28 Jun 2013

A Perfect Spy is in the Cold

We all knew we were being spied on. But the scale of operations is just staggering. Has Obama forfeited his claim to be a people’s president, some claim he is worse than Richard Nixon.
Ed Snowden, a former systems administrator at the NSA (national security agency) gave a startling interview to the Guardian Newspaper from his June 2013 position in Hong Kong. He is now on the run and has given encoded files containing NSA secrets to several trusted friends. If anything happens to Snowden, the files will be unlocked and publicised.
Extracts from the interview sums up the world we can look forward to if the Prism programme continues on present course.
Snowden: Intro
“Sitting at my desk I certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone right up to the president who has a personal e-mail…. I think the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model.

When you are subverting the power of government - that is a fundamental dangerous thing to democracy….. And it (Surveillance society) is going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation who extend the capabilities of this type of architecture of repression

I could be rendered by the CIA, I could have people come after me and they could even pay off the Triads. That’s a fear I will have to live under the rest of my life for however long that happens to be….. If they want to get you they will get you in time.”

Guardian:  Why should people care about surveillance?

PRISM/US-984XN much of the world’s information flows through the USA.
 Prism targets phone calls, e-mail or chat to take the cheapest path….
It has already 97 billion pieces of intelligence from networks worldwide. 
“You can’t come forward against the world most powerful intelligence agencies
 and be completely free from risk, no one can meaningfully oppose them”  Ed Snowden.
“Because even if you are not doing anything wrong you are being watched and recorded….to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call….

Then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinise every decision you have ever made, every friend you have ever discussed something with and attack you on that basis…..  to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.

The greatest fear I have regarding the outcome for America from these disclosures is, that nothing will change….people will know the lengths government is going to grant themselves power to create greater control over American society and global society……. but they will not take the risk to stand up and fight to change things.

And, the months ahead and the years ahead it is only going to get worse until eventually there will be a time where a new leader will be elected, they will flip the switch and say that because of a crisis or the dangers we face in the world…we need more authority we need more power and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it and it will be turnkey tyranny”…..ends.

Typical of people who relish control, some politicians rushed to call for retribution, including Southern Baptist Republican Lindsey Graham who said;   

"I hope we'll chase him to the ends of the earth, bring him to justice and let the Russians know there will be consequences if they harbour this guy."

Wasn't the Cold War about ending communist state repression and advancing civil liberties & democracy???

Snowden is in the Cold. But because of him, the government’s prying Prism feels the Heat.