Case Study 40-1: Edward Snowden — Whistleblowing, Surveillance, and the Limits of Individual Action

Case Study 40-1: Edward Snowden — Whistleblowing, Surveillance, and the Limits of Individual Action

Background

In June 2013, Edward Snowden — a contractor for the National Security Agency — provided journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras with a cache of classified NSA documents revealing the scope of American signals intelligence surveillance programs. The documents disclosed that the NSA was collecting the metadata of virtually every phone call made in the United States (the Section 215 bulk collection program), that it had direct access to the servers of major internet companies through a program called PRISM, that it tapped the fiber optic cables carrying international internet traffic, that it had collected the communications of world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and that it had compromised encryption standards trusted by millions of internet users globally.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong before the publications, then to Russia, where he has lived in exile since. He was charged in the United States with violations of the Espionage Act. He has never returned. As of this writing, the U.S. government continues to seek his prosecution.

The Snowden disclosures produced a global conversation about surveillance that had not previously been possible, because the surveillance programs they revealed had not previously been publicly known. Chapter 40's synthesis, which identifies "what we can know" as a prerequisite for action, makes Snowden's case a natural closing case study: what happens when an individual decides that the public's capacity to know outweighs the classified status of the information that would enable that knowing?

What the Disclosures Revealed

The Snowden documents were published over months by The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and other news organizations. The revelations were substantial:

Section 215 bulk collection: The NSA, with authorization from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, had been collecting the metadata of essentially all phone calls in the United States — caller, recipient, duration, location — creating a comprehensive database of American communication patterns. The legal basis was a reading of the USA PATRIOT Act that most legal scholars, once it was disclosed, found unprecedented. The program's existence was known to the FISA court and to select members of Congress but to no one else.

PRISM: The NSA had arrangements with major technology companies — including Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo — that enabled it to collect communications content and metadata about foreign targets from company servers. The companies' characterizations of the program differed from the NSA's; the details of what was actually provided and under what legal process remain contested. But the existence of a systematic arrangement for intelligence collection from internet company servers was revealed.

Tempora and cable tapping: Britain's GCHQ, in partnership with the NSA, had tapped the undersea fiber optic cables carrying internet traffic globally, collecting and processing large portions of global internet traffic.

XKeyscore: The NSA had built a system called XKeyscore that enabled analysts to search through vast databases of collected internet communications, including content, without prior authorization in many cases.

Encryption subversion: The NSA had worked, in some cases successfully, to introduce weaknesses into encryption standards used by the global internet, including a random number generator standard that contained a backdoor accessible to the NSA.

The Individual and the Structure

Snowden's case is a study in the relationship between individual action and structural surveillance — the question that Chapter 40 has been exploring throughout its synthesis.

Snowden made an individual decision that has no structural parallel. He was a single person with access to a cache of classified information who made a choice — at enormous personal cost — to make that information public. His individual action produced structural consequences: the USA Freedom Act of 2015, which limited some of the disclosed programs; international diplomatic incidents that changed the governance of surveillance agreements between allies; the NSA's reform of some collection practices; the tech industry's accelerated adoption of encryption in the wake of the PRISM disclosures.

These structural consequences were not guaranteed by the individual action. Many previous whistleblowers — Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe — had disclosed concerns about NSA surveillance through official channels and found those channels closed and their careers destroyed, without producing public debate or structural reform. What was different about Snowden was the scale of the documents, the skill of the journalists who received and published them, and the moment — a post-PRISM internet, combined with the political energy following the Occupy movement and growing public concern about corporate surveillance.

The Snowden case thus illustrates both sides of Chapter 40's argument about individual action. Snowden's individual choice was necessary — without it, the structural consequences would not have occurred. It was also insufficient — the individual disclosure produced structural change only because it was received by skilled journalists, published by major outlets, debated by politicians, litigated by civil liberties organizations, and acted upon by technology companies. Individual action is necessary and insufficient.

What Was and Was Not Reformed

The disclosure produced genuine reforms. Section 215 bulk collection was curtailed (though not eliminated) by the USA Freedom Act. The NSA's ability to retain metadata it collected was significantly restricted. Several international surveillance agreements were modified. Major technology companies deployed end-to-end encryption for more communications products, making mass collection of content more difficult.

What was not reformed: the fundamental structure of secret court authorization for surveillance programs unknown to the public; the FISA court's practice of conducting surveillance authorization without meaningful adversarial process; the legal framework that allows the government to collect communications "incidentally" to foreign intelligence collection and retain them for domestic use; the commercial surveillance apparatus that operates entirely outside Fourth Amendment constraints; or the racial and class disparities in how surveillance burdens are distributed.

The partial reform following Snowden illustrates the limits of individual-triggered structural change without organizational infrastructure to sustain it. The civil liberties advocates, journalists, and technologists who worked to translate the Snowden disclosures into policy change were doing organizational work that amplified the individual action. Without them, the individual action would have produced scandal without reform.

The Question of Sacrifice and Legitimacy

Snowden's case raises a question that Chapter 40 does not answer but invites students to engage: under what conditions is extraordinary individual action — including lawbreaking — justified as a response to structural surveillance?

Snowden violated his security clearance and federal law. He caused genuine harm to classified intelligence operations, some of which had genuine security benefit. He has lived in exile for more than a decade as a consequence of his choice. The harm he caused was real; so was the public benefit of what he revealed.

This is not a question that has a settled answer, and students should resist the temptation to settle it quickly in either direction. The argument that he should have used official channels is undermined by the documented experience of other NSA whistleblowers who used official channels and were prosecuted or destroyed professionally. The argument that any disclosure of classified information is per se unjustified is undermined by the fact that the disclosed programs were, in some cases, found by courts to be illegal — meaning that Snowden disclosed illegal government conduct that would not otherwise have been exposed.

The harder question is not whether Snowden was right or wrong but what this case reveals about the relationship between individual conscience, institutional accountability, and structural surveillance. If the only mechanism for public accountability of secret surveillance programs is individual disclosure at enormous personal cost, what does that tell us about the adequacy of the institutional accountability mechanisms that were supposed to prevent the need for such disclosure?

Discussion Questions

The Snowden disclosures produced partial structural reform — the USA Freedom Act and industry encryption adoption — without fundamentally changing the architecture of surveillance. What would have been needed to produce more fundamental change?
Snowden used official whistleblower channels, found them inadequate, and then made an unauthorized disclosure. Evaluate the argument that official channels are adequate for surveillance accountability. What evidence supports or contradicts this assessment?
The chapter argues that individual action is necessary but insufficient. Does Snowden's case support this argument? What elements of the post-Snowden reform story were individual actions, and what elements were organizational or structural?
Multiple technology companies deployed end-to-end encryption more widely in the aftermath of the PRISM disclosures. Is this a case of individual action (Snowden's disclosure) producing design change (industry encryption)? Or does it fit the design response into a different category?
Dr. Osei says the question is how to refuse to be only what the gaze makes you. What was Snowden refusing to be? How does your answer bear on the question of whether his action was justified?