The Orwellian President

Data privacy isn’t an end unto itself, but whoever tramples the rights of hundreds of thousands of people just to identify the source of a leak goes far beyond the pale. Obama is destroying any hope of a new direction for American politics just by his classification of people alone.

Obama once embodied the hope of a new way in American politics. The president has now essentially destroyed that hope: Guantanamo continues to operate outside the framework of the law; U.S. drones continue to kill more people than ever before; and no other president has been responsible for so many surveillance operations. The latest news of the National Security Agency’s dragnet-like actions regarding Internet use confirms the impression that the White House is under the control of some sort of Orwellian techno-manager.

But certainly, privacy isn’t an end unto itself. In the digital age, more and more crimes are planned, organized and carried out with the help of network communications. But that shouldn’t mean that the police and intelligence services are free to trample on what remains of privacy in communications — even if many clueless people voluntarily surrender their personal privacy. Despite that, anyone who tramples on the rights of hundreds of thousands of people just to identify the source of a leak goes far beyond the pale.

Our government must tell the German people to what extent they have been affected by this U.S. espionage action and who (perhaps the German Foreign Intelligence Agency?) knew about it. Obama’s intelligence chief claims that only “foreigners” were surveillance targets and that the rights of no U.S. citizens were affected. But that sort of classification of individuals itself only strengthens the image of an Orwellian president.