Snowden, face consequences

Virtually nothing happens in a vacuum any more.

Americans are learning the fuller extent of this now, thanks to the rogue revelation this month by former National Security Agency worker Edward Snowden that the U.S. government is collecting data on its own citizens’ phone and Internet use. The revelation made a lie of the national security director’s flat denial that this was happening, and justified Snowden as a whistleblower whose decision to disclose disturbing information served the public’s right to know.

What has transpired since then, though, is less justifiable on Snowden’s part, and his actions have unleashed an unsavory international vortex of chaos.

While working at Kunia for three months under NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden illegally downloaded classified documents about the U.S. covert surveillance on Americans, then leaked some of that information to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Snowden had abruptly left Hawaii for the Chinese outpost of Hong Kong, and though initially an anonymous source, he soon revealed his identity. He is seeking asylum in Ecuador, via Cuba, but has been stuck for days now in an airport transit zone in Moscow, Russia. Poor choices all the way around, in countries low on human rights.

But Snowden cannot contain this situation, if ever he had hoped to do so. Wittingly or not, he and his four laptops of U.S. classified information have already been at the mercy of two not-so-friendly foreign governments.

It is increasingly clear that the growing damage threatens to overshadow Snowden’s initial disclosure, done in the public’s interest, of government’s overreaching surveillance. What has unfolded is a trail of rising tensions: China-controlled Hong Kong, and now Russia, have overtly disregarded U.S. entreaties to expel Snowden and return him to face espionage and other charges.

It is difficult to see how the U.S.’s war of words with China, Russia and now Ecuador would not cause lingering damage to already tenuous relationships. But what has become clear is that for all the public rhetoric of global community and diplomacy-building, China and Russia have no desire to advance ties with the U.S. In fact, the Snowden episode reveals a pointed disdain for the U.S. — or, at least, the Obama administration.

To be sure, Snowden has many supporters — WikiLeaks and its backers among them — plus a worldwide spotlight now providing him a public shield of sorts against nefarious or darker retaliation. But there has to be an owning up, a facing of consequences, as there was in the eerily similar case of the "Pentagon Papers" in the 1970s.

In 1971, two days before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case that the guarantee of free speech outweighed the government’s claim of potential harm to national security, whistleblower and former U.S. military analyst Daniel Ellsberg surrendered to federal authorities. He admitted leaking the Vietnam-era documents to the press and was charged, among other things, under the Espionage Act for stealing secret documents.

"I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I would no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public," Ellsberg said at the time. "I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision."

That is what Snowden needs to do. He chose to reveal himself and the classified information — and that has opened whole paths of needed discussion about governmental intrusion into citizens’ privacy, as well as on the government’s many intelligence contractors and the questionable thresholds of security clearance and access to classified information.

But if he fancies himself a patriot, Snowden needs to end the security distraction he’s become and return to America to face the consequences of his decision to divulge. He should not allow the focus on him to divert eyes from real terrorism threats by those who do hate America.