Yes, We Scan _ Frontline

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COVER STORY

Published: July 26, 2013 12:30 IST | Updated: June 26, 2013 12:55 ISTUNITED STATES

Yes, We Scan

President Barack Obamas legacy will be blotted further by the latest revelations. By JOHN CHERIAN

THE REVELATIONS by the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden that the United States administration has been listening inillegally on phone conversations of its own citizens and snooping on Internet communications worldwide for many years now is yetanother illustration that the U.S. has no respect either for sovereignty of countries or for fundamental democratic rights of even its owncitizens.

Snowden had leaked information on secret U.S. government surveillance programs with the code names PRISM and BoundlessInformant. This is probably thebiggest expose so far on the U.S. governments use of subterfuge to conduct illegal acts on a massive

scale. Well-meaning American citizens such as Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning had struck a blow for individual freedom whenthey took a calculated risk and released classified documents. The Watergate Papers led to the downfall of Richard Nixon anddocuments released by Manning through the auspices of WikiLeaks ex posed American war crimes and the country s complicity withauthoritarian regimes. President Barack Obamas legacy will be blotted further by the latest revelations.

As the U.S. seeks to establish full spectrum dominance over world affairs following the end of the Cold War, surveillance programshave ex panded far and wide. These moves were accelerated after the global war on terror started in the beginning of the last decade.Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence officials told the U.S. Senate that military units had been set up to wage cyber war to destroycomputers and computer- controlled infrastructure in countries deemed hostile. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NationalSecurity Agency (NSA), told the Senate that 13 offensive U.S. cyber teams had been set up. They operate from the premises of theNSA and have an annual budget of $199 million. James Clapper, the NSA chief, has acknowledged that the U.S. faces no serious cyberthreats from any nation. The most notorious incident so far has been the unleashing of the Stuxnet virus by the U.S. in coordinationwith Israeli security agencies against the computers operating the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran. The U.S. had also designed theFlame v irus to spy on Iranian officials. Under Obama, the U.S. government has claimed the right to launch pre-emptive cy berstrikes.

Chinese agent

The Obama administration is busy preparing criminal charges against Snowden. He has been characterised as a traitor and aChinese agent by the American political establishment. Snowden, currently holed up in Hong Kong, has said that he was not undulythreatened by the smear campaign launched by the Obama administration and right-wing politicians in the U.S. He acknowledged hisfears that he might be eliminated or deported to the U.S. to face a treason trial, similar to the one being faced by another courageousAmerican, Pvt. Bradley Manning.

It is important to bear in mind that I am being called a traitor by men like former Vice-President Dick Cheney. This is the man whogave us a warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killedover 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 1 00,000 Iraqis dead, Snowden told The Guardiannewspaper.

Snowden revealed that the U.S. had hacked into hundreds of civilian computers in mainland China and in Hong Kong since 2009. Hetold The Guardianthat one of the key factors that motivated him to blow the whistle was to expose the hypocrisy of the Americangovernment when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries.

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Li Haidong, a specialist on America in the Chinese Foreign Affairs University, wrote in China Dailythat for months Washington hasbeen accusing Beijing of engaging in cyber espionage, but it turns out that the biggest threat to the pursuit of individual freedom andprivacy in the U.S. is the unbridled power of the government.

Willing cooperation

The Chinese authorities were, in a way, forewarned. In the second week of May, the Bloomberg news agency admitted that it wasaccessing personal data of clients through its data terminals. Bloomberg, along with Reuters, controls 70 per cent of the global financialdata market. Bloomberg has close connections with the U.S. political and business establishment. Chinese users of Bloomberg dataterminals included big corporate houses, commercial banks and securities firms. The Snowden expose shows that all the big AmericanInternet companies willingly cooperated with the NSA.

Only days before Snowdens bombshell revelations, in the run-up to the summit meeting between President Obama and ChinesePresident Xi Jinping, American officials were describing China as the biggest cyber threat to the U.S. and the world. A Pentagon reportin May accused the Chinese security and military agencies of hacking into military and corporate computers. President Obama hadsought to make the issue a top priority in the discussions with his Chinese counterpart. But after the blowback unleashed by Snowdensexpose, the Obama administration tried to put the issue on the back burner.

The Chinese government reacted angrily to the latest developments. It warned that electronic surveillance on such a large scale wouldtest developing Sino-U.S. ties and strongly rejected the insinuation that Snowden was a Chinese spy.

The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the allegation was completely groundless and instead urged the U.S. to paymore attention to the international communitys concerns and demands and give the necessary explanation. The widely read GlobalTimes, known to be close to the government in Beijing, observed that Snowdens real crime was that he blew the whistle on the U.S.governments violation of civil rights. William Binney, a former NSA official, has estimated that the agency collected over 20 trillionpieces of information on millions of people, Americans as well as foreigners. Snowden himself has asserted that he had the authority totap anyone, including the President of the United States.

Global outrage

International public opinion has been outraged by the sheer brazenness and magnitude of the U.S. spying. Indias National SecurityAdviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, has asked his American counterpart for an explanation for India being on the U.S. surveillance list. TheIndian External Affairs Ministrys official spokesman said it would be unacceptable if Indian privacy laws were violated by the NSA.But it is also a fact that there is close cooperation between Indian and American intelligence agencies. The Americans have on severaloccasions provided valuable t ip-offs to their Indian counterparts. Recent reports in the Indian media suggested that the Indian securityestablishment was trying to replicate the American system of widespread eavesdropping by gathering all Internet usage. India alsocooperates closely with another security state, Israel. Two Israeli companies, Verint and Narus, having ties with their countryssecurity agencies, work for the NSA.

The European Unions Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, has demanded for Europeans the same rights as those accorded to U.S.residents when it comes to data protection. Even close allies of Washington, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have raisedquestions. The Pirate Party, which has a strong representation in the Berlin Municipality and is a growing force in German politics, helda demonstration on June 18 with protesters holding banners that said Yes We Scan, mimicking Obamas 2008 campaign slogan YesWe Can.

President Obama got a lukewarm welcome in Berlin and other capitals which he visited recently. A leaked map from the NSAsBoundless Informant program showed that Germany was particularly targeted for surveillance. President Obama told the GermanChancellor that the NSAs global surveillance succeeded in aborting around 50 terror strikes, but he did not give any concreteinstances. Counterterrorism experts, however, said that NSA surveillance efforts had no significant role in foiling terror attacks.

The conviction, in 2009, of Najibullah Zazi, who is alleged to have hatched a plan to bomb the New York subway system, and the arrestof David Headley in 2008, according to reports in the British media, resulted from tip-offs from U.K. intelligence. The Obamaadministration has highlighted these two cases as illustrations of the efficacy of data mining.

Both domestically and internationally, most people and governments have concluded that the Obama administration is not a harbingerof change and is no different from the Bush administration. In fact, President Obama has arrogated to his office even more powers thanhis predecessor. The drone programme has been expanded with bases in Africa and Asia. Drone attacks have killed many thousandssince Obama took office. More whistle-blowers and journalists have been targeted under Obama than during the period when Bush andCheney were in office.

The ongoing trial of Bradley Manning for leaking U.S. State Department cables that shed light on many appalling U.S. war crimes anddiplomatic skulduggery is an example. Because of Manning, the international community saw the video of a U.S. Apache helicoptertargeting and killing defenceless journalists and civilians in Iraq. When Manning released his cables, he said he was doing so for peopleto see the truth, adding that without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges that could put him behind bars for up to 20 years. The Obama administration wants evenmore stringent punishment, charging him with, among other things, espionage and aiding the enemy. If convicted on these chargesManning will face a life sentence without parole. Manning has been in solitary confinement in an 8ft by 6ft cell since his arrest. TheUnited Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Ernesto Mendez, said last year that Manning had been subjected to cruel,inhuman and degrading treatment.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder responsible for disbursing the data to the world at large, finds himself holed up inthe Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than a year with very little hope of being allowed out of the U.K. The Obamaadministration, according to reports in the American media, has organised a secret grand jury to try him for his alleged treasonableconduct. Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian government, but the U.K. is still refusing him permission to leave.


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