By Bill Sweeney/CPJ Editorial Director
Edward Snowden's global travels have highlighted the chasmbetween the political posturing and actual practices of governments when itcomes to free expression. As is well known now, the former governmentcontractor's leaks exposedthe widespreadphone and digital surveillance being conducted by the U.S. National SecurityAgency, practices at odds with the Obama administration's positioning of the UnitedStates as a global leader on Internetfreedom and its calls for technology companies to resist foreigndemands for censorship and surveillance.
After disclosing his role as the leaker, Snowden left hisBooz Allen Hamilton position in Hawaii for Hong Kong, which brushed aside U.S.extradition requests about the same time The South China Morning Post cited Snowden as saying the NSA was tapping into the networks of Chinese mobile phoneproviders. Authorities in Hong Kong operate under a one-country, two-systemsmodel--that country being China, where the press is subjected to widespreadsurveillance and where ethnicminority journalists are jailed for reporting that doesn't conform toofficial censorship rules.
It was on then to Moscow for Snowden. Russian officials, no doubt aware ofSnowden leaks claiming the U.S. conducted surveillanceof Dmitry Medvedev at a 2009 G-20 summit in London, initially professedhaving no jurisdiction over his travels. Surveillance of journalists is not unfamiliar to Russian authorities. A former Russian interior ministryofficial pleaded guilty last year to orchestrating thesurveillance that led to the 2006 murder of investigative reporter AnnaPolitkovskaya. With the main plotters of the killing still unpunished,the Politkovskaya case is far from being solved--as are 14 other journalistmurders in Russia over the past decade, constituting oneof the world's worst records of impunity.
Snowden is said to be seeking asylum in Ecuador, with passage reportedly throughVenezuela. Leaks of sensitive government information are growing less likely bythe day in the two nations, which have moved aggressively to silenceindependent reporting. Venezuela has effectivelyeradicated independent broadcast outlets through its politicized regulatorysystem. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has pursued criminalprosecution of his critics. His government went even further this month, asCPJ's John Otis recounted,with the adoption of sweeping legislation that criminalizes critical follow-upreporting and obligates news media to cover government-prescribed activities.
Back in the UK, where the story all began when the Guardian broke the first of Snowden'sleaks, the public has been debatinga surveillance bill that critics derisively call the "snooperscharter." The bill would expand the intelligence service's ability tomonitor digital communications, but one wonders how much weight David Cameron'sgovernment gives to public debate. Among the latest revelations via Snowden andthe Guardian: For 18 months, the Britishspy agency GCHQ has been secretlytapping into vast amounts of data carried by fiber-optic cable.
Bill Sweeney is CPJ's editorial director, responsible for all of the organization's online and print publications. He is former New York City news editor for The Associated Press.
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