A few thoughts on this piece, which is a good one:
1. The so-called icon of democracy around the world, United States of America, spies on its citizens & non-citizens, around the world, in the name of "national security."
All the known dictatorships around the world; pretty much all of the Arab countries in Middle East (for example, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt), also strictly control their citizenry & spy on their citizenry in the name of "national security."
US usually berates China & Russia for abusing human rights, which includes, spying on their citizens. But government of those countries say that they are doing it in the name of "national security." See some similarities there?
2. We know how Chinese, Russian, & residents & citizens of dictatorial Middle Eastern countries are dealt with, by their own governments, after they are caught with their "dissident" thoughts. But what's surprising, which I learned from this opinion piece, is that NSA shares its data, collected on Palestinian-Americans, for example, with Israeli "NSA".
Palestinian-Americans must've come to America, thinking it's a democratic, free, & just country & they will be protected here. What they didn't know that they are not only being spied upon but the data collected on them are being shared with the country, which made them a refugee in the first place.
3. People in Western countries usually think that how do people who are living in dictatorships accept those dictatorial governments & live in those countries. Well, the question can be turned around for Americans now. How can Americans keep living in such a country where their own government doesn't trust them & spies on them & will keep spying (regardless of how much Senate & Congress allow NSA to be intrusive or not) for the foreseeable future?
The answer lies in the public's fatigue of being bombarded of NSA's spying & now it's more of an accepted situation by Americans that "it's ok to be spied upon by our government, " & "since, we can't really do anything about it, we might as well accept government's spying & live our own lives." It's safe to assume that that's exactly a Saudi Arabian, a Kuwaiti, a Bahraini, a Chinese, or a Russian thinks; "save my own skin & quietly live my own life, regardless of what my government does against me."
4. Role of media & journalism has become to work with whatever government lets them do. They are spreading news of NSA spying to create that fatigue in the Americans, to the point, that Americans & other people around the world are starting to tune these stories out now, & at the same time, those same media outlets are being selective about what news they publish. Anything new about NSA's spying capabilities is ignored & same stories of email & phone spying are repeated on end.
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... A PEW survey in March revealed that 52% of the public is now concerned about government surveillance, while 46% is not.
Given the vast amount of revelations about NSA abuses, it is somewhat surprising that just slightly more than a majority of Americans seem concerned about government surveillance. Which leads to the question of why? Is there any kind of revelation that might push the poll numbers heavily against the NSA’s spying programs? Has security fully trumped privacy as far as the American public is concerned? Or is there some program that would spark genuine public outrage?
Few people, for example, are aware that a NSA program known as TREASUREMAP is being developed to continuously map every Internet connection — cellphones, laptops, tablets — of everyone on the planet, including Americans.
“Map the entire Internet,” says the top secret NSA slide. “Any device, anywhere, all the time.” It adds that the program will allow “Computer Attack/Exploit Planning” as well as “Network Reconnaissance.”
One reason for the public’s lukewarm concern is what might be called NSA fatigue. There is now a sort of acceptance of highly intrusive surveillance as the new normal, the result of a bombardment of news stories on the topic.
I asked Snowden about this. “It does become the problem of one death is a tragedy & a million is a statistic,” he replied, “where today we have the violation of one person’s rights is a tragedy & the violation of a million is a statistic. The NSA is violating the rights of every American citizen every day on a comprehensive & ongoing basis. And that can numb us. That can leave us feeling disempowered, disenfranchised.”
In the same way, at the start of a war, the numbers of Americans killed are front-page stories, no matter how small. But 2 years into the conflict, the numbers, even if far greater, are usually buried deep inside a paper or far down a news site’s home page.
In addition, stories about NSA surveillance face the added burden of being technically complex, involving eye-glazing descriptions of sophisticated interception techniques & analytical capabilities. Though they may affect virtually every American, such as the telephone metadata program, because of the enormous secrecy involved, it is difficult to identify specific victims.
The way the surveillance story appeared also decreased its potential impact. Those given custody of the documents decided to spread the wealth for a more democratic assessment of the revelations. They distributed them through a wide variety of media — from start-up Web publications to leading foreign newspapers.
One document from the NSA director, for example, indicates that the agency was spying on visits to porn sites by people, making no distinction between foreigners & “U.S. persons,” US citizens or permanent residents. He then recommended using that information to secretly discredit them, whom he labeled as “radicalizers.” But because this was revealed by The Huffington Post, an online publication viewed as progressive, & was never reported by mainstream papers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, the revelation never received the attention it deserved.
Another major revelation, a top-secret NSA map showing that the agency had planted malware — computer viruses — in more than 50,000 locations around the world, including many friendly countries such as Brazil, was reported in a relatively small Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, & likely never seen by much of the American public.
Thus, despite the volume of revelations, much of the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the NSA’s vast, highly aggressive & legally questionable surveillance activities. With only a slim majority of Americans expressing concern, the chances of truly reforming the system become greatly decreased.
While the metadata program has become widely known because of the numerous court cases & litigation surrounding it, there are other NSA surveillance programs that may have far greater impact on Americans, but have attracted far less public attention.
In my interview with Snowden, for example, he said one of his most shocking discoveries was the NSA’s policy of secretly & routinely passing to Israel’s Unit 8200 — that country’s NSA — & possibly other countries not just metadata but the actual contents of emails involving Americans. This even included the names of U.S. citizens, some of whom were likely Palestinian-Americans communicating with relatives in Israel & Palestine.
An illustration of the dangers posed by such an operation comes from the sudden resignation last year of 43 veterans of Unit 8200, many of whom are still serving in the military reserves. The veterans accused the organization of using intercepted communication against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” This included information gathered from the emails about Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions & other private matters to coerce people into becoming collaborators or to create divisions in their society.
Another issue few Americans are aware of is the NSA’s secret email metadata collection program that took place for a decade or so until it ended several years ago. Every time an American sent or received an email, a record was secretly kept by the NSA, just as the agency continues to do with the telephone metadata program. Though the email program ended, all that private information is still stored at the NSA, with no end in sight.
With NSA fatigue setting in, & the American public unaware of many of the agency’s long list of abuses, it is little wonder that only slightly more than half the public is concerned about losing their privacy. For that reason, I agree with Frederick A. O. Schwartz Jr., the former chief counsel of the Church Committee, which conducted a yearlong probe into intelligence abuses in the mid-1970s, that we need a similarly thorough, hard-hitting investigation today.
“Now it is time for a new committee to examine our secret government closely again,” he wrote in a recent Nation magazine article, “particularly for its actions in the post-9/11 period.”
Until the public fully grasps & understands how far over the line the NSA has gone in the past — legally, morally & ethically — there should be no renewal or continuation of NSA’s telephone metadata program in the future.
1. The so-called icon of democracy around the world, United States of America, spies on its citizens & non-citizens, around the world, in the name of "national security."
All the known dictatorships around the world; pretty much all of the Arab countries in Middle East (for example, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt), also strictly control their citizenry & spy on their citizenry in the name of "national security."
US usually berates China & Russia for abusing human rights, which includes, spying on their citizens. But government of those countries say that they are doing it in the name of "national security." See some similarities there?
2. We know how Chinese, Russian, & residents & citizens of dictatorial Middle Eastern countries are dealt with, by their own governments, after they are caught with their "dissident" thoughts. But what's surprising, which I learned from this opinion piece, is that NSA shares its data, collected on Palestinian-Americans, for example, with Israeli "NSA".
Palestinian-Americans must've come to America, thinking it's a democratic, free, & just country & they will be protected here. What they didn't know that they are not only being spied upon but the data collected on them are being shared with the country, which made them a refugee in the first place.
3. People in Western countries usually think that how do people who are living in dictatorships accept those dictatorial governments & live in those countries. Well, the question can be turned around for Americans now. How can Americans keep living in such a country where their own government doesn't trust them & spies on them & will keep spying (regardless of how much Senate & Congress allow NSA to be intrusive or not) for the foreseeable future?
The answer lies in the public's fatigue of being bombarded of NSA's spying & now it's more of an accepted situation by Americans that "it's ok to be spied upon by our government, " & "since, we can't really do anything about it, we might as well accept government's spying & live our own lives." It's safe to assume that that's exactly a Saudi Arabian, a Kuwaiti, a Bahraini, a Chinese, or a Russian thinks; "save my own skin & quietly live my own life, regardless of what my government does against me."
4. Role of media & journalism has become to work with whatever government lets them do. They are spreading news of NSA spying to create that fatigue in the Americans, to the point, that Americans & other people around the world are starting to tune these stories out now, & at the same time, those same media outlets are being selective about what news they publish. Anything new about NSA's spying capabilities is ignored & same stories of email & phone spying are repeated on end.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... A PEW survey in March revealed that 52% of the public is now concerned about government surveillance, while 46% is not.
Given the vast amount of revelations about NSA abuses, it is somewhat surprising that just slightly more than a majority of Americans seem concerned about government surveillance. Which leads to the question of why? Is there any kind of revelation that might push the poll numbers heavily against the NSA’s spying programs? Has security fully trumped privacy as far as the American public is concerned? Or is there some program that would spark genuine public outrage?
Few people, for example, are aware that a NSA program known as TREASUREMAP is being developed to continuously map every Internet connection — cellphones, laptops, tablets — of everyone on the planet, including Americans.
“Map the entire Internet,” says the top secret NSA slide. “Any device, anywhere, all the time.” It adds that the program will allow “Computer Attack/Exploit Planning” as well as “Network Reconnaissance.”
One reason for the public’s lukewarm concern is what might be called NSA fatigue. There is now a sort of acceptance of highly intrusive surveillance as the new normal, the result of a bombardment of news stories on the topic.
I asked Snowden about this. “It does become the problem of one death is a tragedy & a million is a statistic,” he replied, “where today we have the violation of one person’s rights is a tragedy & the violation of a million is a statistic. The NSA is violating the rights of every American citizen every day on a comprehensive & ongoing basis. And that can numb us. That can leave us feeling disempowered, disenfranchised.”
In the same way, at the start of a war, the numbers of Americans killed are front-page stories, no matter how small. But 2 years into the conflict, the numbers, even if far greater, are usually buried deep inside a paper or far down a news site’s home page.
In addition, stories about NSA surveillance face the added burden of being technically complex, involving eye-glazing descriptions of sophisticated interception techniques & analytical capabilities. Though they may affect virtually every American, such as the telephone metadata program, because of the enormous secrecy involved, it is difficult to identify specific victims.
The way the surveillance story appeared also decreased its potential impact. Those given custody of the documents decided to spread the wealth for a more democratic assessment of the revelations. They distributed them through a wide variety of media — from start-up Web publications to leading foreign newspapers.
One document from the NSA director, for example, indicates that the agency was spying on visits to porn sites by people, making no distinction between foreigners & “U.S. persons,” US citizens or permanent residents. He then recommended using that information to secretly discredit them, whom he labeled as “radicalizers.” But because this was revealed by The Huffington Post, an online publication viewed as progressive, & was never reported by mainstream papers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, the revelation never received the attention it deserved.
Another major revelation, a top-secret NSA map showing that the agency had planted malware — computer viruses — in more than 50,000 locations around the world, including many friendly countries such as Brazil, was reported in a relatively small Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, & likely never seen by much of the American public.
Thus, despite the volume of revelations, much of the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the NSA’s vast, highly aggressive & legally questionable surveillance activities. With only a slim majority of Americans expressing concern, the chances of truly reforming the system become greatly decreased.
While the metadata program has become widely known because of the numerous court cases & litigation surrounding it, there are other NSA surveillance programs that may have far greater impact on Americans, but have attracted far less public attention.
In my interview with Snowden, for example, he said one of his most shocking discoveries was the NSA’s policy of secretly & routinely passing to Israel’s Unit 8200 — that country’s NSA — & possibly other countries not just metadata but the actual contents of emails involving Americans. This even included the names of U.S. citizens, some of whom were likely Palestinian-Americans communicating with relatives in Israel & Palestine.
An illustration of the dangers posed by such an operation comes from the sudden resignation last year of 43 veterans of Unit 8200, many of whom are still serving in the military reserves. The veterans accused the organization of using intercepted communication against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” This included information gathered from the emails about Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions & other private matters to coerce people into becoming collaborators or to create divisions in their society.
Another issue few Americans are aware of is the NSA’s secret email metadata collection program that took place for a decade or so until it ended several years ago. Every time an American sent or received an email, a record was secretly kept by the NSA, just as the agency continues to do with the telephone metadata program. Though the email program ended, all that private information is still stored at the NSA, with no end in sight.
With NSA fatigue setting in, & the American public unaware of many of the agency’s long list of abuses, it is little wonder that only slightly more than half the public is concerned about losing their privacy. For that reason, I agree with Frederick A. O. Schwartz Jr., the former chief counsel of the Church Committee, which conducted a yearlong probe into intelligence abuses in the mid-1970s, that we need a similarly thorough, hard-hitting investigation today.
“Now it is time for a new committee to examine our secret government closely again,” he wrote in a recent Nation magazine article, “particularly for its actions in the post-9/11 period.”
Until the public fully grasps & understands how far over the line the NSA has gone in the past — legally, morally & ethically — there should be no renewal or continuation of NSA’s telephone metadata program in the future.
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