Det er i dag ti år siden, at The Guardian offentliggjorde interviewet, hvor Edward Snowden afslørede det globale omfang af overvågningsprogrammet for National Security Agency (NSA) i USA, hvor han tidligere havde arbejdet.

På et hotelværelse i Hong Kong fremlagde Snowden, som senere endte i eksil i Rusland, tusindvis af NSA-dokumenter for de tre journalister Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill og Laura Poitras, som derefter kunne informere verden om det formidable kontrolapparat. fra den amerikanske elektroniske efterretningstjeneste. Snowden havde set industrien indefra og kunne ikke lide, hvad han så, og besluttede, at offentligheden skulle vide, selvom de personlige omkostninger ville være høje.

Snowden har på det seneste holdt en lavere offentlig profil, ikke mindst fordi han og hans kone er blevet forældre til to små børn. Ikke desto mindre har han nu, ti år senere, igen ladet sig interviewe af The Guardian, også denne gang repræsenteret af Ewen MacAskill.

Nutidens overvågningssystemer, der blandt andet bruger biometri og kunstig intelligens, får systemerne fra 2013 til at virke som legetøj, siger Snowden, der forsikrer, at han ikke fortryder, hvad han gjorde.

But he is depressed about inroads into privacy both in the physical and digital world. “Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.”

Snowden er bekymret for både regeringer og teknologivirksomheder, som han siger har bedraget os.

He expressed concern not only about dangers posed by governments and Big Tech but commercially available video surveillance cameras, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and intrusive spyware such as Pegasus used against dissidents and journalists.

Vi har været naive, men det ligger i magtens natur, at den vil blive misbrugt, mener Snowden:

Looking back to 2013, he said: “We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power.”

Lækagen for ti år siden har resulteret i bedre kryptering, siger Snowden:

Snowden views the widespread use of end-to-end encryption as one of the positive legacies of the leaks. The Big Tech companies had been embarrassed by revelations that they had been handing personal data over to the NSA.

Det viste sig senere, at NSA ikke rigtig havde brug for Big Techs involvering for at få dataene:

That embarrassment turned to anger when further leaks revealed that, in spite of that cooperation, the NSA had been helping themselves to data from the Big Tech companies through backdoor vulnerabilities.

Kampen for privatlivets fred bliver lang, siger Snowden:

But Snowden is worried by technological advances that eat into privacy. “The idea that after the revelations in 2013 there would be rainbows and unicorns the next day is not realistic. It is an ongoing process. And we will have to be working at it for the rest of our lives and our children’s lives and beyond.”

Efterretningstjenester i USA og Storbritannien hævder, at Snowden skadede deres arbejde, for eksempel ved at det britiske udenlandske efterretningsagentur MI6 måtte afslutte flere operationer. De hævder også, at der skete politisk skade:

Their other complaint is that the narrative in 2013 portrayed the NSA and GCHQ as the sole malign actors, ignoring what Russia and China were doing on the internet.

Men ingen troede, at Rusland eller Kina var engle, indvender Snowden.

Snowden disputes such claims. He said no one at the time thought Russia and China were angels. As for damage, he said the agencies have never cited any evidence.

“Disruption? Sure, that is plausible,” he said. “But it is hard to claim ‘damage’ if, despite 10 years of hysterics, the sky never fell in.”

Der er næppe tvivl om, at Snowden brød loven, da han lækkede klassificerede oplysninger fra NSA, og hans eksil i Rusland kan næppe undgå at gøre ham forlegen efter landets invasion af Ukraine.

Samtidig er der ingen tvivl om, at Snowdens afsløringer gav Vesten en langt bedre chance for at beskytte sig mod magtmisbrug fra sine egne myndigheders side. At Vesten brugte den chance så dårligt, at en af ​​dens egne whistleblowere følte sig nødsaget til at søge sikkerhed i Rusland, burde derfor snarere være en kilde til pinlighed for Vesten selv.

En af de første ting, Trump – selv et offer for efterretningstjenesters magtmisbrug – bør gøre, hvis han bliver valgt i 2024, er at benåde Snowden.