US government has been withholding from public much more information than is needed and the trend threatens democracy, Edward Snowden said in a video address congratulating Chelsea Manning on winning the Sam Adams Award.
Imprisoned US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning - formerly known
as Bradley - was on Wednesday honored in absentia for revelations
of US war crimes. Manning was awarded the 2014 Sam Adams Prize
for Integrity in Intelligence at a ceremony held by the Oxford
University's prestigious Oxford Union Society.
The event included a video address by Edward Snowden, last year’s
Sam Adams Award winner, who praised Manning for bringing to
spotlight a very important issue of “over-classification” –
unjustified withholding from the public of information that’s not
related to national security.
“In the last year the White House told us that 95 million
records have been created classified and withheld from the public
in the year 2012. That’s more than any other year on record and
shows a trend where the government is withholding more secrets
than ever,” Snowden said, adding that many other Western
governments were “on the same trajectory.”
The former NSA contractor, currently living in temporary asylum
in Russia, believes the trend of making more and more information
secret could lead to a decline in democracy, because “when a
public is no longer aware of the actions of its officials… it can
no longer hold most senior members of its society to necessary
account for serious wrongdoing.”
Manning was in August 2013 sentenced to 35 years in prison for
turning over to WikiLeaks some 500,000 Army documents concerning
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the atrocities of the wars
have thus become exposed. The files included the ‘Collateral
Murder’ video – footage taken in July 2007 from inside the
cockpit of a US Apache helicopter as US troops on board cut down
12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters reporters.
“Documents that we received from Manning showed us that some
of this information is unambiguously necessary for public
ends,” Snowden said in his address. “For example, how
can we vote without evidence of true cost of the wars in which we
are involved, instances of public corruption, official corruption
in nations that we support, ally ourselves with, or even national
participation in torture programs, rendition programs and
unambiguous war crimes? All of these were represented in the
Manning leaks.”
The Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence has since 2002
been given out annually by a group of former US and UK
intelligence officers to whoever they think has championed the
truth - even if it meant breaking an oath. Sam Adams was a CIA
whistleblower during the Vietnam War.
One of those, who decide on who gets the award, is a retired CIA
analyst Ray McGovern. He finds the crackdown on whistleblowers
highly disturbing.
“Actually, it is rather mysterious and rather amazing that
three of our six awardees are not free,” McGovern told RT.
“Bradley Manning, or Chelsea Manning, in Federal prison,
Julian Assange cooped up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and,
of course, Snowden in Russia unable to travel because the United
States withdrew his passport, making him stateless. So we are
beginning to wonder whether the Sam Adams Prize is a good thing
to have when 50 percent of our [awardees] find themselves in some
kind of confinement.”
In order not to have potential whistleblowers discouraged by
fears of persecution former MI5 agent Annie Machon is setting up
a new organization called the Courage Foundation, which would
provide funding, support and advocacy for those who would ponder
leaking sensitive data. Machon believes that with ever more
sophisticated technological capabilities available to
intelligence agencies the mission of whistleblowers becomes ever
more important.
“People are very much aware that with the technological
capability intelligence agencies can now spy on us all and erode
our privacy everywhere. Particularly the NSA and the GCHQ,”
Machon told RT. “What we are seeing now is that the
technological capabilities outpace the law and the accountability
that is supposed to govern these spies. And also of course since
9/11 this sort of brutal response and interventions with illegal
wars in the Middle East, with invasions across North Africa and
covert actions and drone killing strikes, that there is a great
need for people of principle to stand up and say “This is being
done allegedly in our name, but actually this is illegal under
all international laws.”