Canada may fly the flag of "a peaceful nation" or relatively better than its Anglo-Saxon counterparts in US & UK, around the world, but Canadian companies are famous in developing countries, in South America & Africa, for unethical business practices.
Be it Kinross, or Goldcorp, or SNC-Lavalin; they have all been exposed or sued in the past decade for unethical practices, ranging from bribery scandals in Africa to destroying the environment, of the surroundings where their operations are based, in South America.
Ironically, these Canadian companies are also considered some of the best companies in Canada, because of their management team, environmental stewardship, & overall business management. They return good money to their shareholders & investors love them.
It is one thing to be actively destroying your own backyard (Canadian companies being involved in Canadian oilsands in Alberta & destroying the environment there), but it is very wrong to be destroying the environment of a developing country, & then digging your heels that we are not destroying the environment in the face of clear evidence.
Most of the companies from the Western developed countries, in one way or another, exploit & destroy the developing countries. They all have long ethical codes of conducts, but they are written in such a way, that they support unethical business practices. So, besides the mining & energy companies, other companies, for example, Nestle is famous for robbing small villages & communities of their precious clean water resources to sell that water to the millions around the world.
Honesty & fairness in the developed world are only for their own citizens, & only rich business & political elites among them; not for everyone else around them. Talking about spreading democracy, freedom, free speech etc. are all smoke & mirrors for the ignorant billions of people around the world.
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... Paracatu is the epicentre of Brazil’s mining production, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, which generates almost one-third of Brazil’s total mining production.
The exploitation of gold started in Paracatu as early as 1722. ... Since the 1990s the hunt has moved from the river banks to underground deposits. ...
Booming gold prices
In 2005, Canadian company Kinross – which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange & owns gold mines in Chile, US, Russia & Ghana, among other countries – took over the mining concession in Paracatu. During a period in which gold prices rose to historical new heights in global markets, Kinross invested $1.86bn in the site, tripling annual production to the current 15 tonnes & making Paracatu the most productive gold mine in Brazil. As the gold in Paracatu takes the form of a powder & not grain or nuggets, the company had to greatly intensify mining activities to keep production up. Today as many as 160 dynamite explosions are carried out daily to dig the Morro do Ouro, the Golden Hill, as locals refer to the area where the main deposits are found.
As a consequence, the local geography has been profoundly transformed. As you approach the mining area we witness an immense crater that covers 615 hectares, half the size of Heathrow’s airport, & resembles a lunar landscape. The only signs of life are the imposing bulldozers & the high-wheeled vehicles that transport the rocks to the plant. There, toxic chemicals, including cyanide, are employed to separate out the gold powder, which is later molten in ingots & transported by helicopter to São Paulo for export around the globe.
Arsenic health risks
While the visual impact seems hard to deny – in addition to the mining area, two large dams the size of an extra Heathrow airport are used for toxic waste disposal – many argue that the mine poses a threat to the local environment & to the health of the 90,000 Paracatu residents. Not only is dynamite used to access the gold reserves as close as 200 metres from the urban area, the precious metal is mixed in the rock with arsenic, a carcinogenic.
Arsenic is commonly found in gold mines, but in Paracatu it is of particular concern. For each tonne of rock removed only 0.4 grams of gold is recovered & 1kg of arsenic is released into the air & groundwater, according to Márcio José dos Santos, a geologist & local activist.
“Nobody knows how much arsenic is going to the city. The northeasterly wind here means that the arsenic travels in the air from the mine to the urban area. People are inhaling the toxic dust & consequently are inhaling arsenic,” explains José. Sergio Ulhoa Dani, a local physician & also an opponent of the mine, argued in a recent scientific article that “the potential damage of arsenic in a gold mine like the one in Paracatu could impact 7 trillion people”.
Many in the city wonder if their life is at risk, while the word “cancer” has become a taboo. Data from Paracatu’s city council shows that the cancer mortality rate in the town is similar to the rest of the country. Critics argue that statistics from the local government are unreliable. As Paracatu lacks medical institutions, patients must go to hospitals located hundreds of kilometres away to receive treatment & so are not counted in the city’s official data.
Opponents face harassment & threats
The attitude of the company is also under scrutiny. According to documents seen by The Guardian & interviews with former employees, several Kinross’ employees worked as an intelligence unit to track any potential activity against the mine or the company’s reputation.
In an interview with the Guardian, Gilberto Azevedo, general manager of the mine, denied any risk to the health or the environment. “We monitor everything. People have nothing to fear, because we have everything under control. We regularly make environmental & biological tests, & we have hired external sources to carry studies. They all show there is no risk.”
He also underlined the economic importance of the company’s activity for the region. In 2014, Kinross paid about $10m in taxes & currently employs 3,300 people in the mine, about 8% of the active population in the city.
However, tension is perceptible. As we drive through the public roads bordering the concession, an armed guard who had been following the car for an hour brings us to a halt & questions us.
Dozens of documents & internal emails seen by The Guardian show that in 2012 & 2013 Kinross had a policy in Paracatu of regularly monitoring potential opponents, including the former mayor Almir Paraca – known for being outspoken against the mine – & several union leaders.
“They monitor social movements, politicians, neighbourhood associations & their representatives, environmental activists, union leaders... They even monitor what some Kinross’s employees do at their free time. The main goal is to hide or repress any action, demonstration or reference against the mining company or their interests”, said one of the sources, knowledgeable of Kinross’ policies because of his/her former post at the company.
And at least 2 local activists – Rafaela Xavier Luiz & Evane Lopes - have had to leave the city in recent months after they received death threats, which they argue were linked to their opposition to the mine.
“We have nothing to do with this. Kinross is a company that dialogues with the community,” says Azevedo, when asked if the enterprise was in any way involved in the threats to activists. Kinross also denied it monitored activists or opponents.
"What Middle Class" - Ingrid Rice, Canada
There's a misconception that obesity happens because people just like to constantly stuff their faces with junk foods. Not necessarily. Obesity is rising all over the world, & poor people are usually more obese or unhealthy than their rich counterparts; be it in the same country / geographical region or thousands of miles apart.
One big factor is processed foods, which is unhealthy causing obesity, diabetes, cholesterol etc., is much cheaper than healthy, organic alternatives. Dairy, poultry, meat, fruits, & vegetables grown / injected with harmful hormones to grow them quicker are also the same chemicals which interfere with humans' internal hormones & organs, to the point that those people become sick by ingesting those harmful chemicals over time.
Since, the income levels of large section of the populace, around the world, is not increasing, & in many cases, actually decreasing (due to joblessness, homelessness, other factors like medical & education expenses etc.), people are forced to buy unhealthy processed foods / produce, even when they know that it's unhealthy & organic alternatives are healthy.
Although, this article gives a nice alternative to government for helping the public with reducing obesity & other related health problems, by taxing processed foods & using those tax proceeds as subsidies towards the organic foods, it also concedes that taxing junk foods has been a disastrous experiment. Although, Mexico is trying this experiment right now, we don't know how it will fare. I'd add on top of that conclusion that politicians need a very strong will to enact such policies, since, processed foods lobbies are very strong & pay very generously to politicians to support processed foods over organics.
As the article points out that the report's co-author, Steve Wiggins, said that almost 6,000 people prematurely died in UK due to unhealthy foods, my suggestion to resolve this crisis would be stop warfare. One may ask how is warfare linked to stopping obesity crisis?
Considering that US & UK invaded Afghanistan & Iraq, when only 3,000 people died in World Trade Center attacks (which was horrible & I'm not belittling those deaths), & then spent billions upon billions, for a decade, in both wars & then in some infrastructure building, & then all that work amounting to nothing (Taliban are back in Afghanistan & it's again become a poppy-growing haven, Iraq is a mess & that mess has helped the rise of ISIS), what if only a fraction of all that money would've spent, domestically, as subsidies on organics & healthier food alternatives?
The amazing thing is time has not passed, yet. Governments all over the world still have time to reverse climate change & obesity in their populations, by taking money out of military-industrial complexes (which are only fuelling insurgencies & terrorism, instead of killing them) & spend that money on their own people, in terms of improving healthcare access, lowering the costs of healthier foods, reducing the costs of post-secondary education, helping in building of more innovative industries & companies (e.g. green industries), which will in turn provide jobs, helping those companies in raising minimum wages, which will in turn help their own public buy cheaper, but healthier, foods.
Being selfish by spending money on your own population help your own public, & also help the world, when unnecessary wars don't create terrorist groups. Killing multiple birds (terrorism, health crisis, climate change etc.) by one stone. Wow, what a common sense & not-such-a-novel idea.
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The decades-long trend for “unhealthy” foods to get cheaper while fruit & vegetables become more expensive is fuelling the global obesity crisis, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) thinktank in London.
It says relative prices for fruit & veg in Brazil, China, Korea & Mexico soared by up to 91% between 1990 & 2012 while prices of some processed foods such as ready meals fell by up to 20% in the same period.
In the UK, the price of an ice cream halved between 1980 & 2012, while that of fresh veg tripled, said the ODI, which suggested that taxes on unhealthy foods matched by subsidies on healthier alternatives could reverse trends resulting in growing proportions of obese & overweight people.
Mexico has imposed taxes on junk food & the ODI said other countries would be closely watching whether this worked.
Its study, covering the four “newly rich” countries as well as the UK & the US, looked at staples such as cereals, root crops & legumes, fruit & veg, “minimally processed” meat, fish & dairy, vegetable oils & fats, animal fats & sugars, & industrially processed foods.
In Mexico, where 7 in 10 adults are overweight or obese, ready meals had become cheaper as the cost of green veg rose, the report says. In Brazil, obesity soared as crisps, biscuits, energy bars & sugary drinks became more widely eaten.
In China, green vegetables became twice as expensive over 2 decades, & in Korea, the price of cabbage, used in many dishes including kimchi, rose by 20%.
Steve Wiggins, one of the report’s co-authors, said: “In Brazil, the consumption of ‘ultra-processed’ ready-to-eat food has risen from 80kg per person per year in 1990 to around 110kg per person per year by 2013. Using the weight of the food as a measure, this is equivalent to each person eating an extra 140 Big Macs a year”, he added.
Wiggins said: “Research in the UK in 2009 predicted that imposing a VAT-style 17.5% tax on less healthy food & using the proceeds to subsidise fruit & vegetables would save between 3,600 & 6,400 premature deaths a year from diet-related disease.
“Even the lower estimate (3,600) is more than twice as many as the amount of people that die on the roads in the UK & a huge effort is put into road safety.”
Previous attempts by countries to introduce taxes on unhealthy foods have proved controversial. Denmark quickly abandoned a 2011 fat tax after a change of government & Conservatives in the UK prefer to rely on voluntary agreements with the food industry to bring about dietary change.
But Wiggins said he did not believe other countries, including in South America, would be deterred by “cultural cringe” or a sense of inferiority to more industrialised states.
Last week, the World Health Organisation & the UK Health Forum told a conference in Prague that almost 75% of men & 67% of women in the UK would be overweight or obese in 15 years time, part of a Europe-wide health crisis that they said could only be averted by decisive action to prevent & tackle obesity by all its governments.
Other research presented to the same conference suggested that any move to introduce taxes on unhealthy foods in the UK & US would not be supported by most people.
This is what's happening with English residents & citizens in their own country, in UK, that not only government has cut down on the social benefit payments the public used to receive, but they are also now evicting tenants who can't pay rents, due to a hardship has fallen upon them.
Developing countries don't have the social safety net which can help residents & citizens when they fall upon hard circumstances, but it seems like that developed countries are going the same way.
If you are thinking it's just the story of one country, UK, then you are sorely mistaken. Although, you should realize that London is considered one of the financial hubs of the world, right beside New York. The cruel irony is that the number of homeless people in New York City has also doubled in the past decade (2004 - 2014).
I believe it's safe to assume that a homeless Briton looks no different from a homeless American or a homeless Pakistani or a homeless Syrian or a homeless Nigerian or a homeless Iraqi or a homeless Somali. I think you get the picture.
Who do we blame for this rising inequality in this "modern" world of 21st century? Governments, economy, financial systems, businesses, elites, corruption, immigrants, terrorism etc.?
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The number of tenants evicted from their homes is at a six-year high, according to new figures, as rising rents & cuts to benefits make tenancies increasingly unaffordable.
County court bailiffs in England & Wales evicted more than 11,000 families in the first 3 months of 2015, an increase of 8% on the same period last year & 51% higher than 5 years ago.
The increase in the number of tenants losing their homes means 2015 is on course to break last year’s record levels. Nearly 42,000 families were evicted from rental accommodation in 2014, the highest number since records began in 2000.
Rental prices have soared in many UK cities but wages failing to keep pace with rising costs & caps to benefits have left many poorer tenants unable to make payments.
Separate figures also ... showed almost 59,000 households have had their benefits capped in the past 2 years. Nearly half of those families were in London, where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home is £2,216.
Housing charities said the figures were a glaring reminder that many tenants were struggling to maintain a roof over their heads, & they called on the ... government to do more to tackle a housing crisis in the UK.
The latest repossession statistics, published by the Ministry of Justice, reveal the highest number of evictions in a single quarter since 2009, when comparable records began, with nearly 126 families forced out every day.
Between January & March, 11,307 tenants & their families were evicted by bailiffs, compared with a figure of 10,380 between October & December last year, & 10,482 in the first quarter of 2014.
The record figure comes as the number of landlord repossession claims ... also rose. Claims were up 10% on the last quarter, but at 42,226 they remained below a six-year high of 47,208 in the first quarter of 2014.
Claims by both private & social landlords were up, the figures showed, although most of the rise was explained by claims by the latter. Social landlords were behind nearly 5 times as many attempts to recover properties than private landlords, the figures showed. These landlords are typically housing associations providing homes at lower rents than the market rate, often to tenants who receive housing benefit.
In the first 3 months of the year, 64% of possession claims were made by social landlords. These 27,204 court actions came alongside 5,551 made by private landlords & 9,741 accelerated claims, which could have been by either social or private landlords.
In May 2014, when the threat of evictions reached its highest level for a decade, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations across England, told the Guardian the bedroom tax was causing problems for social landlords. The policy cuts the amount of housing benefit paid to social housing tenants whose homes are deemed too large for their requirements. Benefit sanctions were also thought to be causing problems.
But many housing associations, particularly in London & the south-east, have turned out tenants as they have sought to redevelop generations-old estates to take advantage of the big rise in property values. This has in turn led to an increase in the number of grassroots campaigns to oppose evictions, such as the Focus E15 mothers.
The MoJ figures came on the same day as the Department for Work & Pensions revealed that 58,690 households across the UK had their benefits capped to a maximum of £26,000 a year since April 2013. Londoners were the worst affected, with 26,636 families facing a cut in benefits over the period to February 2015, followed by 5,953 in the rest of the south-east.
DWP proposals to meet the Conservatives’ pledge to cut £12bn from the welfare budget, in documents leaked to the Guardian last week, included barring under-25s from claiming housing benefit, increasing the bedroom tax on certain categories of tenants, limiting welfare payments by family size & freezing welfare benefits at current levels.
Responding to the eviction statistics, Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Today’s figures are a glaring reminder that sky-high housing costs & welfare cuts are leaving thousands of people battling to keep a roof over their heads.
“Every day at Shelter we see the devastating impact of a housing market at boiling point, with the cost of renting so high that many families are living in fear that just one thing like losing their job or becoming ill could leave them with the bailiffs knocking at the door.
“The new government must make sure people aren’t left to fall through the cracks & hurtling towards homelessness by preserving, if not strengthening, the frayed housing safety net to protect ordinary families desperately struggling to make ends meet.”
Betsy Dillner, director of the campaign group Generation Rent, said: “These record eviction figures & signs that they are accelerating are a stark reminder of the housing crisis that the government must urgently start taking seriously now they’re back in power.
“Whether it’s an inability to pay expensive rents or a landlord’s desire to take back their property, the fact that more than 40,000 families were forced out of their homes last year is a symptom of the government’s failure to create a sustainable housing market.”
The housing minister, Brandon Lewis, defended the government’s performance, pointing out that mortgage repossessions had fallen drastically, keeping owner-occupiers in their “hard-earned homes”.
He said: “Mortgage repossessions continue to fall at 56% lower than this time last year, & the lowest annual figure since the series began in 1987. Meanwhile, numbers of county court mortgage possession claims continue to fall to the lowest quarterly number since records began. This is thanks to our work to tackle the deficit & keep interest rates low, helping more families to stay in their hard earned homes.
“There are strong protections in place to guard families against the threat of homelessness. We increased spending to prevent homelessness, with over £500m made available to help the most vulnerable in society & ensure we don’t return to the bad old days when homelessness in England was nearly double what it is today.”
A great opinion piece on how current education system in UK (but I can expand it to pretty much all education systems around the world, except maybe a few ones, which don't conform to what's being said here) are not igniting the flame of life-long learning & curiosity in children in school & instead, making them hate schools & learning in general by forcing them to do things in school, which is killing their curiosity & love of learning.
I see this everyday around me. People who were very smart & intelligent in school life (elementary, secondary, post-secondary etc.), & are still intelligent in their work lives, eschew even basic reading. Some still are curious & love to read but they are mostly reading fiction novels of romance & thrill. These are majority of our populace. Heck, these people don't even like to watch documentaries, to expand their learning & mental horizons.
So where's the disconnect that such intelligence in school life stays behind in their school lives?
Problem is the current modern education system. They are trying to make children rote learners or mere tools for teachers & the education boards to show that their students are successful in schooling system, & hence, those education boards & teachers are meeting their periodic targets.
Kids to adults in the education system come to learn that if you want a good job, assuming it is being awarded on merit & not on networks, then you need as high marks as there can be, & based on current education system, those marks can be achieved through rote memorization, regurgitation, & essentially, doing what the teacher / professor is telling me to do in class & in exam.
But that's not how learning & school used to be. Learning & education system built by such great teachers / philosophers as Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle were not based on strict tracking & meeting targets but essentially based on absorbing the knowledge for life. Their idea of learning was for learning is for life. They created curiosity in their students. They wanted their students to not study just enough to get a great mark in the next exam, but to think and learn about themselves, their society, & their world around them; however small it might be, whatever it might be.
That's why, in today's "modern" world, lots & lots of people are "educated" but they have not learnt anything. They are considered "educated" based on the number of degrees they have earned, which they got by regurgitating the materials on exam papers. They never actually gained the powerful idea of how to be curious & actually read & watch & travel to learn. Most people's lives don't revolve around learning about themselves, their society, & their world around them, but what can I learn now, which will help me make some money. Well, that course of "learning" has got us where the world is today; everyone is at someone's proverbial throat, because people have lost humanity & selfishness is enjoying its day out.
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It’s funny really, we’ve all been there. We all remember sitting on the carpet with our legs crossed, listening wide-eyed to our teachers reading a book to us in class. That’s what many of us recall about primary school – how fun it was & how free we were to explore our ideas.
In many ways, that’s the point; to immerse our children in a world where learning is fun, to open up their imaginations & encourage them to be inquisitive in a safe space. As Socrates said, education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. As a primary teacher, that’s a good guiding mantra. Let children discover, their eyes light up & sparks ignite.
Unfortunately, in the wake of their Sats preparation, my year 6 class – & I’m sure every year 6 child across the land – would probably say this isn’t so. Flame lighting has been swapped for vessel filling. Yes, they’ve been learning & yes, they have made “progress” (lots of it for some). We know this because we’ve measured their strict diet of test, drill, repeat twice every half term for the entire year.
The issue here is whether it was worth it, because in so many respects the drive for floor targets & pupil premium percentage increases have robbed students of their primary school experience. The regime is focused on spelling & grammar, reading comprehensions & mental maths – combined with extra practice tests, interventions & booster clubs fitted in anywhere between dusk & dawn. Children can hardly remember what an art book looks like, or what a decent PE lesson feels like, or what a music lesson sounds like. They’re so confined to their desks that the process of developing the whole child has gone out of the window & their actual interests & other skills no longer have a place in school life.
Little Ricky, for example, loves geography. He’s fascinated by the world around him & can’t wait to get the atlases out on the search for capital cities, rivers, mountain chains & forests. This is where he comes alive & feels worthwhile. Excitement fills his wings & he’s ready to fly anywhere in the world – until he is pulled out for his maths booster. Yes, he needs extra support in adding fractions & rotating around a point, but seeing his shoulders drop & his smile fade is heartbreaking & frustrating. Nobody is denying he needs his maths – he has to be ready for secondary school & his future – but it’s just as important that he gets time & space to be him. He needs to connect with what he wants to learn because that’s where he switches on. That’s what he’s good at; that’s where we get him.
It’s at this point we need to wonder who we’re doing this for. Is it really for him? Because it feels like we’re missing who he really is, who they all are. What sparks their flame gets dampened. If your dyslexic child flourishes through art, tough. If the quiet, timid child at the back of your classroom comes out of their shell through drama, forget it. If the young carer, who comes in late because they’ve been changing their parent’s bed, feels they can express themselves through a map, no chance. Get down & give me the area of a quadrilateral.
Already so many children are being turned off school. It’s not just my Victorias & Emilys, who read every night & write stories for fun. It’s not just these children who are going home & telling mum it’s all getting too much. At least these children can complain – my Jaleels & my Delanes don’t know how to, their protest is not so eloquent. They share their thoughts through their poor punctuality & lack of focus. They are sick more, turn up less & don’t want to be there because it’s easier not to try than fail to get the results they “need”. A regime of test & repetition, rote & regurgitation is putting them off. They’re bored. They’ve had enough. They are saturated.
Apart from lesson objectives, all these children are really being taught is that school is a chore & a burden. Because of their Sats, these children are anxious & unhappy, rather than excited or inspired. They are only 11 years old & already asking for extra papers to take home so they can cram over the weekend. Some have trouble sleeping & can’t eat, while others stop attending school altogether. This is all before they have even started secondary education.
Of course, their levels will be great; we make sure of that – we have no choice. But what are they really learning? They are learning that education isn’t stimulating & nobody is listening to their needs. The kindling of their educational flames is fast being extinguished by tracking & targets.
We need to ask ourselves what we want for our children. Do we want them to learn that their passions, interests & dreams don’t count? Do we want them to learn that bottom lines & level 4s are more important than their self-confidence & talents? Or do we want them to know that we hear what they have to say? That the question is more important than the answer? That learning is a lifelong journey that should inspire?
As teachers, it’s our job to ensure that the flame of learning gets kindled & burns brightly for all, whatever their capacity, interests or age. But we need to think really carefully about what we put children through, because there’s no way we can engage them through more years of study if they’ve already run out of appetite.
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.
