Rob Dover (1259040)

English

Loughborough University Institutional Repository

    This item is distributed via Loughborough University’s Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk /) and is made available under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions:  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.     For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/   e-ir.inf o http://www.e-ir.info /2014/01/15/the-nsa-snowden-and-the-media/By Robert DoverThe NSA, Snowden and the MediaAs Michael Goodman and I tried to whimsically note in the sub-tit le of  our edited collection on intelligenceand the media – media needs intelligence and intelligence needs the media. The symbiosis of  thisrelationship can be partly f ound in common expertise and practices (investigative zeal and tradecraf taround weeding out hidden empirical detail), but also in the polit ical or normative f unction of  intelligenceagencies, namely to constrain and repel certain f orms of  polit ical discourse and activity deemed to beabhorrent to the majority, but more particularly which is abhorrent to the established polit ical elites. So, at avery basic level media outlets learn much f rom the activit ies of  intelligence agencies and the business theyengage in. Similarly the agencies have both used mainstream media to shape debates (the Cold War and theWar on Terror were notable examples), and to posit ion adversaries in a particular way (and this might applyto every conf lict since the printing press was invented). But what I want to rehearse here are the particularways in which mainstream and parallel media sources – with a particular emphasis on the UK – havecoalesced and acted within the NSA/Snowden f urore, and the lessons we can learn f rom this.My f irst lesson privileges the posit ion of  the mainstream press. Put simply, without the mainstream paid-f orpress there would have been no Snowden-NSA scandal. There is an important pre-caveat when ref erring tothe ‘Snowden material’, which is that virtually none of  the stated cache has been made publicly available,much of  what we know has passed through the f ilter of  media organisations and as such has beenprécised or synthesised, and that which has still to make it into the open will not do so in raw f orm. So,there is an important distinction to be drawn between Wikileaks – f or example – which has publishedredacted raw material, and overlaid analysis with it – and the Snowden material which has almost exclusivelybeen published in synthesised f orm. Snowden has stated that he did not seek to do damage to US nationalinterests, nor to cause revolution, but instead to provide the f ramework or opportunity through which thepublic could make judgements about how this important area of  government activity should be f ramed, orlimited. This perhaps helps us to understand his dissemination strategy, but either way it is clear thatSnowden would not have been able to achieve his ends without the mainstream media to posit ion stories inthe way they have.It is, however, both ironic and curious that a dissemination strategy premised on withholding the rawmaterial has arguably had a greater impact on the polit ical discourse than the various and transparentWikileaks stories have had, Cablegate  included. Part of  the causal explanation f or this is ‘our ’ connectionto the story: Cablegate was concerned with diplomatic cables between elites remote f rom ‘us’. Snowden’srevelations were about ‘our ’ electronic communications and signals being interf ered with. The other part ofthe equation sits in the way that this story existed in a reinf orcing ecosystem between the print, visual andaudio medias, governments (and note the strong use of  media messaging by Latin American and Europeangovernments, save f or the UK) and international organisations such as the EU, along with extensivecommentary in independent and social media outlets. A vortex of  opinion was created in a way that neverhappened with similar revelations around Cablegate, or in the late 90s and early 2000s around theantecedent ECHELON programme. Traditional print media was the trigger movement f or the spontaneousf ormation of  this ecosystem.My second lesson demonstrates the power of  the geographically bound nature of  intelligence and law,despite all the evidence to the contrary. Snowden and those who helped him with dissemination hadunderstood the lessons of  Wikileaks well: multi- jurisdictional and synchronised release of  inf ormation. Thisis a risk-mitigation strategy, and one that has worked f lawlessly well on the occasions it has been used. Itremoves the problem of  a single point of  f ailure and exposes a f law and tension in globalisedcommunications: that it is virtually impossible to stop communication in another territory. So, if  Snowdenhas chosen only to publish in the UK, it would have been relatively easy to place an injunction on TheGuardian preventing publication, and then presumably D-Notice to prevent other UK-based outletscommenting upon it. By releasing across multiple jurisdictions the genie was out of  the bottle bef ore anysingle or multiple interested governments could intercede. Geographical binding was not just a problem f orthose who sought to contain or suppress this story (and to be clear: suppression was legally justif iedbecause the core documents were classif ied), but is a wider problem f or intelligence activity and theoversight and control of  it. The stories around rendition and torture, on the one hand, and aroundsurveillance of  f oreign nationals (and how one can receive inf ormation about a f oreign national f rom af oreign agency, which turns out to be a home national, but a legal leap of  f aith renders this acceptable) aregood evidence of  how globalisation has presented unparalleled opportunit ies and threats to the businessof  intelligence.My f inal lesson is that of  the media as a regulator. In an exchange of  correspondence in the New YorkReview of Books, The Guardian newspaper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger and the chair of  the UK oversightcommittee, Sir Malcolm Rif kind MP, sparred over the role of  intelligence regulators. Rif kind’s core argumentwas that Rusbridger was not suf f iciently au f ait with the material (and its context) to know whether releasewas saf e or desirable. The sad truth f or Sir Malcolm and Parliament is that the Intelligence and SecurityCommittee and the laws governing intelligence activity in the UK, in particular, have f ailed to keep up withthe radical reorientation of  intelligence activity in an area of  ubiquitous electronic communication, andcheap storage and electronic analytical capability. As such the ‘regulation by revelation’ motif  is one that willremain visible in the UK (and to some degree the US) as a check and balance on relatively unrestrainedintelligence activity. We might ref rame this in the f ollowing way: does the public response indicate that thisissue is in the ‘public interest’? Almost certainly yes.  Was this issue raised and analysed by of f icialoversight mechanisms? No.  So, we are lef t with competing and yet potentially complementary propositionsthat the of f icial oversight mechanisms are not f it f or purpose, that they did not deem this activity to beworthy of  attention, or that they were unaware of  the activity.Parliament, backed separately by the courts, should be the appropriate institutions f or oversight and checkand balance. The media should be a sof t-balancer f or those exceptional moments of  abuse or acts whichare ultra vires. This particular balance went out of  kilter with Snowden’s revelations, and it will be importantf or it to return quickly, there having been appropriate actions taken by the UK Parliament. As a f ootnote tothis section it is worth mentioning that the Brit ish government has stood obdurately by the USAdministration, and senior Brit ish f igures have made bellicose noises about the impact that the revelationswill have on the security of  the US and UK. Senior intelligence f igures (current and retired) have repeatedlycondemned The Guardian in increasingly intemperate terms f or publishing what appears to be – to most layand expert readers – a set of  practices that are deserving of  public and polit ical scrutiny, and which hadbeen allowed to run loose f rom the intention of  legislators. For ref orm to occur in the UK there will onlyneed to be one conceptual shif t and realisation: the weakening of  communications security (by design)potentially makes London a less desirable location as a global f inance hub. If  f inance f irms cannotguarantee their communications they will f ind locations where they can – Germany would look like a goodlocation f or this, going f orward – and the pattern of  Brit ish polit ics is such that only this kind of  spur willgenerate transf ormative change.The tradit ional f orms of  media have historically been crit ical f riends (but good f riends nevertheless) to theintelligence agencies. Since June 2013, this relationship has become a litt le antagonistic because of  theSnowden materials and the rapid (and temporary) f ormation of  the self -perpetuating ecosystem asdescribed above. No matter where one sits on the detailing of  the privacy and intervention issues, it shouldbe relatively uncontested that the tradit ional media has played an essential role in the oversight of  this areaof  government activity, and in posit ioning the Snowden materials in such a way f or international impact. It isa rare corrective to the dominant discourse of  the ubiquity of  social media.—Dr. Robert Dover is Associate Dean (Enterprise) and Senior Lecturer in International Relations atLoughborough University. Along with Michael Goodman and Claudia Hillebrand he is the editor of the newRoutledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (2013). 

The NSA, Snowden and the Media

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The NSA, Snowden and the Media

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