
Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower - sajid
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/daniel-ellsberg-edward-snowden-and-the-modern-whistleblower
======
rqebmm
Gladwell's biggest omission is the stories of Thomas Drake and William Binney.
Two predecessors that Snowden was well aware of, who tried to be, as Gladwell
puts it "leakers as insiders". They were systematically shut down, and Snowden
learned that was no longer an option for him, so he became a "leaker as
outsider".

The nature and style of Snowden's whistleblowing is not because he loves the
hacker-chic style. It's because the CIA and NSA proved they were perfectly
capable of covering up the most damaging "insider" whistleblowers and he still
thought this information was worth releasing to the public.

~~~
tptacek
While I agree that Drake and Binney were "leakers as insiders", I do not agree
that this impacts the narrative of the article. Snowden wasn't an NSA outsider
because he didn't want to be an insider. He was an NSA outsider _because he
was an NSA outsider_ \--- his attempts to be an insider failed.

Moreover, there's more to the point Gladwell is making than that Snowden
wasn't an insider. The core point of the piece is that Ellsberg's insider
status enabled him to leak carefully, and to redact strategically. Snowden
demonstrably did not do this: not only did things get published that weren't
in the American public interest, but other things that were (for instance:
traces of the Juniper/Netscreen backdoor, or implants in other VPN products)
were never published.

It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability
to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was inferior
to the Pentagon Papers.

~~~
MajesticHobo
> It's not just that Snowden wasn't an insider, but that he lacked the ability
> to leak carefully and strategically --- and so the public outcome was
> inferior to the Pentagon Papers.

This is hard to believe. I find it much more likely that Snowden had a broad
agenda he wanted to cover, and simply decided to delegate the work of sifting
through documents relevant to the public interest to journalists. How
successful this strategy was is another issue entirely.

Also, the direct comparison between the material Ellsberg had to work with and
what Snowden had is misleading. Ellsberg leaked a study from RAND literally
designed to assess and document the history of the Vietnam War, including past
failures. It's easy to look at that and go, "Wow, this is a careful, strategic
disclosure." But Ellsberg couldn't have had an easier choice about what to
leak!

In contrast, Snowden had access to a much more disparate set of documents that
required lots of interpretation and technical parsing on journalists' part.
There wasn't a single PowerPoint presentation that summed up NSA's abuses so
conveniently.

That doesn't necessarily justify scraping as much as possible and passing it
over to journos, but we have to keep the two men's access to material in
context.

~~~
tptacek
Can you be more specific about what exactly it is you find hard to believe,
what you believe instead, and what evidence could be presented to you to
change your belief?

~~~
MajesticHobo
The notion that he "lacked the ability to leak carefully and strategically"
because he was an outsider. I'm fairly sure he was more than capable of
selecting only documents related to domestic surveillance if he wanted to --
that just wasn't his broader goal. However, I would definitely appreciate the
argument that his status as an outsider rendered him _opposed_ to the idea of
leaking selectively. I think the author hinted at this when he contrasted
"hackers" and "leakers", but it's still quite different from what you're
saying.

------
wfo
Why should we take Gladwell seriously on this? Why does anyone think he is
qualified? He is a windbag famous for writing the most base and insulting form
of literary clickbait: pop science novels that tell a series of 'just so'
fables which add up to give the reader a satisfying sense of the world which
is completely opposed to the world the way it is. He is a propaganda artist at
best, insidious at least.

And now he writes on Snowden, omits hugely important pieces of the story,
warps the narrative in service of his hip contrarianism and unsurprisingly
misses the point completely but distracts with cute anecdotes about Ellsberg.

I guess the question we should be asking ourselves is why is he given a spot
to write a long-form article like this in the New Yorker? Why does anyone
still take him seriously at this point? Has intellectualism in this country
truly failed this hard?

Perhaps a good thing could come from this: people who have done their due
diligence and read about Snowden will read this and recognize Gladwell for the
hack he is.

~~~
tptacek
Could you be more specific about how he's "warped the narrative" in this
piece? I feel like I've done my due diligence on this topic and I felt like it
was both well written and made a pretty compelling point.

Further, the places where Gladwell departs from the message board orthodoxy on
Snowden aren't at all out of step with what other reporters who covered him
had to say. For instance: read Fred Kaplan's review of the Snowden movie,
which recaps many of the points Gladwell made here, but is far more acidic.

~~~
justcommenting
To give an example, Gladwell cherry-picks quotes to misrepresent Snowden's
views in this piece. The strong stench of elitism and intellectual dishonesty
in insinuating that Snowden is a fool because he claims that non-governmental
institutions have important roles to play in solving social problems is
typical, and I would venture to speculate that Gladwell would _never_ say the
same thing about someone like Larry Lessig (who has actually spoken with
Snowden), even though they happen to hold similar views on those topics,
particularly in relation to the examples Snowden gave in the quote.

Gladwell's process serves well enough as a lazy caricature for the piece but
doesn't represent a good-faith articulation of his subject's views, which is
hard to excuse in light of the dozens of events, thousands of tweets, etc.
that are much more accessible than Ellsberg material was decades ago.

Gladwell could have interviewed Snowden and Ellsberg but probably chose not
to, perhaps because it was easier to trash-talk someone whose life is under
threat at an especially sensitive time (pardon consideration) for a "clever"
contrast with Ellsberg than to try to represent his perspective in good faith.

~~~
tptacek
Which quotes are cherry picked? How is Snowden's view misrepresented? Is it
your argument that Snowden has a greater respect for governing institutions
(conceptual or in reality) than the piece represents?

Long before this piece was published, I had the impression of Snowden as a
sort of technocratic an-cap type.

I will confess to not being the slightest bit interested in what Ellsberg
thinks of Snowden, and far more interested in what people report about
Ellsberg and Snowden than what either of them think of each other.

~~~
justcommenting
Mostly the far-from-charitable interpretation of "When we talk about saving
lives, when we are talking about fighting cancer, treating AIDS, ameliorating
poverty, these solutions typically are not coming from government. . . . While
law is important . . . at the end of the day law is simply letters on a page."

My argument was that Gladwell is painting a cheap caricature of a "hacker"
when it's both easy and reasonable to interpret a quote like the one above in
the broader context of the full speech/event and the dozens of others that
he's given in recent years.

I'm not trying to argue that Snowden has or doesn't have respect for governing
institutions. I think that's Snowden's story to tell. But my read of the piece
is that Gladwell reached some "clever" sounding conclusion - perhaps in a
"blink" \- and then found a quote that supported his narrative, which reads
more like Harvard-worship in Ellsberg's favor than careful presentation of
arguments/evidence. This strikes me as misleading and dishonest in light of
the sheer volume of interviews, tweets, etc. from Snowden that (at least to
me) paint a more nuanced and careful picture.

~~~
tptacek
I can understand bristling at the association of technophilic anarcho-
capitalism with the word "hacker", but I'm less convinced by the argument that
mere invocation of the concept of technophilic anarcho-capitalism is out of
bounds, because it is clearly "a thing" in our community.

~~~
justcommenting
Invoking the concept isn't out of bounds, but having watched a decent number
of presentations, talks, and interviews by/about this particular person, the
lack of nuance in describing someone whose views seem especially easy to find
was frustrating and likely deliberate. It took me all of five seconds to find
Snowden's last tweet on the particular argument Gladwell references, which was
about a week ago (bold font):
[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/805868198138703873](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/805868198138703873)

Gladwell's uninformed gee-whiz speculation seems like an excuse to parrot the
claim that Snowden "may have been the dupe of a foreign-intelligence service"
without mentioning any evidence or even a clear argument beyond its appearance
in a book. Maybe Snowden was that or worse, but the only argument Gladwell
seems to construct to support the claim is that he was a dupe/fool because he
didn't go Harvard like Ellsberg.

------
makomk
For comparison, this is Daniel Ellsberg's view on Edward Snowden:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-
nsa-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-
snowden-made-the-right-
call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html)

~~~
ScottBurson
A quote from that piece:

 _Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly.
More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers,
such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson
of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just
as power corrupts._

~~~
bediger4000
Ellsberg's view of Snowden is Gladwell's biggest omission. It's hard to
believe that Gladwell researched Ellsberg without coming across this or other
similar statements. I therefore assume Gladwell omitted this view on purpose,
because it messes with the noble, Harvard grad leaking based on Game Theory,
versus the CC dropout lamer hacker doxxing the NSA.

------
ranman
This story oozes elitism. It's also rife with misinformation and misleading
tangents. The claim that various government organizations are solely
responsible for AIDS elimination and cancer research is ridiculous. How many
NGOs research these things? How many private industries? Then to follow that
up with the idea that taxpayers foot the bill for the NIH so why not foot the
bill for the NSA??? I just don't follow this reasoning.

~~~
cmiles74
Does Gladwell really not remember how hard it was to get the US executive
branch to take AIDS seriously?

[http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-
AID...](http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-AIDS-Legacy-
Silence-equals-death-2751030.php)

------
DINKDINK
I was astounded at how classist and elitist Gladwell comes across in the
article. His point is essentially, because Snowden didn't have a PhD and
didn't talk to the right people, the civic value of his leaks are mute.

The difference in Ellsberg's leak and Snowden is that Ellsberg had support
within the government (the military) for the public knowing the truth. I'd
argue that the difference with Snowden's leaks is that they were inherently
against the state and in defense of the constitution. Because the leaks were
solely in the interest of citizens, and not the political elite, is the reason
he drew the ire of the state.

------
etiam
A sizable share of this looks like namecalling and misinformation.

~~~
sigmar
Mind pointing out specifics of what is "namecalling and misinformation"?

~~~
Natsu
Not the OP, but I would presume they're referring to things a few other
commenters have already complained about, e.g. as justcommenting wrote:

"Both were imperfect people in unique situations, but Gladwell's distinction
seems to boil down to "Harvard, game theory, & Nobel prize winning PhD
advisor" in the case of Ellsberg vs. "community-college dropout" in the case
of Snowden, followed by Gladwell falling over himself to redefine "insider"
right after spelling it out in detail with the language of class, prestige,
and societal privilege."

Or there's the omission that tanderson92 pointed out:

"Gladwell is intentionally deceptive when he refers to Snowden "washing out"
of the Reserves. In fact he was discharged after breaking both legs in a
training accident. You can debate whether that technically qualifies as
washing out or not, but it's quite another to lump that in with the rest of
the paragraph and let the reader fill in their own opinions of the events. But
perhaps that's the entire point, and part of the reason Gladwell was chosen
for this piece.

Eliding certain facts can leave the reader with a distinctly non-factual
impression of the man."

[http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-army-
di...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-army-
discharge-092486)

------
squozzer
Maybe Leaker 2.0 is inferior to 1.0. It perhaps parallels America 2.0
(indefinite detention without trial, torture, and maybe a few other crimes
against humanity) being a bit inferior to America 1.0.

~~~
mattnewton
I was never a great history student but I am certain America 1.0 isn't as
rosey as you paint it. I can think of genocide of indigenous people, slavery,
increased use of capital punishment and mob justice tactics like tarring and
feathering just off the top of my head depending on when you draw the line.

I imagine the kinds of things you listed are only coming to light now. I can't
see what's unique about the people in power now that makes it likely they are
the first acting like this, with maybe the exception of surveillance. I think
the earlier American government had less problems keeping these activities
secret.

However, despite that cynicism that doesn't mean Americans shouldn't fight for
those improvements too!

~~~
eternalban
They are the first ones to institutionalize these actions. At what point, for
example, did a President of this nation adopt torture as a legitimate tool of
the state? Sure, people have been tortured in US for ages, but it was not
official policy.

That is the difference.

~~~
pvg
"Some people are property" was the law of the land and you could do whatever
you wanted with your property. And that's just for starters. The notion that
some fundamental break occurred at 'enhanced interrogation' is ahistorical.

~~~
mindslight
"Some people are property", as abhorrent as it is, is markedly different from
"all people are property".

~~~
pvg
There is certainly a difference between actual chattel slavery and a glib bit
of hyperbolic political sloganeering.

~~~
mindslight
While you downplay my mention as "political sloganeering", it's a core
assumption of contemporary political philosophy. A specific designation
("chattel") is only required for distinguishing between different classes of
people, when only one class is treated as property. Totalitarianism implicitly
asserts all people are its to control, and thus needs no formal designation.

~~~
pvg
Strike as non-responsive?

~~~
mindslight
That seems more applicable to your first response to me. My exact point was
that there is a difference (your labeling my phrasing as "political
sloganeering" notwithstanding).

It only makes sense to compare current society with historic oppression if you
also equate us all with that oppressed class (eg the unoppressed class is what
has vanished).

I'm not saying you can't find further examples of historic government
overreach against the _citizenry_ , it's just that slavery is not one of them.

edit: Actually scratch that, I see that the comparison was actually being made
with torture, which is generally about non-citizens (I hope?).

I was addressing the larger topic of societal surveillance, and that to me
seems like a definite new phenomenon rather than something comparable to past
oppression. Although I'd say it's been created by technological change rather
than political change.

------
cryoshon
a long and bloviating article, complaining essentially that hackers refuse to
wear ties, and that they really should wear ties because the computer
engineers of the old days wore ties.

instead of "ties" we're talking about niceties regarding whistleblower
behaviors regarding leaks.

my response: the public is kept in the dark intentionally by malicious actors
who run their country; leaking is an ethical path to disrupt those malicious
actors.

~~~
BoringCode
Targeted leaking can be justified. Indiscriminately stealing information can
not be. I think that's a better summary of the article. Now, there are a lot
of subtleties to this, especially in regards to what Snowden actually did. But
I don't think it's fair to boil down the article's premise to "hating on
hackers."

Your response actually agrees with the author. I don't think the author would
deny that leaking can be and is a necessary part of a free society.

~~~
agd
You're using biased language. Rephrasing your point to: "Targeted stealing can
be justified. Indiscriminate stealing can not be." or perhaps "Targeted
leaking can be justified. Indiscriminate leaking can not be".

I think you are missing a point though. Who is best placed to judge what to
release? The leaker, or experienced journalists? What if you know there are
more abuses but don't have time to individually search through the documents
before leaking? Should you only take the ones you have already read, and lose
out on revealing other abuses? It's a difficult choice.

From my outside point of view, the government (and often media) errs too much
on the side of secrecy so I'm glad to see a whistleblower who is more
aggressive with the amount of information they leak.

~~~
BoringCode
I was summarizing the article, that's why I chose that language because it
reflected my interpretation of what the author was saying.

But I think a more balanced approach is necessary. The leaker should have at
least some knowledge of what they are providing to journalists. This was
somewhat addressed in the article because the author seemed to feel that
Snowden was opening himself up to attack precisely because he was so
indiscriminate. He put a target on his back from not just the US government
but also foreign governments who want the information he has.

~~~
EdHominem
It doesn't work the other way. If you take only a few documents they simply
lie their way through those few leaks and continue on. You need the bulk of
the Snowden leaks, and the ability to continually show the government to be
lying, to even start the conversation.

As for what's justified, there's no justification for _not_ reporting crimes.
There's no difficulty bar where you get to relax even though nothing has
changed. You have a legal obligation to report illegal acts and orders even if
it's uncomfortable. If the government wants to deter leakers it should start
listening to their initial complaints, before these loyal Americans feel the
need to go public.

> a more balanced approach is necessary.

Right, when crimes are revealed more of the administration need to go to jail.
Hell, it's the military and some should probably be hung for their crimes. As
long as the whistleblower is the only one suffering we can be sure the system
is failing.

------
fatdog
Gladwell has written a predictable hatchet job of a perceived libertarian
hero. Surprised that it was him, not surprised it was done in the NY-anything.

More interesting question is: if one were going to orchestrate a pseudo-
intellectual takedown of the forces of popular discontent, who would one go
after next?

