There is a simple way of judging the adequacy of media: the focus is on Snowden’s revelations–PRISM, TEMPORA etc.–or on Snowden himself? He is but one in a great chain of revealers driven by conscience rather than money or oaths; there will be more revelations given the enormity of the US spying machine on the world. But, what does it do?
The issue is not the “freedom of expression” of the revealers, the “whistle-blowers”. If they reveal the systematic subversion–and “superversion” from above–of all civil-political and socio-economic human rights, then the denial of the freedom of expression to machine operators is an obvious and rather small part. The focus is naive.
Nor is the intrusion into the privacy of potentially any human being on earth the issue. Recording all traces, verbal and otherwise, left behind by all of us, putting them together for a more holistic image and filing it for its predictive and interventionist value is certainly an “intrusion”. But the basic problem is, for what?
Not for law enforcement, to apprehend, arraign in court, punish crimes; not ex post but ex ante, to intimidate categories, “profiles” and individuals that might commit anti-USA acts. Before, not after.
We may not be against health ministries having enough data and medical histories to issue warnings to categories like “65 and above”. France does that when heat or flu threaten the population; before, not after. That is benevolent. This US spying machine, an industry, is not benevolent to targeted categories. It claims to protect the US majority against potentially violent minority categories at home and abroad.