On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden
November 9, 2021•756 words
"On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden"
Greenwald 2013
Who is actually bringing 'injury to America': those who are secretly building a massive surveillance system or those who inform citizens that it's been done?
9 November 2021 - Paper 1 exam practice:
Glenn Greenwald, who works for The Guardian, has written many articles on Edward Snowden's whistleblowing. This article seems to be about Edward Snowden having multiple felonies under the Espionage act, which could possibly send him to prison for decades. Greenwald believes strongly that he was falsely accused and gives many strong arguments.
What Greenwald does in a very sophisticated manner, is ask questions. At times he answers them, which is very smart. But not only that, when he asks a question and answers it, he then asks it again., he asks his question in a biased way, so that you are left with the same answer as his. When Greenwald says "In what conceivable sense does that merit felony charges under the Espionage Act?", the adjective "conceivable" clearly shows he is showing strong emotions towards this question, especially to the side of the answer being it does not make sense. In the first paragraph, he asked the same question, this time he did answer it. Asking the question before answering it and then asking it again is an extremely smart trick to persuade the readers. Saying or asking things multiple times, keeps the question or statement in the reader's head for a longer period of time, and since it is a question that was answered, the answer also sticks with you.
When we go to the fourth paragraph, we can see Greenwald is quite fond of using sophisticated language. The adjective "ubiquitous" is an example of this. Greenwald does this for multiple reasons, one of them being to come over as a trustworthy and well researched man, it helps him persuade people to agree with his statement. He does also expect his readers to have a high level of reading skills. He uses italics for certain words to emphasise his arguments.
Greenwald argues that this is false information; "He could have - but chose not - sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence service for cast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of America's enemies, or worked at the direction of a foreign government. That is espionage. He did none of those things.". I believe his argument is partially correct. As much as his intention was not to sell information to other governments, these governments still got the information in the end, because these documents were released worldwide. Greenwald said himself "[...]in order to inform his fellow citizens (both in America and around the world)" which proves these documents got leaked worldwide. In my opinion he unintentionally committed espionage. I believe that Edward Snowden was not the cause of the problem, and what he did was inform the world of what was going on, which I find brave. Although he helped many people find out, he did start a massive controversial problem, not only in America but all over the world. He leaked a massive problem going on secretly, but that is now the citizen's problem too.
As Greenwald said "[...]the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the word in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability. If anything is a crime, it's that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behaviour: not the shining of light on it.". This is quite near to what I said, yet Greenwald is very biased towards Snowden. His word choice, especially the metaphor "not the shining of light on it." I find a very strong argument which makes him come over very sophisticated.
To conclude, I believe that those who inform citizens what is being done are not the "injury to America". I do believe that is the government for secretly surveilling citizens. But at the same time, there wouldn't have been a problem to begin with if the citizens never found out. Some things should be left unknown, for the sake of not making the citizens even more worried about their privacy. Glenn Greenwald makes strong arguments, especially by making questions and answering them. Also italicising some words helps emphasise his argument, those words stick out to the reader. I am very between opinions when it comes to if what Snowden did was smart, but I favour slightly for thinking it was good, since now action can be taken so it can be stopped.