Big Brother Obama

The invigilation that Obama has put American citizens through would not be considered a scandal at all, if everyone were aware of it in the first place.

It has been a week since we woke up to the Orwellian reality, but new questions and dilemmas keep flooding in, while they should rather dwindle away.

Was Dick Cheney right? – The New Yorker asks sadly. Cheney was the famous vice president in George W. Bush’s administration, which — as appeared at that time — set records and broke every barrier where abuse of power was concerned, for which it was severely condemned by candidate Barack Obama. Cheney, on the day he was stepping down, said, “My guess is, once they get here and they’re faced with the same problems we deal with every day, that they will appreciate some of the things we’ve put in place.” As it turned out, he was right on the money. The methods have even been creatively developed.

For years later, on the strength of secret warrants, American mobile networks send the National Security Agency information about phone conversations of every citizen, including the time of a call, as well as where telephone subscribers are during a call — so far, only the warrant for Verizon has been revealed, but it is very likely that other operators received the document as well.

The NSA is also conducting a program of Internet monitoring. Grand Internet companies such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft are made to provide access to emails, chats and various private information of their users.

Which users and why exactly those? Nobody knows as the warrants remain confidential, all in the name of the never-ending war against terrorism.

“Your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing,” Obama stated.

He later explained:

“If you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your calls …

“… unless it’s getting an individualized court order.”

From the formal point of view, the president is probably right. The total invigilation of the citizens appears to be in accordance with the law.

However, as The New York Times points out, only a few congressmen — mostly from the Committee on Intelligence — had full knowledge of what was going on. Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal established that the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which decides who can be invigilated, rejected only 11 out of 34,000 submitted applications. It constitutes merely 0.03 percent. No wonder that Obama’s assurance that courts control the government is less than convincing.

Is Edward Snowden a traitor or a hero? He is a 29-year-old IT specialist who used to work as a technical contractor for the NSA and CIA and later ran away from American Hawaii to Chinese Hong Kong and leaked details of invigilation to The Guardian.

Although the U.S. government says otherwise, it seems that Snowden tarnished neither the reputation of his country nor anyone else’s. That is the substantial difference between him and, for example, Private Bradley Manning, the CIA* analyst who passed hundreds of thousands of classified reports of the U.S. Army, intelligence and diplomatic corps to the website WikiLeaks. They contained various secrets, the revelation of which could endanger certain diplomats, spies, etc.

The only thing that Snowden felt at liberty to say was that the government secretly invigilated citizens both from the U.S. and other countries.

Invigilation by any measure is not Obama’s worst sin. Perhaps Americans are willing to be watched because it makes them feel safe. A survey conducted by The Washington Post and Pew Research Center seems to confirm the above thesis: Fifty-six percent of respondents declared that they accepted tracking phone records (41 percent did not), and 62 percent said that the government had the right to invade the privacy of citizens to battle terrorism more effectively (31 percent were against such practices).

The proverbial cardinal sin that Obama committed was keeping all of this a secret and making decisions all by himself. That is it. Snowden was totally right — such important matters should be made public knowledge ASAP, and decisions should be made by a public vote. Then at least, U.S. citizens who are against invigilation could fight for their rights in court.

How can anyone put any trust in U.S. intelligence when they confide in people like Snowden? A funny, but very crucial question. If a computer network administrator was able to reveal the greatest secrets of America, something has to be wrong, at least with the Secret Service. Maybe it is not mature enough to discreetly keep tabs on society?

What could somebody ignoring a secret court order be in for? The Slate portal explains what would happen if, for instance, Google disregarded a court warrant and failed to send its users’ emails to the NSA. Such behavior would be treated as contempt of court. The corporation could be fined in a secret trial; the fine would be secret as well, which means that the judge would not have to give any reason for it. That, in turn, might cause Google some trouble while filing a tax return. Eventually, the owner of Google could end up behind bars, which obviously would no longer be a secret affair. As one could guess, the reasons for the judgment would remain classified.

Does James Clapper have to leave? He is the director of National Intelligence, who, when asked by congressmen, denied that the NSA was “unwittingly” collecting data on millions of citizens. Today, he explains that his answer was the “least most untruthful” answer that he was able to give to the public, bearing in mind that the whole invigilation was top-secret.

Allegedly, the truth is that the government acts like a bibliophile buying all the books and putting them into his library, not bothering to read them. Such a book-lover collects books but does not know what they are about, which could be described as “an unwitting collection.”

The bibliophile opens a particular book only when he has to look something up. Similarly, the government uses citizens’ private data when they are suspected of some illegal activity.

Surely, a broad grin suffuses Cheney’s face as he listens to such far-fetched explanations.

*Editor’s note: Manning was an analyst for the U.S. Army, not the CIA.