Yes, Edward Snowden is a whistleblower. Not a traitor, not a spy, and not someone who “…ought to swing from a tall oak tree”. Since the NSA ruling by Judge Richard Leon, I’ve been hearing more of the MSM use the term to describe, or at least pose the question that Snowden is a whistleblower.
Quite a different attitude than when we first learned of Edward Snowden:
A DC district judge ruled yesterday that the NSA’s collection of Americans’ phone records is most likely unconstitutional. This comes right after the outrageous 60 Minutes promotion/propaganda piece for the NSA last Sunday where the viewer was treated to little tidbits about Edward Snowden’s behavior so he comes across as a bit of a weirdo.
Yesterday as I was finishing up a deadline, I noticed this at the Guardian website. The partner of Glenn Greenwald (one of the journalists who broke the Snowden/NSA story) was detained for 9 hours at London’s Heathrow airport. As an American and an editorial cartoonist, this is a very disturbing development. I remember right after 9/11 how ordinary people were detained for weeks without access to legal counsel, all in the name of preventing terrorism threats.
This reinforces one of my biggest fears- that people who criticize the government will be targeted. Every time I’m interviewed I always talk about how we American cartoonists never have to face the types of threats other cartoonists around the world do because we have the First Amendment to protect us. This is the first time I truly feel the situation has changed.
Here’s Glenn’s response and Andrew Sullivan’s piece challenging PM Cameron. Be sure to read the last line; the unfortunate reality is that it’s a question which needs to be asked.
Today a military judge will rule on the Bradley Manning Wikileaks case. If Private Manning is convicted on the “aiding the enemy” charge, he could face life without the chance of parole in a military prison. Regardless if you feel Manning is guilty or innocent, this could have a serious impact on investigative journalism and how much we know about what our government is doing. It’s a big deal.
With the latest developments on Syria and red lines, you might have missed a member of Congress calling for a reporter to be prosecuted for doing his job. Appearing on CNN, Rep. Peter King said that journalists who reported the leaks of the NSA’s surveillance program should be prosecuted. Later on Fox News he singled out the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, claiming that Greenwald would release the names of CIA operatives. Greg Sargent has Greenwald’s response here.
Where to start? It seems like new developments about domestic spying are coming every hour. Before we get ahead of ourselves, here’s a good AP piece which will give you some background about how we got to this point. Glenn Greenwald & Ewen MacAskill from The Guardian broke the story and revealed the identity of the whistleblower, Edward Snowden while Barton Gellman & Laura Poitrus of The Washington Post had the breaking story of the metadata mining program, “PRISM”. Here’s the link to my take on metadata gathering.