ENEMY OF THE STATE PART TWO: THE STASI MISINTERPRETATION

Daniel Ellsberg can be connected to Snowden in more ways than one. They do not just share the title of “whistle-blower”, but Ellsberg recently drew another connection between the two of them in an article he wrote for The Guardian in which he discusses the importance of Snowden’s leaks. Ellsberg incriminates the government’s recent actions and deems them as unconstitutional as he says, “Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.” Ellsberg continues to describe the terrible state that the government of the United States is in, and how the NSA has taken privacy away from American citizens in a way that rivals what the East German Stasi had done long ago, as he says, “The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former ‘democratic republic’ of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of.” He then claims, “Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.” In this statement, he alleges that Snowden, with his actions, acted as the savior trying to allow the American public to know what their government has become. Is the United States, however, so extreme in its actions that it is comparable to the Stasi? In many ways, yes, it is. But in one major important way, they are so dissimilar that this comparison is illegitimate, and that is in the purpose of the Stasi and the purpose of the NSA. The NSA lives to protect Americans from danger, despite the fact that they cross lines that they perhaps should not cross in the process. On that note, the NSA is also focused on fighting off the terrorist threat at all costs. On the other hand, John Koehler of The New York Times’ book Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police serves to explain the purpose of the Stasi which differs vastly with the NSA. In his book, the Stasi, as described by Simon Wiesenthal, a man who spent half of his life hunting down Nazi criminals, “had four decades in which to perfect its machinery of oppression, espionage, and international terrorism and subversion.” Unlike the NSA – actually, in a way completely opposite of the NSA – the Stasi inflicted acts of terrorism on its citizens as well as foreigners that were in no way attempts to protect them but rather to oppress them. Though as Ellsberg noted, there are some commonalities between the NSA and the Stasi, there are key differences between them that make these claims illegitimate.