Spies and Metadata

I'm thinking today about Edward Snowden.

The technical contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton celebrated his 30th birthday this week hiding in Hong Kong, after revealing to The Guardian that the U.S. National Security Agency has been collecting something called "metadata" on U.S. citizens and hacking civilian computer servers of both our allies and enemies as part of a clandestine program called PRISM.  The U.S. government has revoked his passport and is seeking his extradition for revealing this information to the British newspaper.  As I write this, he has landed in Moscow, en route some believe, to Ecuador.

I'm thinking about Snowden because I believe his case provides an in-time study for how word and image cause us to process reality.  As an artist, this is no surprise.  In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, image, story, and phrase mean everything.

Take for example that word "metadata."  "Meta-" is almost certainly the most overused prefix in the English language today and no one seems to know what it means.  Meta- implies abstraction from another concept, or something that happens above or adjacent to the concept, as in "metaphysics," i.e., "above or beyond the physical realm."  "Metadata" would seem to mean "data about data," but the NSA has been collecting information about who is placing phone calls to whom and how long the calls last.  As my friend Jacob wryly noted, that just seems to be plain old data.

Yet we are meant to believe that government security agencies are not collecting "data" on U.S. citizens - it's only "metadata."  Whew.  I feel much better now.

A similar problem has arisen with just what to called Snowden.  Depending on who you ask, he may be a "traitor," or a "whistleblower."  The AP this week directed its correspondents to identify him as a "leaker," one of the most inelegant terms of recent coinage.  Some have accused him of being a "spy," failing to note the irony that he was, in fact, employed to be a spy.  Some have opined that the term "whistleblower" does not apply to Snowden as he did not follow the "proper channels" for revealing potentially embarrassing information, but what would the "proper channels" be in such a case as this?

In the age of traditional media, most of us would almost certainly know Snowden as a spy and a traitor and might not give it another thought.  But that age has passed and millions of Americans are getting to hear Snowden's story in his own words and in the words of his supporters.  Many of us wonder why the largest superpower that has ever existed is going to such great lengths to silence a man who is really just confirming something many of his fellow citizens have suspected all along.

Also troubling for the U.S. government is the image that Snowden has been able to project.  When the "enemy" is seen as "other," most of us will not investigate further.  This has been used to great effect when discussing both Islam and the Far East, whose languages, customs, and mores might be treated as a monolithic "Axis of Evil."  But Eric Snowden is a mild-mannered tech nerd with stylish glasses and hipster facial hair who has voluntarily surrendered home, family, friends, and a comfortable life in Hawaii to pass on this information.  (A similar image problem is faced in the court martial of Bradley Manning, though Americans seem to believe that soldiers should not be afforded most of the liberties for which they ostensibly fight.)

The information itself is not actually damaging to national security.  The Chinese have insisted for years that the United States is engaged in this sort of activity and now they have confirmation from someone who was involved that yes, we have hacked Chinese universities and mobile phones.  What exactly will our enemies now do with this information except say, "I told you so"?

No, the thing that is most upsetting to our government is that they are unable to control the narrative.  When we think of data we imagine things like pass codes or the locations of counter-operatives within foreign intelligence offices.  The most important piece of data that Snowden has revealed is "metadata": your government is spying on you.

That piece of data changes everything.  Government in our country is predicated on securing our liberties.  If the mechanisms designed to ensure that end are instead used to violate our liberties, what obligations do we owe our government?  As another traitor has written, "[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them (i.e., the rights of the people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . ."  Or as Mr. Snowden has said, "The public needs to know the kind of things a government does in its name, or else 'consent of the governed' is meaningless."

The outcome of this case may well depend on who controls the story and who is able to best capture the imagination of the American people.