[Chapter-delegates] VIDEO: John Perry Barlow & Edward Snowden – A Chat Across Cyberspace

[Veni Markovski]

I was there at that chat. You call it a jewel, Joly, but I actually have 
to disagree slightly.
I'd rather share something written by a very respected Russian 
investigative journalist (unlike the western ones, he really has 
something to be afraid of), Andrei Soldatov (more about him - here: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Soldatov) and people can make their 
minds whether the interview is telling us things, or hiding them.:

http://www.agentura.ru/english/press/noplacetohidereview/


  No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald: A review

Some excerpts from Andrei Soldatov’s critical review of Glenn 
Greenwald’s No Place to Hide 
<http://vozduh.afisha.ru/books/no-place-to-hide-glenna-grinvalda-chto-ne-tak-s-bestsellerom-pro-snoudena/> at 
vozduh.afisha, an independent cultural and entertainment site owned by 
Rambler.ru, translated by The Interpreter:

    “Unlike the Brits [Luke Harding and Edward Lucas], Greenwald
    communicated with Edward Snowden; the first time face to face in
    Hong Kong in May 2013, and the last time only several days ago here
    in Moscow. And it was he who was chosen by Snowden for publicizing
    his exposes to The Guardian.

    However, despite this important advantage, the main thing in
    Greenwald’s book is what is not in it.

    In Greenwald’s book, the Russian period of Snowden’s life is
    missing. So is the story of how Snowden got on the flight to Moscow.
    Snowden’s visit to the Russian consulate in Hong Kong isn’t there,
    or even the names of the two lawyers who drove Snowden from the
    hotel after Snowden published his appeal to the world in the
    Guardian, acknowledging his authorship of the leaks. The name of
    Sarah Harrison from the WikiLeaks team, who accompanied Snowden to
    Moscow and spent the entire time with him during his forced stay at
    Sheremetyevo, is mentioned only once. And in fact Greenwald only
    mentioned her in the afterword, where he thanks Sarah and WikiLeaks
    for support.

Soldatov describes the structure of the book — divided into the 
narrative about his meeting with Snowden; criticisms of other 
journalists who attacked him (even saying he should be arrested); and 
the leaked documents. He says the book contains “a mass of curious 
details,” such as the agreement to meet Snowden the first time by an 
artificial alligator at the hotel, and that Snowden would be carrying a 
Rubiks’ cube in his left hand.

    “Greenwald is not only honest, but completely confident in the
    correctness of each step he and Snowden have taken. Several months
    ago at a journalists’ conference in Rio de Janeiro, I nearly fell
    out of my chair, along with my colleagues, when Greenwald, in answer
    to a question from the moderator, about how he verified Snowden’s
    information, said that he had ‘developed a sixth sense,’ and at the
    next question, about how he maintained the necessary distance from
    his source, said he did not know who had conceived of such idiotic
    rules, and he didn’t intend to observe them.

    This confidence in one’s own rectitude possibly explains best of all
    why in Russia, people don’t talk about the American’s exposes as
    much as they do in Europe and in South America.”

Soldatov then picks out an important contradiction in Snowden’s 
behaviour — he notes how in his book, Greenwald was shocked how open 
Snowden was, using his own name to register in the hotel, using a credit 
card in his real name, etc. because “he wanted to forestall any attempt 
to accuse him that he was some kind of recruited agent, which would be 
easier to do, if he spent that period in hiding.”

“Snowden told Greenwald that from the very beginning, he wanted to 
demonstrate that his actions could be verified from the outside and 
there was no conspiracy here, and he acted alone.

However, Snowden kept to that tactic, as is known, only in Hong Kong, 
and only before his meeting with Poitras and Greenwald.

Since Snowden appeared in Moscow, almost a year has passed, and there 
has been no possibility of learning where he spent all this time, who 
paid his bills and who chose for him Anatoly Kucherena, a member of the 
FSB’s Civic Council, as his Russian representative.

Meanwhile, the Russian reader loves conspiracy theories. From the 
president, who believes the Internet is an invention of the CIA, to an 
ordinary clerk, savoring the details of the intercepted conversation of 
Victoria Nuland in Kiev during Maidan, almost everyone believes that 
behind every sensational political event there must be some state actor 
and it is best if it is an intelligence agency. The Snowden epic is the 
best present to conspirology, since it provides a wide scope for the 
existence of two conspiracy theories in one; first, that the US is 
behind everything on the Internet, and second, that Snowden exposed 
everything on orders from the Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies.

These suspicions are only reinforced by the fact that we have a 
tradition of many years of treating defectors and sleeper agents, from 
Kim Philby to the SVR illegals caught in the US in 2010. This tradition 
is built on the fact that the agent is harshly controlled in his 
contacts and communication. The total impression is created that Edward 
Snowden, once he got beyond the bounds of the airport, automatically 
fell into that category. And in the last year, he has done nothing to 
dispel those suspicions.”

Soldatov believes the book will do little to convince Snowden skeptics 
or believers to change their mind. He notes that Greenwald seems not to 
have realized that once Snowden’s identity was revealed, it wouldn’t 
just be him doing the revelations, but other journalists would now treat 
him as a story as well.

“In fact a good journalist will try to dig for the truth in both cases — 
investigating the lying of the NSA in the USA, and trying to find 
explanations for the strangeness of Snowden’s behavior. Evidently in the 
last year, Greenwald never did understood that, which is why he spends a 
third of the book on haranguing other journalists. Snowden did not 
understand this either, when he decided to reply to criticism directed 
at him by asking Vladimir Putin a question on the air about massive 
surveillance in Russia, and instead of universal approval, received 
harsh criticism from practically all sides.

Snowden’s behavior in Russia should be explained, especially taking into 
account how cleverly his revelations were used by Russian propaganda for 
justifying all the new repressive laws on the Internet; even one good 
question about whether Russian authorities are tracking their citizens 
does not explain anything, and only provides new fodder for conspiracy 
theorists. Glenn Greenwald’s book does not provide these explanations, 
either.”



On 06/11/14 16:39, Joly MacFie wrote:
>  Last week was a busy one and, for some of us, we are just now 
> catching up with the wealth of content that was created by the 
> Personal Democracy Forum in NYC. This video is one of the jewels. 
>  Just one year after the initial reveal, with a fair amount of humor 
> thrown in, it's a succinct summary of the state of the civil reaction 
> to ubiquitous surveillance.  As mentioned at the end donations to 
> Snowden's legal defense can be made at Freesnowden.is 
> <http://Freesnowden.is>
>
>
> joly posted: "On June 5 2014, as part of its Surveillance and Its 
> Discontents segment, the 2014 Personal Democracy Forum presented a 
> live conversation between EFF founder John Perry Barlow and NSA 
> whistleblower Edward Snowden. Video is below. View on YouTube: http:/"
>
>
>     New post on *ISOC-NY NOTICE BOARD*
>
> 	
>
> On June 5 2014, as part of its *Surveillance and Its Discontents* 
> segment, the *2014 Personal Democracy Forum* 
> <http://personaldemocracy.com/conferences/nyc/2014> presented a live 
> conversation between EFF founder *John Perry Barlow* and NSA 
> whistleblower *Edward Snowden*. Video is below.
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QrZlHFgxA0?rel=0&w=600&h=338>
>
> *View on YouTube*: http://youtu.be/3QrZlHFgxA0
> *Transcribe on AMARA*: http://www.amara.org/en/videos/aEYIPtISegDq/
> *Twitter*: #pdf14 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/PDF14?f=realtime&src=hash>
>
> Comment <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/6729#respond> 	See all comments 
> <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/6729#comments>
>

-- 

Best,
Veni Markovski
http://www.veni.com
https://www.facebook.com/venimarkovski
https://twitter.com/veni

The opinions expressed above are those of the
author, not of any organizations, associated
with or related to him in any given way.

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