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54 First Amend. Stud. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/firsamtu54 and id is 1 raw text is: FIRST AMENDMENT STUDIES 2020, VOL. 54, NO. 1, 1-27 https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2020.1742761 NATIONAL caaspueai 1 SOC AN ON *~Taylor&Francis Grnup ARTICLE <Snowden> is (not) a whistleblower: Ideographs, whistleblower protections, and restrictions of <free> speech Joshua Guitar Department of Communication, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA; Department of Communication, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Edward Snowden's revelations ignited public discourse on whistle- Received 18 October 2019 blowing and whistleblower protection legislation. Given the Accepted 9 March 2020 polemics over whistleblower distinctions throughout mediated KEYWORDS exchanges between US officials and the press, this manuscript Ideograph; Snowden; constitutes a synchronic ideographic analysis of pertinent, recog- whistleblowing; democracy; nized ideographs as they were operationalized in relation to whis- surveillance tieblowing within the Snowden discourse. While news media and the public agreed that Snowden operated as a whistleblower, the US government adamantly denied this classification. Instead, US officials manufactured a media trial, and in three distinct phases, purged whistleblowing from the public forum, rhetorically crimina- lized Snowden as a threat to national <security>, and utilized whistleblowing as a means to propagate the war on <terrorism> and defend covert surveillance. These processes afforded US offi- cials the ability to funnel whistleblowers through private channels, effectively neutralizing the public power of whistleblowers. It is argued that removing whistleblowers from the public forum, while packaged as a protective measure for whistleblowers, oper- ates as a defensive measure for state officials and authoritarianism writ large as it disarms a democratic populace of a foundational tool of free speech and dissent. Introduction Edward Snowden's exposure of the US government's covert surveillance practices shook the world. The revelations began June 5, 2013 when The Guardian reported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's (FISC) demand that Verizon release customer commu- nication information on a daily basis.' On June 6, 2013, both The Guardian and The Washington Post publicized the Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management (PRISM) security program that collected real-time data on American citizens. Among other revelations, it was also reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was tracking internet and communication activity of US citizens without legal warrants,2 was surveilling foreign citizens, leaders, and institutions,3 and was secretly bugging European Union meetings.4 A published internal NSA audit also found that the US government violated domestic privacy laws over a thousand times annually. CONTACT Joshua Guitar joshlguitar@gmail.com =° Christopher Newport University, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Newport News, VA, USA © 2020 National Communication Association

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