Friday Diary: Snowden's vindication and the meaning of martyrdom

Tennis in the corridors of secrecy

How many more reports? How many more rulings? How many more articles need to be written before Edward Snowden is vindicated, finally perceived to inhabit the whistleblower role he has already proven himself to fulfill wholeheartedly.

The NSA’s various programs of phone tapping, metadata collecting, internet trawling, and warrantless targeting culminate in the reasonable assertion that the United States (and some of their allies) has become a surveillance state. Without Snowden’s bold move, however perceived in the public eye, darkness would still reign supreme in the server-riddled corridors of state power.

A tit-for-tat game is being played as a result.

A review panel, convened by trenchcoat-and-fedora-wearing spying overlord Barack Obama himself, was initially considered to be a whitewash that would return only favourable answers to the wounded administration. Instead, 46 glib and prescient recommendations were made against the lawless prying conducted by the NSA and others on December 19 last year.

This panel was buoyed by a court ruling a number of days earlier which asserted the illegality of such wildly vague, unspecific, and invasive trawling. Judge Richard Leon said Founding Father James Madison would be “aghast” at the "almost Orwellian" nature of mass spying, picking out a common idiom within the debate.

Just over a week later, a US federal judge insisted the programs were, in return, legal. Judge William Pauley rolled out that favourite administration excuse of ‘national security’ – those faceless agency men and women are only defending against terrorist attacks. Well, tell that to the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Advantage Obama, then.

The scrum changed tack last week, with the European Parliamentary inquiry into the Guardian’s disclosures stating the NSA’s actions were probably illegal, and noting the “chilling” way in which journalists involved in the case were interfered with and targeted.

As a result, Snowden himself is due to give evidence via video-link to the European justice and civil liberties committee, which prompted the bundling in of the FBI’s James Comey to throw a few punches for the aggrieved Americans.

But the man’s boring obfuscation and pathetic knowledge of his own country’s constitution tainted his remarks on Snowden’s proverbial appearance before the EU (only slightly ironic, no?).

"I see the government operating the way the founders intended," Comey said, "so I have trouble applying the whistleblower label to... someone who basically disagrees with the way our government is structured and operates."

The very first amendment to the Constitution protects citizens’ rights to freedom of speech, association, and assembly. And yet both the NSA and GCHQ have violated this very principle by spying on the UNDP, UNICEF, and Medicins du Monde with no apparent reasoning. These revelations do nothing if not invalidate the Special Relationship excuse of protecting ‘national security’.

Further, as if delivering a return-serve, the Guardian and Channel 4 today explained how those under no suspicious of illegal activity whatsoever are subject to “travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more” stored on their cellphones being hoovered up by the shockingly nefarious state intelligence vacuum cleaner.

To borrow a phrase from New Zealand’s own spying legislation, the United States seems to be defending only its “economic interests”, choking reasonable dissent in the process.

General public: nul points.

Apathy acquiescent to murder

Aitzaz Hasan is a hero indeed, but the realities of suicide bombing mean the teenager’s example will rarely be found.

The 15 year-old tackled a fanatic wrapped in a terrifying amount of explosives on his way to a school in Hangu district of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa area of Pakistan after seeing the man dressed in school uniform, but asking for directions.

Instead of hundreds of innocent lives lost, we were robbed of only one.

His father Mujahid Ali Bangash, on almost equally brave terms, reclaimed the language seized by the savage and belligerent holy men who succeed in their goal of paradise far too often.

"Many people are coming to see me but if they try to express sympathy, I tell them to congratulate me instead on becoming the father of a martyr," he said.

"I will be even more than happy if my second son also sacrifices his life for the country."

Hasan has received one of Pakistan’s top civilian honours – and rightly so! But suicide-murder in the name of Allah is all too frequent across troubled nations, and more frequently feature enormous amounts of explosives packed into cars, detonated outside the mosques, schools, or weddings of a rival sect.

These attacks can’t be stopped by a lone body, however courageous, and their frequency highlights the volatility of so many communities across the world.

In the same country earlier in the month, police investigator Muhammad Aslam Kahn was blown apart when a bomb-laden truck rammed his. He had led many campaigns against the Pakistani Taliban.

No person, however brave, could have halted that.

So, when the Western world stops relishing the chance to talk about a story of heroism against a ragged reality, the horrors will still remain.

Why are these tragic and all too frequent cases confined to the bland murk of apathy?