In an interesting piece on Monday, Bloomberg.com rightly notes that Snowden’s location and motives shouldn’t distract attention from “what really matters.”
“What really matters” being — according to Bloomberg — the growing U.S. “security apparatus,” the “unprecedented scale” at which the U.S. government is monitoring its citizens, and other alleged problems with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Bloomberg piece also raises questions as to “what exactly it is about the U.S.’s treatment of its citizens that is so noxious.”
Finally, the piece notes:
Even more important, though, is that Snowden’s revelations have thrown a spotlight on a balance between security and liberty that the government has been striking largely in secret. Snowden started a debate Obama now says he wants. So do we. That’s the discussion that counts.
This author totally agrees that the debate started by Snowden’s actions is welcome, timely and necessary.
However, in doing so, the media — and I don’t have any pretenses of being part of that group — must not feel muzzled or intimidated into ignoring relevant aspects of Mr. Snowden’s background, motivation, whereabouts or intentions.
If members of the media felt so, the New York Times would not have published an intriguing piece on what may be a very interesting part of Mr. Snowden’s background — a piece that some may call a hatchet job or pure speculation, but one that New York Times journalists feel is relevant.
The Times article starts as follows:
Just four years before Edward J. Snowden set off an international firestorm by disclosing highly classified National Security Agency documents, someone using his screen name expressed outrage at government officials who leaked information to the news media, telling a friend in an Internet chat that leakers “should be shot,” according to chat logs made public on Wednesday by the technology news Web site Ars Technica, which hosted the exchanges.
“They’re just like WikiLeaks,” Mr. Snowden — or someone identified as him from his screen name and other details — wrote in January 2009 about an article in The New York Times on secret exchanges between Israel and the United States about Iran’s nuclear program.
His unidentified interlocutor replied, “They’re just reporting, dude.”
But Mr. Snowden was not mollified. “They’re reporting classified” material, he wrote, suggesting that both the leak and the article were dangerous to national security. “Those people should be shot” in their private parts.
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