The era of privacy in America and elsewhere is over. The NSA enjoys broad, unchecked surveillance over phone calls, and virtually all data that changes hands on the Internet, at least through the major US companies, is routinely at their fingertips.
It begins at the NSA, but where does it end? That’s an open question, but the enormous treasure trove of personal information on Americans and, indeed, everybody else, is being shared around the English-speaking world.
Britain’s GCHQ, their NSA-counterpart, has been given access to the NSA’s scheme, and according to some reports has been using it to circumvent British bans on them surveilling British citizens. Because it’s not Brit-on-Brit surveillance, it’s the Americans, surveilling Britons for them.
And of course it wouldn’t stop there. The US-UK information sharing has since been expanded, to include Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. US officials confirmed this, in fact, saying that the foreign spies aren’t allowed to sit “at the actual terminals,” but they get unredacted access to the results after the NSA types in their requests for them.
What about surveillance-enthusiast Israel? They’re involved too, it turns out, with two Israeli companies closely tied with Israel’s domestic spy agencies not only linked to the program, but actually doing a lot of the work installing the system for the NSA.
All of that’s got Europe (minus Britain) pretty nervous, by all accounts, and German Privacy Minister Peter Schaar condemned the program as “monstrous,” demanding the US provide clarity into why this wasn’t as reprehensible as it, clear as we can tell, is.
The only concrete proposal came from the Hessian Justice Minister, Joerg-Uwe Hahn, who called for a total boycott of all the companies involved, insisting their “flippant” attitude was unacceptable. How practical this is however is unclear, since Google and Microsoft, between them, account for virtually the whole search engine industry, and are both complicit.
No surprise there. I guess that's part of safeguarding our privacy? American's can't know what's going on but foreign governments including our soulmates in israel, they can know about everything that Americans do?
Jason, its a bit late to be getting alarmed now.
This all started in 1947 with the UKUSA agreement, better known as Echelon that came out of the closet in 1999.
The EU in pursuit of its data protection policies has made half-hearted attempts from time to time to rein it in but has been thwarted by the US lapdog, the UK, and their equally half-hearted support for the EU concept itself. The UK hosts and continuously expands a primary Echelon listening post – staffed mainly by US personnel – at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire.
Like anndoc, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I knew about the NSA and COINTELPRO and other dirty tricks 40 years ago, although some of it seemed to be as much rumor as fact.
How about Hoover’s secret files on everybody in DC? Does anybody here really believe the FBI quit spying on Congresscritters when Hoover died?
I’m waiting for the story that Facebook and Twitter were dreamed up by the CIA – have you ever wondered how out of millions of websites these two exploded onto the scene virtually overnight? And how did they come to be endlessly promoted by every TV network, radio station, and website in the world?