Spying, Information and Power

When it comes to spying, it is going from bad to worse for Uncle Sam. The National Security Agency is in the eye of the hurricane. According to British newspaper The Guardian, the NSA has probably spied on 35 world leaders, leading to the discomfort that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and the Spanish government have all expressed to the U.S. president.

Spying is as old as war. Since antiquity, empires like those of the Chinese, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Romans, have used encryption methods to protect sensitive information. Spying has received a great deal of attention since as long ago as 25 centuries, as demonstrates Sun Tzu’s military treatise “The Art of War,” one of the oldest books written in China, whose main message is: Know your enemy. This book considers spies the most important component of war because the ability to move and lead an army depends mainly on them.

From this work, we get the somber quote, “If you know the enemy and you know yourself, then you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” This book is still valid today. It is used as a training manual for senior management, transformational leadership, effective corporate management and conflict resolution. Sun Tzu’s strategies and tactics are applied and adjusted to the realities of the business world. Acquiring classified information is essential for governments to make foreign and national policy decisions, but it is not exclusive to them. Commercial espionage using cutting-edge technology, for example, affects multimillion-dollar interests in the auto, information technology, telephone, pharmaceutical, agricultural industries and others.

Before, during and after the two world wars, spying was crucial to the effective application of military strategies. Countries like Germany, England, Japan and the United States have continually improved their methods.

For Max Weber, the German political economist, knowing is a source of power and, in simple terms, makes it possible for an individual — meaning a group, brotherhood, corporation or country — to exercise his or her will in full. It is no surprise that since 1979, the year when the largest web of espionage and analytic processing of information by the entity ECHELON was made known, nothing, absolutely nothing, remains hidden in this global community.

ECHELON is a phenomenal system of 120 satellites. It can track 3 billion government, business or civilian communications daily. This entails control over electronic correspondence, land line and cell phone calls, and fax messages in most of the world. What is really impressive is that ECHELON automatically collects, categorizes and analyzes all the information. The destination is an alliance of military intelligences, consisting of the United States, England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the beginning of July of this year, Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the U.S. has spied on various Latin American countries including Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Peru and El Salvador. At the time, the Salvadoran government alleged that it did not have concrete or sufficient information. This response is understandable, considering there are more than 2 million Salvadorans in the United States, and the recipients of remittances from the U.S. to El Salvador triples that number.

Locally, at the time, both Belarmino Jaime, former Supreme Court president, and its current president, Florentin Melendez, expressed suspicion that their telephones were being tapped. Then it is no surprise that on July 11 representative Edwin Zamora said that “we are all in danger of being spied on,” and that his colleague, representative Ana Vilma de Escobar, seemed to have confirmed this practice — with a fortuitous, live demonstration — when she coincidentally got a call during an interview, granted at the Legislative Assembly, regarding spying and wiretapping. Interestingly, President Funes accused the party both representatives belong to of cyberterrorism.

My conclusion is that spying is a cultural and global phenomenon. It is invasive and slips in through the crevices of politics, business, even temples. Privileged information obtained through the use of information technology, the buying of sources and interception of communications systems demonstrates the fragility of individuals, institutions and governments.

Nowadays, spying, especially on telephone calls and emails, is on everyone’s lips. Without Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, the world would not be aware of what a government is capable of doing when it realizes that spying is a great source of information and power.