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

Wed Jun 11 15:14:41 PDT 2014

Personally, I take Snowden at face value. He wouldn't be in Russia if the
USA hadn't coerced other governments to prevent him from leaving.

What's interesting in retrospect is Glen Greenwald's talk at F2C2013, as
webcast by ISOC, when apparently he had come direct from the meeting in NY
where he'd first learnt the extent of Snowden's material.

https://isoc-ny.org/p2/5676

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Veni Markovski <veni at veni.com> wrote:

>  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
>
>
>    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 Markovskihttp://www.veni.comhttps://www.facebook.com/venimarkovskihttps://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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