It may be years before the full cost of Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks can be measured. But his disclosures about top-secret surveillance programmes have already come at a price for the US government: America’s foes have been handed a powerful tool for portraying Washington as a hypocritical proponent of democratic values that it doesn’t abide by at home.
As Snowden continues his extraordinary flight from American authorities, hopscotching the globe with the acquiescence of other governments, Washington’s critics have savoured the irony of the world’s human rights champion being tripped up by revelations about its monitoring of phone and internet communications.
Meantime, China, Russia, Cuba, and Ecuador - countries with dismal human rights records - have cast themselves as the champions of political freedom.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, confirming on Tuesday that Snowden was holed up in a secure transit zone at the airport in the capital, said that Russian authorities saw no reason to extradite him. He also jabbed at the US treatment of the former NSA contractor and his new benefactor, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.
“Assange and Snowden consider themselves human rights activists and say they are fighting for the spread of information,” Putin said. “Ask yourself: Should such people be extradited to be jailed or not?”
US officials have rejected characterisations of Snowden as a whistleblower, while defending the NSA’s surveillance programmes as critical to protecting national security interests. They have also pointed out the irony in Snowden’s decision to evade arrest by travelling to Hong Kong, a Chinese territory, as well as Russia – “powerful bastions of internet freedom” secretary of state John Kerry quipped recently.
For many of the countries that have long bristled under Washington’s criticism of their policies, disclosure of details of the NSA’s electronic monitoring has been a golden opportunity to return the favour.
In the aftermath of revelations by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper, the state-controlled China Daily published a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty, her shadow in the form of a hooded spook hoisting a recording mike in one hand and a tape recorder in the other.
“The United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber-attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age,” the state Chinese news agency Xinhua wrote in a commentary.
In Latin America, the Snowden affair has been a political coup for America’s fiercest critics, including Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador, where the contractor was said to have explored the possibility of asylum.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, who has been criticised for silencing journalists, has taken up Snowden’s cause. His foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said Snowden’s asylum request “has to do with freedom of expression and the security of citizens around the world”.
“Ecuador puts its principles above its economic interests,” he said. “We take care of the human rights of the people.”
The Chinese and Russian governments have been no less testy in their responses to American allegations that they had abetted Snowden’s flight.
“We consider the allegations that Russia violated US laws and all but colluded with Snowden to be absolutely groundless,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We have nothing to do with Mr. Snowden or his movements around the world. He chose his route himself.”
In failing to act on Washington’s extradition request, Hong Kong’s government turned the table on Washington, saying that it had officially sought “clarification” from the US about reports of its hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong. It said it would follow up on the matter “to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong”.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, which is now helping Snowden in his bid for asylum, said that the spying revelations have begun to turn international opinion against the US.
“Other countries are starting to examine how these programmes touched them,” he said. “Everyone is focusing on China and Russia right now, but I would not rule out that other countries in the world, even in Western Europe, would be favourable to Mr Snowden. There has to be at some point an acknowledgment that US laws are not international laws, and not everyone has to obey them.
“What is being revealed now in these overgrown tactics and bullying is… being observed by countries all over the world,” he added. “They are seeing an unwillingness by the US to deal with the real issue at hand, the need to investigate and explore and critically examine the information that was revealed by Snowden and to examine evidence about whether Congress was lied to or misled.”
The revelations have also unnerved some of America’s allies. Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has not pulled any punches. “America has been a different country since the horrible terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” she wrote in Der Spiegel Online. “The relationship between freedom and security has shifted, to the detriment of freedom.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the Obama administration’s surveillance programme. But her remarks have been more tempered in the ensuing days, in part, according to some observers, because Germany benefits from electronic snooping from the US. – Washington Post-Bloomberg