A Liberal Moderate's Critique of Snowden and Greenwald. The liberal moderates present themselves as sober analysts striving for objectivity. They're careful to name excesses of the national security state and its critics, but only the latter are subject to scorn, disdain and ad- hominem. Sometimes I wonder if a formal etiquette guide to that effect is tucked into the seatback pouches on the Acela Express. Packer is best understood by beginning here: . Libertarianism has become practically the default position of young people who work in technology, especially the most precocious among them. There's something else I find extraordinary about that passage. Consider the United States since September 1. In this era, when you think of ideologues who verge on rejecting politics, take absolutist positions, and operate in a sealed off environment, do you think of the ideology that gave birth to the Iraq War, torture, classified law, indefinite detention, kill lists, and secret warrantless wiretapping? Do you think of Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, John Brennan and James Clapper? George Packer thinks of libertarianism! And he thinks of Snowden and Greenwald, one of the most consistent voices opposing the conceit that the national security state ought to operate unilaterally, in secret, beyond politics. The biggest factual error in that same Packer excerpt is the suggestion that Snowden, Greenwald and other NSA critics object to . That's why NSA critics tend to invoke the Framers, the Bill of Rights, the Church Committee report, and the widely accepted notion that Americans have a right to privacy, not some manifesto setting forth a new paradigm for a utopian future. Civil libertarians aren't speaking out against . Constitution and existing law. If they're right that tens of millions of Americans were having their rights violated, and that national security state officials were constantly violating the law, Snowden's whistleblowing did far more to bolster the rule of law than to undermine it*, even if his revelation of many classified documents was itself unlawful. In a review of 'No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State,' George Packer, whose best work is superb, makes a number of dubious claims about the subjects under discussion.He seems to agree. Yet he persists in treating Snowden and Greenwald as if they're the threat to the rule of law, partly because Snowden fled rather than facing prison. For Packer, his flight . Say that, rather than turning himself over to police in Birmingham for his lawbreaking, he fled the city and the state under cover of darkness, checked into a hotel room in New York (or even Canada), and started penning letters as a fugitive. Had King made that decision, would Packer excoriate him? Would he regard King as the threat to the rule of law and an unreasonable absolutist rejecting politics? Would he draw equivalences between King's misdeeds and the misdeeds of those seeking his arrest? I predict that Packer's attitude toward Snowden will one day seem as absurd as someone insisting that MLK would be worthy of condemnation if he hadn't gone to jail, or that the activists who stole FBI files proving improper spying. For example, consider this passage: Greenwald believes efforts by the US and British governments to recover leaked documents are illegitimate, because of what those documents revealed. Last August, Greenwald. Miranda was transporting some of the Snowden archive from Berlin, where Poitras lives in self- imposed exile, to Rio, where he and Greenwald live. Terrorism is Terrorism «. In his rebuttal to Glenn Greenwald's critique of the 'terrorism expert industry,' Daniel Trombly profoundly. He points out here Snowden, Assange and Greenwald’s use of outrage to obscure an ideological attack on the democratic state. What is, exactly, the liberal critique of it? My $.02: What LFC said @86, in part, but more. Glenn Greenwald: Fascism’s Fellow Traveller. So what then are we to make of Greenwald’s involvement in the Snowden leak. Lawrence O'Donnell's failure confirmed how difficult it is going to be for conservative or liberal pundits to dismiss Snowden's. And we hear a similar critique of Snowden's actions from. Game of Thrones: Spoiler-y Speculation, Take Two. Spoiler-y Speculation, Take Two. Glenn Greenwald on how the Snowden saga. Focus Analysis The Liberal defection from independent thought, courage and reason. Not that there is any increase in Liberal’s criticisms of their hero (gods forbid!) but the most recent crimes by our. Freedom of Information. Greenwald’s praise for Snowden has at times been unrestrained. A Liberal Moderate's Critique of Snowden and Greenwald. The biggest factual error in that same Packer excerpt is the suggestion that Snowden, Greenwald and other NSA critics object to 'any. Greenwald initially told the press that his partner was being held to intimidate him from continuing his work on the NSA disclosures, but did not mention the purpose of Miranda. Greenwald and Miranda are absolutely right that British authorities used the law disingenuously and improperly. The objection they made was always that the British violated that law, not that Miranda should be beyond all law. In contrast, the British government's position was effectively, . Of course we can seize them. The NSA disclosures are disturbing and even shocking; so is the Obama administration. These are abuses, but they don. A sentence later, Packer acknowledges that Poitras was being harassed at airports because she makes documentaries critical of the U. S. This strange internal contradiction is resolved with the assurance that while these are abuses, they don't reach the level of the Stasi. Who claimed otherwise? Greenwald has written about the possible future abuses mass surveillance makes possible (as Packer points out in the next sentence). What I want to know is why Packer regards the . Will he reconsider his criticism of Greenwald and Snowden if I point out that they're not as bad history's great villains either? Or is the bar only set so low for the state? Stepping back, notice that in the same passage, Packer contrasts the wrongs of Greenwald with the Obama Administration . Like Packer, I don't trust Silicon Valley. Rather, I read The Intercept. Rather than confirming a target. DEA unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. On this topic, Packer has shown himself able to confront neither the relative radicalism and dangerousness of the national security state nor the serial lawlessness of its leaders. The evidence of lawbreaking is right there for all to see. But the moderate liberal is accustom to thinking of people who levy such unpleasant charges as unserious, uncouth sourpusses. The moderate liberal spends more time distancing himself from staunch critics of the state than criticizing powerful people even he believes to be misbehaving.
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