{"id":385,"date":"2014-12-06T23:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-06T23:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=385"},"modified":"2014-12-07T10:31:49","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T10:31:49","slug":"snowdens-actions-put-007-at-risk-also-who-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/snowdens-actions-put-007-at-risk-also-who-cares.html","title":{"rendered":"Snowden&#8217;s actions put 007 at risk. Also, who cares?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Le Mal est dans la chose m\u00eame et le rem\u00e8de est violent. Il faut porter la cogn\u00e9e \u00e0 la racine.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The solution to evil is violent. We must take the hatchet\u00a0to the root.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Jean-Paul Marat<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The heads of the National Security Agency, NSA, and our somewhat derivative equivalent in Britain, General Communications HQ or GCHQ, still say\u00a0NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2014\/12\/05\/us-britain-security-privacy-idUSKCN0JJ18H20141205\" target=\"_blank\">revelations of excessive spying by our governments on their own people<\/a> put &#8220;our&#8221; much-loved spies and heroes at risk all around the world. These men behind the curtain won&#8217;t say how, but they insist the leaks are a threat to our (or rather their) security.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"James Bond 007 - Spectre - Trailer #1\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gHF2g8Wx92Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p><em>Above: cryptic trailer of the latest Bond movie. Little can be told about its content yet, other than that it features the return of the villainous SPECTRE criminal organization as the main antagonist.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My first rebuttal to this crazy idea that some kind of James Bond is out there saving the day, and he is now at increased risk because of the &#8220;arrogant&#8221; whistleblowers revealing state secrets, is simple: Who cares? \u00a0They still have their secrecy, so they aren&#8217;t going to be missed. It is a bit arbitrary\u00a0to insist on a curtain of secrecy behind which they can sacrifice lives for freedom and democracy, while they aren&#8217;t willing to sacrifice for transparency &#8211; something supported by the overwhelming majority of the public. It sounds like\u00a0they&#8217;re afraid of the costs of true freedom and democracy, in which case\u00a0they aren&#8217;t\u00a0exactly the tough guys they try to look like\u00a0via these movies like <em>Zero Dark Thirty<\/em>, <em>Argo<\/em> or the better-known <em>007<\/em> movies. It would be more accurate to call them manipulators and liars.<\/p>\n<p>The point is, we are led to believe in a fictitious picture of the world of espionage by movies like the 007 movie, <em>Skyfall<\/em>, which even depicted a leaker with curiously bleached blonde hair<em> *cough* Julian A.\u00a0*cough*<\/em> as the latest, high-tech incarnation of the supervillain. \u00a0But if GCHQ is full of such tough guys and heroes as Mr Bond, why are they desperately afraid of the truth, or of any engagement with the public? Would heroes really be scared of being tempered or overseen in any way by the public they claim to protect? Would they be willing to thwart democracy in order to save it, or\u00a0go cloak-and-dagger in\u00a0the name of the liberal virtues of openness, democracy and justice? What kind of hero would claim to have a mandate from the crowd, but turn their weapons\u00a0against\u00a0the same crowd for information-gathering, target practice\u00a0or human shields as soon as they deem it &#8220;necessary&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve all heard of the &#8220;hornet&#8217;s nest&#8221; analogy, and some people might think Snowden kicked a hornet&#8217;s nest &#8211; that what he did was irresponsible, even disastrous for the intelligence community and their efforts to &#8220;keep us safe&#8221;. He did a lot of damage. Or did he?<\/p>\n<p>Well, even if you grant them their entire argument and conclude that Snowden did cause a lot of damage, there&#8217;s another way of looking at it. If you found an idiot with his head embedded in the\u00a0hornet&#8217;s nest of the Middle East, like the NSA and GCHQ have done to themselves, wouldn&#8217;t you also\u00a0feel an urge to kick them up the backside like they deserve? What Snowden has done, or has been alleged to have done by his most exaggerated critics, is a lot like that. How can Snowden be blamed for other people maintaining mass\u00a0spying operations\u00a0with\u00a0such elusive and complicated justifications\u00a0that the public can&#8217;t be trusted to know anything about them? Even if Snowden&#8217;s actions were\u00a0to culminate in disaster, thousands of dead spies embedded around the world by the US and UK, it would be their own fault, and they&#8217;d deserve what is coming to them. They don&#8217;t get to blame the guy who drew attention to their idiocy, as if\u00a0he somehow made them idiots by pointing out what they&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, it should not be disavowed, but hoped that Snowden&#8217;s actions and other whistleblowing such as WikiLeaks&#8217; activity has endangered the lives and complicated the efforts of the\u00a0guys\u00a0at GCHQ and NSA. If they won&#8217;t take it from us, let\u00a0every dagger in their backs\u00a0be a lesson against their attempts to get\u00a0solace by cloaking themselves from public scrutiny. Why should they get\u00a0any public\u00a0sympathy for their trouble, if they aren&#8217;t even going to explain themselves? After all, history\u00a0shows us how\u00a0the\u00a0heads\u00a0who won&#8217;t\u00a0take a message from the public eventually take it from a bullet. That lesson is the sole reason why we uphold democratic ideals at all.<\/p>\n<p>For all the grandiose military and intelligence chiefs, prime ministers and presidents who condemned Edward Snowden or the public -serving actions\u00a0of journalists through the help of WikiLeaks, I have this question:\u00a0Who are you, a bunch of idiots who start pointless wars and lead our soldiers to empty deaths in the sands, to lecture Edward Snowden about the sanctity of life or importance of national security?<\/p>\n<p>It is ironic that the rulers\u00a0who justify wasting the lives of soldiers for &#8220;freedom&#8221; in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are incapable of understanding the costs of true freedom, insisting\u00a0that\u00a0it isn&#8217;t worth putting our lives at risk to know the truth about mass surveillance &#8211; but the same rulers think it\u00a0is worth putting our lives at risk for wacky plans to replace the regimes in Iraq, Syria and Iran and slaughter thousands of people. What&#8217;s more worth sacrificing for? The freedom\u00a0to enjoy true democracy and hold our rulers accountable through revelations about their abuses, or some wacky plan to eliminate the leaders of Syria and Iran to plunder those regimes&#8217; oil reserves? It&#8217;s quite obvious.<\/p>\n<p>The United States and Britain are apparently governed\u00a0by charlatans. Their\u00a0curtain of national security is illegitimate, and must be ripped down at all costs. Even an earthworm\u00a0would have\u00a0more discipline to\u00a0manage our national security in a capable way.<\/p>\n<p>It so happens that Edward Snowden is a hero, and that no-one was better positioned to blow the whistle on the outrageous government abuse\u00a0of technology against the public than him. But even if the abuse had been exposed by a young child, or\u00a0if\u00a0a rat had somehow gnawed the\u00a0cable and thereby revealed these abuses against the public, the exposure of the truth\u00a0would still have been both charitable and necessary for the public good, and well-worth any blowback that might be foreseen.<\/p>\n<p>Read my most recent deep political analysis, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/2014\/12\/the-use-of-republican-war-hawks.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Use of Republican War Hawks&#8221;<\/a>, at <em>ClubOfINFO<\/em>, and keep a look out for my next major contribution to world opinion <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.com\/Contributors\/323344.html\" target=\"_blank\">at Press TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Unlocked-Emerging-Technology-Harry-Bentham-ebook\/dp\/B00J6ELGKE\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/71UszCWepKL._SL1288_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For my more optimistic analysis of technology and my theories on the way technology can be directed and guided for the sake of positive social change, get\u00a0my book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Unlocked-Emerging-Technology-Harry-Bentham-ebook\/dp\/B00J6ELGKE\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Unlocked: Emerging Technology Promises<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">By <a title=\"My file at ClubOfINFO\" href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham\" target=\"_blank\">Harry J. Bentham <\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-41\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/375\/2014\/08\/HJB-Signature-and-stamp-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"HJB Signature and stamp\" width=\"200\" height=\"113\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Le Mal est dans la chose m\u00eame et le rem\u00e8de est violent. Il faut porter la cogn\u00e9e \u00e0 la racine. The solution to evil is violent. We must take the hatchet\u00a0to the root. Jean-Paul Marat The heads of the National Security Agency, NSA, and our somewhat derivative equivalent in Britain, General Communications HQ or GCHQ,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,8,68,17,72,153,67,18,66,40,15,89],"tags":[279,274,1483,272,276,124,273,278,20,277,280,275,176,91],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-antistatism","category-conflict-2","category-edward-snowden","category-international-relations","category-lordre-2","category-middle-east","category-nsa","category-politics-2","category-publishing","category-us","category-wikileaks","tag-279","tag-disclosures","tag-edward-snowden","tag-espionage","tag-gchq","tag-julian-assange","tag-leaks","tag-new-james-bond-film","tag-nsa-2","tag-spectre","tag-spectre-trailer","tag-spying","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wikileaks-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Snowden&#039;s actions put 007 at risk. Also, who cares? - L&#039;Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/snowdens-actions-put-007-at-risk-also-who-cares.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Snowden&#039;s actions put 007 at risk. Also, who cares? - L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Le Mal est dans la chose m\u00eame et le rem\u00e8de est violent. Il faut porter la cogn\u00e9e \u00e0 la racine. The solution to evil is violent. We must take the hatchet\u00a0to the root. 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Also, who cares? - L&#039;Ordre","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/snowdens-actions-put-007-at-risk-also-who-cares.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Snowden's actions put 007 at risk. Also, who cares? - L&#039;Ordre","og_description":"Le Mal est dans la chose m\u00eame et le rem\u00e8de est violent. Il faut porter la cogn\u00e9e \u00e0 la racine. The solution to evil is violent. We must take the hatchet\u00a0to the root. 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Also, who cares?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L&#039;Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. 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