Snow, Synchronicity, and Edward Snowden

Maybe it was those snowflakes in our weather forecast, but I had a lot of snow-related synchronicities this week.  It started with the news that a new monument had gone up overnight in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park, not far from the Brooklyn Bridge.  The monument consisted of a bust of Edward Snowden, with his name emblazoned across the column below it in big Roman capitals.  It was an impressive gesture by a group of artists who wrote (as you shall see below) some powerful things about freedom and heroism and the public’s right to know.  And even though the government covered it up, by sending park employees to smother Snowden’s bust in a tarp so no one could see it, civil disobedience had happened and it was noteworthy.  Check it out — it’s a nice statue.  

Perhaps because I had snow on my mind, I chose to spend an hour in the early evening reading an essay entitled The State of Seige by C. P. Snow, a British scientist and government advisor from the middle of the last century.  Writing in 1968 — not a great time, to be sure — Snow confessed that in that year he had come the closest he had ever come to despair, as saw the enormity of the problems facing humanity and at the same time realized just how disinclined humanity was to do anything about them. 

Reading his essay, I felt that little tingle of recognition that you sometimes get when words from long ago sound like they could have been written yesterday.  Snow’s thesis is that the world faces urgent problems of the sort that only collective action can solve, but, perhaps because the problems are so large, people are overwhelmed.  Instead of turning out toward the world and trying to help, they turn their backs and retreat into little enclaves of like-minded friends and family, doing their best to know as little as possible about the outside world.  Snow did not think this was a good thing.

Also this week, the John Oliver interview with Edward Snowden aired, taped somewhere in Russia apparently.  I watched it.  Snowden seemed thinner, if that’s possible, and nervous, as anyone would be, but he responded to all questions with the same rock-solid commitment to his truth that we’ve come to associate with him.  He didn’t waver.  Freedom is good.  Life without freedom is prison.  The people have a right to know so they can decide for themselves what kind of government they want to have and just how much government control of daily life they’re willing to tolerate.  

This is where it got a bit depressing.  Oliver showed Snowden some video of people interviewed in Times Square in which almost no one had any idea who Edward Snowden was. If they did, they merely repeated the negative patter of mainstream media, condemning him for endangering the country (“the troops”) and leaking things “that should not have been leaked,” as one woman put it.  The fact that his revelations had shown us that our government has access to what we thought was our private information seemed lost on them.   

Admittedly, this was Times Square.  A recent issue of a young women’s fashion magazine interviewed the actress playing Snowden’s girlfriend (in the upcoming Oliver Stone movie) with only a passing mention as to who Snowden was. It was assumed that their audience of under 25s would know.  But that’s not the point. Oliver wanted Snowden to know, on no uncertain terms, that Americans do not care about NSA surveillance.

Snowden, who had just told Oliver that he thought the American people could “surprise you” and rise to the challenge, looked visibly deflated when Oliver told him they would not.  Then Oliver explained, in a kind of deranged, older British brother sort of way, that what “Americans” really care about, more than anything else, is keeping naked pictures of themselves private — photos of their “junk” as he prosaically put it — even if they email said photos to other people.  He proceeded to roll tape of the same people from the first round of interviews, where they declared how very not-OK it would be with them for the government to look at the naked pictures that they themselves had emailed.  (I am aware that this is a comedy show but these appeared to be real people).  

Snowden seemed a bit nonplussed by this scenario, but nevertheless, he gamely explained all the ways the government could, potentially, look at your junk (assuming you send such pictures around in email).  Basically, just about any program handling email and online communications could end up scooping people’s naked pictures into the government’s database.  An especially good way to get caught up in the dragnet, according to Snowden, is to use Gmail which he said gets moved around between domestic and foreign servers all the time, making it targetable under our laws.  And, just to be clear, Snowden said that government “data analysts” see people’s naked pictures all the time. 

It’s too bad the line in the sand has to be naked selfies, but if that’s what it takes…

To return to our theme, flimsy though it be, here are a couple of guys with the word “snow” in their names who both think that we the people should look at the urgent problems of our day and try, at least try, to collectively do something about them.  This we don’t seem to be doing.  In fact, we seem to be doing something closer to what C. P. Snow warns about in his essay — tuning out the news, tuning into our little enclaves of family and friends, and actively seeking to avoid knowing too much about the troubles our country and our world face.  The reason is almost a cliché at this point:  What can I do?  The implied answer to which is, “nothing.”

Without sounding too simplistic, I disagree that there is nothing we can do.  For instance, the barest minimum action one can take is to know what’s going on and not just from the 10 o’clock news.  The second is to care, where caring is possible.  And the third is to be honest about your views when opportunities arise for you to share them with others. 

Also, contrary to anything you might have heard, I’m pretty sure it’s still safe to write your congresspeople, and if you do, they will know what you think.  You can allow your view to be tallied with others of your state who have similar views on a particular matter.  And your congresspeople will be more likely to fight for you than otherwise because they will know. 

This is not just about NSA surveillance.  There are a host of issues we could concern ourselves with, if we chose.

Nevertheless, Edward Snowden took a huge risk to bring important information to the American people and give them an opportunity to act on it. It would be a shame if we let this chance slide.  As Lord Snow discovered in 1968, loss of hope for positive change leads to despair, and when you live in a democracy, that hope resides in the people.  We’re the only ones who can fix this thing, but not if we chooose to sit quietly and keep our mouths shut.   

Fortunately, as the residents of Fort Greene have shown in interviews about their short-lived new monument, not everyone is as sheepishly innocent as those Times Square tourists.  This is somewhat reassuring.  Perhaps, as Snowden believes, Americans will finally get it and put a stop to unfettered domestic surveillance.  

From the artists who erected the Snowden statue:

Fort Greene’s Prison Ship Martyrs Monument is a memorial to American POWs who lost their lives during the Revolutionary War. We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies. It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSA’s 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance programs to light. All too often, figures who strive to uphold these ideals have been cast as criminals rather than in bronze.

Our goal is to bring a renewed vitality to the space and prompt even more visitors to ponder the sacrifices made for their freedoms. We hope this inspires them to reflect upon the responsibility we all bear to ensure our liberties exist long into the future.

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