Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'

[bemildred]

One day last summer – a short while after Edward Snowden revealed himself as the source behind the momentous leak of classified intelligence – the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger got in touch. Would I write a book on Snowden's story and that of the journalists working with him? The answer, of course, was yes. At this point Snowden was still in Hong Kong. He was in hiding. He had leaked documents that revealed the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent GCHQ were surveilling much of the planet.

Our conversation took place not in Alan's office but in an anonymous sideroom at the Guardian's King's Cross HQ. Was Rusbridger's office bugged? Nobody knew. But given the Guardian's ongoing publication of sensitive stories based on Snowden's files this seemed a reasonable assumption. Britain's spy agencies were good at what they did. Thus the project to chronicle Snowden's story began in an atmosphere of furtiveness. And perhaps mild paranoia.

I was part of a small team that examined Snowden's documents in a secure fourth-floor room overlooking Regent's Canal. Security was tight. Only a few trusted reporters were allowed in. Guards were posted outside. None of the laptops were connected to the internet or any other network. Cleaners were banned. Soon the room grew unkempt. Discarded sandwich packets and dirty coffee cups piled up.

Downing Street's response to Snowden's leak was initially slow – then strident. David Cameron sent his cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood to visit the Guardian. Heywood demanded the return of Snowden's files. And, in passing, suggested the newspaper was now itself under secret observation. "I wonder where our guys are?" he said, gesturing vaguely to the flats opposite. These interactions culminated with the Guardian, under threat of government injunction, smashing up its laptops in an underground carpark as two boffins from GCHQ watched. It was beyond the plot of any thriller.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/20/edward-snowden-files-nsa-gchq-luke-harding

[jsr]

1. Recommend

[delrem]

2. Amazing how intimate our keepers like to be.

I'm such a coward that I prefer to be a regular animal caged at the zoo, rather than one of those so privately and intimately bitch-slapped as the uppity Luke Harding was. I can honestly say that I would not know how to handle that.

I'm getting old, way long and yellow in the tooth, and most of this shit going down is far beyond the most paranoid fantasies of my youth. Heroes like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are so incredibly *young*, and the reality that they absorb, deal in and make radical decisions about isn't something I was trained to understand.

I was trained to understand the abstract, the formalism of Immanuel Kant, the formalism of the Magna Carta, the formalism of ....
I took that formalism absolutely seriously. I studied it like my life depended on it.
So far so good, but I was also conditioned to believe that that kind of formalism, e.g. the kind of formalism that proclaims "The Constitution" and "The Founding Fathers" etc. in big capital letters, has essential and over-riding, future determining and causative meaning. A meaning, an import, a causal factor, that over-rides any other actual physical/political fact, forcing intransigent physical/political fact to bend to reason. I now know that such a belief was just an unsubstantiated "faith".

When I call Manning and Snowden 'heroes', I mean it.

[RobertEarl]

3. Formalism, which leads to voting as the cure

... is proven to be a fallacy these days.

That 'Rules are meant to be broken', is not a part of the formalism of which you speak. Instead it is mere reality, and those with the most cache are those most prone to be able to break the rules and slide.

Meanwhile the poor beggar who steals for his dinner goes in the pokee and the formality of his decline begins therein. OTOH, the bankster who robs the widow now dines at the fanciest and most starred restaurant around.

It is good to see those who once had supreme faith in the formalities saving us, are now come back to earth.

Ukraine is devoid of these formalities and their future now looks less bleak. Such is the way of the world in this 21st century, Hang on, it's gonna be a wild ride.

[delrem]

5. I'm not sure about what you're saying.

The story of Jean Valjean was part of my early primary school learning and that lesson isn't, by some degrees, applicable to the issue. IMO it's far too simple.

I don't quite know what you mean by "It is good to see those who once had supreme faith in the formalities saving us, are now come back to earth." I have always been "on Earth". From my earliest memories I've been what is loosely called a leftist - I'm an unapologetic bleeding heart. I've weaned myself on leftist literature, feminist literature, liberation literature. I hope you don't think that I hold those works in disrespect.

[cprise]

6. I'm not sure its 'formalism' if the terms cannot be

...adjusted according to new data; Its blind conservatism.

Which reminds me of a Dick Cheney quote from right after 9-11... "We are no longer a nation of laws but a nation of men". He didn't care for formalities, either.

[delrem]

11. By its very nature formalism is general, allowing input of various "data" .

insofar as the "data" is consistent. Insofar as substitutions can be made.

A formal principle of politics/ethics like "every person ought to be treated equally before the law" isn't something that can be 'adjusted according as new data'; and the fact that it can't be altered at the whim of politicians citing this example or that doesn't make the notion one of "blind conservatism".

There's a different dynamic going on.

The relationship between "raw data" and "the principle of equality before the law" isn't one where either determines the other. We know that situations change, that "raw data" changes. The US had slave states before the civil war. Yet at the same time, the US proudly proclaimed a principle of equality which (the whole world now recognizes) contradicted that idea. So how did the (free) populace square that circle? It redefined terms describing the "data" - it redefined the enslaved to be non-people, and by redefining the enslaved to be non-people the (free) populace narrowed the parameters of what could be substitutable. In that way the (free) population found it could sleep well at night, feel righteous in the morning, and think nothing further about these matters during the coming day.

[bemildred]

4. OK. By paragraph:

I was originally trained as a mathematician, and that still colors all my thinking. But then I went into software, a lot. And anyway, I would not have been much surprised to see what Luke did, it's not that hard to do. And I'd likely respond similarly, something between "so what?" and "please proceed".

Well, I see that the world is changing fast, and change can wear you out after a while. It has me, at times.

And I really hear what you are saying in that 3rd paragraph.

I think they are ordinary guys, though Snowden appears to be pretty sharp. Nothing special going on. But yeah, braver than me, since they had some reason to know what they were going up against. The main thing about Snowden is he really had the right level of cynicism and paranoia about computers and the internet and security. Like you were talking about in the 3rd paragraph. And lucky too, he got help at the right time. I can understand people who find his odyssey suspicious, his access to all that stuff, except I know how sloppy the defense business is, and when it's growing like gangbusters it gets even sloppier.

[woo me with science]

7. Thank you for this post, delrem.

Last edited Fri Feb 21, 2014, 03:05 AM - Edit history (1)

What you wrote resonates deeply with me.

I consider myself in a sort of extended, developing shock from realizing the chasm between the events unfolding around us and what I was conditioned to believe could ever happen in this country and in my lifetime.

I am in awe of their heroism every day.

[cprise]

8. The physical facts were always there, supporting

...this formalism or that. Its not all faith.

The Founding Fathers had a some sense that an Industrial Revolution was about to unfold, for instance. Who needs kings when you've got a confluence of Galileo and the steam engine, and the methods for discovery that produced them?

Even Feminism has a great deal of washing machines, freezers and automobiles setting the stage for it.

Now we are settling in to the ideas and social trends prompted by the info machines.

And the next phase will be about the knock-on effects of sustainable technology (which will hopefully put consumerism to bed).

[delrem]

9. I don't agree with how you order events w.r.t. social/ethical ideas.

"washing machines, freezers and automobiles" didn't set the stage for any idea, least of all those that are expressed in feminist literature.

[cprise]

10. Then what excuses does any parent have

to spend less time at home tending to domestic duties, crops, etc?

A lot of it is based on the technology that affects reproduction and child-rearing. The ultimate justification for Progressivism is that we have this wonderful new, productive gift of science and technology, so there *is* no excuse to make people suffer.

I think that digital activists like Manning and Snowden want these newest machines to stop getting bent toward the interests of control and hierarchy... that the machines should be the 'friend' of everyman.

[delrem]

12. Sorry, I don't know what your argument is.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote tracts on feminism that, in my view, at least equal the depth of Thomas Paine's writings, and I think surpass them. There was no focus on technology. Technology, e.g. the relatively recent advances in the technology of birth control, has an amazing impact on people, but .... it's a category error to imagine that such advances/declines/changes in tech are somehow determinants of political/ethical principle.

In fact that's what my post was trying to say - that I was WRONG to imagine some such causal principle at work (except my error was in the diametrically opposite direction).

[sabrina 1]

13. Good post. I suppose heroes are always treated badly in the beginning. The world is in turmoil

there are bad things happening everywhere and we seem to be almost always involved somehow. But then there are the brave souls, as there are always are, and they are always few, who see bad things happening and decide to risk everything to expose them.

They really are heroes and we owe them at the very least, our support.