Reform Government Surveillance

I was born during the Cold War and I don't see it that way. In fact, I think you have it precisely backwards.

I remember being alive when the USSR and East Germany were going concerns, and those countries seemed so horrible -- the USA really was on what any sane person (by my definition) would describe as the right side of that struggle.

Living under constant surveillance, scared to speak out even in private, corruption and bad pretense in place of the rule of law? Those things were horrible, and living under such a regime sounded unimaginably awful.

Fast forward some decades and here comes Snowden. That shit really resonated with me and virtually all friends of my age (39).

America is becoming that kind of place. Most of us had a creepy feeling that was happening after the G. W. Bush debacle, but Snowden proved it.

It's the same fucking fight, man: the fight for freedom. The fight for human rights and a non-dystopian future for our children.

The Cold War resonates, but in exactly the opposite of what you describe. We've got all that shit now: hyper-surveillance, secret and therefore meaningless 'laws', kidnapping, torture, America has fucking gulags now. The difference between us and East Germany is now mainly a matter of scale. But as Snowden showed, we were scaling up pretty fucking fast.

Snowden blew the lid off of it, he exposed the massive scale of it, and then he was literally running for his fucking life like some kind of Jason Bourne figure. He had a massive, ruthless security apparatus chasing him, willing do who knows what, and if they caught him it meant he was going to be tortured in solitary confinement for the rest of his life like Bradley Manning.

Nobody in their right mind would begrudge him from going any fucking place he had to in order to escape that.

And to my Cold War-shaped mind, it is impossible to think of him as anything other than a whistleblower that this country badly, badly needed.

(i) when the government failed to give Bradley Manning due process, they forfeited the moral right to criticize Snowden for fleeing. Daniel Ellsberg is in a better position to comment on this than just about anyone else; here's what he said (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-07/opinions/40427... ):

"Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.

There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to 'incapacitate me totally').

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as 'cruel, inhuman and degrading.' (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)

Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts."

(ii) when they forced down the Bolivian presidential plane, they forfeited the moral right to criticize Snowden for staying in Russia.

Therefore it is up to technology and service providers to secure their customers against any and all snooping.

The idea that surveillance can be "reformed" is unworkable, unrealistic.