Keeping Secrets: Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald and the privatization of Snowden’s leaks

[El_Johns]

Who “owns” the NSA secrets leaked by Edward Snowden to reporters Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras?

Given that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar just invested a quarter of a billion dollars to
personally hire Greenwald and Poitras for his new for-profit media venture, it’s a question worth asking.

It’s especially worth asking since it became clear that Greenwald and Poitras are now the only two people with full access to the complete cache of NSA files, which are said to number anywhere from 50,000 to as many as 200,000 files.

Given that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar just invested a quarter of a billion dollars to
personally hire Greenwald and Poitras for his new for-profit media venture, it’s a question worth asking...

Edward Snowden has popularly been compared to major whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Jeffrey Wigand. However, there is an important difference in the Snowden files that has so far gone largely unnoticed. Whistleblowing has traditionally served the public interest. In this case, it is about to serve the interests of a billionaire starting a for-profit media business venture. This is truly unprecedented. Never before has such a vast trove of public secrets been sold wholesale to a single billionaire as the foundation of a for-profit company.

Think about other famous leakers: Daniel Ellsberg neither monetized nor monopolized the Pentagon Papers. Instead, he leaked them to well over a dozen different newspapers and media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and to a handful of sitting senators — one of whom, Mike Gravel, read over 4,000 of the 7,000 pages into the Congressional record before collapsing from exhaustion. The Papers were published in book form by a small nonprofit run by the Unitarian Church, Beacon House Press.

Chelsea Manning, responsible for the largest mass leaks of government secrets ever, leaked everything to WikiLeaks, a nonprofit venture that has largely struggled to make ends meet in its seven years of existence. Julian Assange, for all of his flaws, cannot be accused of crudely enriching himself from his privileged access to Manning’s leaks; instead, he shared his entire trove with a number of established media outlets including the Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde and El Pais. Today, Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in a military prison, while the Private Manning Support Network constantly struggles to raise funds from donations; Assange has spent the last year and a half inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, also struggling to raise funds to run the WikiLeaks operation.

The point is this: In the most successful whistleblower cases, the public has sided with the selfless whistleblower against the power- or profit-driven entity whose secrets were leaked. The Snowden case represents a new twist to the heroic whistleblower story arc: After successfully convincing a large part of the public and the American Establishment that Snowden’s leaks serve a higher public interest, Greenwald promptly sold those secrets to a billionaire.

http://pando.com/2013/11/27/keeping-secrets/

[Vincardog]

1. This paints with a broad brush, Snowden was not enriched when Greenwald sold those secrets.

[El_Johns]

2. I don't think it says Snowden was enriched; I think it says he wasn't, in fact.

[Vincardog]

18. The inference is there:

[div class="In the most successful whistleblower cases, the public has sided with the selfless whistleblower against the power- or profit-driven entity whose secrets were leaked."]

[last1standing]

19. What this hit piece does is try to confuse the weak minded into believing Greenwald shouldn't profit

It conflates Greenwald, a journalist, with Ellsberg, a whistleblower, to claim that Greenwald is greedy so we shouldn't care about NSA abuses. Of course the proper comparison would be with Woodward and Bernstein who both made a ton of money from reporting information leaked by Deepthroat. They went on to write books and generally make their careers off of the Watergate scandal.

[Vincardog]

20. Agreed. Apples to Grapes comparison.

[Whisp]

47. oh, I didn't know they ran to China and Russia with the goods in hand...

Last I heard they are both not in prison and doing quite well!

Does not compare. At all.

[last1standing]

48. Looks like you don't know the difference between a journalist and a whistleblower, either.

I guess that's why you still believe the bullshit you're being sold.

[Whisp]

49. I don't have to be 'told' anything.

It's only common sense not to compare Woodward/Bernstein and that runaway rand Paul lovin' thief that tripped to Russia and the GG and company that are cashing in on it all.

omg.

and lol.

[BlueCaliDem]

55. ^^^ This! ^^^

I couldn't have written it better, Whisp.

[Tarheel_Dem]

57. Hammer meet Nail!

[last1standing]

62. Haha! What a performance.

False smears and itty-bitty insults are all you guys have. It's so sad, isn't it? But no longer worth my time. Since all you've got is venom and spite to post, I think its time I stopped reading your anger and hatred.

[Whisp]

68. He is a libertarian of the R Paul stinkin type, he stole and he ran to Russia,

therefore he is all of those things as those facts are facts.

itty bitty reading comprehensive may view it differently.

[blackspade]

51. Snowden turned nothing over to the Chinese or Russians

Per the Rolling Stone article from last month.

[Whisp]

52. he also said he can hack into the Presidents email and phone...

apparently he can just say any shit he wants and it becomes fact just by slipping through his liar lips.

[blackspade]

54. LOL!

So your essentially saying "pants on fire" no matter what facts come out and from what sources.
You'll never change your mind because it is case closed because you have judged Snowden guilty based on your own mental evidence.
Got it.

[last1standing]

3. Who owned the secrets disovered by Watergate and the Pentagon Papers?

Did the Washington Post not make money from the sale of newspapers when those reports were published? Did the New York Times become a non-profit? Did Woodward and Bernstein donate all the proceeds from their work at the Post and the following books to charity? It seems that Snowden is making nothing off of these leaks and that Greenwald is doing no more than Woodward and Bernstein in getting the info out.

This reads like yet another attempt to smear whistleblowers, this time by demanding that they be completely unsullied by dirty money.

I wonder how much Mark Ames was paid for writing this propaganda piece. I'm sure he didn't keep any of the money, right? Right?

[msanthrope]

5. You know, I can read all the Pentagon Papers. Can you read all the NSA documents Snowden claims

he has?

Mike Gravel read all of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. You can read them, for free. Why doesn't Snowden make everything available to the public?

[last1standing]

8. So you want them all published? I agree. Let's get them all out there.

Isn't it great when we can agree on something?

[msanthrope]

16. All published, after identifiers that could harm people are taken out.

Why isn't this being done?

[last1standing]

21. Is that necessary in order to stop NSA abuses?

Or is this just another hoop that you demand Greenwald and Snowden jump through to gain your support?

[msanthrope]

25. It's necessary to prevent this situation from popping up again.....

As soon as WikiLeaks received the State Department cables, Assange announced that the opponents of dictatorial regimes and movements were fair game. That the targets of the Taliban, for instance, were fighting a clerical-fascist force, which threatened every good liberal value, did not concern him. They had spoken to US diplomats. They had collaborated with the great Satan. Their safety was not his concern.

David Leigh and Luke Harding's history of WikiLeaks describes how journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind.

It is hard to believe now, but honest people once worked for WikiLeaks for all the right reasons. Like me, they saw the site as a haven; a protected space where writers could publish stories that authoritarian censors and libel lawyers would otherwise have suppressed.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen

[last1standing]

28. What does the opinion you linked have to do with what we're talking about?

The question is whether Greenwald is a baddy for taking a salary. I say he's not unless Woodward and Bernstein were also meanies.

Were they?

[msanthrope]

29. Something more important than Greenwald and Snowden---people's lives. If the NSA information

contains identifiers that would put people in jeopardy, that should be edited. Otherwise, publish.

Please note---you've missed something important about Woodward and Bernstein--they didn't publish the Pentagon Papers, did they? And the Papers themselves were available long before their book.

What about the NSA papers? Why aren't they being published?

[last1standing]

31. Please tell me you're joking.

If you can't understand why I made that comparison there's not much else I can say other than to be more explicit. Woodward, Bernstein and Greenwald are all journalists. Daniel Ellsberg is not a journalist; he is a whistleblower. Whistleblowers are not generally journalists; they leak information to journalists like Woodward, Bernstein and Greenwald. The article tries to compare Greenwald with Ellsberg but Greenwald is not like Ellsberg because one is a whistleblower and the other is a journalist. Ellsberg is a whistleblower like Deepthroat was a whistleblower. Deepthroat leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein who are journalists. The journalists made money reporting the information the whistleblower leaked because it was their job and people usually get paid for doing their jobs.

Is that clear enough for you? If not, I could see about writing it up as a children's book.

As for the NSA documents not being published, I'm pretty sure that the Watergate papers weren't published freely before the Washington Post printed the info. Does this mean Woodward, Bernstein and Mark Felt should have gone to jail or that the information was somehow less important?

This appears to be yet another bullshit hoop some expect Greenwald and Snowden to jump through before setting up another hoop.

[msanthrope]

33. Okay--you are a bit all over the place. The comparison was between Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers and

Snowden/NSA papers.

What Watergate papers? You do realize that Watergate is separate from the Pentagon Papers, right? Is there some treasure trove of National Security documents that Mark Felt stole? Or are you talking about reporter's notes?

Mr. Greenwald is free to make money off his own scribblings, but why aren't the actual NSA documents being published so we can make up our own minds about them?

[last1standing]

34. I'll get working on that children's book.

n/t

[msanthrope]

36. First, kindly tell us about the trove of documents Mark Felt stole???? nt

[last1standing]

38. You want us to believe Felt made up the Watergate scandal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt#Watergate

He leaked classified FBI documents. How the Hell do you think he got his information, Vulcan Mind Meld?

You're trying very hard to keep people from understanding this issue clearly. Why is that?

[msanthrope]

40. Tell us all how the head of COINTELPRO 'leaked' FBI documents to Naval Intelligence.

Seriously. Where is this treasure trove of 'leaked' FBI documents?

[El_Johns]

7. I think the article makes it very clear how that case was different from this one. Ellsberg leaked

not only to the NYT, but to multiple media outlets. The NYT didn't have exclusive possession of the leak, nor did it sell the leak. It sold its paper, which reported on the leak.

I was a Greenwald defender until recently; his linkage with Omidyar gives me pause.

[last1standing]

10. Snowden offered the documents to more than Greenwald. They chose not to take him up on it.

Not Snowden's fault.

[El_Johns]

11. I don't think you read the article. Its focus is Greenwald, not Snowden. It doesn't claim

Snowden profited or attempted to.

[last1standing]

12. Did Woodward and Bernstein give away the info they got from Deepthroat or profit from it?

If this is about Greenwald then let's not compare him to Ellsberg. Let's compare him with other reporters.

[El_Johns]

13. I'll wait for you to actually read the article. No point responding until you have.

[last1standing]

15. I've read it. It's an insulting smear piece that doesn't answer my question. Neither have you.

Why are you comparing Greenwald with Ellsberg? They are not comparable.

[El_Johns]

24. Your comments don't indicate it.

[last1standing]

26. Um.. Have you read the article? My comments directly contradict it.

You can act as though they don't, but they do. The hit piece you linked tries to conflate Greenwald with Ellsberg which doesn't work unless the reader is so weak-minded they can't understand the difference between a reporter and a whistleblower.

Maybe you should take a little more time reading the article you provided.

[struggle4progress]

4. Assange has also sometimes sought to privatize his leaks

On the afternoon of November 1, 2010, Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks.org, marched with his lawyer into the London office of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian ... He was .. angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to The Guardian just three months earlier ... Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange—that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released ...
The Man Who Spilled the Secrets
By Sarah Ellison
February 2011

[Cha]

43. Imagine.. "a victim of his own methods"..

[Demeter]

6. Considering the risks and startup costs, He'll be lucky to break even

and I sincerely doubt that he "bought" exclusive rights to the Snowden files.

[Thinkingabout]

9. As more and more stories emerge and there will be many more, saying these leaks are to

Inform the public and we hear of more money in the game. If Snowden is not profiting from these leaks then he is a big patsy to the one or ones receiving the money. I have suspected for a few months this is a conspiracy for greedy people. I can see Greenwald has no interest in informing the America citizens of data collection but he is interested in collect money and is doing the selling of information for this purpose. I don't see how the US can give Snowden clemency under the circumstances.

[bemildred]

14. Does this guy really want Snowden's NSA package spread around more?

Or is he just trying to get in on it too?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. They belong to We The People and the NSA should hand them over to us.

Without the need of whistle blowers and middle men like Snowden, Manning, Ellsberg, Assange, and Greenwald and the press.

[KoKo]

22. Glenn Greenwald Responds to the "Pando post" - and other matters

Glenn Greenwald: On NSA Journalism and the Absurdity of Some Recent Critiques (Fascinating Read)
-------------
Questions/responses for journalists linking to the Pando post - and other matters
by Glenn Greenwald

The other day I referred to those who "evince zero interest in the substance of the revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying which we're reporting on around the world", but "are instead obsessed with spending their time personally attacking the journalists, whistleblowers and other messengers who enable the world to know about what is being done." There are dozens of examples, one of whom is the author of a post this week at Pando.com which accuses me and Laura Poitras of having "promptly sold secrets to a billionaire", Pierre Omidyar, and claims we made "a decision to privatize the NSA cache" by joining Omidyar's new media organization and vesting it with a "monopoly" over those documents.

I've steadfastly ignored the multiple attacks from this particular writer over the years because his recklessness with the facts is so well-known (ask others about whom he's written), and because his fixation is quite personal: it began with and still is fueled by an incident where The Nation retracted and apologized for an error-strewn hit piece he wrote which I had criticized (see here and here).

But now, this week's attack has been seized on by various national security establishment functionaries and DC journalists to impugn our NSA reporting and, in some cases, to argue that this "privatizing" theory should be used as a basis to prosecute me for the journalism I'm doing. Amazingly, it's being cited by all sorts of DC journalists and think tank advocates whose own work is paid for by billionaires and other assorted plutocrats: such as Josh Marshall, whose TPM journalism has been "privatized" and funded by the Romney-supporting Silicon Valley oligarch Marc Andreesen, and former Bush Homeland Security Adviser and current CNN analyst Fran Townsend ("profiteering!", exclaims the Time Warner Corp. employee and advocate of the American plundering of Iraq).

Indeed, Pando.com itself is partially funded by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and CIA-serving Palantir Technologies. The very same author of this week's Pando post had previously described Thiel (before he was funded by him) as "an enemy of democracy" and the head of a firm "which last year was caught organizing an illegal spy ring targeting American political opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, including journalists, progressive activists and union leaders" (one of whom happened to be me, targeted with threatened career destruction for the crime of advocating for WikiLeaks)).

Moreover, the rhetorical innuendo in the Pando post tracks perfectly with that used by NSA chief Keith Alexander a few weeks ago when he called on the US government to somehow put a stop to the NSA reporting: "I think it's wrong that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000-- whatever they are, and are selling them and giving them out as if these-- you know, it just doesn't make sense," decreed the NSA chief. This attack is also the same one that was quickly embraced by the Canadian right to try to malign the reporting we're now doing with the CBC on joint US/Canada surveillance programs.

I would think journalists would want to be very careful about embracing this pernicious theory of "privatizing" journalism given how virtually all of you are not only are paid for the journalism you do, but also have your own journalism funded by all sorts of extremely rich people and other corporate interests.

Much More...long read at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/02-5

[Oilwellian]

27. Great piece

Every worthwhile investigative journalist - by definition - at some point receives, and then publishes, classified information. They are virtually always paid for their work in exposing that information, because that's how professional journalists earn a living. It's also a necessary arrangement for journalists to report on these matters with legal protections (see below). And rather than mail the material they get from their sources around to other media organizations, they keep it themselves, work on reporting it, and then write about it in their own media outlets.

If you are so infuriated by this NSA reporting that you short-sightedly embrace theories that suggest there's something untoward or criminal about this process, then you're essentially criminalizing all professional investigative journalism. Do you not see where this idiocy takes you?

<

[msanthrope]

30. Funny--I can read the Pentagon papers for free. Why can't I do that with the NSA ones? nt

[last1standing]

32. Could you read all the info from the Watergate scandal before the Post printed it?

You never seem to answer that question.

[msanthrope]

35. I think you miss the comparison made---in both the Pentagon Papers and the NSA debacle, there's

a trove of government documents. We can see the former, not the latter.

In Watergate, did Felt steal a trove of National Security documents? Or are you referring to reporter's notes and work product? Trust me...I have no wish to see Greenwald's reporter's notes---I want to see the stolen loot.

[last1standing]

37. Felt leaked secret FBI documents. How is this different?

You want to exclude any points that don't make Greenwald out to be the bad guy in all of this but it doesn't work.

[msanthrope]

39. To whom? FYI, do you really believe that the head of COINTELPRO 'leaked' anything to

Woodward? Woodward, who was and is Naval Intelligence???

[last1standing]

42. When facts disrupt what you want to believe you merely reject them.

I think we're done. I didn't know you were able to create your own reality.

[msanthrope]

44. Seriously--where is this treasure trove of super-secret FBI documents that Felt leaked?

Can you name a single document Felt leaked?

[jmowreader]

23. Now just hold on

The Media is portraying Snowden as the greatest computer genius of all time. You know Turing, Grace Hopper, Steve Wozniak, Phil Estridge and Seymour Cray? All pikers compared to The Greek God of Gigabytes.

Now given that Snowden actually does know his way around a computer, are we to believe he didn't make a copy of that data before he gave it to Greenwald? His assurances ring hollow considering he also assured Booz Allen he wouldn't steal Every File The NSA Has, and he did that.

[Whisp]

41. Excellent article.

and fuck Ron Paul.

[Cha]

45. Indeed.. is Snowden the patsy?

“Only Laura and I have access to the full set of documents which Snowden provided to journalists.”

From your link, El..

"Greenwald’s leftist and anarchist fans have always had an almost cult-like faith in his judgment, seeing him as little less than a digital-age Noam Chomsky. But now they’re reeling from cognitive dissonance, trying to understand why their hero would privatize the most important secrets of our generation to a billionaire free-marketeer like Omidyar, whose millions have, in some cases, brought market-based misery into some of the poorest and most desperate corners of the planet.

A Greenwald-Omidyar partnership is as hard to swallow as if Chomsky proudly announced a new major venture with Sheldon Adelson, on grounds that it’s a “once-in-a-career dream academic opportunity.”

[last1standing]

46. You keep selling but nobody's buying.

Us "leftist and anarchist fans" generally understand that people should be paid for their work. To bad the right-wing and authoritarian Obama fans don't understand that insults and childish arguments aren't going to make their hero look any better.

[dionysus]

53. u mad not everyone likes douchewald bro.

mad that we actually laugh at him and his "cheerleaders", "worshippers", and "apologists"...

[Cha]

56. .. yes, they mad..

[Tarheel_Dem]

58. They're good & pissed at Sibel Edmonds as well. She's asking some interesting....

questions as well, and I say it's hightime. GG's fans want answers to all the questions, except the ones that involve GG. This is well worth watching. A lot of good questions that are yet to be answered by Snowie & GG:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017165892

[dionysus]

60. don't you make light of bebe jeebus glen like that! those are fightin woids!111! time for kickboxin!

<-- kickboxin

[last1standing]

61. LOL! All you've got is writing like a sixth grader on Reddit.

I don't think it's me whose mad, bro. Your hero can't seem to figure out how the proper talking point to send you guys to smear Greenwald with. That's gotta hurt deep down.

[dionysus]

63. no, not really. i recognize bitter flailing when i see it.

[last1standing]

64. And you still can't stop yourself? Must be a compulsion of some sort.

Have you seen a therapist?

[dionysus]

65. yes, as a matter of fact i do. we've concluded the people i argue on DU with are nuts.

[last1standing]

66. So they're at the stage where they placate you? Nice.

By the way, that was a Damned quick response. I barely clicked off the post. Lol!

[blackspade]

50. What a bullshit article

The Wall Street Journal isn't for profit? How about Der Speigel? The Guardian? MSNBC? Fox?
The whole line of attack against Greenwald is patently dishonest.

[fadedrose]

59. Wonder what the purchase is to be used for ....

To put the papers on Ebay cheapens Snowden, the Government, and the entire affair that got so many people emotionally involved in the outcome . . .

Unless Omidyar has some noble intentions unimaginable at this time....

[ucrdem]

67. Greenwald's cravenness is revealing but not the least surprising.

I knew the whole thing was a scam from the get-go, i.e. the "leaked" Verizon warrant. I don't know who's behind it but I imagine it's some RW outfit or another, possibly a foreign government, maybe two. And I knew Snowden was full of sh#t from the moment I first heard his idiotic demagoguing on Hypocrisy Now! which has gone full southern strategy. Not sure about them anymore either.


p.s. thanks for posting this. KnR

[Whisp]

69. Greenwald is a slimeball.

News about Greenwald-Poitras’ decision to privatize the NSA cache came just days after the New York Times reported on Greenwald’s negotiations with major movie studios to sell a Snowden film. This past summer, Greenwald sold a book to Metropolitan Books for a reportedly hefty sum, promising that some of the most sensational revelations from Snowden’s leaks would be saved for the book.

What a pig, and the dumb will line up to jam more cash in his jeans and buy his swill. Good lord this is not too far from teabaggin' nuttery.

As Yasha Levine and I wrote at NSFWCORP, Omidyar invested in a third-world micro-loans company whose savage bullying of debtors resulted in mass suicides. Rather than acknowledge this tragedy, Omidyar Network simply deleted reference to the company from his website when the shit hit the fan.

This — this? — is the guy we’re supposed to trust with the as-yet unpublished NSA files? He’s the one we’re relying on to reveal any dark secrets about the tech industry’s collusion with the NSA? Let’s hope there’s nothing in there about eBay. Whoops! Deleted!

And so called 'progressives' think GG & Co. teaming up with this dude is okey dokey? Someone tell me this is all a joke.