. Their mouthpiece, the magazine Elsevier, sees no problem with what is happening; all this spying is being done for our safety, so it’s fine. Secretary of State for Security and Justice Fred Teeven is the greatest security fanatic of all.

Doesn’t something about this attitude seem paradoxical, perhaps even schizophrenic? In almost every sphere the guiding principle is “freedom of the individual,” and in order to achieve this, the state is broken up and the market is given free rein — in effect, this amounts to freedom for corporations and bankers, of course. When it comes to the most fundamental freedom of all, however — freedom for citizens within their own personal sphere — the VVD has no interest at all. They allow the surveillance state to operate with impunity and want the government to be allowed to know everything.

Or is this not really so schizophrenic after all? A lack of privacy does in a certain sense fit perfectly with the neoliberal worldview, in which all social interaction should be commodified. What is good for the economy is good absolutely. Large companies have a right to all potentially useful information because it helps them make profits. From this point of view, privacy is theft, since you are depriving them of data that could help them turn a profit.

*Editor’s note: This refers to a sex scandal in the Netherlands involving Onno Hoes, the mayor of Maastricht, and his husband, the gossip columnist Albert Verlinde.