Reflections on WikiLeaks and Snowden

by The Reluctant Plumber

Progress is a history of tension between idealism and realism.

The idealists see problems in the world, come up with solutions, and try to implement the solutions to make the world better.  The realists see that, while problems exist, things could be much worse, and push back on the proposed solutions, seeing danger in change.

Now that we are a decade past the war between the leakers and the government, it makes sense to reflect on lessons learned, and what we may have lost.

To fully understand the situation, we need some history.

Shortly after (((World War Two))), President Harry Truman established multiple agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), in an effort to combat the growing threat of (((Communism))) from the Soviet Union.  With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, these agencies lost their purpose and refocused from communism to terrorism.

Although they had a shared goal, they had divided resources, partly in reflection of the separation of powers inherent in the U.S. government.  This led to a situation where the right hand could not talk to the left hand and, in my opinion, is largely the reason the 9/11 attacks happened.

Seeing a major communication hole in the intelligence apparatus, President George W. Bush "solved" it by forming the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), bridging the communications between these agencies.  This led to a centralized data store, which, as any IT professional will affirm, creates a single point of failure.

From this data store, PFC Bradley Manning was able to leak hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks and, a few years later, Edward Snowden was able to leak a similar treasure trove to the founding journalists of The Intercept.

Why did they leak these documents in the first place?

To put the question in a different frame, we should ask whether they were idealists or realists.  An idealist might look at the way data is classified and conclude that too much is being hidden from the public, preventing proper accountability.

Using Daniel Ellsberg as their role model, it could logically follow that, after informing the public (and elected officials) about what is being done in their name, suitable reforms would take place to fix these issues.

The realist approach suggests that, in addition to insufficient safeguards, the hierarchy of the intelligence community is rigid and prevents lower ranks from asking hard questions, blocking badly needed reforms.

In this view, it makes no sense to try to fix things internally and the best strategy is to inform the public outside of proper channels.  It is worth noting that the Espionage Act does not allow the courts to take intent into consideration when deciding guilt.

One of the main challenges of this debate is that we only get one side: that of the leakers.

The CIA and NSA could have valid reasons for the way they operate and classify data, but the nature of classification prevents them from sharing them.  So on one hand, it could be that due to the compartmentalized nature of these agencies, Manning and Snowden could not see the big picture which would set their worries at ease.

On the other hand, perhaps the breadcrumbs they did see provided enough insight to realize something needed to be done; after all, these agencies have gone through reforms before, so maybe it was time for another reformation.

Because the public only had one side, there were some pretty intense holy wars, and a degree of arrogance.

Idealistic activists assumed that, because the agencies responded with empty platitudes rather than reasons, the activists were justified in increasing their vitriol against the "Dark Side."  Conversely, people with security clearances could tout their privileged and secret access, bragging that they had knowledge that could resolve the activists' concerns, but due to their allegiance to country could not divulge, and mocked the idiot activists.

Many considered these leaks to be a digital Storming of the Bastille.  However, neither side could make a truly compelling case, and it ultimately created a civil war in the hacking community.

Next, assuming that both Manning and Snowden leaked with the intent to improve oversight and fix the systems, we should look at what actually resulted.

In Manning's case, the corpus of documents was handed to WikiLeaks, and with Snowden, it still resides in a data vault which a select few can access.  With both WikiLeaks and the Snowden vault, these documents presented an unexpected poison.

Every government and corporation in the world wanted access to the documents for many different reasons, and the activists soon found themselves, by necessity, creating a spiderweb security apparatus by which they could determine who they could trust.

If someone had access to the contents, or knew what was in the documents, they now ran the risk of an adversary from China or Russia kidnapping and torturing them to get the classified information.

Many activists had to completely change their lifestyles, disavowing normal communication methods and moving around with great caution, always justifiably paranoid.  In some sense, they wound up creating their own form of secret police, and although trust was paramount, it was almost nonexistent.

Were the leakers' efforts satiated by political impact?  The contested intelligence programs seem to continue largely as before.

In short, a great pile of mud was thrown at the wall, and almost nothing stuck.  While WikiLeaks was focused on rallying up the public rage, they found that the public easily forgets its opinion and will change sides when the narrative shifts.

Snowden seemed to focus more on the legal aspects, but he forgot that to qualify a lawsuit, one must show sufficient standing: in order to sue the NSA, one must show that the NSA directly violated their rights.  Only a single court case, ACLjU vs. Clapper, found success, based on the very first published document, a FISA decision.

As far as we know from the publicly available leaked documents, no additional evidence exists.  Perhaps this will change in the future, but after more than a decade, this seems unlikely.

Either Snowden was naive about the ability of his documents to carry actionable weight in the eyes of the law, or the reporters to whom he leaked held things back which should be published.  The most important lesson from this: a strong personal dislike of something does not make it illegal.

What does the future hold?

Unfortunately, in the decade since these events transpired, political polarization has become much worse, and it seems that the veneer of respect for law has all but disappeared.  We now have a cast of characters that resemble circus clowns, each entrenched in their convictions like Atreyu's Artax, with no direction to go but down.

I do hope that we can come up with some way to bridge this communication gulf and bring in badly needed reforms, but I wonder if we fired our last shots ten years ago.

After all, if you come at the king, you best not miss.