A bit from the Guardian that struck me:
When Snowden disclosed the existence of the NSA's Bullrun programme we learned that NSA had lied for years to the financiers who believe themselves entitled to the truth from the government they own. The NSA had . . . subverted technical standards, attempting to break the encryption that holds the global financial industry together. . . .
Part I: Westward the Course of Empire begins with more familiarity with the details of the decline of the Roman empire than I am afraid I have retained, or, indeed, was ever exposed to.
Edward Snowden committed espionage on behalf of the human race. Knowing the price, knowing the reason, knowing that it wouldn't be up to him whether sacrificing his life was worth it. So I would think that our most important effort, first, is to understand the message: to understand its context, to understand its purpose, to know its meaning, and to experience the consequences of having received the communication. Others will of course regard the first imperative as being to eliminate the message, and the messenger, and the meaning: to render everything as invisible as possible. Because invisibility is where listeners have to live in order to work. But I think we must let them go about that business. We must let them try to obliterate the message as best they can, and do our work, which is the work of understanding first.This struck me because I have wished to interject something like this each time the water cooler is roiled with the artificial debate of partisans ranting past one another, or to challenge some mouthpiece of surveillance --who again and again deflect, asserting certain journalists' (and former agency insiders') characterizations of programs described by leaked documents are errant, and that we should address the real ongoing programs and view such documents with due regard for context -- to produce that context, forthrightly, together with sufficient evidence to support the veracity of such information proffered by parties who have squandered their credibility through the consistent disclosures of their consistent earlier lies. Mr. Hayden and his ilk cannot in honest debate defer open examination of the parameters of surveillance programs on grounds that we should all be able to talk with particularity about the same real programs and activities, while failing to disclose (and continuing to otherwise prevaricate and mischaracterize) such relevant facts concerning such programs as are within his cognizance. Until such a time, the documents sure appear to speak for themselves, and are, nevertheless, the best available information.
Watch here. Listen here.
Part II: Oh, Freedom considers two constitutional traditions of resistance, arising out of the founding narrative of liberty and subsequent history of slavery leading eventually to the abolition of chattel slavery and the political and social enfranchisement of its former objects.
For analytical purposes let us take this word "privacy," that we are growing accustomed to using quite freely, and see what it really is. Privacy—as we use the word in our conversations now all around the world, and particularly when we talk about the net— really means three things. The first is secrecy, which our ability to keep messages "private," so that their content is known only to those who we intend to receive them. The second is anonymity, which is our ability to keep our messages—even when their content is open—obscure as to who has published them and who is receiving them. It is very important that anonymity is an interest we can have in both our publishing and our reading. The third is autonomy, which is our ability to make our life decisions free any force which has violated our secrecy or our anonymity. These three are the principle components of the mixture that we call "privacy". With respect to each, further consideration shows that it is a precondition to the order that we call "democracy", "ordered liberty", "self-government", to the particular scheme that we call in the United States "constitutional freedom."Mr. Moglen also addresses two common responses to the scope of the revealed programs: the "it's hopeless" and the "if you're doing nothing wrong -" tropes, the latter of which he answers with
If we are not doing anything wrong. then we have a right to resist. If we are not doing anything wrong, then we have a right to do everything we can to maintain the traditional balance between us and power that is listening. We have a right to be obscure. We have a right to mumble. We have a right to speak languages they do not get. We have a right to meet when and where and how we please so as to evade the paddy rollers.watch or here/listen
Part III: The Union, May it Be Preserved presents the present privacy crisis, "government abuse of the systems of surveillance and listening" deployed by "those who wish to earn off you" -- Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and the like -- and adopted by we the statistical datasets,
this form of pervasive spying on societies which has come into existence, results from a larger environmental and ecological crisis brought on by industrial overreaching. It is not the first, the last, or the most serious of the various forms of environmental crisis brought on in the last two centuries by industrial overreaching. Industrial overreaching has begun to modify the climate of the whole earth in unexpected and damaging ways. Against that enormity this is merely an ecological disaster threatening the survival of democracy. So we need to understand the ecological harm done underneath, before we can begin to restrict the listening of government to its appropriate sphere, and abate those violations of the constitution. . . .With an ecological framework, he proposes an environmental law approach to questions of privacy in the, ahem, private sector. Also:
The anonymity of reading is the central, fundamental guarantor of freedom of the mind. Without anonymity in reading there is no freedom of the mind. Indeed, there is literally slavery.watch/listen
Part IV: Freedom's Future
I haven't made it to the fourth part yet to poach passages. Not sure what will happen, but hopefully that sense of hope described in Part II will be transmitted. Also, it is certain to be as deep, informative and thoughtful.
watch/listen