Saving the Net from the Surveillance State: Glenn Greenwald Speaks Up (Q&A)
Published on Sunday, December 8, 2013 by CNET
Saving the Net from the Surveillance State: Glenn Greenwald Speaks Up (Q&A)
CNET: Some of your former colleagues at The Guardian were recently asked where they thought all this NSA stuff was headed long term. Ewen MacAskill replied, "Expect only cosmetic changes. Now intelligence agencies have this capability, they are not going to get rid of it." Spencer Ackerman said, "The intelligence cycle in the US historically is: abuse, outrage, reform, repeat." What do you think? Will these revelations lead to any real change? And what would true reform of the NSA and its oversight mechanisms look like? Is there any legislation being hashed out in Congress that could potentially lead to such reform?
Greenwald: I agree with what both Ewen and Spencer said, as far as it goes -- I think they accurately summarized how these things normally go, and I wouldn't blame anybody for thinking that it's likely to go like that this time too. I do, though, think there are some differences in this episode versus prior, similar ones.
For one thing, I think that the anger has been not only domestic but global. And when you combine that global reaction with the fact that the United States is much less able to exercise this hegemonic power over the world than it was even 10 years ago -- that world opinion matters more to the US and can restrain the US more than it could previously -- I think it's a major factor. I also think the fact that the Internet itself is global and that everybody has an equal interest in it means that -- that introduces a much different factor into the prospect for reform as well.
The fact that the Internet is global and that everybody has an equal interest in it introduces a much different factor into the prospect for NSA reform."
But ultimately what I think is that you cannot have just reform, legislative reform in a vacuum, because then I think both Spencer and Ewen are right: It really will just be symbolic and, you know, basically empty.
If you look at the reforms of the mid 1970s that came out of the Church Committee, they made a big deal out of announcing this newly created FISA court and the fact that there was going to be a Senate Intelligence Committee that was going to oversee the Intelligence Community. And then they just co-opted those institutions: They made the FISA court unbelievably toothless so that it approves everything the Intelligence Community wants, and then they just installed their most ardent loyalist as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee or of the House Intelligence Committee, so that it is worse than toothless, it exists to endorse what the Intelligence Community does.
So if you just have reform legislatively, without massive fundamental changes of public opinion, then Spencer and Ewen are right: Nothing significant and meaningful will happen. But I don't think that's the case here. The extent to which people think differently about a whole variety of topics, as a result of this NSA reporting -- not just surveillance, but journalism, their relationship to the state, the role of secrecy, the role that the United States plays in the world -- there's been radically different opinions around the world about all these topics. I really do think the last six months have been consciousness-shifting.
And I think that's going to continue as more reporting gets done, because there is a lot more reporting to do that will shock people around the world and further change how they think. So when you start to have radical changes in public opinion, not just domestically but globally, that will then be the real cause. Legislative reform might be an outcome or an effect, but the real change will come from those kind of consciousness changes that can make legislative reform or other kind of changes much more effective than they would be without that.
MORE OF AN INTERESTING READ AT:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/08-0