NSA Spying and extra — World Points

March 21, 2025

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by Anup Shah
This web page Created Monday, October 07, 2013

This web page: https://www.globalissues.org/article/802/surveillance-state.
To print all info (e.g. expanded facet notes, exhibits different hyperlinks), use the print model:

At first of June 2013, numerous paperwork detailing surveillance by intelligence companies such because the US’s NSA and UK’s GCHQ began to be revealed, based mostly on info provided by NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden.

These leaks revealed a large surveillance program that included interception of e-mail and different Web communications and cellphone name tapping. A few of it seems unlawful, whereas different revelations present the US spying on pleasant nations throughout varied worldwide summits.

Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of furor. Whereas some nations are little question utilizing this to win some diplomatic factors, there was elevated tensions between the US and different areas around the globe.

A lot of the US surveillance packages got here from the aftermath of the 11th of September terrorist assaults on the US in 2001. Considerations a few crackdown on civil rights within the wake of the so-called struggle on terror have been expressed for a very long time, and these revelations appear to be confirming a few of these fears.

Given the widespread assortment of knowledge, apparently from central servers of main Web firms and from different core servers that type a part of the Web spine, actions of thousands and thousands (if not billions) of residents have been caught up in a dragnet type surveillance drawback referred to as PRISM, even when the communication has nothing to do with terrorism.

What impacts would such secretive mass surveillance have on democracy?

On this web page:

Secrecy; US Congress unaware of mass NSA surveillance program
When you’ve obtained nothing to cover…
Entry to vasts quantity of consumer knowledge from Web Giants
Web Governance
People and residents of different nations
Spying on pleasant nations and worldwide establishments
US mainstream media give attention to Edward Snowden
Privatization of surveillance means even much less accountability?
Extra info
1. Different internet sites
2. Information tales from IPS

Secrecy; US Congress unaware of mass NSA surveillance program

One of many main issues within the US has been how members of the US Congress themselves weren’t conscious at how huge the actions have been. Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist that revealed the paperwork from Edward Snowden wrote a follow-up article every week after the preliminary revelations. He famous Democratic Consultant Loretta Sanchez’s feedback mentioned after Congress was given a categorized briefing by NSA officers on the company’s beforehand secret surveillance actions that what was revealed was simply the tip of the iceberg and that it’s broader than most individuals even understand. She added that the majority of them in that session have been astounded to study a few of this.

Greenwald continued to mirror on the gravity of what she mentioned:

… as a member of Congress, she had no concept how invasive and huge the NSA’s surveillance actions are. Sen. Jon Tester, who’s a member of the Homeland Safety Committee, mentioned the identical factor, … fairly frankly, it helps folks like me turn out to be conscious of a state of affairs that I wasn’t conscious of earlier than as a result of I don’t sit on that Intelligence Committee.

How can anybody assume that it’s remotely wholesome in a democracy to have the NSA constructing a large spying equipment about which even members of Congress, together with Senators on the Homeland Safety Committee, are completely ignorant and discover astounding once they study of them? How can anybody declare with a straight face that there’s sturdy oversight when even members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are so constrained of their capability to behave that they’re diminished to issuing obscure, impotent warnings to the general public about what they name radical secret regulation enabling home spying that may stun People to find out about it, however are barred to reveal what it’s they’re so alarmed by? … What sort of particular person would assume that it might be preferable to stay in the dead of night — completely ignorant — about them?

Glenn Greenwald,
On Prism, partisanship and propaganda
, The Guardian, June 14, 2013

And even the unique creator of the controversial Patriot Act, has argued that the present metadata assortment is unbounded in scope. He added that the overwhelming majority of data collected don’t have anything to do with investigating terrorism, and requested, How can each name that each American makes or receives be related to a selected investigation?

Greenwald additionally makes an attention-grabbing statement about partisanship and describes how in 2006 the Democrats have been very clearly against this type of secret surveillance that Republicans had spear-headed within the aftermatch of the 11th of September terrorist assaults. And he contrasts that with how defensive Democrats have been this time spherical. He additionally factors to this attention-grabbing YouTube video that summarizes this (although learn the article, too!)

Biden in 2006 colleges Obama in 2013 over NSA spying program, Digital Frontier Basis, June 2013

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When you’ve obtained nothing to cover…

Defenders of those packages have typically argued that you probably have nothing to cover then you shouldn’t fear about this invasion of privateness.

Cory Doctorow, writing in The Guardian, responded as to why you need to care:

We’re unhealthy at privateness as a result of the results of privateness disclosures are separated by plenty of time and area from the disclosures themselves … it occurs so far-off from the disclosure that we are able to’t study from it.

It is best to care about privateness as a result of privateness isn’t secrecy. I do know what you do in the bathroom, however that doesn’t imply you don’t need to shut the door if you go within the stall.

It is best to care about privateness as a result of if the information says you’ve performed one thing incorrect, then the particular person studying the information will interpret all the pieces else you do by that gentle.

…

It is best to care about surveillance as a result of individuals who could be compromised by disclosure: people who find themselves homosexual and within the closet; folks with terminal sicknesses; people who find themselves associated to somebody notorious for some terrible crime. These individuals are your mates, your neighbors, possibly your children: they deserve a life that’s as free from trouble as you’re along with your fortunate, skeleton-free closet.

It is best to care about surveillance as a result of as soon as the system for surveillance is constructed into the networks and the telephones, unhealthy guys (or soiled cops) can use it to assault you.

…

As for Hague: if the harmless don’t have anything to concern from disclosure, then why did his personal authorities demand an unprecedented system of secret courts wherein proof of UK intelligence complicity in unlawful kidnapping and torture could be heard? Privateness, it seems, is completely important for the highly effective and fully nugatory for the remainder of us.

Cory Doctorow, The NSA’s Prism: why we must always care, The Guardian, June 14, 2013 (Emphasis added)

And, John Naughton, writing in The Observer, provides:

Residents who had performed nothing incorrect, declared Uncle Hague, had nothing to concern from complete surveillance.

Oh yeah? As Stephen Fry noticed in an exasperated tweet: William Hague’s view appears to be we are able to conceal a digicam & bug in your room & in the event you’ve obtained nothing to cover, what’s the concern? Hell’s enamel!

Hell’s enamel certainly. I can consider hundreds of people that don’t have anything to cover, however who would have good causes to fret about intrusive surveillance. Journalists searching for to guard their sources, for instance; NHS whistleblowers; folks searching for on-line assist for private psychological torments; frightened youngsters searching for recommendation on contraception or abortion; estranged wives of abusive husbands; asylum seekers and dissident refugees; and so forth.

In a means, Hague’s smug, patronising tone was the least troubling facet of the NSA/GCHQ story. Extra worrying was the unexplained contradiction between claims within the Prism PowerPoint slides that the NSA routinely collects knowledge from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple, and the businesses’ frantic denials that this was the case.

John Naughton, The NSA has us snared in its entice – and there’s no means out, The Observer, June 15, 2013

The opposite factor Hague overlooks is how the UK’s GCHQ used very misleading means to intercept communications throughout essential G20 summits to know the personal positions of different governments, together with regimes pleasant with the UK. This included establishing pretend Web cafes, putting in spyware and adware corresponding to keyloggers, and intercepting emails.

It has typically been thought that every one governments want to (or do) carry out some type of spying and espionage throughout worldwide conferences, and it’s typically within the nationwide curiosity to take action (or at the very least could be argued that means).

As well as, because the journal Overseas Coverage revealed, the US spied by itself residents way back to the Vietnam struggle, together with spying on two of its personal sitting senior senators and distinguished figures corresponding to Martin Luther King, boxer Muhammad Ali, and others. This wasn’t with congressional oversight, however on the White Home’s behest; an abuse of energy, because the journal additionally famous.

However it has been hardly ever doable to show such suspicions, till now. One other essential instance was the US and UK’s efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the varied UN conferences about Iraq-related resolutions, the place the US and UK have been regarded as spying on buddies and others.

Lastly, the you probably have nothing to cover argument misses a elementary level; having such vasts quantity of information, doubtlessly unnecessarily when collected through a dragnet type system, is awaiting abuse. The NSA and others presently declare they don’t seem to be abusing their roles (however we have now already heard them deceive Congress, so they’re already dealing with public belief points which is difficult for a secretive group anyway), however with all this knowledge, it’s the potential to abuse it (internally, or by hacks, and so on) that’s the privateness concern right here. Secrecy (particularly in a democracy) by-passes checks and balances. Within the case of the US, who strongly declare there’s authorized and judicial oversight in these items, it’s nonetheless performed in secrecy; it’s not clear how a lot private knowledge of strange residents (of the US and remainder of the world) is caught on this.

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Entry to vasts quantity of consumer knowledge from Web Giants

One other facet of the US/NSA spying story was the involvement of Web giants corresponding to Apple, Fb, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter.

It was claimed that the NSA had some form of backdoor or direct entry to the vasts quantity of information these firms have on their customers, which the Web titans vigorously denied. In some methods, these denials look like spin as firms should adjust to authorized surveillance requests and the data could not technically be shared through backdoors.

However, firms usually are not legally allowed to acknowledge sure forms of intelligence requests so legally there could be vasts quantities of information sharing however the secrecy surrounding it means it’s not clear how a lot privateness invasion is respectable or not.

However on the very least it emerged there have been presumably hundreds of requests for nearly all knowledge for varied customers they might goal. And that the NSA have been in a position to seize an unlimited quantity of Web knowledge.

Edward Snowden informed the Hong Kong-based South China Put up that there had been greater than 61,000 hacking operations globally, with lots of of targets in Hong Kong and on the [Chinese] mainland. We hack community backbones–like large Web routers, mainly–that give us entry to the communications of lots of of hundreds of computer systems with out having to hack each single one, Snowden added.

And a few firms are solely too keen to promote to the US authorities to help these actions. For instance, Inter Press Service notes a Californian firm providing US authorities companies software program to intercept alerts on undersea cables that can be utilized to investigate all kinds of well-liked Web providers, corresponding to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Fb, Twitter, and so on.

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Web Governance

It’s attention-grabbing to notice that just a few months earlier the US was resisting what appeared like worldwide efforts to place the stewardship of the Web within the palms of the United Nations somewhat than being a decentralized system (although with the US having remaining say over the modifications to sure elements of the core, or root, Web servers).

On the time, a lot of the expertise group and others argued that the US is an efficient defender of the Web (and helped create it within the first place), and that placing it into the palms of the UN was actually the agenda of countries like Russia, China and others with questionable data on human rights. Examples corresponding to surveillance and censorship got as causes to not belief different governments. And boards and blogs have been stuffed with the same old over-simplistic UN-bashing that the US is usually recognized for.

The US, by comparability, (most likely rightly) argued that the present decentralized system works properly. Web giants corresponding to Google additionally weighed in alongside comparable traces, as did varied Web freedom activist organizations and people.

Sadly, even with the present system, governments sadly can sensor giant parts of the Web in the event that they need to. However because the current spying episode has revealed as properly, that is maybe another excuse for the US not desirous to relinquish management of such a globally helpful useful resource. Having the ability to faucet into among the core Web servers, a lot of that are based mostly within the US or US-friendly nations, offers it a bonus of different nations and entities.

In different phrases, if even throughout the present system nations like China and Russia can censor and monitor the Web why do they care about wanting extra management? Larry Geller offers an instance:

Little question wrongdoers fully perceive that they mustn’t plot their actions utilizing Gmail. They know that if their cell telephones are powered on, somebody within the US is aware of the place they’re. In order that they keep away from utilizing the methods that the NSA is monitoring. These whose knowledge does get recorded and analyzed are overwhelmingly strange residents—of this and different nations. The NSA computer systems are stuffed with strange folks’s knowledge, together with particulars of their love-lives, their monetary transactions, and which films they’ve ordered tickets to see.

The current leaks by Edward Snowden could revive strain to maneuver to extra native management of information flows to stop US spying. Do different nations care whether or not we file their citizen’s personal knowledge? Maybe not a lot. However Putin could care that his personal cellphone calls are on file someplace in Utah.

Larry Geller, NSA spying could revive opposition to US management over the Web, Disappeared Information, June 11, 2013

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People and residents of different nations

A few of the scandal within the US has been that the surveillance by NSA has included American residents. Misplaced in that concern is the privateness of non-US residents. It virtually seems that mainstream US media usually are not too frightened about that. However residents around the globe are rightly out-raged.

It isn’t just like the US-based providers (corresponding to these from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Fb, and others) are simply replaceable. Not solely do folks around the globe depend on these providers, however these firms depend on folks around the globe utilizing their providers too.

Being international providers, the concept of nation states and citizen rights have probably not developed rapidly sufficient to cater for the modifications being led to by the Web. (It has equally been argued that the way in which firms are pushing for a neoliberal type of globalization, nation states are struggling to deal with that, too, so there’s maybe an actual situation of democracy and folks’s rights in a brand new world that’s basically at stake.)

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Spying on pleasant nations and worldwide establishments

I feel the principle factor I need to emphasize is I don’t have an curiosity and the folks on the NSA don’t have an curiosity in doing something aside from ensuring that … we are able to forestall a terrorist assault… We would not have an curiosity in doing something aside from that. And we’ve tried to arrange a system … to be sure that these packages usually are not abused.

US President Barack Obama, President Obama Holds a Press Convention, Whitehouse.gov, August 9, 2013

Breaking UN protocol at a Normal Meeting assembly of all members states Brazil strongly criticized the US for illegally infiltrating its communications community, intercepting cellphone calls, and breaking into the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations. President Dilma Rousseff dismissed the US argument that such actions have been to counter terrorism. As an alternative, she argued, company info — typically of excessive financial and even strategic worth — was on the middle of espionage actions.

Reviews additionally surfaced of the US spying on the United Nations and varied European nations, together with the workplace of the European Union on the UN. The US had managed to crack the UN’s inside video teleconferencing system, as a part of its surveillance of the world physique.

Main expertise site, Ars Technica, additionally provides that the NSA additionally runs a bugging program in additional than 80 embassies and consulates around the globe, beneath a program referred to as the Particular Assortment Service, an intensive program that has little or nothing to do with fending off terrorists, in response to Der Spiegel.

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US mainstream media give attention to Edward Snowden

When Edward Snowden made his revelations he hoped the main target could be on the problems, not on him or his plight. However as many have recognized for a few years, the US mainstream media is never in a position to do reporting of great points; sensationalism and specializing in people are simpler to do in comparison with tackling core points which might maintain energy to account (be it authorities, company or in any other case).

In a Q&A session with The Guardian, he famous that Sadly, the mainstream media now appears way more fascinated about what I mentioned after I was 17 or what my girlfriend seems to be like somewhat than, say, the biggest program of suspicionless surveillance in human historical past.

Within the US, a lot of the main target had turn out to be about whether or not he was a traitor or not; he felt there was no probability of a good trial within the US as a result of the US had overtly accused and judged him of treason. In response to questions on whether or not he was a traitor he added

US officers say this each time there’s a public dialogue that might restrict their authority. US officers additionally present deceptive or immediately false assertions concerning the worth of those packages, as they did only in the near past with the Zazi case, which court docket paperwork clearly present was not unveiled by PRISM.

Journalists ought to ask a selected query: since these packages started operation shortly after September eleventh, what number of terrorist assaults have been prevented SOLELY by info derived from this suspicionless surveillance that might not be gained through some other supply? Then ask what number of particular person communications have been ingested to attain that, and ask your self if it was price it. Bathtub falls and cops kill extra People than terrorism, but we have been requested to sacrifice our most sacred rights for concern of falling sufferer to it.

It’s essential to keep in mind I’m being referred to as a traitor by males like former vice chairman Dick Cheney. This can be a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a form of atrocity warm-up on the way in which to deceitfully engineering a battle that has killed over 4,400 and maimed almost 32,000 People, in addition to leaving over 100,000 Iraqis useless. Being referred to as a traitor by Dick Cheney is the very best honor you can provide an American.

Glen Greenwald, Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower solutions reader questions, The Guardian, June 17, 2013

When requested how the therapy of different whistleblowers influenced him, he had a profound problem for President Obama:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing solely escalate the size, scope, and ability concerned in future disclosures. Residents with a conscience usually are not going to disregard wrong-doing just because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. As an alternative, these draconian responses merely construct higher whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an excellent harsher hand towards me, they are often assured that they’ll quickly discover themselves dealing with an equally harsh public response.

This disclosure offers Obama a possibility to attraction for a return to sanity, constitutional coverage, and the rule of regulation somewhat than males. He nonetheless has loads of time to go down in historical past because the President who regarded into the abyss and stepped again, somewhat than leaping ahead into it. I’d advise he personally name for a particular committee to overview these interception packages, repudiate the damaging State Secrets and techniques privilege, and, upon getting ready to depart workplace, start a convention for all Presidents forthwith to show their respect for the regulation by appointing a particular investigator to overview the insurance policies of their years in workplace for any wrongdoing. There could be no religion in authorities if our highest places of work are excused from scrutiny — they need to be setting the instance of transparency.

Glen Greenwald, Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower solutions reader questions, The Guardian, June 17, 2013

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Privatization of surveillance means even much less accountability?

Chris Pyle, a former army teacher uncovered the CIA and Military’s monitoring of thousands and thousands of People engaged in lawful political exercise within the Nineteen Seventies. His revelations in the end resulting in a sequence of legal guidelines geared toward curbing authorities abuses.

He was just lately interviewed by the superb Democracy Now! concerning the current NSA revelations and echoed issues raised by others; about lack of expertise and oversight by Congress and that the secrecy is uncontrolled.

However he additionally provides that privatization of surveillance (70% p.c of the intelligence funds of the USA right now goes to personal contractors, Democracy Now! notes) is leading to an absence of accountability and importantly a means for governments to shirk their authorized duties; the Fourth Modification of the Structure, which protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, solely binds the federal government, doesn’t bind firms. That’s a significant issue, he notes.

Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on Home Spying in 70s, Says Be Cautious of Assaults on NSA’s Critics, Democracy Now!, June 13 2013

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Extra info

This site will most likely not have the ability to sustain with new revelations as they’re revealed. Nevertheless, there are a selection of web sites which are price following on this situation. As well as, the IPS information feed that this website carries may also cowl this.