Snowden = Global Thinker?
Even those who may not be persuaded that our surveillance technologies have dangerously outpaced democratic controls should agree that in democracies, surveillance of the public must be debated by the public. No official may decide the limit of our rights in secret.
This choice nugget of farcical altruism is the money shot of Snowden’s statement on being added to the list of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers for 2013.
We must debate surveillance and rights in the public square. But for somebody to espouse such a noble ideal and give up so much in pursuit of that goal, it’s immensely ironic that he chose to run to countries that have horrible records of human rights and government control.
But even worse, Snowden has chosen to align himself with Glenn Greenwald. An advocacy journalist of immense energy who’s chutzpah is only matched by his thin skin.
In a complex subject such as internet surveillance that we all must be debating, isn’t Greenwald a horrible choice as a journalistic messenger about this most important of debates?
Is Greenwald a feature or a bug?