Hounding Snowden

Hype surrounding the “escape” of whistle-blower Edward Snowden is covering up the real scandal: Widespread communications spying by the United States and Great Britain.

“Where is Snowden?” The question is omnipresent in the forest of both print and digital newspapers. The German Press Agency knows an espionage thriller when it sees one. The odyssey of the 30-year-old American Edward Snowden is now being described as his “escape.” Media hype has engulfed a man who apparently has to go into hiding—that is to say, if he were a criminal. But what outwardly looks like a James Bond movie screening is covering over the real problem.

Security advisor Edward Snowden informed the world about the widespread spying operations carried out by the United States and Great Britain. He revealed the millions of instances of abuse of citizens’ privacy by governmental snooping programs that had long since been given free rein and hidden from public scrutiny. Snowden revealed that Great Britain had spied on high-level delegations of supposed allies like South Africa and that the U.S. intelligence had hacked into Chinese research networks. That’s why his nation’s now-exposed government wants him arrested and why it pursues him as if he were a common criminal. The fact that Snowden isn’t a criminal can be shown relatively easily. No international warrant has been filed against him with Interpol because his “crime”—namely exposing governmental tyranny—isn’t considered a crime by the global community. That’s true even if Snowden did, in fact, accept his job intending to reveal the extent of the spying going on.

The ill-defined “consequences” with which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made his energetic but vague threats in demanding Hong Kong return Snowden were doomed to failure because the underlying extradition treaty between the two nations excludes political refugees. The “American dissident” Snowden—as the Russian media has since tagged him—falls indisputably into that category. Snowden is currently staying in the transit area of Russia’s Sheremetyevo Airport and the U.S. has no extradition agreement with Russia. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been residing in Ecuador’s Embassy in London and Ecuador is currently reviewing Snowden’s request for asylum there. The U.S. response to Ecuador hasn’t consisted of negotiations but threats. Anonymous U.S. government officials have been subtly referring to the approval of upcoming tariff extension preferences for Ecuadorian products.

In this way, the real anti-freedom criminals get themselves out of the line of fire. “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sorts of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded,” Snowden told Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald. He added, “Because even if you’re not doing anything wrong you’re being watched and recorded…You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call.” These are the words that explain why Snowden voluntarily gave up his former well-paid life as a security advisor. The government’s ongoing persecution of him has shown him to be right.