NSA And Associates Have Already Killed Freedom Of The Press

The NSA and its accomplices have killed whistleblower protection by tracking every communication that takes place. In doing so, they have killed the free press. There is no longer any function in society that is capable of challenging lies from people in power.

The free press has been called the “fourth branch of government” beside the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches: a free and independent investigative journalism is required for checks and balances against the other three branches, in order to uncover and disclose abuse of power in all its forms. The underlying assumption is that abuse of power shuns the light of day, and would be disappearing in the bright sunlight the press is able to shine on it. The free press is therefore an anti-corruption function.

One critical mechanism for a free press to function is its ability to protect its sources. If you want to blow the whistle on bad or abusive behavior in the halls of power, the idea goes, you should be able to do so without risk to your position. In this way, society counters corruption and human rights violations by providing incentives to everybody working in government to blow the whistle on it – to document any and all abuses and hand that documentation to the press. Therefore, a reporter has a right to protect their sources. In some countries, like Belgium or Sweden, a reporter even has a legal obligation to protect their sources – they can go to jail for revealing them, once whistleblower protection has been invoked.

It is widely understood that without strong protection of sources, a free press cannot function and fulfill its duty as the fourth branch of government, keeping tabs on the other three.

That’s the theory, anyway.

However, this protection of sources has effectively ceased to function. With the spying agencies – NSA and their accomplices – recording and logging pretty much every conversation that takes place, there is no longer any need to ask a reporter for their source. You just have to see whom the reporter has spoken to, anywhere, over any channel – preferably a connection coming from the governmental department whose abuses are being reported on. The whistleblower protection has been completely wiped out, and it happened while we were looking the other way.

Edward Snowden knew this. He knew he could walk away with the crown jewels (and the entire treasure room) of the NSA, but he also knew that he would no longer be protected as a source, regardless of what the laws say, regardless of the highly-prized integrity of reporters like Glenn Greenwald. Therefore, it was logical to keep the initiative and disclose himself as the source of the NSA files, before he was tracked down – and he likely understood very well how long he time he had to play that card to still keep the initiative.

The price for that whistleblowing was essentially a life in exile, but also a life as a hero. Few would be willing to pay that price, and so, the incentive to disclose abuses of power to a free press is now a mere myth of legends of the past.

Compare this to the break-in at the FBI on March 8, 1971, where documents were copied describing other illegal activities and spying on citizens. At the time, documents could be sent anonymously and secretly – anonymously and secretly! – using something that everybody had access to: the ordinary postal service.

Imagine that. Everybody had the ability to communicate untracked, in secret, and in private, and that ability of everybody and their brother – not placing any demands on high levels of technical cryptographic skill – was used to uncover scandalous abuses of power while still maintaining the anonymity of the sources.

The function of the press in society depends on its ability to shine a light on abuses of power. This, in turn, fully and totally depends on reporters’ ability to protect their sources. But that ability has been eradicated, wiped out, and shot dead by a government that doesn’t want to be held accountable for its actions. As a result, there is no longer any press capable of fulfilling its primary function.

With the press unable to get sources that contradict official statements, the only thing the press remains capable of is to print and retell statements – true or false, just as often the one as the other – made by government officials. It has lost all its function as the discloser of truth, in the face of governmental lies. Rather, it is now bound to a fate of repeating those lies blindly.

We deserve better than that.