Episodes
Thursday Mar 06, 2014
Thursday Mar 06, 2014
Edward Snowden has said that his motivation for looting an estimated 1.7 million classified files from the National Security Agency was to expose the NSA’s indiscriminate, wholesale violations of privacy rights in pursuit of the clandestine interests of the surveillance state. He carefully selected media outlets to tell various aspects of the story based on the files, he said. The London-based Guardian newspaper and contributing reporter Glenn Greenwald were clear favorites.
But after a few stories that gained international attention came a noticeable lull that was broken by news that Greenwald had struck a $250-million deal with Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire owner of Paypal, a longtime cooperator with the NSA’s data-collection program and, recently discovered, co-funder with the U.S. government of ultraright groups seeking to topple the government in Ukraine. Greenwald and a small posse of “leftist” journalists are now employees of Omidyar’s recently launched multimedia venture, First Look Media.
Questions abound. Did Snowden get punked by the person he said he entrusted his classified cache to? Is Greenwald a checkbook journalist? Is Omidyar now the “owner” of Snowden’s looted files? Did Greenwald strike a deal also with the U.S. government to hand over certain files?
An EyeOpener report by independent commentator James Corbett puts the issue in perspective.