Enemies and Friends – Whistleblowing in the Internet Age

America, most of the world in fact, was rocked by another whistle-blowing scandal this week as former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Edward Snowden revealed state secrets about the snooping program Prism.

These revelations follow close on the heels of the start of Bradley Manning’s trial, the US Army private accused of handing over information to Wikileaks, and increased calls for a beefed-up ‘Snoopers Charter’ in the UK after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

All of these incidents, and many others, have posed two very awkward questions. First, do whistleblowers hurt or help the cause of freedom, and second, how much privacy should the public expect in the face of global terrorism?

Both of these questions are, at best, difficult to answer or, at worst, the very definition of impossible to resolve.

Surely, if you can prevent another 9/11 or 7/7 by logging people’s internet usage a loss of privacy is a small price to pay, and whistleblowers harm this endeavour.

However, a founding principle of democracy is openness and the guaranteed freedom of its citizens and central pillars of this are innocence until guilt is proven and freedom of expression.

The first question is arguably the easier to answer, because, as many of the talking-heads have already pointed out, what whistleblowers do is wrong legally, but morally justifiable.

Manning does not deny most of the charges being brought against him and Snowden was so sure he would face prosecution, and even possible persecution because of his actions, he left the US for Hong Kong and has now gone into hiding. In fact Manning knows the best he can possibly expect is to spend the rest of his life in prison.

This clearly shows they were both aware of the crime they were committing, but blowing the whistle on organisations like the US Department of Defence or the National Security Agency is a question of ethics, not legality.

Without people willing to shed light on shady practices the public would have maybe never found out about Watergate, the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and MPs expenses, or the fraudulent and corrupt behaviour by Enron, Pfizer and UBS.

Undoubtedly, the world would be a worse place if these abuses of power and corporate greed had not been exposed and each specific case led to improvements being made to the system to stop them happening again, even if the fixes have not been perfect.

However, there is one point which makes the two most recent cases more significant.

Sherron Watkins, the woman who exposed the Enron scandal, committed a crime by just being aware of the false accounting at the US corporate giant, while the more recent cases are a question of threatening national security and, in Manning’s case, the very serious offence of aiding and abetting the enemy.

Essentially the question is did Manning or Snowden endanger lives through their actions?

In Manning’s case the answer is probably yes, even though his actions only proved what many people suspected, but with Snowden the question is far less tangible.

If, due to Snowden’s revelations, the US stops gathering data from mobile communications and internet records and because of this miss the opportunity to catch terrorist suspects who go on to commit an atrocity, did victims of the atrocity die because of Snowden’s actions? Where is a tort lawyer when you need one?

This brings us neatly to the second question of how much privacy people can rightfully expect in this time of global terrorism.

Of course there has hardly been a time in the UKs history when it has not been under some kind of threat, but the rise of religious and political extremists in the internet age poses unique challenges.

In the past it was impossible to monitor the search engine results of the Jacobite’s, mobile phone use of IRA members and the satnav records of the Spanish Armada, but today the most effective way of keeping tabs on potential terrorists is to see who views extremist material or reads about bomb making.

However, this raises two further issues.

Firstly, just because people view this material does not mean they are going to commit a terrorist act and going after them in such a haphazard way is comparable to claiming all readers of Fifty Shades of Grey are now into bondage.

Secondly, having extreme views is not a crime. Various political groups of the left and right hold some extreme views, but in itself this does not mean these groups should be illegal, censored or banned.

As Noam Chomsky said “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

Most people would not object to known terrorist threats having their communications monitored as an intelligence gathering device, but the serious issue, ignored by all governments, is how far to take these tactics.

CCTV, for example, has been an incredibly useful tool for indentifying criminals, but an unavoidable consequence of this is the recording of all people’s movements regardless of any illegal intent.

In the same way monitoring people’s internet use will throw focus on all people who view extremist material, not just those who are encouraged by it to go on and commit violent acts.

Another important question is what is classified as extremist material.

I, like many, was shocked at the levels of racism and xenophobia expressed by my “friends” on Facebook following Lee Rigby’s murder in Woolwich, many of which included the sharing of blog posts, pictures and videos from across the internet.

A minute fraction of the people who posted this material across all social media platforms would even consider taking this standpoint to a violent level, but all of them viewed the material.

However, would we not all be shocked and appalled if we found out all of the people who posted this material were now on government watch lists because of it?

The fact of the matter is the internet does need to be, for want of a better word, policed, but the way this is done must be in line with both historic and modern views of privacy and freedom.

What has appalled people about the Prism revelations has been the secrecy with which it was carried out, indicating how the government agencies involved knew how controversial (or potentially illegal) the scheme would be.

The use of tools like covert surveillance of internet and mobile phone use need to be discussed in public and if they are not history shows these powers can end up being used in a despotic and oppressive manner.

These tactics need to be used as tools at the disposal of the intelligence services, not as the front line of counter terrorism, or the western world will have no moral authority, and they should certainly not replace other means of gathering this information which does not infringe on people’s human rights.

There is also too much information and traffic online for this to be a focused means of defence, making this more blunt tool than laser guided.

All people want to see the UK and the world free from extremist attacks on our freedom, but the way to achieve this is by not damaging the freedoms vital to democracy and the best way to achieve this is by encouraging people to have moral conviction and, if required, blow the whistle, regardless of the consequences to themselves.