The rest of the world is much more appalled at the spying of the National Security Agency on telephone, email, web browsers and other personal information than is the US public. As new revelations come out almost daily about the cavalier way in which the NSA has spied on the world’s presidents, parliaments and ordinary citizens it is natural that the rest of the world should begin responding to what they see as a dire threat to government and personal privacy.
The Indian government is preparing to ban government employees from using Google mail (gmail) or Yahoo mail for official purposes.
India is also considering requiring that all Indian-to-Indian email be carried solely on Indian servers inside the country. At the moment, Indian email (like that of most countries) bounces around the world before being delivered to the recipient, and likely will pass through US servers, opening it to being spied on by the NSA. One of the likely outcomes of NSA overreaching is that the internet will become more fragmented and hence less useful to the rest of us.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament is considering legislation that would fine private telecom and internet firms operating in Europe that turn data over to the NSA or give it a back door into their systems.
One byproduct of Wolf Blitzer’s (and all the rest) rush to war in Syria is that NSA has not been mentioned on tv for several weeks. Snowden’s revelations have been banned from discussion. When Obama was confronted by questions about spying on Mexico and Brazil’s leaders he acted like he’d barely heard about it but was defending it nevertheless.
Besides.. All those NSA documents are classified so Shhhh!!
Let’s hope the Indians act more wisely than they did when they heeded Gandhi’s call to spin and weave cloth and burn their foreign-made clothes. Forcing people to do things that make their lives more difficult is not a good solution. What would Rabindranath Tagore do?
the people of the world are much more upset than the US with the NSA spying
they get it
they are acting
one of the few bright spots of industry in the US is (or was?) information technology and the internet
what is not obvious, but was eye opening when I read it a few months ago, was that US industrial policy is military
related to this is the lack of non military jobs in the economy
Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel pointed out that out industrial policy was military
Now that security state is the flip side of the military state, that makes our industrial policy is military and security
and our IT industry is deeply embedded in both of those
so the reaction of the world will have economic and foreign policy implications
Obama’s rush to start another war isn’t going quickly enough to stop the fallout from The Snowden Affair
whistle blowers who expose the illegal behavior of the government are being tracked down with a vengeance and every day it becomes clearer how important it is for the government to intimidate anyone who speaks out
You got to love stuff like this:
link to usatoday.com
Mr. Steel might be a backwoods survivalist America-Firster militiaman, we might disagree on lots of stuff, I don’t know or care — he’s come up with an interesting virus to combat the runaway tumor of Surveillancism…
In other news, “SWAT officers kill man, 107, in standoff.” Makes you wonder what that was all about, proportionality and reality-checking and all that…
link to thenewsstar.com
WaPo: Obama had NSA limits reversed
New article out from Washington Post (WAPO) that Obama reversed NSA limits to allow
“The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.”
link to washingtonpost.com
As Glenn Greenwald points out that with each revelation the administration denies that it is true, then the next week it comes out that they lied and it is even worse.
This evening Glenn Greenwald plans an article about NSA spying on corporations.
This article by Juan on the Indian Government will stimulate development of their domestic internet and information technology.
In other words, again giving away our markets.
The USA is the first empire in history that gave away its markets in its quest of empire. This example of market give away was not planned.
Empires often destroy markets in the quest for empire. Spain destroyed Castille’s place in the international wool market as a part of creating the Spanish empire. Great Britain either destroyed or seriously damaged the East India company to solidify control over India. Empires are not agreeable places to live if you are an ordinary person.
This is such an excellent example of the ego of empire trumping the common sense of empire; which is of course, an oxymoron.
Excellent time line of The Snowden Effect
Click on the arrow and see the stories generated by these documents
Allowed the dots to be connected on other stories that have been out there for years which provided warnings, but now with the documents the cat is out of the bag.
link to america.aljazeera.com
US Executive Branch:
Lying about NSA for years, lied about Iraqi WMDs, strictly truthful about Syrian gas.
One of these things is not like the other.
I have been absolutely astonished by how much our government has lied to us. Ive only been alive for 16 years and I find that our president and government have approved mass surveillance on every electronic device every American owns. The only match to how much and often they lie to us is the effort put into covering it up.
Through out my entire life I’ve been lied to, and any man who speaks out against governmental injustice and unlawful activity is immediately headhunted and “put to justice”. I just wish I knew what the truth about all this is, and after a year of searching, I’m still dissatisfied.
Thanks for all the info, doc. I just wish there was something that could help leave a more brightly lit path to bettering our corrupt government.