Governing in the Dark

[unhappycamper]

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19614-governing-in-the-dark



The NSA scandal isn't going away, and each leak tears a bigger hole in our current governing structure, says Gautney.

Governing in the Dark
Saturday, 02 November 2013 00:00
By Heather Gautney, Truthout | Op-Ed

Obamacare may have sucked much of the air out of the room over the past few weeks, but to the chagrin of the White House, the NSA scandal is not going away so easily. Since June, each new leak has outdone the other in tearing at the fabric of the president's legitimacy. Last week, it was the NSA spying on Mexican President Felipe Calderon; this week, the wiretapping of 70 million French and the cellphone of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. And, according to Glenn Greenwald, Snowden's trusted messenger, "the worst is yet to come."

By now, most people know who Edward Snowden is - the 30-year-old computer geek who leaked mounds of top-secret information on NSA surveillance programs - implicating not only the US and British governments, but also leading telco and high-tech companies like Verizon and Facebook.

Snowden's leaks came on the heels of Chelsea Manning's disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to the website Wikileaks - the notorious leaker dropbox that publishes source material, aimed at bringing "the unvarnished truth" to the world public. Manning, an Army intelligence "information groomer," was deeply troubled by what she described as American foreign policy bent on "killing and capturing people," including the intentional murder of Iraqi children and civilians. Things that would deeply trouble any one of us.

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In interview after interview, Snowden has stated that he "acted in the public interest" and took strict precautions with his data. By sparking a debate, he reasoned, the public would be better capacitated to make informed decisions about which freedoms they'd willingly trade off for national security. Manning too described herself as a "transparency advocate," fighting for the public's right to know and ability to decide. Assange's Wikileaks was positioned similarly - as an agent of freedom of speech and a crucial check on governments. A "lights on, rats out" operation, as Assange so irreverently put it.