Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; truthdig.com; Glenn Greenwald via TomDispatch.com
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First appeared at TomDispatch; see Tom (Engelhardt)’s introduction. [This is a shortened, adapted version of Chp. 1 of Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, with permission of Metropolitan Books.]
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| Greenwald, author, investigative journalist |
On December 1, 2012, I received my first communication from Edward
Snowden, although I had no idea at the time that it was from him.
The contact came in the form of an email from someone calling himself
Cincinnatus, a reference to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman
farmer who, in the fifth century BC, was appointed dictator of Rome to
defend the city against attack. He is most remembered for what he did
after vanquishing Rome’s enemies: he immediately and voluntarily gave up
political power and returned to farming life. Hailed as a “model of
civic virtue,” Cincinnatus has become a symbol of the use of political
power in the public interest and the worth of limiting or even
relinquishing individual power for the greater good.
The email began: “The security of people’s communications is very
important to me,” and its stated purpose was to urge me to begin using
PGP encryption so that “Cincinnatus” could communicate things in which,
he said, he was certain I would be interested. Invented in 1991, PGP
stands for “pretty good privacy.” It has been developed into a
sophisticated tool to shield email and other forms of online
communications from surveillance and hacking.
In this email, “Cincinnatus” said he had searched everywhere for my
PGP “public key,” a unique code set that allows people to receive
encrypted email, but could not find it. From this, he concluded that I
was not using the program and told me, “That puts anyone who
communicates with you at risk. I’m not arguing that every communication
you are involved in be encrypted, but you should at least provide
communicants with that option.”
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| The United States of Fear |
“Cincinnatus” then referenced the sex scandal of General David
Petraeus, whose career-ending extramarital affair with journalist Paula
Broadwell was discovered when investigators found Google emails between
the two. Had Petraeus encrypted his messages before handing them over to
Gmail or storing them in his drafts folder, he wrote, investigators
would not have been able to read them.
- When the US National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the newly elected Obama administration, it predicted that the planet's "sole superpower" would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing 15 years hence. The United States of Fear makes clear that Americans should don their crash helmets and buckle their seat belts, because the U.S. is on the path to a major decline at a startling speed.
“Encryption matters, and it is
not just for spies and philanderers.”
“There are people out there you would like to hear from,” he added,
“but they will never be able to contact you without knowing their
messages cannot be read in transit.” Then he offered to help me install
the program. He signed off: “Thank you. C.”
Using encryption software was something I had long intended to do. I
had been writing for years about WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, the
hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, and had also communicated with
people inside the U.S. national security establishment. More
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