Tagged with Spying

Uncle Sam, what big ears you have!

American eyeTranslated from the original by François Delapierre

We do not know what is more astonishing. The revelations about the spying on the European Union by the United States intelligence services? Or the surprise this causes among EU leaders? It seems that amid the rhetoric of the unity of the “free world” during the Cold War, prolonged by the idea of the unity of the “West” in the “clash of civilizations”, our dismal European leaders have forgotten that the dominant power in the world has a distinct position to their interests. Continue reading →

What is being done to control mass surveillance?

CCTVThe cascade of revelations about secret surveillance, thanks to Edward Snowden, rolls on. Today it’s Dropmire which apparently refers to a bug inserted in an encrupted fax machine used for transmission of commercial data at the EU mission in Washington DC. Once revealed, the Americans explain it as designed to collect data on policy disagreements between member states regarding global issues. It is far more likely that it has been used to gather commercially sensitive information to put the US secretly a step ahead in the global market place.

But whichever it is, it is utterly unacceptable and reprehensible to treat allies (or anyone) in this manner, and German outrage has rightly condemned it as tactics reminiscent of the Cold War. But amid all this flood of revelations of dirty tricks, the central issue still remains: what is being done to stop it since both the US and UK governments, the main perpetrators, have sought to defend it, however feebly and evasively? Continue reading →

They snoop on anyone anywhere: there’s nothing & nobody they won’t target

The latest revelations from Edward Snowden are really chilling. Not only do GCHQ/MI5 have a private portal into the US National Security Agency’s data mining against UK and other European citizens which, because it is offered rather than specifically sought, circumvents ministerial controls, but we now know also that the spooks have secured a laxity of legislative provision which enables them to go far beyond the bounds of acceptable surveillance with total impunity.

The latest example of that is Snowden’s revelation that GCHQ/MI5 spied on and bugged ministers and senior officials from South Africa, Turkey and Russia during the G20 summit in London in 2009. The usual rationale trotted out for such spying is that it is protect the UK from terrorists and criminals. That can hardly apply here. Continue reading →