Edward Snowden has got to be one of the most courageous persons I know of. I read his autobiography and feel highly inspired by his courage, to bring some serious abuse of power to light, thereby risking his personal freedom and life.
What his fate can mean to us
His lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck wrote an article in June 2023, reminding us of the possibility to have one set of values and to apply it to every situation the same.
In particular, the failure of Western democracies to give a safe harbour to this courageous man who acted in perfect integrity with his values, to name an enormous abuse of power.
“When Western democracies refused Snowden asylum they once again proved their double standards.”
It is up to all of us to show our support truly universally held values and to request our governments and politicians to act in integrity with these aspirations.
Read a machine translation of this thought-provoking article below:
Whistleblower Edward Snowden
1000 years imprisonment
A guest contribution by Wolfgang Kaleck Spiegel Online, 08.06.2023
On June 9, 2013, the world first learned of Edward Snowden. Shortly thereafter, the whistleblower was stranded in Russia. Today he is forgotten by many. But his fate affects us all. An interjection from his German lawyer.
A few days ago, the Irish data protection regulator imposed a record fine of 1.2 billion euros on the company Meta, which owns Facebook. It is about the illegal transmission of data from European users to US authorities. This trial and the trials before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on the same issue were made possible by Edward Snowden’s revelations in June 2013.
The same Snowden, who is still revered in the internet community, is stuck in Moscow, forgotten by a larger public – in an authoritarian, war-making state, its own and the future of the country and the entire region more uncertain than ever. Does the messenger of bad news have to pay once again, even if it was extremely useful in the end?
As a human rights activist, as his lawyer and now also as his friend, it makes me bitter that his situation in Russia is so messed up. And that despite or – what would be even more bitter – because he fights for more democratic and open societies and took an enormous personal risk to do so. In his case, the Western states that refused him asylum once again proved their double standards. And so what happens to Snowden is not only about his personal destiny, but it is something that concerns all of us.
It’s been ten years since the then 29-year-old left Hawaii for Hong Kong with a number of data carriers in his luggage, a journey with an uncertain outcome. He was convinced he was doing the right thing, but had no idea where he was headed next. The only thing that was clear was that the US secret services, especially the NSA, for which he last worked, would pursue him as soon as they had identified him.
Thanks to support from refugee families and migration lawyer Robert Tibbo, Snowden found refuge in Hong Kong and was able to travel from there, first to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and later to the city. He has lived there ever since.
In Hong Kong it was still uncertain whether and how the data compiled during his service would find its way to the world public. We now know, not least from the documentary »Citizenfour«, that he chose the right contacts to get his message out to the people. In addition to director Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman, all of whom are now prominent and have won numerous awards, wrote the first major articles for the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Against initial resistance from publishers and pressure from the US intelligence services, they provided comprehensive and factual information about the Prism and Tempora surveillance programs and surveillance tools such as XKeyscore.
News magazines such as DER SPIEGEL, »Le Monde« and many others researched on the basis of Snowden’s revelations; parliamentary committees of inquiry began their work; Legal proceedings have been initiated. The topic of mass surveillance was present in the media for months, as was the youthful hero Edward Snowden.
Alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917
As was to be expected, the US authorities rolled out heavy legal artillery. In the precautionary extradition requests to various states, including Germany, a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 was listed in addition to the charge of theft of government property. The provision makes espionage a punishable offense and is therefore part of classic political state protection law. It is questionable for constitutional reasons, since it also criminalizes publications protected by freedom of the press. For example, in the ongoing extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, who is being held in London’s Belmarsh prison.
It’s not just the exorbitantly high threat of punishment that’s frightening. A penalty can be imposed for every single data set stolen by him, so Snowden faces a total of over a thousand years in prison in the USA. Because he had access to classified information as a former intelligence worker, the US authorities would almost certainly use special surveillance and isolation measures against him, the so-called SAM (special administrative measures).
Also, the Espionage Act does not allow him a proper defense at trial. Under this provision, it doesn’t matter whether you sell state secrets to enemy states for millions, or how Snowden—and I say this as a legal professional, not just as his attorney—conscientiously breaks rules to publicize and remedy unlawful conditions .
The amount of the fine, the unfair trial and the fact that he should enjoy protection as a whistleblower should mean that the European states provide him with a secure residence, especially the most important ones, Germany and France.
That was exactly our task as a European legal team. But once again it became clear how the EU states are dealing with legal and moral principles.
Western bigotry
It was only the Snowden revelations and the subsequent research that made everyone aware of the extent of mass surveillance in the USA and abroad – and also of the technical possibilities of wiretapping even high-ranking politicians like Angela Merkel. But while whistleblowers and human rights activists from China and Russia are showered with honors, those who expose the misconduct of Western governments and companies are thrown to the wolves, in this case the intransigent US authorities, despite having just benefited from their knowledge. Outside the West, this instrumental handling of legal and moral standards has long been understood as bigotry and has repercussions far beyond the individual case. As is currently the case with the migration issue, Germany and the others are demonstrating the entire coldness of reasons of state; absurd how mediocre German politicians advised Snowden to reach an agreement with the US prosecutors. Knowing full well that this could only mean life imprisonment.
Edward Snowden himself always insisted in our regular meetings in Moscow that he was less concerned with his own fate. Nor did he present himself as just the technical expert he undoubtedly is. Rather, he appears publicly as a militant democrat and warns of the threat to democratic societies from powerful apparatuses that work in the dark. Back in the days of Barack Obama’s government, he repeatedly pointed out the danger that data collection and technical possibilities could fall into the wrong hands – authoritarian governments. None of us thought of Donald Trump back then.
Restoration of basic democratic principles
Snowden’s autobiography, published in 2019, also made it clear that he is concerned with the restoration of basic democratic principles. He had put us global citizens in a position to bring about political change and now called on us to take political action. However, over the years it has become increasingly clear that Western democracies could only take a few small steps in this regard.
However, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary, civil rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are right to point out that there has indeed been some progress. Critics such as the German Chaos Computer Club or WikiLeaks were always told up until June 2013 that they had no evidence for the allegations of mass surveillance. Since the Snowden revelations, however, not only the facts but also the dangers of them could no longer be denied. In the USA and Europe, parliaments, courts and governments built in a few legal hurdles and prohibited some surveillance methods. A US court ruled that the NSA’s surveillance programs were unlawful, the Federal Constitutional Court considered parts of the BND law to be unconstitutional, and the European Court of Justice allowed class action lawsuits against Facebook for data protection violations.
The intelligence apparatuses around the world tend to seize any opportunity to expand their technological capabilities and their power. Painfully aware – and Edward Snowden and I both agreed – this became apparent during the pandemic. Because this has led to further freedom-threatening data collections and a new legitimacy for it. When outstanding technical possibilities meet authoritarian power, apocalyptic scenarios such as those during the lockdowns in Shanghai arise. The Chinese government had ordered that all citizens had to show their negative corona status via mobile phone everywhere.
Edward Snowden, the bearer of the bad news, is not doing well these days. Since the US authorities canceled his passport in the summer of 2013, he applied for Russian citizenship in November 2020, well before Russia’s war against Ukraine. In September 2022, during the ongoing war in Ukraine, President Putin publicly granted it to him. Some people then turned away from him on social media. In the United States in particular, he had to defend himself against malicious and hostile comments.
But what should he do – as a father of two now? To this day, he has been denied asylum or even just a safe place to stay and protection from merciless persecution in the USA. His tweet from last year seems almost like an act of self-defense, showing a picture with his two young children and his wife and pointing out that he had to separate from his family in the USA in 2013. He did not want to experience that again, he wrote.
Western states are surprised these days that many of the economically stronger, but not necessarily more democratic states of the Global South this time do not simply swallow their narrative of democracy and the rule of law, but are pursuing their own interests. And how India or Brazil take a neutral stance on the Ukraine war.
But the Iraq war of 2003, Guantanamo, but also the treatment of Snowden have contributed to this distancing from the West. It’s not just Edward Snowden who pays the price, we all pay the price.
About the author
Wolfgang Kaleck is a lawyer and founded the human rights organization European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin in 2007, of which he has been Secretary General ever since. ECCHR sees it as its task to enforce human rights by legal means. As an author, Kaleck recently published »The Concrete Utopia of Human Rights« (Frankfurt, 2021). Together with other lawyers, he represents Edward Snowden under the leadership of the American non-governmental organization ACLU.