When Security Becomes Insanity
Published in Zeit Online
(Germany) on 23 October 2013
by Josef Joffe (link to original)
(Germany) on 23 October 2013
by Josef Joffe (link to original)
Translated from
by Ron Argentati.
Edited by Gillian Palmer.
Due to its addiction to data, the super-secret U.S. National Security Agency not only spies on its own citizens but on citizens of other nations as well.
In 1929, when U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson closed down the State Department's code decryption office, which was charged with deciphering codes used in telegrams between foreign embassies in Washington and their respective capitals, he remarked, “Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.”
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman called the creation of the CIA an “imperative” — up until World War II, the United States had no intelligence service. But he gave one caveat in the founding of the CIA, saying: “This country wanted no Gestapo under any guise or for any reason.”
Since then, no less than 16 spy agencies have been founded in the United States. Today, Truman would likely say America needed to know what the nation's enemies were up to — whether nations or terrorist groups — but not at the cost of our constitutional rights and liberties, rights such as requiring the government to get court permission before eavesdropping on telephone conversations or reading citizens' personal mail. Nowadays, the only difference is that envelopes no longer need to be steamed open — it takes just nanoseconds to open an email.
And the revelations just keep on coming. The French newspaper Le Monde recently reported that the NSA alone intercepted about 70 million telephone conversations in France from late 2012 into 2013.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said urgent steps must be taken to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen again. He forgot to mention, however, that his own intelligence service — the DGSE — engaged in the same activities in France and internationally. In July, Le Monde reported that everything — including email, text messages, Facebook posts and Twitter messages — was being captured and stored for years.
The NSA claims this applies only to foreign intelligence and counterterrorism. As of this October, we know that the super-secret agency, in its data collection addiction, systematically gathers intelligence on its own citizens, thereby doing nothing more than what Google, Facebook and the like are also routinely doing.
In 2012, the NSA diverted over 500,000 address books to themselves, constructing a system capable of storing 20 billion digital events per day. All, of course, in the name of national security: Who knows who is communicating with whom?
The British GCHQ intelligence service is doing exactly the same as their American and French counterparts — all with the cooperation of their friends Facebook and others. Unfortunately, Edward Snowden has not yet revealed what the German intelligence service BND is doing. In any event, he also profited from the snooping conglomerate.
Needless to say, they are not the Gestapo, nor the Stasi. They only have our best interests at heart and want to protect us from terrorists. But in so doing, they have removed nearly every democratic safeguard — and not only in America. This isn't a U.S.-European espionage war; the democracies involved are already waging war against their own citizens. War against themselves. And our representatives fail to do anything about it.
It's not exactly comforting to know that even a liberal stalwart like Senator Dianne Feinstein writes that her Senate Intelligence Committee will soon be discussing a template designed to “improve” the anti-terrorism program. How? The courts may have to approve the investigation of telephone contacts. The law may also “limit” how such information may be “harvested, stored and used.”
Truman, who was famous for his plain language, would likely have an attack of apoplexy over such empty rhetoric.
In 1929, when U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson closed down the State Department's code decryption office, which was charged with deciphering codes used in telegrams between foreign embassies in Washington and their respective capitals, he remarked, “Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.”
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman called the creation of the CIA an “imperative” — up until World War II, the United States had no intelligence service. But he gave one caveat in the founding of the CIA, saying: “This country wanted no Gestapo under any guise or for any reason.”
Since then, no less than 16 spy agencies have been founded in the United States. Today, Truman would likely say America needed to know what the nation's enemies were up to — whether nations or terrorist groups — but not at the cost of our constitutional rights and liberties, rights such as requiring the government to get court permission before eavesdropping on telephone conversations or reading citizens' personal mail. Nowadays, the only difference is that envelopes no longer need to be steamed open — it takes just nanoseconds to open an email.
And the revelations just keep on coming. The French newspaper Le Monde recently reported that the NSA alone intercepted about 70 million telephone conversations in France from late 2012 into 2013.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said urgent steps must be taken to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen again. He forgot to mention, however, that his own intelligence service — the DGSE — engaged in the same activities in France and internationally. In July, Le Monde reported that everything — including email, text messages, Facebook posts and Twitter messages — was being captured and stored for years.
The NSA claims this applies only to foreign intelligence and counterterrorism. As of this October, we know that the super-secret agency, in its data collection addiction, systematically gathers intelligence on its own citizens, thereby doing nothing more than what Google, Facebook and the like are also routinely doing.
In 2012, the NSA diverted over 500,000 address books to themselves, constructing a system capable of storing 20 billion digital events per day. All, of course, in the name of national security: Who knows who is communicating with whom?
The British GCHQ intelligence service is doing exactly the same as their American and French counterparts — all with the cooperation of their friends Facebook and others. Unfortunately, Edward Snowden has not yet revealed what the German intelligence service BND is doing. In any event, he also profited from the snooping conglomerate.
Needless to say, they are not the Gestapo, nor the Stasi. They only have our best interests at heart and want to protect us from terrorists. But in so doing, they have removed nearly every democratic safeguard — and not only in America. This isn't a U.S.-European espionage war; the democracies involved are already waging war against their own citizens. War against themselves. And our representatives fail to do anything about it.
It's not exactly comforting to know that even a liberal stalwart like Senator Dianne Feinstein writes that her Senate Intelligence Committee will soon be discussing a template designed to “improve” the anti-terrorism program. How? The courts may have to approve the investigation of telephone contacts. The law may also “limit” how such information may be “harvested, stored and used.”
Truman, who was famous for his plain language, would likely have an attack of apoplexy over such empty rhetoric.