Snowden’s Twitter

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.- Edward Snowden, in a live Q&A session

So even Edward Snowden is on Twitter now. I’m falling very behind the social media curve, it seems.

From his very first statement, Snowden was extremely cautious and methodical with his words. He kept out of the public eye until he felt he needed to reveal his identity. He stated from the beginning that he wished for the emphasis to be on what the American government was and is doing, not what he had done. There was a sort of neutrality to Snowden’s words; what he was saying was anti-government at its core, but the way he said it was quiet and humble, as if he had resigned himself to his fate. Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald even went so far as to describe him as “zen-like”, as if he possessed some “inner peace” regarding what he had done. Snowden was accused over and over again of being a narcissist, but because of the way he presented himself, those accusations were, at least in my mind, completely unfounded from the start.

This old Snowden has been slowly but surely giving away to a new one, with his new Twitter account demonstrating a sharp deviation from his previous habits. Snowden’s live Q&A with the Guardian gave the broader public more direct access, but for a brief period of time in a highly moderated setting. The Reddit AMA he participated in with Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, while a bit more public, was much the same, and again not focused exclusively on him. However, Snowden’s opening act on Twitter, a playful exchange with astrophysicist and spokesman Neil deGrasse Tyson, shows nothing of the somber 30-year-old on a mission that he was in Hong Kong. He must know full well that this account will crank up the intensity of the public spotlight to heights he has never before experienced; the issue of mass surveillance has never before been so connected to Snowden’s personal life and opinions, an idea which he used to explicitly reject. This brings up many questions in my mind about what he is personally thinking; if this is new attitude is deliberate, or if Snowden’s feelings about the issue have simply followed a natural progression to a different stage. Maybe he has started to forget that he didn’t want this to be about him.

The most frightening question is one of Snowden’s motivation for opening his new account. If Snowden, observing from afar, looked and saw the fruits of his labor producing meaningful and measurable change in American society and government, would he really take to Twitter and try to further publicize himself, his beliefs, and what he has done? Would he really take on the extra effort and extra risk? Assuming his motivations have not changed since he left the United States, it seems unlikely.

What this implies is nothing less than failure on behalf of the American public to live up to Snowden’s wishes. Dragnet surveillance remains a dangerous reality of modern America, and that while more and more people are talking about it, less and less people are doing actual work to try and make real change.

Consider at the presidential candidates for the 2016 election. Do gun laws, the ‘War on Drugs’, and police brutality top headlines over government surveillance? Absolutely. And while candidates have addressed the issue, not a single one has made it a core tenet of their platform. Some, such as Jeb Bush, have even taken ‘anti-internet’ positions, with pro-surveillance slants and calls for backdoors and restrictions to be placed on encryption.

Of course, there is always the potential that I am reading too much into this. We must consider, though, the alternative, which is that we live in a strange and dangerous world, and Snowden himself, slowly falling off the beaten path in an effort to change the game, has all but made a personal statement that the situation is not improving. Indeed, if privacy advocates have to do more and more work to get their message out with less and less visible results, it means we are losing.