A World Without Secrets!
Published in al-Dustur
(Jordan) on 16 June 2013
by Usama al-Sharif (link to original)
(Jordan) on 16 June 2013
by Usama al-Sharif (link to original)
Translated from
by Jackson Allan.
Edited by Gillian Palmer.
The scandal of the American government’s official program of spying on citizens and non-citizens by penetrating their email accounts, social networking sites, phone conversations and other things, with the knowledge and collusion of the service providers, shook the entire world. And President Obama’s lackluster defense of it didn’t help.
Edward Snowden, who exposed these facts after working in the American National Security Agency and spying on citizens and non-citizens through a national intelligence program, will be subjected to a smear campaign, just like Julian Assange after he exposed hundreds of thousands of secret official documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One issue concerns us: There are no secrets in the world of global communications today. What George Orwell predicted and warned us about decades ago in his timeless story 1984 is happening often today. Don’t trust Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple or other companies; all of them are subjected to spying. No conversation transpires and no email is sent without the American government and its allies watching, waiting to ambush.
We have said repeatedly that our digital footprints will not be wiped out no matter how many times we press our PC’s wipe button. Millions of emails are recorded by national security agencies all around the world. Leaving aside the constitutionality and legality of such measures, Snowden uncovered a comprehensive program of spying on millions of citizens around the world, a program that the American government supported and a program in which other governments participated.
This is the Big Brother that Orwell foretold. He is in every place, watching, eavesdropping, spying and intervening whenever it pleases him. There is no privacy in cyberspace. Everything that our service provider said to us about guaranteeing and protecting privacy is just nonsense. On the Internet, you are accused until proven guilty; today we discover that our cell phone calls are being monitored too. Whoever controls the network also controls the people using it.
Sometimes I feel like I envy Robinson Crusoe, the fictional novel character who lived alone on a remote island, far from civilization. Who will rescue us from burden of the civilization that we live and celebrate? It is a snare for our dreams, our ideas and our sins!
There is no escaping Big Brother; he controls the World Wide Web. He is there with us every time we express ourselves. We were naïve, simple dreamers. Today, we wise up to the fact that we are just accounts in a great system that sees and knows everything about us.
Edward Snowden, who exposed these facts after working in the American National Security Agency and spying on citizens and non-citizens through a national intelligence program, will be subjected to a smear campaign, just like Julian Assange after he exposed hundreds of thousands of secret official documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One issue concerns us: There are no secrets in the world of global communications today. What George Orwell predicted and warned us about decades ago in his timeless story 1984 is happening often today. Don’t trust Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple or other companies; all of them are subjected to spying. No conversation transpires and no email is sent without the American government and its allies watching, waiting to ambush.
We have said repeatedly that our digital footprints will not be wiped out no matter how many times we press our PC’s wipe button. Millions of emails are recorded by national security agencies all around the world. Leaving aside the constitutionality and legality of such measures, Snowden uncovered a comprehensive program of spying on millions of citizens around the world, a program that the American government supported and a program in which other governments participated.
This is the Big Brother that Orwell foretold. He is in every place, watching, eavesdropping, spying and intervening whenever it pleases him. There is no privacy in cyberspace. Everything that our service provider said to us about guaranteeing and protecting privacy is just nonsense. On the Internet, you are accused until proven guilty; today we discover that our cell phone calls are being monitored too. Whoever controls the network also controls the people using it.
Sometimes I feel like I envy Robinson Crusoe, the fictional novel character who lived alone on a remote island, far from civilization. Who will rescue us from burden of the civilization that we live and celebrate? It is a snare for our dreams, our ideas and our sins!
There is no escaping Big Brother; he controls the World Wide Web. He is there with us every time we express ourselves. We were naïve, simple dreamers. Today, we wise up to the fact that we are just accounts in a great system that sees and knows everything about us.