SXSW was rocked today by a virtual visit from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Depending on who you talk to, Snowden is either a folk hero or a pompous cyberterrorist for his activities that led to the public knowledge of widespread government surveillance of US citizens.
Snowden’s message to SXSW, where his interview was simulcast across three different packed ballrooms, was that he was not regretful of his actions, and a call to action: The people at SXSW are the people who can fix the problem.
In this, I find Snowden to be naive and ridiculous. Yes, always tell your audience they’re the best place ever the way the Rolling Stones would tell Des Moines they’re the rockingest city in the world. But the problem is, people seem to take him seriously.
First, his solution to surveillance was largely technical. If companies like Google and Facebook who collect all of this customer data would secure their systems better so governments can’t intercept them en masse, there would not be mass surveillance, Snowden told the rapt, often cheering audience.
While he’s not wrong about the need for private companies to secure their data, he’s incredibly naive that governments won’t try to get as much information as they possibly can. The rejoinder I too often hear from politicians is that “How can it be illegal for the US government to do something that Google does?” You build a higher fence, the government will find a way to creep over it. So all you’re doing is playing a never ending technological cat and mouse game. Surely, there are better uses of our times and solutions to this.
Snowden fundamentally misunderstands the nature of tyranny. He thinks if you take the easy route away from them, those who want power through a panopticon-like surveillance state will be stopped.
His second proposal is equally naive. He called for a separate organization to have oversight over Congress. Ummmm… Last I checked, those were called “elections” but I can understand Snowden forgetting what those are in his exile in Russia.
Yes, our elections process is corrupt. And we keep electing bad leaders. But those problems are the technical ones we can solve. Get money out of politics. A constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations are not people and money is not speech. End partisan gerrymandering so that 90% of Congress aren’t re-elected from “safe”districts. Universal voter registration and make it easier to vote. And members of Congress will have to actually listen to their constituents.
Citizen oversight of Congress is what’s warranted. And it’s called “vote the bastards out.”
But enough about Snowden. Let me end by saying I appreciate what he did, but I think he’s kind of an ignorant douche. So, he fits in well with a lot of the crowd here at SXSW. (I kid. I love you, SXSW.)
Immediately after seeing Snowden, I went to a panel featuring Benjamin Simon from Greenpeace, David Segal, Executive Director for Demand Progress, academic Molly Sauter, and Shahid Buttar, Exec Dir of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, about the future of direct digital activism. What does that mean? Remember SOPA? And how a huge portion of the internet went dark in protest? That’s direct action.
But so would a DDOS attack on someone’s website (say, the Koch Brothers’ site, or a major corporation or government agency whose actions you don’t like). Or any other sort of hacking to disable or deface a website.
This. . . This is what was useful. Actual people engaging in online activism actually creating change.
While a little bleak and depressing, since so many security firms have gotten good at making their websites secure against sophisticated hacks and attacks and the laws are very punitive for this sort of action, the consensus was that there continues to be a place for online direct activism as well as online activism as well.
while sparsely attended by maybe only 100 or so folks, this panel was 100 times better than the bitter words Edward Snowden had to offer via Google Hangout.