CAT AND UMBRELLA-IS PRIVACY FREEDOM?-GOODBYE CHARLIE

THE CAT AND THE UMBRELLA

  An umbrella drying on the spa provides a perfect place for a Hemingway nap, interrupted by camera sounds.

  "Hmmm. You woke me up bub!"

  "Ahhh!  Big stretch and look at these polydactyl paws."

  "Looks like little sister Joy is curious." 

  "Hey, I was here first!"

  "Good, she's gone.  Now if Mr Camera would leave me alone I could get back to napping."

TIME WITH THE CITIZEN

   The complex detail and playing time will rule this film off  people's list, but it is a film citizens should see.  CITIZEN FOUR is a nearly two hour examination of leaker Edward Snowden's act of leaking the documents that alerted the world to the pervasive surveillance under which we live.

    Most probably have an attitude about Snowden and what he did, but it's my take that until you've looked very closely into this, as documentary maker Laura Poitras has done, you've made your judgement without benefit of intimate, revealing, complex and important detail.  CITIZEN FOUR is about detail and implication. My bias is journalism; information gathering, fact checking, analysis with opinion or judgement coming last.  

    Even with all I have read and studied, I was still undecided about Snowden- a patriot, hero, trader, goat, grandstander? I've been given a closer examination of the leaker, his motivation, the absolute lying by US Government  officials, the specifics of the surveillance, the handling of the story around the world, an ultra-pervasive British spying program and the relationship between Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story and Snowden. 

    It's still a confusing situation on which to draw a judgement. It is clear to me Snowden was a young idealist and perhaps even a bit naive in his actions.  Seeing him now in Russia, you see a changed man. He looks worn, fatigued and even beaten emotionally. He says he did the right thing, but I sense he didn't fully estimate the toll it would take.

    Did he do the right thing?  Paths diverge at this point.

Those whom this nation tasks with its protection, security and law enforcement face a more difficult and lethal challenge than civilians can begin to understand. It is a hostile world and information and intelligence is a tool and weapon. Technology has provided keys to amassing that information. But should all citizens be subjected to a loss of privacy in an effort to provide security.  As an analyst in the documentary says, privacy is freedom and liberty. Loosing any privacy is a loss of freedom.

     It is not as though a monolithic dictator or fascist regime is using the gathering of the data to their specific advantage, but it is only a step from having the data to that kind of reality.  

     Presently information is being collected and gathered by a variety of agencies and in numerous ways. Now, this is a muddled kind of security, but the lack of federal coordination and the inability federal agencies to communicate well and to cooperate is a hedge against the information's singular mis-use. Still, in my mind, that is no defense. The point is, we are all suffering from a loss of privacy. Some of it we give up willingly. Social networks and commercial organizations gather and collect lots of data. It is something else when the federal government lies to us about what they are doing and what they are doing with what they gather. It is quite more serious when they use the cover of national security. Politicians have used that cover before, for all of the wrong reasons.
     Some have said if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. That is faulty thinking and is tantamount to  permitting a stripping away of any expectation of privacy, your most intimate freedom. That thinking is a slippery slope.

     The public has a right to know almost everything. The safety of agents, troops and critical operations must be maintained and that by nature puts some information out of public view, but in our process of governance there should be congressional oversight and judicial review.  We have a right to know that we were being spied upon and that our government lied about it. Had it not been for Edward Snowden, all of this would have been academic if not non- existent.  Did he violate a law? Yes. Did he tell Americans that his government was also violating the law? Yes again. He also revealed how.

      Attend Citizen 4 with friends and you may disagree with what it means to you individually, but it raises the kind of issues a democratic republic needs to address in the 21st Century. It is a bit slow, even tedious, but freedom is worth all of that.

IN THE SURF

    

GOODBYE CHARLIE

     Charlie Skinner, president of ACN died with his boots on but I hate it. As the extraordinary HBO series The Newsroom comes now to the finale, Sam Waterston's expertly portrayed old hand news executive goes out in a rant and rage. The networks new owner, a tech company billionaire is imposing  his silly but all too real reliance on social networks to guide news content and well, old Charlie's heart just couldn't take it.  I was particularly fond of the Waterston character who's life and death could have been drawn from real case studies. That is the beauty and brilliance of Aaron Sorkin's drama-there's a whole lot of truth in that fiction.

See you down the trail.

FREEDOM OR SECURITY-TALK IS NEEDED-Dangerous or Otherwise

FEELING MANIPULATED?

or as though someones listening in?

   The big yap yap now over the NSA disclosures at least

has people talking.

     And there is a lot of that going around.(Friend and reader Beverly noted, the bovine above is not a bull. Indeed, as a careful look will inform you. But just sort of go with it)  
      A question is, How do we want it?  What are the boundaries?

      Are we willing to give up liberty to feel safe? The conversation is needed and all of us, from voters to the intelligence community, need to weigh in. 

      I'm hung up on a couple of points.  Why is so much of our top clearance, security and intelligence work being done by private contractors? When and how did we decide to job it out and for who's benefit?  We are now paying private sources more money to do work that should be the exclusive franchise of US Government employees.

      Eisenhower had it right about the "military-industrial complex."  The modern codicil is "intelligence-industrial."  So a high school drop out, army wash out, can get hired by the CIA and get clearance and then quit only to be hired by a private contractor, paid reportedly a $ quarter million a year and have his ticket punched so he can purloin some of our most secret and sensitive information. Yea, that's intelligent isn't it!  Where are the adults?

      It's not an easy riddle. Americans voluntarily give up more private and specific data to social media, banks, in online purchases and e-mail than what the NSA has gathered in bundles. Private business knows more about you than do the spooks and some in the intelligence community  can't figure why that is, or why the current flap.

      Intelligence and security people reason they've been tasked with keeping us safe from harm and in their mind they cannot have too much information. But in the old days raw and irrelevant data got purged.  Now files are kept forever. Is that right?  It's another choice we have to make.

      The panel of Judges who guide the intelligence community in their acquisition of data also need to be heard from. It would be good for the Republic to hear the mind set and thinking of those who frame these vitally important considerations.

      And a word about Snowden as a leaker.  As a one time investigative reporter I could bore you with countless details about how a whistle blower or leaker helped get information to the public. In my experience there were many instances where the public good was served.
     Examples-an elementary school being built over a "forgotten" hazardous material dump, a grand jury being used to punish political enemies, mental patients being poisoned by inept or non existent medical supervision in over or wrong medication, Ku Klux Klansmen working on a city payroll as a result of extortion, managers of public housing selling material meant to improve housing projects out of the back door and profiting huge sums, a KGB officer trying to infiltrate a public office holder's staff, security breaches where some of this nation's most deadly nerve agent is stored, toxic poison leaking into a public water resource.

      I would not have been able to get that information onto the public agenda, had it not been for state, city and federal employees getting information to me-data, records, documents that had been buried, hidden, over looked, forgotten or in some cases "destroyed." 

      In my own little footnotes to history, our work prompted investigations, prosecutions, regulations, new statutes, and informed conversations. 

      We all would be well served by a robust conversation now about privacy, safety, expectations, propriety, and who should be minding our secrets.

       There's a great thought, attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.  I'm comfortable with quoting them both-

       "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either!"

   See you down the trail.