The basic problem of the Snowden case
Global espionage by the United States
08/07/2013
- Opinión
The virtual retention of President Evo Morales for 13 hours in Vienna, after France, Italy, Portugal and Spain prevented his aircraft from penetrating their airspace on suspicion that he may have hidden the former information specialist of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Edward Snowden, is an episode that, because of its serious nature, has captured international attention.
With this event assuming such importance, without precedent in recent history, it should not be forgotten that the basic problem for debate is the massive, global, indiscriminate and arbitrary espionage which, according to Snowden's whistle-blowing, is being carried out by intelligence organizations of the United States in the whole world, endangering the privacy of tens of millions of citizens who use the social networks of Internet. Obviously, this is something that the corporate international news media have not looked at in depth. They are interested rather in diverting public attention to secondary or anecdotal aspects.
"The real problem is not himself (Snowden) but what he revealed", Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa expressed to Reuters; Correa considers this to be the greatest case of espionage in the history of humanity, of which the first victim is precisely the people of the United States as well as other sovereign States (1).
Another stripe on the tiger
Edward Snowden, who worked for the CIA as an analyst and later worked for one of the security companies that contract their services to the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed that the NSA and the FBI have access to the electronic data both from the U.S. telephone company Verizon as well as the servers of the internet giants (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Apple, Microsoft), all through a special project called PRISM.
Snowden has revealed how these U.S. intelligence agencies are employed to snoop and extract data and metadata (2) from social networks not only involving U.S. citizens, but the whole world, violating the elementary principle of privacy for persons and institutions.
With this event assuming such importance, without precedent in recent history, it should not be forgotten that the basic problem for debate is the massive, global, indiscriminate and arbitrary espionage which, according to Snowden's whistle-blowing, is being carried out by intelligence organizations of the United States in the whole world, endangering the privacy of tens of millions of citizens who use the social networks of Internet. Obviously, this is something that the corporate international news media have not looked at in depth. They are interested rather in diverting public attention to secondary or anecdotal aspects.
"The real problem is not himself (Snowden) but what he revealed", Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa expressed to Reuters; Correa considers this to be the greatest case of espionage in the history of humanity, of which the first victim is precisely the people of the United States as well as other sovereign States (1).
Another stripe on the tiger
Edward Snowden, who worked for the CIA as an analyst and later worked for one of the security companies that contract their services to the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed that the NSA and the FBI have access to the electronic data both from the U.S. telephone company Verizon as well as the servers of the internet giants (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Apple, Microsoft), all through a special project called PRISM.
Snowden has revealed how these U.S. intelligence agencies are employed to snoop and extract data and metadata (2) from social networks not only involving U.S. citizens, but the whole world, violating the elementary principle of privacy for persons and institutions.
"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards", Edward Snowden pointed out in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian (3).
The revelations of Edward Snowden put the United States in an extremely embarrassing situation, especially after the German weekly Der Spiegel, using documents from the former NSA agent, revealed that the secret services of the United States were engaged in massive espionage on Germany, on the European Union mission in New York and Washington and on 38 embassies. This has raised questions and protests in the European Union.
These facts have dealt severe damage to the image of the United States, already impaired by the cables revealed by Wikileaks, which exposed the dirty linen of the foreign service of the United States and the actions of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have led to thousands of victims, among both civilians and the military, to which must be added the maintenance of the centre of detention and torture of Guantánamo (and before that, of Abu Ghraid in Iraq), as well as extrajudicial assassinations with drones (unmanned aircraft) in Pakistan and other countries.
These problems do not appear to worry the elites in the United States, who justify espionage in the name of national security. In this respect it is both revealing and up-to-date to read what Richard A. Clarke – former coordinator of the National Security Council in the governments of the elder Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – and Robert K. Knake have written:
"The ways in which we obtain information, including cyber-espionage, may offend the sensibility of certain persons, and on some occasions might involve a violation of national and international law, but with a few notable exceptions, the espionage activities of the United States are in general necessary and beneficial for the interests of the nation (4).
With Obama, more vigilance
The revelations of Snowden show that under the Obama administration these programmes of vigilance and control applied by George W. Bush after the events of September 11, 2001, have been maintained and indeed expanded. We may recall that the legislation called the U.S. Patriot Act, approved by the Congress at the request of Bush, has not been overturned and is still in force. This authorizes the U.S. government to intercept electronic or telephonic communications (5).
The Obama government, supported by judicial orders authorized in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has allowed the National Security Agency to collect during two years electronic data from millions of clients of Verizon, one of the biggest communications companies in the country, according to The Guardian of June 27 2013, based on documents provided by Snowden (6).
Militarization of Cyberspace
During the government of Obama there have been significant advances in the militarization of cyberspace which is seen as one of the high priorities in the framework of U.S. military strategy for world control and domination. For this purpose, in October of 2009 the Cybernetic Command of the United States began, with the participation of distinct task forces to unleash defensive and offensive operations in cyberspace. This is conceived by U.S. military as a space in which combat is developing and which has to be dominated by the United States (7). The objective of the military forces of this country is to gain strategic superiority in cyberspace, for which the United States should attack, counting on "offensive capacities in cyberspace to gain and to maintain the initiative" (8).
Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks which has posted thousands of secret documents of the United States, and who has been in asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past year, points out that the Internet, which was supposed to be a civil space, has become a militarized space (9). "At the present time there exists a militarization of cyberspace, in the sense of a military occupation. When someone communicates on the Internet, when someone uses a mobile telephone, which is now tied to the internet, these communications are intercepted by the military information services."
It is nonetheless worth pointing out that cyberspace is still a disputed area, in which the forces of the empire and of world business, political and military elites look to control this space and mold it in accord with their mercantile and business interests, but there are also networks and projects that resist predatory capitalism and propose emancipative projects, promote peace and democratic transparence. The actions of people such as Assange, Snowden and Bradley Manning indicate that the security apparatus of the world power are vulnerable and contribute to the release of information that they want to keep hidden precisely because they violate human rights of people and infringe international law.
Global vigilance
The authorities of the United States have attempted to minimize international reactions concerning cyber-espionage, saying that all countries do this and that it is justified by the need to protect the nation from terrorist threats. Nevertheless the evidence indicates that espionage is not only directed against potential terrorists but also against social activists, friendly countries and enemies, heads of state, citizens in general, as well as embassies, in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 12), international law and the Constitution of the United States itself.
According to Julian Assange we are now faced with a new technological model of espionage that allows for the interception and stockpiling of all telephone calls, electronic mail, voice and text messages, etc., of a given country. This activity involves hundreds of private enterprises which offer their services to States, which is also of concern for the use which they can make of the data of persons and institutions. It should also be noted that these are not subjected in many cases to any kind of democratic control.
In an interview given to the journalist Santiago O'Donnell of Argentina's Página 12 (09-23-12) Assange points out that it is much cheaper to have permanent archives on entire populations rather than concentrating on determined individuals. "It is better than everyone is targeted than to have to discriminate." Later, when data are required on a determined person, it is possible to go to the permanent archive, find the data on this person, easily find him/her and follow their tracks, according to the opinions of Assange.
Another element that is now revealed in the exposure made by Snowden is the tight collaboration of the Internet giants with organizations of espionage of the United States. As Snowden has mentioned, through the PRISM programme, they can access data bases of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft.
This has serious repercussions for tens of millions of people throughout the world who have surrendered personal data to these global Internet companies in exchange for free access to different applications that these companies offer such as email, chats, blogs, social networks, etc. But from now on, we have certainty, and not only suspicions, that no one using these companies and networks can be secure and trusting, and that information, photos, messages and metadata (with the exception of encrypted messages) that circulate on the internet can be intercepted and controlled through technologies of identification, surveillance and investigation.
Latin America: threats and hopes
It is estimated that 80 per cent of international data traffic in Latin America passes through the United States, double that for Asia and four times the percentage of Europe, according to Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi (10). Electronic communications between Latin American countries must first pass through servers based in the United States. These communications are intercepted by the National Security Agency, as Julian Assange revealed to the Argentinian "Página 12".
The good news in this area is that the telecommunications ministers of UNASUR, who met in May of this year in Brazil, agreed to create a mega-ring of fiber optics that will make it possible in the future for communications to no longer pass through U.S. territory. This ring which will have an extension of ten thousand kilometres will reduce costs and result in more secure communications. Given the evidence of massive espionage on the part of the United States in the networks, this project acquires a strategic importance for the twelve countries that make up UNASUR, making it possible to obtain independence and technological sovereignty. Until such time as this project is established, the encryption of communications is imperative as well as efforts to develop and utilize free software and open platforms, given that it is the big multinationals that monopolize proprietary software that leave a "back door" open in order for some spy services to obtain information on citizens of the whole world.
(Translation by Jordan Bishop for Alai)
* A longer version of this article, in Spanish, is available at: http://alainet.org/active/65377
The revelations of Edward Snowden put the United States in an extremely embarrassing situation, especially after the German weekly Der Spiegel, using documents from the former NSA agent, revealed that the secret services of the United States were engaged in massive espionage on Germany, on the European Union mission in New York and Washington and on 38 embassies. This has raised questions and protests in the European Union.
These facts have dealt severe damage to the image of the United States, already impaired by the cables revealed by Wikileaks, which exposed the dirty linen of the foreign service of the United States and the actions of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have led to thousands of victims, among both civilians and the military, to which must be added the maintenance of the centre of detention and torture of Guantánamo (and before that, of Abu Ghraid in Iraq), as well as extrajudicial assassinations with drones (unmanned aircraft) in Pakistan and other countries.
These problems do not appear to worry the elites in the United States, who justify espionage in the name of national security. In this respect it is both revealing and up-to-date to read what Richard A. Clarke – former coordinator of the National Security Council in the governments of the elder Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – and Robert K. Knake have written:
"The ways in which we obtain information, including cyber-espionage, may offend the sensibility of certain persons, and on some occasions might involve a violation of national and international law, but with a few notable exceptions, the espionage activities of the United States are in general necessary and beneficial for the interests of the nation (4).
With Obama, more vigilance
The revelations of Snowden show that under the Obama administration these programmes of vigilance and control applied by George W. Bush after the events of September 11, 2001, have been maintained and indeed expanded. We may recall that the legislation called the U.S. Patriot Act, approved by the Congress at the request of Bush, has not been overturned and is still in force. This authorizes the U.S. government to intercept electronic or telephonic communications (5).
The Obama government, supported by judicial orders authorized in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has allowed the National Security Agency to collect during two years electronic data from millions of clients of Verizon, one of the biggest communications companies in the country, according to The Guardian of June 27 2013, based on documents provided by Snowden (6).
Militarization of Cyberspace
During the government of Obama there have been significant advances in the militarization of cyberspace which is seen as one of the high priorities in the framework of U.S. military strategy for world control and domination. For this purpose, in October of 2009 the Cybernetic Command of the United States began, with the participation of distinct task forces to unleash defensive and offensive operations in cyberspace. This is conceived by U.S. military as a space in which combat is developing and which has to be dominated by the United States (7). The objective of the military forces of this country is to gain strategic superiority in cyberspace, for which the United States should attack, counting on "offensive capacities in cyberspace to gain and to maintain the initiative" (8).
Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks which has posted thousands of secret documents of the United States, and who has been in asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past year, points out that the Internet, which was supposed to be a civil space, has become a militarized space (9). "At the present time there exists a militarization of cyberspace, in the sense of a military occupation. When someone communicates on the Internet, when someone uses a mobile telephone, which is now tied to the internet, these communications are intercepted by the military information services."
It is nonetheless worth pointing out that cyberspace is still a disputed area, in which the forces of the empire and of world business, political and military elites look to control this space and mold it in accord with their mercantile and business interests, but there are also networks and projects that resist predatory capitalism and propose emancipative projects, promote peace and democratic transparence. The actions of people such as Assange, Snowden and Bradley Manning indicate that the security apparatus of the world power are vulnerable and contribute to the release of information that they want to keep hidden precisely because they violate human rights of people and infringe international law.
Global vigilance
The authorities of the United States have attempted to minimize international reactions concerning cyber-espionage, saying that all countries do this and that it is justified by the need to protect the nation from terrorist threats. Nevertheless the evidence indicates that espionage is not only directed against potential terrorists but also against social activists, friendly countries and enemies, heads of state, citizens in general, as well as embassies, in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 12), international law and the Constitution of the United States itself.
According to Julian Assange we are now faced with a new technological model of espionage that allows for the interception and stockpiling of all telephone calls, electronic mail, voice and text messages, etc., of a given country. This activity involves hundreds of private enterprises which offer their services to States, which is also of concern for the use which they can make of the data of persons and institutions. It should also be noted that these are not subjected in many cases to any kind of democratic control.
In an interview given to the journalist Santiago O'Donnell of Argentina's Página 12 (09-23-12) Assange points out that it is much cheaper to have permanent archives on entire populations rather than concentrating on determined individuals. "It is better than everyone is targeted than to have to discriminate." Later, when data are required on a determined person, it is possible to go to the permanent archive, find the data on this person, easily find him/her and follow their tracks, according to the opinions of Assange.
Another element that is now revealed in the exposure made by Snowden is the tight collaboration of the Internet giants with organizations of espionage of the United States. As Snowden has mentioned, through the PRISM programme, they can access data bases of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft.
This has serious repercussions for tens of millions of people throughout the world who have surrendered personal data to these global Internet companies in exchange for free access to different applications that these companies offer such as email, chats, blogs, social networks, etc. But from now on, we have certainty, and not only suspicions, that no one using these companies and networks can be secure and trusting, and that information, photos, messages and metadata (with the exception of encrypted messages) that circulate on the internet can be intercepted and controlled through technologies of identification, surveillance and investigation.
Latin America: threats and hopes
It is estimated that 80 per cent of international data traffic in Latin America passes through the United States, double that for Asia and four times the percentage of Europe, according to Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi (10). Electronic communications between Latin American countries must first pass through servers based in the United States. These communications are intercepted by the National Security Agency, as Julian Assange revealed to the Argentinian "Página 12".
The good news in this area is that the telecommunications ministers of UNASUR, who met in May of this year in Brazil, agreed to create a mega-ring of fiber optics that will make it possible in the future for communications to no longer pass through U.S. territory. This ring which will have an extension of ten thousand kilometres will reduce costs and result in more secure communications. Given the evidence of massive espionage on the part of the United States in the networks, this project acquires a strategic importance for the twelve countries that make up UNASUR, making it possible to obtain independence and technological sovereignty. Until such time as this project is established, the encryption of communications is imperative as well as efforts to develop and utilize free software and open platforms, given that it is the big multinationals that monopolize proprietary software that leave a "back door" open in order for some spy services to obtain information on citizens of the whole world.
(Translation by Jordan Bishop for Alai)
* A longer version of this article, in Spanish, is available at: http://alainet.org/active/65377
(2) Barack Obama points out that they are not spying on the contents of the information but that the NSA, through the PRISM project, only collects metadata. What are these? One can define them as data about data. Every time we send a text, images, audio and video, or make a telephone call or visit a web site, we leave a trail, a digital footprint that is registered. When we make a telephone call, for example, the number to which one calls, the duration of the calls, and the routing of the communication are saved. These are the metadata of telephone conversations. This kind of metadata are available to the National Security Agency in an occult way and without our knowledge. See: Alberto Salazar, La metadata que la NSA de EEUU está espiando de todas sus comunicaciones, http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=170005, 21-06-2013
(3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why
(4) Richard A. Clarke, Robert K.Knake, Guerra en la red, Ariel, Barcelona,
2011, p. 305-306
(5) Walter Graciano, Hitler ganó la guerra, DeBolsillo, Buenos Aires,
2005, p. 74
(6) http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/98582-obama-nsa-vigilancia-email, 2013-06-27
(7) Op cit. Richard A. Clarke, p. 71
(8) Ibid. p.71-72
(9) Julian Assange et al, Menace sur nos libertés, Robert Laffont, Paris,
2013, p. 47
(10) http://www.contrainjerencia.com/?p=33911
(3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why
(4) Richard A. Clarke, Robert K.Knake, Guerra en la red, Ariel, Barcelona,
2011, p. 305-306
(5) Walter Graciano, Hitler ganó la guerra, DeBolsillo, Buenos Aires,
2005, p. 74
(6) http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/98582-obama-nsa-vigilancia-email, 2013-06-27
(7) Op cit. Richard A. Clarke, p. 71
(8) Ibid. p.71-72
(9) Julian Assange et al, Menace sur nos libertés, Robert Laffont, Paris,
2013, p. 47
(10) http://www.contrainjerencia.com/?p=33911
https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/77527
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