A question for Glenn Greenwald

I just watched Glenn Greenwald's TED Talks video on Why Privacy Matters. In it, he spent quite a bit of time explaining that the goal of the "surveillance state" is to control the population by generating an assumption that we are being watched.

If that were the case, one has to wonder why NSA took such elaborate measures to keep their programs secret. Shouldn't they have celebrated Snowden's revelations instead? After all, how can we be controlled if we don't know we're being watched?

If I was in the mold of a Glenn Beck conspiracy theorist, I might assume that Greenwald/Snowden are really agents of the surveillance state who's job was to get the word out.

Just saying...

;-)

"If nothing is true, then anything is possible"

When I started reading this article by Peter Pomerantsev,  I thought it would be an interesting explanation of how Putin uses propaganda in Russia. But as I continued to read, I could feel my blood pressure rising as way too much of it began to hit home in terms of our own media. Here are the sections that started to make my hair stand on end.

The new Russia...reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action...

In the philosophy of these political technologists, information precedes essence. “I remember creating the idea of the ‘Putin majority’ and hey, presto, it appeared in real life,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a political technologist who worked on Putin's election campaigns but has since left the Kremlin, told me recently. “Or the idea that ‘there is no alternative to Putin.’ We invented that. And suddenly there really was no alternative.”...

The Kremlin tells its stories well, having mastered the mixture of authoritarianism and entertainment culture. The notion of ‘journalism,’ in the sense of reporting ‘facts’ or ‘truth,’ has been wiped out...

The point of this new propaganda is not to persuade anyone, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted...to leave them confused, paranoid, and passive—living in a Kremlin-controlled virtual reality that can no longer be mediated or debated by any appeal to ‘truth.’

‘‘Huge parts of our population live in a separate reality created by Russian media,” says Raul Rebane, an expert on propaganda in Estonia, where a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian. “This makes consensual politics impossible.”...

“Is there more interest in conspiracy theories because far-right parties are growing, or are far-right parties growing because more conspiracy thinking is being pumped into the information space?” asks Gleb Pavlovsky, a little wickedly.

Long before Pomerantsev mentioned it in this piece, I thought of what Karl Rove (we all know it was him, right?) said to Ron Suskind back in 2004.

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

But of course, its not just the former Bush administration that bears some resemblance to this kind of propaganda. It is spewed every day by Fox News as well as right wing radio and web sites. A short trip to Media Matters or Right Wing Watch will disabuse anyone's doubts about that. What's interesting is that just before I read this article, I saw that someone on my Facebook page had linked to this unbelievable nonsense. It reminds me that there are significant numbers of people who are buying the bullshit!

But then Pomerantsev has the wisdom to recognize that its not just right wing ideologues who peddle propaganda in this country.

In a Prospect magazine review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide, for instance, George Packer writes, “Greenwald has no use for the norms of journalism. He rejects objectivity, as a reality and an ideal.” (Similarly, RT’s managing director once told me that “there is no such thing as objective reporting.”)...The ties that bind Greenwald and the Kremlin consist of more than a shared desire to ensure Edward Snowden’s safety. In some dark, ideological wood, Putin the authoritarian gay-basher and Greenwald the gay, leftist-libertarian meet and agree. And as the consensus for reality-based politics fractures, that space becomes ripe for exploitation.

With all the noise that exists in our media environment today, it can be difficult to find much objectivity and truth. But we've got to keep at it because...

What we've learned from the Snowden revelations: The difference between abuse and the potential for abuse

Much of the heat produced by the Snowden revelations has started to calm down. I thought it might be a good time to take a look at the big picture and see what we've learned.

We've learned a lot about the methods/programs NSA uses to collect information: metadata, PRISM, XKeyscore, etc. Its true that all of them provide fertile ground for the potential of abuse by the government. What we haven't learned about are any actual examples of abuse.

Its true that last August Bart Gellman reported that an internal NSA audit found that there were "thousands of 'incidents' or violations of the rules or court orders" under which the agency operates. But there is a significant difference between operator/typographical/computer errors and abuse. That report contained nothing to document the latter.

Recently Glenn Greenwald attempted to demonstrate abuse by reporting on five Muslim leaders the FBI and NSA spied on. But he failed to provide two pieces of important data that might have indicated there is an actual problem with abuse. First of all, he doesn't know whether or not the court approved warrants for this surveillance and if so, why.

Given that the government’s justifications for subjecting Gill and the other U.S. citizens to surveillance remain classified, it is impossible to know why their emails were monitored, or the extent of the surveillance. It is also unclear under what legal authority it was conducted, whether the men were formally targeted under FISA warrants, and what, if anything, authorities found that permitted them to continue spying on the men for prolonged periods of time.

I almost laughed out loud when I read that first sentence. Here is Greenwald reporting on millions (?) of documents Snowden stole that were formerly classified. And yet he claims that he can't report on the reasons these men were surveilled because that information is classified. IOW, Snowden didn't manage to steal any documents that would tell us why.

Secondly, the spreadsheet Greenwald uses to demonstrate this surveillance indicates that it was terminated for two of the individuals in 2008 and extended for 3 of them about the same time. After that...nothing. So the surveillance he reported on occurred prior to that time (under the Bush administration) and he provided zero evidence that it continued beyond that date. I'll simply note that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended by Congress in July 2008. Whether or not this is why the spreadsheet contains no further information, we don't know. What we can be sure of is that if Snowden's documents contained proof that this surveillance had continued into the Obama administration, Greenwald would certainly have reported that.

In the end I'd suggest that what hasn't been reported is probably more important than what has been. We've just witnessed the biggest breach of national security secrets in our country's history. And after over a year of reporting, we have not seen one case of abuse documented. That's a pretty BFD.

So it is appropriate to question whether or not we are comfortable with the potential for abuse that these NSA programs make possible for future administrations. But other than the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping that was reported by the NYT in 2005 (and ended in 2007), the Snowden documents have provided zero evidence of illegal surveillance or abuse.

Who gets to decide?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is the text of the First Amendment to our Constitution. It clearly states that Congress can't pass laws that interfere with the freedom of the press. And so it has become conventional wisdom in this country that journalists enjoy special privileges against prosecution for the stories they tell and the things they write. The New York Times was never taken to court for publishing the Pentagon Papers. But Daniel Ellsberg faced trail for leaking them to the press.

This issue has resurfaced lately with reporters who play more than a passive role in publishing leaked documents. For example, if Glenn Greenwald is to be believed, Edward Snowden gave him thousands of documents and basically told him "you decide" which one's to make public. It seems to me that blurs the line quite a bit between leaker and journalist.

Of course much of this conversation includes an assumption that there is a clear distinction between journalist and citizen. If journalists are exempt from laws that govern the rest of us, its important to know who is included in that definition. Interestingly enough, it sounds like the courts have made no such distinction.

The Free Press Clause protects the right of individuals to express themselves through publication and dissemination of information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government. This right was described in Branzburg v. Hayes as "a fundamental personal right" that is not confined to newspapers and periodicals.

That's a good thing because these days, anyone with a computer can publish and disseminate information, ideas and opinions. I would suggest that, based on the court's understanding of the First Amendment and current technology, there are no clear lines defining what it means to be a journalist. The New York Times and Glenn Greenwald have no special privileges that aren't available to me publishing here on my little blog.

Apparently Greenwald thinks there is a distinction.

Through all the bombast, Greenwald makes no serious effort to defend as a matter of law the leaking of official secrets to reporters. He merely asserts that “there are both formal and unwritten legal protections offered to journalists that are unavailable to anyone else. While it is considered generally legitimate for a journalist to publish government secrets, for example, that’s not the case for someone acting in any other capacity.”

He's a lawyer and I'm not. So perhaps he is aware of "both formal and unwritten legal protections" that apply to journalists and not the rest of us. But I have a hard time imagining what they'd be.

I'm not saying all this because I think Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing leaked documents. I'll leave that one for others to decide. My concern is that there are very real questions presented by this situation that don't lend themselves to the easy black-and-white answers that Greenwald has a habit of embracing. We should be talking about those questions. The most important one right now is "who gets to decide what information is private/secret and what is made public?" When it comes to making that decision, apparently even Greenwald and Assange don't always agree. But the truth is that - as is the case in that situation - lives are often on the line. All I know is that I don't think the right answer is that anyone with access to a leak and a blog should be able to make that call on their own.

Learning to live with ambiguity

David Cole provides us with a fascinating review of Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide. Here is the money quote:

Part of the problem is that Greenwald sees the world in black and white. As he puts it, “There are, broadly speaking, two choices: obedience to institutional authority or radical dissent from it.” For him there is apparently nothing in between. Anyone who does not share his radical dissent is, therefore, a tool for the political elite.

I have to say that as I pondered that for awhile this morning, I got some fresh eyes about why it is that Greenwald pushes my buttons so effectively. The reality is that the choices he limits us to - obedience or radical dissent - are the two I have spent much of my life trying to avoid.

I've mentioned before that I spent my childhood in a family, church and community that embraced obedience to fundamentalist Christianity. When the cognitive dissonance became too much to bear, I specifically avoided the route that most others had chosen - that of radical dissent. Instead, I started asking hard questions. That's why I've always found Sara Robinson's description of the process of leaving the authoritarian mindset so powerfully affirming.

Internally, it requires sifting through every assumption you've ever made about how the world works, and your place within it; and demands that you finally take the very emotional and intellectual risks that the entire edifice was designed to protect you from. You have to learn, maybe for the first time, to face down fear and live with ambiguity.

Niether obedience nor radical dissent allow for ambiguity. In my experience, they are both boxes we lock ourselves into that give the keys to independent thought away for others to control. Its easier to see how that happens via obedience. But radical dissent locks us in as well. It takes away the option of ever agreeing with someone in a position of power/authority (remember: Greenwald said that he always assumes that people in power are lying).

What keeps us inside those boxes is fear. David Whyte captured what that fear is all about in a poem titled Revelation Must Be Terrible.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
at least we are exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
the first time. No one is
even interested in saving you now

Being "on your own" means deciding for yourself rather than the black and white of obedience or radical dissent. But it also means making peace with yourself (go read the rest of Whyte's poem).

The hard part is that the boundaries of labeling others as heroes or villains are not so clear anymore. You actually have to listen to what they say and decide for yourself whether you agree with them or not.

This is why I find it so fascinating that - just as Greenwald's heroism is being extolled with the release of his book - the same crowd is having a field day demonizing the villain President Obama chose to be his Treasury Secretary (Tim Geithner) on the day his book is released. And what was Geithner's greatest sin? Not villainizing Wall Street sufficiently. When you follow the path of either obedience or radical dissent, your heros and villains are chosen for you. It is imperative that you listen to the former and dismiss the latter. That's what passes for political discourse these days.

I believe that - more than anything else - this is what absolutely confounds people about President Obama. As James Kloppenberg wrote back in 2010:

Obama rejects dogma, embraces uncertainty, and dismisses the fables that often pass for history among partisans on both sides who need heroes and villains, and who resist more-nuanced understandings of the past and the present...

After almost two years as president, Obama has failed to satisfy the left for the same reason that he has antagonized the right. He does not share their self-righteous certainty.

In other words, at some point Barack Obama learned to face the fear and live with ambiguity. As his law school students have said..."he was in the business of complication." That is something that those who are determined to see the world through the black and white lens of obedience vs radical dissent will never be able to comprehend. But it is exactly what is necessary if we are ever going to expand our moral imagination.

Is anyone really interested in NSA reform?

Yesterday I said that one of the best ways to spot fear-based politics was to notice the people who are spreading fear and outrage but not engaged in talking about solutions. Those are the folks that want to tap into your emotions but not your thinking.

Glenn Greenwald got everyone emotionally riled up with all the hysteria he promoted about NSA surveillance. And now President Obama has proposed reforms to the bulk metadata collection program and his Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will shortly be releasing their recommendations for other programs.

But what's even more interesting is that - even as everyone is distracted with talking about the ridiculous House Select Committee to investigate Benghazi - almost no one is paying attention to the scramble in Congress to get an NSA reform bill to the floor of the House. Apparently the rush is fueled by some intramural power games between the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. But whatever the motivation, this "least productive Congress in history" is all of the sudden having an outbreak of bipartisanship. Even if no one is paying any attention to it. Doubt my word about that? Go check out the list of 143 Representatives who have signed on as co-sponsors of the Judiciary Committee's bill. You'll find everyone from the far right to the center-fielders to the far left on the list. Strange brew happening there!

And so, you'd suppose that the "journalist" who started all this would either be patting himself on the back and taking victory laps or knee deep in analyzing it to find out whether or not it addresses the issues he raised. Of course you would be wrong. Greenwald hasn't written a word about it. I'd suggest that tells you all you need to know about him.

P.S. Almost no one in the media is showing much interest in this story. So Glenn isn't the only one. I suspect there's no linkbait available to exploit.

Stuck in Reversal

One of the reasons I wanted to write about the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity is that Bennett noticed an interesting phenomenon that is not often captured in developmental theories, but tends to affect many liberals. As a reminder, here are the stages:

Bennett noticed that sometimes people move out of the "Defense" stage, but instead of progressing to "Minimization," they go into what he calls "Reversal."

A variation on Defense is Reversal, where an adopted culture is experienced as superior to the culture of one’s primary socialization (“going native,” or “passing”). Reversal is like Defense in that it maintains a polarized, “us and them” worldview. It is unlike Defense in that it does not maintain the other culture as a threat...Reversal may masquerade as cultural sensitivity, since it provides a positive experience of a different culture along with seemingly analytical criticisms of one’s own culture. However, the positive experience of the other culture is at an unsophisticated stereotypical level, and the criticism of one’s own culture is usually an internalization of others’ negative stereotypes.

Many of us have experienced this stage at one time or another - or at least have witnessed it when (usually liberals) get so disgusted with the lies they've been told that they reverse course and embrace something that is not their own. But as Bennett says, the "us vs them" way of seeing the world remains intact.

As an example of someone in the Reversal stage, I would point to Glenn Greenwald. Back in 2005, he was firmly planted in the Defense stage - as can be seen by his writing about immigration at the time.

The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known, and it gets worse every day. In short, illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone. Few people dispute this, and yet nothing is done.

If you click on that link, you'll see that Greenwald has added a note to that post denouncing his own views from back then. But instead of moving into minimization and focusing on what cultures have in common, he has continued with an "us vs them" worldview. For Greenwald, the U.S. is the embodiment of the "evil empire." There are some ways that that framework is historically true (slavery, Jim Crowe, Native American genocide, the Monroe Doctrine, covert foreign actions during the Cold War, etc.) But the U.S. is also the home of things like the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Marshall Plan and the Civil Rights Movement.

Greenwald also fails to ever acknowledge the failings of the opponents of the U.S. To do so would mean to actually grapple with a response to terrorism rather than simply paint them all as the innocent victims of our country's policies. It would also mean holding the USSR (as well as the U.S.) responsible for the failings of the Cold War or Russia's politics of demagoguery both at home (LGBT issues) and abroad (Ukraine).

I've used Greenwald as an example. But this way of framing things generally applies to many of the liberals we tend to call "dudebros." It not only informs their view of U.S. politics, but helps us understand why they are so woefully bad at addressing the racial dynamics that are at work in this country. That's because they are still operating out of an ethnocentric perspective.

Far be it from me to prescribe an antidote for these folks. But here's what Bennett said:

The resolution of Defense issues involves recognizing the common humanity of people of other cultures...Facilitators who try to correct the stereotypes of people in Defense are likely to fall prey to the polarized worldview themselves, becoming yet another example of the evils of multiculturalism or globalization. The need here is to establish commonality, not to introduce more sophisticated understanding of difference. When this resolution is accomplished, the stage is set for a move into Minimization.

So if/when a dudebro starts having a kumbaya moment about our common humanity, don't mock him...he's actually making progress ;-)

Why the media didn't fact-check Snowden/Greenwald

I see that Edward Snowden is following the lead of George W. Bush in prematurely claiming Mission Accomplished. Someone might want to tell him that it didn't work out so well for the guy who said that last time. But politicians and pundits from all across the political spectrum are lining up to canonize the guy.

All of this totally ignores some very inconvenient facts related to the lies and misinformation that have been spread by Snowden/Greenwald. I might remind you that one of Snowden's opening statements was that he could wiretap the President's phone from his desk if he wanted to. Not true. There was that whole PRISM thing about "direct access" that turned out to be a hoax. Of course there were also the lies of omission. Like the fact that the Snowdenistas have produced zero "revelations" on the NSA's policies - enforced by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - about the minimization procedures that are in place to protect the privacy of Americans. Then there are all the things we still don't know. Like the fact that Snowden admitted he took the job at Booz Allen specifically to steal information and the questions that raises about when/how he first made contact with Greenwald/Poitras. Or what was the significance of Snowden not only fleeing to Russia, but staying in their embassy while in Hong Kong?

Can you imagine how different this whole story might look if the media ever really looked into all that? It might actually resemble how President Obama talked about it at his end-of-the-year press conference. Heaven forbid!

Based on all this, I went to Politifact to see if they've ever fact-checked Snowden/Greenwald. Oops, they don't do that for "whistleblowers" and journalists...only politicians. When it comes to journalists, Media Matters does an amazing job of fact-checking the right wingers. But we've known since the run-up to the Iraq War that there is precious little fact-checking of the MSM.

Snowden/Greenwald have been able to exploit that opening by fueling the media's love of hysterical accusations and blinding cynicism to produce a narrative that paints Snowden as a hero and NSA as the villain. I don't know about you, but my experience tells me that no story is ever that black and white. Silly me...what kind of linkbait is that going to produce?

Snowden and Manning have cheapened what it means to be a whistleblower (updated)

One of the things that bothers me about the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning episodes is that they have blurred the lines about whistleblowing. As with any act of civil disobedience, it is an important tool for those seeking justice.

That's why I found myself agreeing with some of what Peter Ludlow has written in a NYT op-ed titled The Banality of Systemic Evil. For example:

In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” one of the most poignant and important works of 20th-century philosophy, Hannah Arendt made an observation about what she called “the banality of evil.” One interpretation of this holds that is was not an observation about what a regular guy Adolph Eichmann seemed to be, but rather a statement about what happens when people play their “proper” roles within a system, following proscribed conduct with respect to that system, while remaining blind to the moral consequences of what the system was doing — or at least compartmentalizing and ignoring those consequences.

That reminds me of this Martin Luther King, Jr. quote:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Staying silent in the face of evil is indeed to be complicit.

But nowhere in Ludlow's article does he grapple with the deep moral question of having to isolate what is "evil." Much as Glenn Greenwald simply assumes that anyone in a position of power is lying, Ludlow infers that any bureaucratic system is evil and therefore justifies whistleblowing. When it comes to our government system, you can see how this aligns perfectly with a libertarian view.

Even those who are the loudest critics of Chelsea Manning will note that if she had merely leaked information about malfeasance in Iraq, she would likely be deemed a hero and walk free today. But that's not what she did. She leaked indiscriminately.

When it comes to Edward Snowden, there is even less of a case to be made. To date he has not released anything that points to illegal activities. President Obama has been willing to discuss improvements to NSA surveillance and the administration is busy declassifying at least as many documents as have been leaked so far. The idea that what we are witnessing from this administration falls under the rubric of "the banality of evil" is simply absurd.

Ultimately the job of whistleblower brings with it the responsibility to ask deep moral questions of oneself. To take the easy way out by simply defining every system as evil isn't a moral position - its the abdication that responsibility. Snowden and Manning have cheapened the whole concept of what it means to be a whistleblower. They don't deserve the label.

UPDATE: Just a bit off-topic, but I find this kind of tweet from Greenwald to be fascinating.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, Alice Walker, Shows Support For Edward Snowden http://t.co/BKoPQ0pE9p
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 16, 2013

No one has more respect for Alice Walker than I do. But the implication here is that if Walker supports Snowden, so should I, because nowhere in the article linked is her position explained or justified. Its simply stated. This is solely an appeal to authority from someone who constantly decries authoritarianism. It also suggests that perhaps those in doubt should "blindly" follow those they admire.

Alice Walker's view of Snowden doesn't really affect mine. I chose to look at the evidence and decide for myself. If that means I don't agree with her, so be it. I have as much right to my own opinion as she does. I suspect Alice would support that. Its the non-authoritarian thing to do.

"The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based"

OMG - the NSA can use your smartphone to spy on you! That's the latest revelation from the Snowden files anyway. But amidst all the scaremongering in the article comes this:

The material contains no indications of large-scale spying on smartphone users...

In other words, there's no indication that the NSA actually does use your smartphone to spy on you - but they could...technically!!!

This is a theme that runs through most of the Snowden revelations and its why I used a quote of his as the title for this piece. If you want to know what the NSA can do technically, these leaks have been a treasure trove of information. If you want to know what they actually do based on the policy proscriptions, not so much.

For those who are interested in informing themselves about the policies that limit this kind of thing, there hasn't been much reporting on that in the media. The only place that is happening is with the government's process of declassifying documents that outline those policies/procedures. But as long as the media ignore all that, the general public is simply left with the kind of hyperbole and distortion in the latest "revelation."

The fallacy of transparency in an era of media hyperbole and distortion

When it comes to the debate about NSA surveillance, one of the main issues involved is transparency. President Obama has said that when he took office, his goal was to ensure that there was proper oversight of these intelligence activities by Congress and the Courts. Historically, that had been sufficient given the sensitivity of the work involved.

But now even the President is committed to going beyond that and giving the public as much information as possible about NSA activities and procedures. That is the new standard for transparency being placed on this administration.

The problem, as I see it, is that the American public is pretty dependent on the media to inform them about what is put out there for public consumption. Whether its the hyperbole and lies of omission practiced by people like Glenn Greenwald or what might be understood as lazy journalism by others, its frustrating to watch the story be twisted over and over again - giving the public a distorted view of what is happening. Let me give you an example.

Early on when the NSA story broke this summer, there was lots of talk about a FISA court order ruling that certain elements of the NSA program violated the 4th Amendment. Advocates went to court to get it declassified. Last month it was released. How many people do you suppose actually read it? Yeah, I'm pretty committed to this story, but even I couldn't get through the whole thing. The gist of it was that the court ruled that the minimization procedures NSA was using to protect the privacy of US persons when they collected bulk data from the internet were not sufficient. Here's how Kurt Eichenwald describes minimization.

Now, anyone who discusses this process without also mentioning minimization procedures is also either very uninformed or intentionally hyping the story. Minimization is a term of art in the world of NSA intercepts which essentially means “stay out of American citizen’s business.” If information about specific Americans (or even foreigners inside the United States) is captured, those details must be removed from all records and cannot be shared with any other entity in the government unless it is necessary to understand and interpret related foreign intelligence or to protect lives from criminal threats.

What many in the media failed to report is that, along with releasing that particular FISA court ruling, the administration also released a ruling from the following month after they had gone back to the court with more stringent minimization procedures. The court ruled that those procedures met the standards of the 4th Amendment. The administration actually released the new minimization rules as well.

But then along comes the Washington Post with a misleading headline about all this: Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011. Here's how they describe the exact same story I just told.

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

Nowhere in the entire article is the word "minimization" used nor is there any attempt to inform the reader that this was the very basis of the FISA rulings. We're once again fed lies ("permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications") and omissions that go to the heart of the issue involved. Notice also the hyperbole of talking about how the administration "secretly won permission." Of course they fail to note that ALL FISA court rulings are secret - by the design of the Church Committee. And the fact that they know about this one is only because the Obama administration voluntarily declassified it.

If you've gotten this far in reading what I have to say about this, you are probably more diligent than about 99% of the American public. And that's the problem with transparency...it requires a media that tells the entire story accurately right up front. Its clear that we don't have that right now. Given that reality, the whole idea of transparency is nothing more than a fallacy.

Greenwald jumps Sharknado

Just when I think I'm about done writing about the hysteria being flamed by Team Greenwald these days, along comes another story that grabs me. Part of my soul-searching about all this has been a recognition that this whole story is like finding yourself in the grips of a mystery novel and getting caught up in trying to guess the ending. So todays' installment is written with a bit of humor at watching the wheels come off the charade.

It all started last night when The Independent published an article touting the latest Snowden revelation that the UK government has a facility that spies on people in the Middle East (yes, quell your shock at that one). The trouble is...they didn't explain how they got access to this leak.

Enter Team Greenwald. He provides a quote from Snowden saying that he is not the source of this leak  and that what is happening here is that the UK government leaked harmful information to The Independent to create the illusion that previous leaks are harmful. Got that? But wait...it gets worse.

Greenwald then goes on to try to buttress Snowden's statement by suggesting that this leak is "exactly the type of disclosure the UK government wants but that has never happened before." Wait a second...is Greenwald contradicting Snowden's contention that this leak is harmful? Or is he suggesting that the UK wants harmful leaks to occur?

Oh well, nevermind. The point here is that this is all the government's fault (UK/US? - you decide). Isn't that always Greenwald's point?

What I find interesting is that this is the first time Greenwald has reacted negatively to the publication of leaks about surveillance in places other than The Guardian. He's had no problem with leaks in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Der Speigel, etc. As a matter of fact, he has usually applauded those stories. So why did this story in The Independent spark this attack? It seems that the answer to that question goes back to who did the leaking.

Joshua Foust laid out the 3 possibilities he sees in answer to that question. The 3rd one is the most likely scenario.

A new party, unknown to us, also has control of said documents and is spreading them to new outlets. This would also imply that, contrary to their constant public assertions, Team Greenwald-Poitras has lost control of their cache of source material.

Now, if you want to join me in trying to guess how this mystery novel ends, here are my two guesses about who that "new party" is.

Foust points out that The Independent is owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev. The dots seem to connect automatically in my head. Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't it possible that the Russian government (now so thoughtfully providing Snowden with asylum) might be involved?

But the other possibility is Julian Assange. Just last week he said this to the Australian press:

Former hacker Assange, who has said the US owes a "debt of gratitude" to Snowden for exposing the surveillance on Internet and telephone usage, hinted at more material from Snowden being made available.

"Hopefully one day, not too far in the future, we will see a WikiLeaks file rollout to media organisations," said Assange.

And in what seemed like a direct swipe at Greenwald/Guardian, Wikileaks (ie, Assange) recently tweeted this:

Why did the Guardian cover up their distruction of Edward Snowden's hard drives for a month? https://t.co/odN7oTGi8j
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 21, 2013

Could there be division brewing amongst Snowden's handlers? Note the title of the linked article: "Fuck the Guardian." The whole point of it seems to be that the author is mad at Greenwald/Guardian for their slow walk-out of the Snowden leaks (one of the main reasons Assange threatened to sue The Guardian during the roll-out of the Manning leaks).

I suppose we'll have to continue reading this mystery novel to find out. But let it be noticed that Mr. Greenwald just might be having a really bad awful week. First his partner was detained while shuffling Snowden documents between he and Poitras. It is now clear that whatever Miranda was carrying is in the hands of the UK (and likely US) government. And yesterday he finds out that he's losing control of this narrative about the Snowden leaks.

Those of us who have watched how Greenwald reacts are aware that when his narrative is falling apart, he attacks. So it comes as no surprise that people like Joshua Foust are currently on the receiving end of his smears. And when in doubt, he's always good for a ridiculous conspiracy theory about how government is leaking false flag ops against itself.

I'd suggest that Greenwald jumped the shark years ago. Today he managed to jump sharknado. LOL

An adversarial approach vs the aikido way

In my line of work, I occasionally deal with lawyers - often the type who spend a lot of time in a court room. When we have trouble working together on tackling community issues, its often because they approach things in the way they've been trained to practice law in a system that is designed to be adversarial. Too often the goal of our legal system is "winning" (or at least not losing) rather than finding the truth. And so facts that could hurt one's chance of winning are left out or distorted in order to go for the win.

It should come as no surprise then that Glenn Greenwald (a former lawyer) describes himself as an adversarial journalist. His job is to present information in such a way that he wins the argument. If you understand that about him, you've basically got his MO.

And so, when President Obama says that, despite the fact that what Edward Snowden did was illegal, he welcomes the conversation about US surveillance, that presents some real cognitive dissonance for folks like Greenwald. The response is often to declare a win and say this vindicates Snowden as a whistleblower with prosecution being nothing more than intimidation.

Jeffrey Toobin has a wonderful response to that argument.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy led directly to the passage of a historic law, the Gun Control Act of 1968. Does that change your view of the assassinations? Should we be grateful for the deaths of these two men?

Of course not. That’s lunatic logic. But the same reasoning is now being applied to the actions of Edward Snowden.

One of the issues this all raises is that adversarial approaches are often at odds with a democratic problem-solving process. When your only goal is to win and your opponent provides an opening for conversation/compromise, the response of an adversary is to "go in for the kill" rather than negotiate. That doesn't work if your opponent refuses to play the game.

There are no kicks and no punches within Aikido itself, though the person playing the role of the attacker may well use both, as well as weapon strikes. Instead, there is an emphasis on blending with a partner's attack and the use of techniques to lead that attack safely to a conclusion that is good for everyone.

What we're witnessing right now is Team Greenwald's adversarial approach against President Obama's aikido way. It will be fascinating to observe. But we've long known what the President's goal is.

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of "framing," although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It's a matter of actually having faith in the American people's ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

Another one bites the dust

When it comes to foreign policy issues related to the Middle East, one of my "go to" sources has always been Juan Cole. Its not that I always agree with him. Its that he knows legions more about that topic that I do. So I pay attention to what he says.

That's why I am so terribly disappointed in him - much like I am in so many other reporters lately. You want hyperbole? Take a look at this headline from Cole.

Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship

And then his opening statement makes it even worse.

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps:

Since "Greenwald's partner" was detained by the UK government, its interesting that his "10 steps" are focused completely on the US - not the UK. But what's a little omission like that when you're talking about a "STASI authoritarian state?"

Then he goes on to make several outrageous claims:

1. Classify all crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret. What would those crimes and violations be? Japanese internment? Secretly sponsoring coups in places like Iran and South America? Gulf of Tonkin lies? Nixon's lies?  Iran/Contra? Bush's torture? Oops, we know about all that so they're hardly secrets. I suspect he's actually talking about our current intelligence programs...more on that in #2. 
2. Spy on the public in violation of the Constitution. Yeah, we know Bush did that by refusing to get warrants. But show me where the Obama administration is continuing that practice. Specifically, what violations of the Constitution is he talking about?
3. Sharing of NSA info on drug trafficking is only to protect pharmaceuticals and liquor industry against pot. Whaaa??
4. Criminalize the revelation of government crimes and spying as espionage. When has spying NOT been classified as espionage and what government crimes?

Anyway, there's 10 of them. Some have merit but should lead to policy discussions and not hyperbole about dictatorships and STASI authoritarian states. 

This is why we can't have a rational discussion these days about this topic. The entire conversation has been overtaken by the latest iteration of Godwin's Law. Juan Cole just jumped that shark.

A little soul-searching

As regular readers here know, I've been pretty consumed lately by the NSA/Snowden story. That hasn't come without a lot of soul-searching. You all know that I've been following Glenn Greenwald for years and have no love lost for his reporting. So just as we see people who seem to be motivated by "Obama Derangement Syndrome," I've been worried that I'm suffering from "Greenwald Derangement Syndrome." I don't want my view of these important issues to be driven by my feelings about any particular individual.

And while I've obviously been a strong supporter of President Obama, I also regularly question myself about whether or not I'm "blindly" supporting his administration. I'm very aware of the history of the intelligence community in this country. Their record is abominable. But I also want to think about what it looks like when we want to change that. Its a much more complex process than simply saying "shut it all down!" And so I wonder if that is what we are witnessing.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that I'm a bit depressed about how our so-called "liberal" media is handling this issue. I'm not just talking about the MSM. I'm talking about people I've looked to for guidance on understanding important stories...like Steve Benen and Greg Sargent and Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum and - to a certain extent - BooMan. I've occasionally disagreed with all of those writers. That's not what bothers me. What does bother me is that, as I've said, I've done a lot of soul-searching through all of this and am NOT reacting simply from anti-Greenwald or pro-Obama.

What all of those writers have failed to do is ask any real substantive questions about Greenwald and The Guardian's reporting. They're more than happy to question the Obama administration, but don't see any reason to question the hysterical claims in the reporting on Snowden's leaks, even after - as Bob Cesca documents here - so many of those claims have been proven to be false. Its gotten so bad that Cesca has coined the "24 hour rule" - wait 24 hours and the real story will surface. But by then the link bait has worked and everyone has moved on to the next outrageous claim.

As an example, I found this particular article by Andrea Peterson at Wonkblog (Ezra Klein's blog) to be particularly noxious given the circumstances. She is defending Greenwald for saying this following his partner's detention at London's airport:

I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I am going to publish things on England too. I have many documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did. [...] They wanted to intimidate our journalism, to show that they have power and will not remain passive but will attack us more intensely if we continue publishing their secrets.

She totally buys into Greenwald's claim that other news outlets "sensationalized" this quote in suggesting it was retaliation against the UK. Does anyone else find it unbelievably ironic that Greenwald would be complaining about "sensationalized" reporting? Many of us have been working feverishly to follow up on his sensationalized stories to try and get the basic facts. So while Peterson feels it necessary to devote an entire blog post to defending Greenwald against sensationalism, I don't see the same dedication to challenging his outrageous claims.

Greenwald is really good at bullying reporters when he thinks they've misinterpreted what he said. We saw that with his reaction to this quote as well as the Walter Pincus article. But no one seems interested in pushing back when he says equally outrageous things like "the Obama administration is waging a war on whisleblowers" or insinuates they'll be "disappeared."

In the article I linked by Benen up above, he finds the detention of Miranda to be outrageous. And yet his reporting never once mentions that Miranda was carrying stolen classified documents that Snowden leaked. Doesn't he think that is a significant part of this story? And does he not find it equally outrageous that Snowden lied when he said that as an analyst he could read anyone's emails...even the President's? Not a word from Benen about that one.

Greg Sargent wrote a whole blog post giving Greenwald the chance to explain how the timing of Snowden contacting him before he took his job at Booz Allen didn't implicate he was involved in Snowden taking the job in order to steal classified documents. But has he written anything about how "direct access" was a total hoax? Zero, zilch, nada.

I don't need any of these guys to agree with me. I'd just like to see some actual reporting on this story because its important. And yes, I get pissed when they don't do that. What happens when I get pissed is that I get defensive and have taken "sides." I'll continue to do so until they start doing their job. If that makes me an "Obot" in Kevin Drum's patronizing characterization of "the great emo/Obot debate"...so be it.

Greenwald's challenge

I'm not going to recount the whole hysterical drama that unfolded last night as the story about Glenn Greenwald's partner being detained at the London airport unfolded. Bob Cesca has done a great job of breaking it down.

But this whole story about Edward Snowden and his handlers ignites my sometimes dormant "recovering therapist" mode and so I find myself considering Greenwald's challenge as the public mouthpiece of the handlers. That challenge, as I see it, is to maintain their role as merely victims of the big bad surveillance state while simultaneously aggrandizing their role in uncovering the "story of the century." Give the guy some chops...he's pretty good at it.

The first ingredient in pulling this off is to hype the hell out of stories about stuff most of us knew already. They did this by using documents Snowden had stolen while working as a contractor of NSA. So now we don't just know that NSA collects metadata on our telephone calls, we get to see one of the warrants issued by FISA to do so. And we don't just know that NSA surveils foreign targets, we get to see documents that describe the actual programs they use to do so (PRISM and XKEYSCORE).

All of this reignited a conversation we'd had years ago about government surveillance post 9/11. Perhaps that's a good thing. From other releases of information (from both Snowden and the government), we now know that getting access to the phone call content for Americans requires a warrant and that via audits the NSA has compliance issues on 0.001% of its queries.

But you only know that kind of thing if you've followed these stories through for a few days. Greenwald's job is to hype the hell out of each disclosure and pretend that something REALLY BIG is happening before you get the rest of the information. He does that well by not actually reporting - but by telling you only the information he wants you to hear (lies of omission).

The bigger challenge for Greenwald though is actually the other part of his job - to cast he and his partners as victims while they're pulling off all this hysteria. The story about his partner Miranda is a perfect example.

Glenn's version of that story casts Miranda as an innocent traveler who was besieged by the big bad authorities simply because he is Glenn's partner. And he vows to "fight on" against these horrible abuses of power. Do you see how the stage is set for the government as the bad actor and Greenwald, et al as the reactive victims in the situation?

Of course nowhere in his account is it mentioned that this whole drama started when Edward Snowden stole classified government documents. Or that Miranda was traveling at the Guardian's expense to transfer those documents between Poitras and Greenwald. Its all simply a matter of the government's attempt to intimidate these poor innocent people.

Finally, as I said yesterday, all of this totally ignores the fact that Glenn's partner in crime - Julian Assange - had just issued a blackmail threat to the government the day before all this happened.

On a couple of occasions here I've talked about the drama triangle as a mode of communication. It posits that unhealthy relationships are often characterized by traveling around the triangle to assume various roles as well as see other actors playing one of them.

This is the source of the "drama" that we see emanating from Greenwald. In its current iteration, he (and Miranda as well as all the other handlers) are both the victim of the big bad persecutor (government) as well as those that are out to rescue all of us from said persecutor. Maintaining that conflagration means denying that they have any agency in the events that are currently underway. 
Trouble is...that's a totally powerless position to be in. So when the time comes to take credit for these "bombshells," Greenwald needs to flip the whole thing and pretend like he (and the other handlers) hold the key to toppling the entire government (shifting into the role of persecutor). 

"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.

"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

If your head is spinning now from all that, just remember - that's what communicating with someone who employs the drama triangle will do to you.

If we know nothing else these days - its that our media loves a drama. And right now, Greenwald's challenge is to give them one. I'm sorry to say that even folks like Steve Benen are buying it.

Assange's latest op underway (updated)

On Friday I remember seeing this tweet. But, being terribly tech-impaired, I didn't know what it meant.

Please mirror: WikiLeaks insurance 20130815-A: 3.6Gb http://t.co/WAXtszZl8E B: 49Gb http://t.co/Ca1Hqi1VCJ C: 349GB http://t.co/iu00DmfQ0A
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 16, 2013

Well, I just found out and thought I'd share it with you.

Someone remind WikiLeaks that the U.S does not respond well to blackmail.

We'd think this was some kind of interactive Internet mystery if we didn't know better, but in fact WikiLeaks has released about 400 gigabytes' worth of mysterious data in a series of encrypted torrent files called "insurance." And no one can open it.

With nothing better to go on, the Internet has decided that "insurance" may be code for "back off" to the U.S. government...

File encryption means that the data is hidden and no one can see what's in the shared files without a key to unlock them—which, of course, hasn't been publicly released...

WikiLeaks abruptly released the files and asked the public to mirror them—on Facebook and Twitter, no less, hardly the place you go to drop off highly classified intelligence...

As long as the files are released without the keys that unlock them, it's impossible for anyone, even the government, to get inside.

But if WikiLeaks releases the keys to the public—and all the governments of the world at once—then it's possible that the war on unauthorized access to government secrets could get a lot more dangerous.

Of course people are speculating all over the place about what's in these files. Its possible that its all a hoax. But from what I've seen, Julian Assange is not the joking type. He obviously has copies of everything Snowden stole and has already hinted at doing one big data dump - the same way Wikileaks released the cablegate documents. Perhaps Mr. Assange grows tired of Greenwald being in the limelight and drib-drabbing the stories out. Who knows?

Whatever is going on, Assange is making a hardball power play. This should disabuse anyone who thinks any of this is about the privacy of ordinary Americans or that Assange is some kind of innocent bystander being needlessly surveilled by the US government. This is Mr. Assange's version of cyber war.

UPDATE: So this happened on Friday morning.  Early Sunday morning Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda was detained at the London Heathrow airport on his way home to Brazil after spending time in Germany with Laura Poitras and Jacob Applebaum (his Wikileaks collaborators) at the Guardian's expense. Its not real difficult to connect the dots.

There's no such thing as "privacy" online

Earlier I wrote about the fact that Edwards Snowden's "handlers" aren't really concerned about privacy. If they were, they surely wouldn't completely ignore things like this:

...Acxiom [a commercial data broker] reportedly has information on about 700 million active consumers worldwide, with some 1,500 data points per person. Such data brokers learn about us from the cookies that hitch rides as users travel online and from the social media sites where we post everything from home addresses to pictures to magazine subscriptions and store purchases, as well as deeds on file in towns and counties. They load all this data into sophisticated algorithms that spew out alarmingly personal predictions about our health, financial status, interests, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, politics and habits.

As Bob Cesca pointed out the other day, visiting Glenn Greenwald's article about XKEYSCORE at The Guardian would have provided information to 27 different trackers for this kind of data. While Glenn and The Guardian are hyperventilating about the fact that the US government might get access to that information (when in reality, NSA's online searches are restricted to non US persons), they obviously don't give a shit about the actual dossier on almost every American that companies like Acxiom make available to the corporate world.

That's what makes the whole conversation about all of this so ridiculous and infuriating. If there were two messages I'd like to scream at everyone they would be:

1. Take a look at the real agenda of folks like Greenwald, Assange, and Applebaum - it has absolutely nothing to do with privacy.
2. There is no such thing as privacy online. If we want to take advantage of the internet, we just have to accept that.

If we could understand those two things, we might actually be able to have a reasonable conversation about the very real issues that are involved.

The battle for the world-wide web

I think its high time we took a look at the people who are "handling" Edward Snowden and what their agenda is in all of this. That's because I think the questions are more broad than the one's we're currently hearing about related to NSA surveillance and actually go to the question of who controls the world-wide web. There is a battle raging beneath all this that has serious implications for all of us.

But first its important to recognize that Snowden is being handled. The question is "by whom?" Yesterday we saw that his father (and his father's lawyers) are starting to speak out about what's happening.

More fractious is the relationship among Lon Snowden, WikiLeaks and Mr. Greenwald. Mr. Fein's wife and spokeswoman, Mattie Fein, said Lon Snowden's legal team doesn't trust the intentions of Mr. Greenwald or WikiLeaks and worry they are giving Edward Snowden bad advice.

"The thing we have been most concerned about is that the people who have influence over Ed will try to use him for their own means," Ms. Fein said. "These guys have their own agenda here and we aren't so sure that it has Ed's best interest in mind."

In response, the Huffington Post received an email that is reportedly from Edward Snowden saying everything is cool. But its important to note that the HuffPo article is based on an email (that anyone could have written). I found this portion particularly sad:

Neither my father, his lawyer Bruce Fein, nor his wife Mattie Fein represent me in any way. None of them have been or are involved in my current situation, and this will not change in the future. I ask journalists to understand that they do not possess any special knowledge regarding my situation or future plans, and not to exploit the tragic vacuum of my father's emotional compromise for the sake of tabloid news.

In other words, we should not pay any attention to his father's anguish over what is happening to his son.

So, who are these people that are handling Edward Snowden? To understand the stakes, one of the best examples to look at is the battle that raged between Wikileaks and Bank of America. The story starts with the troves of donations Wikileaks was banking based on their "handling" of the Bradley Manning leaks (20,000 euros a month). Several banking institutions responded by refusing to process these donations. And Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks) fought back by hacking into the hard drive of an executive at Bank of America and threatening to "take them down."

What we know now is that the Bank of American began working with HB Gary to develop a strategy to go after Wikileaks. We know that because the group Anonymous (which works closely with Wikileaks) hacked HB Gary's system and released 44,000 of the company's emails - including a plan to go after Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald (who they saw as the critical spokesperson for Wikileaks...interesting).

Personally, I don't have a dog in the fight between Wikileaks and the Bank of America. But I tell that story to point out the agenda of some of the players involved in the Snowden situation. Does it strike you that they're really interested in anyone's "privacy" when their modus operandi is hacking into other people's computer systems? Take just a moment to review that Wikipedia article I linked to above about Anonymous and count up all the private information about innocent people they've hacked and released.  And then take a moment to read the speech Jacob Applebaum (Wikileak's promoter) gave about the importance of the work of Anonymous.

THE ISSUE HERE IS NOT ABOUT PRIVACY!!!!! Its about who controls the world-wide web. The battle has also been engaged in the fight between those who oppose any effort to control piracy and the proprietary rights of creators/artists/entrepreneurs. As with privacy in this technological age, that is a complex issue. But those that are screaming the loudest about government surveillance have planted themselves squarely on the side of open access, regardless of individual/business claims to proprietary rights.

Enter China and Russia. We know that the United States is in a heated battle with China over this issue. We should not forget that the Snowden revelations came out (with Snowden safely ensconced in Hong Kong) just as President Obama was about to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk about cyber security. No one can doubt that the leaks significantly weakened the President's hand in those negotiations. Here's how Catherine Fiztpatrick explains it:

...the purpose is to weaken and discredit America as a champion of Internet freedom; to claim that it is a hypocrite and not true to its ideals; to act as if it is no different than the surveillance states of Russia and China; and to make it seem as if the "sovereign Internet" plans of these authoritarian governments then are justified due to the discreditation of both US commercial and government involvement in the World Wide Web.

By now we all know that Snowden has received asylum in - of all places - Russia. But it is Julian Assange's relationship with Russia that is most revealing. Perhaps the best example of that is that back in April 2012, he got a talk show on Russian-sponsored media. We also know that Snowden's legal issues in Russia have been jointly handled by Wikileaks and Anatoly Kucherena.

...he is a political supporter of Mr. Putin’s and serves on the Public Chamber, an advisory body that critics have long derided as a Potemkin construct of actual government oversight. He also serves as a member of another board that oversees the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

When folks like Julian Assange, Jacob Applebaum and Laura Poitras say that they are being surveilled by the US government (and therefore we should all be scared shitless about being surveilled ourselves), this is why. They are not innocent players in this world-wide battle over the internet. And they're fighting back...with the likes of Edward Snowden. Just like they fought back against Bank of America by hacking their secrets.

There are HUGE issues at stake here...privacy, piracy, hacking, who controls the internet, and the international balance of power with cyber security threats. But the idea that the Assange's and Greenwald's and Applebaum's of the world are taking up this cause on behalf of everyday Americans is pure hogwash.

What's the real story behind the Snowden leak?

One of the things I've learned about Glenn Greenwald from following him over the last few years is that his most blatant lies are often the ones of omission. Its the information he doesn't provide that tends to change the whole tenor of the story from the one he tries to tell.

I'll give you an example. In April 2012 Greenwald wrote a story about the harassment filmmaker Laura Poitras was experiencing at border crossings coming into and out of the United States. Several times in that article he says that not only has the government not proven that Poitras has committed any crimes that would warrant that treatment, he says that she is not even suspected of any wrongdoing.

While I would never condone the treatment of Poitras, Greenwald's claim is simply not true. As you can read in the NYT portrait of her, there are reports that Poitras, while embedded with Sunni insurgents in Iraq, might have known ahead of time about an attack on U.S. forces but failed to warn anyone about it. Whether grounded or not, the government DID have suspicions about her activities. Beyond that, Poitras' story initially was that she wasn't present at the time filming the attack. But in the NYT article, she changed her story and admitted she was there. So she lied during the initial questioning about it.

In reading about this I am struck once again by the conflation of people involved in the Snowden leaks. And I have to wonder what other lies of omission are going on with this crew. For example, the NYT article says that Greenwald and Poitras have known each other since 2010 when she became interested in his work on Wikileaks - the tie that seems to bind all of these players.

But I was struck by the news - both in Greenwald's 2012 article about Poitras and the NYT article today - that she had started working on a film about NSA surveillance way back in 2011. We are led to believe that this is why Snowden contacted her. But given several serious discrepancies in how various people have reported that timeline, one has to wonder if its really true that this bombshell simply fell right into her lap totally unsolicited.

• We all know that Snowden went to work for Booz Allen in March 2013 for the express purpose of gaining access to classified information he planned to leak.

• Initially we were told that Greenwald and Poitras first met Snowden in May 2013 in Hong Kong.

• Greenwald then tweeted that he and Poitras had been working with Snowden since February 2013.

• The NYT article today says that Snowden first contacted Greenwald in November/December 2012 and Poitras in January 2013.

• The NYT also says that Greenwald and Poitras didn't talk to each other about Snowden until April 2013.

• Greenwald said he started getting documents from Snowden in late March, early April 2013. But he also says that Snowden took months to review the documents before releasing them. Snowden didn't start working at Booz Allen until March 2013.

All these stories can't be true. It seems clear to me that what we have here are some major omissions with people having trouble keeping their fabricated versions straight.

One blogger that is asking all the right questions about this is Catherine Fitzpatrick - who seems to be pretty familiar with the "hacker" world where these folks all connect.

An episode that sticks out for me in the story of how Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jacob Appelbaum came to get in touch with Edward Snowden, write about him, and spill his secrets is the furious response Greenwald has to Walter Pincus' articles containing his findings and questions on the connections between WikiLeaks and Snowden and Greenwald's role.

Pincus' article tracks with the sense a number of us have who have been following these radical activists long before the Snowden story broke that these people all knew each other long before, and collaborated much closer than they admit to bring about the Snowden defection to Russia...

Sure, my basis for these contentions is basically just a hunch based on tracking how these people behave over a long period of time, but it's based on repeated experience of seeing how they operate; how they edge-case and obfuscate and distract about their motives and actions...

Why is it important to show that these people in fact knew each other in the past, and collaborated on this story earlier than we knew and aren't telling us everything? Well, not only to show that if they lie about this thing, they could be lying about the entire NSA story...but we can see more clearly the deeper activist agenda they have and the larger plot involving WikiLeaks assault on America, with Russian help.

One of the people Fitzpatrick zeros in on is Jacob Applebaum - anarchist hacker, creator of Tor,  and Wikileaks volunteer. She points out that the technological skills Poitras used (and taught to Greenwald as documented in the NYT article) to evade surveillance, she learned from Applebaum. As was noted in Der Speigel, Applebaum and Poitras teamed up to interview Snowden via email in May 2013 prior to the time Greenwald and Snowden met him in Hong Kong. But perhaps most intriguing of all, apparently Applebaum travelled to Hawaii (where Snowden was living at the time) in both April of 2012 and 2013.

I'm not going to pretend to know what the real story is here. But as I said at the beginning and I've tried to document here, the lies of omission seem obvious and could change the tenor of the story. Rather than swallow the one Greenwald and Poitras told - as Maass did in the NYT - it would be great if an actual investigative reporter would start asking some hard questions.