Snowden, the Movie

Gripping drama, potent activism—guest blogging about Oliver Stone’s Snowden biopic over at BoingBoing today.

"The movie succeeded splendidly as popular entertainment. But there’s another level worth discussing, too.

"Logically, it shouldn’t particularly matter who Snowden is. His background, his formative experiences, his motivations, his life—none of these is relevant compared to what we’ve learned from him: that the US government developed and deployed an unprecedented and illegal system of mass surveillance, foreign and domestic; that the head of the US intelligence apparatus was lying about this system in sworn testimony before a Senate oversight committee; that the NSA has been subverting the very encryption standards upon which Internet security—banking, shopping, medical, everything—depends. And so much more. In the face of government actions as toxic to democracy as these, who brought the actions to our attention seems of distinctly secondary importance.

"And yet, I know as a novelist that we humans are wired to focus more on who than we are than what. If I can get you to care sufficiently deeply about my characters, for example, I can afflict them with only the most trivial travails and you’ll still be entertained. Conversely, if you don’t care about my characters, I can put in play the fate of all of civilization and you probably won’t even finish the book. There’s something about our species that makes us understand “what” at least partially through the prism of “who.” This is why so many people give the candidate of their preferred party so much latitude to violate their own party’s stated principles. When your party’s the one doing it, it just feels different.

"So it's no surprise that..."

Read the whole thing over at Boing Boing.

Deep Web--Great Documentary

The other day, I stumbled across an excellent documentary called Deep Web, about the Ross Ulbricht/Silk Road prosecution. I'd followed the story somewhat at the time, but not closely, and the film illuminated a lot of aspects worth considering--including the societal and individual costs of drug prohibition; the dangers of prosecutorial overreach; and the ways people try to create communities beyond governmental intrusion and inanity. Fascinating and highly recommended.

My Op-Ed in Time Magazine Urging Obama to Pardon Snowden

From my op-ed in Time Magazine urging Obama to pardon Snowden:

"In other words, Snowden followed his conscience. Authoritarians might condemn such a choice. Americans should celebrate it. After all, in his seminal essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” And indeed, if people were intended to only and always obey the law, why would we have been given the power—and burden—of conscience? Similarly, if the president were intended always to hew to the law even at the expense of justice, why would the founders have vested the office of the president with the power of pardon?"

Read the whole thing here. And please consider adding your name to this worthy effort.

We're Winning the War, But Will Never Actually Win

Guest-blogging today over at Boing Boing:

If you were the government and wanted to maintain a state of perpetual war, how would you go about it?

First, you'd need an enemy, of course, but that part would be pretty straightforward. After all, if the US government could convince the citizenry that Iraq was the 9/11 enemy but that Saudi Arabia was our friend when nineteen out of the twenty 9/11 highjackers were Saudi, it's fair to say that just about anything is possible.

But the next part would be harder. On the one hand, you'd have to claim progress in the war so that the citizenry would maintain its support for the war. On the other hand, you couldn't actually defeat the enemy, lest the war end.

That is to say, you'd have to maintain a longterm, delicate balance: we would always be winning in the war, but would never actually win the war.

With that balance in mind, your propaganda would likely be some version of, "Today, our military forces have achieved a significant victory. Of course, the enemy is insidious and resilient, and there is much hard work still ahead."

Which brings us to the latest in All The News That's Fit To Print...

Read the rest over at Boing Boing.