By: Trudy Rubin
The global hunt for Edward Snowden is damaging U.S. interests in ways that go far beyond the intelligence data he leaked.
The wild flight of the fugitive leaker — from Hong Kong to the transit area of Moscow’s Sherymetyvo Airport, and perhaps on to Ecuador — has turned into a public humiliation for the White House. U.S. officials publicly threatened “consequences” if Snowden wasn’t returned, only to be openly rebuffed by Chinese officials and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. This made embarrassingly clear how little leverage President Obama has in Moscow or Beijing (and how much wiser it would have been to request Snowden’s return in private).
Most disturbing, the Snowden affair has enabled some of the world’s worst human rights offenders to portray themselves as champions of freedom by defending Snowden while denouncing America as a massive violator of rights.
China’s Xinhua news agency branded the United States as “the biggest (cyber) villain in our age.” Russian parliamentarians did likewise. You might think that such self-righteous claims would be dismissed as political posturing. Yet in today’s world, with America’s image sullied by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and by our paralyzed politics, these charges can find a receptive audience, not only abroad but at home.
So let’s look at the records of the countries that are offering Snowden the greatest support.
For starters, there is something bizarre about the list. While Snowden claims to be defending personal freedoms, he has sought shelter from egregious violators of human rights, including China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. Whatever his motives, this lends an air of hypocrisy to his claims.
He took refuge in Hong Kong, which is part of China, whose leaders control the country’s Internet portals, block content and monitor individual access. The Chinese censor print and electronic media and have “the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world,” according to Amnesty International. Chinese government hackers have conducted massive commercial and military espionage in the United States (and presumably elsewhere) and even breached Google’s computers.
Beijing is obviously delighted that it can fend off U.S. complaints by claiming America does likewise. Such charges are bogus — and they know it. Whatever your opinion about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, the fact is that Congress OK’d them and set up special courts to monitor them. The U.S. public can debate whether the controls should be tightened, and demand change.